30 lessons in 30 years

I turned 30 last week! Since being a teenager, I’ve had an infatuation with being 30 after watching the film 13 Going On 30. It follows the story of Jenna, a 13-year-old girl who wanted nothing but to be 30 after seeing a magazine article titled “30, flirty and fabulous” and she woke up as a 30-year-old.

And here I am, 30. Thirty, flirty and fabulous. Haha. I’m really excited and grateful to finally be at this age and I feel a lot of energetic upgrades already. It almost feels like everything took place to heal old beliefs, reprogram my mind and learn some serious lessons the hard way so others don’t have to.

Here are just 30 of the things I’ve learned:

1. Everything is a reflection of your inner state. When someone acts a certain way, it’s a perfect opportunity for you to slow down and tune into your heart centre to see what it’s telling you.
2. Feel your thoughts. Always.
3. The path of spiritual enlightenment comes with giving yourself up to God. Doing things for God is the ultimate way of “letting go” to receive.
4. Surrender, surrender, surrender. Take it all to Al-Noor (the light).
5. Wake up for tahajjud (the last third of the night) to pray and meditate.
6. Straight and frizzy is not an actual hair type! You have waves or curls that you don’t know about and don’t know how to take care of.
7. If you start by wanting to “manifest” something, that’s an invitation to clear your subconscious mind.
8. Visit your inner child frequently, daily if you can.
9. Trust the process while feeling your feelings.
10. Starting a boundary with “I feel” and describing your feelings in simple words is the best way to solve issues with others.
11. Forgive, forgive, forgive. Forgive from your heart. If you want people to show up differently, forgive them with your heart. If you want clarity on a situation, forgive with your heart and be grateful. Gratitude and forgiveness don’t take from the gravity of the situation and don’t take your rights away.
12. Taking responsibility does not mean it’s your fault.
13. Approach scenarios and people with curiosity, not assumption. This is how you become an alchemist.
14. It’s okay to let things come to an end. Say goodbye gracefully.
15. It is possible to send healing energy to a situation that isn’t in your control or has nothing to do with you. Pray about it and speak with gratitude.
16. Money is energy. When you spend it wisely and give generously, it will want to run back to you. This is why charity doesn’t decrease wealth.
17. It’s not a bad thing to admit to being wrong. It’s healthy.
18. Men aren’t trash.
19. When someone comes with “love and light”, make sure that it’s projecting the energy of Al-Wadud (name of Allah: the most loving) and Al-Noor (name of Allah: the light) and if they aren’t, chant those names in your heart to project them and disarm the ego that comes with those powerful words.
20. Regulating your nervous system is more important than regulating your emotions. Feel your emotions and calm your nervous system to regulate your reaction to having them.
21. Cleaning your energy field/aura is just as important as brushing your teeth.
22. Don’t chase high vibrations, chase God. Put God in the centre and pray for your life energy to reflect this and watch how you will become the vessel that raises the vibration in low-vibration places. It’s important to remember that this isn’t you doing it, it’s God.
23. People will forget what you know, but they’ll never forget how they made you feel.
24. Ho’ponopono.
25. Keep your space clean at all times.
26. Carry prayer beads with you to chant, even if it’s silent.
27. Not everyone whom you resonate with is your friend. If they aren’t being nice to you, speak your truth and if they let go of you for it, they weren’t your real friend.
28. Not everyone has narcissistic personality disorder. Don’t dissect people and don’t hunt for red flags. Take things one step at a time and when they do hurt you, understand how you feel and approach them about it by starting by talking about how you feel as opposed to what they did. You’d be surprised how often people’s actions are unintentional.
29. It’s okay to watch trash TV!!!!!!!! BINGE ALL YOU WANT! This need to be intellectual all the time is draining you and it comes from a space of people-pleasing.
30. Treat life as a game.

I love you all xx

Social media detox is already changing my life

Hi my loves! Here I am hours into my new social media detox and I have an immense urge to write about it.

I had a really low evening last night and it led me to deactivate my Instagram account, the only social media platform I consider myself addicted to.

As an overview of what happened, I woke up at 8am feeling really groggy, but instead of meditating, leaving my bed and doing some stretches, I went back to sleep and then woke up and scrolled through YouTube shorts and Instagram reels. For someone who aims for such a healthy lifestyle, I find myself fighting my mornings for reasons like this.

Two hours had passed and I was still laughing at harmless videos of cats and babies and learning life hacks that I don’t even remember. I ended up starting my day late, it felt shorter and it was not really doing me justice, despite getting a lot done in the time my laziness compelled me to ration. Come 10pm, I was feeling really crap and began to journal. Instagram came up while I was writing and I promised myself that I’d deactivate the following morning, but my heart just told me to deactivate on the spot. Here I am writing this.

I have Facebook, but I rarely post and I only check it every few days for the purpose of being on one group that I need to be active on. I’ve limited my use of Clubhouse to once a week because I host a room every Thursday with Rumi’s Cave (check out their story and fundraiser here). I deactivated Twitter a while back and returned because I had beef with Uber Eats, but then I deactivated it again. Now that I’ve removed Instagram, I’ve let go of the only platform that I’m addicted to.

I already noticed a huge difference. I woke up feeling drained (I hate mornings lol) so I did dhikr (remembrance of God) while I was half asleep and meditated on gratitude. I forced myself out of bed and started my day. I began cleaning the kitchen before I even started work! I love cleaning, but I can’t stand doing anything in the morning.

My issue is I’ve always hated mornings. As I write this, I realise it’s because I used to associate waking up early with going to school, which I deplored. Instagram was sort of like my cartoon time before heading off to learn and now that I realise this after deactivating Instagram, I think I have a solid base to work with to restructure my mornings.

