Heart Diving: Healing And Awakening The Divinity Within With Chandler Yorkhall

“When you move in the heart, all the barriers go away.” This is what Chandler Yorkhall has been passionately working on people with. As a Minneapolis-based healer, bodyworker, and Sufi teacher, he has been helping others find deep healing just as he had done for himself. Now, he has created a new method for healing and awakening to the divinity within called Heart Diving of sacred movement and sound. In this episode, he joins Debra Gaugnard and co-host Amany Shalaby to tell us all about it. Chandler takes us across his healing and teaching journey, from finding Qigong and Sufism to using music and movement in his classes. He also talks about trauma, healing beyond the body to the heart and soul, as well as talking about religion. There is so much wisdom shared in this conversation that will help you see healing in a new way. Follow along with Chandler to learn more!

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Heart Diving: Healing And Awakening The Divinity Within With Chandler Yorkhall

We have as our guest, Salim Chandler Yorkhall. Welcome, Salim. Thank you. I’m glad to be here. Let me introduce Salim to you. Salim Chandler Yorkhall is a Minneapolis-based healer, bodyworker, and Sufi teacher serving his community since 1995. Raised in a deeply Christian home, he has walked deeply on the yoga and Qigong paths as well. First encountered Sufism through the teachings of Bawa Muhaiyaddeen in 1999, Chandler struggled mightily with depression and despair from his early years. At last, finding deep healing and relief through the teachings of Sidi Muhammad al-Jamal. He wants people to know, no matter how hard it is, and these are his words, “I know it can get hard. There is hope. There is a way, and you are meant to shine in this life.” Chandler is the Creator of the Heart Diving Method of Sacred Movement and Sound, and the Heart Diving app. He has done healing work in private practice, hospital, and clinical settings, continuously integrating mind-body medicine, hands-on healing methods, and spiritual healing. Also, trained as a hospital chaplain, he is passionately in service to the revelation of the divine within each and every human heart. We are so blessed, honored, and excited to have you here. Welcome. Thank you so much. I want to also introduce my co-host, Amany Shalaby. She has her Master’s in the Comparative Philosophy of Religions. She has her postgraduate degree in Islamic Studies and Sufism. She served as a translator for my spiritual teacher, as Chandler mentioned in his bio, Sidi Shaykh Muhammad al-Jamal. Amany served as his translator for the last twelve years of his life. She is a Founder of Universal Chaplaincy, from which I have graduated from her program there, and she is my co-teacher in the Ocean of Sound Program. We all have a lot in common. I’m excited about the conversation we’re going to have. Thank you, Mastura, for the introduction, and welcome, Salim. It’s a pleasure to have you in this interview series we’re doing about sound. I am very curious to know how you got attracted. How did you start to get attracted to the Sufi path, especially also with the sound of the Arabic letters and its relationship to the Sufi path and to the bodywork you are doing? It’s a broad question and a long story. I’ll try and hit some discreet points along the way. In my home growing up, we sang constantly. My brothers and I were always singing and we sang in church, but we also sang hymns at home. By the time we were teenagers, my brothers and I were singing in harmony together. The connecting power of the voice and sound combined with sincere spiritual desire was always there for me. To this day, singing is my favorite pastime. I would get together with family and friends and sing. That was one thing. I was also raised in this Christian tradition, which left me with a lot of questions, especially because my mother was suffering from multiple sclerosis from when I was very young to when I was in my twenties. She was so ill. I never knew her well as a young person. I carried this despair for many years, and it was partly mine. It was partly hers. I carried so much for her. I later realized that I didn’t need to, but it was heavy on me. Singing was the only relief that I had as a young person because the Christian tradition wasn’t working out for me well. The problems that I had within, no one was able to answer, “Why does Jesus have to die for me to be good?” It made me sadder looking back and for me to be okay. My mother started to heal when I was seventeen. She started doing Qigong, Tai chi, and also bodywork. Several of my brothers and I went to these classes with her, which were two-and-a-half-hour classes each week. A lot of times we were going to because it was helping and we wanted to participate in anything that was helping her. We would learn bodywork techniques in class, and then we would go home and do the bodywork, energy work, meditation, and Qigong. Looking back as a Christian young person, this was very unusual, especially in my family’s brand of Christianity, which looked down on all that. I became a very serious Qigong practitioner at that point. I quickly realized that I didn’t ever want to do anything except bodywork for a living. I couldn’t see myself doing something else because I loved this so much. The Qigong path and the Daos path helped me a lot with my inner life. I won’t go into that now, but it was helpful for about ten years. Within that time is when I met Muhammad Muhaiyaddeen. I didn’t meet him, but I met his community. He had already died at that time. I was so moved by the people, the generosity, the community, and his books. I read voraciously. I read 6 or 7 of his books in the first year that I knew about him. In particular, there was a slim little book called Dhikr that moved me to tears. The idea that I could be connecting with God, I had interpreted the joy that I felt when I was singing. I could be connecting with that all day long, and that I thought would solve my problem. I continued to appreciate his work, but I fell away from it because I moved away from there and continued to the Qigong path, got married, had kids, and started to go into depression again because of the pressure, the life of a dad. I was starting a career, had a new house, and a new city. I couldn’t help myself. I was going into a slide. This is right about the time I encountered the Al-Shadhili path with Sidi Muhammad. First, I met Pat Abdullah, and he was my wonderful friend and guide for a long time. He said, “You should go ahead and meet Sidi.” I’m going on and on. Years passed and I continued to do Qigong because it was how I was formed as an adult, but I was also getting relief from my suffering through the Sufi practices and the Sufi teachings. The Qigong was like a wagon bumping along in the back for a while. I wanted to learn Arabic besides writing and memorizing the prayers and the sewers in that. Once my third child came along, I have to wait, but I could tell there was so much power there. I had also done a lot of yoga and learned some of the yoga sutures that we would recite. There was this similar resonance and power. It was unmistakable to me. I knew what was happening, except this time I was going to stick with it. About 2015, I got a grant for my work. I was working in one of the big hospitals here. I got a grant to create a community-facing and a staff-facing Qigong program, where we could introduce the idea of Qigong as an activity for community wellness. I decided to get certified in this particular method that I thought was good. It