Closing the Bones & Drumming
How rhythm and ritual help women honour life’s transitions
A Free 75-Minute Live online workshop
Wednesday 5th of August 2026
7pm UK time
If you’ve ever felt called to offer healing, wrapping, or drumming to women, but wondered whether you need formal training or what is the “right” way to do it, this workshop is for you.
This isn’t a lecture. It’s an experience.
You won’t just be listening. You’ll be watching, feeling, experiencing and discovering what happens when two of the most ancient forms of women’s healing, wrapping the body with shawls and intuitive drumming, come together in a single practice.
This free workshop is a taster of what I teach across my wrapped in rhythm in person workshops and my closing ritual online course, and it’s completely free to attend live.
What if you could…
Learn the science behind why being wrapped and held is so deeply regulating for the nervous system, and understand why this matters for the women you work with?
Discover a healing practice that requires no complicated technique, no hierarchy to climb, and no permission from anyone, just your hands, your presence, and your drum?
Try it on yourself. I’ll walk you through simple self wrapping techniques, so you leave with something you can use that same evening, on your own body, with nothing more than a scarf or shawl.
Feel it in your own nervous system through a short drum meditation, guided live, so you don’t just learn about regulation, you experience it.
See exactly what the practice I have created that blends closing the bones wrapping with intuitive drum healing look like in practice, through stories from clients, and photos and videos from real workshops.
Connect with other women who are called to offer this kind of care to the women in their lives and work.
If this speaks to you, join me for 75 minutes of teaching, demonstration and genuine connection with women on the same path.
Here’s what’s in it for you
This isn’t passive learning, it’s a real introduction to a real practice, and you’ll leave with a real experience of what it feels like something in hand.
By the end of the workshop, you will:
- Understand the neuroscience of why wrapping and rhythm regulate the nervous system so powerfully together, and be able to explain this to the women you support.
- Have tried self wrapping for the pelvis and shoulders yourself, so you know exactly how it feels in your own body before you ever offer it to someone else.
- Have experienced a drum meditation, so you carry a felt sense of what intuitive drum healing is, not just a definition of it.
- Know precisely what my Wrapped in Rhythm in person trainings involve, and whether they’re the right next step for you.
- Understand what my Closing the Bones online course offers, and how it differs from and complements in person training.
- Have a clear, honest sense of whether this practice is for you, with nothing to decide on the spot.
We’ll explore
- The history and roots of wrapping. Where rebozo wrapping and closing the bones ceremonies come from, how they’ve appeared across cultures independently.
- The history and roots of drum healing. How drumming has been used as medicine across human history, and why the drum is uniquely placed to support women through transitions.
- The neuroscience of why this works. What actually happens in the nervous system when a woman is wrapped, and why adding drumming to that experience deepens the regulation even further.
Why these two practices together?
- Wrapping a woman is an act of deep care. It says: you are held, you are safe, you can let go. The nervous system responds immediately, releasing, softening, dropping into rest.
- Adding the drum takes this somewhere else entirely. The rhythm reaches the parts that words cannot. It shifts brainwaves. It moves what has been stuck. It reminds the body of something it always knew.
- I’ve been teaching closing the bones and rebozo wrapping for over 12 years. I’ve been working with the drum for the same length of time. When I finally brought them together, for 55 women at the Convention of Women Drummers last year, I lost count of how many women approach me afterwards saying it was life changing.
- I have run similar online introduction evenings over the years, and they have always been widely attended and very well received.
What You’ll Need
- An internet connection and device for Zoom (computer, tablet, or phone all work).
- Somewhere comfortable to sit and, when we get to the wrapping demonstration, a little space to stand and move.
- A scarf, sarong, or shawl if you’d like to try the self wrapping technique. Not essential, you’re welcome to simply watch.
- A notebook if you like to write things down.
- Curiosity, nothing else is required.
Who This Is For
This workshop is for you if:
- You’re curious about Wrapping or Closing the Bones and want to understand what they are before committing to a training or course.
- You work with women, as a bodyworker, therapist, doula, educator, circle facilitator, or in any other capacity, and you’re looking for a simple, yet powerful practice to add to your offering.
- You’ve been drawn to use the drum in your work but aren’t sure where to begin.
- You want to understand the science of why wrapping and drumming are so regulating for the nervous system, and want to feel it for yourself first.
- You’ve already done some rebozo or closing the bones work and want to understand how drumming can deepen it.
- You believe women’s healing belongs to all women, not gatekeepers, and you want a practice that reflects that.
Why This Practice Matters Now
For centuries, women held other women through the threshold moments of their lives. Through birth and loss, through grief and reclamation, through the passages that the modern world offers no map for.
They used what they had: their hands, their voices, cloth, and rhythm. They didn’t need a certificate to do it. They needed presence, care, and the willingness to be there for each other.
Closing the Bones and Drumming is a return to that simplicity. It combines the practice of wrapping with shawls with the medicine of intuitive drumming, and it asks nothing of the giver except that she trusts herself.
The women who receive this ceremony say it changes something. The women who offer it say the same.
About me
I’m Sophie Messager, a holistic women’s guide, drumming facilitator, author of The Beat of Your Own Drum, and the creator of Wrapped in Rhythm. I hold a PhD in reproductive physiology and spent 20 years as a research scientist and 10 years as a doula, before broadening my work to support women through life transitions.
I bridge science and ceremony. I read research papers and I drum in the woods. I’ve taught closing the bones and rebozo wrapping to hundreds of women over 12 years, and I’ve been working with the drum as medicine for the same length of time.
When I brought wrapping and drumming together into a single modality for the first time, something clicked that I hadn’t been able to name before. It made space for the intuitive ability my students already have when it comes to holding space for transformation, whilst being both powerful and technically simple.
This free workshop is my way of sharing what I’ve discovered with as many women as possible, and of inviting those who feel called to learn it further, in person or online, so they can carry it forward into the lives of the women they hold.
What happens next?
This workshop is completely free. No strings attached.
You’ll leave with a real, felt understanding of what closing the bones style wrapping and drumming is, where it comes from, and why it works, including your own experience of self wrapping and a drum meditation. You’ll have an understanding of intuitive drum healing. And if the in person training or the online closing the bones course calls to you, you’ll have everything you need to decide.
When is the workshop taking place?
On Wednesday the 5th of August 2026 at 7pm UK time.
The workshop is 75 min min long with about 60 min of teaching and 15 min of Q&A
How much does it cost?
The workshop is free to attend live. If you cannot attend live, the recording will be available on my website for £30.
This workshop will include a short talk about my upcoming in person workshop near Cambridge, and about my closing the bones online course and include an offer for class attendees
Ready to be part of this? Simply enter your details in the form below.
The drum is calling.
Let’s reclaim our voices together!