L. Jay Mitchell, experienced in building outdoor and participatory therapeutic programs for young people, is the founder and owner of Greenbrier Academy for Girls. The accredited therapeutic boarding school, set in the rolling hills of rural West Virginia, offers a strong academic track alongside individually tailored programs for developing young women’s mental and emotional health. At Greenbrier, L. Jay Mitchell and his team have established a number of activities that nurture clients’ sense of self-reliance and resilience. Some of the most popular are drumming circles and the drumming performance group.

The Greenbrier drumming group has performed at schools and senior care facilities in the area, as well as at the Carnegie Hall cultural center in Lewisburg. In addition, girls have taken their drumming skills to community holiday events such as the Independence Day parade in Alderson and a local Martin Luther King Day celebration.

Greenbrier students with an interest in traditional drumming, dance, and performance have the opportunity to audition for the school’s performance group, which creates its own rhythmic dances and presentations based on those in its therapeutic drumming sessions.

As the counseling team at Greenbrier understands, even 10 minutes of daily drumming or another type of musical performance has the ability to lower tension levels and recalibrate the rhythms of the body and mind.