Sufi Mindfulness Yoga With Brian McPherson

Have you ever noticed that certain sounds have an impact on you, even the basic sounds that do not form words? Today, our special guest, Brian McPherson, Ph.D. shares with us the inherent emotional impact of sound and words on the body, and their healing effects when used in meditation. He shares the unique approaches and Sufi practices that help promote mindfulness and spiritual growth. Based on his book entitled “Sufi Mindfulness Yoga,” Dr. Brian shares the best ways to approach your situations and how mindfulness practices can shift your mood and energy. He also shares his insights on these practices and how they can help us cultivate inner peace and deepen our connection to the present moment. Join us as we explore the fascinating world of Sufi Mindfulness Yoga with Dr. Brian McPherson and learn how this practice can help you grow spiritual growth, inner peace, and greater mindfulness.

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Sufi Mindfulness Yoga With Brian McPherson

We have with us now, Dr. Brian McPherson. Welcome, Brian. Dr. Brian McPherson got his PhD in Psychology from Tufts University in 1995. He studied Sufism with Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan at Sufi Order International, now The Inayati Order. He studied yoga with Amrit Desai, the Founder of Kripalu Yoga Center. He studied yoga with Dr. Vijayendra Pratap, the Founder of the Yoga Research Society. He’s published a dozen articles in various scientific journals. He’s presented research finding at over a dozen scientific conferences, including the International Sound Colloquium. He’s published a book called Sufi Mindfulness Yoga, work that uses mindfulness practices to connect specific Sufi practices to The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. He has put together an amazing body of work. We’re very excited to have this conversation with Brian. I want to introduce also my co-host, Amany Shalaby. Amany has her Master’s in Comparative Philosophy of Religions. She has her postgraduate degree in Islamic Studies in Sufism. She did her thesis on Ibn Arabi. She served as a translator for my spiritual teacher, Shaykh Muhammad Sa‘id al-Jamal ar-Rifa‘i ash-Shadhuli for the last twelve years of his life. She is a Founder of Universal Chaplaincy. I got my Chaplaincy Degree Certification under her Universal Chaplaincy program. She is my co-teacher in the Ocean of Sound. Welcome, Amany. Thank you, Mastura. It’s a pleasure to have you, Brian, in this interview. We’re very excited to know what attracted you to study Sufism, particularly the beautiful names of Allah, and how did you connect it to the yoga practice? I first was interested in yoga through my wife. My wife started studying yoga, and she asked me to come along. I was reluctant at first to go. After my first visit to the Kripalu Ashram with Amrit Desai, I was taken away by the chanting and the use of the sounds of chanting. That was what got me interested in understanding how sounds can affect your body and how they can produce these emotional feelings through the sounds. With that, I was studying the sounds on my own. I had a spiritual experience I would call a vision. After a session of just trying to understand sounds, I leaned back and closed my eyes. Instead of relaxing, I was transported into a field, and in the distance saw three people sitting around something that I didn’t recognize. It turned out these three people were Sufis. They were dressed in like I would. I identified them not at that moment as Sufis, but somebody maybe Middle Eastern dressed. What they were studying, at first looked to be an object that looked like a roulette wheel, which is a gambling device. When I got closer, instead of a roulette wheel, I saw a beautiful crystal. My consciousness went toward this object and was engulfed in this beautiful crystal, and it became an overwhelming feeling of love and joy. That was very uplifting spiritual experience. I didn’t understand what it was about until later that evening, my wife brought home a book. The book was written by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. I opened the book’s page, and I see this face and say, “That was the Sufi I saw on my vision.” The book was all about how to view sounds, and how they connected to the body. That was where I first got into studying the sounds. Eventually, I went to the Sufi community where Pir Vilayat was the leader, and got a chance to study with him. That was what triggered my long search for the meaning of sounds. That was just the beginning, though. I spent a lot more time. That answers the question about the initial foray into sounds. Brian, your PhD is in the relationship of sound to emotions in the body. Is that correct? That was my intention to study at Tufts, study sounds. I was drawn or led to a particular advisor at Tufts, and his work was electrophysiology. That involved putting electrodes on people’s heads and reading brain waves or EEG. I wanted to study how people reacted to sounds. The person who I was led to was like, “There’s not much been done in that, and here’s what has been done.” He was not very encouraging for me to pursue that particular line, so I instead studied Language, which was his field. Sounds are part of language, and I thought that that would fit, but I ended up doing my dissertation on reading disabilities, and how people with reading disabilities have trouble processing the sounds. I did research that had compared normal readers to people with reading disability. They had to listen to words that rhymed and didn’t, and make certain decisions. That was what I found. At least a subset of people with reading disabilities, had this phonological processing problem. It’s tangentially related to what I wanted to study, but I had to be