Engineering on one side.
Yoga on the other.

When I leaned into engineering, I felt fake in yoga.
When I leaned into yoga, I felt irresponsible toward engineering.

People asked how I held both.

I didn’t.

I oscillated.

And when you oscillate long enough,
you start trying to prove that you’re stable.

That’s what being split does.

When you don’t feel steady inside,
You try to look steady outside.

You over-structure.
You over-explain.
You try to look integrated before you actually are.

I see the same pattern in teaching.

There’s another quiet split that creeps in:

Teaching versus self-practice.

Output versus private work.

I remember teaching five times a week.

I told myself I was immersed.
I told myself teaching counted.

It didn’t.

Teaching is visible.
Self-practice is private.

Teaching is performance.
Self-practice is confrontation.

When the private work thins out,
The visible work gets louder.

More creative flows.
More complex transitions.
More choreography to feel solid.

Somewhere along the way, we started confusing complexity with depth.

But complexity is often a shield.

When you don’t feel grounded,
You add layers.

Imposter syndrome doesn’t show up because you’re incapable.

It shows up when you don’t trust your own ground.

Whether it was engineering and yoga,
or teaching and self-practice,
the pattern was the same.

When I felt unsure inside,
I tried to look certain outside.

Integration didn’t happen when I chose one side.

And it didn’t happen because I did more poses.

It happened when I stopped trying to perform a version of myself.

When I sat long enough to admit where I felt small.

When I allowed both sides of me to exist
without trying to make one win.

Self-practice isn’t choreography.

It’s the place where you stop lying to yourself.

Teaching is the embodiment of that honesty.

If your private work disappears,
your presence starts to wobble.

Not because your sequencing is wrong.

But because you’re compensating.

You don’t need to look put together.

You need to stop splitting yourself.

At work.
With your partner.
In the way you teach.
In the way you speak to yourself when no one is around.

Because when you feel unsure inside,
you try to sound certain outside.

When you feel small,
you try to look impressive.

When you don’t trust your own ground,
you build complexity.

This isn’t about yoga.

It’s about the moments where you say yes
When you mean no.

The times you over-explain
because silence feels unsafe.

The way you build more
instead of sitting still.

So I’ll leave you with this —

Where are you performing strength
instead of admitting you’re unsettled?

Where are you adding layers
because you don’t feel solid?

That’s the real practice.

Not the one people clap for.

The one where you stop pretending
and quietly become whole.

With Love & Stillness,
Saf

The living series continues on → Whispered Life.

Practice and reflection unfold daily on → Whispered Flow.

For yoga teachers ready to deepen their grounding → The mentorship lives here.

I thought I knew what I signed up for.
Asana.
Breath.
A bit of philosophy I could romanticize.

I did not know I was about to lose my shit over a plate of rice.

Sadhana was at 5:30 a.m.

By 8, after practice, my body was awake and my stomach was roaring.
I was used to eating like a machine.
Protein. Volume. Second servings.
A guy my size doesn’t “sample” food.

Except at the ashram, we didn’t eat at 8.

We went straight into lectures.

By noon, hunger wasn’t hunger anymore.
It was agitation.
It was ego.
It was, why the fuck are we still talking?

At 12, there was an hour of meditation.

I sat there bargaining with God,
resenting enlightenment,
counting minutes like a prisoner.

By 1 p.m., it was finally food time.

The plates were small.
Offensively small.

I remember staring at mine thinking,
This is a starter.

I mentally planned my second round before taking the first bite.

There were no second rounds.

The chef didn’t care how big you were.
Didn’t care if you lifted weights.
Didn’t care what your appetite thought it deserved.

You got what was placed on the plate.
That’s it.

There were rules.

No silverware.
Eat with your hands.

Fine.

Then another rule.

Right hand only.
Left hand behind your back.

Day one: shocked.
Day two: irritated.
Day three: pissed off.

There was no coffee either.

No espresso.
No double shot ritual.
No cigarettes.

I’m the kind of man who measured mornings in caffeine and smoke.

By the end of the first week I was convinced this had been a huge fucking mistake.
Grumpy. Distracted.
Trying to absorb philosophy while fantasizing about omelets.

The teachers watched me unravel and quietly laughed.

And somewhere around day ten, something shifted.

Not spiritually.
Not dramatically.

Just a simple thought:

What if this is all you get?

This portion.
This exact plate.
This day.

Are you going to stay offended?

Because that’s what it was.

Not hunger.

Offense.

Offended that reality didn’t match the picture in my head.

I started eating differently.

Slower.

Every grain of rice deliberate.
Every vegetable tasted like it might not come back.

Food time stopped being compensation.
It became attention.

I wiped the plate clean — not because I was starving —
but because I didn’t want to waste what had been given.

Something in me softened.

Not surrender.

Respect.

Two weeks later we were allowed to leave the ashram.
Cafés.
Fast food.
Coffee.

I walked past them.

Not out of discipline.
Not out of pride.

I just didn’t feel like it.

The hunger had changed shape.

Months later — still traveling — I sat in a small café and ordered an espresso.

I looked at my wallet.

I could order another.
And another.

No one would stop me.

And the thought came back:

Just because you can
doesn’t mean you should.

Now when a cup of coffee lands in my hand,
I pause.

Three seconds.

Because I remember the version of me
who was offended by a small plate of rice.

The version of me
who thought the world should adjust to his appetite.

Fasting was never about feeling someone else’s hunger.
It was about meeting your own.

Meeting the irritation.
The grabbing.
The quiet belief that more is owed.

Sometimes less doesn’t make you weaker.

It makes you free.

And when something finally reaches your hands
coffee, food, a kiss, a quiet morning,
you don’t consume it like it’s owed.

You receive it like it isn’t.

So I’ll leave you with the question that cracked me open:

What are you still convinced
you can’t function without?

With Love & Stillness,
Saf

A student shares something heavy.
Emotion rises in the room.
The space tightens.

And something in the teacher shifts.

Not outwardly.
Internally.

The chest leans forward.
The voice softens a little too much.
The urge appears, to help more, to say more, to hold deeper.

This is where many teachers cross a line
without realizing it.

Not because they’re careless.
But because they care.

And care, without grounding,
becomes confusion.

You are not a therapist.
You are not a physio.
You are not there to fix what surfaces.

Your role is simpler
and harder.

To stay present
without inserting yourself.

To hold the room
without absorbing it.

To let experience move
without managing it.

Early on, I misunderstood this.

I thought holding space meant carrying
what students brought in.
That presence meant emotional availability without limit.
That being a “good” teacher meant leaning in.

What actually happened?

I left classes drained.
My body felt heavy.
My clarity dulled.

And students didn’t feel safer.
They felt uncertain.

Because when the teacher leaves their body,
the room loses its ground.

Holding space isn’t about going deeper into emotion.
It’s about staying rooted while emotion moves.

There’s a difference.

A grounded teacher doesn’t chase release.
They don’t amplify feeling.
They don’t rescue.

They stay with breath.
With timing.
With silence.

They trust the practice to do its work
without narrating it.

This is where many teachers get confused.

They think:
“If I don’t respond, I’m cold.”
“If I don’t engage, I’m bypassing.”
“If I don’t help, I’m failing.”

But stepping out of your role
doesn’t make the space safer.

It destabilizes it.

Students don’t need you to understand their story.
They need you to remain regulated.

They don’t need your insight.
They need your steadiness.

Presence is not emotional intimacy.
It’s nervous system leadership.

And this is where the mat ends
and life begins.

Because the same mistake shows up everywhere.

In friendships.
In relationships.
In family conversations.

Every time someone shares something heavy
and you rush to reassure, explain, or fix
you’ve stepped out of presence.

Every time discomfort rises
and you soften your truth to keep the peace
the ground disappears.

We overstep because we care.
We absorb because we fear conflict.
We confuse closeness with collapse.

But holding someone
doesn’t mean carrying them.

Being available
doesn’t mean being porous.

Love doesn’t require self-erasure.

Whether you’re leading a class
or sitting across from someone you love,

the principle is the same:

Stay in your body.
Stay in your role.
Stay where your feet can feel the floor.

That’s where trust comes from.
That’s where safety actually lives.

Feet before hands.
Ground before response.
Stability before meaning.

If this feels uncomfortable, good.

That discomfort is the edge of integrity.

With Love & Stillness,
Saf

The living series continues on → Whispered Life.

Practice and reflection unfold daily on → Whispered Flow.

For yoga teachers ready to deepen their grounding → The mentorship lives here.

It’s avoidance that learned how to sound clean.

It shows up as good vibes only.
As we’re all love.
As I don’t engage with negativity.

Not because darkness isn’t there,
but because engagement would cost something.

This is how disembodiment hides now.
Not in dissociation,
but in composure.

Not in chaos,
but in curated calm.

You can hear it in the phrases people reach for:

“I’m staying neutral.”
“I don’t want to add negativity.”
“I’m protecting my peace.”

Peace that depends on silence isn’t peace.
It’s withdrawal.

This creates a bubble
where everything revolves around
lmy process,
my healing,
my truth
until reality becomes inconvenient.

Call it egospiritual insulation.

Inside it, concern becomes selective.
Compassion narrows.
Responsibility gets reframed as “low vibration.”

Healing doesn’t make you fragile.
It makes you available.

If what you call healing makes you more self-referential,
more offended by reality,
more focused on protecting your inner state

that’s not embodiment.
That’s self-absorption with a spiritual accent.

Another version sounds like this:

Nobody knows the hell I survived.

Maybe true.
Still not the point.

Survival doesn’t grant moral exemption.
Pain doesn’t excuse absence.
What you went through doesn’t determine how you show up now.

Embodiment doesn’t float above reality.
It enters it.

It shows up in what you don’t ignore.
What you refuse to stay silent about.
What you’re willing to risk.

If your practice only works
when nothing is asked of you,
it isn’t grounding.

It’s insulating.

If your calm collapses the moment truth is inconvenient,
that calm was never embodied.

It was controlled.

Disembodiment doesn’t live in sensation.
It lives in omission.

In what you don’t say.
In what you don’t stand for.
In what you quietly step around
while calling it peace.

If this feels uncomfortable, good.

What you do with that
is no longer a matter of healing.

It’s a matter of choice.

With Love & Stillness,
Saf

The living series continues on → Whispered Life.

Practice and reflection unfold daily on → Instagram.

For yoga teachers ready to deepen their grounding → the mentorship lives here.

For years, I thought that was strength.

For seventeen years, discipline was my identity.
Martial arts. Daily training. Preparing for competitions.
Locking in, no matter what.

Pain wasn’t a signal.
It was background noise.

So when my wrists gave out — both of them — I didn’t stop.
Tendinitis turned chronic.
My back followed.