My ego tried to talk me out of deactivating Instagram. How else will I make content to compliment my blog? The blog that I neglect because I procrastinate nourishing because I’m too addicted to Instagram? How else will I build a business strategy without social media? The strategy that I haven’t worked on because I’m so anxious about starting extra small due to subconscious comparison by being on Instragram? There’s no excuse. My spirit needed out and it sent me a window of a depressive episode to give me a massive kick.

Ergh, even the word Instagram is making me feel anxious.

Now that I’m away from social media, I realise how it was a bit of a culprit in putting me in my masculine energy. I was doing nothing but scrolling, which ultimately, is doing. The absence of doing isn’t the feminine state of being, it’s just empty doings. To be in the state of being, you need to be in a state of rest, surrender and trust — all of which takes immense practice and discipline in a world that does so much to hyper stimulate our nervous systems.

When I really think about it, there’s also an element of greed. I’m taking all of this morning time and keeping it for myself so I don’t give it out in service of the Divine, whether it’s doing extra prayers, meditation, exercise, getting extra ready for work, etc. I feel like having this morning gluttony makes me fight with what I really love and want for myself, which is happiness, peace and success and it’s time to hold myself to account, starting with something as simple as reaching for prayer beads to do dhikr instead of my phone.

Greed is the antithesis of feminine energy because the underlying feeling is being unable to trust and receive. I don’t trust that the time I put in to nourish my mornings will come back to me and energise me tenfolds. A social media addiction is pacifying and reflects the energy of doing, whereas immersing myself in my spiritual practice is active surrender and allowing the spirit to roam and be.

I’m already feeling better and in more alignment. Moving forward, I’m filling two simple intentions into this detox to make it more meaningful and productive.

1. To fulfil my dream of becoming a morning person, I will do some inner child healing on morning work through EFT, reiki and self-hypnosis and I will set an alarm to wake up at a set time to start my day every morning. I’ll gradually aim to wake up at 6am.
2. I will actually work on the stuff that I need Instagram for and create a content schedule, business plan, etc.

This is also a sign for us all to honour our low feelings. I sat with feeling upset yesterday and honoured my state with compassion and curiosity and it gifted me with a revelation that is uplifting me into the vibration of abundance and joy.

This is the beauty of life and the wonders of God. Everything is a message. It’s all telling us something, but are we willing to listen? Some days we are, other days we aren’t. Regardless, we got dis. We’ve got it all.

Peace, love and light to you all

Diana xox

Life is a mirror, but there are seven of them: The Seven Essene Mirrors

My loves,

Today, I want to talk to you about something from mystical Judaism that blew my mind. The Essenes are a mystical sect who flourished between 2nd century BC to 1st century AD. It is said that they resided in Khirbet Qumran, which is south of Jericho in Palestine.

Their lifestyle hailed spirituality and God consciousness and they believed in communalism as a way of life. They (like Muslims) believe the soul is eternal and death is just a channel to the higher self.

They were a very tight-knit community and forbade marrying those outside of their sect. Those who wanted to be an Essene had to enter a three-year conversion introductory period.

They had many teachings, but one of them that blew my mind is the concept of the Seven Essene Mirrors.

When I started my spiritual journey, I remember reading that life is merely a reflection of who you are. Being low on consciousness and high on anxiety, I couldn’t rationally fathom it, nor could I quieten my mind enough to realise how everything truly is a reflection of the self.

As I expanded my awareness, I saw myself in others and I saw oneness in individual acts and circumstances. If there are infinite ways to look at a circumstance or a person and if no two people interpret a situation in the exact same way, that means much of our interpretations come from within.

The Seven Essene Mirrors teach just this, but with seven different levels. My mind immediately went to the seven main chakras, the seven levels of heaven and seven gates of hell in Islam, having to circulate the Ka’abah seven times, throwing seven stones at the devil, etc etc. My mind is running away from typing right now as it starts to lose control of what is coming out of my fingertips, but I think we should just sit and appreciate the significance of the number seven and all of the mysteries that come with it.

If we look at the seven mirrors, we see that each of them have their own guide to see how something may be a reflection of what is happening in your subconscious mind. You use these to unlock your thought patterns to let them go and achieve God consciousness (taqwa) and ego death (fana). In other words, the deeper you know your ego self, the faster you will be able to peel its layers to discover the true higher self that has unconditional connection to the Divine.

Even if you aren’t a believer, you can still benefit by coming to your higher self and releasing the limiting beliefs that hold you down. The less weighed down you are with attachment, the more you ascend.

Use these as a guide to figure yourself out when you have questions, or when you want to figure out the clutter of your mind.

The first mirror reflects what you are at the present moment

If you’re finding it difficult to gage who you are at a specific moment, look around you. How do things feel right now, at this very moment? You can be in the same situation twice, but notice different things based on your present mood. Are you more likely to notice the birds flying together, or their droppings on the floor?

The second mirror reflects what you judge

There’s an old saying of when you point one finger, three fingers point back at you. When you find yourself judging someone or something, there is something you haven’t forgiven within yourself or your past experiences. For example, if you’re judging someone for going out too much, you’re resenting a feeling of restriction either within or around you.

In order to manifest better for yourself, release the judgement by releasing the resistance.

The third mirror reflects what was taken away from you

When we see a quality in another person that we want for ourselves, that means we lost it. It could be a sense of femininity, masculinity, joy, confidence, self love, abundance, etc. At our essence, we are whole, but as we go through life, we lose our sense of complete self because of traumas that created limiting beliefs.