practical. I wanted to get the credentials of a PhD. Later on, I was able to do more specific study of the sound. Initially, it was more a side avenue. Later, you did specific studies then about the effect of sound on the human emotion and body? Yes. I was able to do a study that showed people, when they heard a particular sound, it activated certain areas of emotional memory. It’s rather detailed process to explain. I can give you a brief example. The vowel sound of ah, some research has is shown that it has a connection to relaxation or a feeling of being relaxed. You can think of this if somebody would give you a massage, maybe you would say, “Ah, that feels so good.” That’s the idea. The study I did look at various other sounds. Ah was one of the primary sounds that I looked at. In the psychological literature, there’s something called lexical decisions, which people have to identify whether a letter string is a word or non-word. It gets a little complicated here, but some of the words that they had to identify had the connotation of relaxation, and other words had no connection to relaxation. When people heard the sound ah before a word that had relaxation, they were able to identify that word faster and more accurately than if it was a word that had no connection to relaxation. That was one part of it, but I used similar kinds of reasoning to come up with the study that shows certain sounds have connections. There are six different primary sounds, and ah being one of them. Each of the primary sounds has a particular connection to a part of an emotion dimension. In the literature of psychology, it’s been identified that there are three dimensions of emotions, a relaxation dimension or how aroused or relaxed your emotion is. Some emotions are very relaxed. Some are very aroused. Other emotions are how pleasant or unpleasant they are. Some emotions are very pleasant. Happiness and joy are very pleasant. Other emotions are not pleasant like sadness and anger. The third dimension of emotion is how much you feel in control, how much are you controlling it, or how much something outside of you is controlling it. That’s internal versus external control.

These three dimensions of emotions have a particular sound that resonates most with it. As I already told you, relaxation resonates with the sound ah. If you’re looking at the dimension of relaxation, the other extreme is arousal or agitation, and the sound that connects to that would be an R sound, somebody would be angry or a growling type sound. That’s how the one connected with that. With the idea of how pleasant or unpleasant an emotion is, the M sound with your lips closed and making a sound through the nasal passage is connected to pleasantness. If you are thinking of something that tastes good, then it’s pleasant. You might say, “Mmm. That’s good.” The opposite extreme of pleasantness would be something that’s not very pleasant or disgusting. That would be, “Ooh. That’s not very nice.” You might see a bug or spider, and go, “Ooh.” Is this a cross-culture? This is cross-culture. I don’t know how many cultures. I haven’t done it myself, but I’ve seen some literature in German at least supporting this. I know that one of the main ways that people look at emotions is through facial expressions. Facial expressions have been found to be congruent across cultures. It’s been studied by various people and cultures to show the raising of the eyebrows for surprise, the smile for happiness, and the frowns for sadness. That’s universal across cultures. My reasoning for sounds is you’re doing a facial expression. If you purse your lips, ooh, that’s a facial expression, make that the ooh sound. There is a facial expression there. Carrying the logic of facial expressions in general are cross-cultural than it fits with sounds. Although, I haven’t been able to do cross-cultural studies, it would be something that would be worthwhile to pursue. I wonder when those studies are done, is there any inflection in the tones of the sounds like oh versus ooh? If you look at it, it changes facial expression when you change the inflection, and it also changes the meaning. The modulation of the voice has been studied and is known that that also affects emotion. Whenever I had people recording the sounds for my studies, I had to give them the instructions of, “Keep your intonation even, and don’t use inflections because of that confound that the inflections could create.” The ooh, I had to say, “This has to be neutral. You have to make the sound without an inflection if you can.” That’s the trick of doing it. That’s a fascinating study. I wonder if you have the application part of it that I assume you integrated in your yoga practice. Also, as a psychologist with clients, have you been able to apply sound to help them? Unfortunately, my Degree in Psychology is not as a clinical psychologist. I’m not qualified to be a clinician and have individual patients. My degree was in Experimental Psychology. The people that I studied were all clinical populations, but they were being seen by physicians or other psychologists, and not by myself. I had to do the paperwork to be able to study these people. There’s a whole process of meeting requirements that you’re not going to harm these people, written consent, and all that. I studied them, I’m not trying to treat them. Your passion is in trying to understand just across the board how we work with sound and vibrations. I was not trying to treat people, just trying to understand the sounds themselves. With your own practice, you did feel the effect on yourself? You integrated the sounds? That’s what I wrote about in my book, how I’ve used these practices, how I perceive these, and what I think could be useful. I give the caveat that everybody should try and see what works for them, and