Services
Photo by Tania Fernandez
Dr. Ram Bhagat is a visionary leader, master teacher, and community healer with decades of experience in conflict resolution, arts integration, restorative practices, and trauma healing. Ram collaborates and studies with leading experts in these fields. His extensive research, practice, and training are the key ingredients of this abundant menu of culturally relevant services, which are available to the international community.
Here are the best ways to engage with Dr. Ram – classes, circles, presentations, performances, workshops, artist-in-residence, and retreats – as well as his Massive Resilience equity training. This integration of trauma healing, restorative practices, mindfulness, and artfulness is innovative and transformative. His approach to equity, justice, and liberation is culturally relevant, creative, and compassionate.
CLASSES
Private or Group
Ram offers 60-minute and 90-minute classes on drumming & mindfulness, yoga & meditation, and the science of breathing (pranayama) for youth, adults, and intergenerational groups. He also teaches master classes, including Drums No Guns, Junk Yard Jam, and Yoga Drum Dance with local, national, and international artists. At different times during the year, Ram sponsors free drumming and yoga classes for the community. His approach to teaching, learning, and curriculum design is based on the praxis of conscientization, described in Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
“Whoever teaches learns in the act of teaching, and whoever learns teaches in the act of learning.”
– Paulo Freire
CIRCLES
Drum Circles and Restorative Circles
Ram provides community building, community healing, community conferencing circles, as well as culturally responsive circle facilitation and training for schools, communities, and organizations. He integrates the spirit of drumming, dance, and drama with the magic of circles, to uplift, motivate, and empower groups of all ages, all races, and all identities. His unique approach to group work can be explored in any of these transformative circle experiences: Drums No Guns, Junk Yard Jam, Massive Resilience, Afrikan Males, and Shattering Paredes.
“The practice of Circles is helpful for building and maintaining a healthy community in which all members feel connected and respected.”
– Boyes-Watson & Pranis
Presentations
Ram delivers informative, insightful, inspiring, and interactive talks and lecture demonstrations on a wide range of topics from Science Education to Rhythmic Intelligence and Social Justice to Racial Healing. He has presented captivating talks for conferences, schools, universities, professional associations and federations, civic organizations, panels, town halls, community groups, detention centers, churches, non-governmental agencies, tv and radio programs, webinars, and cultural events across the country and around the world. His most compelling presentations include Healing Community with Rhythm, Drums No Guns, Junk Yard Jam – The Rhythm of Restorative Justice, Massive Resilience – An Emergent Strategy for Equity, Justice, and Liberation, The Common/wealth and The Common/debt with Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, Arts and Peace Education, The Rhythm of Leadership, and The Soul Food Conspiracy.
Performances
Ram is a multitalented artist who creates, directs, and produces shows and edu~concerts that are infused with a vibrant festival atmosphere of world rhythm music. His classic performances celebrate life and promote liberation with the synergy of pulsating drums and passionate percussion, multimedia imagery, spoken word poetry, and social dance. A performance by Ram Bhagat is an act of resistance that instigates reciprocity and generates resilience. Ram’s current repertoire includes Drums No Guns, Junk Yard Jam, Breastmilk Blues, and Carnival Masquerade – Where Anything Is Possible!
“The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers.”
― James Baldwin
WORKSHOPS
Imagine learning the chemistry of ionic and co-valent bonding through Salsa and Capoeira, interpreting the triangular slave trade through drumming, dance, drama, and digital storytelling, or investigating leadership styles through Rumba and Samba. Dr. Bhagat implements sustainable and transformative educational practices (STEPs) that stimulate critical thinking and creative problem solving. His multi-dimensional workshops investigate the root causes of complex educational, environmental, public health, racial healing, and social justice issues.
His premiere workshops are Drums No Guns, Junk Yard Jam, Building Resilience for Challenging Systemic Racism, The Brother’s Circle, Shattering Paredes, Strategies for Trauma Awareness and Resilience for Sexual Harms, and Yoga Drum Dance™. His introductory workshops include Racism 101 & Racism 102, Culturally Responsive Mindfulness, The Talk, Massive Resilience, and The Rhythm of Leadership.
Dr. Ram is a compassionate educator who integrates science an art to propel students into the realm of creative possibilities. His four-week, six-week, eight-week, or twelve-week Artist-in-Residence courses include Junk Yard Jam, Massive Resilience, Brown v Board of Education – The ReMix, Plastic Nation – Recycle, Reimagine, Reuse, Nanotechnology of Clean Drinking Water – How Safe is Our Tap, and The Rhythm of Chemical Bonding.
Retreats
Dr. Bhagat and his team of certified Yoga Drum Dance™ (YDD) teachers offer a retreat experience unlike any other, which relaxes the mind, rejuvenates the body, renews the spirit, and revitalizes the community. This trauma informed restorative approach is offered at Omega Institute for Holistic Studies and other retreat locations around the world. YDD opens the way for all people to Experience the healing vibrations of drums, uplifting magic of dance, transformative power of story, unifying message of song, and the spiritual connection of circles. Explore your inner ability to connect with universal rhythms, through a fusion of yoga, drumming, and dance. Escape from the toxic stress, conflicts, and collective trauma of everyday life. Embark on a RhythmicJourney to peace, where compassion and love transform “social arrhythmia” into communal balance, resilience, and hope.
Photo by Ram Bhagat (Salvador da Bahia)
Training
Dr. Ram Bhagat is devoted to healing community with rhythm. His pedagogy revolves around the ideals of compassion, equity, liberation, and love. Dr. Bhagat integrates four spheres and four arcs of engagement in his community healing process, called Massive Resilience. This emergent strategy is based on the principles of Ubuntu (I Am, Because We Are) and Sawubona (I See You, We See You). The four spheres for Massive Resilience are art, culture, education, and health, which collectively promote and support safe, responsive, loving, and healthy communities and organizations. The four arcs or engagement practices are trauma healing, restorative practices, mindfulness, and artfulness. Equity (2020) is the central focus of this holistic approach. The goal of Massive Resilience is to generate a decade long renaissance of transformative cultural experiences, which includes training a cadre of warrior healers who are committed to developing leaders for at least the next two generations.
Trauma Healing
This arc of the training connects art and culture. It consists of four evidence-based systems that provide practitioners with a culturally relevant approach to inter- and intra- racial trauma healing.
“Black people need a safe space to unpack the traumatic effects of systemic racism and oppression. Understanding historical trauma is essential for healing from unresolved historical grief and ongoing oppression and racial stress.” It’s critical to shift away from trauma informed care to healing centered engagement, especially for youth of color.
Ram and Shyamuu with Kay Pranis
Restorative Practices
This second arc of the training is a bridge between culture and education, which is designed to provide practitioners with a multi-tiered balanced approach to restorative justice. It consists of four culturally responsive frameworks that promote community healing and social justice.
Photo by Larry Jackson
Mindfulness
This arc of the training connects education and health. It consists of scientifically proven systems that provide practitioners with best practices for yoga and mindfulness in schools and communities.
Artfulness
This fourth arc of the training is a bridge between health and art. It consists of four organizational ecosystems that provide practitioners with culturally relevant methods for community building and healing through the arts.
The heart and soul of Massive Resilience is an arts-based paradigm, that utilizes myriad forms of the Black Aesthetic for intergenerational trauma healing and mindfulness-based restorative practices. This emergent strategy rejects the hierarchy of human value based on skin color, defies the lie of Black inferiority, promotes the truth of Black humanity, equity of voice, racial healing, and embraces the transformative power of art as a shield for social justice.
“Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change – it can not only move us, it makes us move.” – Ossie Davis