took a year, and I went on a seven-day retreat at the end of that. One of our beloveds was there, Nadia Linda Hole. She saw me teaching, and we connected about Sufism, about our path. She saw me teaching Qigong and said, “You’re doing it. You’re doing Sufi Qigong.” I was like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never heard of that before.” Through our conversations, I was inspired to think hard about what a Sufi movement form would look like. Through some more conversations with her and other teachers that are close to me, I landed on the idea of doing movements that mirror the Arabic letters and then putting the letters together to spell the names of God. I learned the Arabic alphabet in about 4 days, and within about 3 weeks, I had put together the whole system. I had movements for every letter 2, 1, 2, or sometimes 3 movements for each letter depending on where it is in the word. I was having the time of my life. I don’t think I was sleeping at all. I was doing these movements all night long and praising God. I never remember being so happy in my life. The process is to do these slow movements that mirror the letters, that spell the names, and then also to recite the particular name that you’re spelling. Are you talking about the name Allah, or any of the beautiful names of Allah? You can do Allah and spell any Arabic word. I’ve even spelled out the Fatiha using movements. It’s a little harder to repeat it over and over and not easy to learn. I teach this process. If I’m with a group, we will choose a name. It could be Allah, Ar-Rahman, Ar-Raheem, Al-Malik, Al-Quddus, or anything you want. I’ll teach the letters that are the movements, and then there’ll be a period of teaching where we teach the letters seated and then standing, and then a period of practice where we do the movements over and over again while reciting the names. That’s a testament to how we learn also. I’m saying this as I took one of your classes, and if I may share my experience of it, I started following along, “What’s he doing here? How to get the motion and the rhythm?” As I fell into the motion and the rhythm, then it became a flow of energy vibration moving through my body, along with the resonance of the sound. I was in the flow of the movement and the vibration of the sound, and it was moving through me. Instead of me doing it, I was with it and becoming that one with it. We have all these different levels of knowledge of how we learn. Learning in my experience of this, first learning from the mental and the visual, and then integrating and feeling it, and then becoming awakened by it. Where it gets ingrained and deep like that is where it starts to awaken a deeper knowledge and an inner knowing of it that then informs us even further. As someone who’s taken your class, that was my experience of it. It was a wonderful experience. I couldn’t ask for a better testament to what I’m trying to do. A funny story is from when I was in college. I took one Education class. It was a Music Education class and was one of the most impactful classes I took. It showed me that I wanted to become an educator, but it was my last year, and I didn’t have time. The last piece of that was about a 2 or 3-month internship in a third-grade classroom. They were learning the water cycle. I had already been practicing Qigong at this point for 6 or 7 years. Maybe it was only five years, but I understood the power of movement as a learning tool well. My project with this class when I had them to myself, that is to teach them, not alone, but to be the lead teacher. It was to create a series of movements that taught them the water cycle that they could do as a group. They practiced being rain, a river, and then going into the ocean, evaporating, and traveling as a cloud. What you said, reminded me. I haven’t thought of that in years. When I was working on these movements, it was a very similar process of, “I don’t want to just understand the name.” There are a number of books or teachings that can help you understand what this name means. I wanted to feel the quality in my body, and not only feel it, but I know from Qigong that when you do movements over again, you find little hitches and glitches in the body where the movement doesn’t go smoothly. In yoga, we call those the fluctuations of consciousness. I had intuited very early on that by chanting the names or reciting the names and doing the movements, I don’t understand how, but I was somehow inscribing the quality in my nervous system and moving it deeper and cleaning out whatever was blocking it from coming. As I am sitting with both of you, it brings so much inspiration, understanding, and feeling because if not, the universe’s fabric is made of Arabic letters, and the Arabic letters are the vibration from the qualities. The motion is almost when you dive into it and tuned into the natural fabric of the universe of your being. All of these blockages get cleared. I also study a little bit of Sacred Geometry. I’m very drawn to it. It feels as if you are talking about the geometry of the universe. You all come from the beautiful qualities of Allah. When was your first experience diving with a name and saying, “That’s it?” Can you speak to us about that experience? I was in the first three weeks when I was creating the alphabet. Before I had it all created, I decided that I would choose the letters I wanted for the names that I wanted first so that I could experience what this was going to be. I remember using Raheem, the compassion. You’re saying that for people reading who don’t know. I had many beautiful experiences with that name. When you’re practicing Qigong, you are working with energy. Over many years of practice, I’ve become very attuned to what happens to the energy when my mind is like this. The mind, we say the E leads the chi or the mind leads the energy. There were problems with that because I knew that my mind was limited. My energy and my chi could only expand so much. It could only move in such a way. That was the point at which I realized how important it would be to create a movement form that embodied the truth of the Sufi path. When you move into the heart, all the barriers go away. I thought if I could create a movement form where all you had to do was do the movements, maybe that would take the mind away from the problem. I wanted to remove the mind from the problems. When you move in the heart, all the barriers go away. Share on X I remember clearly when I finally figured out what it would look like to spell Raheem through movements, I started, and it was very much like my story described. I had gone through the movement several times and was starting to get comfortable with it. There was this moment where I hit this groove. I wasn’t doing the movement anymore. The movement was doing me. All I was doing was following along and being willing. My mind became so occupied with reproducing the letters and putting my body in the right position for the movement that it wasn’t a problem. All of a sudden, my heart started to feel this opening. That was what I had always known was there. When I sat with Sidi or Abdullah Pat, I could feel that deepening, but it was always hard to get back to it, especially when I was on my own. When I felt that deepening start to happen so easily, I knew that I had it. I knew I had something. The thing is, one of Sidi’s many books is called Music of the Soul. I don’t even call it an introductory book, but it’s the one that most of us get first. We know that music does bypass. That’s why commercials have jingles that we find ourselves going around during the day singing these little jingles.