not just take my word for it, but give it your own evaluation. What I’d say in writing in the book is that this is hopefully something you can use for spiritual growth. Sufi Mindfulness Yoga is a great book for self-evaluation and spiritual growth. Share on X What is the name of your book? Sufi Mindfulness Yoga. What I studied first was yoga, and I learned through Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, which were first put down in words by Patanjali in the third century of this current era and are considered sacred books by Hindu folks. Within that, it’s quite a fascinating structure of understanding psychology. The Yoga Sutras have been studied by various Sufi masters. There’s been a lot of commentary written by Sufi masters on the Yoga Sutras. You have some YouTube videos. Do you teach some practices with Sufi Mindfulness Yoga? In those videos, that’s what I have created, yes. So far, I’ve only created six of them. I have a lot more ideas. I’ve just been stalled for whatever reason. Life happens. The first three practices I put were talking about were in the Yoga Sutras. They were called the modifications, the mind, and the Sufis would call the nafs. The processes that your mind is agitated and all the time churning, perhaps needlessly, sometimes usefully, but a lot of times, it’s just chatter in your mind that is going on. I’ve identified several Sufi or names of Allah that you can use in helping you overcome if you get stuck in some of these nafs that are constantly bugging you. For example, if your mind is thinking about, “How do I solve this? How am I going to do this? Am I doing this right? How can I work on this?” that’s where I find the word salam can be very helpful, getting rid of that nagging self-doubting. The word salam has the meaning in English of peace, which makes a lot of sense if you think about, “Let your mind become at peace.” I can go through the process of how that works if you’d like.

The different sounds have different connotations. The S sound is a very white noise kind of thing. It’s a churning of you trying to be in control. If you remember, I said one of the three dimensions of emotions is control, and it can be internal or external. If you’re trying to make yourself internally be in control of the situation, the sound that most connects to that is the S sound. Your control wheels are turning, and it’s like a white noise. That mental energy keeps foaming. The first step in taking control of that is to move that to letting go, and that is the purpose of the L sound in salam. Both of them use the tongue. For the S sound, the tongue is letting a little bit of the air come out. It’s creating friction by closing the gap and making your vocal track very tiny space. You’re trying to control a whole lot with your tongue there. If you realize the L sound, that lets your tongue drop down and lets the air flow through there. You’re letting go of that control with the L sound. The A of salam, you relax. Let go and relax, and then let that M come in, salam. That takes your mental energy of the S, let’s go into the L, and relaxes with the A, and then you end up with feeling this pleasantness. That’s the process that would work. That’s how I would analyze it. Can we take a minute with that? For the people that are reading, can we have an experience? I’m sure that maybe I’m the only one who has chatter going in the mind, but just in case, anybody else who’s reading this right now has chatter in their mind, maybe we can just do a little? Can you lead us on a little practice, Brian? Sure. A lot of times we use ah as a lead in salam. Sufis use that because the ah is identifying and ah is supplication or a request to bring in this, the ya. If we just relax for a second, I’ll start here and say, “As-salam. Ya salam.” Hopefully, that can be useful. It can allow your mind to relax and stop your worrying or fretting over something that you’re trying to figure out with your mind. It’s not something you would perhaps use if your emotion is not associated with trying to control something. If you’re upset with something, that’s more of, “This feels bad to me,” then that’s not going to be as useful. If it’s just a mental issue of your mind, you want your mind to slow down, and not be so caught up in trying to figure something out, then I think salam is excellent. If you want your mind to slow down and not be so caught up in trying to figure something out, Salam is an excellent practice. Share on X I also think maybe the ancient language has the ability to also prolong the letters and slow down. When you say salaam, you can prolong because of the relaxation. That’s what Mastura was referring to. The tone of the voice, and how you are present with it and say it slowly, all of this has effect. How about the posture of the body? How the person is sitting, does that also has effect? I’m sure it does. When I do my practices, I try to sit erectly. I used to sit on the floor. I can’t do that anymore. My knees have gotten to the point where that doesn’t work. I try to sit in erect position with my back straight. That seems to be the most beneficial to me. If that’s something that you can’t attain or not as easily, and you need support or other position, it still can be useful. It’s from the perspective of everything affects everything else. I know in just doing that short little practice that we did, I felt all kinds of tension releasing from my face, jaw, and shoulders. I felt my face and facial expressions changing, and I felt my shoulders dropping. I felt my body posture and body language shifting as we were introducing those sounds and invoking the peace, the sounds that invoke the divine name of peace. That goes to the effect the sound has on the body, the way the body responds, and how the body language, facial expressions, and