Radical Healing, Wholeness and Islam (Part 2)
An Introductory Narrative on Transforming Emotional Pain Through Journeywork
Part 2
By (Dr) Muzammal Hussain
Accredited Journey Therapist, Coach, and Medical Doctor (with background in NHS Psychiatry)
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Steps within the Journey: What the Soul is Wanting
The key synergistic steps for a person undergoing a Journey process are typically as follows:
1) Safely accessing an unresolved memory;
2) Immersing into a deep stillness or sense of oneness, (this expanded experience provides a context of safety for the unresolved memory to be processed);
3) Emptying out of the pain locked into the accessed memory; and,
4) Forgiveness related to those associated with the accessed memory
As can be imagined, when taken together these steps contribute to a thorough therapeutic process - their synergy massively enhanced by the fact that they can all occur in a single session.
To shed further light on the mechanics of Journeywork, let’s first jump to the second step: ‘Immersing into a deep stillness or sense of oneness’. (We’ll come back to Step 1, Safely accessing an unresolved memory a little later).
Let’s explore how this second step of immersing into a deep stillness would happen…
Entering into Stillness
While there are many ways to open into the underlying stillness, the primary method used in Journeywork is through opening into emotions that arise in the body.
As we feel an emotion arise in the body, if rather than suppressing it or distracting ourself from it, we instead are supported to accept and feel into it, something interesting happens: the emotion feels welcome. It’s as though it now has permission to move through us. It doesn’t stay stuck any more. It doesn’t hang out beneath the surface consuming energy and haunting us! It finally feels free.
“If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?”
- Rumi (13C poet, mystic, Islamic scholar)
Each Journey session is different, and is tailored to the individual. Typically, to help a client feel and embrace an emotion that is arising, I may ask them if there’s an obvious name to what they are feeling; and also if they can name where in the body they are feeling this. When I gently invite them to open into their felt experience, I would choose my words to enable the individual to progress such that I honour their situation and pace. I might support them to surround their experience with love and compassion. If it feels appropriate I might also ask them to use their breath in a way that assists them to connect with and ease further into what they are experiencing.
As the welcomed emotion comes up, it moves through the body - and as it moves through, space is then created for whatever is deeper to now emerge.
Thus a deeper emotion can now arise, and this can also be approached in a similar way. We connect with and feel into it. It feels welcomed and passes through. And so forth.
While this process can result in strong emotions coming up, and tears may also arise, there’s a sense of authentic connection and release as we go through this. With our resistance out of the way, and compassionate acceptance there instead, the brakes are off. We have moved our ego aside, and are undergoing a process that is in fact very natural. It’s as though we’re finally entering into what our soul truly needs and wants.
As we feel and move through successive emotional layers, our experiences eventually become more expansive and joyful. We are gradually drawn deep, into that underlying experience of Stillness, of Oneness, or Unity (Step 3). It’s an experience of Bliss.
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”
- Rumi (13C poet, mystic, Islamic scholar)
Thus, each of our emotional experiences, however challenging, offers a doorway that takes us in the direction of that inner Peace that was there all along. All we need to do is to surrender our self to whatever is arising, and the door will surely open.
The Prophet Muhammad and the Feeling of Emotions
Sacred Holding
As a Journey Practitioner of many years, my jaw dropped when a few years ago I read a particular piece from Jamal Rahman’s delightful book, ‘The Fragrance of Faith: The Enlightened Heart of Islam’. In that short piece, Rahman describes a process that sounds very similar to one of the elements of a Journey Process! He describes “an ancient technique” that his grandfather, a scholar and healer, had said was practised by Prophet Muhammad for many years in caves in Mecca. Rahman refers to the practise as ‘Sacred Holding’.
Below are a few quotes that outline the technique, taken from Rahman's book:
“…Sacred holding is a supremely powerful technique meant to be practiced for a lifetime. When negative feelings come up in you, take time to do this exercise at the earliest opportunity.
• The first step is to allow yourself to experience. Tell yourself that every feeling is valid. Ask yourself, "What feeling is coming up in me?" Name that feeling. Maybe it is anger, sadness, jealousy, or bitterness.
• In the second step, ask yourself, "Where do I hold this feeling in my body? Locate the feeling. It definitely has a resting place in your body. We are able to experience a feeling because it registers as a physical sensation somewhere in the body.
