David Hickman
Spiritual Director
Specialties: Drumming, Mindfulness
David Hickman, MMF, a Spiritual Guide and meditation teacher, is certified by University of California Los Angeles as a Music Medicine Facilitator. At Roots Through Recovery, David facilitates mindful practices groups, including a variety of meditation techniques and spiritual disciplines that support our clients in their early recovery. Upon entry to treatment, clients have a challenging time regulating their nervous systems. Research indicates that music and rhythm, meditation, and other mindful practices lower heart rate, regulate stress levels, and engage the autonomic nervous system’s calm response. In David’s Music Medicine groups, the clients have the opportunity to use hand drums, shakers, singing bowls, and a collection of instruments to experience silence for the mind, rhythm for the body, harmony for the soul, and melody for the heart.
David has a lifelong love affair with music and nature. In his youth, they were a means of coping with his childhood trauma. He could slow his mind down sitting on a creek bank casting a line. Or get lost in the early influence of the British Invasion as the threat of the Vietnam War loomed. In adulthood, David was fortunate to have a number of mentors who led him back to nature – an elderly man named Howard who spent weeks sitting in the woods “listening to the trees”, a trauma therapist who happened to be a Cherokee native who facilitated every minute of his trauma work outside in nature.
It was there he began to dream of using his passion for music and nature to meet hurting people where they are, offer them a safe space to become vulnerable and reconnect to themselves, to their bodies, to their truth. His gentle Elder spirit welcomes the clients at Roots Through Recovery into this process.
David brings 25 years of experience working in all levels of care for individuals coping with mental health and substance use disorders, as well as providing emotional and spiritual support to healthcare professionals. David is one of the most beloved staff at Roots, and we are grateful for the unique services he provides.
