Paulette & Jim O jo.and.po@gmail.com 603 335-3414 didgeridoo4U.

com

Didgeridoos Snoring and Sleep Apnea

The U.S. National Institutes of Health says, "One of the challenges in the treatment of sleep
disorders is poor compliance. Thus new treatments not only need to be effective but also be ones that people are
motivated enough to use. Didgeridoo playing seems to meet these requirements. Participants were highly motivated
during the trial and practiced, on average, almost six days a week, which was even more than the protocol asked for.
Regular playing of a didgeridoo reduces sleep apnea and snoring in people with moderate obstructive sleep
apnea syndrome and also improves the sleep quality of partners. Severity of disease, expressed by the apnea-
hypopnoea index, is also substantially reduced after four months of didgeridoo playing."

The Mayo Clinic concurs with these findings in a new book titled "The Mayo Clinic Book of Home Remedies". This
book was published in Nov. of 2010 so the content is fresh while the home remedies are ancient to modern.

British Medical Journal is a prestigious medical journal that has studied serious controlled trials and found that
playing for 25 minutes per day 5 days per week has a significant effect on sleep apnea symptoms. More evidence would
be needed before going to the FDA and getting full approval for treatment but it is a very supportive study.

Rubin Naiman, PhD., Clinical Assistant Professor of Medicine, University of Arizona."Learning to play the didgeridoo
is emerging as a surprisingly effective and practical strategy for managing snoring and sleep apnea symptoms. I
encourage all my patients with these concerns to discuss this option with their doctors."

Doctors recommend practicing 20-30 minutes a day, 4-5 days a

week

Didgeridoo and Meditation

The didgeridoo has a long history of association with meditation. The sound of the didgeridoo offers a high representation of low
frequencies, typically in the range of 50-200 Hz, which has a high physical impact on the listener and performer for both meditation and
as many believe, Sound Healing. The distribution of frequencies also contains not only harmonics going up to 1000 Hz but also
extremely low frequencies way below the Alpha brainwaves, in the same area as the rhythms of drumming commonly used in
shamanistic rituals of Aborigines and peoples all over the world, time-tested to help in inducing altered states of consciousness. This
may help to explain why the didgeridoo many thousands of years ago found its way into Aboriginal shamanistic and healing practices.
Extremely low frequencies are also produced by interference between two didge frequencies close to one another: one from the drone
or harmonics, the other from vocals used.
Part of the benefits of playing the didge is probably due to circular breathing as well as simply breathing more than usual. In order to
play didgeridoo one has to breathe a lot. The more you breathe the better your didj playing gets. Since most people normally breathe
very shallow, the extra amount of oxygen circulating through the body is beneficial. Playing the didgeridoo forces the player to push air
out of the lungs, reversing the less healthy shallow breathing. If you play the didgeridoo for longer than half an hour, you are likely to
become very relaxed and yet very energized and aware.
Many didge players have reported that quietly playing slow, long notes without vocalizations works well to achieve inner calmness
and emptiness. Other players have the experience that playing protracted notes for half an hour is not very motivating and that some
(not too fast) rhythm increases the attraction of playing without hurting the calming effects. And yet other players come to rest in playing
fast rhythms. It's all very personal.
 Didgeridoo and Sound Healing
This is a wide and as yet very poorly represented issue. Didgeridoo healing is the use of didgeridoo sound to heal people and
animals. The didgeridoo is an instrument that produces low frequency sound that we can hear and actual vibrations that we can feel,
especially if the end of the didgeridoo is placed close to the body.
The didge is beneficial as mentioned above for sleep apnea, snoring and meditation and does benefit the player by increased
breathing and oxygen levels which many find energizing. There is also evidence that listening to a didgeridoo can be relaxing. Here are
some comments people gave when asked for their first experience of didgeridoo sound: deeply touching, in tune with the world, takes
away from thinking, awe inspiring, magical, feels like a voice from the earth, ancient, haunting, powerful, primal, other worldly,
mesmerizing, calming, enchanting, soothing, mystical, hypnotic, relaxing, earthly feeling, primordial.
Beyond the benefits of relaxation there are theories and beliefs that having a person holding the end of a didgeridoo being played or
having a didgeridoo played over the prone body of a person does have healing effects. Indeed it may, but there are few studies to
verify or refute this.