There was a period where I couldn’t even hold a fork without pain.
Doctors told me I’d have to live with it.

I listened to them.
I just didn’t listen to my body.

That injury is how I found yoga.
Not as relief
as interruption.

It asked for something I wasn’t trained to give.
Listening.
Pausing.
Letting the edge soften.

And at first, I resisted it.
Not consciously
habitually. And yet, slowly, something cracked open.

The body softened.
The noise dropped.
A different kind of silence appeared.

And underneath it, a question I couldn’t outwork:

What are you trying to prove?

I learned to rest.
I learned to modify.
I learned not to push through pain.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

Because the pattern didn’t disappear.
It adapted.

The violence simply changed form.

Instead of pushing through injury, I built structure.
A very rigid structure.

4:30 a.m. wake-ups.
Two-hour long practices.
No exceptions.

If I woke up late, the day felt wrong.
If I missed a session, I wouldn’t practice at all.
Fifteen minutes didn’t count.
Thirty minutes didn’t count.

It was all or nothing.

Yoga didn’t remove the distortion.
It revealed it.

I hadn’t stopped hurting myself.
I had just changed the method.

What finally shifted things wasn’t force or willpower.
It was allowing space instead of resisting what was already there.

And slowly — not dramatically —
the pain let go.

This is the part we rarely talk about.

Discipline isn’t automatically clean.
It can come from devotion
or it can come from fear.

Fear of slowing down.
Fear of feeling what’s underneath.
Fear of losing the identity built on I push through.

Discipline can be love in motion.
And it can be violence with better manners.

They look almost identical from the outside.

The difference isn’t in the routine.
It’s in the relationship.

One listens.
The other overrides.

One adapts.
The other demands.

One comes from care.
The other from the quiet need to prove something
to yourself, before anyone else.

I don’t write this to argue against discipline.
I write it because many of us were never taught how to recognize
when discipline stops serving life
and starts replacing listening.

The body always knows.
It signals.
It whispers.
It tightens.

And when it’s ignored long enough, it forces the conversation.

The question isn’t whether you’re disciplined.

It’s simpler than that.

Where is your discipline coming from?

From love
Or from fear
the need to stay in control,
the refusal to stop?

You don’t need to answer it perfectly.
You just need to answer it honestly.

That’s where things actually begin to change.

With Love & Stillness,
Saf

The living series continues on Whispered Life.

Practice and reflection unfold daily on Instagram.

For yoga teachers ready to deepen their grounding → the mentorship lives here.

Not abandoned dramatically.
Just quietly bypassed.

Life still functions.
Days move forward.
Decisions get made.

From the outside, things can even look good.

But inside, something is always slightly ahead of itself.

The mind takes over because it has to.
It plans.
It explains.
It stays alert.

It learns to scan rooms.
To anticipate reactions.
To stay one step ahead of discomfort.

Not because it wants control,
but because it doesn’t trust what hasn’t been felt yet.

What isn’t allowed into the heart doesn’t disappear.
It relocates.

It shows up as a chest that never fully softens.
As breath that stays shallow in public spaces.
As a body that’s braced even when nothing is happening.

You don’t need a dramatic story to recognize this.
You only need to notice how often you explain what you feel
before you’ve actually felt it.

How quickly you reach for clarity
instead of contact.

I’ve seen this most clearly in my own life.
Not all at once — slowly.

There was a period where everything looked right on paper.
Work was stable.
Structure was solid.
I kept going.

And yet, something in me was always slightly ahead of itself.

I ignored it — not aggressively, just quietly — until the body started to speak louder.

I noticed the same pattern in my practice.

There was a time when my flows were clean.
Handstands long.
Splits open.

Everything worked.

But I wasn’t checking in.
I was using the body to move.

I remember one of my teachers saying once — almost in passing — that postures done without awareness are just shapes.

At the time, I understood it intellectually.
I just didn’t feel it yet.

When the heart is ignored, the system compensates.
When the body is sidelined, the mind works overtime.
When feeling isn’t trusted, control becomes the substitute.

And life slowly loses texture.

Not meaning — texture.

The warmth of being affected.
The relief of not knowing for a moment.
The simple intimacy of feeling something move through you
without needing to name it.

Courage isn’t found in fixing this.
It’s found in seeing it clearly.

In noticing the cost of staying up there,
and asking — honestly, without drama —

Do I want to keep living like this?

Not
“What’s wrong with me?”

Not
“How do I solve this?”

Just:

Is this how I want to be in the world?

Sometimes that question alone
is enough to let the heart back into the room.

Not to take over.
Just to be included.

And when it is, life doesn’t become easier —
but it becomes whole again.

It doesn’t ask to be figured out.
It asks to be met.

With Love & Stillness,
Saf

The living series continues on Whispered Life.

Practice and reflection unfold daily on Instagram.

For yoga teachers ready to deepen their grounding → the mentorship lives here.

Lately, I’ve been noticing how heavy “coming back” can feel.

Not just to practice
to anything that mattered to us once.

There’s often a quiet pause before we return.
A hesitation.
A sense that we should have done better by now.

Most people don’t stop practicing because they don’t care.

They stop because they miss a few days.
Then a few more.
And at some point, coming back starts to feel heavier than staying away.

The guilt builds quietly.
The standards rise without being questioned.
And what once felt supportive turns into something you have to qualify for again.

I know that place well.

There was a stretch where I didn’t practice at all.

Not inconsistently.
Just not at all.

Life was moving.
Things were happening.
And the mat stayed rolled in the corner longer than I was used to.
In the past, that would have bothered me. I would have turned it into a problem to solve, a discipline to restore, a story to fix.

This time, I didn’t.

When I finally came back, I didn’t promise myself an hour.
I didn’t aim for depth, progress, or intensity.

I made a smaller agreement.

Fifteen minutes.
Show up.
Sit down. Stay.

No more. No less.

Some days, those fifteen minutes were all there was.
Other days, the body stayed longer on its own.

But what surprised me wasn’t how much I practiced
it was how little pressure came with it.

Nothing needed to be proven.
Nothing needed to be recovered.

For a long time, my sadhana had been built around conditions.
The right time.
The right energy.
The right version of me.

Without realizing it, I had turned practice into something I had to earn my way back into.

This agreement changed that.

Not because fifteen minutes is better than two hours,
but because returning stopped feeling like a test.

I didn’t negotiate with guilt.
I didn’t compensate the next day.
I didn’t explain the break to myself.

I just came back.

And something steady met me there.

Practice, I’m learning, doesn’t ask for ideal conditions.
It asks to be met.

Again.
And again.

With Love & Stillness,
Saf

The living series continues on Whispered Life.

Practice and reflection unfold daily on Instagram.

For yoga teachers ready to deepen their grounding → the mentorship lives here.

This Whisper is part of an ongoing series.
The most recent pieces live on my website.
You can find them here → Whispered Life

Some moments feel alive in a way that’s hard to explain.

You know them.

The first days in a new country.
The air unfamiliar.
Your senses wide open.
Colors brighter.
Sounds sharper.

You walk slower without trying.
You notice faces.
Smells.
Small details you usually miss.

It feels like presence.

And at some point, without saying it out loud, a quiet conclusion forms:

This is it.
This is what I was missing.

I know that feeling well.

For a long time, I thought travel itself was what made me present.
That routines killed awareness.
That repetition dulled life.

But that belief slowly revealed its crack.

The mistake we make

What we often call presence isn’t something travel gives us.

Travel simply removes the noise long enough for us to notice what was already there.

New places strip away habits.
They interrupt autopilot.
They demand attention.

But the danger comes when we start chasing that state.

Another country.
Another retreat.
Another training.

Trying to recreate the feeling instead of understanding it.

That’s how “presence” quietly turns into addiction.

The crash after the high

If you’ve ever returned home after a retreat, a training, or a long journey, you know this part.

The practices were deep.
The days were full.
The body felt alive.

Then you come back.

Same room.
Same street.
Same mornings.

And suddenly there’s a void.

So you try to replicate what once was.

You force the routine.
You recreate the schedule.
You chase the same intensity.

And when it doesn’t land, disappointment creeps in.

Not because something is wrong, but because you’re trying to repeat a moment that already passed.

Presence doesn’t work that way.

The frustration paradox

Here’s something most people miss:

The moment you realize you’ve lost presence is the exact moment you’ve found it again.

Awareness of distraction is awareness.

But instead of relaxing into that return, we judge ourselves.

Why can’t I stay present?
Why did I lose it again?

So we reach for more stimulation.

More movement.
More knowledge.
More experience.

As if presence were something fragile we have to hold onto.

It isn’t.

What presence actually is

Presence isn’t intensity.
It isn’t novelty.
It isn’t awe.

It’s contact.

And contact doesn’t disappear — it only gets ignored.

You don’t lose presence.
You stop listening.

Just like with breath:
You don’t forget how to breathe — you forget to notice it.

That’s why silence can feel uncomfortable.
That’s why stillness exposes what movement hides.

And that’s why chasing presence through constant change never satisfies for long.

A quiet reminder

An old teaching says:

When you stop naming things, you start seeing.

Presence isn’t about adding more life.
It’s about subtracting the commentary.

The moment doesn’t need to be special.
It doesn’t need to be meaningful.
It doesn’t need to go anywhere.

The threshold

And this is the part I want to leave you with:

The present moment doesn’t have to take you towards tomorrow.
And it doesn’t have to feel like yesterday.

It only asks to be met.

Not chased.
Not repeated.
Not improved.

Just met.

With Love & Stillness,
Saf

This Whisper is part of an ongoing series.
The most recent pieces live on my website.
You can find them here → Whispered Life

Some days, teaching feels light.
Words arrive on time.
The room listens.
You feel like yourself.

Other days, nothing lands.
You lose your words.
You feel watched.
Your body feels a half-second behind your voice.

Most teachers assume this means they’re not ready.
That they need better cues.
More preparation.
More confidence.

I used to think that too.

But every time I looked closely, the issue wasn’t skill.
It was where I was standing from.

When my attention floated upward — into thoughts, expectations, how I sounded — the room felt unstable.
Not because students noticed,
but because I did.

So I stopped trying to fix my words.

I felt my feet.

Not metaphorically.
Literally.

Weight through the heels.
Breath low.
Jaw unclenched.

Nothing mystical happened.
The room didn’t change.
I did.

And from there, everything simplified.

I didn’t need better cues.
I needed gravity.

Presence doesn’t come from saying the right thing.
It comes from being somewhere the body recognizes as safe.

That’s why you can forget a sequence and still hold a room.
That’s why silence can feel clearer than speech.
That’s why some teachers feel steady without trying.

They’re not performing from the head.
They’re standing in the body.