When you admire or envy something within someone, that means you need to go on a journey to find it within yourself. We need to enter a space of neutrality and release the limiting beliefs that stop you from remembering that you are one with your desire. The Qur’an does say that we were created from a single being after all (39:6).

The fourth mirror reflects patterns of a lost love

You know that feeling when you’re in a new situation and you keep comparing it to the old? Whether you’re comparing every new person you meet to your ex, or that feeling when you start a new job and you’re trying to draw parallels to your new colleagues and old ones? This is it!

When we look at ourselves through this mirror, we’re able to see our patterns of addiction. This gives us great spiritual power because recognising such compulsions give us an instant trigger into the shadow self when we foster a sense of curiosity about our patterns. When did this pattern start? Why do we feel the need to do what we need to do? Which relationship do we need to make peace with?

Keep in mind that when it comes to relationships, you can get closure without contact through meditation, understanding the deeper meanings and lessons, therapy, journaling, reframing, prayer and cord cutting. Please don’t text your exes or put yourself in a dangerous position with anyone else to clean up your fourth essene mirror!

The fifth mirror reflects your relationship with your parents

Our parents are our first window to the world and are the vessel of our soul’s incarnation to the earthly realm. This is the first relationship we have. As we grow, we find ourselves seeing the world through their eyes. This is why generational healing is so important, because much of the traumas they have are passed down to us.

This can range from our beliefs on money, God, our self identity and self worth, the environment and even politics. If we look deeply and access our subconscious mind, we can even see how our relationship with our parents manifests into relationships we have with others as adults.

How did you feel when you interacted with your parents as a child? Get to know the good and the bad aspects and this will give you a very deep an insight. Just as we’re human, so are our parents. We all view things from very limited scopes, even if we’re spiritual.

Then, you can practice some inner child healing and reparenting and rise above what may be limiting you.

The sixth mirror reflects your dark night of the soul moments

Our darkest moments, our most traumatic experiences, our struggles with mental health and the cloud over our head. When do we view the world through the sadness that lives within us?

Here, we’re talking about trauma. By definition, trauma is an experience that causes shock to the system. This manifests in physical, emotional and spiritual pain and leaves our fight or flight mechanism on. When we become aware of how we see the world through our traumatic experiences, we’re able to use discernment and question if things are the way they are because they truly are this way, or if it’s our trauma that’s talking.

When we become aware of how our trauma affects our perception, we unlock a new level of power — if we’re willing to overcome. Go easy on yourself because healing is nowhere near linear and we can get triggered at random moments. When this happens, we just need to ask ourselves what this moment is trying to teach us.

The seventh mirror reflects our ultimate self perception

So, this mirror is different to the first mirror because the first one talks about our state of being at any particular moment. You could be feeling happy and see roses and butterflies one moment, and then see fire in a few hours if something changes your mood.

Despite our shifting moods, we have a basal vibration, which is what this mirror talks about. Rather than asking what your mood is, you ask how you view yourself in the ever changing circumstances around you.

Using money as an example, a mood is feeling incredibly abundant after a payment. This can shift based on your current financial circumstances. Your self perception, however, is your ultimate relationship with money. Do you believe money flows through into your bank account easily? Or do you believe you’re a poor person?

The latter two are part of your self perception because they come from subconscious beliefs that you identify with.

This mirror is where we do the most exploration when we’re trying to manifest using the Law of Attraction. We can script, visualise, etc about being abundant, but if we don’t try to work on this mirror and understand the deep imprints of our subconscious mind, we won’t be able to rewrite and manifest.

I love this philosophy because it really breaks down how life can be a mirror to you. During your healing journey, you can use these mirrors as a reference point. What I like to do is write one aspect of my life down and pick a mirror that I feel relates the most. Then, I just speed write everything that comes into my mind, without even thinking about what I’m writing. When you’re writing very fast, you access your subconscious mind. Then I move to the next mirror.

Each mirror gets deeper, so if you want to do it with all of the mirrors, do it in the order that was written by the Khirbet Qumran.

I love you all so much,

Di xox

Here’s why you’re burning yourself out and what to do

This age has been categorised by identifying ourselves with our careers. Our whole childhood education has trained us to do and contribute as opposed to just be.

Take, the innocent question of “what do you want to be when you grow up?” and the way we were trained to by well-intentioned adults to use childhood as a building ground to serve capitalist ideals. We went to class for a “future”, did homework so we could pass and go to university and then went to university, or training for a job. We were told to have realistic expectations and to not pursue dreams that could land us in financial trouble in the future.

We may have had creative outlets, but our identity was first and foremost, how we could contribute to capitalism and how we identified through its lens. Unless our passions were profitable, we were told to choose between what we love and what would let us lead the lives we love.

For me, writing was always my passion. I loved expressing myself through writing, but judged myself based on my grades, which naturally were fluctuant. I then went on to study politics and war at university and I identified myself as a student. Then I identified as a journalist and my highs and lows became dependant on how my career was going.

Little did I know, those perceived ebbs and flows were one single meander that is life and I was just navigating whilst plastering my identity to one tiny aspect of it.

Learn more about my distance reiki healing sessions via Zoom

After realising this, I stumbled upon an article that said adults should identify with their health goals as opposed to their careers. It seemed legitimate, so I started to do it. I became Diana, the health conscious person and my fitness definitely improved… until I had days it didn’t.

Then came the same feeling losing your sense of self, but based on a different hurdle. I soon realised that the problem wasn’t what I was attaching my identity to, but the fact that I was identifying with temporary aspects of life, full stop.

Really, there’s no step-by-step to stop burning yourself out. We all do it in different ways and for different reasons, which change throughout our lives. Sometimes, it’s a necessity, other times it’s a survival instinct and then there are times we become addicted to the feeling of success. What we can do, though, is identify with something else.