posture changes when the sound is invoked. Is that a part of your study as well? I haven’t been able to get to that level of detail on it. You spoke about the external and internal effect of sound. Does this mean if someone recite the beautiful name of Allah on someone else, it will have similar effect if the person themselves said it? The voice coming from within versus hearing it from someone reciting to you on the outside. What is your understanding? I can speculate but I haven’t been able to do that study. It would be worth doing. One study that I can remember that did affect and look at just one particular sound was the ooh sound. Even just listening to that created a feeling of uncomfortableness, displeasure, or unpleasantness to people. It’s only one study. I didn’t do that study myself, but I was able to read that study in the literature. It makes sense that others’ sounds would also follow through like that. It’s tapping into an infinite integrated drops of ocean. Poet Rumi says, “We’re not a drop in the ocean. We’re the ocean in a drop.” Everything’s so interconnected and interrelated, and everything affects everything else, and you’re tapping into this huge ocean. Is there one thing in your research that sparked your passion or something you found most fascinating? I could not identify anything that happened in an instantaneous way. At some point, it just struck me that all that I’ve studied and found fits together in such a beautiful way that I was like, “This is so much beyond me making something up. This is such a beautiful existence.” It was something that I can’t put into words, but the feeling of all the beauty that I’ve seen and found in this is overwhelming almost. You said that you started with yoga. I know some people do yoga and meditation in silence and some chanting. Would you say that when someone meditate or do the Sufi audibly, it’s more effective than sitting in silence? I don’t know. My practices are mostly in silence now. When I’m in a group, I find that when we do the speaking out loud, it’s more powerful than sitting together in silence. Sometimes, I do words out loud in my practices. Those are ones that feels like it has to be said. It comes out. Other times, I’m focusing on a particular name, Ballah, and how I can feel those sounds maybe internally rather than having to say them. That came a lot. When I was in grad school up in Boston, I had a night job of teaching Computer Science in Central Square. I don’t know if you know anything about the subway system, but anyhow, I had to take the subway. Driving was not really much fun, so I usually took the subway. While I was there, I carried with me a little book of the 99 names all the time, and I would go through them. Sitting in the subway, you don’t want to be saying things out loud. I had a practice of saying them internally. The same vibration. I became familiar with the 99 names. I’ve learned them and have them all in inside of me through that process. I don’t know if that’s influenced me later on why I still do things silently. I know other Sufis have written that they practice their sounds internally instead of out loud. I do. I try to try to play with both. When I’m really going into the deep places, then it becomes silent, almost more of an intention for the waves to move through and the resonance to become an inner resonance. I found that when I can’t focus, I use the audible. If I am focused and tuned, then I can just say them silently. Did your study of sound help you understand the beautiful names of Allah and the deep meaning of them? Yes. Every time I would get an insight or found something in the literature that was pertinent and then did some work on my own to verify or support that, I would then apply that my practices of the names. I had been continually doing the practices. It would be like a light bulb would go on many of these times. My first understanding of the names would be then expanded into, “That’s why this is.” My realization went together with my study of the names. It’s an organic process. I have a question that is maybe a little bit off the beaten path. Brian, when we were first introduced, I know your undergrad is in Mathematics. As is mine. Amany is in Engineering. What kind of engineering, Amany? Electronics Engineering, which you have to include the Math also, the algebra. I also recognize some other people that I know that went into Physics were drawn to Linguistics. One thing about Mathematics and Physics is understanding the geometric structure of the universe. There is sound in terms of the emanation of vibration from source. Everything is energy, is wave, and moves. Everything is energy and motion, and we have this geometric and physical structure of the universe. I’m fascinated with the number of people that I’m meeting lately who started in Math and Physics, and then ended up with really wanting to understand sound. Have you noticed any connection? There’s a part of me that’s personally wanting to explore that connection more deeply. I believe it all helps us to understand the structure of the universe, creation, emanation of creation, and consciousness from source. I personally am wanting to understand and explore that more. Have you noticed anything in your work or personal life that connects any of the dots there? The observation is a good one. It speaks to the fact that inquiring minds that are very analytical eventually are going to get focused on the self, what is that, and how does that connect to everything. Ultimately, from a philosophical point of view, that’s what we are. We’re connected to everything, and we want to understand and experience that. I can’t point to any research that shows how a math background would lead to that, but it does make a lot of sense. I’m fascinated to understand that that’s common.

