Who Do the Drums Belong To?

A little while ago, the yoga world was rightly buzzing with conversations about cultural appropriation. It was intense. Sometimes eye-opening, sometimes aggressive, and emotional. People were (and still are) calling out the misuse of sacred symbols, language, and rituals - often by people who don’t know the history or pain behind them. It mattered, and it still does.

In the middle of all that, I found myself reflecting on my own relationship to drums.

I’ve used them for years - in yoga spaces, in community song circles, in rituals that weren’t always religious but were certainly sacred. For me, each drum circle became a medicine circle, each song lifted my spirit, each chant reconnected me with something ancient and real. I didn’t just use the drum - I lived through it. It helped me feel my body. It helped me return to myself.

But then I paused.

Because I didn’t want to be the cause of someone else’s discomfort. If my drum and my songs simply remained in my life - if they lived in my hands, my breath, my story - wasn’t that enough?

That pause took me deeper.

I returned to an aspect of Buddhism I hadn’t explored properly before. After more than a decade of constant travel, I realised some teachings only make sense when you’re grounded. So, I stopped roaming, and I began settling into the Himalayan sides of Tantric Buddhism - a lineage where the drum came back again.

And these yogis? They didn’t do sun salutations.

They weren’t obsessed with handstands.

They sat, they chanted, they moved in strange, spiralling ways.

It wasn’t flashy - but it was full. The drum, again, was part of the thread.

At the same time, I began reflecting on my friends back in the modern yoga world -predominantly white women. I’ve witnessed how intense the scrutiny toward them has become, especially online, and while witness and accountability are essential, I also saw something else happening: shame being used as a weapon. These weren’t mindless appropriators, they were women of integrity, they didn’t need to be punished - they needed to be included in the deeper conversations.

Social media has a way of demonising white women, without context but it’s easy to forget that as much privilege as they’ve had, they’re still under the thumb of the white man. That doesn’t excuse harmful behaviour - but it complicates the picture. When I saw some of these sisters shut down and disappear, I didn’t see a win - I saw a loss.

And then I remembered…

The West had its own shamanic roots: witches, druids, pagans - all violently stripped of their traditions. Many of them burned, drowned, or ridiculed into silence. Their rituals, ceremonies, and medicines were severed.

So, of course the modern seeker reaches for what’s left.

Of course, someone raised in the West leans into indigenous or Eastern practices - because in their bones, something remembers. Something resonates and if most spiritual paths lead to the same place, then maybe what we’re witnessing is the long road back home.

Because let’s be real, suffering exists everywhere and healing practices will always travel, shape-shift, and land where they are needed most.

So… who do the drums belong to?

Are they the sacred property of a specific community?

Or are they born from the lands themselves?

In the East, shamanic practices evolved with complex cosmologies - spirits, deities, yidams, dakinis. In Native American and European traditions, the focus leaned more toward nature, ancestors, and a smaller circle of guiding spirits. Africa, from what little I’ve studied, offers an intricate amalgamation of practices - but I won’t pretend to know enough to speak for it.

And then there’s Britain.

Spiritualist churches.

Yes, they’re real and they were doing healing, divination, mediumship long before it became Instagram content. What I saw there felt like the essence of what we now call “shamanic work” - just dressed in different robes.

Which makes me wonder…

What would these practices look like if they were never labelled?

Who gave them their names?

Were those names given out of reverence, or were they originally meant to diminish and dismiss?

And if we removed the labels - would we see something much older, much more familiar, reflected back at us?

Maybe the question isn’t who the drum belongs to.

Maybe the better question is -

Can we listen to where it leads us?