Saturday, October 17, 2026
Sea Cliff’s wellness center Sol Vibration introduced a new program aiming to bring the community together. On the first Wednesday of each month, Co-founders Graciela Bustos and Cathy Henderson host a drum circle, open to all ages and all abilities.
“You don’t have to be musical,” Henderson said. “Everybody’s got rhythm.”
The first monthly drum circle was held on Oct. 7, with the proceeds being donated to Love Your Neighbor Project, the Sea Cliff nonprofit dedicated to connecting members of the community.
Bustos said that a drum circle was one item on her and Henderson’s “wish list” for programs they want to bring to Sol Vibration. The pair has participated in drum circles together in past years in places like Mexico and California, including one with singer-songwriter and guitarist Melissa Etheridge and Henderson’s Antigone Rising bandmates.
“That was my first experience doing drum circle, and I love it,” Bustos said. “I love the idea to get everybody together.”
A drum circle typically includes participants using drums and other percussion instruments to improvise together. Bustos and Henderson placed the drums in the middle of the wellness center space, and participants picked their drums. They were welcome to sit in chairs or on the floor, arranged in a circle.
While Henderson led the Oct. 7 session, she said that it is important to “let the circle speak.”
“Then we just kind of center and take a few breaths,” Henderson explained, “and then just start to attune to the rhythm.”
Henderson and Bustos held an outdoor drum circle at Kiwanis Sea Cliff Mini Mart in 2025. Bustos said some people stayed for more than 30 minutes. They held a drum circle indoors at this year’s Mini Mart, adjusting to the day’s rain. Roughly 30 people participated, including adults and children. With a limited number of drums, some used containers typically used for collecting compostable material, donated by Sea Cliff resident Laura Russo.
Henderson described the Oct. 7 session as “intimate,” with roughly 10 participants.
“This one was more personal,” Bustos added. “It’s different beauty.”
Sol Vibration is a connected neighbor with Love Your Neighbor Project. Connected neighbors are businesses, organizations or individuals who build a partnership with the organization.
“It’s a way to help promote our local businesses to show partnership,” said Jaime Teich, founder of Love Your Neighbor Project, “to show that there are ways that we can build community together even when we do what seems like totally different things.”
Teich had been talking with the Sol Vibration founders prior to the program’s creation. Bustos and Henderson said the decision to hold the Oct. 7 drum circle with Love Your Neighbor Project and donate the proceeds to the nonprofit came about naturally.
“It just came in perfect timing,” Bustos added, “because we were for a long time saying, ‘We have to do something.’”
Henderson noted the similarity in the missions of Sol Vibration and Love Your Neighbor Project, both focused on connection and community. She added that a drum circle is “a beautiful way to illustrate that.”
Teich said the drum circle was an opportunity to find just one thing to connect people and “create a rhythm together as a community.”
“We’re going to vibe off of each other, right? You start to get louder, I want to start to get louder,” she added. “You want to go a little bit lower, I want to go a little bit lower, and we’re in sync with one another, regardless of anything else that might create division between us.”
