Speakers

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  Jalila Chris Botsford
  

  Jalila Chris Botsford

  Jalila Chris Botsford has been a student, facilitator and teacher of many forms of holistic healing for over 25 years. As a holistic health practitioner, working both in person and long-distance, she utilizes energy healing, cranial sacral and the foundational Sufi practices of presence, breath, light and guided meditation in her Spiritual Energy Sessions. She also leads individual sessions, workshops and retreats based on Carolyn Myss’s Archetypal Sacred Contracts course. Jalila’s passion for healing and service has led her to Africa, Haiti and Guatemala working in hospitals and clinics in impoverished communities.

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  Jamia Haqq Eila Paul
  

  Jamia Haqq Eila Paul

  Jamia Haqq (Experienced Farmer and Ziraat Co-Vice President 2024 – ).
  Jamia Haqq (Eila Paul) of Tainui descent has been walking a spiritual path all her life. Introduced to the Inayatiyya in 1997 she was soon initiated by the late Murshida Halima McEwan at the Sharda Centre, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Through her Maori heritage, having a strong connection with nature drew her to the Inayatiyya’s annual Summer Camp in Switzerland in 2002, where she was initiated into Ziraat by Pir Zia. In the last 15 years she has been a trustee, and at times custodian and kaitiaki/guardian, of the Sharda Centre, caring for the beautiful natural native forest, stream and visitors with an outward expression of her inner path.

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  Raqib Misha Kogan M.D.
  

  Raqib Misha Kogan M.D.

  Raqib Misha Kogan, M.D. received his medical degree from Drexel University College of Medicine. He’s the medical director of the GW Center for Integrative Medicine and associate professor of medicine in the division of Geriatrics and Palliative Care at George Washington University. Raqib has been on the Sufi path since 2001 and is a Conductor in the Inayatiyya Healing Activity. Together with his wife Rafia, he completed Suluk training in 2007. Raqib has been working closely with Devi Tide and other Healing Activity leaders for over 10 years and has assisted in organizing and running many annual Leadership Retreats. Raqib’s goal is to bring healing wisdom and practices of the Inayatiyya to more people, especially those who are vulnerable. To achieve this goal, Raqib founded AIM Health Institute, a non-profit organization in the Washington, D.C. area that provides integrative medicine services to low-income and terminally ill patients regardless of their ability to pay.

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  Jessica Bromby
  

  Jessica Bromby

  Jessica Bromby is a Healing Cherag and offers all generations Universal Services. She’s a Canadian born on a farm in Quebec and now living with her husband and daughter in Sarasota by Rising Tide International. She is a singer and often shares songs in her services. She guides and facilitates healing retreats in person and online. She is a guide in the Inayatiyya and shefayat and healing retreat guide serving in the Healing Order. She’s a mentor in the current life transitions Healing Cherag program and healing retreat guide training program. She is soon hosting an interfaith group for babies and parents this fall.

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  Amina Georgia Feliou
  

  Amina Georgia Feliou

  Amina Georgia Feliou is the Kefayat and Emeritus Vice President of the Inayatiyya Healing (IH) for Europe and Pakistan. She is the leader of the IH in Athens, Greece and a representative for the Inayatiyya Inner School. She is a psychotherapist following Murshid’s path since 2008. Before working as a psychotherapist, she was working for more than 10 years at the United Nations and in particular the United Nations Information Center for Greece, Cyprus and Israel, stationed in Athens, Greece. She has studied philosophy, psychology, psychotherapy, and library and information science. She enjoys swimming, hiking and practicing fascia exercises. She is dedicated to the service of fellow human beings, non-human friends and Mother Earth to the best of her abilities.

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  Nur Alima Smith
  

  Nur Alima Smith

  Nur Alima Smith is a Shefayat, a Cherag, a Healing Conductor and a Raphaelite Healer in the Inayatiyya Healing Activity. She is adept with various breathing techniques, having studied this for over 40 years. Nur Alima brings the Inayyati philosophy and practices to community groups. She has run many trainings for staff and volunteers at Hospice and multiple Veteran Organizations, focusing on these techniques and how to heal oneself with the breath. Since 2015, Nur Alima has also led a weekly meditation group at the VA for Veterans who have PTSD. Her additional work with the Veteran Community includes teaching meditation and relaxation techniques to those on active duty about to be deployed and to those who have just returned from combat. She serves on the Inayatiyya Healing Senior Teacher Committee and lives in Syracuse, New York. Currently, Nur Alima is serving as the co-Vice President, the Bayt-ul-Haram, of the Inayatiyya Healing Activity.

