Blog Posts

Ready for 2022? Reflection #5

7/12/2021

The feeling I aimed for in 2020 was “safe” and for 2021 was “connected.” It took me some time to realize that both words are some how “connected”. Safety comes from within, from feeling connected to my authentic deepest soul and thus connected to God on a much deeper level.

If we look at it from a worldly perspective, 2020 was as far from safety as one could imagine especially if you work in the health care sector engaging with Covid patients on a daily basis. Yet, I was safe, I was protected on a much deeper level, protected physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually by an All- Powerful, All- loving, All-merciful Creator. I was safe within the chaos of the world and the chaos of my own personal life challenges.

And, then, came 2021. I guess when I chose the word “connected”, I was thinking about my social isolation, I had moved into a new city, a new setting, a new job; I was harshly judged by my own community, rejected and alienated by many people who I once considered close friends – yet, God had intended for me a much deeper connection… connection with Him SWT. I spent so much time during this year in what Joseph Campbell calls, “the Belly of the Whale,” trying to make sense of the chaos of my life.

One thing I learned about the nature of this Belly of the Whale is that you do not get to choose when or how you get out… you just surrender… totally surrender and once you reach that stage… once you are ready, you’ll find yourself in the world again totally renewed and rejuvenated, totally transformed and restored – a better and more wholesome version of you… a version that is free of judgement, free from anger or resentment, a version that is filled with love for the world even if this world still seems unfair and unfriendly.. a version that is “connected” to herself, to God and to the world… a version that is at peace with life ambiguity and paradoxes… AT PEACE! This feels like the my needed word for 2022... Feeling at peace.

So, how do I want to feel in 2022? I want to feel At Peace... peace of mind and heart. I am craving for a tranquil soul (Nafs mutma’inna), satisfied, and content… A soul that is working for love & service, a soul embodying the beauty that God created deep inside all of us… a soul that trust God in the dark as well as in the light moments… a soul that surrenders yet keeps working and striving for spiritual excellence (Ihsan). A soul At Peace!

Now, it is your turn, how do you want to feel in 2022?

Have a beautiful week.

Ready for 2022? End of Year Reflection #4

30/11/2021

My mentor once told me, God is painting the most beautiful canvas of our life, if you keep holding on to the brush and insisting on putting your own colors, you will end up with chaos.

Painters know that adding just one wrong color to the mix can turn a beautiful vibrant paint into a muddy mess… I indeed need to let go of the brush… Letting go does not mean surrendering work and actions; it means surrendering the results… refraining from being attached to any specific outcome… doing the best that I can while trusting the Divine to paint the ultimate piece of art for me.

Caroline Myss teaches that part of humility is to “let go of the superstition that, because you do not surrender, you can prevent God from creating chaos in your life.” She asks readers to “feel the awe that illuminates you where fear once lived.” Letting go of fear is another hard task. Along the years, I have been battling many fears… fear of the unknown, fear of tomorrow, fear of failure, fear of criticism, fear of letting people down, fear of being let down, fear of not having enough, fear of not being enough… and the list goes on and on…
Maybe it is time for me to try once more to let go of my fears… to trust and surrender.

As Myss teaches, “I surrender my mind, my heart, my need for safety and my need for rational explanations to God’s will for me. I trust that all that is in my life is as it should be.”

Now, it is your turn. What do you need to let go of?

2022... We're almost there! End of Year Reflection #3

23/11/2021

Like its sister 2020, 2021 has been full of turbulence and uncertainty. If there is one thing I've learned (and am still learning) is that nothing is certain – change is the only constant in our life.

Ambiguity and chaos are integral parts of life. 2021 taught me again and again to make peace with them and to embrace my fears and worries as protectors and signposts rather then decision makers. I wasn't always successful, but kept on trying. I learned not to let my fears choose and decide for me. I learned to acknowledge and listen to my fears yet connect to my heart and let my spirit guide the way.

I've also learned that I have to fight for my rights. I learned to walk the fine line between humility and self-doubt knowing my rights, my value, and my worth.

I learned to connect to God on a much deeper level, talk to Him and embrace silence so I can listen to His answer. I learned to see Him in everything and everyone I encounter. I learned to love Him like I never experienced before.

