My story
For most of my life I was shut down, and I didn't know it. Boarding school teaches a boy to hold everything in, and my body learned the lesson well: from thirteen to twenty-eight, I cried once. I thought that was strength, but really I was just disconnected — I wasn't feeling the lows of life, but I wasn't feeling the highs either.
A wake-up experience in my early twenties put me back in touch with my body — and with everything trapped inside it. Years of searching followed: different traditions, meditation, looking for truth, looking for God. Then I found breathwork, and deep change began: I started processing grief, anger and fear I'd carried since childhood — and on the other side of it all, discovering a deeper sense of peace.
In 2023 came a cancer diagnosis — and with it, a deeper call to come closer to God. In 2025, AlhamduLillah, surgeons removed the tumour from my lung — and that same year, for the first time, I recited the Shahada. Breathwork, alongside my faith, carried me through the pain, the fear and every day of the recovery.
The road has only gone deeper since: into tasawwuf — the purification of the heart — and a life of worshipping God. For me, this work is a service: helping people come back to themselves, to the nature already within them — the fitrah.