Yoga doesn’t begin when the class starts.
It begins the moment you stop reaching upward
and remember to arrive downward.

Feet before hands.
Always.

With stillness,
Saf

This Whisper is part of an ongoing series.
The most recent pieces live on my website.
You can find them here → Whispered Life

Berlin, somewhere before COVID.

It was my first time in the city.
I was supposed to meet a friend at the end of the day.

10 a.m

My phone died.
My charger refused to work.
My wallet decided it wanted a life of its own.

By noon, I was in this big city with no technology, no money, and only a vague visual memory of my friend’s place from Google Maps.

So I did what I always do when I’m frustrated.

I walked.

5 p.m

I had walked in circles long enough that every street looked the same. Buildings repeated themselves.
Direction stopped meaning anything.

I found a park, sat on a bench, took a breath or two, opened my notebook, and wrote one line:

How can I be lost if I’ve got nowhere to go.
— Metallica,The Unforgiven III

I didn’t just calm down.
I laughed.

Not because things got better but because I stopped arguing with the day.

I remember thinking: This will be a story to tell one day.
I didn’t know how literal that would be.

A few minutes later, I got up, put my backpack on my shoulders, and started walking again.

In a blink, I was on the floor.

A bicycle.
My 60-liter backpack bracing me from behind.
A girl lying next to me on the street.

We both looked at each other and said the same thing, out loud:

“What the fuck.”

Then recognition landed.

We knew each other.
Not from Berlin, from India.
From my first yoga teacher training, years earlier.

Out of more than three million people in the city, we collided like that.

After the shock settled, she asked what I was doing.
I told her everything.

She smiled and said,

Come with me. I’m teaching a class tonight.

At the studio, I dropped my backpack and decided I’d probably skip the class. I was exhausted. Mentally done.

She gave me a look and said,

Follow me.

We entered the shala.

Mats were already laid out.
Props scattered around the room.
Music playing softly.

She stood near the door and said:

Good evening everyone.
Tonight’s class will be led by my dear friend, Saf.

And she pointed at me.

Silence.

Every eye in the room turned toward me.

In my head all I said was: “What the fuck.”

I was wearing jeans.
A hoodie.
Two unmatched socks.

Someone smiled.
A guy gave me a thumbs up.

My friend walked over, tapped my shoulder, and said,

Enjoy.

Then she left.

I froze.

I hadn’t taught a class in months.
And after the kind of day I’d had, this felt like the last thing I needed.

But the class had already started.

So I walked to the teacher’s mat.

Hi, I said.
I’m Saf. And I’m guessing this is the first time you’ve had a yoga teacher in jeans and unmatched socks.

A few people laughed. A few kept staring.

I know you’re expecting a power class, I continued.
But I’ve just arrived in Berlin after a long day.
So instead, we’re doing yin.

I don’t remember planning much after that.

Each breath I cued, it was for me first.
Each pause I offered, I needed it myself.

At one point, I noticed a student staring at me with questions in their eyes.
I realized I’d forgotten a side of the sequence.

I laughed and said,

Don’t worry about it. I’m still in Berlin for a couple of weeks.

Somewhere along the way, I relaxed.
Found my voice.
Found my frame.

The noise of the day faded.
The room softened.
So did I.

After the class, I sat quietly and closed my notebook.

Same line.
Same words.

I hadn’t written a sentence earlier.
I had been living it all day.

With love and stillness,
Saf

This Whisper is part of an ongoing series.
The most recent pieces live on my website.
You can find them here → Whispered Life

My dear reader,

It’s been almost twelve years since the first time I stepped on a yoga mat, eight years since my first teacher training.

One thing has kept me coming back, again and again:

the post-practice feeling.

As a teacher, it’s one of the most beautiful things to witness — a room quiet, faces softer, people a little more themselves.

But not all days are bright.

Some days, after practice, I find myself feeling exposed.
Vulnerable.
Emotionally open in a way that’s hard to name.

Over the years, I’ve seen this happen to many students too.

Especially in teacher trainings, when practice is daily for weeks. Every other day, you notice it two, three people emotional, crying, feeling raw.

I know that place well.
I used to live in my head.
So when I found myself sensitive and emotionally open after practice, one question kept coming back:

What the fuck is wrong with me?

If you’ve spent time in your body, you’ve probably met moments like this too.

Sensitivity high.

Emotions moving without a clear reason.

As if someone turned the volume all the way up, and suddenly you can feel everything — everyone — all at once.

Not long ago, a student asked me the same thing:

Why do I feel so vulnerable? Why is everyone emotional?

Here’s what I’ve learned.

The problem isn’t sensitivity.
The problem is sensitivity without grounding.

Practices like yoga, breathwork, and yin ask the body to soften.

And when the body softens, things move.

Old tension.
Unfelt emotion.
Held breath.

All come to the surface.

So no nothing is wrong with you. Nothing was ever wrong with me.

This is part of being human.

What helped me most along the way was noticing when I slipped back into the head — analyzing every feeling, trying to understand it.
Or collapsing into the emotion and identifying with it.

I had to remind myself every time:

I’m not my thoughts. I’m not my feelings.

So when that vulnerable state shows up, I don’t fight it. And I don’t feed it with stories.

I acknowledge what’s there, and I come back to the body.

But most of the time, mental reminders aren’t enough.

When we’re grounded and clear, nothing touches us. When we’re emotional or afraid, we get exposed.

So when something feels overwhelming, I go physical.

I move a little.
I squat.
I shake my legs.
I do a sun salutation.

Anything that brings me back to earth.

It’s like setting a boundary the same way you would if a stranger stopped you in the street.

You stop. You stand your ground. You feel your feet.

Firm. Clear. No drama.

Energy respects clarity, not force.

And remember this, my dear reader:

You are your own space.

And when you know that in your body — not just in your head — everything changes.

Somatic practices don’t break you. They just turn the volume up for a bit, until you learn how to stay rooted while listening.

With love and stillness,
Saf

PS:If this resonated and you’re curious about how I approach yoga and awareness, you can read more here

This Whisper is part of an ongoing series.
The most recent pieces live on my website.
You can find them here → Whispered Life

I still remember my first flight alone, my dear reader.

How my stomach dropped during takeoff.

How the city lights shrank beneath me.

For the first time, I felt it—that intoxicating taste of freedom.

What I didn’t know then: Freedom isn’t a place you travel to.

It’s a practice of coming home to yourself.

India

I still remember the first days in India.

It wasn’t spiritual.

It was incredibly shocking.

I was like a little kid in awe and the only world I knew is Wow.

The country felt like a giant forest that swallowed cities whole.

Everything was loud, unfiltered, alive.

People smiled without needing anything from you.

Chai vendors shouted over traffic.

Cows moved like they owned the road.

Life pulsed.

There was a kind of grounded chaos I hadn’t felt before.

It stripped something off of me.

I had arrived with an ache I couldn’t name, and suddenly, there wasn’t space to carry it anymore. The jungle was too loud to hear my worries. And in that first silence, something broke open.

I thought: this is it.

This is the freedom I was chasing.

The Seeker’s Journey

I started counting airports like rosary beads, my dear reader.

Sleeping in train stations, laughing with strangers, watching the sun rise in places I couldn’t pronounce. I was volunteering in ashrams in India, hitchhiking between countries, eating with my hands in temple courtyards.

The jobs came and went with the seasons - hotel receptionist in Bali where the ocean became my morning ritual, horse trainer for months in Malaysia learning a language of subtle movements and trust.

I became whatever kept me in motion, whatever funded the next ticket.

I wasn’t a tourist. I was a seeker. At least that’s what I told myself.

I thought I had transcended structure.

But what I really did was build a new routine out of randomness.

The Mirror

Everywhere I went, I met people like me.

Hungry. Wandering. Free, but not really.

I remember meeting a Brazilian man I worked with at a hostel in Malaka, Malaysia. We shared the reception desk, swapped stories during quiet shifts. He had been on the road for six years. No home, no plan, just a backpack and a lot of crazy stories.

I was super impressed. Until one night, he told me his personal story.

His wife had gotten sick. They had a baby. He panicked. Gave the child to his parents. And left.

He called it freedom. Said he was giving himself space and that this is what he wanted, to travel the world.

But his eyes said otherwise.

He wasn’t traveling. He was fleeing.

And I saw myself in him.

The way I told stories.

The way I exaggerated my own detachment from everything.

The way I feared slowing down.

The way I feared being trapped in a box and labelled.

Little did I know that outside every box, there is a bigger box.

You see, my dear reader, there’s a difference between traveling with a purpose and traveling to escape.

Between seeking new experiences and seeking distractions from your own life, and it’s not necessarily one or the other, it’s always a mix of both.

My intention for you, is to acknowledge and know the difference between the two.

It is the same as looking at the parts of you that you dislike.

Over time, sunsets stopped hitting.

Hostel chats blurred together: “Where are you from? How long have you been on the road? Where to next?”

Different people. Same questions. Same dance.

Even awe becomes a loop if you repeat it long enough.

We called ourselves citizens of the world. But couldn’t last two weeks in our hometowns.

There was always an excuse to leave. “It’s too small.” “Too negative.” “Nobody gets me here.”

It is the same as when the world gets all of you but you don’t.

I remember an old woman in India at a temple.

She spoke English, looked at me intently, and called me Jesus—something that happened throughout my travels, this strange recognition in strangers’ eyes.

When I told her where I was from, she put her hand on my heart and said:

You can travel the whole world, country by country, but if you're not traveling inside, please go home.

I smiled politely, but inside I was defensive. Who was she to tell me where I belonged? To suggest my journey wasn’t authentic?

Years later, her words haunt me. The way her hand felt on my heart. The way her eyes saw through me.

Because the truth, my dear reader?

Sometimes the place isn’t the cage.

Sometimes your own nervous system is.

I loved being called Jesus wherever I went, that was a story that fed into my distraction.

The Sunset Realization

I didn’t plan to go home. But reality has a way of making decisions for you.

I was running out of money.

Job applications vanished into digital voids.

The anxiety I’d been fleeing started catching up - no matter how fast I moved.

Then one evening, watching another perfect sunset in another perfect place with another group of wanderers, it hit me:

Then what?

Another country, another town, another culture.

What am I really chasing here?

The horizon never ends.

You can spend a lifetime following it.

The painful truth surfaced: I was running from my own fears, avoiding myself. And at the time, going home represented the ultimate failure.

The admission that my grand journey wasn’t working.

I mean I learned a lot about life, people, cultures and how most of the comfort we think is necessary was just an illusion.

My dear reader, in that moment I saw myself clearly.

The bitterness rose in my throat as I booked that flight home. Because I knew what waited for me there, everything I’d been running from.

All the parts of myself I’d tried to leave behind.