Now, it is your turn. What lessons did you learn in 2021 – the hard way?

Have a beautiful week

It's 2022! End of Year Reflection #2

16/11/2021

For many of us, thinking about our accomplishments might be challenging. Sometimes when we look at our life, we think we didn't achieve much because we didn't reach any concrete goals yet... This is mainly because we learned to measure our success from a Western mentality standpoint, looking only at material achievements - things that we can see, hear, touch, taste or smell; Things that we can perceive with our five external senses; and worse yet, things that others can see and praise us for. With all the selfies and hypes on social media, it is extremely difficult to even try to fit in… we can’t help but compare and we end up beating ourselves up and torturing ourselves with guilt and feeling worthless.
But, this shouldn’t be the case… Sometimes our biggest achievement is in laying the foundation and the groundwork for our next stage in life, our inner growth, our inner heroic journey that only God could see…
When considering your achievements this year, I invite you to first consider your heart, namely its state: Is its mirror well polished reflecting the beauty of your human spirit? Is it closer or further away from its Creator? Is it more loving, forgiving and caring? Is it more balanced? Is it braver, more courageous? Is it wiser and more just?

Take out your journal and start your reflection…

Have a beautiful week,

2022... New Year Reflection

9/11/2021

Another year is almost gone. I don’t know how and where it went… so many things happened this year, and so many things didn’t. And, as we are preparing to move into the New Year, we’re also preparing ourselves for a new “norm” that is here to stay – no one can deny that some things have forever changed, not just in the world, but also in us, in our souls… For the best or the worst, I don’t know, but I believe it is up to us to determine… it is up to us to choose.
This year, I am starting my end of year reflection earlier than usual. I felt that I needed more time of stillness and self reflection… more time to sit in silence and ponder… more time to dig into my soul looking for answers or making peace with not finding those answers.

I am inviting you to join me on this reflective journey… Today is the first of our 7-week End of Year Reflection… I’ll post a prompt every week for you to contemplate. You might like to print the image and stick it in a new page spread of your journal and give yourself the whole week to reflect on it…

Despite its obvious challenges, there are always tons of things we are truly grateful for… God sends us grace and blessings every single day, every single moment… we just need to be awake and aware to receive them.
Write your list of at least 3 things you are grateful for in 2021. Allow yourself to breathe them in, embody them, and fully feel the gratitude with every cell of your body. God promises us: “If you express gratitude, I shall certainly give you more” (Q. 14: 7)

A Soul Yearning...

1/11/2021

Years ago, my cousins and I used to rent a small boat from the shores of the Alexandrian sea. The fisherman would warn us, “you can row far and wide, but never cross the boughaz (the inlet)” – this was a small opening in the wall of the breakwater rocks that the city had instilled years ago to protect its shores from the raging sea…. The Mediterranean coastlines were thus tamed and peaceful. The sea was still vast and wide open… you can safely row for hours and hours and stop your boat to fish and cast your net… You’re safe and protected as long as you don’t cross the inlet - the boughaz!

Yet, crossing we did… EVERY SINGLE TIME… We couldn’t help it… Those bunch of rebellious kids who wanted to experiment with the unknown. As soon as we got the hang of our tiny boat, we row and row away from the shore and out of sight right through the boughaz… it’s a whole new world out there, a magical feeling… In just a few seconds, you’re thrown into the wild and the Mediterranean shows its true face, its untamed and scary side… It’s much more alive than the boring smooth waters of the safe coastlines. Once we've tried it, we could never enjoy the tamed sea again… we had to cross the inlet… every time we’re out in the sea… and, it was our little secret.