Identify with your higher self, your soul. It could be too much to comprehend for some, especially for my readers who are new to spirituality, so think of it as identifying with your breathing.

“I am my breath. I am how I breathe.”

Take yourself there. How fast are you breathing? How deep are you breathing? Does your breathing come from your chest, or are you taking deep, belly breaths? Without judgement, focus on your breath, slow it down, put your hand on your heart centre and just say “I am”.

The rest of those identities will change. Success is relative, material is temporary. Even the body we have doesn’t stay with us forever, but our soul self, the self that was created in a completely dimension, will forever be ours and us.

Just coming to this realisation is enough. When you find yourself drifting with stress, overworking and identifying with success, just know it isn’t you.

Yes, life gets stressful, things get in the way of us doing what we want, but those are things that happen to you — they are not you. They do not need to become a part of you.

Don’t judge yourself for how well you’re connecting with your breath or identifying with your soul. Just do it. Allow negative thoughts to pass. They are not you and they do not stay forever. That extra sale may boost your confidence and dissolve those disturbing thoughts, realising your home is within lets you take a step back, allow you to feel how you want to feel, reminds you your thoughts aren’t you. Your thoughts are thoughts that affect you, but that doesn’t mean they become latched to your identity.

Get comfortable with stripping yourself of all of those labels and not identifying with the temporaries around you. Meditate on yourself, let go of the world and view yourself as the raw ethereal being you are. This is the purpose of spirituality and spiritual practice. You honour where you are, but you identify with yourself on a spiritual level to clear the material clutter in your mind.

Yes, you may need to do it more than once and yes it may take a while to retrain your brain to change the way you identify yourself, but by just having the simple awareness, you’re doing more than enough.

Baby steps, small wins and lots of gratitude and love.

I love you all.

Diana xoxo

Instagram: @flowerknafeh
Twitter: @superknafeh
Learn more about my distance reiki healing sessions via Zoom

Mindfulness resource sheet for tired Black activists (every part of you matters)

My dear, beautiful Black readers. There are times when as a writer, I know my words may not be enough. I don’t want to write about how much I care for you all, how much I stand with your cause and why I believe Black lives matter (because they do point blank. If you’re questioning the humanity of another human, you’re the problem) and blog about my feelings. This isn’t about me and it will never be. I’m a bleached blonde Palestinian who looks and passes for “white” until the slightest part of my culture comes out of me (pretty much all the time because y’all know how Palestinian I am 👀🇵🇸). For this reason, I felt uncomfortable writing because I want to use my blog to genuinely help and I didn’t know how. Until now.

This morning, I was watching a video by thevillageauntie (Angelica Lindsey-Ali) explaining why she is refusing speaking engagements by non-Black Muslims to “educate” others on anti-Blackness in our communities. She’s right. We’re closest to our community and we have the most influence. She also spoke about how tired she is, how anxious she is, how fighting anti-Blackness affecting her relationship with her children, etc. As she was talking, I realised that I have tips from my own personal journey on how to calm the anxious mind, how to regulate thought, tackle self esteem, powerful duas, etc. I want to share them all with you.

Before anything, please follow thevillageauntie’s example and say no. When it feels tiring, say no. Those with genuine intentions will understand. Those without are obviously coming with narcissistic intentions. If they wanted to help you, they would care for you first.

To fellow non-Black Muslims, this isn’t the time for me to address us. I know a lot of us have lost friends and family during this as their true colours show, have had awakenings to bias, have to deal with moving past anxiety to speak, etc. I’ll talk to us later, in a different post; I promise. My intention is to not burden my Black readers in something I’ve written for them. All I will say right now is watch the video I linked above and be mindful. Check on your Black friends, tell them you love them, pray for them and ask what you can do for THEM. Be sustainable and mindful that the fight against racism doesn’t stop when the hashtags stop trending.

Enough rambling. Let me get started. I am not a therapist and I am not a yoga teacher, nor am I a Muslim scholar. I am a writer, a learner reiki healer (inshallah will be licensed when Covid-19 is over), a Muslim and a yogi and I am making this list from my independent study, advice from various mentors and personal experience.

Quientening intrusive thoughts with feeling

Once upon a time, I used to suppress my feelings. My thoughts used to run through my mind at what seemed like the speed of light. I used to feel overwhelmed, scared and helpless. I felt trapped in my own thoughts and I felt like they controlled me because I couldn’t catch them, let alone control them. Until I learned this one thing: thoughts are meant to be felt, not controlled.

What underscores your thoughts are your feelings that you have not processed. I encourage you to ask yourself how you feel at that moment. Don’t fight with your thoughts, because they are a part of you, but connect with yourself on a deeper level by asking yourself how you feel. What you’ll find is your thoughts and feelings aren’t as separate as you think and you identifying those feelings and trying to work through them will always quieten those thoughts. Have compassion for your feelings. Meditate on the child within that feels those feelings (I covered this + a guided meditation here).

Breathing techniques

Breathing is core. When you focus on your breath, you’re focusing on the energy that is connecting your body to your soul, thus keeping you alive. Being in-tune with your feelings and breathing are foundations of mindfulness, which is why I put them both first. In my breathing practice, I was taught that to enter a state of relaxation, you need to breathe into your belly (diaphragmatic breathing) and generally your exhalation needs to be longer than your inhalation. There are some breathing techniques I learned as I went along and here they are:

4-7-8 technique: Breathe in for 4 seconds, hold for 7 seconds, out for 8 seconds. Repeat as long as you want (I do it for around 2 minutes)

Box breathing: This technique is where you breathe in, hold and out for the same amount of seconds for relieving anxiety and lowering stress levels. Some people do 3-3-3, whereas others do 4-4-4.