If you remember the Schoolhouse Rock! the last of the creators of the Schoolhouse Rock! passed away, and they were shown on the news. This was when I was a child. Do you remember Schoolhouse Rock! “Conjunction junction, what’s your function?” those little jingles that they had on the Saturday morning cartoons? They showed a little clip of a couple of those and they were talking about it on the news. It took me right back to sitting in front of cartoons when I was a kid and Saturday morning cartoons and watching the Schoolhouse Rock! Many of us learned things that we still remember now through music and rhythm. You can put your whole body right back into it and feel from tapping into the music of it. It’s brilliant. I’ll give credit to the divine orchestration for putting all of this into your life and bringing you to this marriage of these gifts that come out in this way. I recall in your class. Your mother was there as well. She looks vibrant, very supportive, and healthy, being another testament to the work that you all are doing. I wouldn’t be doing any of this if it wasn’t for her journey of healing. I tell her the story all the time. It’s part of who I am. How moving that your whole family would become a part of that system of healing. It’s another testament about family healing, support, encouragement, and community. She’s got a great story. Our family has got a good story. My dad is a scientist, a PhD astrophysicist, and quite accomplished, and successful in his field. I remember after my mom was going through all this healing, Eastern medicine, and different things, there were two people. My mom went back to her doctor after five years of doing Qigong. She was able to walk and stand up. She was able to be alive. She said, “What do you think?” He said, “You’re lucky.” My dad famously went on record when she asked him what he thought about this as a scientist. His job is data. He said, “You’re nonstatistical.” It’s amazing how we explain what we don’t understand. I had ulcerative colitis and healed. This was at least 25 years ago or maybe even more than that. I went back to a doctor later and had to fill out the history and everything. I said, “In history, I did have that. I don’t have it anymore.” She said, “There’s no way that you could have had it and not have it anymore.” I said, “I had it, and I don’t have it anymore.” She said, “It must have been a misdiagnosis.” Makes you feel better about it that’s fine but it’s sad. Listening to both of you, it’s inspiring because we depend on language, and language is limited in a way that motion and music are more in tune with nature. I’m curious. Salim, do you do these practices regularly? Do you do it at a certain time of the day? How would you recommend people approach a practice like doing the Qigong motion of the letters and the beautiful names of Allah? I’ve been on the Sufi path since 2009, and in the early years, I did everything. I worked hard to be as good as I could be on this path. I did five times prayers and an hour of remembrance twice a day sometimes. As the children came and grew, they needed lots of attention. These things were not practical. My spiritual practice became parenting and being a good person, doing my work good with high integrity. My spiritual practices became the place where I went to find balance when I had lost it. I recommend people if you want to start a practice, start with a very small practice. This is what I recommend. Regular practice is more important than long practice. 5 or 3 minutes a day can grow slowly. If you do it every day, it will have a much bigger impact on your life than if you did an hour or five times prayers for a week, and then didn’t do it anymore. For me, when I have time to practice is typically after everyone else is in bed. It seems to me, listening to your life story illustrates what the Sufi says. There are types of Dhikr. There is the Dhikr by tongue or by heart and then by action. If you’re conscious and doing services in action, as the prophet Muhammad Allah said, it becomes a form of worship. Work can be a form of worship. A service is a form of worship. You said it exactly well. It’s way better than I could say. I look at my healing work as a form of worship and look at my best days as a form of worship. I am intentional about carving out time to deepen my heart and my relationship with Allah. Usually, that happens at night after everyone is in bed, or the rare few minutes here when there’s nobody calling my name or asking me for something. Personally, I do Isha prayer. Before I sat for and done remembrance, I now do this. It depends. I’ll sometimes sit, but when I sit still and I’ve been busy all day long, my mind is still going like this. If I sit, it’s hard to calm down. The movement helps me very quickly come into a, “This is where I’m at a still place.” It feels like a deep form of remembrance when you get your whole being into the flow of that remembrance and our natural rhythm. You mentioned something about nature and sounds in nature. Sounds are very fundamental to nature. You can give me the source of it because I always forget. Everything in nature has a sound. Everything has a vibration. Our bodies are inherent. Our