Greek mythology teaches about the Symplegades – those Clashing Rocks in the midst of the sea that collided whenever a vessel would attempt to pass through. In the myth, we learn that they were conquered by Jason and the Argonauts who followed the advice of Phineus, the seer. Jason let a dove fly through the opening to check how fast they needed to go to make it through. The dove lost its tail’s feathers, but made it through, so did they as they row with all their might. They made it and the rocks stopped moving forever.
It is said that the myth is a symbol of the soul yearning to cross the barrier that separates the material worldly realm from the spirit, the Divine breath, the magical, yet dangerous territory of the heavenly dominion.
Not everyone can cross the Clashing Rocks, teach the Sufis… and not everyone is expected to even try. Many of us prefer the safety of the material physical world that we are familiar with. The world of senses, a world that we can see, hear, touch, smell, and taste. The spirit is unknown and will forever remain so. No one can explain it… You can only get a glimpse for yourself… You only have a few seconds, to feel this connection, to throw yourself in the wild open sea… a few seconds that will forever change the way you experience reality.
As St. Teresa of Avila describes it, “the little butterfly who feels so estranged from the world begins to seek true refuge again. But where can the poor creature go? She can’t return to where she came from. No matter how hard we try, we are powerless to enter God’s abode until He is pleased to bring us there again Himself.”

Those rebellious kids at the Alexandrian coastlines could never enjoy the safety of the tamed sea again… the beauty and serenity, the peacefulness of the vast blue waters that meant the world to everyone, was but a boring illusion that held them from the true taste of the mysterious world – a world with no boundaries – the “true” Mediterranean – the True Sea, they yearned for.

40 years later, I’m wondering whether the beauty, safety, and comfort of my modern life became but a boring illusion… is my soul yearning to cross the boughaz, to pass the Clashing Rocks and connect with its True Sea?

Islamic Roots of Modern Pharmacology

3/10/2021

Around the 8th century, one man took it upon himself to dig deeper into this amazing world of chemistry. A long forgotten historical figure, Khaled Ibn Yazeed came from the house of the Umayyad Caliphate. It was very unusual for a man in his social and economical stature to adopt such an unrecognized profession. However, his decision was a turning point in the history of chemistry.

Just as the Greeks and Romans had acquired their learning from ancient Egyptian and Sumerian breakthroughs, Ibn Yazeed started his journey by translating Greek and Roman references in the field. He studied chemical reactions and started his pioneering experimentations in synthesizing drugs and remedies. Ibn Yazeed set the foundation upon which chemistry and pharmacy could be studied which was later built upon by his successor Jabir Ibn Hayyan.

By the beginning of the 9th century, thanks to these two pioneers, pharmacy became a well-established independent profession with well regulated rules and laws. Pharmacists were knowledgeable about drug use, compounding, preparation, and dispensing. They mastered dosage adjustment, drug interaction, and prevention of drug adulteration.
Muslim physicians further developed the field of pharmacy. Famous physicians like Al-Razi (Razes), Ibn Sina (Avicenna) and Al-Kindi, contributed much in the advancement of this field of science. Being the most knowledgeable about body ailments and diseases, physicians were the most suited to develop and prescribe the cure. They combined their knowledge about medicine with herbal remedies, chemistry, and philosophy to develop an amazing body of work describing disease diagnosis, description of appropriate remedies, and the required dosages. Some of many outstanding references in pharmacology at the time and for centauries to come include:

Al-Biruni’s book, The Book of Pharmacology,
Al-Zahrawy’s 30 volumes Al-Tasrif (Dispensing),
Al-Razi’s Al-Hawi (The Comprehensive Book on Medicine) and The Secret in Chemistry,
Al-Mansur Muwaffaq’s The Foundations of the True Properties of Remedies,
Ibn al-Wafid’s work, The Book of Simple Drugs,

Building upon the work of these Muslim scientists, modern Western World has founded its pharmaceutical knowledge.

The most important aspect of Muslims’ development to the pharmaceutical profession, though, was their honoring of the Islamic teachings while still basing their knowledge and studies on scientific experimentations and practical experiences. Additionally, they honored the whole human being, body and soul, and sincerely and ethically pursued their mission in easing people’s pain and relieving their sufferings. Physicians, like Al-Razi, advocated resorting to diet and herbs for treatment before referring to chemical drugs. His one-of-a-kind book, Tibb Al-Fuqara’a (Medicine of the Poor), described ways of treating diseases using affordable foods and herbs rather than expensive preparations and formulations.

While delving into this great history, I can’t help but feel awed by such wisdom and knowledge. And, I can’t also help but wonder when the achievements of modern-day Muslims will match that great era of human advancement.

