SA
Abdul, It’s so good to be here with you. Where are you in the world? Can you describe the current state of your mind, body and spirit for me?
A
It is an incredible honor to be in community with you as we can communicate across the world. I am currently in Long Beach, California: home of Snoop Dogg and Sublime. The current state of my mind, body and spirit, I would say, are in flux. I am trying to stay grounded, but we are in such a time of great transition and upheaval, that I would be lying if I said that I am where I would like to be in my mind, body, and spirit. My mind is struggling to make sense of the world we find ourselves in, and the very real thoughts, images, and emotions that swirl up around uncertainty. My body is home to where I want to live. I want to live my life, no in my mind, but in my heartspace. That ties into my spirit, I think. My spirit is always there, but I’m not always connected to it in a grounded way. That’s a great question!
SA
Oh, I so resonate with the yearning to be grounded in a time of rapid change.
How has your practice of Breathwork supported you during this unprecedented time, and can you tell me a little bit about how you arrived at this practice?
A
Breathwork has been a pillar of my grounding and the closest connection to spirit I can find, in any sort of a somatic experience. Breathwork brings me into myself in a way that lets me feel as though I am connected to everyone and everything on this planet. It helps remove the trappings that separate us as peoples, by placing me into a space of simply being a human being, and seeing all others as human beings, without filters or qualifiers.
How I got here is a story. About 5 years ago, into my late 30’s, I developed OCD. My particular OCD focuses around obsessive intrusive thoughts that greatly disturb me. When the OCD is active these thoughts race through my mind all day long and impact my ability to be the person I want to be in the world. As this mental health challenge unfolded, I out of desperation, self-medicated with illicit substances, pharmaceuticals, and whatever else I could find. This dark chapter in my life led me through hospitalizations, profound fear, and ended in a holistic, spiritual recovery program that saved my life, and introduced me to Breathwork. At this recovery center, my first week there, I was thrown into a Breathwork session. This session was the first time that I had felt a spiritual connection in decades. Through simply utilizing my breath and having a teacher guide me through the experience, I lost sight of all of the doubts, fears, and anxieties that plagued me. I felt (and I want to credit my friend Jared for this) that in my body, I had a sense of home, which is being safe, known, and loved. Realizing that I could feel this way and really be back in touch with who I was at my core, propelled me into the holistic healing space. I devoured literature and training on Breathwork, Reiki, EFT, and Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing. I am at my best, I am self-actualizing, when I am in the service of helping others self-actualize and heal. I am a big proponent of Abraham Maslow’s work on Hierarchy of Needs. It’s a foundational part of the pedagogy I employ as a school principal, and Maslow, before he died, revised his hierarchy of needs and posited that the highest form of being you could attain, was called “transcendence”. Transcendence is our self-actualization through helping others self-actualize. I know I meandered a bit, but hopefully I tied that back at the end. I can’t help nerding out on Maslow. 🙂
SA
We encourage nerding out in every capacity! What a profound journey you’ve been on, Abdul. And what a commitment you have to elevating collective consciousness – both as a principal and as a healing practitioner.
I myself only began conscious breathing a year and a half ago after I began my healing journey. Understanding how my CPTSD had frozen trauma within me resulting in shallow breathing, diaphragmatic breath was incredibly transformative in allowing me to both call my spirit back to my body and do the uncomfortable work of healing my wounds. A lot of my healing is around ancestral dysfunctions and has focused directly on my mother wound. How is Breathwork a vehicle towards healing ancestral and racial trauma?
A
As you illuminated, the deep trauma that we hold, our ancestral trauma, the complex PTSD of living in the age of COVID, or being a minority in such a racialized oppressive system where Black and Brown people are easily oppressed, is all locked in our body! The shallow breathing, the pain in our back, there are countless symptoms that we notice during the day. I myself carry a very deep father wound. I lost my father when I was 6. Breathwork is a way for us to move the “stuck” energy in our body that has locked us into unhealthy postures and breathing patterns, by pushing us into the depths of what an original, authentic, conscious breath would be. In doing this, we unfreeze some of the trauma locked in our body. The chemicals that regulate stress levels in our brain change. And we can, with the right guidance, revisit the pain of our racialized ancestral trauma and reprocess it. For me, and I’m gonna nerd out again, for sec: this is very similar to the new gold standard of trauma psychological modalities, which is EMDR. This uses the somatic practice with the eyes and the body to reprocess and refile trauma in the appropriate place. Our bodies are where the pain is, but they are also where the solution lies.
SA
Do you think there needs to be greater education around the way the body holds trauma and how neural pathways are formed and can be rewired?
A
Absolutely! I think it has to be taught in our schools. We focus so much on content areas, that we’ve overlooked the need to educate a generation of people as to how to live in their bodies, and how to navigate a complex and changing world! In my practice at my school, I imbed, breathwork, mindfulness, and other tools that I’ve picked up, as part of weekly professional development with my staff. These tools allow my staff to then use them with students and families, so that the community at large can have more exposure to this healing. I feel as though we are moving in the right direction. I know many other school leaders who are moving down this path. But I think that the way to really move this forward is to teach these strategies at teacher and school leader education programs so that they know that these are a foundation to their service.
SA
Teaching mindfulness to children is such a simple, yet revolutionary concept. I remember, in third grade, my teacher would play guided meditations for our class in between subjects. When I began healing, I came back to those moments in time as pivotal and necessary for me as a child who was experiencing domestic violence. Knowing these are strategies incorporated in schools today fills me with so much joy and hope.
