My name is Jwaydan. I am a certified Ayurvedic wellness consultant, Meditation guide, Herbalist, Artist, Writer, A classically-trained musician, Singer/Songwriter, a graduate of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama and an avid animal-lover. I studied classical composition and Film music for four years, determined to dive into the film music industry, but after graduating with a Bachelor's degree in Film music & Classical composition, I did a 180, redirecting my focus into mainstream music and becoming a songwriter for notable artists at the time, and later using my own singing voice to create and release my own music, several of those releases going onto have notable success. But this is where my story officially begins :
I was raised as a classically trained musician since the age of five, and immersed in the world of the great composers (Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Chopin, Brahms, Debussy, Franz Liszt to name a few) guided by my mother, a classically trained pianist herself. Classical music was the centre of my universe growing up, and from an early age, both piano and cello became my main instruments of focus and study, and by the time I turned 12, I began to compose fully-fledged orchestral scores to accompany some of my favourite films, which later led me on a four year quest of dedicated study at the Guildhall, which eventually resulted in exploring other ways in which I could musically express myself and uncovering a gift for songwriting alongside my other musical abilities, and almost overnight, I found myself in the presence of major music labels, turning out songs for up & coming mainstream artists at the time.
After several years in the music industry, I quickly came to realise that it wasn’t an environment in which I was able to truly thrive or express myself in a way that honoured my individual needs. At the same time, I was experiencing a tremendously violent spiritual transformation (which would be the beginning of multiple spiritual awakenings). By the time I hit 2015, I was plagued with “mysterious” health issues and entering into one of the deepest and darkest nights of the soul I had ever encountered. This would be the beginning to the obliteration of everything I had ever known, including my identity as a singer, and my hopes and dreams for the future, as well as the beginning to uncovering the root of my deepest wounds which had held me back for a lifetime.
It was only after many years of deep healing work that I slowly began to understand my place in the world as a highly sensitive, highly creative, neuro-divergent, mixed race women of colour who had spent a lifetime feeling like an alien on a strange planet, deeply misplaced within my own body, family, and sandwiched between two different cultures, neither of which felt like home to me. This is a common story for those of us who venture into the world of healing and embark on the ‘hero’s journey’, but it can feel deeply lonely, ungrounding, and downright terrifying especially when we do not have a community of likeminded people to support us as we move through the dense and heavy layers of trauma in an effort to reunite with our true self.
Much of my work in this lifetime involves creating safe space for individuals like myself who feel that they are ‘too different’ ‘too weird’, and ‘too sensitive’ to fit into a world which tends to cater to people who walk a conventional black and white path, rather than the path of the creative, the healer, and those who are here to shake up the cultural narrative, and rewrite history in their own powerful and unique way. This is currently the path I walk with fierce resolve, and I wish to do everything in my power to guide others along the way, through their confusion, chaos and fear, and out the other side towards embodying more of their power, authenticity and self-expressions, to the very best of my ability.
My role as an Ayurvedic consultant and intuitive healer is to guide you towards embodying the highest expression of who you authentically are. Ayurveda is a gentle yet extraordinarily powerful holistic healing science that truly understands what each and every one of us requires to support our unique constitution. Every single one of us is built with entirely different physical and emotional requirements, and Ayurveda is a system that illuminates what each of us need as individual beings with distinctive preferences to enhance and maintain our health. I am committed to restoring the hope and wellbeing of those who have struggled with on-going health issues or existential spiritual crisis whom like me, have been told it is not possible for them to heal, or to actualise dreams, and whilst healing and creating the life of our dreams comes with tremendous challenge, it is more than possible, and it is in fact our absolute birth right to live the life of our deepest imaginings and beyond. Our bodies are designed to heal, to feel joy, pleasure and continuous expansion. And our healing is made that much easier when we have the unwavering support of someone who believes in our potential to heal and to thrive.