spirits within our bodies have a knowledge of the sound of everything in nature. We have a knowledge of it. We have a wisdom of it. We have a connection to it. When our minds are busy, and we’re being called in many different ways and doing many things, we forget. That practice of remembrance, it’s brilliant to bring it into the body, the movement of the body, the energy, and flow. What better way to connect with the natural rhythms of creation and nature than to remember and awaken to on a conscious level? What does our subconscious long to be attuned to? It’s brilliant. I’m praising you more than I’m asking you questions. I want to shift that. It brings up a big piece of my process if you don’t mind me continuing this. As a bodywork and hands-on therapist, I’ve been largely concerned with how trauma is stored in the tissues of our bodies. Very early in my professional career, there was a period of about four years where I mostly who I worked on people who had been in a car accident, work accident, or something like that. A lot of personal injuries. I’ve done more later in chapters but those early years taught me something, which is the person who came and I did the bodywork that I was trained to do. They felt better, but they came back the next week and I had to do it again. I remember there was one client that I worked on 38 sessions before I fired her. “Sorry. I’m not helping you. You come back every week and it’s the same.” That put me on this path of trying to understand why are people not getting better. Ultimately, I had already been trained in craniosacral therapy and some other forms of energy work and advanced soft tissue therapy helped. The thing that helped most was the remembrance. As I was working on their body, in my heart, I would be reciting the name, “Allah.” I’m a very slow student. I burned slowly. It took me years to start to understand what was going on. I began to realize that this person’s healing was deeper than their body. It was in their heart and soul. By deepening to the level where I felt the congestion in them, and then sitting there with prayer, I could assist them in releasing that trauma. After doing that for a number of years with other people, I realized, “I should do it for myself too. I would probably be a better husband, father, neighbor, and practitioner if I took it upon myself to relieve myself of trauma,” of which I had planned. This understanding of the body, the neuromuscular system is the proprioceptive system. In every muscle, nerve, and all throughout the body, we have what are called proprioceptors. They tell us where we are in space. Your eyes are only here. Your ears are only here. Your nose and tongue are only here. This is all one big sensory organ. One of my favorite truths about the mind is that the senses do not lie. They tell the truth. The mind changes the meaning or signs meaning that doesn’t belong or that makes sense based on your history, but the mind is an instrument of making meaning. Our senses do not lie. They tell the truth. The mind changes the meaning. Share on X The senses are day to day, only do what they’re supposed to do. The heart is the same. The heart gives you information. That’s true. “My heart feels despair and sadness.” The mind says, “No, I don’t want to be sad. I want to be happy.” I put all kinds of layers over that so that I don’t have to feel sad. The movement, because the body is the biggest sensory organ, doesn’t lie. It cannot lie. It’s harder for the mind to argue when you go into a body-based movement practice. If you’re paying attention, it’s easier to surrender. I have a curious question because sometimes I talk with people who are cynical or critique that energy work or bodywork. Sometimes they say if the person is having pain from a previous accident or so, this body movement or massage therapy and prayers may help. If it is another type of disease, they are critical in the medical field specifically. I am curious to ask you, as you teach the movement of Qigong goes the letters and the beautiful names of Allah, did you encounter other people who have other diseases that got healed? It’s pretty new as a form. It was all finally put together in January 2021. I’ve taught 3, 8-week sessions of live classes and 1, 6-week course through the app of which semester was apart. I haven’t gotten to work intensively with groups of people on this, where I had access to their health history, information, and all that. I do have some clients and private clients that I’ve worked with who have taken it up and been very satisfied and who have in-depth health concerns. From my experience as a Qigong practitioner, I can say without reservation that this process works. It works because it almost seamlessly combines the work of locating and cleaning the pictures that Sidi taught so well with a process of relaxing the body, opening the body, and stimulating a parasympathetic nervous response, which is the Holy Grail of integrative medicine or holistic medicine. We must figure out how to get a relaxation response going on a regular basis because that’s where the body does the healing. That’s where it does tissue repair. That’s where it eliminates toxins, all that good stuff.