2-3-4 technique: Breathe in for 2 seconds, hold for 3 seconds, out for 4 seconds. A smaller version of 4-7-8 but it’s still effective and maybe even more if you want to work your way up to breathing deep

Kapalabhati: A pretty advanced yogic breathing technique, but I love it! This cleanses your lungs, releases toxins, purifies your blood, warms your body, clears your mind and you get a bit of an ab workout 😝! This warms your body so don’t do on the first 3-4 days of your menses, if you have high blood pressurem pregnant or have heart problems. I want you to read about it properly before doing it (Chopra Centre has a good guide and clear instructions) but essentially, you take deep inhales and explosive exhales.

Nostril breathing: In kundalini yoga, I was taught that the left nostril is the feminine nostril that you breathe through for calming properties (stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system) and the right nostril is the masculine nostril that energises you (stimulates the sympathetic nervous system).

You can either do left nostril breathing by blocking your right nostril and breathing deeply through your left nostril (usually in for 4 seconds and out for 4 seconds but the longer the counts the more effective). You can also do alternative nostril breathing which is breathe in through your left nostril, out through your right nostril, in through your right nostril and out through your left nostril, then in through the left, etc.

PS: You don’t need to block your nostril through sticking your finger inside! Just pinch the outside of your thumb or index finger on the outside of your nostril.

Affirmation guide

Affirmations are very important because they rewire your brain! One of my favourite things to do is to listen to affirmations instead of music when I’m tidying up my room by going on YouTube. You can go on Pintrest to find a list of affirmations, or you can make them yourself! Here’s how:

1. Identify how you’re feeling and what your consistent negative thoughts are
2. Write them down (I am helpless, I have to do everything or I will be a bad activist)
3. Write counter statements (I am powerful, I am allowed boundaries for the sake of my mental health and they make me a better activist)

It may feel like you’re lying to yourself or you’re being oblivious to the situation at hand, but you’re not. You’re rewiring yourself from within as you change the world. You’re creating a safe space inside your mind where you listen to yourself, connect with your breath, address your feelings and unlearning toxic messages you were fed during childhood. Do not use affirmations to hide your feelings. Use them as you feel your feelings so you can raise your self esteem and tap into a healthier emotional space.

Using yoga to calm the mind and body

Yoga poses are amazing for everyone! Each pose is good for your mind, body and spirit and has a different effect on you. Here are some relaxing poses that you can search and try:

• Child’s pose
• Downward facing dog
• Forward fold
• Sphinx pose
• Cow face pose
• Reclined eagle pose
• Lotus pose (the lotus mudra can be done as well by sitting in easy pose and breathing deep)

Kundalini yoga meditations

Some people are not okay with chanting, and that’s okay. This is a comprehensive list for everyone regardless of their religion so take what you want and disregard what you don’t. I know many Muslim kundalini yogis who don’t chant and others who do and others who prefer to find the meaning of the chant before chanting. I’ll be linking the full meditation and summarising it.

Lotus open heart meditation

To open, strengthen and heal the heart centre. You put your hands in a lotus mudra and you chant, or breathe deep.

Kirtan Kriya (Sa Ta Na Ma Meditation)

This meditation brings a total mental balance to the individual. Your thumb touches your index finger as you chant sa (birth), middle finger as you chant ta (life), ring finger as you chant na (death), little finger as you chant ma (rebirth). You do this at different volumes explained in the link above. You can follow a guides on YouTube that sings, whispers and is silent with you to guide you.

Antar Naad Mudra

This meditation is said to help with creativity. You sit in easy pose with your hand touching your baby finger and chant the sa-re-sa-sa mantra. Again, you can find the mantra on YouTube or Spotify and chant with it. Usually done for 11 minutes.

Duas

I am Muslim, so I will put some duas. I’ll paste them in Arabic, transliterate and translate so anyone can use these powerful prayers.

اللَّهُمَّ اِنِّىْ اَسْىَلُكَ الْفَوْزَ فِى الْقَضَآءِ وَ نُزُلَالشُّهَدَآءِ وَعَيْشَ السُّعَدَآءِ وَ مُرَافَقَةَ الاَنْبِيآءِ وَ النَّصْرَ عَلَى الاَعْدَآءِ اِنَّكَ سَمِيْعَ الدُّعَآءِ

Allahumma inni as’alukal fauza fil qadaai’, wa nuzul-ash-shuhadaai’, wa aiyshaslua’daa’i, wa murafaqatal-ambiyaai’, wannasara alalaadaai’, innaka sammaiiud’dua

God, I ask You for success concerning my destiny, and feast with the martyr, and enjoyment with fortunate people, and the companionship of believers, and victory over my enemies. Only you can answer my prayer.

الَّهُمَّ اسْتُرْ عاوْرَتِىْ وَ امِنْ رَوْعَتْىْ

Allahummastur ‘auraati wa aamin ru’aati

Allah, cover my faults, and change my fear into peace

رَبَّنَا لا تَجْعَلْنَا فِتْنَةً لِّلْقَوْمِ الظَّلَمِنَ وَ نَجِّنَا بِرَحْمَتِكَ مِنَ الْقَوْمِ الْكَفِرِيْنَ

Rabbana la taj’alna fitnatan-llil qaumidh-dhalimeen, wa najjinna bi-rahmatika minal-qawmil-Kafireen

Lord, do not make me a trial for the wrongdoing people, and deliver me by Your Mercy from the oppression of disbelievers.

