Tom Harris has worked in Therapeutic Wilderness Camps, Residential Treatment Centers, Intensive Outpatient Treatment Programs and in school systems as a facilitator/trainer/consultant for over 40 years. In 1996 he began playing the djembe, a hand drum from West Africa, and quickly began to develop a therapeutic intervention for children and youth using this drum and the culture that it came from. Since then, he has trained and certified over 200 professionals in the TDI model of Therapeutic Drumming, built over 5000 drums, performed over 2000 times in public with young people he has taught and become a highly effective presenter and trainer at national and international conferences for educators and therapists.

As he was finishing up his career in residential treatment as a therapist in 2019, after 26 years of developing and fine-tuning a Therapeutic Drumming program for at-risk children and adolescents, Tom incorporated Therapeutic Drumming Interventions and began adapting this highly effective program for use in public school settings. Tom used his decades of study of traditional West African Djembe drumming and his knowledge of Djembe drumming and its traditional culture to craft a powerful and engaging intervention. It is effective in providing children, youth and other populations an environment in which to actively heal, grow and overcome traumas and other challenges. Learning to play this ancient instrument in community offers each individual benefits, such as self-regulation, focus, improved sense of self-efficacy, competence and joy, even as it produces group benefits including a sense of safe and accepted belonging, and exploring a new way to develop and use one’s voice in community.