It’s returning the body to its homeostasis and natural way of being. It takes time to get there like the doctor said, my mom was lucky. We grew up in a church where if you were going to be healed, you were going to be healed at the altar. When you got the spirit and fell down, you were going to be healed. My mom was a homemade miracle. It was doing the work. It was doing the daily practice and the daily meditation, and it was doing it regularly. That’s what changed. Was it hard for her in the beginning to do it? It was very hard because it was outside of her spiritual and religious box. If I’m talking to people who are skeptical, I never tried to convince people. If my heart feels moved to share the full thing of what I’ve created with people, I do and I will address their concerns if they come up. In a way, I’ve created this to satisfy my own curiosity. Is it possible for spiritual healing and physical healing, and movement practice to coexist in 1 thing and 1 form? I believe this. I’ve spent my whole career addressing that concern of people who are skeptical. Also, oftentimes people who want to believe that there’s something to all of this, but who are trained to think that’s impossible. I usually start where they are if they have a question. I’m familiar with the arguments. I also know when I’m not going to get anywhere. Would you like a foot massage? It feels good. It reminds me of our common spiritual teacher Sidi Muhammad al-Jamal who said, “At the heart of all religions is only one religion. It’s the religion of peace, love, mercy, justice, equality, and freedom. If everyone knew their religion well, there would be only one religion.” I always think of that as the deep passion in the heart. That passion and that yearning to return to unconditional love, compassion, acceptance, and truth. That’s what we all yearn for. I’m also feeling through this that experience of feeling our resonance with all of nature and that energetic vibrational resonance. It’s where our bodies and our nervous systems can settle into a place of an experience of peace. To me, it feels like a beautiful marriage in those places. It’s the yearning of the heart and the experience of the body and the nervous system. You have to meet someone where they are with their need. If I say, “Sufi love, universal peace,” and they have a terrible headache, they’re going to go, “Yeah. Great. That’s fine.” Can I tell a quick story? Yes, please. A young woman came to me who was about to write her dissertation. She traveled to Scotland in December 2021. In January of that previous year, she traveled to write her dissertation. Before she left, she was in a terrible car accident. She was unable to have a single day without a migraine headache. She considered not going to Europe and then putting off the dissertation or the research until she was able to heal from the headaches, but she decided it was the chance of a lifetime, and the headaches would probably get better and she went. She came to me for the very first time at the end of that year that she had been away, accomplished research, but had not accomplished any writing, and had a migraine headache every single day. The force of will that was necessary for her to move through that do that research while having these symptoms was incredible. She sat down and told me her story about the accident. The whole time, there was this tremor. Her nervous system was set at this high pitch. She had never calmed down after the accident. I felt so much compassion and love for her. I wanted to say to her, “You should become a beloved of Sidi’s now because that’ll fix everything.” That’s ridiculous. She had a terrible headache, so I said, “Hold your finger like this. Start to move it around in a circle like this and move it at the speed of your mind.” She said, “Okay, on my mind, it’s going about like that.” I said, “Yeah. That’s where it’s set. It’s been there since the accident, hasn’t been?” She said, “Yes, I can’t calm down.” I said, “Gradually, start to slow your finger movement down until you start to feel something change in your body.” Her eyes start to open, and she’s going, “Oh.” She heaved a sigh of relief. We went on and did some bodywork and whatever. Before she left, I said, “Do this for ten minutes every day. Focus on this area. Figure out where your mind is and start to slow down.” She came back in two weeks and she said, “I’m only here to say thank you.” I can feel it. It gives me the chills. You have a way and I feel Allah blesses you with a way because when it comes to religion, they have different understanding and different levels. The information was passed to them in a certain way that they feel afraid to go beyond it. It creates differences and fear, but you put people in the experience itself, which most of the Eastern tradition attempts to do. The Qigong movement is to bring people to experience something, to experience how to be holy, to be in tune with nature, to let go and all of what is needed to put the body and the soul ready for healing. Eventually, it’s the mind that needs to heal. You put them in the experience. Have you ever encountered someone when you introduce them, for example, the emotion to tell you, “That is weird,” or something like that? Usually, are they in a situation where they want to try something? I’ve fumbled around for many years thinking that what was working for me is what would work for my clients. Working for me as someone who’d been on a serious path for a decade or more. The answer is yes. I’ve seen many people like that and people to whom I introduced an idea too and never came back. They are cynical. It’s because what I was offering them was not what they needed at that time. I look at my job as an educator as being the job of sitting down with someone, taking their hand, looking into their eye, and understanding what it is exactly that’s going to help them the most. If this is a person who has religion very strongly, I don’t want to get involved with their religion. I don’t want to try and argue with them, because arguing will make them more stressed. It will cut them off from access to whatever it is that I have that might be helpful. I’m a Muslim. When I worked in the hospital, I once encountered a Muslim man from Somalia who was in cirrhosis of the liver. I said, “How did you get cirrhosis of the liver?” He said, “It’s because I drank too much alcohol.” I said, “Why did you drink alcohol? Aren’t you a Muslim?” He said, “The shaitan got me.” I said, “Do you think that’s permanent?” I got into a conversation with him. It was very helpful for him because I could speak his language. There was another Muslim woman I remember later who had been a Christian and had converted. She was in the hospital sick, but she had a full body covering and everything. She was anxious and cut off. She was trying to tell me about the Qur’an and tell me these things that she was supposed to tell me as a Muslim. I said, “What if you pray? Can you pray?” She said, “I used to pray to Jesus, but I don’t pray anymore. We don’t do that.” I said, “What if you tried?” She then relaxed. There are sometimes when you can get in with religion, but very often, that’s not where people are comfortable. They’re not going to relax there. What I want people to do is to understand that it’s okay to relax and feel safe in their bodies. Whatever it takes to get someone there, that’s what I’m going to do. It's okay to relax and feel safe in your body. Share on X Can you tell us a little bit about your process? It’s a follow-up question. Was it an inspiration that came to you to suggest that she do the motion with the finger? How the process was for you? That particular method of using the finger was something I had worked out because I knew that I had over many years needed for myself to develop methods of calming down quickly. If you were to somehow interview three dozen clients that I’ve had over the last several years, they would all tell you, “He taught me the finger thing and it worked great.” She was that client was early on in that process of learning that. The effect of a very simple body movement on the whole cascade of inner experience illustrated to me how powerful it could be. Did that answer your question? It’s beautiful. I have a few questions. I know you have somewhere to be, so I’m trying to choose them carefully. I’m going to throw them out there. I would like to know how you feel about your early experience with music like your family