_______________________________
References:
As-Sergany, R.. Khaled Ibn Yazeed. Retrieved from: www.islamstory.com. 2008.
As-Sergany, R.. [Science and the building of nations- in Arabic]. Egypt: Iqraa. 2007.
Al-Hassani, S. (Editor). 1001 Inventions: Muslim Heritage in Our World. UK: Foundation for Science Technology and civilization. 2006.
National Library of Medicine. Islamic Culture and the Medical Arts: Prophetic medicine. April 5, 1998. Retrieved June 6, 2007.

October: Breast Cancer Awareness Month

2/10/2021

Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer among women and the second cause of cancer death after lung cancer. Recent genetic research points at breast cancer genes that, if present, increases the the risk of breast cancer. These studies show susceptibility, but do not explain how many women carrying those genes never develop breast cancer nor do they demonstrate how many women lacking the genes end up developing the disease. According to Dr. Lipton, the internationally recognized cell biologist and author of Biology of Belief, 95% of cancers are not caused by genetic inheritance. Environmental conditions and energetic makeup are major cause of cancer development. When cells are subjected to unfavorable environmental conditions (including toxins, nutritional deficiencies, emotional traumas, abuse…), they can’t perform optimally which may trigger those genes. If environmental conditions are under control (i.e. physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing) the genes won’t be triggered and the disease is never manifested.

Listen to your Body Whispers®

Breast cancer is associated with the heart chakra, our fourth energy centre. Breast cancer sufferers usually have a history of repressed love, mothering too much or too little, losing a loved one or being betrayed by a loved one. In most cases, they have a history of over nurturing others while neglecting or rather denying their own needs for love and care. Our body sends us messages… If we keep ignoring them, they keep getting louder and louder until the Whispers turn into screams…

Some time ago, I met a lovely 30-year-old lady who had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. I was with her as she navigated the chaos of emotions: fear, helplessness, anger, depression… and as she suffered the pain of surgery, and the side effects of radiation and chemo. It was hard… extremely hard.
Yet, one day, she came back to see me. It was almost a year after her treatment has concluded. I will never forget her words: “you know, this cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was asleep and it woke me up.” She related how her illness gave her time to reflect on her life, her beliefs, and her values. She changed and she grew… And now, she was helping women on the same journey to navigate the pain and chaos of their illness and restore their life starting by the most important step: Awakening & Awareness.

Al-Harawy (d. 1089 C.E.), the Muslim scholar and Sufi mystic, described human beings as travelers on a life-long journey towards knowing God. His hundred-station journey starts with the most critical step: Awakening, which involves self-awareness and deep self-reflection. According to Al-Harawy, awakening initiates a life-long venture towards a sound heart, the center of human intellect that guides the way to the Straight Path.

How often does our life pass us by and go totally unnoticed? How often do we run on autopilot unaware and tumbling out of balance? Sometimes when we’re caught up in life challenges and pains, we miss those simple moments of awareness. Living our life with awareness allows us the opportunity to reflect on our trials and wounds. We do not bypass our pains, we do not deny our depression or brush away our fears; on the contrary, we learn to acknowledge our feelings; to savor every second of our life with its joys and sorrow, ups and downs; to live our life with gratitude and awe.

St. Teresa of Avila teaches “[God’s] voice reaches us through words spoken by good people, through listening to spiritual talks, and reading sacred literature. God calls to us in countless little ways all the time. Through illness and suffering and through sorrow He calls to us. Through a truth glimpsed fleetingly in a state of prayer He calls to us. No matter how half-hearted such insights may be, God rejoices whenever we learn what He is trying to teach us […] The important thing is not to think much but to love much, and so to do whatever best awakens you to love.”