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  Sitara Mitten-Lewis
  

  Sitara Mitten-Lewis

  Sitara Mitten-Lewis founded the first Sufi Order center in Sydney, Australia, in the 1990’s and served as Regional Representative for Australia until 2010. A Senior Teacher in the Inner School, she also serves as a Shafayat in the Healing Activity and a Mentor in the Dances of Universal Peace. She coordinated the Inayati Order Leaders Training Committee from 2010-15 and helped develop the training module on Sacred Sound. She guides murids and offers retreats and workshops on meditation, music and movement in the US and Australia.

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  Mahbano Scase
  

  Mahbano Scase

  Mahbano Scase lives on the Kapiti coast in Aotearoa, New Zealand. She has been with the Inayatiyya for almost 20 years and serves as a Shafayat in the Healing Activity and a Representative in the Inner school. In her professional life she worked as a homeopath for many years yet now works as a psychotherapist in private practice. She has raised three children and delights in the recent arrival of her first grandchild—her greatest teacher!

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  Sufiyah Stephenson
  

  Sufiyah Stephenson

  Sufiyah is a Shafayat and holds the Healing Concentration for Australia.
  Driven by a passion to empower others to help themselves, Sufiyah taught yoga for 16 years in ashrams as well as in the wider community. More recently, having been present during the deaths of close family and friends over the years, she was led to volunteer in palliative support, trained as a death doula, and continued this work for 11 years. She feels privileged to be able to sit with people who have a life ending condition, in the sacredness that exists at that time. Sufiyah has a family of adult daughters and a newly adult granddaughter with whom she treasures spending joyful times and going on many adventures.

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  Jamila Cranston-Buckley
  

  Jamila Cranston-Buckley

  Jamila Cranston-Buckley is a deeply grateful traveler on the Sufi Path of Hazrat Inayat Khan for 50 years. Student and Practitioner of the wisdom laws of nature found in Chinese Medicine. Spirit and Nature guide and inform Jamila in her support of fellow travelers. Her home, ‘Naubahar,’ is a hub of activity, functioning as a clinic, a center of spiritual gatherings, and a custom-built cabin nestled in a food forest for individual retreats.

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  Devi Tide
  

  Devi Tide

  Devi Tide is the Kefayat (Head) and Vice President of the Sufi Healing Order in North America, New Zealand and Australia. She has over thirty years of experience as a teacher of healing and the esoteric sciences, bringing the qualities of wisdom, heart, subtlety, humor, and intelligence to her role. Devi has contributed to and offered programs in India, Australia, New Zealand, Europe and North America. In her seminars, public speaking, and individual sessions and retreats, Devi represents the inner vitality and harmony of the body, mind and spirit, the vitality of our interconnected world, as well as personal transformation. 

• Sarmad Michael Tide
  Sarmad Michael Tide

  Sarmad Michael Tide, an initiate since 1982, is a senior teacher, representative, retreat guide in the Inner School. He is a Cherag, a Ziraat farmer, and a Shafayat and healing retreat guide. in the Healing Activity. He has been a center leader in Seattle and at the Abode. He was employed by the Sufi Order (now Inayatiyya), editing and publishing twelve booklets of Pir Vilayat’s teaching, editing and publishing the Heart and Wings newsletter, producing promotional materials, and was the Creative director for Elixir magazine. He served as activities director for Pir Vilayat’s camps and seminars, and was chairperson of the Jamiat Am from 1991 to 2006. He is also a certified Dances of Universal Peace leader. He is graced with barakat connections with the Ruhaniat, Mevlevi and Rifai orders. He is currently active in online teaching and mentoring, guiding retreats, and training Healing Retreat guides. He resides with his wife, Devi Tide, in Seattle.

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  Tara Noor Newberry
  

  Tara Noor Newberry

  Tara Noor Newberry serves as a Shafayat, Representative, Healing Conductor, Cherag, Healing Retreat Guide, Ziraat Initiate, and Co-leader of the Tucson Center. She discovered the Sufi Path in the 1980s through the Sufi Message volumes and was initiated by Pir Vilayat in 2002. Professionally, she is a Professor of Biology and Ecology at a tribal college serving Indigenous peoples. Healing, nature, and the recognition of our interconnectedness with one another, the Earth, and all living beings remain central to her path and service.