Over the past six years, in my quest to heal myself from several chronic health issues, I immersed myself in the world of holistic healing. After spending 2015 going in and out of the hospital with a mysterious cough in my lungs that no doctor seemed able to get to the root of, my mental health and emotional wellbeing quickly deteriorated. My career as a singer and musician was officially over, and my identity as an artist was obliterated overnight. Little did I know that this would lead me on a six year journey to re-discovering who I am beyond music, beyond all former identities, and forcing me to make a deep inquiry into my emotional landscape to uncover repressed stresses and traumas that had been disrupting the flow of life within me. As far as health and wellbeing was concerned, I had never heard a single doctor or health practitioner mention anything of how repressed emotions or past trauma deeply impacts our wellbeing and our ability to manage day to day life. I had spent countless days in a state of overwhelming frustration and hopelessness, aware that there was far more to the matter of health than what our culture and medical institutes had led us to believe. It was through the process of unravelling deeply painful past experiences and allowing myself to process and integrate those experiences, that I became aware of how multi-layered and extraordinarily complex our inner world truly is. Is was through Chinese medicine and acupuncture that I became acquainted with how the five elements (water, fire, mental, earth and ether) influence our constitution and contribute towards how we react and respond to adversity and our external environment, and how the hundreds of meridian points used in acupuncture have the power to release, transform or pacify wounds that we have carried throughout this lifetime. It was through breath-work that I was able to access some of the deepest layers of my being weighed down by unprocessed hurts, and stresses that had been accumulated from years of bypassing my body’s needs. It was through yoga and qi-gong that I discovered the simplest and subtlest of poses have the ability to open up energy centres within the body and cleanse our tissues of stagnant stuck emotions. And it was through exploring the wisdom of the indigenous culture, shamanism and ancient India, soaked in deep wisdom and the understanding of how to work with the intelligence of nature in order to activate the body’s own inner healing mechanism, that I began to see transformation within my own life. And lastly, it was through a deep study of Ayurveda and adopting the Ayurvedic lifestyle and incorporating the deep wisdom of this 5,000 year of holistic healing science into my everyday routine that my body began to feel nurtured and supported in a way that it never had before.
Quite early on in my health journey, I knew that I needed to go in search of ancient wisdom and ancient medicine in order to not only heal myself but to understand who I am and who we are beyond our bodies, our personalities and the beliefs that create our experience of the world. Most of us spend a tremendous amount of energy trying not to feel the layers of stuck dense energy that are the result of unpleasant emotional experiences, but when we begin to acknowledge and accept that we are in pain, we also begin to heal, freeing up the space within our bodies and minds and all that energy that was being spent on trying to hold ourselves together so as to avoid facing painful emotions. All of the energy we spend on attempting to shut out painful experiences can instead be utilised on truly enjoying life, utilising our creativity, connecting with loved ones and enjoying new experiences.
Healing ourselves is not merely a matter of restoring our bodies to a state of wellbeing. Healing is about uncovering and re-discovering who we are beyond our habitual patterns, trigger responses, everyday commitments, relationships, and the disappointments and hurts of the past or fears of the future that tend to distract us from experiencing the quality and purity of life we all deeply yearn to feel. Healing not only gradually opens us up to our own dormant potential and hidden gifts, but as well, life’s many offerings that are available to us at all times, if we ourselves are available and ready to receive. Healing is a path that allows us to recognise that the dreams and the desires that we hold are more than possible to reach once we connect to the intelligence of our own inner wisdom and the universal wisdom in order to bring the life we dream of living into fruition. In Sanskrit the vedas would refer to this as our ‘Dharma’, our life purpose and a way of living that is in harmony with our deepest wishes and all life on earth. To walk the path of healing requires great courage, and may feel like a tremendous challenge at times, but I believe that what is even more challenging and painful is walking upon this earth denying ourselves of the abundance and joy that is our absolute birthright to experience, continuously burdened with the weight of unprocessed emotional baggage belonging to the past and a belief-system that does not support our evolution and our ability to thrive no matter the challenges we are required to face. Too many of us deny ourselves from aligning with the quality of life that we so deeply wish to experience. There is no denying that healing can be challenging, but within that challenge lies the most fulfilling and transformative outcome if we are brave enough to take the first step, and venture into the unknown within which all possibility for our fullest, most adventurous and joyful life is present.