This week, we had the opportunity to speak with Mariam-Saba – a prominent Spiritual Healer. We learned more about her beginnings, how she connects music with healing, and what can a client expect from a session.
When did you first know that being a Spiritual Healer was your calling and how did it come about?
When I first started the spiritual healing program I was trained in, I was attending medical school. I suspected I would not be finishing medical school back then but wasn’t ready to admit it, mainly because of the huge sacrifice that is required to get as far as I did. I quickly realized that my heart wasn’t in serving people as a physician.
My parents are retired physicians and they see the world through the lens of a doctor. Being a doctor is part of their identity. The further I got into my spiritual healing training, the more it became the way I viewed the world. Eventually, I realized being a spiritual healer is part of my self-identity, the way being a doctor is for many physicians. Being a spiritual healer is who and what I am. It’s the only thing that feels right in my world.
It’s taken me so long to find what’s right for me, that I’m unwilling to turn away from it. The awareness that this was my calling came about gradually but I think I needed it to. I was so used to feeling lost that suddenly understanding an important part of my life purpose and ultimately who I am, would have been overwhelming.
Now I feel grateful and excited about my life. I help people I care about in profound and subtle ways, every day, and I witness the Divine everywhere. I never thought I could have a life like this and it continues to get better.
What is Spiritual Healing? How do you connect music with healing?
As human beings, we exist in multiple levels, or “worlds” at once. That’s how we can have an energy system and a soul that most of us don’t easily perceive. At the densest level of our existence, the place where we interact with our environment on a physical level, it is easiest to perceive our existence through our five physical senses: touch, taste, smell, sight, and hearing.
When something is out of balance in our physical world, we may feel pain, via our touch sense. When something is out of balance in our energetic world, we may feel intense emotions such as emotional pain, grief, or rage. When something is out of balance in the soul world, we may experience repeating patterns in our life, often resulting in frustration and bewilderment.
Human beings are fully integrated into all these different worlds we exist in, at any given moment, so there is an overlap in what can help. A physical intervention, treatment of a tumor by surgically removing it, affects us on an energetic level. The effects could even extend into the soul world. Healing in the soul world often extends into the energetic world and can manifest in the physical world.
Spiritual Healing in the Islamic sense is helping the client to turn to the Divine, who I identify as “Allah”, with whatever the client needs. A client may approach with the need for guidance, help, support, clarity, knowledge, healing, mercy, compassion and so on.
I am just another human being so if I try to meet the client’s needs with my own knowledge, opinions, and beliefs, I’m not likely going to be helpful to the client, in the long run. Instead, with my training, I support the client in identifying what their need or needs are, and then help the client bring that to Allah and ask Allah to meet their need or needs.
Spiritual Healing requires understanding how all these different worlds work and interact with one another within a human being. By understanding this, a healer can support the client in getting to the root issue of whatever is negatively impacting their life.
If the root is in the spiritual world then with Allah’s permission and guidance, a spiritual healer can help impact the issue and things can finally begin to shift for the client. It is faith-based healing but not without logic and reason. Allah has created us in beautiful and amazing ways. Physicians and scientists witness this as they study our physical bodies and organs.
Muslim healers witness this as we study human existence from the level of the Unseen. I am in awe of what Allah has made from this vantage point in the same way I experienced awe when I was in medical school studying the physical human form.
To answer the second part of the question, music affects us in multiple ways. Music directly affects us by the sound vibrations, impacting us in our physical world. Music affects us by the feelings it inspires impacting us in our energetic world. Music can often help us slow down and reflect or manifest something new within us impacting us in our spiritual world. Without realizing it, many of us turn to Allah while listening to music.
Have you ever seen something beautiful, such as a painting or a sunset, and just felt awe-struck? Or peace and serenity? Or pure joy? That’s a moment when you’re with the Divine. Music does that for many of us. Music can be a force that connects the listener more deeply with themselves, their community, their world, or even the Divine. Music can transfer a sense of joy.
Music can even offer a reality check to the listener, helping the listener to right-size their problems and world. Musical lyrics can affect our thought processes. If they come from Real Truth, they can heal. Any music I share with the world, I am intentional in the mood it can inspire and the truths I attempt to share through the words. I hope that the music and art I share are spiritually healing for others in the ways I have experienced it to be for me.
