MY STORY
I was gifted with healing hands.
MY
STORY
I am the proud descendant of Ugandan bone healers dating back more than 80 generations. Alongside this gift of attunement, and centuries of indigenous healing practices, my ancestors passed down something just as potent: The belief that our stories are our medicine, and we are our own best healers.
I grew up between the U.S. and East Africa, traveling between Newton, Massachusetts and Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda.
As I saw family members in Uganda die from illnesses that would be considered treatable here in the U.S., I gained deep respect for the clinical perspective. And yet I witnessed a country full of people suffering here in the States, disconnected from their internal resources, spirituality and their own ancestral knowledge.
After a health scare left me partially paralyzed, and the death of my uncle and surrogate father, I started asking questions that ultimately sat at the intersection of health and spirituality: How do we listen to our bodies to understand the truth of our emotions? How do we heal our physical pain by accessing the trapped stories that live within us? How do we access our spirituality and build innovative and creative solutions into our healing approach?
I left fifteen years of building healthier communities in the nonprofit space to explore the merging of these healing paradigms, ultimately leading me to Columbia’s Narrative Medicine program.
Now, I am an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University and speak at universities and conferences around the world about the key role storytelling and spirituality play in healing, especially in healthcare settings. I also work with people in my private practice who want to incorporate narrative medicine and indigenous healing modalities into their own work.
In Luganda, my father’s tongue, my name means “happiness, joy.” It is the energy that I bring to this work, to the people I am so fortunate to serve and to this radiant life.
Bio
Ssanyu Birigwa is a Narrative Medicine Clinician, Indigenous Bone Healer and Adjunct Professor for the Master of Science Narrative Medicine program at Columbia University. A nonprofit executive with 15+ years of experience building healthier communities, she is now the co-founder of Narrative Bridge, an innovative communications & culture firm that brings narrative medicine training to organizations, and a world-renowned expert on the intersectionality of health and spirituality.
Ssanyu’s work is driven by a core philosophy: That we have the ability to heal ourselves and that healing is multi-dimensional and requires an embodied, integrated approach. Through narrative medicine training, indigenous healing modalities and her integrative Pause3 method, Ssanyu teaches people how to heal themselves through story. More broadly, her work builds healthier communities and cultures by providing organizations with tools to actively listen, openly communicate and create psychological safety within groups and teams.
Ssanyu is the recipient of the 2016-2017 Columbia University Narrative Medicine Fellowship. Ssanyu speaks on world stages about the key role storytelling and spirituality play in healing, especially in healthcare settings, and most recently lectured at the International Conference on Health, Wellness & Society at the Sorboonne Universite Paris; John Hopkins Interprofessional Telemedicine Education Symposium; and the Saint Lukes SLUHN Diabetes Symposium. She has led Narrative Medicine courses for SocMed and the Soros Foundation in Uganda and Rwanda, hosted the Narrative Medicine Rounds at Columbia University and taught workshops at Kripalu, NYU and the Boston school system. You can learn more about Ssanyu and book her to speak at your next conference at ssanyubirigwa.com.
ABOUT
Ssanyu Birigwa
Ssanyu is a Columbia-trained Narrative Medicine facilitator and world-renowned speaker on narrative medicine and the intersectionality of spirituality and health.