It will be interesting because I don’t know about the yoga practice that much, but in Islamic Sufism, we are told to recite, for example, certain secret phrases 33 times. Sometimes, that makes me wonder because you said in your research, you made people repeat a certain sound like the ooh sound or the ah sound in a certain number or period of time, or was that not in an aspect of the research? I did not in my research, but I can say that with the yoga groups, particularly the Yoga Research Society, which is where I spent a lot more time originally anyhow, they also have practices. Thirty-three times is common. If we’re going to do this, and it’s 33, it’s often the number that was chosen. It seems that maybe for the sound to have its maximum or full effect, it needs to be repeated. The mind repeating to break out of its reputation circuit, it has to be a certain number of time. It’s a guess. I’m not sure where they come up with those numbers, but it does seem to be something that is common. In terms of the impact on using these practices for our daily lives from the theoretical into the daily life practice, what do you find is the biggest impact for people in this work for using sound, understanding sound, and putting it into practice? It’s all dependent upon where the individual is, what their aims are, and hang-ups they might have. You can use the sounds to enhance the spiritual experience or connection, feeling of connection to Allah. You can use the sounds to help you get over certain emotional issues you’re having. It can help you deal with physical problems better, not saying to solve those physical problems, but have your outlook on them perhaps change. Maybe one of the bigger ones is helping to reduce stress. In our society, stress is such a big thing that we can find the use of these sounds very helpful in that way. It depends. Right now, I use the sounds for the names in a couple of basic ways. I used to be focusing mostly on trying to get a deep meditation and feeling a connection to Allah or the presence of the universe being part of that whole. As I’m older, I use it to address certain physical issues, try to not let them absorb me and be as they are, but not let them take over. I also use it as a connection, a feeling of gratitude, or letting the feeling of the goodness that can be a blessing to you. Let that feeling come in. Let your feeling be like, “I feel blessed to be alive and to be part of this.” There are several different avenues of values. You told us a story about how you had this spiritual experience or vision. Do you think that these invocations of the beautiful names of Allah and the sound can open for us to see these visions and receive inspirations that can help guide our lives? There’s certainly a possibility that if we’re able to tune ourselves with these names, that can lead and guide us. There are certainly various sounds, Rasheed being one of the ones that I’m aware of that can help that way. There are other ones as well. If we're able to tune ourselves with these invocations of the beautiful names of Allah, it can lead and guide us in life. Share on X Can you give the translation of Rasheed for people who don’t know? The English translation that I’m familiar with is guide, but it’s a little more than that. Help me out here. It’s more than that. it’s guide and rationality. It has to do with the highest rationality and to reach intellectual and spiritual maturity. That is based on how it is used in Arabic. I think of Rasheed as a teacher also. It is not only a tool of relaxation because people can say, “I can relax by something else.” There are a lot of things that can produce relaxation, but I feel these practices open more than just a state of relaxation. It can open for the person to work with psychological issues or find the inspiration and vision that informs their daily life. The spiritual aspect of it is what I think you’re referring to, rather than the physical benefit. There are physical benefits, but that’s not where it ends. The goal or the true end would be the spiritual connection. It’s physical, emotional, and spiritual. Brian, I apologize, I interrupted you when you were going to speak about using the name Rasheed. Would you like to complete that thought? If you’re working towards something and you try to put your best effort forward, you have this energy, you want to apply your energy, and you’re not sure where this energy should go perhaps, that’s where the Rasheed is useful. The energy that you have can be expressed as an R with the R sound. The SH sound in English is not the same as the S sound. The tongue slips back for the SH sound. It’s more of a control. The S sound itself is just your mind going on, but the SH sound is your mind connecting to the physical. You’re trying to deal with what to do in this physical world with the SH sound. If you have this energy to work towards something, but you’re not sure where it’s going to go, the Rashid can be a useful practice for you. Share on X This energy you apply R, SH, and E, the E sound is letting go. This is where why I use the word guide here because we want to be guided by Allah or the power that we have our connection