Workplace Wellness

Workplace Wellness in the Health Care and Corporate Sector

I loved participating in the Drum Circle for so many reasons. I think it helped build cohesiveness as a team at a very deep level. There was a wonderful sense of the fun of it, shared amongst all of us. And it was a powerful metaphor for what a team can do. More!!!!!
Sheila Lindfield MA, RCC, RPT-S, CPT-S
Senior Clinical Counsellor

Unusual, unique. Just a couple of words participants have used to describe a drumming and team building session. In this ever changing global climate that calls for a more integrated approach to wellness, innovative health care and corporate sectors are looking for powerful interventions to boost patient and employee’s sense of connection and health.

In a Drum Circle, we play various instruments and rhythms simultaneously. One of the ways that drumming can be a valuable personal teaching is when we are successful at staying with our own rhythm, even as other different rhythms are played all around us. There is a wonderful metaphor for life within this poly-rhythmic experience: the task has two aspects, to unwaveringly hold our own personal rhythm (as we resist the temptation to play another’s rhythm), and to not lose ourselves to someone else’s rhythm.

We all have certain people who trigger us and move us off our centre, which is really just allowing another’s rhythm to become our own. If we take personal responsibility that on some level we’ve allowed this to happen, we are more aware for next time. Playing various African poly-rhythms in a Drum Circle gives individuals an experiential and fun way to practice staying within one’s own personal rhythm, all the while listening to and interacting with other different and complimentary rhythms. Add being simultaneously more relaxed and energized – two of the most common descriptors for the drumming experience – how can it not boost our health?

A great metaphor for leadership. It really ties it all together for us.
Participant, Meeting the Leadership Challenge, UBC Sauder School of Business.