Back home, I’d have no choice but to face whatever I was escaping.

These days, I preach for exactly that confrontation. That’s where your real growth is waiting - not in the next destination, but in the courage to stop running.

By no means I’m telling you traveling is bad, my dear reader.

Travel can expand your mind, open your heart, and teach you about the world and yourself.

But at least be honest about it.

Are you traveling to explore? Or traveling to escape? Are you running? Or are you chasing something truly aligned with your being?

The Real Homecoming

Coming home later—really home, to Tunisia—was the real slap.

I remember getting into a taxi at the airport, fresh off a 38 hours flight home.

My last job in Asia had been on a construction site, building houses.

All I had was a worn pair of jeans stained with paint and dusted with welding debris.

The taxi driver looked me up and down, scoffed, and muttered something about me being too dirty for his car.

That was my welcome back. A slap before I even reached my old street.

So I got out. Threw my backpack on and walked the 10 kilometers home. I’d walked so many roads abroad to save money. But that walk, back on Tunisian soil, back in my broken jeans was something else.

It was the first time I realized: returning home isn’t one decision. It’s made again and again, every step, especially when the world tries to shame who you became.

People looked at me like I had lost my mind. I was still barefoot. Eating with my hands. Going to bed before 8. I had stopped eating meat, stopped chasing the next big thing.

They didn’t know where to place me.

Friends asked: “So, are you finally back?” “What are you going to do now?” “Are you applying for engineering jobs?” “Are you traveling again?”

The first few months, I ego-tripped on the adventure. I loved the questions about my travels, loved telling the story. I felt it gave me a freedom, a sense of being different.

Until I got tired of it and hit the present reality.

Your stories are stories now.

Life is here and now.

For months, I was kissed by that same anxiety that followed me while traveling. The geographical cure had worn off. The fears were waiting, patient as always.

This is what happens, my dear reader, when we use travel as medicine for our inner unrest. The relief is temporary.

The “coming home blues” that so many travelers experience is really just the reunion with what we tried to outrun.

Until I started writing and digging, trying to understand what fears were hidden behind all that movement.

And truth is, it’s a mix of multiple things, but mainly this: I didn’t feel safe in my being, in my body, in my breath.

My shadows were driving me, distracting me, making me chase the next shiny thing under the name of freedom.

But that freedom was just escapism wrapped in a shiny shell.

Afraid of going broke.

Afraid of not being enough.

Shouting at the world so I could feel seen and worthy while inside, gripping tight and secretly believing in my own unworthiness.

It took courage and brutal honesty to look inside.

That is one of the reasons I wrote to you, my dear reader, that loving the lovable parts is easy.

I loved the traveller in me, the yoga teacher, the one with stories to tell.

But I hated the scared part of me, the one who felt unsafe. And what I did was leave him behind and run away, chasing stories and adventures.

By no means am I minimizing the joy of traveling. I still travel, but now I do it with alignment, with purpose, and I take all of me, even the scared parts.

And I’m not saying I’ve got it all figured out. If you read my previous letters, you probably know that I left the tech world with all its fancy perks and a six-figure salary.

Earlier this month, I got worried about some financial stuff. I opened my journal from India and saw the younger me who wrote: “I spent 70 USD in 3 months. If I survive this, I can survive anything.”

It brought me to tears.

Because as much as he panicked, as much as he was afraid of the world, unsafe in his being, he believed he would make it.

And I still pull from his strength to this day.

I even whispered a promise to him, because in that same journal he wrote: “I’ll make a blog and a newsletter and write my heart out to the world.”

Whispered Life, this very letter and the previous ones are a promise to him, now fulfilled.

What the Journey Taught Me

Here’s what I learned about running, my dear reader:

It feels like freedom until the moment your legs give out and you realize the ground was always there to catch you.

When you finally stop moving, your body becomes the messenger for all the emotions you outran.

They arrive like old friends who’ve been chasing you across continents - exhausted, but relieved to finally find you home.

For me, coming home to myself wasn’t grand or spiritual.

It was small, daily surrenders:

• My yoga practice helped, sitting in meditation for 10 minutes every morning, my body rebelling like a mad Arabian horse, heart racing, thoughts screaming for distraction. Some days, those 10 minutes felt longer than entire months of travel.

• Walking the same path daily without music, without filters, without escape routes. Just feet on earth, breath in body, sky above. Boring, until it wasn’t.

• Writing until my hand cramped, asking again and again: What am I feeling? What am I avoiding? What do I need? Sometimes the answer was just one word: Rest.

The hardest part wasn’t the practices.

It was facing that voice inside that whispered, “You’re nothing without your stories. Nobody will love the ordinary you.”

The voice that said I needed to be extraordinary to be worthy of love, of space, of breath.

I had to learn to whisper back:

I am enough, even when I’m still.

Especially when I’m still.

And here’s the strange magic that unfolds, my dear reader:

The silence you feared becomes the sanctuary you craved.

The feelings you avoided become your most patient teachers.

The ordinary moments - making coffee, watching clouds, feeling your feet on the kitchen floor - become sacred without trying.

The real journey happens when you stop journeying.

When you start noticing the unspeakable world around you.

That’s home.

So if you find yourself needing that next trip, that next adventure to feel alive - ask yourself what you might be running from.

There’s nothing wrong with traveling the world — in fact I’m flying back to Asia next week, this time differently. But the most important journey is the one that leads you back to yourself.

My dear reader, I’ll leave you with few lines that I sent to my dear ones before they travel :

When you walk, feel the earth beneath you.

When you eat, taste it like a prayer.

When you sip your coffee, let it soften your face into a quiet smile.

And somewhere between your inhale and your exhale,

love yourself, just a little more than before.

You don’t need a plane ticket to feel all that.

With Love and Stillness
Saf

Join The Whispered Letters

Last week, I closed the whisper with this:

Don’t call it love until you’ve made peace with the parts,

you prayed no one would ever see.

Find it here if you missed it.

That peace… is the beginning of real love.

Everything else is performance.

A mask you wear until you can’t peel it off your heart.

Which brings us to the onion theory:

Take a breath, dear reader.

Think of yourself as an onion.

Layer by layer, you peel away the performance until you can simply be.

With no pretending.

No effort.

Just presence.

You can’t slice through the onion.

If you try, you’ll hurt yourself.

So life sends you people, heartbreaks, and sacred triggers.

And your only task is to peel gently.

One layer at a time.

One whisper at a time.

It’s okay if you cry along the way.

There’s no path to consciousness that doesn’t pass barefoot through your own hell.

So today, we go one layer deeper.

Bring all of you.

Take a breath.

My whispers are only reminders.

So find your center.

And meet yourself here.

Some of you wrote me after last week’s letter.

You said: “Choosing myself makes me feel guilty. It feels selfish.”

Good.

Let’s talk about that.

Side note —

If these whispers touch something tender in you, my DMs are always open.

Love is never neutral.

What we call self-love is often dictated by the shadow that dominates:

Sometimes it’s the need to be seen as “nice.”

Sometimes it’s the vow to never feel vulnerable again.

In both cases, it’s not love.

It’s a mask made of fear.

You either burn yourself to keep others warm.

Or light the match, burn the room, and walk away with your head high.

And you swear you had no choice.

But pause here my dear onion.

Breathe again and know:

You always have a choice.

Even in your most doomed moments, your intention is yours.

Sacred Selfishness is the fire that warms without destroying.

Not the kind that burns others to feel free.

Not the kind that burns yourself to feel loved.

But the kind that holds heat without harm.

The kind that says:

I’m here. And I’m not leaving myself again.

As Osho teaches:

Only a person who loves himself can love others.

But what most people miss:

A man who loves himself finds there is no ego in him.

Love always melts the self.

Sacred selfishness dissolves the ego.

It doesn’t feed it.

And if you think you have no ego, coz you're just kind.

That's exactly your ego in a form you haven't recognized yet.

You're human, my dear onion.

Thus, your ego is here with you.

🌋 A Flame that asks for nothing

Someone dear to my heart called me selfish for speaking my truth, for following what I felt, for showing up without asking for permission.

But here’s what I’ve come to know:

Self-love begins where performance ends.

It’s not a negotiation.

It’s a declaration.

To love yourself is to give your heart freedom to speak.

Not to win.

Not to convince.

but because silence would be betrayal.

What looks selfish from the outside

is often just truth with nothing left to prove.

No grip. No mask. No agenda.

Just flame.

it doesn't show up to win.

It simply is.

Because truth asks to be spoken out loud

Without needing applause, outcome, or reward.

That’s sacred selfishness.

It’s the love that sets your soul free

without needing to trap anyone else.

Because real love expands.

It doesn’t beg.

It doesn’t perform.

It burns clean.

And maybe the most selfless thing we can do,

is to stop abandoning the truth that lives in our chests,

just because someone else might call it “too much.”

🔥 The First Flame: Self-Belonging

We’re all looking to feel safe.

To belong.

Take it from someone who never did.

I’m half Tunisian, half Lebanese.

In Tunisia, I grew up as the Lebanese kid.

In Lebanon, I was the Tunisian one.

I stretched myself so thin, I started to say:

“I belong everywhere. To the earth. To the stars.”

But that too… was bypassing.

Because if you belong everywhere, you forget where your feet are.

What I missed is this:

Before geography.

Before nationality.

Before approval.

I belong to myself.

To this breath.

To this body.

To this soul.

The world mirrors back how deeply you belong to yourself.

And most of us?

We’ve never even visited home.

We keep outsourcing belonging:

To partners.

To jobs.

To likes.

To titles.

If you’ve read the previous whispers, you know my story:

Fighting to fit into the engineer’s life.

Only to meet the void.

As Brené Brown said:

True belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world.

And to be even more precise:

To be authentic is to be alive.

To be genuine to the moment flowing through your veins, unfiltered by who you think you’re supposed to be.

Self-belonging means:

I won’t abandon myself, even if you do.

Ironically?

That’s what makes you safe to love.

Because if you’re unsafe inside, you’ll either avoid love, or attach to it obsessively.

And in the context of self-love?

That unsafety breeds extremes:

You abandon yourself to be accepted.

Or you amplify your ego to control.

So today, just start here:

Sit with one hand on your heart.

Whisper: “I am home here.”

Say it until your body believes you.

💧 The Second Flame: Self-Nourishment

My dear onion,

Pouring from an empty heart only makes you bleed.

Most people think they’re kind.

They’re just exhausted.

They give and give, until what they call “love” turns into silent resentment.

They say they’re “being there” for others.

But they’ve already left themselves behind.

I’m not preaching from a podium.

I’ve been there too.

I didn’t know how to say no.

I stayed in rooms I didn’t want to be in.

Went out when I longed to stay home.

Stayed in relationships that drained me.

