Transcript to short:
Hi, I’m Dr. Jo. I want to tell you how taiko drumming helped me heal—from trauma, and as an autistic person.
I did therapy for years (group, individual, EMDR, etc.), and it helped. But taiko did something different. It got me out of my head and into my body. The rhythms, the movement, the yelling—it gave me a way to feel everything I couldn’t put into words.
As an autistic person, I’ve often been told I’m too much. Too intense, too sensitive. But in taiko, being loud is celebrated. I got to take up space—and for once, that felt safe.
Taiko also gave me connection without all the pressure to socialize. Sometimes we’d just be drumming and catch each other’s eye—and we’d laugh. That laughter was healing. That connection was real.
I didn’t even know I was autistic until 2024, but looking back… taiko was the first place as an adult where I really got to be me. I will explain more in the next video.
Transcript to longer video: How Taiko Healed Me as an Autistic Person with Trauma
Hi, I’m Dr. Jo, and this is a story I’ve been wanting to share for a long time—about how taiko drumming helped heal me as someone with trauma… and as someone on the autism spectrum.
For years, I did therapy, I journaled, I reflected—I worked hard to heal. And I did grow. But even after twenty-five years, something was still locked up inside me.
And then… I started playing taiko.
In the first two or three years, I had more memories and realizations than I had in the ten years before. Things started rising to the surface—hard things, but also freeing things. Taiko cracked something open.
It also helped me connect with people in ways that didn’t require small talk or eye contact or all the usual social rules. I could just play. And sometimes I’d catch someone’s eye while we were drumming, and we’d just… laugh. Or we would move like children and laugh big, silly laughter. The kind that makes you feel like a person again. Taiko really brings us back to who we were before we got squashed.
As an autistic person—which I didn’t know I was until 2024—taiko gave me something I didn’t realize I’d been craving: structured, full-body, sensory connection. The sound, the rhythm, the vibration—I could feel it in my bones, and it was actually regulating. Grounding.
Most of my life, I’ve felt like I’m too much. Too intense. Too loud. Too sensitive. And then I started taiko, and suddenly being loud was expected. Being big was part of it. I got to raise my arms high, yell from my gut, and stand in a powerful stance. I didn’t have to shrink.
Taiko is also incredibly structured—there’s a beat, a form, a rhythm. And within that, there’s space to be creative, to improvise, to mess up and laugh about it. That combination was magic for me.
And over time, the initiative and energy I felt spilled over into other parts of my life. I started two support groups in St. Paul in 2022. Then I started my own taiko program. I was probably still masking in the beginning, but taiko helped me begin the process of unmasking. Of trusting my own voice.
So yeah—taiko didn’t “fix” me. I’m not broken. But it gave me a space to connect, to move, to feel… to heal. And to really laugh again.
Thanks for watching. If this speaks to you, I hope you’ll come try a class or connect somehow. We all need a place to be loud and be loved.