We Need A Paradigm Shift

28/9/2021

October is the Islamic Heritage Month in Canada… I want to take this opportunity to talk about a worldview that Muslim scientists have adopted during the Islamic Golden Age (roughly from the 7th to the 13th Century) and that we are definitely missing in our current approach to life…

Traditional Islamic teaching differentiates between two types of knowledge, transmitted (naqlī) and intellectual (ʿaqlī) knowledge. The transmitted knowledge is the one we acquire from books or through teachers, while intellectual knowledge is the knowledge that we find by digging within our souls to reach for the Truth, and which can only be reached through training the intellect and purifying the heart.[1] Accordingly, there are two basic paths of acquiring knowledge, following authority (taqlīd) and verification (taḥqīq). In practice, transmitted and intellectual knowledge, and taqlīd and taḥqīq, should always be interweaved yet it is usually the intellectual science that builds on the transmitted one. For Muslim scientists in the Islamic Golden Age, intellectual understanding has been regarded as an advanced level whereas transmitted science is an essential foundation and scaffolding that initiates and sustains intellectual inquiry.

If we apply this to our modern-day healthcare and medical practice, intellectual knowledge would be the skills and wisdom of the practitioner. It is the heart-based, dynamic, and ever-unfolding truth that depends on the practitioner’s expertise as well as on the client’s needs, hopes, and context. This intellectual knowledge could be reached not only through the sound training and transmitted learning, that is to say, through the evidence-based research, the body of knowledge, and accumulated data from previous teachers, researchers, experts and authorities (in both the conventional medicine and traditional fields), but also through the inner work (the purification of the heart) that the practitioner needs to perform. Science, from a traditional Islamic perspective, has one goal: to draw us closer to the Truth, to God.

But, this is not the case anymore… in our modern-day, we relinquished the pursuit for the essence, for the Truth and became content with the physical matter, with what we can see, hear, touch, taste, or smell… what we can sense: what you see is what you get, basically. We forgot that the first page of our Sacred Book praises the believers for being “those who believe in the unseen (al-ghayb),” (Q. 2: 3). We dismissed this ghayb (unseen) for the “certainty” of conventional scientific dogma. But, what we failed to acknowledge is that there is no certainty in scientific dogma – there are theories, hypotheses, and speculations many of which do not hold the test of time and crumble under the weight of new scientific discoveries,[2] the weight of new idols that we choose to worship.

Let’s be clear here. I am in no way against science. I am a scientist, a pharmacist who researched and taught pharmaceutics, pharmaceutical medications, biochemistry, and body metabolism for years; and who is still fascinated by science and chemistry. Yet, for me, these are tools not a destination. Professor Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, the Hungarian biochemist who won the Nobel Prize in physiology/ medicine in 1937, wrote in his autobiography,
“I wanted to understand life but found the complexity of physiology overwhelming. So I shifted to pharmacology. This, I found, did not relieve the difficulty. So, I went into bacteriology, but found bacteria too complex, too. I shifted on, to physicochemistry and then to chemistry, that is, to molecules, the smallest units in those days. Ten years ago I found molecules too complex and shifted to electrons, hoping to have reached bottom. But Nature has no bottom. If Nature puts two things together she produces something new with new qualities, which cannot be expressed in terms of qualities of the components. When going from electrons and protons to atoms, from here to molecules, molecular aggregates, etc., up to the cell or the whole animal, at every level we find something new, a new breathtaking vista. So now, at 68, I am to work my way up again following electrons in their motion through more extensive systems, hoping to arrive, someday, at an understanding of the cellular level of organization.”[3]

For all traditional cultures, science has always been a tool that helps human beings in their pursuit for the Truth, for the Sacred. Somehow, in our modern world, we managed to turn this tool into a tyrant whose only goal is to conquer the world and subdue nature. When I decided to study pharmacy, years ago, I was fascinated by my grandmother’s pantry full of home remedies for every conceivable illness; I loved herbs and was enchanted by their natural powers of healing… I was disillusioned… the way pharmacists and modern-day conventional scientists approach herbs robs them of their soul, of their essence, and reduces them into Latin names and chemical formulas. We extract the one ingredient that “science” proves to be effective and discard the remaining of the herb considering it useless. But, who are we to judge?

There are some therapeutic classes that we can only find in traditional herbal medicine like:

Adaptogens: These are herbs that help the body adapt to whatever stressful condition it faces;
Alteratives: These are herbs that alter unfavorable conditions in the body whether by increasing or decreasing certain functions.