Avoided conflict.

Hoped people wouldn’t leave if I just kept stretching.

Love is nourishment for the soul.

So what are you feeding yourself?

What rituals return you to your aliveness?

What’s in your cup before you offer it to anyone else?

Self-nourishment means:

Tending your roots before you bloom for the world.

And if you’re wondering how to begin:

Start with the tiniest yes to yourself.

A walk without your phone.

Sitting down to eat without rushing.

Choosing silence over people-pleasing.

Every morning: ask yourself

What do I need today?

Every night, ask

Where did I abandon myself? What felt not loving to me?

This isn’t indulgence.

It’s return.

🗣️ The Third Flame: Self-Truth

If you keep muting your truth to stay safe,

you’ll forget the sound of your own voice.

Self-truth isn’t about telling everyone everything.

It’s about not lying to yourself.

There’s a voice inside you.

You know the one.

The one you’ve learned not to listen to.

The one you betray then you say: “I knew it.”

That’s the voice you need to give the mic to.

Take it from a yoga teacher:

Your body always knows.

You can feel the betrayal in your bones every time you say yes but mean no.

Every time you dim your light to avoid tension.

Every time you say “I’m fine,” when what you really mean is “I’m falling.”

Brené Brown warns:

If you trade in your authenticity for safety, you may experience: anxiety, depression, burnout, addiction, rage, blame, resentment, inexplicable grief.

That list?

It’s not abstract.

It’s your body telling the truth you’re not allowed to say.

So here’s a little practice:

Place one hand on your throat.

Whisper a truth you’ve been scared to speak.

Even if it’s just to yourself.

Before we move on, ask gently:

Am I choosing myself to connect deeper with truth?

Or am I choosing myself to avoid intimacy?

And know, my dear onion:

One is sacred.

The other is a shield.

🥀 When the Body Says No

So what happens when you actually try to choose yourself?

Not in theory.

Not in a Pinterest quote.

But in real life, when you say the no.

Cancel the plan.

Hold the boundary.

Your body says no back.

You feel it in your stomach.

Tight chest.

Jaw.

Shame.

Guilt.

Your nervous system flares.

You hear your mother’s voice.

Your ex’s silence.

Your teacher’s scolding.

“Too much.”

“Too selfish.”

“Too sensitive.”

But here's the thing:

A wound unspoken will write every rule you live by.

Until you love what hurt you, you will keep hurting what loves you.

That guilt you feel?

It’s not always a warning.

Sometimes, it’s just your body rewriting the code.

So if your no feels heavy — say it anyway.

If your boundary makes your voice tremble — hold it with grace.

If you say no then relapse — start again.

Yes, some people will leave.

But not the ones who were really with you.

🪞 The Hidden Mirror

If you’ve read this far thinking:

“Finally, someone gets why I cut everyone off!”

Pause.

If your boundaries are walls.

If you haven’t apologized in months.

If you can’t remember the last time you asked “How are you?” and actually waited for the answer…

This next part is for you.

Narcissism doesn’t come from too much self-love.

It comes from self-hatred dressed in pride.

Some of the coldest people I know are not cold because they don’t care.

They’re cold because caring once cost them everything.

So now?

Everyone else pays that cost.

You call it peace.

But it’s absence.

You call it strength.

But it’s fear.

You call it boundaries.

But it’s a fortress.

You’re not selfish.

You’re just hiding behind an egotistical pride.

And I say this with love:

The terror under your armor is sacred.

It’s trying to protect the child who got annihilated, silenced and abandoned.

So if your strength is a mask,

if your peace is isolation,

if your “I don’t care” is your religion:

You don’t love yourself yet.

You’re still performing safety.

Sacred selfishness doesn’t protect the ego.

It dissolves it.

✍️ The Letter Practice

Let’s integrate.

Write a letter.

Not from the person you show the world,

but from the one you’ve silenced.

If you’re not sure which one you are,

you might be both.

We all wear different masks in different rooms.

Start here:

If you tend to abandon yourself:

• Name one thing, you've been doing and you know it's not loving to you.

• What part of me have I betrayed to be accepted?

• What boundary am I afraid to set?

• If I truly belonged to myself, what would I stop doing?

If you tend to protect yourself with pride:

• What feeling am I avoiding by staying in control?

• Whose needs have I minimized to protect my comfort?

• What part of me is still afraid of being seen?

Then read the letter out loud.

Let your voice tremble.

That’s the sound of returning.

Sacred selfishness doesn’t scream my dear onion.

It doesn’t justify.

It doesn’t need applause.

It simply stops abandoning itself,

and lets love return as a consequence.

The sacred selfish is not selfish at all.

It’s the most generous thing you can offer this world:

A human being who has come home.

Love, when it starts with the self, has no choice but to expand.

It becomes lighter.

Freer.

Less of a grip and more of a gift.

The deeper we dive into self-love, the more love itself evolves.

It stops being about possession or expectation and becomes something purer.

Something vast.

Larger than life itself.

Love & Stillness,
Saf

Last week, I posed a quiet ultimatum:

Achieve your goals, or wake up in love with yourself.

You can find it here if you missed it.

This week, we dive deeper.

Because something about that whisper didn’t sit right with me.

So I sat with it. And then it hit me:

If you ask anyone, “Do you love yourself?”

Most people say yes, unless they’re drowning in grief or depression.

But my dear reader

Who exactly do you love?

The successful you?

The one who’s surrounded by love?

The one that looks good in the mirror?

The one that gets all the attention when they walk into a room?

I don’t say this to question your love.

I say it to shed light on the unthought known behind our declarations of self-love.

Because if the world gets all of you,

and you don’t,

that isn’t love.

That’s performance.

A beautifully wrapped mask with no one left behind it.

My invitation today is simple:

Unclench your jaw.

Relax your shoulders.

Breathe.

It’s only a whisper.

From the age of five, I practiced martial arts.

What was supposed to build strength became a quiet hell.

I was the only kid in my classroom who practiced Karate.

Most boys loved football.

I didn’t.

I carried an extra backpack every day with my kimono.

At first, I thought it made me special.

But then someone had an idea:

“If we beat up the karate kid, no one can question our strength.”

And so it began.

Every day after school, I was cornered.

My bag stolen.

My kimono thrown in the dirt.

Sometimes they fought me one by one.

Sometimes in groups.

Sometimes my seniors saved me.

Most days, they didn’t.

Then I’d go straight to training, learning how to defend myself while still carrying bruises I couldn’t explain.

Over time, I developed a sixth sense.

I could smell danger before it arrived.

I learned to flee strategically,

to clench my jaw,

to never cry, even when surrounded by 8 legs kicking me like a sandbag.

In the mornings, I’d stare at the clock, counting the hours until I could go home.

Back then, it wasn’t called anxiety. It was “just kids playing.”

I was the martial artist who couldn't defend himself.

Who got beanten up on daily basis.

To this day, most of my friends don’t know I practiced Karate for 17 years.

That I competed nationally.

That the martial artist in me was born in survival, and raised in silence.

I remember that boy.

Curled on the ground.

Guarding his face.

Wondering why no one came.

Wondering what he did wrong.

At night, I prayed to become Bruce Lee.

Not to be famous.

But to never feel that helpless again.

That’s how you build an angry yet fragile boy.

One who wakes up every day asking the same question:

Why me?

Eventually, I buried that part of me.

Shame rooted itself in my heart, and I grew a new identity to cover it.

Shame turned into anger.

Anger turned into a performance of strength.

That performance became my shield.

Passive-aggressiveness.

Cutting words.

A sharp mental edge I used to shake others’ confidence before they had a chance to swing.

I thought I was strong.

I didn’t know back then I was just defending a wound I had forgotten how to name.

Can I say I loved myself back then?

Maybe.

But what about that boy?

For years, I couldn’t even look at him in my memory.

Until one day, everything collapsed.

The goals.

The strength.

The identity I’d built to stay safe.

I had to sit with him again. The boy I left behind.

I listened—finally—to what he had to say.

I let him cry.

I let me cry.

And in that moment, for the first time,

I realized the shame wasn’t mine to carry.

That was the turning point.

The beginning of return.

Not to an image of strength, but to a truth that could hold me.

Loving the lovable parts is easy.

Loving your achievements, your light, your discipline, that’s not hard.

But what about the part of you you skip in old photos?

The one you hide from the world?

The version you buried so deeply you forgot it even existed?

That’s where the real love lives.

Because self-love isn’t a performance.

It’s not a concept.

It’s not saying “I’m kind” while betraying your boundaries.

It’s not smiling when life slaps you and pretending it didn’t hurt.

That silence?

That was the real betrayal.

We all build layers to survive, layers that become personas.

Personas that chase success to bury shame.

Personas that set goals we swear are soul-led, when in truth, they’re just echoes of the pain we never grieved.

If your self-love is tied to titles, achievements, or being the “nice one”,

That’s not love. That’s a strategy.

As Brené Brown puts it:

When we bury our story, the shame metastasizes.

If you find yourself triggered, controlling, overly agreeable, or exhausted by people-pleasing.

it’s not because you’re broken.

It’s because part of you still believes that if you show the whole truth, you’ll be left.

But here’s the paradox:

The more you abandon yourself for others, the more you’ll fear others will abandon you.

And this is where Sacred Selfishness comes in.

Not the ego-driven, arrogant kind.

Not the “I don’t care about anyone” kind.

But the kind Osho speaks of when he says:

Only a person who loves himself can love others.

The kind of selfishness that says:

Before I give you all of me, > I must return to the parts of me I left behind.

You cannot be in two places at once.

You cannot fully love others while abandoning yourself, just as you cannot tend to a wound while pretending it doesn’t exist.

To meet your shadow, you must become temporarily unavailable to the outside world.

To set a boundary, you must risk being misunderstood.

And yes, you will feel guilt.

But guilt is not always a sign you’re doing something wrong.

Sometimes it’s a sign you’re doing something new.

Sometimes it’s proof you’re finally choosing yourself for the first time.

This is a journey.

A peeling away.

An act of trust

between you

and the child you abandoned.

Because you’re not here to be agreeable.

You’re not here to perform worth.

You’re here to return,

whole, unhidden, unashamed.

So my dear reader, the next time you say you love yourself

Don’t call it love until you’ve made peace with the parts you prayed no one would ever see.

Until next time,

Allow yourself the space,

Choose gently.

Choose truly.

Choose you.

My dear reader,

Last week, we walked through the fire that consumes you.

The goals and dreams that turn into a living hell wrapped in the illusion of achievement.

The mental justification that you’re on your path. That there is no other choice but to be consumed by fire.

This week’s whisper carries an invitation to dive inside.

And diving inside requires courage to open doors, and honesty to face the shadows lurking behind them.