connection and bonding or whatever with music. Your early relationship with music and family helps to inform you or is somehow related to the work that you do now. I’d like to know that and how you use it in chaplaincy. You gave us the finger thing, but if you can give us an example of the work that you do, that’s three things. If you have time for all of them, is that okay, Amany? You may have other questions you wanted to ask, too. I have time to answer them. I feel held here and delighted to be able to think about these things with you, guys. It’s an honor to be asked these questions. Many of them, we don’t always get to talk about what’s important to you. Singing is what saved me as a Christian child. Would you say as a Christian child or as a child growing up in the family experience that you had with your siblings and your mother who was ill? All of the above. If I had Christianity without the singing, which I don’t know if that exists. What’s the specific type of singing you’re talking about? It’s devotional singing. The general public has different genres of music. I love that too. I love singing, but what I had was devotional singing. Even though I look back and much of our theology at that time did not agree with where I am now at all, I can still go back when I’m with my family and open those old hymn books that are singing about the body, the blood, and soldiers for Christ and all this imagery that I would never teach my children. We can sing those songs together, and the hearts open and the love comes in because the spirit of raising your voice in devotion and love for God is salvific. It saved me many times. I’m moved to give you an example. I’ll sing you this little song. My voice is shot, but I don’t care. I’ll sing anyway. I’ll sing you this little song. It’s a hymn that we used to sing and we still do. “I pause there to hear the voice of a stranger. I wrapped to behold him. I asked him his name and he answered, “It’s Jesus. From heaven, I came.” It goes on. I want to sing more now that I’m in the middle of it. I knew from a very early age what it meant to open my heart and feel connected and safe. Even though my sister died, my mom almost died, and my brother broke his neck, and everything that happened, there was always this to use your voice to express your longing, sadness, and love, and to reach out for help to rise.” “I’m pressing on the upward way, new heights I’m gaining every day.” There was a lot of inspirational theology within the music that also helped. I ended up in the Islamiyat way, which has to do a lot with the voice and the sound is not a mystery to me. I remember in fact sitting in a circle of Dhikr fellowship, going, “Ya Haqq”. The tears, everything coming out of every orifice of like, “I’m home,” this is true. This is right. For those reading who don’t know Ya Haqq is the truth or invoking the truth. It’s the divine reality. I was primed for this from a very early age. My heart knew what it meant to be devoted to God and be sad, and then to open. That’s along the lines of your question. This has been the gift. Probably my greatest gift throughout my entire life is the ability to open to perceive the need, and then to hold on to somebody’s hand and go there, “Let’s go now. There’s no reason to hold back. We can do it. I know you’re sad, but I’m here and I’m sad too, but we’re going up together now.”

It’s the unity. It’s singing with the family or doing Dhikr. In the group you feel the unity. It’s holding and raising us together in spite of where we are. It’s those beautiful experiences. When we would gather as a family to sing, we never put a time limit on it. We were about to get out the books and each person would say their number and you would sing. Somebody would say, “We need to pray.” We’d pray, and then everybody would go around and pray or if you wanted to pray and sing some more. You were done when everybody felt better. In our Sufi school, usually at the end, we have a musical diet, or people share poetry and sing together, sing along. It’s very beautiful. It reminds me, too, of an interview I heard with Paul McCartney where somebody asked him, though he was an adult, how is it at a relatively young age, so much music poured forth from him. You look at the time that the Beatles were together, they were young, and it was a very short time. Look how much music came out of those guys that changed the world and still live on in a very timeless way. He said when he was young, his family would get together and sing. His aunts would come over and his parents would play the piano and sing together. He didn’t say what kind of songs they sang, but he said he felt like they were depositing into his bank. If you were a piggy bank, that they were depositing all of this music into him. That is what grew as he grew and came out and returned with interest. I see that in your family as well like what was deposited into you and then grew and was seasoned with all of the experiences of your life and has now been returned with interest in a beautiful way that is able to change the world and many lives, God willing. I love this. Music, I live it and breathe it. I teach my children how to sing. I’ve said to them, “If you leave my house knowing how to sing, I’ll be happy.” I didn’t have the time to look at your app, but now, I’m becoming more and more curious to get deeper into your work. I want to thank you very much for the time you spent with us explaining all of these beautiful concepts and experiences that you went through. It’s a pleasure. Do you want to go after those other two questions, Mastura? Sure. If you have time, Amany? Yes. I don’t work as a chaplain now. I work as a massage therapist. I believe I’m in hospice because I’m trained as a chaplain. You’re a hospice massage therapist. It was a good fit for me. Chaplaincy, as you said, Amany, is a very holy work. You are putting yourself through the forging fire of a person who understands yourself well that you can make sure you get out of the way so that the light can come through for the person who needs it. My story is well enough to notice when it’s in the way. Even as a massage therapist in hospice, you meet people who need spiritual care. If it’s appropriate in my role, I will go ahead and offer my heart to people as a listener, an encourager, a lifter up, and a lightener of the heart. The movement work doesn’t come into that very often. I can’t think of a time when it did because I’m dealing with people who are expected to die within six months, but where it does come in, as I have practiced this work over the last few years, I’ve made a lot of progress spiritually. In the previous several years on the path, this is how I understand it. I was very limited by my mind and by my patterns, the patterns of the traumatic patterns that were held in my body. I didn’t know how to get past it. The same things kept coming up, “I would make lots of progress. It was so beautiful. The path was wonderful and a humbly a lot.” I would still get into the same things in my very close relationships with my marriage, my children, my parents, and my brothers. The same things would come up. When I started to move to do the movement with the recitation of the names, something changed. I was able to relax so much more in the process of receiving the transmission of the names. I was able to experience a lot of transformation. If I get into the energy speak of it, my crown chakra opened a lot. My third eye opened a lot. My ability to perceive the subtle worlds opened a lot. It changed a lot. When I am with someone who is in hospice or even someone who is not, I’m doing bodywork on a regular because I do some private practice still. I will silently in my mind, say equality, say a name, and feel because my sensibility has become so much more refined through the movement practice. I’ll feel how that name resonates in this person. Usually, I’ll feel something in their heart or their soul, to use a technical Sufi term, that I can identify as causing their suffering in a similar way that I would identify that. This particular fascial restriction is causing pain in their back or their shoulder. That’s how it’s assisted me. It’s simply an elegant solution to the problem of, “How do I grow? How do I get out of the way of my own growth?” That’s how it applies to chaplaincy. As a chaplain, you need to get out of the way. You need to improve your ability to perceive subtle things. That’s what it’s helped me.