Terms like these teach us that herbs have some form of inherent intelligence, they have an inherent wisdom that is lost when we extract only one ingredient that we think is the active one -or even worse, when we try to replicate the chemical formula of this ingredient and synthesize it in our labs from coal tar and crude oil by-products that have nothing to do with the original herb- and stuff it into tablets or capsules expecting it to perform its magic.
Years back, when scientists discovered the calming effect of Kava Kava, a herb used by Native Americans for anxiety, they did what they do best – reduced it into one chemical ingredient they thought responsible for the pharmaceutical action: Kavalactones. The Kavalactones were extracted, purified, refined, stuffed into capsules, and mass-marketed. Soon enough, cases of liver failure started to be reported… It did not make sense; Native Americans have been using this herb for centuries with no reported side effects… It turned out that God who created the Kava lactones, also created another ingredient in the same plant, a powerful antioxidant that helps the liver detoxify and break down the lactones once their job is done. When we reduced the plant to only the anti-anxiety chemical, our body failed to eliminate it so it accumulated in the liver and caused more harm than good.
Reductionist Newtonian physics works just fine with technology and machines, but it stands at a loss before the miracle of our microcosm… Our body is not mere flesh, blood, and bones; our brain cannot be reduced to mere neurons and neurotransmitters; our heart cannot be concluded into a mere pump; and our intellect and consciousness could not be bound by the Cartesian bifurcation.

We Need A Paradigm Shift

We cannot understand and acknowledge our human complexity without integrating science and theology, physics and metaphysics. And, if we are to effectively integrate them, we need a paradigm shift. In the modern Western biomedical model, the scientific research is still based on and undergirded by the Cartesian-Newtonian dualistic, linear, and reductionist approach to life. This view “not only presents an inaccurate vision of human existence but also contributes to the disease of modern society.”[4]

Nowadays, evidence-based healthcare relies heavily on statistical analysis of collected data. The use of statistics, which began in the 1800s by eugenicists, aimed, and in most cases is still aiming, at establishing the “normal distribution” of human beings in an attempt to reduce deviation from the norm. But who gets to decide what “norm” is? This idea of the norm in itself is a tyranny that ignores many aspects of the human experience.[5] Besides, “the delusion that […] the accumulation of a large number of facts can be of use by itself as a proof of a theory,” is another oversimplification feature of our modern-day scientific inquiries that focus on quantities missing the real essence.[6] Even studies concerning spirituality and health “must conform to the canons of scientific research which focus primarily on the relationship of behavior and outcome,” overlooking:

The multifactorial nature of causation (instead they focus on linear causation);
The interconnectedness of mind, body, and soul (instead they see life through the dualistic Cartesian lens of separation); and
The interrelated holistic nature of life (versus the isolation, compartmentalization, and individualization view of modern thinking).[7]

We need to broaden our understanding of scientific evidence to include metaphysical first principles and include thoughts, feelings, relationships, and a holistic view of life.[8] We need to recollect the scattered pieces of our human existence and reconnect the severed ties between our hearts/ souls and our bodies.

_____________________________
[1] William Chittick, Science of the Cosmos, Science of the Soul
[2] Wofgang Smith, Science and Myth.
[3] Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Lost in the 20th century
[4] Epperly, B. G. (2000). Prayer, Process, and the Future of Medicine
[5] Lennard Davis, The Disability Studies Reader
[6] René Guénon, The Reign of Quantity.
[7] Epperly, B. G. (2000). Prayer, Process, and the Future of Medicine. Journal of Religion and Health 39, 23–37.
[8] William Dembski, Intelligent Design.

October: Breast Cancer Awareness Month

28/9/2021

Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer among women and the second cause of cancer death after lung cancer. Recent genetic research points at breast cancer genes that, if present, might increase the risk of breast cancer. These studies show susceptibility, but do not explain how many women carrying those genes never develop breast cancer nor do they demonstrate how many women lacking the genes end up developing the disease. According to Dr. Lipton, the internationally recognized cell biologist and author of Biology of Belief, 95% of cancers are not caused by genetic inheritance. Environmental conditions and energetic makeup are major cause of cancer development. When cells are subjected to unfavorable environmental conditions (including toxins, nutritional deficiencies, emotional traumas, abuse…), they can’t perform optimally which may trigger those genes. If environmental conditions are under control (i.e. physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellbeing) the genes won’t be triggered and the disease is never manifested.

