This has only been a brief exploration into the connection between rhythm, embodiment, and altered states of consciousness, but it’s clear to see that combining rhythm with psychoactive plants and fungi can greatly increase the impact that rhythm has on our lives. The benefit is that we can potentially draw ourselves away from the individualised healing narrative and engage more within embodied communal practices that benefit the wellness of our entire community.
While psychoactive plants and fungi might not have directly caused us to become rhythmic creatures, it seems that the introduction of these organisms might open up something within us that allows us to tap in more to a rhythmic way of being. We might think that we should be able to tap into this purely by ourselves, but there might be aspects of our lives which cut us off from this rhythmic part of ourselves, and we can utilise different plants or fungi to help possibly remove some of these aspects that create a barrier to the rhythmic expression.
When we consume psychedelics in safe environments, with people whom we trust and ideally in something of a communal environment, there is more potential for psychedelics to have an overwhelmingly positive impact on our rhythmic experience.
Our rhythmic experience can go beyond just practices which engage us in specific sonic expression, as there might be wider rhythms to life and nature that we can engage with through the use of psychedelics. In a 1987 interview titled Nature Is the Centre of the Mandala, Terence McKenna is quoted as saying:
…before technology, people had to store firewood in the autumn for the winter. And in the spring they had to sharpen tools for the late spring planting, and this sort of thing. That there was an implicit rhythm laid down by nature that entered the human cosmos at every level, and then was reflected in the poetry, the culture building, the language evolution, et cetera.
And between urbanization, other factors removed the influence of these rhythms, ending in the final culmination of the modern city where life under electric light goes on 24 hours a day. There’s then a flattening of the human dimension. There is no more a sense of being embedded in flux. There is instead the myth of eternal culture.
With this quote in mind, I think it’s quite fitting to look towards our engagement with rhythm as being a bridge between the biological natural world, the communal, and the cosmic.
Oli Genn-Bash | Community Blogger at Chemical Collective | linktr.ee/oligennbash
Oli is one of our community bloggers here at Chemical Collective. If you’re interested in joining our blogging team and getting paid to write about subjects you’re passionate about, please reach out to Sam via email at samwoolfe@gmail.com
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