Shamanic drum medicine: Awakening ancestral joy
Deep in your bones lies a forgotten medicine - the vibrant joy and wisdom of your ancestors.
While modern healing can sometimes focus on fixing what's broken, shamanic drum journeys offer something different: a path to reclaim the natural vitality, wisdom, and joy that is your birthright.
How shamanic drumming heals generational trauma
Our ancestral inheritance is layered. In our recent family lines - our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents - we often carry the weight of unprocessed experiences. Science now shows us through epigenetics how trauma can be passed down through generations.
Our recent ancestors often didn't have access to the healing information and tools we have today. They lived in times when emotional wellbeing wasn't discussed, when trauma wasn't understood, when healing practices were often lost or forgotten. This unprocessed material lives in our bodies, influencing our patterns and responses today.
Through the drum, we can reach deeper, connecting with ancestors across vast spans of time.
Our earliest ancestors faced intense challenges - harsh climates, predators, the daily uncertainty of survival. As humans developed agriculture, new challenges emerged - failed crops, changing social structures, conflicts over land. Throughout these periods, our ancestors developed ways to process their experiences through rhythm, ceremony, and community.
When the drum's rhythm calls us into altered states of consciousness, we can access:
The patterns in our recent ancestral lines that need understanding and integration
The wisdom of how our ancestors, across all eras, found ways to process their experiences
The strength that comes from connecting with these ancestral practices and understanding
As we work with both our inherited patterns and these ancient practices, deep transformation unfolds. The drum guides us to the wisdom we need - whether from our recent lines or our ancient past. This isn't about idealising any era of human history.
Rather, it's about recognising how, throughout time, humans have used rhythm and ceremony to move through life's challenges. Now, with our modern understanding of healing, we can work with these practices in powerful ways.
“Absolutely incredible experience. Almost indescribable! Drumming is literally out of this world...and certainly from another world. What a talented team. Such wonderful people too. Thank you Ruth & Brillo for bringing out the wildness and zen in this woman! Highly recommended.”
Healing through generations
Here's a profound truth about ancestral healing work: when we heal our ancestors' wounds, we set ourselves free. Each pattern we transform, each trauma we witness with compassion, each heavy legacy we lighten - this healing ripples both backwards and forwards through time. We heal not only ourselves but also help release our ancestors from their unresolved pain. In doing so, we create new possibilities for future generations.
This is the deeper purpose of our drum journeys - not just personal healing, but a transformation that spans generations. By drawing on the strength of our ancient ancestors, we can face and heal the wounds of our recent lines, creating a new legacy of wholeness for those who will come after us.
“Through shamanic drum journeys, you can access ancestral joy, wisdom and courage. The drum’s rhythm speaks a language your body remembers, even if your mind has forgotten. It’s a homecoming to the natural state of aliveness that lives in your very DNA.”
Body memory & shamanic drumming
Your body carries not just your personal story, but the layered wisdom of all who came before you. While recent generational trauma might create static in this connection, the steady beat of the drum can help you tune into deeper frequencies - from the primal joy of our hunter-gatherer ancestors to the earth-wisdom of early farming communities, reaching beyond recent struggles to touch the ancient knowing that lives in your bones.
Scientific research shows that rhythmic drumming:
Activates the same brainwave patterns as deep meditation
Releases natural feel-good chemicals in the body
Reduces inflammation and chronic pain
Helps process trauma stored in the body
Creates a natural state of peaceful alertness
But beyond these measurable benefits lies something even more profound: the awakening of your body's inherited wisdom.
A personal journey from pain to joy
As someone who has moved from experiencing drums as symbols of division in Northern Ireland to discovering their profound healing power, I understand the journey from ancestral pain to joy intimately.
Through my own experience with chronic pain and fibromyalgia, I've discovered that the drum doesn't just ease physical suffering - it awakens a deep remembering of joy that lives in our bones.
In my own drum journeys, I often connect with an ancient medicine woman through the land. She comes from pre-agricultural times, bringing with her a strength and wisdom that predates our modern separations from earth and body.
Through her presence, I feel a courage that helps me transform my recent ancestral patterns. She reminds me that this healing wisdom has always been here, waiting in the land, in our bones, in the drum's rhythm.
In my work with countless others, I've witnessed how the drum's rhythm can:
Guide us past recent generational wounds to access ancient wisdom
Transform physical pain into embodied understanding
Release trapped trauma without needing to relive it
Awaken natural states of joy and aliveness
Connect us to the strength and resilience of our lineage
What happens in a shamanic drum journey?
Unlike conventional healing approaches that focus on "fixing" problems, a drum journey creates a safe container for remembering. As the rhythm builds, it speaks directly to your nervous system, bypassing the thinking mind to access deeper wisdom.
Brillo, my co-creator drumming at a recent drum journey at the Mount Without
In this sacred space:
Your body naturally attunes to healing rhythms
Ancestral wisdom becomes accessible through direct experience
Joy emerges not as something to seek, but as something to remember
Physical and emotional healing occurs organically
You connect with the strength and vitality of your lineage
Shamanic drum medicine: Awakening ancient memory
When we gather to receive a drum journey, our ancestors' legacy awakens within us. Their resilience lives in our bones, their hard-won wisdom flows through our blood. We carry both their struggles and their triumphs, their tears and their laughter, their darkness and their light.
This is not about painting a romanticised picture of the past. Rather, it's about acknowledging the full spectrum of our ancestral inheritance. Through their hardships, our ancestors preserved something precious - the medicine of hope and celebration.
“In the drum’s rhythm, we find an enduring message from our ancestors:
Even in life’s darkest moments, we can access strength and joy.”
Answering the drum’s call
Perhaps you've exhausted traditional healing approaches and still feel something missing. Maybe you sense there's more to healing than just addressing symptoms - a deeper wisdom waiting to be remembered. The drum speaks to those who are ready to explore beyond conventional paths, to those carrying physical or emotional pain, to those feeling a pull toward ancestral connection and belonging.
If these words resonate, then your ancestors might be calling you home through the drum.
“Ruth and Brillo are two incredibly talented and joyful people whose sounds and poetry reached my soul and created such physical, mental and emotional responses within me. Every cell in my body danced to their rhythms and ancient traumas were released. Such a joyful and magical experience, I can’t wait to return for more. Thank you Beautiful Souls.”
Your journey home
Join us for a shamanic drum journey in the sacred space of The Mount Without or the Bristol Goddess Temple, and experience how the drum's rhythm can guide you past recent pain to the joy and wisdom that is your birthright.
No experience needed - just an openness to remember what your body has always known.
