Making your own medicine drum is Sacred.
It is Healing.
It is Powerful.

Women’s Drum Making

Workshops

Gather, create, and celebrate the rhythm we share

Make your own medicine drum and learn to play in rhythm with the heartbeat of Mother Earth. People all over the world have honored the art of drum making for generations. In our workshops, you'll carry on that tradition in a warm, welcoming space filled with ceremony, music, dance, and sharing.

Workshops Throughout the Year

We offer medicine drum making workshops throughout the year in different locations around Oregon.

Private Workshops

We'll also come to your home or chosen space for a private workshop with your friends or family.

Host a Workshop

Are you a business or healing center with space to share? We'd love to hear from you. Contact us to host a workshop.

Sacred Medicine Drum Making

October 2026

Make your own drum. Find your rhythm. Join a circle of women.

Over three gatherings, you'll build your own hand drum from start to finish and join a warm community of women drum keepers. It's part ceremony, part craft, and part coming home to yourself.

Why the Drum

Drumming just might be the most powerful instrument for activating rhythms of whole-body resonance.

There is something about a drum that you feel in your whole body. The beat slows you down, steadies your breath, and helps you listen to yourself in a new way.

Together we'll share in circle, set a personal intention for your drum, build it by hand, and bring it to life in a drumming circle. You'll leave with a drum that carries your own story, and a deeper sense of your own rhythm.

12-hr Drum Making Schedule

Hoop Journey Women's Sharing Circle Fri 10/23 from 6-8:30pm

Ceremonial Drum Weaving Sat 10/24 from 10am-5pm

Drum Awakening Celebration Fri 10/30 from 6-8:30pm

Between gatherings, you'll have simple at-home practices and journaling prompts to help you get the most from the experience.

 

Investment:  
$555 for a 16-inch sacred elk drum. Additional sizes and animal hides are available. Ask about payment plans. Limited to 12.

Awaken to Your Wild Natural Self

You have answered to the call to be a Drum Keeper. By taking this step you have committed both time and resources to what may prove to be a life-long journey of wonder. Perhaps the reasons and motivation in making a drum is different for every person. However, exploring naturally occurring rhythms and sounds can give you access that many have found to have strengthen their abilities to connect and build deep trust in ones inner guidance.

Your Medicine Drum

A note from Melissa’s mentor, Tarika Lea: “This Medicine Drum can be a profound instrument of healing. Many have found their drum has brought greater clarity in their life choices. Pick up your Medicine Drum often. Sing, cry, chant, hum, or just listen to the beats that it wishes to gift you. Allow it’s voice to awaken ancestral support as your very bones will feel to respond. The syncopation of your own heart beat aligns as you relax with the evolving rhythms coming through you. Emulate your highest intentions with prayers of gratitude. Face the East of your medicine wheel and find balance simply through ‘showing up’. Your personally made Journey Drum can create an environment like no other instrument. May it be a strong medicine of soul strengthening your calling and heart’s knowingness as it transforms your life.”

Resources Included

  • Creation of your sacred healing drum with Melissa McGlenn

  • Materials to create a 16” drum using sacred animal hides

  • Meditations and sacred journeys

  • Journals for personal reflections

  • Rainbow obsidian sphere

What You Bring

  • Yoga mat and comfy sitting cushions

  • Comfortable clothing for free movement

  • Apron and washcloth

  • Lunch and refillable water bottle

  • Curiosity and a willing heart

Drumming at the local Farmer’s Market – Melissa & mentor Tarika Lea.

Join us as we create our own beautiful sacred drums.

Register Now

Meet Melissa McGlenn

Melissa McGlenn is a sacred drum maker and rhythm keeper devoted to facilitating embodied Soul presence supported by your connection with the sacred nature of Gaia. In this day and age, many of us feeling disconnected and ungrounded. Melissa’s passionate about cultivating experiences that help you to stop, listen, and feel your connection to the rhythms of life itself.

Based in beautiful Bend Oregon, Melissa McGlenn works one-on-one with individuals, in groups and for organizations, making personal and community medicine drums and facilitating drumming circles.

“I would be honored to share the healing power of the drum with you. Drum making is sacred art that our ancestors, across the world, have been sharing for generations. Making your own medicine drum is Sacred. It is Healing.  It is Powerful.” ~Melissa McGlenn

Great Spirit has given me all the pieces.

Each piece has become One.

The One has become a drum.

With this drum I have been given a new voice.

With this voice my Spirit rises.

Grey Wolf

© 2026 Obsidian River Drums