اللهم اهدني صرة المستقيم للوصولي

Allahuma ihdeeni seerat al-mustaqim la wusuli

Allah guide me to the straight path to my destination

اللهُمَّ لا سَهْلَ إلا مَا جَعَلتَهُ سَهْلا وَ أنتَ تَجْعَلُ الحزْنَ إذا شِئْتَ سَهْلا

Allahuma la sahla illa ma ja’altahu sahla, wa ‘anta taj-alul hazna idha shi’ta sahla

Allah, nothing is easy except what You have made easy. If You wish, You can make the difficult easy.

بِسْم الله وتوكلت على الله ولا حول ولا قوة إلا بالله

Bismillah wa tawakkaltu a’la Allah wa la hawla wa la quta illa billah 

In the name of Allah, I trust in Allah’s plan, there is no might, nor power, except for Allah

“Just for today”

A principle we are taught in reiki, where we set an intention and choose to live in peace for today. The human mind responds better when you have short term aims, so if you aim to be at peace “just for today”, your brain digests it better. It also helps you to practice living with intention, which is SO unbelievably important! I’ll write something in depth on this later and I’ll link here once it’s ready so you don’t have to keep checking back.

Here are the five reiki principles to live by (gratitude is very important because it takes you out of anxiety and puts you into the present moment):

Just for today I will not worry.
Just for today I will not be angry.
Just for today I will do my work honestly.
Just for today I will give thanks for my many blessings.
Just for today I will be kind to my neighbour and every living thing.

That’s all so far, I’m open to questions and more suggestions. Please tell me what you want from me and what I can do to support you. I’m all ears.

Love you all so much!!!

Instagram: @flowerknafeh
Twitter: @superknafeh

How to let go of attachment patterns and reclaim your life

Attachment is the route of all suffering –

Gautama Buddha

Hello, my loves!

Again, this topic is very important to me. Throughout my life, I measured my success based on my ability to control. If I could control outcomes of situations, I was victorious. If I had a goal in my mind, I used to measure success to how close I was to achieving it, or what actions I’m forcing myself to take that will take me a step forward. Laying back felt like failure and sitting out felt like rejection.

That was no way to live and I thank God every day that I’m out of this pattern.

It’s always good to have motivation to take inspired action to get to where you want, but sometimes, you need to slow down and ask if you really are acting out of inspired action, or anxiety? Are you putting a certain outcome on a pedestal and only allowing emotions to release and express themselves under specific circumstances? Do you deny happiness because you don’t feel worthy because you somehow don’t think you accomplished enough to deserve happiness? Do you suppress disappointment and dismiss negative feelings because you want to avoid confrontation with others?

It’s good to regulate how we react, but when we regulate how we feel, we begin to deny who we are. We deny our past, we deny our present, we deny a better future, and most importantly, we deny that sweet, innocent child that continues to live inside us that has the same wants and needs as that child did in its physical form, years and years and years ago.

Attachment patterns govern our relationship with other human beings. If you felt abandoned as a child, and internalised that feeling, you will always feel a sense of abandonment in your relationships until you address your issue with being abandoned. You may feel anxious at any inconvenience in your interpersonal relationships, only for the source to be hidden trauma or a suppressed memory. The memory or trauma could have been from a small event, or as a result of being mistreated by (most of the time a well-intentioned) adult, but it’s not the memory or the event that matters. It’s how it made your cute, innocent, baby self feel as a child.

That innocence will never go away, which is one of the best things about life. We were born a blank canvas with the world as our oyster, feeling like we can do anything. Those limiting beliefs we have were all learned behaviours. The fact that we still have childlike innocence buried in us in some way is a blessing, because we can tap into our infinite potential and unlearn all of that stuff that no longer serves us. This goes for attachment patterns, beliefs on money, beliefs on self, beliefs on what core school subjects you’re good at, whether you’re clean or messy; the list is endless.

For attachment patterns, the first thing you need to do is figure out what your attachment pattern is. There are countless books and videos to watch to learn about the different one. You can even find an online quiz to help you decipher if you need help. With awareness, comes power.

Then, you need to find your way of calming yourself when you’re in a state of stress, because your triggers to your attachments show up. When this happens, our mind starts to race and it feels like our thoughts are running around at 10000 mph. When this happens, you need to slow down by asking yourself how you feel. When this happens, you narrow the focus from the many thoughts that you can’t fully identify, to the few feelings that your thoughts are rooted in. These feelings don’t have to be related. You can feel a mixture of things and that is a perfectly normal part of the human experience.

Take a few deep cleansing breath, and ask yourself: “How do I feel?”

You’ll feel drawn to be more actively curious about one of the feelings. Pick it and try to unfold. Questions to ask yourself are: Why am I feeling this way? What experience does this remind me of when I was younger? How does this remind me of my relationship with my mum/dad/guardian? What memory does this feeling invoke? Here, you’ll find some answers that will put your current thoughts and feelings in reaction to something very recent into context.

Once that happens, you open your mind to the possibility that there are many more reasons behind another person’s actions. Thoughts like: “Okay, maybe I’m not being ghosted and ___ just needs some space”, “maybe ___ didn’t like what I said and told me because they want a better relationship with me because they like me, as opposed to wanting to humiliate me”, “maybe I overreacted, but I still felt like ___’s behaviour was unfair. I’ll admit to my overreaction, but stand my ground when defending myself because they were wrong”.

When you do this, you also find boundaries. You realise that maybe that person’s actions may not have been personal to you, but you would prefer that they clarified their intention. That is a boundary and an expectation of open and honest communication.

Meditate on your inner child

Diana is not Diana if she doesn’t talk about meditation 😉. Seriously though, meditation is one of the best things you can do for yourself. I found that “visiting my inner child” through meditation really helps me. I see baby Diana as someone who is still living inside me and sometimes needs to be soothed. Things happen in adult Diana’s life and baby Diana gets triggered and needs to be calmed down.