Not to fight them.

Not to escape them.

But rather to know at heart that these shadows are your old protectors, they helped carry you through roads you never thought you could walk.

But there comes a time for the warrior to drop his sword.

For the hero to stop abandoning themself and realize that saving the world requires saving oneself first.

Even though I have this habit of writing daily, I’m starting to love writing these whispered letters.

It’s not always smooth. Not always in the right mood or rhythm.

I’d been staring at the screen for the past 20 minutes, sipping my coffee, not knowing whether I wanted to write or not.

60 minutes went by.

My eyebrows met in the middle.

My jaw clenched.

That’s when it hit me.

I'm familiar with this inner corner of my mind. I’ve been here before. And I know its name:

Self-pressure.

I was experiencing writer’s block, and did myself a favor by adding a pinch of pressure on publishing this letter.

So I left the coffee shop. I left writing. Because I never want to entertain self-imposed pressure.

It is never loving to oneself, unless it’s about survival.

A few months ago, when I was planning to launch Whispered Life, I found myself engineering and strategizing everything, but not moving a single step forward.

No execution.

Only planning.

Fantasizing about the plan.

Fully mentally masturbating on what this may turn into.

Until the day I decided to paint my apartment all by myself.

Theoretically, painting is meditative, artistic, fun.

The idea was to blast music and paint the walls.

I estimated 3 days. It took a month.

I cried every day.

Realizing that now, I wanted to do the tasks I was avoiding for months.

The mind has its incredible way of trapping you, then screaming to be freed.

Painting the fucking walls was the only way to wrap it up.

The first day, I felt stuck. Unproductive. And the only way through was to do the most unproductive task:

Paint the damn walls.

The frustration was real. And the realization was sharper:

I’d fallen into the trap of fake productivity.

The lie that as long as I’m busy, I’m productive.

And if I’m productive, I’m on the way to my goals.

That was the same highway that led me to burnout as an engineer.

Here’s what hit me while scraping paint off my hands:

What if self-pressure is just my way of avoiding the real question?

What if every goal I chase is really just me trying to earn my own love?

My dear reader, take a breath and allow me to drop a little inquiry into your mind, one I hope goes deep into your heart:

If you had to choose waking up tomorrow with all of your goals achieved or waking up tomorrow loving yourself fully, unapologetically.

which one would you pick?

Choosing an answer may feel like an impossible choice, I know.

In chess, they call it Zugzwang: When every move available feels wrong, when the wisest strategy is to not move at all.

When the most viable move is not to move.

But sometimes, my dear reader, the impossible choice is the only choice that sets you free.

Keep that question in the back of your head for now.

But know this : your answer reveals everything about why you chase what you chase.

Why Your Goals Might Be Stealing Your Love

This question isn’t philosophical decoration. It’s a scalpel that cuts straight to the wound:

The belief that we must earn our worth through achievement.

Remember the boy who burned himself applying for 10,374 job listings, burned himself working day and night, thinking he needed to do more so he could feel worthy and maybe then… love himself.

After leaving engineering, I received offers from top tech companies. Generous ones. Money that would end all financial worries.

High prestigious roles with perks and titles. Maybe a year ago, I would've seen it as one of my greatest achievements.

I turned them all down.

Not out of arrogance.

Not out of fear.

But out of love.

Because I’ve learned to listen to the heart, to know when I’m trying to prove something, and when I’m simply trying to express who I truly am.

Getting back to what we left in the back of your head.

There are only three possible answers to that question.

Only one is correct.

Answer 1: You choose your goals.

Because reaching them will make you feel fulfilled, and that will lead to loving yourself.

Logical, linear and makes sense, right?

But that’s the fallacy.

You’ve already put a condition on your ability to love yourself.

"If I reach my goal, I can then love myself."

“If I don’t reach my goal, I cannot love myself.”

If that’s your answer, ask:

What’s the goal behind the external goal?

Is it really yours?

Or is it inherited from distorted beliefs, societal constructs, and mental prisons?

Maybe you feel it’s selfish to love yourself.

Maybe you’re so stuck in your head, chasing the external world, you’ve forgotten to look inside.

Answer 2: You feel torn between both answers.

And that’s okay. It only means you’re in a liminal space.

Your heart knows the answer. You just need a little push.

When I first started questioning my own goals, the resistance was fierce.

Jaw clenched.

Stomach knotted.

Breath shallow.

I told myself:

“But this is practical.”

“But this is responsible.”

“But this is what successful people do.”

But the body doesn’t lie.

It speaks in tension.

In shortened breath.

In the ache in your hips.

Where you store the weight of carrying what isn’t yours.

Answer 3: You choose self-love.

And that, my dear reader, is the only right answer.

What is the external world but a projection of your inner one?

What are your goals but an embodiment of your soul’s truth?

Some goals are tough. Not all are sweet.

But are they stepping stones?

Or detours from your worth?

Remember that boy from Africa?

He thought validation would prove his value.

But when the success came, the void remained.

He had been filling space

Instead of shining light.

Here’s what I discovered when I truly tried to love myself unconditionally.

The biggest lie of the world:

It’s not that simple.

The world will have you believe that it 's not that simple, until you believe that everything needs to be earned, you need to work hard to earn your money, you need to burn to prove your worth, that everyone is fighting to earn their place under the sun not knowing that once they loosen their grip from that fight, from shouting at the world asking to be seen so you can feel you 're worth something.

But here 's what most people get wrong about self-love.

They think it means only embracing the pretty parts.

Loving the lovable parts is easy.

But can you sit with what you hate about yourself—without trying to fix it?

Can you call out your darkness and not turn away?

Can you face the parts of yourself you 've been avoiding—and let them stay?

Don 't call it self-love if the world gets all of you, but you don 't.

I wouldn 't say it was an easy task, but rather you can save yourself time just by stopping and looking inside, asking the right questions and daring to see your own distortion.

How to Tell If Your Goals Are Yours

Most people chase goals that aren’t theirs.

They’re just sophisticated ways to avoid feeling unworthy.

But there’s a way to tell the difference. A compass that always points toward your truth.

Inner work isn’t easy. but it’s the most loving act you can offer yourself.

Step 1: The Ultimatum Test

If forced to choose between your goals and loving yourself.

if you knew that you will never achieve that one goal.

Where do you feel resistance?

That resistance is gold.

It might show up in mental justifications.

In your breath.

In your body, jaw, stomach, hips.

Anxiety may rise, even panic.

Instead of seeing anxiety as an enemy, can you see it as guidance?

A cue that something is misaligned.

That something in you, wants to speak up.

Step 2: The Void vs. Light Question

Ask yourself:

What am I trying to fill, and what am I trying to express?

Void-filling goals leave you emptier the closer you get.

Light-shining goals nourish you in the pursuit itself.

When I turned down those engineering offers, I could feel the difference in my body.

The void-filling choice made my chest tight.

The light-shining choice, though uncertain made me breathe deeper.

Stand taller.

Step 3: The Permission Audit

Ask:

Do I need this goal to give myself permission to love myself?

If yes. you’ve handed your power away.

Practice this instead:

What if I loved myself now, with nothing changed?

Feel the resistance. That’s where your inner work lives.

Step 4: The Sacred Selfishness Check

Does choosing yourself feel selfish?

That’s your sign.

You’ve been abandoning yourself too long.

This isn’t about quitting your job on impulse,

you’re responsible for your life.

But if you’re stuck, start by asking better questions. Work less if you’re overworking.

Create small spaces that reflect who you are. Make a plan that reflects love, not pressure.

And if you do quit your job, congratulations. Don’t blame me though.

My dear reader, this inquiry isn’t meant to make you abandon your goals.

It’s meant to help you reclaim them.

When your goals become expressions of self-love, the pressure lifts.

The anxiety softens.

The work becomes play.

You still grow.

Still give.

Still create.

But from fullness, not lack. From love, not fear.

And the goals that no longer fit? The ones born from wounds and “shoulds”?

You let them go. Grateful for the protection they once offered.

Because now, you have something better:

Yourself.

And maybe that’s what the fire was for all along, to burn what isn’t you, so what is, can finally rise and shine.

Next time, the whisper will be about the sacred act of being selfish enough to love yourself and why the world desperately needs you to choose yourself first.

Until then, sit with the question.

Let it simmer. Let it sting a little.

Because sometimes the most loving thing you can do is ask yourself the questions you’ve been avoiding.

And breathe, my dear reader, breathe for it's a blessing to be alive and breathing.

With Love and Stillness

Saf

10,374 rejections. That's where the counter stopped.

My dear reader, last week we walked through the flames of persistence—the infinite game where you don't need to win every battle, just refuse to lose the war.

Find it here

But what happens when you finally win?

When the goal you've chased relentlessly suddenly stop running?

Kahlil Gibran once whispered:

And thus your freedom, when it loses its fetters, becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.

~ The prophet

I never understood these words until I lived them.

This whisper carries a confession: sometimes the fire you feed to keep you warm will burn you from the inside out if you forget to step away from it.

The thing about obsession, it doesn't end when you reach your goal. It just finds new corners of your soul to consume.

Every grip we hold too tightly eventually shapes us into its own image.

Every identity we cling to becomes the cage we built for ourselves.

This is an invitation to look at what you might think is You, but is not.

To see the goals, titles, and achievements, you're gripping so tightly that your knuckles have turned white.

What would happen if you loosened that grip, just a little?

What might you discover about the hand underneath?

Your life is yours, my dear reader, and it's truly up to you to fuck around and find out.

I can only whisper what happened when I did.

Covid lockdown.

The world paused, but my mind wouldn't.

After years of rejections, I decided to create the opportunity I couldn't find.

I built a yoga platform for the Berlin studio where I taught, bringing the engineer and the yogi into one breathing body, Green Yoga .

I was busy—teaching classes, building code, finding harmony in this unexpected convergence.

And yet, some small, anxious part of me still threw job applications into the void.

Out of habit.

Out of fear.

Out of the identity I couldn't quite shed.

Until one day, I stopped, not from hopelessness, but from presence.

I was too alive in what I was creating to remember what I'd been chasing.

The counter stopped: 10,374 rejections.

Late 2020, a message appeared in my inbox from a stranger in the UK who'd found me on a digital nomad platform.

"Coffee over a call?"

I didn't mind.

The coffee became a tech talk.

The tech talk became an offer.

The offer became fate.

Ninth engineer at a British startup. Paid in pounds sterling.

And then it hit me, I had spoken this exact reality years before, during that first insulting job offer, when I bluffed:

"I work with clients in the UK, paid in pounds sterling." ( full story here )

See? Call it a coincidence, call it randomness if you need to.

But words carry the weight of the emotion spoken with them.

They move through time differently than we do.

I saw the counter stop, and I took the job.

