You’re never too old to try something new. In fact, staff at the Holly Creek Retirement Community in Centennial believe trying new, unexpected things helps keep people young.
That mindset seems to be working for a group of residents who meet each month to bang drums, shake rattles and listen to John Robinson play flutes and didgeridoos.
“When you learn how to drum, especially with the hand drumming, or if you have two sticks, it starts helping their cognitive abilities,” John Robinson explained.
Robinson brings along a cartload of instruments to the drum circle he leads at Holly Creek.
“The beauty of the drum circle, no matter where you go in the world, everybody is accepted just for who they are right at that moment,” Robinson said to the group of drummers during a recent jam session.
The residents who picked up instruments ranged in age from their mid-70s to mid-90s.
“I like to play the drums because I can,” Holly Creek resident, Mary Ellen Verduft said.
While Verduft kept the beat better than most, even those who struggle to hold an instrument are welcome at the monthly drum circle.
“Just tapping a drum or a rattle – it allows an emotion to come up that might have been buried for such a long time,” Robinson said. “And I just see the spark and I see a little gleam in their eye.”
Robinson admitted “drum circle leader” was not a typical gig for someone who recently retired from law enforcement.
“I’d been a deputy sheriff in El Paso County,” Robinson said.
Robinson said he retired after suffering and injury on the job in 2012. Now, he devotes his time to a passion he first discovered during a business seminar about eight years ago.
“It just kind of infected me,” Robinson said, remembering his very first drum circle.
Robinson, who also leads monthly drum circles at the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs, volunteers his time at Holly Creek Retirement Community.
“It’s very fulfilling,” Robinson said. “Very fulfilling. I enjoy it a lot.”
You can tell by the smiles on the faces around the drum circle that the residents enjoy it, too.
“I really enjoy watching the little kid come out again in a lot of people,” Robinson said with a smile.
Staff at Holly Creek said the monthly drum sessions have had a positive impact on residents.
“It gets the heart pumping, helps stimulate the left and right sides of the brain, helps create new friendships and allows the individual drummer to have their own unique experience and exercise their creativity,” explained Holly Creek life enrichment director, Cindy Livingston.
Family members of some of the residents said they believe the drum sessions helped transform their loved ones’ personalities. John Robinson believes it, too.
“That’s one of the things that gets me is that, you know, you can feel their youth back,” he said.
