The Sufi Work and how it can help trauma.
Question to Tamsin from Nika Feist from Vienna, May 2025
The foundation of the Sufi work we do is to know who we are, as we are. To acknowledge the selves, the qualities and all the elements that make us human is fundamental. To try to repress, deny, pretend, and manipulate the reality of who we are leads to depletion, sorrow and hatred. Like a sculpture who begins with dirt, they do not create by wishing the dirt to be otherwise. Rather they approach the dirt with the perceptions, the skill, the creativity, the love, the will power, the patience and the knowledge to turn the dirt into clay, the clay into a form that is beautiful, meaningful and powerful. It is still dirt, but it has been transformed into its finest expression.
The center of the Sufi work is the heart. Not the physical heart but the spiritual heart. It is where we have some spark of the intelligence of the cosmos. This is the source of the yearning we experience for the spirit. In Sufi, the spirit is love, intelligence, creativity, harmony, peace, selflessness, kindness, intuition, gentleness, compassion, mercy, joy, gratitude, good intention, generosity, patience, resilience, acceptance, wisdom, and all the qualities that bring a human being closer to God. This is the intelligence of the heart we open, develop, purify, connect to when we practice the Sufi techniques of breathing, slow movement, chanting the names of God, whirling and drumming. The breath is key to awakening the intelligence of the heart. Whatever expression of movement we do in the work, whether it is veil dance, slow movement, chanting, listening to the drum, dancing, or whirling, we are engaging the breath in a positive action to open and awaken the heart and to purify it from all the negative things. This process of purification is expressed in every action we do, and it then ripples out to our life outside the workshops into making every thought, action and intention we undertake. We develop discernment. This discernment allows us to look at what we do, what we think, what we feel and how we behave through the lens of whether it will bring us closer to God or further away from God.
“Any action which does not lead us to God can only lead us to destruction.”
The more we develop this intelligence of the heart, the more we can discern and choose how we want to live our lives.
In Adnan’s Sufi work there is no rules of conduct, no hierarchy of stages to acquire, no rituals, no special clothing or appearance. There is no segregation of practices between people just beginning and people who have done the work for years. The only thing you need to begin this work is the desire to learn and to grow in spirit. Adnan looked beyond the state of people and had the faith that if they did the Sufi work they could change.
You can come to this work, having experienced all kinds of trauma, conflict, destruction and sit on the floor, on a mat and begin. Adnan often said to students, “From here we start.”
The way he offered a two-month summer workshop and often three or four or five months in the mountains of New Mexico, and countless workshops across Europe and America you could do as much or as little of the Sufi work that you could. With the long periods of rest between you could recover and assimilate the work and blend it with your life by chanting, dancing, whirling, drumming in your own time.
One woman whose background had been very destructive came to the summer for the first time for two weeks. When she left, she felt completely changed. She had lost weight, quit bad habits, opened her mind to new possibilities of living and gained a huge insight into how to keep the wonderful state she experienced in the Sufi work. She moved away from all the society and people that were destructive, and she chanted every morning for a year so she would not lose what she had gained in those two weeks at the summer camp. She did this because in summer she had heard Adnan say that if you chant every day, eat right and keep away from the destructive habits you will keep the state you are in.
People come to this work with trauma, with problems, with conflicts and feelings of guilt, shame, anger, depression, disassociation, fear, anxiety, malice, jealousy, revenge, intolerance, sadness, judgements and all kinds of issues. It is in the power of positive action, vibration, intention and love that these problems start to dissolve little by little over time or in a matter of a few days. This is why we call it the Sufi work. It begins the process of purifying the selves of all the negative feelings, habits and conditions.
These problems are instigated by the ego, the negative self and the lower soul. Their origins come from negative experiences which become chronic conditions that keep a human being in a state of darkness with only small glimpses of the light of spirit. But these glimpses of spirit, glimpses of who they really are what make some people search for the spirit. Spirit is a way to heal and to bring to light the real human being that is trapped deep inside the catacombs of many wounds and conditions they have survived with through life. And beyond the trauma, when the human being is healed comes the opening of the spirit to freedom.
The practical way to deal with trauma is to know oneself. To know the self in its fullest sense. The Sufi work provides guidance and tools that can be used like medicine. For example, if you had a very deep experience with one of the chants in the work like Allah Hu or Ya Rahman you can practice on your own in the morning before you do anything else. For around 60 minutes every morning make time to do the chanting in a quiet place and after the chanting to breathe, relax and be quiet till it is time to begin your day. By doing the chant every day you learn how it affects you, you see how it changes your energy, and you begin to understand how there is a connection between chanting the name of God, the intention to heal from a certain kind of trauma and how your attitude and perceptions change in your approach to the issue. The chanting brings the being into a state of peace and positive perception. It opens you to solutions you would otherwise not consider. It lessens the impact of the trauma by developing detachment, compassion and a state of peace that reduces the need to react blindly to the issue that triggers trauma. Done with sincerity, regularity and faith the chanting will draw you out of the pain and into a way of dealing with trauma, so it no longer holds you in a pattern of pain, denial and destruction. The chanting of the names of God develops a connection with the cosmic intelligence. This energy, as it grows with the chanting, eliminates the identity with the trauma as being who you are, and you become identified with the positive qualities in your heart. Each day you chant the more you transcend into a creative and life sustaining perception which guides you away from those behaviors and triggers that feed trauma.
Mohammad said words to this effect. “It is your own doing that put you in hell or heaven. You think it is destiny, but it is what you do.” Whenever you make the effort, to change your state from negative to positive by chanting the names of God, the positive energy created by chanting, will bring to you the perceptive power needed to find solutions to any problem you face.
Some Sufis will chant the same chapter of the Quran or the same name of God every day for months until the problem they face is replaced by a deeper understanding and energy that dissolves the problem and teaches the Sufi how to avoid creating the same problem again. By seeking a solution with the cosmic intelligence, with God, you are submitting to the power in the universe that gave you the problem to encounter and gave you the opportunity to learn the lesson of it until it no longer become a veil between you and the existence. If you think of God as the pure intelligence behind existence, then it is an intelligence that exists in all things and knows all things and in appealing for help to it brings you directly into communication with the power of creation. The Sufis recognize that we develop in spirit when this communication becomes more complete through chanting the names of God and reciting certain verses in the Quran.
Like the dirt of the sculpture when it yields to the sculptor’s experienced hands it no longer seeks dirt but becomes refined. When it is refined into clay it becomes form by the communication taking place between the clay and the sculptor. When it becomes form it realizes its expression in existence through the hands of the sculptor. Like the dirt we submit ourselves to the moment, to the sound of the chant and we yield all that is dirt to be transformed to something higher. Anger can become creativity, fear can become compassion and faith, disassociation can become presence, depression can become sensitivity and strength, anxiety can become understanding. These feelings are energy and by chanting the names of God, doing the Sufi work, knowing who we are we transform this energy from negative to positive. When the energy is positive then we can act from a better place and see the positive in life and use the energy in a way to make the life better.