• In the third and very important step, receive this "holding" in your body with compassion for yourself. Encompass the physical sensations in your body with the embrace of your soul…
• In the fourth step, focus gently on the holding in your body and intend to inhale and exhale through that part of you. Allow divine breath to caress you there.
…Slowly, as you persist with this technique, an amazing shift occurs: that which was negative, irksome, and painful, integrates and now transforms into a source of strength and wholeness in you.”
A point of connection between two worlds?
Inviting someone to name, feel, accept, embrace emotions with compassion, and use their breath are also all steps we may take as Journey therapists, when working with clients. Together these ingredients can have a profound effect. To think that the Prophet Mohammad may have practiced a similar exercise in caves in Mecca personally feels both surreal and liberating. The world seems much smaller as I appreciate the universality of a basic, yet profound practice being illustrated.
To think that the Prophet Mohammad also practiced a similar exercise in caves in Mecca personally feels both surreal and liberating.
Befriending the thinking mind
Practices such as ‘Sacred Holding’ are extremely valuable and can also be done alone. At the same time, we human beings who like to seek pleasure can also develop elaborate methods preventing us from feeling more painful emotions. These resistance strategies can fortunately be undone bit by bit over time, and the frequent engagement with a practise like ‘Sacred Holding’ would assist with that.
As Journey therapists, as we facilitate process after process, hundreds of times over the years, we become very familiar with the range of resistance strategies clients use. We also become very experienced at guiding clients to overcome these internal strategies, so their process can be complete.
Typically, the main obstacle is the over-involvement of the ‘thinking mind’ and its narrative. For instance, the thinking mind might come up with a mental story about an emotion that it then pulls the client into. This prevents the person from entering into the felt bodily experience, when it is in the body that emotions are actually felt.
The solution, as a therapist, is to support the client to befriend the ‘thinking mind’ rather than fight it, and to invite it to take a role that assists, rather than distracts from the healing process.
The Soul, Islam, and Emotional Healing
Accessing Spirit
As described earlier, in a Journey session, as a client feels, enters into and moves through successive emotional 'layers’, they move into a deep, expansive place, to their core: a place which they may describe using words such as beauty, pure oneness, bliss, peace, light and boundless love, to name a few.
Also their complexion tends to change, and their body relaxes deeply. It’s a very real experience in that it isn’t evoked through attempting to imagine or force a state, but has naturally emerged through simply accepting and surrendering to whatever is in each moment, without using the escape routes (e.g. the thinking mind’s story) that are normally entertained.
I propose that this deep, expansive experience is, in Islam, what is called, the Ruh, or Spirit.
The Ruh, or Spirit, is an aspect of the soul, described as “a direct access point to God, where the human being can potentially receive divine knowledge, guidance and healing.” (Rothman and Coyle, 2018).
In an Islamic model of the soul, it’s the heart or qalb, that has the capacity to ‘turn’ towards this higher truth , i.e. the Ruh. It can either turn towards the Ruh where it receives Divine inspiration and nourishment, or it can turn towards the nafs (ego or lower self) consequently getting trapped in dunya (worldly affairs).
Through connecting with the Ruh, we become bathed and nourished by Divine light. We enter a state of acceptance and wisdom, yet with a quality that is alive and responsive, rather than passive and disconnected.
This experience, as a common component of Journeywork, is one core aspect that distinguishes it from mainstream talking therapies.
This experience also re-configures our soul towards alignment to the fitrah, which is the state of pure goodness that all human beings have been created into - but that we tend to deviate from. (This deviation, or misalignment, can be due to conditioning in life, and the unhealed traumas of differing degrees that we accumulate over time). Realigning to our fitrah enables us to unlock our uniqueness and gifts - which are there not only for us to express, but for the world to receive.
Divine Light as a foundation
Even though we’ve now entered into this very healing experience within a Journey process, there are further steps that can build on this foundational state. Coming out of a process at this point would actually be a pity! After all, we’ve moved so far, and into a place that is actually a powerful springboard for further deep-seated emotional release and healing.
So, what else is left? As touched on earlier, a Journey process also involves:
1) Connection with an unresolved memory;
2) Emptying out of the pain locked into the accessed memory (while still bathed in the experience of essence), and
3) Forgiveness to whatever degree is appropriate and possible.
