Didge Project is a didgeridoo awareness movement based in New York City. The didgeridoo is an incredible instrument that can be used for music, meditation and healing. Didge Project's goal is to bring a didgeridoo into every household and to facilitate happiness and harmony on planet earth.

At Didge Project we make and sell handcrafted bamboo didgeridoos in order to provide our community with affordable, high-quality instruments. We teach how to play the didgeridoo and how to use it in musical, meditative and healing contexts. Our events include live performances, yoga classes with live didgeridoo, didgeridoo lessons, vibrational awareness workshops and group meditations. We also work privately with individuals and groups using our own didgeridoo healing methodology.

Ultimately Didge Project aims to elevate human consciousness through the power of the didgeridoo and its vibrations.

In Chennai, India, AJ Block met and recorded with the worldly bansuri flute player Navin Iyer. Listen and enjoy.

More selections from these India recordings can be heard at AJ Block's MySpace Page

In 2005 The British Medical Journal reported on a study conducted at the University of Zurich in which researchers hypothesized that regular didgeridoo playing could be an effective treatment for obstructive sleep apnea. The sleeping disorder is characterized by pauses in breathing during sleep, often leading to daytime restlessness. Participants, mostly men aged around 50 and experiencing high amounts of daytime sleepiness, were to learn to play the didgeridoo by taking periodic lessons and practicing at least 20 minutes per day, 5 days a week for four months. All participants used identical acrylic didgeridoos (as seen in the first photo). Participants were given four lessons as follows (quoted directly from the study):

 1. "participants learned the lip technique to produce and hold the keynote for 20-30 seconds"

 2.  "the instructor explained the concept and technique of circular breathing. Circular breathing is a technique that enables the wind instrumentalist to maintain a sound for long periods of time by inhaling through the nosewhile maintaining airflow through the instrument, using the cheeks as bellows"

 3. "the didgeridoo instructor taught the participants his technique to further optimize the complex interaction between the lips, the vocal tract, and circular breathing so that the vibrations in the upper airway are more readily transmitted to the lower airways"

 4. "the instructor and the participants repeated the basics of didgeridoo playingand made corrections when necessary"

 The Results:

 Participants were tested at the beginning and end of the study for four different quality-of-sleep and daytime sleepiness indicators and were then compared to a control group that was not allowed to play the didgeridoo. For each indicator, the group that practiced the didgeridoo made significant improvements compared to the group that did not. 

The most significant indicator is the Epworth scale, a measurement of daytime sleepiness (the higher you are on the scale, the more daytime sleepiness you experience). The figure here shows that those who practiced the didgeridoo saw their level of daytime sleepiness decrease, while those in the control group saw various changes, including testing better, the same and far worse.

The study was hailed as a success but only through continued research will we know the true effects of playing the didgeridoo to treat sleep apnea. It is unclear the level to which the participants mastered circular breathing, a technique which often challenges newer didge players. Enhanced results could potentially be found in longer experiment periods (greater than four months) and more in-depth and frequent didge lessons. For information on learning to play the didgeridoo in New York, email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

(Images taken from the British Medical Journal report)