That first day, I worked eight hours.

The second day too.

By the third week, ten hours felt normal.

After years of wanting to work, I had an insatiable hunger.

Not for the work itself, but for something deeper, recognition, belonging, proof that those 10,374 rejections were wrong about me.

With Covid lockdown, I found myself in a whole different dimension.

When I first joined, everything felt perfect, like finding a tribe that understood my particular brand of madness.

We were all "crazy" in our own ways, all valued for our uniqueness.

The freedom was intoxicating – work whenever, wherever, however you wanted. How could I not fall in love?

But as any ancient forest would tell you: too much rain can drown even the strongest roots.

Too little sun leaves even the tallest trees withering.

I am referencing Echoes from the Ancient Wood: Cultivating Timeless Leadership

Remember, now I worked three jobs:

• Building the platform for the yoga studio

• Teaching yoga online

• This dream job that finally validated me

For someone who chased jobs for so long, I got what I asked for and more.

I was willing to bust my ass working, little did I know that reaching the goal was just a station, not the terminal.

My schedule got crammed.

I would work from 8am to 4pm as an engineer, teach yoga from 5pm to 7pm, and from 8pm to 2am work on the online yoga platform.

Drinking Red Bull at seven in the morning.

Not caring about balance nor my health.

Like a thirsty man walking the desert for three years, all I saw was water. And all I cared about was drinking, even if thirst was gone.

"You got what you asked for and more," I'd tell myself.

"Keep at it, you got no excuses."

I was so hungry after all those rejections, I wanted it all.

Until my body gave out.

I didn't understand then that this kind of fuel eventually burns the container that holds it. That this fire has a name, a particular pattern, that everyone is invited to observe—but at that moment, the fire was mine alone.

The yoga teacher in me knew better, but was silenced.

My body began sending signals I refused to receive.

My breath became shallow, efficient, just enough to keep coding.

"Tech is my real passion" I told myself, justifying the obsession.

"I'm finally doing what I was meant to do."

This job had to be secured at all costs.

The alternative was unthinkable, returning to that dark place.

The rejected place.

The fire was burning, and I was the wood.

Sometimes I would look at the horizon, past my screens, and whisper to myself:

"It's finally better."

"Life is better now."

I repeated this until I almost felt it was true.

A year later, I ended up breaking up with my partner.

The relationship had been crumbling beneath the weight of my obsession and my emotional absence.

I barely noticed until the ruins were at my feet.

Funny thing about heartbreak—I had a fix.

I glued the cracks with more work.

I wrapped the pain in productivity.

Work became my meditation, my medication, my salvation.

4 AM wake-ups to tackle code before the world stirred.

Midnight oil burning until my eyes couldn't focus. I'd volunteer for my teammates' tasks, hungry for more distraction.

Pride is a seductive companion until it becomes your prison guard.

I'd do anything—everything—to fill the hours that might otherwise force me to face my reflection.

To avoid the questions that lived in silence.

To escape the feeling of my heart splitting open in my chest.

I never asked myself how I felt.

I knew the answer would require attention I wasn't willing to give.

I knew my heart was breaking.

I knew I probably had some fucked up things to heal.

But the only medicine I recognized came in the form of:

• Lines of code.

• Weights at the gym.

• Problems I could solve.

The thing about workaholism is its perfect disguise as virtue.

You work because "it's your responsibility."

Because "who else is gonna do it if you don't?"

Because "this is what committed people do."

And the worst part? It delivers results.

Goals achieved.

Teammates impressed.

Skills sharpened.

Promotions granted.

The mind can't argue with outcomes. and the heart can only whisper beneath the noise.

So I kept going, fueled by external validation, until my salary was raised twice in less than four months without even asking.

I crossed into six figures.

The boy from Africa who once earned 30 dollars a week now made more money than he'd ever imagined possible.

I didn't know how to hold this reality.

I didn't know how to manage these emotions.

The only thing I knew when overwhelmed by anger or joy, it didn't matter was to walk.

I remember that day, walking for 4 hours, crying my heart out with gratitude.

Tears streaming down my face with no one to witness them.

My body trying to release what my mind couldn't process.

Little did I know that moment of gratitude was just the beginning of a disastrous end. The fire I'd been feeding was now consuming me from inside.

My body began sending louder signals:

Insomnia that medication couldn't touch.

Muscles that ached even in stillness.

A mind that raced even in exhaustion.

A heart silenced beneath layers of mental justification.

The mind, my dear reader, is not You. It is only a tool.

Untamed and ridden by your ego, it carries you further and further from what matters most.

But what does your heart say when you finally let it speak?

Meanwhile, the company transformed around me.

As the organization grew, the delicate ecosystem changed. What once felt like a family began to feel like a system. The spirit that had brought life and creativity began to shift into something mechanical.

In nature, no tree stands alone – its strength comes from a network of roots intertwining beneath the surface, communicating through fungi and sharing resources. When that underground network is severed, even the mightiest oak becomes vulnerable.

From being the 9th engineer, I watched as we grew to nearly 200 employees. I became the veteran, the institutional knowledge, the reliable pillar. The one jumping between teams, helping everywhere, coaching new engineers, onboarding fresh talent.

And then the sweetest irony—I found myself on the other side of the interview table. The guy whose worth was questioned 10,374 times now became the one who assessed others' worth.

Interviewing candidates from Twitter, Netflix, and other prestigious companies.

I felt a dark pride in this reversal of fortune. I was the guy from Africa, the one rejected countless times, now the gatekeeper who could welcome or turn away.

I found belonging in being needed.

I found worth in being essential.

I found identity in being the one who could never fail.

Until things got tense.

Until my mind lost its edges.

Until I found myself:

• Leaving keys stuck in doors

• Eating dinner foods for breakfast

• Forgetting where I'd parked my car for days, not hours

• Diagnosed with cognitive fatigue, a clinical term for a mind that's been burned to ash

I was working entirely from home, barely meeting people in real life, my screen the only window to a world beyond my walls.

When my team finally burned out, everyone falling sick simultaneously, I held the roof alone for two weeks—one person doing the work of many.

I cracked. Not a clean break, but a fracture that could no longer be ignored.

They forced me to take two weeks off. I fought against it. I didn't even recognize I was burning.

The fire had become so familiar I'd forgotten what it felt like to be cool.

The first day of my forced sick leave, I panicked—not from the absence of work, but from the sudden presence of silence.

Two years had evaporated like morning mist.

Two years without a single day off.

Two years of relationships were crumbling while I stared at screens.

Two years working like a mad dog, chasing validation I couldn't seem to grasp.

I hadn't traveled as I promised myself.

I hadn't taught yoga.

I hadn't even unrolled my mat and my heart beat only because of an over-caffeinated system that couldn't afford to rest.

In the stillness of that first day off, a terrible truth emerged: I had become a slave to my own goal. I was imprisoned by the very freedom I had fought for.

I will not bore you with corporate details, but as the company grew wildly, policies changed. That's when the slap in the face came.

I was suddenly classified as a TIER 4 employee, a new system separating people by regions. The boy from Tunisia who had climbed so high was reminded of his place in the global hierarchy.

Imagine the cosmic joke of being from a "third world country" and now being labeled a "fourth class employee"

It didn't matter how good an asset you were.

It didn't matter how long you'd been loyal.

It didn't matter how many nights you'd sacrificed.

You are expandable. Replaceable. Disposable.

No matter how much you gave.

No matter how much heart you poured into the job.

No matter how much you believed.

Burnout after burnout, something shifted. I began speaking up about social justice, questioning leadership, challenging the system that had once seemed like salvation but now felt like a prison.

I watched as my seniority was stripped away by new policies. I felt the walls closing in, trapped once again in exactly what I had tried to escape.

The most painful realization: I had become my job, and my job had become me.

I had identified so completely with my role that I forgot the golden rule of business: Never love a company that can't love you back.

I transformed from the eager, grateful worker to the vocal, unsatisfied employee who always had something to say about every injustice.

Trapped in a new system. Full circle.

Late 2023, I found myself in an exit interview.

Signing an NDA to not speak of why. (Remember, this fire has no name, though my first word as a child was "Why")

And here I am.

Fired.

Again.

I remember, 5 AM the morning after.

Made myself a coffee.

Opened my laptop automatically, muscle memory taking over.

Forgetting I was laid off yesterday.

My access was revoked. My email was deleted. My digital existence, erased.

And that's when it hit me, like a wave crashing against stone:

Three years had gone by.

Three years of my life were burned as an offering.

Who the fuck are you now? Without your job? Without your titles? Without your fat salary?

The identity I'd built, the self I'd constructed so carefully, collapsed like a house of cards.

I choked on air.

I panicked in stillness.

I cried without sound.

Never in my life had I lost myself to that point. I'd survived rejections, crossed seas, built new lives. But this was different, I had become so identified with what I did that I'd forgotten who I was.

I didn't even know what had happened.

Nor who I was anymore.

I'd become the fetters I once escaped.

Money won't make you feel your emotions.

Titles won't mend your broken heart.

This isn't about hating money or success.

This is about the wisdom of not letting them define who you are.

I over-identified with my work because it gave me a crutch.

A way to skip feeling my emotions.

A path around my darkest shadows.

Workaholism burned me from inside out, and the only reason was that I was:

Delusional.

Afraid to feel.

So stuck in the head.

Mistaking mental understanding for heart-knowing.

The obsession was a signal that something inside wasn't aligned.

The titles were just filling a void. The extreme hours were just me putting my head in the sand.

I led people, coached them. If we ever worked together, you've probably heard me say: "Take a breath."

I was the one choking on air. I was derailing from who I truly am.

And then came the question that shattered everything:

Who are you without your job?

Without your titles? Without your partner?

Without your money?

"Senior engineer. Team lead. Tech lead."

All those titles suddenly felt void and hollow. "A yoga teacher," my mind whispered. But that was also a title, one that could be stripped away.

I now understand that true wisdom lies not in finding belonging in a company, but in becoming the forest yourself, diverse, resilient, capable of weathering storms and droughts alike.

The most ancient trees know their worth isn't measured by the clouds above, but by their own deep roots and steady growth.

The true spirit moves like wind through branches – unseen but essential, nurturing what matters most.

I am no one. But this fire has a name.

So my dear reader, that story wasn't a rant.

It was a whisper.

I hope it seeds in you that you're much more than what you think you are. That pride in your work is beautiful, but you are more than what you do.

The obsession I've described here isn't only about work.

It's about answering these questions:

What are you avoiding?

What part of your life are you obsessing over?

What are you distracting yourself from?

This story is about work, but it could be anything— with a positive or negative connotation.

It doesn't matter.

Work, fitness, and binge-watching all justifiable to the mind.