to. That’s the E sound, outside control. We want to let go, and let this outside control give us direction. Again, that’s where how I perceive guide in this. If we can take this energy that we have, this R energy and use the SH, and then E, let our control of the environment be guided for this outside force and end it with a D. We use the tongue for the D. It’s a stop consonant. When we say a D, it temporarily stops the airflow. It’s a voice stop consonant. D and T are both articulated with the tongue behind the teeth. The difference is for the D sound, you vibrate your vocal cords before you release the air, before the stop is taken away. For the T, you release the air before the vocal chords vibrate. There’s subtle difference there. For the D, you’re holding on to this articulation. With the tip of the tongue, that is self-control. That sums it up very probably too glibly but for one of saving time. We end with this D. This gives us the control that we’re looking for. It’s a paradox that we can seed our control to Allah or the outside E. We’re letting go to this power that we’re going to have faith in, and that lets us have the control we need. That’s a paradox that’s used in several of the names of Allah, the E followed by a D or the E followed by another control sound. Rasheed is a prime example of that. It’s more complicated than the salam explanation. I find this fascinating. A little bit easier to understand would be Raheem because it also has the E sound in it, and it has that R sound to begin with. I would recommend Raheem to use it to relieve stress. It’s a good way to release stress. If you’re dealing with the world, the stress builds up. They have this physical energy that isn’t hitting your nervous system. It’s not really mental that much as it is physical, you’re all keyed up. If you sit through traffic, that’s a prime example for me is having to deal with traffic, that can get you all round up. Raheem and Rahman both uses the guttural H, not the English H, but the Arabic H. With the effect that has, with that sound, it exhaust or flush out this R sound, Raheem. We want to get rid of this stress and let the E sound, which is this beneficial and merciful external control that we can tap into as most Sufis identify. This external control is being from Allah. That E then allows M to come in for the ending Raheem. It’s about the pleasure? That gives you this pleasant feeling, gets rid of this stress by letting this outside control give us this pleasant feeling. I really find Raheem very useful in that for situations of stress release where we want to just let go and bask in the power that Allah will allow come to us. Raheem and Rahman are mercy and compassion. There’s Rahman differs slightly because here you’re ending with an M sound, which if you understand that the way you articulate an M is with the tongue again, the tongue blocks the airflow completely. With an N, the air has to come through the nose. It’s similar to the M and that the air comes through the nose, but you’re not using your lips, you’re using your tongue. For articulators, the lips modulate the pleasant unpleasantness. The way to think of this is when a child is nursing, the only sound it can make is an mm-hmm sound. This is very pleasant, I’m sure, for the child. If the child is searching for the mother’s breasts, the lips are pursed, and ooh, they’re not getting what they want. The lips modulate. The B, which is also with the lips and the P, they both modulate this pleasantness dimension in a slightly different way because they’re being stop consonants. For the N sound, we’re using the tongue. The tongue modulates with all these sounds, like the S, T, and D sound. For all those sounds, we use the tongue, and they all modulate control in some way, how we’re controlling our thoughts and the physical environment. All those things are modulated through the tongue. The biggest or strongest control we can do is just block the airflow entirely, and that’s the N sound that we get then. With the N, that is how we express our strongest control. An example where you can see it in English, we use the N sound with No when we’re talking to our toddler. When we want to control that child, it’s no. The N sound is exemplar of very much control. In Rahman, you want to get control. The difference between Raheem and Rahman, Raheem, you’re asking for Allah’s mercy to come down. Rahman, you want to be in control. An example for Rahman is you have this nervous energy, or there’s something going on, maybe agitated, upset, but you need to have control of the situation than Rahman. That will be the ah, and it relaxes, the N gives you control. Rahman puts you in control. Instead of feeling like you’re upset, going to bite somebody’s head off, or do something aggressive because you’re agitated, Rahman can calm you down and give you control. Whereas Raheem, on the other hand, lets you let go, and have outside control through Allah to judge that you feel pleasant. There’s a big difference in Rahman and Raheem, but they both started out with trying to get rid of this energy that you’re dealing with. Which one you want to use depends on how you want to resolve this situation.

It is because energy, as they say, can’t be destroyed. It can only be transformed to something else. From my studies and reading, the R sound understood in Arabic as a repetition or recycling. It’s almost like you are recycling, aroused this unpleasant energy in you, and transforming it to something else more pleasant, peaceful, and insightful. As you are mentioning about the babies and how the first sense, to my knowledge, that the baby forms or even in while being an embryo is the sense of hearing. Sound is important. It is said if the mother listen to sacred recitation of the Quran, for example, or relaxing music, it will affect the babies rather than noise, fighting, and quarrelling. The second sense is the tasting, because that is first thing that connects the baby to the mother, unity, and nourishment. It just reminded me of how the Sufis say tasting when they describe spiritual experience, which always perplexed me. It’s almost when you are talking, all of a sudden became clear. They described spiritual experience as dhawq, as tasting, because it is connected to how the tongue pronounce some letters.  it gives us the inner peace or the pleasant emotion we have when we were in unity, just as when we were embryo, in unity with the mother. It seems like everything is connected that way. Also, I like the discussion about the position of the tongue, the stop where the energy is held or where the sound is held. It seems like it’s an expression of something very basic instinctual that is just natural as opposed to learned, and something that we are taught and learn. As you’re saying that, I’m feeling how sound connects us with our basic natural instincts that are found beyond the learned mind. Sounds are intrinsic to our being. We don’t have to think about them. We just experience them. It’s very big contrast to language. We do think about what we say. Hopefully, most of us do. If you talk to the leading linguists in the country, which I’ve had an opportunity to do, they’re not very open to the idea that a sound has an intrinsic value. Sounds are intrinsic to our being. We don't have to think about them, we just experience them. Share on X It’s very frustrating from my viewpoint of trying to get my research into an academic setting because of the establishment. In this country, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology or MIT has the leading voices in linguistics. Tufts, where I went was close enough that I’ve been down to the MIT campus a couple of times and spoken with some of these leading linguists, and they’re just very dismissive of the ideas that I was trying to present. It’s very discouraging that way. How much our thoughts affects us, and our thoughts are our inner voice, inner vibration, and sounds in a way. That also makes me think of the people who, for example, are deaf, but they can still receive that vibration in a subtle way and from inside themselves as thoughts. It should make the scientists aware that sounds are also connected to thoughts, and thoughts connected to our psychology, which is connecting to our wellbeing. It’s unfortunate that they think that way. Also, with one more study of trauma and the effects of trauma on the brain and the body, whereas, experientially speaking that a person can lose their voice or stifle their voice when they’ve experienced a trauma, especially a severe, catastrophic trauma, then the voice closes up, but you can help to connect with what you’re feeling and experiencing just by starting to play with those very introductory base sounds of hmm, just to try to connect with what’s really happening inside during this time so that you can begin to start to trust your voice and body again. Connect with your body. I know that’s one of the practices for treating trauma now. Maybe there will be new opening, Brian. I’m feeling like we need to start our own academy because what Amany and I are learning through this series of interviews that we’re doing and the Ocean of Sound that we’re facilitating, there’s so much there that goes beyond the knowledge that has been agreed upon in our mainstream cultural studies that is so valuable for our human, emotional, mental, and spiritual experience of what this world is about, why we’re here, and what we are here to be, to do, and to realize in our human lives. We just need to do our own. I’m very happy to find like-minded people in this area because there are a few people that I’ve been able to connect to in this way. Without the Sufis, the group that I connect to most here is Unitarian Universalists which are very open to all viewpoints. When I talk to them about sounds, they mostly scratch their heads. They’re not very experienced with those ways of trying to connect. I remember myself, I was a skeptic in the past. One phase or something clicks, and it opens a personal interest so for everyone where they are and what is helpful to them at the point. There are many people who are now interested in sounds, and I’ve been also trying to find the research and read about it. It’s great to connect with you, and I’m looking forward to read your book more in detail to understand. Thank you for all the efforts you are putting in that topic. It’s important. I want to thank you also. As a student when I was studying in Advanced Mathematics classes, I was having a spiritual experience that at the time I didn’t have words or any context for it. I tried to express it and I got hard shutdown by academia in a way that was damaging and set me back spiritually for a while. Embarking on the spiritual path and through this path that I’ve been on now for the last couple of years, it’s coming full circle and I’m recognizing the context of the experience I was having in earlier days. I want to say for people who are out there, especially young people in academia, people who have had those experience, and for teachers in academia, too, you never know how we can bring about new avenues of understanding for each other and to not ever dismiss or shut things down. There’s been a lot of that that’s happened. I know I’ve talked to other people who’ve had similar experiences. Brian, being in the academia, it’s difficult to find the openings because there can be some rigidity there, yet those are the places that we turn to when we want to do research meant to open up new avenues. A word, note, and prayer that we can have some more openness, receptivity, and a sense of exploration there. With that said, Brian, I’d like to ask you as a final question. Is there any advice that you have for anybody who wants to learn more about this study that you have been exploring and the work that you do? They can check my website out. I guess you can leave a link in the comments section for me. Sufi Mindfulness Yoga would probably get you there. The URL is www.HolisticEmotivePractices.com. That gives you a link to start exploring that. I’m open to people who have questions, and who want to make email contact with me, which you can get via that website. From my endpoint, that would be ways to do it. I have some YouTube videos that can get you some information, maybe a little more easily accessible than the website. Finally, there’s the book, Sufi Mindfulness Yoga, which goes very much into detail of all this work. If you get interested in it, that would be where you would go. Maybe that’s not your first stop, but you can explore through the website, which is a lot easier than YouTube videos. If I could ask both of you, if you know people that would be interested and you bring up my name, feel free to give my contact information.

I’d be happy to talk to more people who are likewise trying to figure things out in this area, trying to use the names of Allah, understand, and apply them in a way that makes sense and makes good use of them, and enhances people’s lives through them. If I can get more connected to people directly, that would be great. Having people look at my work, that’s fine, too, but personal connections are excellent. I appreciate you reaching out to me. I appreciate all your interest in my work. Thank you. It will be our pleasure, Brian, to let people be in contact with you or interested to learn more about that. I want to thank you very much for the valuable knowledge you shared with us and for the time you spend with us in this interview. You’re quite welcome. Do you want connection with the yoga community also? It seems like you have a nice comprehensive bridge there. I do have connections with the Yoga Research Society. I periodically participate in events that they hold. They’re located in Philadelphia, so I still have that connection. They’re familiar with my work to some degree. Some of them have read it more than others. It’s all one and connected. It’s all one, and that there is a commonality. If we stick with things long enough, we find the commonality. Thank you so much, Brian.

Important Links

• Brian McPherson
• Sufi Mindfulness Yoga
• The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali
• YouTube – W Brian McPherson
• https://Joyfully-Living.MyKajabi.com/TheOceanOfSoundSummit
• http://www.HolisticEmotivePractices.com/
• https://www.ResearchGate.Net/Scientific-Contributions/W-Brian-McPherson-38812696

About Brian McPherson

About Amany Shalaby

Amany Shalaby, PhD, is an Author, Speaker, Teacher, Translator, Interpreter, and Chaplain. She is the Founder of Universal Chaplaincy, and a Member of The Association of Muslim Chaplains, MWO’s Hakima. Amany served for twelve years as interpreter and translator for Sidi Shaikh Muhammad Sa’id al-Jamal, who was the Imam for al-Masjid al-Aqsa and the Head of the Sufi Counsel in Jerusalem for thirty years. She translated twenty books on Islamic spirituality, written by the Shaikh. Shaikh Muhammad al-Jamal taught that there is only one Divine message for humanity: It is the message of unity, love, peace, mercy, justice, and freedom for all.