Scientifically speaking, up until the age of 6, our brains were functioning on theta brain waves, which means we were absorbing the world in an almost trance-like state. This is why our infancy is so crucial to our development, because that’s when thought patterns that stay with us for the rest of our lives are formed. If we can’t understand this, we can’t unlearn the negative ones.

Inner-child work (I’ll write a whole post about it and my experience in practicing it in the future) is one of the most important things we do as adults. We need to find our scars and re-parent them. It’s a normal part of life. It doesn’t mean your parents were bad parents (for those who didn’t grow up around abuse, our parents are human after all and obviously made mistakes), or you are so “messed up” that you need to start again, re-parenting is about taking responsibility.

There are many guided meditations to follow on YouTube, just do a search and go on the best one. The intentions of meditating on your inner child are to recognise that your inner child still exists, to have empathy with your inner child, really internalise how sweet and innocent you were (and still are) as a child and how you deserve the absolute best and to tap into that part of yourself, befriend it and to heal the child that is hurting.

When you tend the needs of that child, you heal yourself. From personal experience, this works! If you’re not used to meditating, find a good guided meditation that you can listen to throughout your practice. Especially if you’re new to meditating!! Read my blog post on meditating for beginners if you need help. For my Muslim readers, I also wrote a post explaining why meditation is not haram, because I always get people asking.

A quick guide to the meditation of healing your inner child would be to:

1. Take 21 deep breaths or do whichever breathing exercise you’re familiar with to calm you down
2. Picture a beautiful forest or beach or playground and walk barefoot, familiarising yourself with the area
3. See a child playing by themselves, sitting alone with their head down, however you feel best
4. Walk closer to the child and realise that child is you (it helps to picture yourself as a 4-year-old)
5. Look into its eyes and understand what this sweet child is feeling
6. Hug the child, hold their hand, etc and say “I love you” – really show this child love until they feel better
7. When the child feels better, take the child by the hand, start to play with them until you feel the innocent laughter in your heart
8. Keep saying I love you, affirming what the child needs to hear (you’re valid, you’re beautiful, you have amazing hair, your emotions are amazing, your boundaries are precious, you’re allowed to cry, etc) and really make that child as happy as you can
9. When you’re ready to leave the meditation, look into the child’s eyes and see its happiness, hug the child tight and say you’ll be back. Take them to a nice place that they’ll love and they feel safe.
10. Take your focus back to your breathing, start to wiggle your fingers and toes, your hands and wrists and slowly bring yourself back to this dimension

Do this meditation as much as you want. I find that the more I do it, the better I feel and the more my inner child trusts me because I keep my promise to her. This has REALLY helped me with my own attachment patterns. If you want to feel the meditation more deeply, put your hands on your heart whilst doing it.

I barely scratched the surface on this topic so please take advantage of this introduction and go and do lots of research, or comment below/contact me on my socials with questions and comments that I’ll address!

I love you all so much!! Good luck!

Instagram: @flowerknafeh
Twitter: @superknafeh

Is meditating haram?

I remember when I first started awakening, I remember coming across meditating and hesitating at the thought. As a practicing Muslim, I pray five times a day. Through my prayers, I should be connected to God and reach the epitome of spirituality.

But anxiety crawled all over my body. I had no idea what inner peace felt like because my mind was on autopilot, thoughts unregulated and my ego (nafs) was

Let’s go to the Qur’an: “Indeed he succeeds who purifies his own self” (Surah 91 (Ash-Shams The Sun), Verse 9). Meditation is an exercise that helps you know, understand and purify yourself. When you sit and give yourself that gift of introspection, what you’re doing is tapping into the subconscious that records every bit of information you’ve taken in. We never forget, we only bury information. This is why you end up randomly remembering things from events that took place years ago that you haven’t thought about since it happened. Where’s the haram?

I’ve had people talk about them not needing to meditate because they have prayer. To me, that’s like saying you don’t need water because you have prayer. Each has a different purpose and the spiritual purpose of meditation is to work with your mind, work through your thoughts and understand yourself through the record of data that has been collecting our entire lives. We shut off our talking, egoic mind and we tap into the quieter mind that explains why we react the way we react.

Nowadays, many of us find it harder to mentally and spiritually commit to our prayers, even if we do all five, and then some. We were born and raised in a heightened state of capitalism. We grew up around computers and machines, fast food and having everything at our fingertips. Yes, living in the most digitalised era in human history yet has its perks, but it also means we’re functioning through basic physical needs and ego as opposed to feeling through higher states of being.

Meditating improves our concentration, it helps us enter within. Instead of thinking about what we want to “fix”, we slow down. We allow ourselves to process. We allow our mind to reorder and we tap into the deepest realms of our consciousness. We let go of worries, we let go of anxiety and we allow ourselves to just be. This is why when we’re stressed, we find it more difficult to focus on our prayer. We can’t just be, because there are so many things going through our head.

PS: I wrote an article on meditation tips here

The same way you can actually use the anxiety in prayer and pray through the anxiety by asking God for answers, we do it in our meditation practice and intend to release and trust that the answers will come. When you’re in a heightened state of being, you have access to parts of your subconscious mind that can explain. You’re not idolising your mind, you’re not praying to a different entity, all you’re doing is trying to get to know yourself better.

Guilt

From what I’ve seen by having discussions with many Muslims, they fear the guilt of potentially finding peace with meditation that they might not be able to access through prayer. Meditation is an exercise that helps you expand your perspective and tap into the energy of being closer to God because you’re not operating from anxiety. You’re training your mind. You’re connecting to your spirit and you’re by default bringing yourself closer to God.