I can relate to that. When I was in the hospital, my first experience was an emergency. I was like, “I’m going to quit.” I was on my own way with all the fears and trauma that were coming. I couldn’t quit at that point and I knew where I have to be. I started to recite Allah’s name. It subtly changes the situation that I was dealing with. Not only me but the person that I was trying to help. It works. We could tell stories. When you’re able to connect and embody a spiritual truth, it changes not only how you feel, but also how you perceive the situation around you. When you’re able to de-escalate yourself to use a healthcare term to calm yourself down, usually the situation improves.

The app is not quite finished, but when it is finished, you’ll be able to find a page for learning this material where there’s a whiteboard where I teach the Arabic letters. I go over them again. I have the student go over the letters many times to get the feel for what that is. The next one will be the movements in a seated position. You don’t have to worry about the legs and the feet. It’s simple. Allah and I’ll say the letters several times, so they get that. In the videos, I do it backward so that you can do it forward. Here’s Lam, and then a second Lam, and then, and then a-ha like this. Teach the standing movements in the same way, except it’s a full-body video, so you see my feet very clearly. I do an Alif. I talked to you about how to shift your weight and step, make Lam. You’re shifting your weight as you’re in between each letter, there’s a shift left to right Lam like that. That’s the teaching section. Another there’s a practice section where you can open the name that you want, and then you see this 8 or 10-minute video. The first one is Allah, so I’ll do that hum. I would repeat that, and then the video goes on repeat. This is very simple, but they become very interesting for people who are interested in movement. For example, Sabr is one of my favorites. All of the names besides Allah, I put the Ya in front of them. “Ya Sabr.” Can you give the meaning of, “Ya Sabr,” for people to understand that? Ya Sabr is the ultimate perseverance and patience. It’s perseverance through all difficulties. The Arabic letters are so fascinating. They’re so varied and interesting in how they have translated into movements. For me, it continues to be amazing. How those movements affect the body and how they are important or how they address an important need for the body in terms of flexibility and improving circulation, balancing, and chi. I could go on, but there’s a lot of geometry in there that’s instrumental. I didn’t intend it. I only discovered it afterward. I encountered one of the very interesting pedagogical problems as I was teaching this on Zoom. I didn’t have people in the room with me. I created this because of the app. I had a lot of people contacting me from around the world who were not able to come to my Friday morning classes. They’ll go, “You need an app.” I don’t know how else to do it, but that meant I had to teach on video, and on Zoom, I was teaching on video anyway. I tried doing Allah in the way that I recognize, here’s Allah. Here’s the Alif and Lam goes this way, but you’ll testify that I’m doing it backward. That’s the wrong way. I’m doing it right to left, but you see left to right. I had to reverse all the letters and learn how to do it. When I do it left to right, you see it right to left. When I practice at night, I do the name once forward and once backward because I want to prepare myself to teach whatever the name is that I’m working on. On my nervous system, the effect is truly remarkable. When there’s this injunction in the Qur’an when you worship God, worship as if you are seeing God. If you can’t see God, then know that Allah can see you. If I’m doing them this way, then I’m doing them as though I’m seeing God. If I’m doing them in the reverse, it’s as though I’m being seen. When you worship God, worship as if you are seeing God. Share on X It’s because it’s a mirror. It reminds me of a lot of calligraphy. They do the mirror. It was the mystical invocation of the essence of Allah. They usually make it in a mirror, many calligraphers. As you were talking, I was getting it. It’s a mirror. It’s interesting. It has something to do with our nervous system and the right hemisphere and left hemisphere. When you are moving your left hand, you are accessing your right hemisphere. When you do the reverse, you are accessing the reverse. It’s balance. A journaling technique that I’ve sometimes used is to try and journal with my left hand or the non-dominant hand. I can clearly tell you, with no uncertainty, that I now write backward in Arabic, much better than I can write backward in English, minor trivia. It’s beautiful how will you live with the experience, you were able to see, “This is when I witness Allah. This is when Allah is witnessing me.” That helps you to do it. It’s very confusing and requires a lot of control or be with it and has that reflection that helps you to be with it. It’s wonderful to speak with you and be understood. I want to put the URL for my app here so people can see it. It doesn’t have the WWW. If you use WWW, it takes you somewhere else. It’s HeartDiving.passion.io. If you go to that place, you arrive at a web app. You can open it on your phone or the computer, but it’s through the internet, through the browser. It’s not like a downloadable native app on your phone. I’m working on that. That will come later. Also, know that the whiteboard videos with the Arabic letters are not up yet. Most of them are not even created yet, at least as of now, December 9th, 2022. Hopefully, they’ll be up in the next month. There are the names Allah, Ya Rahman, and Ya Raheem. All the content