TEDxMileHigh 2022

Read The Script:

For 25 years I’ve worked in the child welfare system, first in Ghana and now, in the United States. And of the many cases I’ve been a part of, there’s one that stuck with me: A 14-year-old boy who watched his older brother get shot and killed during what was reported to be a gang-related activity.

I met him 3 or 4 months after the shooting, but he was still in a state of shock as if the trauma had just happened. You could see it in his eyes – the anger, sadness, loss of interest, confusion. He struggled in class – he wasn’t following directions or paying attention. And he received all the diagnoses that you could think of, like Oppositional Defiance Disorder and ADHD.

In cases like these, the standard course of treatment is two-fold: talk therapy & medication. And for good reason, they‘re very effective.

But medications have side effects & talk therapy has its limitations. I often get calls from therapists who tell me that a child isn’t able to talk about their trauma or even describe it.

But that’s why I started to wonder – is there another way to help young children/adults process their trauma?

For thousands of years, communities around the world have developed their own healing traditions and handed them down from generation to generation.

In parts of Australia, Aboriginal healers, called Ngangkaris, soothe physical and mental pain through massage. In India & Nepal, Ayurvedic practitioners use food as medicine. And in Ghana, where I was born and raised, we have traditional herbalists & spiritualists who use herbs, music to heal.  As a child, I witnessed a man who claimed to have had his spirit taken over by powerful entities healed by listening to traditional drummers play and sing songs. While they surrounded him.

Colonial legacy will suggest that these traditional and indigenous healing practices are not effective, that, they haven’t been scientifically proven to be effective so they’re not worth prescribing.

But it’s also true that many practices we now take for granted – like yoga & meditation – were considered unscientific or “woo woo” just a few decades ago. Until scientists created a whole body of research to show their effectiveness. Now, they’re mainstream.

The lesson is clear – Western scientists should, at the very least, investigate traditional healing practices. Especially when these traditions sit at the intersection of a person’s culture, rituals, community, and spirituality – everything that makes them whole.

So in 2016, I set out to do just that. To search for answers to the burning question I’ve been asking: Is there a science behind the rituals and traditions I experienced growing up in Ghana?

As a child, some of my favorite memories were spending my summers with my maternal grandfather Kojo. Every Friday evening the communities came together for drumming, singing and dancing, rituals, and pouring drinks as a way of thanking our ancestors and asking for healing for the sick. 

So I asked my grandpa Kojo, “Why were the people dancing barefooted, the drums tilted to a certain angle?” He told me that “we are giving our tiredness, burden, and weariness back to Asese Yaa (The goddess mother Earth) and we are asking for rejuvenation. He further explained to me that the drums which are made of wood from mother earth and the animal skin we use as the head of the drum Their blood returned to Mother Earth and when we beat the drum, and dance barefooted we are connecting back to the source of all life.

He taught me the three basic tones of Djembe a) Base [DEMO], b) tone [DEMO], and c) slap [DEMO]. Put together, these three tones can express any feeling you could imagine: Excitement [DEMO]. Nostalgia [DEMO].

Grandpa Kojo would always say, if you are not feeling it in your soul and spirit, you are not doing it right.

So at the end of my first year as an Adjunct faculty at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work, I submitted a proposal for a research project called Building Resilience Through Self Expression: The Power of Traditional African Drums to Heal & Relieve Traumatic Stress.

We recruited 100 second-year graduate students over four quarters, with support from a researcher colleague, Dr. Christina Peguya, we developed surveys to assess each student’s stressors or symptoms both before and after the drumming therapy. Things like low energy, depression, difficulty paying attention, difficulty processing information, loss of creativity, connectivity

For the majority of our students, this was their first-time drumming, so I taught them how to play the three basic tones, and as they learned to play, I asked them to pay attention to what was happening, physiologically, in their own bodies. How did their heart rate change? Their breathing? Connection to each other, mood, energy level

Once they learned the basics, we went through a group exercise. I’d ask the students, “How are you feeling today? What emotions are going on in your body? Can you drum something to share what you’re feeling?” [DEMO] Sometimes, the students found themselves relating to each other’s emotions & experiences. And so I asked them to drum together, like this: [DEMO]

In the post Survey, we asked them to describe if the experience eliminate or help reduce any of their stress symptoms. And 90% of participants said that the experience increased their energy level, their connection with their classmates, their creativity, and self-confidence for having been able to learn a new skill. 90% is an incredible result.

And it’s an important contribution to this growing body of work. In the last 10 years, scholars have published dozens of papers on `the efficacy of Drumming and healing trauma-related stress.  Dr. Barry Bittman concluded, “When our hands connect with a DRUM that vibrates with our energy, vitality, emotions, exhilaration, hope, sensitivity, giving, sharing and Unity, we become whole again.” 

So for my next project, I partnered with local schools and nonprofits to enroll students with difficult home lives in a 7-10 week drumming program. And at the end of it, teachers and parents reported a significant improvement. They said that drumming helped boost their self-confidence, enhanced their creativity and attention in the classroom.

I believe communal healing has never been more relevant in our society. We have had two years of forced isolation due to a global pandemic, where we couldn’t come together as families and communities to celebrate or be with each other. All while enduring racial and political turmoil in our country.

So, as social workers, clinicians, doctors, and psychologists, let’s not continue this colonial mindset by condemning traditional healing therapies. Therapy and medications have a very important place in healing traumatic experiences. However, I also believe that true and total healing connects a person with domains of their lives – like their community, rituals, and spiritual practices that hold a significant meaning to them.

I know because it worked for the 14-year-old boy who sat in my office angry and in pain, he found himself again through drumming… And it worked for me too.

Four years ago, I sat in an empty house I had just closed on to start my new life post-divorce. There was these overwhelming feeling of failure, doubt, and questions of how I was going to manage having 50% custody of my boys who mean the world to me, having a full-time career, my adjunct faculty work, bills, etc. I picked up a Djembe and drummed for about 40 minutes nonstop. I saw the stress evaporate out of my body, stepped out, and took my new life head-on.

And like the 14-year-old, I rediscovered the power of traditions and rituals.

Thank You!

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