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  Muhammad Bauer
  

  Muhammad Bauer

  Muhammad Bauer is a Shafayat in the Healing Activity and a Co-Center Leader of the Charlottesville Inayatiyya Center. In the late 70’s he was in nursing school when he saw a flyer for a seminar on Sufi spiritual healing. He enthusiastically attended and began attending the weekly Inayatiyya meditation classes in Cleveland, Ohio, and was initiated by Pir Vilayat at the summer camp of 1980. The Healing Activity has always been central to his life. In the 1990s he was a Co-Center Representative of the Gaithersburg, Maryland Center with Noorunisa and Ramana Smallen. He is also ordained as a Cherag, initiated in Ziraat, and a certified Raphael practitioner. A devotion to the 99 Beautiful Names is central to his spiritual life. He deeply values spiritual friendship and community, and feels that in the emerging world this will be ever more critical to our collective unfoldment.

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  Fred Johnson
  

  Fred Johnson

  Fred Johnson is a Spiritual Elder in the Inayatiyya, a vocalist, sacred chanter, author, painter, and arts educator. He is recognized globally for his work in health and wellness, and was instrumental in establishing the “HeArts & Hope” program at the University of Florida. Mentored by masters of the African oral and percussion legacy, he has been hailed as a guardian of a tradition transplanted and nurtured into something uniquely American and inherently African. His presentation “Jazz, Its Roots and Branches” has been offered to audiences around the world, and he lectures widely on the healing power of music and on creative expression as a catalyst for personal and communal empowerment. Fred currently serves as Community Engagement Specialist and Director of the Arts Legacy and Arts and Healing initiatives at the David A. Straz, Jr. Center for the Performing Arts in Tampa, Florida; as Performing Artist in Residence at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC; and as Creative Arts and Spiritual Life Enrichment Facilitator for the Center for Integrated Medicine in Washington, DC.

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  Himayat Inayati
  

  Himayat Inayati

  From 1972 until Pir Vilayat’s passing, Himayat Inayati studied and worked closely with him. He was International Kafayat of the Sufi Healing Order for twenty years, and has travelled to many countries for almost half a century offering teaching of the Message in Our Time. Himayat also studied the teachings of Murshid Samuel Lewis through his first teacher, Sheikh Mansur Johnson, and offered training in spiritual walks and dance throughout his travels. Presently Himayat is a member of the Murshid Circle of the Ruhaniat International and chairs the Ruhaniat esoteric school, The School of Living Wisdom.

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  Kristen Swann
  

  Kristen Swann

  Kristin has been practicing and teaching Qigong since 2006. She studied with Master Liu He of the Ling Gui International Healing Qigong School. She is an acupuncturist and owner of Grand Rapids Wellness. She began her healing journey in 1999 at the World School of Massage in San Francisco. Over the years she has studied the esoteric aspects of Chinese medicine and Buddhism, and is currently learning Sufism. Forever a student, her dedication to helping people cultivate joy and heal from trauma guides her path, and is how she found her way to learn from the Grandmothers.

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  Malik Willand
  

  Malik Willand

  For Malik, spiritual healing has been the thread of Ariadne guiding him back to the source since his youth. Before his initiation into the Sufi Healing Order in 2002, he completed training in “hands-on healing” and was registered as a healer with the British NSFH. He learnt Ayurveda, Lomi Lomi, Tantra and Chi massage, and enjoys integrating spiritual healing into his intuitive massage practice. For more than ten years, he has been offering training courses in “Healing Presence” (Raphaelite Work) together with his wife, Amaité. Malik is a mureed of Himayat Inayati and has been his German “parrot” — acting as his online translator — for many years.

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  Dr. Saadi Neil Douglas-Klotz
  

  Dr. Saadi Neil Douglas-Klotz

  Dr. Saadi Neil Douglas-Klotz holds degrees in religious studies, psychology, and somatic psychology, and for many years was co-chair of the Mysticism Group of the American Academy of Religion. He is an independent scholar with training in hermeneutics, ancient Semitic languages, and sacred movement. He has been following the Sufi path for 50 years and is the khalif of Hazrat Moineddin Jablonski, who was the only khalif of Sufi Ahmed Murad Chishti. He has also studied for many years with Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri of South Africa. He is a member of the Dervish Healing Order and also co-founded the International Network for the Dances of Universal Peace with the Rev. Tasnim Fernandez. He has authored several books, including The Sufi Book of Life, Desert Wisdom, Revelations of the Aramaic Jesus, and the forthcoming Vectors of Love. His presentation will focus on the use of the elemental healing/purification breaths in various ways, with an emphasis on the way the elements appear in the work of Hazrat Inayat Khan, somatic psychology, and in the ancient Semitic languages, particularly Aramaic and classical Arabic.