Healing through music and community - Pittsburgh Women's Wellness Drum Circle | KD Sunday Spotlight

For a group of women, they've got a language all their own, through the power of drumming.  They've found that it's therapeutic with every beat, through a recently formed nonprofit called Pittsburgh Women's Wellness Drum Circle.

"People should be running and flocking to these circles because they're so healing and they're free," said Haley Jenkins.

You'll find these free drum circles are exclusively open to women.

"Drumming is a beautiful way to heal as it does so many things for you," Jenkins said. 

All those benefits participants feel are part of the nonprofit's mission to help women find wellness. Jenkins said drumming, "changes the state of brainwaves. It helps with memory; it helps with focus."

"[We have] therapists, we have drumming experts," she continued. "We are very tapped into the wellness and mental health community with our board members."

The board and nonprofit became formalized in March 2025, and since then, Jenkins said it's rapidly taken off. 

"We have doubled our drum circle numbers. We have been to countless festivals, drummed with thousands of people just in the last year and a half," Jenkins said.

Pittsburgh Women's Wellness Drum Circle hosts drum circles, events, and workshops to help build a community of people who participate. Jenkins said that community is their number one priority. 

On the last Sunday of every month, drum circles take over the Steel Goat Marketplace, but the benefits resonate long after the beat stops. To Jenkins, drumming and the drum circles build community. 

"It taps into your central nervous system; you can actually start to heal," she said. 

It's a nonprofit bringing wellness to the streets, for free, with every rhythm of a drum. 

"Finding the things, inside and outside of you, that can bring you back to yourself. That can bring you peace," said Jenkins.

Pittsburgh Women's Wellness Drum Circle plans to host Pittsburgh's first "Drum Fest" this September at Herrs Island off the 31st Street Bridge.

The nonprofit's goal is to eventually start a leadership program to train other women how to start drum circles. 

The nonprofit is on all social media, but for more information, you can check out their Facebook page.