And now you know why a full process can take 2-3 hours!… which due to the experience being one of deep connection and a move to wholeness, seems to go very fast for the client! “Where did all the time go?” is a question I hear exceedingly often!
The Missing Piece for Forgiveness
Let Forgiveness be Real
"But indeed if any show patience and forgive, that would truly be an exercise of courageous will and resolution in the conduct of affairs."
(Qur' an 42:43)
A point I’d like to stress is that often in religious communities including amongst Muslims, while there is a strong emphasis on forgiveness, there can also be a tendency to discount the pain someone might still be feeling. Yet my own experience is that if I am still feeling deeply hurt following another person’s behaviour, the act of saying, “I forgive you”, will usually feel like I am just going through the motions to fit into a religio-cultural expectation: i.e. the forgiveness won’t feel or be real.
It was through Journeywork that I more fully realised the importance of connecting with, and releasing, stored pain or trauma, prior to moving to forgiveness. Once I have fully emptied out the pain, I feel light - there is then nothing left to hold onto. Forgiveness becomes the next natural step - and importantly, now does feel real. The missing piece is having the appropriate tools to release pain that is stored, which is where approaches such as Journeywork have such a crucial role to play.
However, if already there genuinely is no pain, and the only step left is to forgive, then moving to forgiveness, in this instance, would of course be appropriate. But only if the pain has been released, when much of the time, for many of us, it has yet to be - even if we may want to believe and show otherwise.
Who needs forgiving?
I should add, that sometimes it is we, who need forgiving. This can be a powerful realisation, and indeed a wonderful opportunity. It may take the form of being forgiven by another person, by another element in the natural world, or by ourself - perhaps an older version of ourself needing to forgive a younger version. Or we may need to ask for forgiveness from God.
Any combination of these realisations can emerge through a Journey process as a result of having connected with Ruh, and emptied out stored pain. We have, after all, entered into a state of open intuitive awareness, being pulled along a journey of wholeness. The beauty of this journey towards wholeness is that it draws to the surface whatever is necessary for healing to be complete.
Let’s now continue exploring the Journey Process through an Islamic lens. We’ve already looked at the process of feeling into successive emotional layers, through which we can immerse into Essence/Spirit/Ruh, through which we are bathed in Divine Light.
Let’s talk more about Step 1, accessing an unresolved memory, a step that we skipped over earlier...
Download this series as a single compact E-book right away (no email required)
About the Author
Dr Muzammal Hussain (likes to be called Muzammal) has worked as a medical doctor in the area of NHS Psychiatry over more than 12 years. He is also an experienced Accredited Journey Therapist and a Coach at Restorative Wholeness.
Additionally, Muzammal is active in ecological activism where he weaves together the strands of Islamic ecology, Permaculture and Inclusive leadership. He is especially passionate about the relationship between inner transformation, conscious community building and ecological healing. He lives with his wife in Brighton, East Sussex, in the UK.
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Helpful References
Bays, Brandon: ‘The Journey: A Practical Guide to Healing Your Life and Setting Yourself Free’ (2012)
Billet, Kevin: The Enneagram - Ancient Wisdom, Modern Insights: (VIdeo, 2020)
Rahman, Jamal: ‘The Fragrance of Faith: The Enlightened Heart of Islam’ (2004): See p. 109-110 for a description of 'Sacred Holding'.
Rothman, Abdallah and Coyle, Adrian: Towards a Framework for Islamic Psychology and Psychotherapy: An Islamic Model of the Soul (2018)
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Acknowledgements
I would like to express my deep gratitude to Elizabeth Lymer for her dedicated time and attention in carefully reading the first two drafts of this publication, and providing valuable feedback that helped immensely with adding clarity and refinement to almost all aspects of the final version of this book.
I thank my caring friend, Ben Rogaly who, having listened to a writing update on one of our physically distanced woodland walks, offered an insightful idea for the main title that I just had to take up.
I would also like to thank my dear wife, Shumaisa, for her love and encouragement every step of the way, with this piece of work and so many others.
Privacy
The names of any clients mentioned in this book have been intentionally changed to honour their privacy.
Disclaimer
If you have a medical illness, you are advised to consult your own medical practitioner. Any approach described in this post is not a replacement to seeking medical advice. While people have reported significant improvements in physical and mental well-being following Journeywork, each of us is unique, and no one can say in advance how any one individual will respond.