You’ll find it easier to switch off and focus on your prayer when you’re praying. You’ll find it easier to be in the moment and have trust and faith that everything will be okay. Tawakkul is a much loved characteristic of the believer and it’s achieved when turning off your fight or flight and you enter into flow state.

You shouldn’t gaslight yourself or spiritually punish yourself if you can’t enter these stages. You shouldn’t normalise not being connected to your emotional and spiritual selfs. You should take steps to learn about yourself and connect to your intuition. You should have so much inner peace and your mind’s eye so clear that you are able to receive messages from God because you won’t be clouded by your anxiety.

Peace is a birthright. Happiness is a birthright. Manifestation is a birthright and it is all done by the will of our kind, benevolent Lord. Dua changes qadr, after all. Incorporate it into your spiritual wellbeing, work on turning off your fight or flight and allow yourself to receive the blessings of your Lord as you purify your soul with the intention of getting close to Him.

It’s our duty to tap out of the materialistic world. It’s our duty to meditate and enter flow state. You’ll find yourself accepting, receiving and perceiving from a place of love as opposed to anxiety. Your relationship with yourself will change, which will ultimately change your relationship with God.

Remember, He’s closer to us than our jugular vein. Your intention is everything. You’re not worshiping some deity or taking an alternative route to faith by meditating. Meditating is an exercise that has effects on your mind body and soul. Allow yourself to just be.

So, short answer: NO!

Too anxious to meditate? I got you. Here are some tips

Hello lovely people.

I’ve had some people ask me about mediation and visualisation. Last week, I tweeted that I managed to treat my PMS cramps with visualisation when I was tucked into bed and was too tired to get pain killers. Since then, people have been wondering how to tap into this energy themselves.

Honestly, I didn’t know I was capable of doing this. I practice yoga all the time and I love meditation and mindfulness. I also believe in the power of the mind as a mechanism of healing, but I didn’t think I was spiritually awakened enough to to see results of pain relief if I tried it at this so-called “stage” in my spiritual journey.

But here we are. God really showed me the power of my own mind right there.

Before I do a deep dive, I want you all to understand the difference between fight or flight and flow state. If you don’t understand this, you won’t understand mediation.

The ability to meditate is our birthright. Naturally, we find adventure in the unknown. We’re able to close our eyes, allow our bodies to fall into sync with our higher selfs and trust. The reason so many of us find it so difficult to meditate is because our fight or flight is perpetually on and we can’t reach flow state.

Living the lives we do, we’re conditioned to be in a perpetual state of anxiety. We always feel as though we have to defend ourselves from something. This is when our fight or flight is on. It’s supposed to be a temporary state to get us out of extreme danger. But in this day and age, it’s the default.

Naturally, our default is supposed to be flow state. Rather than fearing the unknown the way the human body, humans are supposed to find adventure in the unknown. As opposed to associating the unknown with anxiety, we are supposed associate it with peace and enjoyment. Naturally, we’re supposed to trust it as a process and trust in the benevolence of the destination.

So where does meditation come into the picture?

If you cannot enter flow state, you cannot meditate. If you find yourself in your state of anxiety/fight or flight, all you need to do is recognise it for what it is and observe it.

How does this feel? Which parts of my body are tensing up? Am I shaking anywhere? How fast am I breathing? What may be happening?

Approaching your anxiety with a sense of curiosity calms it. Focus on how your body is feeling and be aware of the sensations. When thoughts come through, simply be aware of them too. Don’t fight your thoughts because they will fight back. Let them sit. And breathe. They can’t defend themselves when you’re flushing them out with breath-work.

There are many breathing techniques out there. One of my former yoga teachers taught me the 4-7-8 breathing technique, which I used when I had anxiety.

Breathe in for four seconds, hold for second seconds, out for eight seconds. Repeat until you feel better.

Breathing is core to meditation.

When you focus on your breath, you’re focusing on the energy that is connecting your body to your soul, thus keeping you alive. You can simply meditate by closing your eyes and focusing on your breath.

You can also look up different meditations. In kundalini yoga, there’s a plethora of meditations we use (if you belong to a religious faith and you feel uncomfortable with some of the chants, you can omit them or do a different meditation).

If you want, I can make a list of different breathing techniques.

Okay, but how do we visualise?

I taught myself visualisation through using guided meditations. Look them up on YouTube, Spotify or even yoga/meditation websites and find videos for different occasions or feelings.

When I visualised my PMS cramps away, I put my hands on my belly and imagined a warm gold ball loosening my muscles just because I felt like it. I could have imagined a red ball, I could have imagined massaging hands, the only restriction was my mind.

The trick is, I entered flow state through my breath. This is where beginners may need help because they need to be guided into relaxation. I still use guided meditations when I can’t seem to relax, want a fresh visualisation or want to do a yogic meditation.

See it in your mind’s eye/third eye

You don’t have to, but you can also use your pineal gland. Close your eyes, breathe and focus your eyes between your eyebrows. This is a very powerful state because you’re opening your third eye chakra.

Use healing/relaxing sounds

If you want relaxing sounds in the background, but not necessarily a guided meditation, you can use healing frequencies. I made playlists for each chakra you can use. You can even use playlists to time your meditation.

Most importantly, don’t worry about the amount of time you meditate. Just do it. Even if it’s for a few minutes. Progress is key. The last thing you want to do is stress about a mechanism we use to intentionally help us relax, heal and manifest.

Good luck and don’t hesitate to contact me on my socials if you have any questions xox

Instagram: @flowerknafeh
Twitter: @superknafeh

Image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay