Rahima Schmall, Ph.D.
Rahima Schmall, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist, registered nurse and a master healer and teacher in the Sufi tradition. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a BS in Nursing and then received her master’s and doctorate in counseling psychology from California Institute of Integral Studies. Professionally, she has worked as a family therapist in addictions, a consultant in a locked psychiatric clinic, director of a student counseling center and a department chair for a graduate program in counseling. With over 30 years of private practice experience, Dr. Schmall blends psychology, medical knowledge and spirituality in her work and she specializes in working with people who have life-threatening or chronic medical conditions.
Rahima started her own spiritual growth and emotional healing process with the Twelve Steps. Her involvement in Al-Anon started her on a life-long commitment to turn her will and life over to the care of God and be of service to others. Her spiritual seeking then brought her to Tibetan Buddhism, and in the late 1990’s after being diagnosed with a serious illness, she was introduced to the Sufi path and Sufi healing tradition.
An experienced leader of groups of all kinds, Rahima is the former director of a Sufi retreat program and the former director of their Healing Intensive Program. She is currently on faculty at the University of Spiritual Healing and Sufism, serving as the department chair for the Spiritual Healing and Counseling Master’s Program.
Rahima provides a gentle and nurturing space for people to move past their pain and despair to find peace, wholeness and harmony. She is known for her ability to guide clients into the depth of their own hearts to bring forth their own healing light, transforming the most difficult of circumstances. Her own healing journey with chronic illness allows her to understand the stresses that a serious diagnosis brings and the blessings of love that can emerge.
To learn more about the Healing Intensive Virtual Retreat, contact Rahima directly at dr.rahimaschmall@suficenter.org.
Wadude John Laird, M.D.
Dr. Laird graduated from Dartmouth College in 1969, Dartmouth Medical School in 1976 and completed his Family Practice Internship in 1977. Immediately thereafter, he started to serve indigent patients in the mountains of western North Carolina. In 1980 Dr. Laird founded the Great Smokies Medical Center in Asheville, N.C. Under his direction, the center served nearly 10,000 families and became a leading innovative and influential force in the early integrative medicine movement.
As a specialist in integrative medicine, John Wadude Laird, M.D. has dedicated forty years of his professional life to empowering his patients by consistently providing them with a wide range of therapeutic options, expert counsel and deep personal caring. For Dr. Laird, the practice of medicine is, above all, a service profession, a calling to facilitate real healing of the body, mind, heart and spirit. He believes that healing begins by listening deeply with care and compassion.
Dr. Laird knows that every human being has a unique and profound ability to heal.
Dr. Laird has a life-long commitment to integrating scientific and spiritual perspectives of healing. Early in his career he organized and chaired several international conferences, attended by more than 5,000 people, that presented world-recognized experts who described breakthrough discoveries on how to facilitate real healing. Dr. Laird has provided specialized continuing medical education training to over one hundred health professionals seeking advanced training in heart-based clinical therapies that promote deep healing of emotions and the spirit. In addition, he has taught these self-care perspectives to several thousand people and is widely recognized as an insightful, loving and inspired teacher.
Nura Lora Laird, M.Ed.
Nura Laird, M.Ed, graduated from Smith College in 1969 and earned her master’s degree in education soon thereafter at the University of Massachusetts. She has over forty years of healing and counseling experience, facilitating deep emotional and spiritual healing with individuals, couples, and families. Nura was a true pioneer in the alternative school movement in the 1970’s, 80’s and 90’s. She co-founded two alternative schools, one of which is internationally recognized for innovation and excellence in pre- through middle school education.
For 40 years Nura has been a student of spiritual healing and Sufism and she is a graduate and faculty member of the University of Spiritual Healing and Sufism (USHS). She has undergone a process of deep spiritual development and years of extensive training and as a healer, her goal is to be a vessel through which Divine light and love freely flow, and to provide compassion, safety, protection and guidance. One of her gifts is to be deeply present with people facing profound life challenges.
Nura is also a mediator with extensive training and experience in community and family mediation. In this way, she has facilitated healing and transformation in the areas of relationships, parenting, and family systems. She is widely recognized as an insightful, loving and committed spiritual counselor and healer, with a unique ability to help clients and their families face difficult life situations.
Rahima Hayes
Rahima Herminia Hayes was born and raised in Mexico City. Since she was young, she has been interested in healing of all modalities, especially spiritual healing. Her first studies in healing began in 1997, in the field of metaphysical diagnostics, through which she became fascinated with the relationship between the body, mind and spirit. In 2008, she discovered Sufi healing, the modality which resonated most deeply in her heart. These teachings were brought through Sidi Muhammad Sa’id al Jamal, whom she recognized as a very holy and humble servant of God. That same year she officially became his student and began her Masters in Divinity at the University of Spiritual Healing and Sufism in Pope Valley CA, with a focus in healing. She currently lives in Santa Rosa, CA with her husband and son and works as an active healer and member of the local Shadhiliyya Sufi community.
What I love to share is the calling to explore the subtle inner worlds inside ourselves. To learn to read our own book and find a higher Source of wisdom that is full of Divine Love, Mercy, and Compassion. Practicing and sharing healings is an invitation to know God in everything and everyone. It is an invitation to break every picture, illusion, or belief that causes us pain and suffering, and open to a Divine shower of Light and new possibilities.
Through this journey we can know true healing and experience in this lifetime, in this moment, real Love, real Peace, joyful relationships and intimacy with God (insha’allah – God willing).
Donna Jamila Crews
Donna Jamila Crews took the Sufi promise in 1998 and started attending what was then The Jaffe Institute and is now the University of Sufism in 1999, and has been a student ever since. Donna Jamila has served the Sufi community and the University in many ways over the last 20+ years. She was a teaching assistant for 12 years in the undergraduate program, and is currently a teaching assistance for the Peacemaking Master’s program. .
Jamila feels that Sufi healing has helped her manifest and live the life that Allah/God intended for her. The biggest surprise of studying Sufism has been family lineage healing. One of her gifts is helping people unveil their truth, usually about their unmet potential, and then offering them support in managing that potential.
One highlight of Jamila’s family lineage healing is finding the daughter she gave up for adoption. Sufi healing helped Jamila to open her heart and release all of the guilt surrounding that time, opening the door for a beautiful relationship with her daughter.
Jamila loves to answer questions about Sufism, including exploring the best options for learning more about Sufi healing.
Na’ama McCreedy
I found my way to Sufi Healing by reading a flyer that said “Healing through the Deep Love of God.” It was a desperate time in my life after being diagnosed with a life threatening illness, and my whole world seemed to crumble around me. This was a good thing, although I did not know it at the time. Over 20 years later after “taking the Sufi Way” of surrendering to the Divine, and one step at a time being able to learn how to walk through the veils/pictures and begin seeing everything in life through a lens of the Reality of Divine Love, my business card now says “Healing through the Deep Love of God.” This is what brings the real healing and true happiness.
My real life began 22 years ago when I made a commitment to God and began walking the Sufi path. Even though I had no clue who God was, I had seen others that seemed to have a deep peace in the midst of facing some of life’s most difficult challenges. I knew I needed to pursue God to find that peace.
Since that time, I have completed 3 years of the Sufi Healing University, followed by 15 years in service to the Sufi University as an assistant teacher. I have served as a healer and teacher for the Healing Intensive for 15 years, and I have also served as a teacher for the Sufi Zawiya Retreat, as well. In my local community, I have been a hospice volunteer for 15 years, and I’ve also volunteered for a few years at a horse rescue. I coordinate and support daily free spiritual teleconference calls on behalf of our Sufi community. I also worked in our local hospice resale shop for four years.
At the core of all of these outer expressions of service has been my ongoing journey to know myself as a means of knowing my Lord, as taught by our shaykh, Sidi.
This Sufi way of Divine Love, its ritual practices and openings of awareness, and the secrets it contains, have really supported me in walking through all of life’s challenges. It guides me as I continue to cultivate the understanding of who I truly am at the very core of my being, and it helps me to deeply receive and embody the real peace and happiness that can bring.