Could you describe to us how your healing sessions look like?
This healing modality is Islamic so I normally start with a prayer recited in Arabic, surah al-Fatiha. This creates space and time to further ground within ourselves, opens and sets spiritual protections in the space between and around the client and me, and it gives me another chance to check my alignment with Allah. After this initial opening prayer, I may recite a prayer in English. Then I often ask or clarify the client’s intention for the session.
Then, from this point forward a healing session can go in many different directions. The session might start with an interview, where I’m asking questions to help me elicit the root of the issue the client wants to be addressed. The bulk of the session can look like a conversation between me and the client. Or after the initial interview, I may start reciting prayers or words in Arabic depending on what I’m guided to do.
I have had some sessions where the client and I were silent most of the session. I’ll often check in with my client throughout the session and connect with how they are doing. Sessions are all different, depending on what the client needs at that moment. Sessions are unpredictable and I am often surprised at what new things pop up in a healing session that hasn’t happened before, despite my years of experience with this.
At the appropriate time, I will ask the client if they feel complete, or at least complete enough to end our session. If we both feel like we’re at a good stopping point, then I will close the session with the same Arabic prayer I started the session with. Once the session has officially “closed” or “ended” then the client and I can converse more freely about technicalities and I can answer any questions that may have come up for the client. If there seems to be homework for the client to do, then this is the time we can discuss that as well.
What should a client expect from a session?
My client will always be respected, cared for, and heard in my sessions. I listen very deeply on multiple levels. I work hard to ensure my client’s heart is held and protected during a session. A client is spiritually protected and safe during our sessions. I’ll always be honest with my clients about what I can do as well as what my limitations are. If I believe I am unable to help someone, I will refer them to someone who can. My top priority is pleasing Allah, for as a Muslim, I know I’ll be held accountable for all my actions, especially anything that happens in a healing session, so I take these sessions, my responsibilities, and obligations to my clients, very seriously.
Just as each session is unpredictable in what may come up or what may occur, it’s hard to set up any other expectations. Some issues can be dealt with in one healing session, and other issues require multiple sessions, especially issues with lots of layers to them. It also depends on how much work the client has done on any particular issue and how much self-awareness they have.
For example, I had a client that worked on a particularly complicated issue with multiple people such as therapists, energy workers, and other spiritual healers. When she came to me, she’d done so much work, we only needed one session that brought all her other work into play and she experienced immediate changes in her life. Other times a client may learn something completely new and unexpected about themselves and may require more sessions to heal what was opened up. I love working with other healers. Sessions with other healers tend to go deep quickly and we can even address multiple issues during a single session, which is fun for me.
What is the most important detail in maintaining a relationship of mutual trust with customers?
Being worthy of my client’s trust is extremely important. Trust is based on healthy boundaries, reliability, accountability, respecting privacy, integrity, non-judgment, and emotional generosity. I work hard to monitor my trustworthiness. Also, as part of my integrity, I ensure that I check my spiritual alignment and ensure the client is spiritually safe during our sessions.
I also continue to deepen my knowledge and training to ensure my skill level is at its very best. All these measures are what I can do to ensure I hold up my side of trust in the healing relationships with my clients. In turn, I expect my clients to be honest with me, sincere in their desire for healing and surrender to their higher power to take the steps they are guided to take in their healing journey. It’s a big expectation, but one I believe must be met for my clients to experience the kind of healing and change I have experienced in my own life.
What do you love most about your job?
I love witnessing God in this work. My understanding of Allah is that He/She/It is infinite, so I’m continually amazed and awed by what I’m shown in healing sessions. I’m humbled by His Generosity, Mercy, and the Healing He just keeps giving and giving and giving. He loves each of us so much and it’s easy to lose sight of that. I love that moment when my client is aware of receiving the Truth.
That moment the client can feel loved and cared for, or amazed and awed, or even stunned and still. At that moment my client is connected to their higher power. It’s beyond beautiful. We all have the ability to experience spiritual intimacy with our higher power, sometimes we just need someone to help us turn back to Him so we can regain or deepen that special and holy connection.