How do you incorporate EFT into your practice? I’ve only recently become familiar with the practice of tapping and, admittedly, was initially skeptical. Can you talk me through how it works and what it does to release trauma and tension?
A
Absolutely. I use EFT in my group Breathwork sessions, at the end, as a kinesthetic way to plant positive beliefs about yourself, by tapping and speaking different mantras. This is much different than how EFT is used on an individual basis to address trauma. The EFT protocols are highly scripted, on an individual level, to allow the practitioner and the client to identify where in the body the hurt is stored, what it looks like, how old it is, what color it is. This again, is very similar to EMDR, where you work to come up with what the negative cognitions are that you believe about yourself, where they’re stored in the body, and then transitioning into what positive cognitions you want to have about yourself, and reintegrating those into the hurt places of your body through the tapping.
I have had profound success when I have received EFT from very skilled practitioners. I would say I am definitely still learning my way through the EFT process, because there is a lot of nuance to how you read the body and help it readjust.
SA
Can a practice of EFT be useful with children? Is there an age when this practice can or cannot be integrated into an overall practice of mindfulness – and if yes, what would a group session of EFT look like with a group of children?
A
That’s a very interesting question. I don’t believe there is an age limit as to when EFT could begin. I believe that so long as you have the emotional vocabulary to articulate what you are feeling, or have a skilled practitioner who can help you name it, you can EFT it up!
That being said, I have never used EFT as the sole modality of a group session, especially not with children, but what I can see being done (and I think this would also work with our BIPOC groups when we meet), is allow the group to come up with negative cognitions, stereotypes, that are impacting them through their environment, through social media, and allow them to come up with the positive replacement cognitions they want to believe about themselves, and do believe about themselves at heart. And now you gave me an idea to try out!
SA
So very intriguing and exciting! How did you come to Reiki? Is incorporating Reiki into your practice as a community healer something that you do, or is Reiki also a modality that is reserved for individual sessions?
A
I came to Reiki through a community wellness center in my city. I went to a sound meditation where Reiki was being performed on the participants, and it blew my mind! There is something profoundly healing about receiving loving touch. I then befriended the Reiki practitioner from that night and she became my mentor. There are people that do distance Reiki healing, but that’s not what I practice. Mine is all touch-based, which works in group and individual sessions but isn’t quite the same in the online environment. I have experimented with it and directed clients to touch and hold parts of their body during our sessions, but there’s something magical about getting it from somebody who is solely focused on your well-being, and I wish I could use Reiki more in my current practice.
SA
The first time I went to see a somatic therapist in New York, I left the session with clarity, but also a little frustrated. I was thinking, ‘This is basically what a Reiki does, but glorified and more expensive.’ I know now that there are a lot of differences between the two offerings, but am also wading through some of the racial biases that exist within the field of somatics in terms of how a lot of these non Western practices are incorporated into the field. Do you think about the field of somatics as one that does maintain some sort of status quo in that it borrows a lot from other, non white practices?
A
Absolutely. I think the entire Western holistic healing movement has taken Eastern practices and repackaged them without acknowledging where they come from. We’re talking about indigenous practices that have been passed down from generation to generation, and passing them off as brand new Western inventions. The target audience has also been problematic. This movement has really catered to upper middle class white families. This is where the yoga studios and wellness centers are typically found, and there hasn’t been access to our BIPOC communities that really need access. That is a great observation, and one that we definitely need to explore more in depth as practitioners.
SA
Yes, it’s our hope at Studio Ānanda that by really interrogating the foundations of these fields, we can learn more about ourselves and the world around us.
What are a few things that have kept you grounded during this time?
A
I love that question. I think having a sense of hope helps to ground me. It comes from all of the men, women and children that I work with that are continuously interrogating the systems of oppression that we live in, with an anti-racist lense. I’ve been reading a lot of Bettina Love and and these powerful Black women give me hope that even in the chaos of where we find ourselves, there are people doing the work, there are people dedicated to bringing the light into places where darkness has lived for far too long. There are people infusing their actions with audacious love. Also cheeseburgers and pizza!
SA
Beautiful, thank you so much for sharing, Abdul. Do you have any last words you’d like to share before we wrap up?
A
Prinita thank you so much for this opportunity! I feel as though the questions and flow of the conversation allowed me to grow, better understand myself and find new ways to challenge myself to be better. As far as last words, we can’t often control the environment and situations we find ourselves in, but we can always control our response. We have a choice!! Choice is a powerful thing! IF we can choose only one thing, choose love all day, every day.
Abdul-Rehman Issa is a career educator (former special education teacher, current school administrator, MA in School Leadership, and prospective doctoral student), who also holds certifications in Breathwork, Reiki, and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), as well as Drum Circle Facilitator, Restorative Practices Trainer, and Restorative Circles Facilitator. He is also a Somatic Experiencing (SE) Practitioner in Training.Abdul-Rehman is a career educator (former special education teacher, current school administrator, MA in School Leadership, and prospective doctoral student), who also holds certifications in Breathwork, Reiki, and EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), as well as Drum Circle Facilitator, Restorative Practices Trainer, and Restorative Circles Facilitator. He is also a Somatic Experiencing (SE) Practitioner in Training.