Event

Sal Nunez, Drumming Circle

Sal Nuñez, PhD, is Director of the Healthy Drumming Institute in San Francisco and is a licensed clinical psychologist, consultant, researcher, and professor with interest in cultural healing practices, health and wellness, recovery, neuropsychology, indigenous and behavioral medicine, and medicinal drumming as a healing methodology. Over the course of a decade, he developed the medicinal drumming practice that integrates behavioral medicine, indigenous schema, and psychological principles. For the past 13 years, he has been investigating the curative properties of specific percussive patterns, songs, rhythms, and medicinal plants. In 2009, a review of the methodology (medicinal drumming) he developed was found to meet the standards of community defined evidence practices by the University of South Florida in a project funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. Currently, Dr. Nuñez is training practitioners in the methodology, which has been integrated into local and state wide behavioral health clinics as a culturally congruent therapeutic approach for communities, groups, and families.

Dr. Núñez offers a training apprenticeship to clinical graduate students, licensed professionals, musicians, and other individuals committed to community service. He delivers medicinal drumming circles, trainings, workshops, and lectures throughout the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to facilitating forums designed to restore community balance and health; a significant portion of his work focuses on using medicinal drumming to help individuals move through the process of recovery from traumatic stress and injury. Dr. Nuñez is a tenured faculty member at City College of San Francisco and program director of the community mental health certificate program at the College.