Steph Thompson is a certified Mindfulness Trainer and a graduate of the Open Center’s Integrative Sound & Music Institute Certificate Program. Previously the founder of arts education nonprofit InspireCorps, Ms. Thompson discovered the benefit of percussion to help teach group harmony and connectedness and began in 2017 to facilitate “Get in Tune” healing drum circles for school children and men and women living in temporary housing shelters. In 2022, Ms. Thompson created her Sacred Bloom practice to offer Sound Bath rituals she terms, “healing harmonies for the soul.”
MY STORY...
When I first played a beat on a drum, I couldn’t imagine that a sound could make me feel like me.
I’ve been a writer since I was little and always tried to use words to convey how I felt, who I was. But suddenly I realized that sound, a simple rhythm, contained so much more.
Around 2008, with small children at home, I began to go out to live music a lot. Friends play every night of the week at one or another venue in New York City, and I found myself there, transfixed, listening to their rhythms, soothed and focused by their melodies. Inspired, I signed up for a band class with other moms. I played piano and drums, did some songwriting. Our teacher began with a drum circle. From the first moment I created a beat, it was like I discovered a way to express something inside, deep yet subtle, a way to
connect with other people.
...reverence for who you are & want to be.
Listen.
Learning how to be attuned to music has awakened me to sounds everywhere, from the intermittent knocking of a woodpecker in the woods to the repetitious bleating of a car
alarm on the streets of Brooklyn. Awake and aware, I am
mindful, present.
Along with the vibration and tones of music and sound, I have the freedom and permission to look within, to feel safe through its shifting variations to adapt to the varying emotions that course through my mind and body.
​
Since the dawn of time, humans have gathered in a circle to
play instruments created from the hides and sinew of
animals, from the seeds and skins of plants. It is in our
nature to find ourselves this way, to find each other, to find
harmony.
​
Peace. Shalom. Inshallah.
XX Steph Thompson
