What if you already knew how to do this?
Last November, when I decided to create a new healing ritual, blending rebozo wrapping (closing the bones style) and intuitive drum healing, I knew I was taking a gamble, but I never expected it to prove so popular.
I ran a fully booked taster workshop last month, and my first ever teaching workshop was also fully booked with a waiting list. Women are asking me when I’m doing it again AND also asking when I’m going to be offering an online version of this training.
Honestly I was really surprised by how popular this has been. I think I’m beginning to understand why this is resonating so deeply. And it has everything to do with permission, intuition, and breaking away from patriarchal ways of doing things.
How I got here
I decided to create this hybrid modality after teaching closing the bones for over 12 years, when I facilitated a workshop with this modality, without prior training, for 55 women at the convention of women drummers. There not only did I witness how powerful it was, but I lost count of how many women approached me afterwards saying it was life changing.
I had already been handing drums to my closing the bones students for over 3 years, but I hadn’t yet not making the drum as important as the wrapping. When I last taught the closing the bones workshop in its previous inception to a group of doulas last November (with the rocking, the massage and the wrapping), one thing became clear: I needed to simplify things and make more room for the drumming.
Four years ago, whilst training with Mexican midwife Naoli Vinaver, I had already become aware that wrapping what powerful in its own right, especially as I took this training whilst undergoing a mental health crisis. You can read about that here and the amazing effect of sharing this with my community here.
Since the launch of my book, The Beat of Your Own Drum, and through teaching women about drumming and about ritual, one thread has become very clear: I want to offer something easy, simple and accessible to everyone. Something that is away from rules and rigid ways of practising. Something that doesn’t require years of training, but rather makes space for each person to do it from intuition, and with what works for them.
In short: do it like you, not like me.
Intuition over technique
I think this was always in my nature, because during the first year I was teaching closing the bones 12 years ago, my then doula mentor, Suzanne, a very experienced healer, told me that what she liked best about my style of teaching was that I wasn’t imposing “my way” onto my students, but rather encouraging them to do it their own way.
What I witnessed with 55 women at the drum convention in November showed me I was right. All these women knew how to hold space and how to drum, intuitively. Very little teaching was needed and I could focus on space holding and responding in real time to what was happening, instead of being in my head to correct techniques.
Last week when I did a taster workshop with 12 women I was able to go into a completely altered state of consciousness whilst facilitating, because I didn’t need to focus on the technique. From that space I could feel where everybody was at, whether they were ready to move to the next wrap, I could drum and sing, and respond energetically instead of intellectually.
That felt very, very right to me.
The patriarchal construct of “doing it right”
Over the last 12 years of teaching closing the bones and rebozo techniques, one thing that I have noticed time and time again is that students often ask how long or how fast/tight they should rock, massage, or wrap the woman they’re working with. I have felt that this need to be given strict numbers is rooted in a patriarchal way of doing things, one that likes to measure everything, and treat everyone the same. I have always answered that it depends on the woman and that you need to ask her what she prefers, as well as feel into it.
Since starting to teach drumming workshops, I keep hearing women ask me what is the “right technique”, the right rhythm to drum. And time and time again I tell them the right rhythm is the one they want to play intuitively. IWhen I was interviewed by a scientific journal about drumming and birth, and the editor asked me what rhythm I play during births, and I explained that I didn’t use any set rhythms, rather I played my drum by responding intuitively to the mother and the energy in the room.
But with the drum, now I’m going even further: I tell women to actively avoid trying to play set drumming rhythms, because it may prevent them from learning to trust themselves (worrying that they are “doing it wrong”), and also prevent them from learning to drum intuitively.
This fear of doing things wrong, this idea that there is only one right way of doing things, is a patriarchal construct, and I want to help women break away from it. I tell them this is self expression, and the opposite of a performance.
The drumming I encourage women to explore isn’t a performance, itās self expression.
For me this is similar to dance. I’ve attended 5 Rhythms dance sessions for over 6 years. 5 Rhythms is about self expression, not “doing the right dance steps”. Itās completely different from taking ballroom dancing classes.
Believing that the only right drumming is playing set rhythms is similar to believing that 5 Rhythms isn’t dance, and that only dance with set steps, like say Tango, is ātrueā dance. They are just two different things. Both are valid and enjoyable in their own rights but they do not serve the same purpose. And you could do and enjoy both!
You don’t need permission
Another thing I have noticed (something I write about extensively in my book), is that the gatekeeping of artistic expression is something that only exists in modern western society. In human cultures around the world, drumming, dancing and singing are normal communal activities (the same way it’s normal for bees to make honey), and NOT DOING THEM isn’t normal. They arenāt reserved to a select few who are āgood enough” Only it’s kind of hard when we haven’t been raised that way.
This leads me to my next point: you don’t need permission.
You don’t need permission from anyone to drum, not from me, not from a teacher, not from anyone who can decide whether you are “good enough” to do it.
You also don’t need permission to give healing, touch, holding, nurture and care to other women.
The same applies to the idea that one needs permission to do healing rituals like closing the bones. While I understand that some people prefer to prioritise formal lineage structures, I believe the practices of woman care, including closing ceremonies, belong to the collective wisdom of women across cultures, not to gatekeepers. These are human practices that have emerged independently in multiple traditions precisely because they meet fundamental human needs. I don’t believe anyone requires permission to learn, adapt, and offer rituals or woman care, and I encourage all my students to do so.
What matters is not whose permission you have, but whether you practice with skill, ongoing learning, and genuine care for the women you serve.
The new era we’re stepping into
I believe that we are at the cusp of a new era when new modalities need to come forth, away from the gatekeeping of patriarchal structures, and that encouraging women to trust themselves and feel good enough (in a culture that has subtly, and not so subtly been teaching them that they aren’t), is fundamentally important.
And this is why I believe that my new workshop is proving so popular, because deep down we women know this.
We know that we don’t need more rules, more techniques to master, more hoops to jump through to prove we’re “good enough”. We need permission to trust ourselves. We need practices that meet us where we are. We need to remember what our ancestors knew: that caring for each other, drumming together, holding each other, these aren’t skills reserved for the initiated. They’re our birthright.
Want to learn this work?If what I’ve written here resonates with you, Iām teaching the next Wrapped in Rhythm in person workshop near Cambridge on the 9th and 10th of May.
Symbolic Rituals and Objects
āHaving the closing the bones massage helped me to accept my baby’s loss and start to move forward and also forgive my body and let go of all the negative feelings.ā 
I have written a blog
As you can imagine and as is the case with much traditional wisdom around the postpartum, there isnāt a lot of published research or written words on the subject.