The brain is a game of two halves.

Attend a drumming session with Mike McElya and his Sunshine Drumming Company and something extraordinary happens inside your head.

Instead of that sensible 'left brain' mode you arrived in, with its questioning, doubting, unhelpful insularity - the state in which most of us spend our waking hours - it's time to go 'right'.

Right brain is where instinct takes over from instruction. Right brain is open, flowing, receptive and creative. And right brain is where you want your delegates, your trainees, your class or your guests to be, especially at the start of their day with you.

Of all the resources available to today's HR and training professionals the 'wake up' and the 'ice-breaker' are the crucial starting points which set the mood and define how involving any activities or discussions are approached and perceived, whatever the event.

Mike's special ability to teach African rhythms played on traditional instruments draws people into working together as a team without ever stating the fact. His technique can turn a roomful of strangers into a gang of friends and colleagues in the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.

And apart from any practical consideration, the sheer thrill of 10, 20, 50...perhaps as many as a hundred people at a time learning to beat African goatskin djembe drums is quite an amazing musical experience, gripping the concentration with an emotional, uninhibited and primeval force.

That's in the right-hand side of your brain, remember: the part we're usually encouraged to suppress.