is there for free. You can go there and download it. Check it out and see if you want to. As a parent of four, I’m trying to sustain a business, a job, and a home I charge for the other names, but I’ve tried to make it as reasonable as I can with three different pay from the heart. I would like to create a library of 99 names. That’s a lot of videos. They’re professional videos and cost money. That’s partly why I need to charge them so I can create something of good quality. I encourage people to support you in your work, and I’m happy to support work. Most of us are happy to support work that we feel is doing a beautiful service and comes from a deep heart and soul place of love. I thank you for that and for your desire to make it affordable. I encourage people to return that love and support you and your family has a lot of mouths to feed there. Thank you. I appreciate it. As a final wrap-up question, is there any advice that you would give, in your case, maybe someone who is at that place of wanting to heal on a more holistic level and wants to learn about the work you do, the conglomeration of the path that you’ve been on and what it’s led you to the work as a whole, or how they might heal? That leaves it pretty wide open and broad. What would you like to say? It depends on who this person is, but I would say that my path is very unique to me. That person’s path is going to be unique to them. At some point, I did not slap the label Sufi on me and say, “Now I’m a Sufi.” No one ever offered Sufism to me in that way. If I was speaking with someone who didn’t know what the next step is for them, and I wasn’t able to speak to them directly and hear their heart, I would encourage them to find someone who could. It’s impossible to do it alone. I tried for a lot of years. You can’t do it alone. You have to have someone who’s been down the path, who knows what it means to open and hear you in your difficulty, encourage, and support you in your own personal way forward. Not in the way of, “I know what’s going to help you. You should try my thing.” You could download the app and try it and see. If it works, great. I can’t listen to your heart through the app. It’s designed to support you in the ways that it can and it isn’t going to be right for everybody. Since I now work 3 days a week in hospice and 1 day in private practice, my schedule is totally full, so I can’t offer that. I wish I could. There are a lot of people like me who are yearning to be supportive and give someone a hand. By doing the work with the app, each person has to try it for themselves and to see if there’s something there for them. I love that you speak of slapping a label on. For myself, I don’t believe we’re here to slap labels or invite anyone to slap a label on them. That’s where the Ocean of Sound speaks to the fundamental elemental vibration, frequency resonance. That is a very basic part of human makeup and our connection with nature and with the divine that we’re in a place in that very basic inner knowing, inner resonance, and all that is the fundamental wave of motion and energy where we can all connect in and find resonance in a piece. We’ve been talking about music, but a radio receiver. Whereas there are all kinds of radio waves going through the air at all times, and they’re passing through and by us. If we have a radio receiver, we can turn that dial and it will pick up what is playing on the frequency that can be received by wherever we tune the dial to and it will play that music. That’s a fundamental Law of Nature there that we’ve created and amplified throughout our world. There is the basic resonance of the waves and the sounds of the fundamental creation. Our bodies are the receivers of those fundamental sounds of creation. We can tune our dial to connect with and play that music through our own beings if we desire to resonate with nature and find that peace within. To me, that does not depend on any labels, religions, or anything like that. It does intend very deeply on your intention and yearning in your heart. What you aspire to is what’s going to set that receiver and allow that vibration, that music to be played through you and to set you into where you desire to go, God willing. Thank you so much. I appreciate you and the time. What a pleasure to be with you guys. It’s a total delight. I enjoyed being with you, your work, and your path. We hope that by introducing it there are a lot of tools that people can use to help themselves and help one another. Thank you very much again. Thank you for the chance to speak. It’s wonderful. Thank you. As-salamu alaykum.

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About Chandler Yorkhall

Salim Chandler Yorkhall is a Minneapolis-based healer, bodyworker, and Sufi teacher, serving his community since 1995. Raised in a deeply Christian home, he has walked deeply on the Yoga and Qigong paths as well, and first encountered Sufism through the teachings of Bawa Muhaiyadeen in 1999. Chandler struggled mightily with depression and despair from his early years, at last finding deep healing and relief through the teachings of Sidi Muhammad al-Jamal. He wants people to know: “No matter how hard it is–and I know it can get really, really hard–there is Hope; there is a Way; and you are meant to Shine in this life.” Chandler is the creator of the Heart Diving method of sacred movement and sound, and of the Heart Diving app. He has done healing work in private practice, hospital, and clinical settings, continuously integrating mind-body medicine, hands-on healing methods, and spiritual healing. Also trained as a hospital chaplain, he is passionately in service to the revelation of the Divine within each and every human heart.

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