Listen to your Body Whispers®

Breast cancer is associated with the heart chakra, our fourth energy centre. Breast cancer sufferers usually have a history of repressed love, mothering too much or too little, losing a loved one or being betrayed by a loved one. In most cases, they have a history of over nurturing others while neglecting or rather denying their own needs for love and care. Our body sends us messages… If we keep ignoring them, they keep getting louder and louder until the Whispers turn into screams…

Some time ago, I met a lovely 30-year-old lady who had just been diagnosed with breast cancer. I was with her as she navigated the chaos of emotions: fear, helplessness, anger, depression… and as she suffered the pain of surgery, and the side effects of radiation and chemo. It was hard… extremely hard.
Yet, one day, she came back to see me. It was almost a year after her treatment has concluded. I will never forget her words: “you know, this cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me. I was asleep and it woke me up.” She related how her illness gave her time to reflect on her life, her beliefs, and her values. She changed and she grew… And now, she was helping women on the same journey to navigate the pain and chaos of their illness and restore their life starting by the most important step: Awakening & Awareness.

Al-Harawy (d. 1089 C.E.), the Muslim scholar and Sufi mystic, described human beings as travelers on a life-long journey towards knowing God. His hundred-station journey starts with the most critical step: Awakening, which involves self-awareness and deep self-reflection. According to Al-Harawy, awakening initiates a life-long venture towards a sound heart, the center of human intellect that guides the way to the Straight Path.

How often does our life pass us by and go totally unnoticed? How often do we run on autopilot unaware and tumbling out of balance? Sometimes when we’re caught up in life challenges and pains, we miss those simple moments of awareness. Living our life with awareness allows us the opportunity to reflect on our trials and wounds. We do not bypass our pains, we do not deny our depression or brush away our fears; on the contrary, we learn to acknowledge our feelings; to savor every second of our life with its joys and sorrow, ups and downs; to live our life with gratitude and awe.

St. Teresa of Avila teaches “[God’s] voice reaches us through words spoken by good people, through listening to spiritual talks, and reading sacred literature. God calls to us in countless little ways all the time. Through illness and suffering and through sorrow He calls to us. Through a truth glimpsed fleetingly in a state of prayer He calls to us. No matter how half-hearted such insights may be, God rejoices whenever we learn what He is trying to teach us […] The important thing is not to think much but to love much, and so to do whatever best awakens you to love.”

Whether you are seeking personal healing and growth or you are a female Muslim Health Practitioner, Coach, or Therapist who is wondering how to get direction regarding her next personal or professional step…
It’s time to listen to your Body Whispers before they turn into Screams...

If you feel that it is time for you to embark on your Journey of healing & transformation… Let me help you find your authentic voice as you explore your personal story and experiences.

“Verily God will never change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves” (Quran,13:11)

Learn about my private counseling HERE. And if you feel inclined, contact me at info@amiraayad.com to set a 30 min free phone consult to see if and how I can help you.

About the Author

Hi, I'm Amira... I'm all for simple, natural, uncomplicated life... My core values are derived from my Islamic faith... My definition of wellness includes lots of smiles, human interactions, delicious food, music, joy, colorful paint, Mediterranean sunshine, blue sky and turquoise sea, care, love, compassion and deep heart-felt peace.
I love learning… I love books and art supplies… And, I am saddened by human conflict and intolerance.

I am an introvert who loves being around people... I love building communities and gathering around the kitchen table... I am a teacher at heart... I simplify complex health science and speak openly about heart and soul stuff...
I've been helping people on their health and healing journey for more than 20 years now and I am committed to be authentic, caring and a beacon of love and peace.

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Disclaimer
My wellness coaching, workshops, teachings, and all the services I provide are at all times restricted to education, teaching and training on the subject of natural health matters intended for general natural health well-being and do not involve the diagnosing, prognosticating, treatment, or prescribing of remedies for the treatment of any disease, or any licensed or controlled act which may constitute the practice of medicine.
Any questions? Please email me at info@amiraayad.com

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