A good thing.

A duty.

A responsibility.

Addiction, smoking, alcohol—they hold negative connotations, but in the mind of the addict, they too are justifiable.

Take a breath.

Feel the space between your identity and your essence. That space is where freedom lives.

This isn't about leaving your job or dying to find one.

You may blame it on your workspace, the toxic people around you.

But originally, your life is a single-player game.

Your intention, the choices you make consciously and subconsciously, and everything around you are a manifestation of a combination of your soul, heart, ego and shadows.

So fuck around and find out who's causing the bad taste in your experience.

It’s probably you.

And at any point, if your mind thinks you don't have a choice, think again.

For a better context, I recommend reading the previous post This Fire Has a Name.

This isn’t a whisper about engineering.

It's for anyone who's ever stood at the edge of a system and wondered what lies beyond.

My dear reader, as you walk with me through these embers, listen for the echo of your own whispers.

The fires you've already walked through.

The boundaries you've already questioned.

The part of you that’s been overlooked.

The part of you that questioned the systems.

The part of you that dared to say:

Maybe I’m not the problem — Maybe the game is rigged.

Zlobek *— the mischief and rebellion

Żłobek — Czech noun (from “zlobit”)

Used to refer to a misbehaving or naughty child; someone who causes trouble or doesn’t obey.

I was never a good student.

I was a mischievous one, intentionally and probably subconciously.

Engineering requires understanding and implementation of systems.

And I hated the very idea of being trapped in one.

During my university years, my motto burned within me like a prayer in reverse:

Fuck all systems—I'll hack them, corrupt them, and set myself free.

I deliberately failed.

Never attended classes.

In exams, I'd write my name and leave a blank paper—my silent rebellion against prescribed thinking.

Once, an exam prompt asked: "If you are interested in joining Company X, write your motivation letter."

A practical lesson in professional communication.

A bridge to the working world that awaited.

My exam paper had only two things:

My name and one single sentence:

"Thank you, but I am not interested."

I failed, of course.

But logically—technically—I was playing within their system.

The system just doesn't like those kinds of games.

Don't mistake this rebellion for laziness. I am ferociously ambitious.

You are responsible for your own life. This isn't a call to fail your exams, but rather to see the invisible doors in every wall built to contain you.

Post-graduation, I applied for a Master's degree at Oxford.

With my grades, it felt like trying to touch stars with hands still dusty from the ground.

I applied anyway.

I got shortlisted.

I remember calling friends, just to watch their faces transform: "How did Saf get shortlisted with his grades?"

The thrill lasted exactly eight days.

Rejection arrived like a whisper that silences a shout.

Was it the end?

No.

I sent a letter titled: "Rejection of rejection: I refuse to be refused."

Do I have a master's degree from Oxford today?

No.

But I have something far more valuable—the knowledge that rejection is just another person's opinion of your worth.

Daring to take the craziest leaps of faith is what makes life worth breathing through.

I'm grateful for that rejection; it taught me that we always have a choice in how we receive the world's "no."

The goal isn't reaching the goal, my dear reader.

It's learning to breathe and act as if what you desire is already yours.

Not in delusion, but in the grounded daring that says: I am already what I'm becoming.

A Price on worth

My first job offer came where I completed my thesis: 150 TND per month. 30-40 EUR.

You read that correctly—no numbers missing.

That's when life whispered its first hard truth:

No one will know your worth just by looking at your face.

The same way no one knows you have a headache until you speak it.

I refused to believe my worth was determined by a market, a geographic location, a man in a suit who knew nothing of the braincells or the voices in my head that led me here.

Looking at the situation upside down, I turned that offer into a freelance opportunity, imposing my own rigorous terms that came as a shock:

• "I'll only work for two weeks."

• I bluffed: "I work with clients in the UK, paid in pounds sterling, and I don't have time to waste for what you're offering." (1 GBP = 4 TND, a currency of dreams)

• "I won't be tied to office hours. I come whenever I decide."

Watch what you wish for, dear reader. I did end up working for clients in the UK, paid in pounds sterling— but I'm getting ahead of my story.

I decided the better place to look for my worth was in the clouds, not in an office, and sadly, not in my country.

This led me to refuse many offers to work locally or migrate to France (the easiest getaway for Tunisian engineers— no offense, French friends, but your streets never sang my name).

Freelancing wasn't easy, especially at the beginning.

I lowered my prices, constantly teaching myself new skills to widen the chances of being hired.

Months passed without traction.

My first 30$ evaporated like morning dew:

Six dollars for the transaction fee.

Ten dollars for bank account activation.

The rest burned into a monthly fee.

For the context, my reader: In Tunisia, we aren't allowed international bank accounts.

It's illegal to open accounts outside the country.

God bless digital banks and my hacky way of always finding a path

The Potato and the Code

Fast forward— life jumped me to India, freelancing on the side while working different kind of jobs.

One day, working in a restaurant, my boss handed me a box of potatoes to peel, only to grab his laptop and tell me he could now finish coding his project since he got me to do the tedious work.

Little did I know that in India, almost everyone knows how to code ( or at least the people I met )

I looked at the potatoes and laughed at my engineering diploma.

That day I shattered the cultural supremacy of being an engineer.

We identify more than we need to with titles, certificates, diplomas, and even our skills.

That is not what makes you special, my dear reader, not what makes you, You.

I launched different projects, hoping to make enough money to sustain my travels until I met someone who worked remotely.

A spark ignited in my mind: If I could get a remote job, work from anywhere in the world, make enough to survive— that would be my sweet definition of freedom.

I crafted a CV full of ambition and dreams.

Started sending job applications like a man possessed. Only to discover I wasn't seen the way I thought I'd be. Then came my first interview.

The adrenaline.

The excitement.

The rush.

It was do or die.

I prepared. I stressed. I braced myself.

Stars in my eyes—all I saw was the dream of financial safety, of traveling the world, of being a free man.

Hours after the interview, I was shattered by an email that said:

"You're good but we don't hire people from Africa."

That one broke me. Judged for something I didn't choose.

The world will break your heart ten ways to Sunday.

~ Silver Linings Playbook

But what are you going to do about it ? ( That's the question that transmuted my anger )

I cried. I wept. I got back on my feet.

The thought that kept me going: I got an interview.

Someone took a chance on me.

This was enough to continue.

I rose from rejection like a mad phoenix.

Applied again and again.

Created different versions of my CV.

Set up a Gmail filter for anything containing "unfortunately" or "we are sorry to inform you"— I named it "fucked."

The first interview electrifies you.

You prepare, memorize, rehearse.

After thirty interviews, you just put on the shirt, keep the shorts, and get on with it.

Two and a half years.

Applying and reapplying.

Interviewing and failing.

I made a counter that increased with each application:

The first hundred.

One thousand.

Four thousand.

Nothing worked.

Some companies banned me from applying— I would get rejected and reapply the next day.

I thought if they saw my persistence, my hunger, my fire, they might give me a chance.

That didn't happen.

The Infinite Game

When you get an interview, your mind locks onto that single opportunity.

It stops seeing the future beyond that moment.

You only see the tunnel:

Succeed or face the pain of being stuck in the same place.

With each rejection, I sat with myself:

• What did I do wrong?

• What couldn't I answer?

• What can I improve?

I would learn whatever technical thing stumped me. YouTube became my university. I couldn't afford paid classes, so I found pirated versions of what I needed.

My days became disciplined rituals: Sections for learning. Sections for applying. Sections for emails.

The rest was either yoga or a way to vent the frustration that threatened to consume me.

Time and endless rejections forced a shift in my mind.

I stumbled upon something in my readings about the Vietnam War.

How did Vietnam defeat the mighty United States?

→ They played what philosophers call "the infinite game."

In a finite game, you play to win specific battles.

In an infinite game, you play to keep playing.

The Vietnamese soldiers didn't need to win every battle. They just needed to not lose the war. They learned from each defeat. Adapted. Persisted. The goal wasn't the next hill or village— it was outlasting the opponent who thought in finite terms.

This changed everything for me.

I stopped thinking, "I must get this one job or die trying."

Instead, I thought, "Let's see if I can do better than the previous time."

I mapped my frustration and reframed it from an angle that wouldn't cut so deep. This wasn't just detachment— it was strategic persistence.

Rejections became a strange joy.

An opportunity to improve.

An obsession to avoid past mistakes.

A curiosity about what the next rejection would teach.

The one reality I couldn't hack my way around is :

"Rejection for being the guy from Africa."

That's my identity, my roots and like we say in Tunisian, you can't take your nose off of your face.

At some point, I wondered if I even wanted a job anymore.

The chase had become its own purpose.

If only someone would pay me for being rejected.

Two Offers, Two Truths

One day, the impossible happened.

I reached the final interviews with two different companies. And both said yes.

I cried my heart out.

Not soft tears.

The kind that shakes your entire body.

The kind reserved for when something long-thought impossible suddenly stands before you.

The first day at Company A (they don't deserve to be named): They handed me a contract. I read it once, then twice.

The salary: 20% of what was mentioned in the job offer.

I called the CEO, my voice steady despite the storm inside. "There's been a mistake in the contract."

"No mistake was made. That's what we pay people from Africa."

A brutal knockout, delivered without gloves.

An impulsive but wise decision formed in my mind.

I don't know if it's called resignation when you never truly began, but I told the CEO:

If you see people as less because of where they stand on a map,

then you’ve already lost the plot of what it means to be human and I'm not willing to work with someone with such convictions.

What calmed my anger was the second offer I still held up my sleeve.

Company B was offering 3,000 USD per month— more than enough for a guy from Africa.

I signed the contract.

Started working remotely, after almost three years of sweat and tears and infinite frustrations.

Every day I woke up excited to do my best.

But that didn't last.

Oh, life.

Has a way of keeping its fists up.

The Exit Interview — the knockout moment

One month later, I was delivering my first presentation at my new dream job.

Only to be interrupted by the CEO (Still not sure what it is about CEOs and their flair for rude timing) :

"We're not here for the presentation, Saf. We're here to tell you you're being let go."

I clicked to the next slide in disbelief.

CEO: "I think you didn't get my message. This is an exit interview."

Fuck my life.

One thing about me: When I'm angry, I walk.

I don't care which direction. I just need to move.

That day, I walked for four hours, crying my heart out.

I was beyond broken.

All I knew was: I am not willing to send another application, not another interview, not another rejection.

When the Engineer Met the Yogi — the convergence

I took a six-month rain check from job hunting.

Traveled again.

Taught yoga in Berlin.

Until COVID swept the world and I found myself back home, alone in my apartment with a new decision:

Fuck jobs, I'll create my own opportunity.

I started a project with the yoga studio where I used to teach in Berlin: An online platform for yoga classes.

Two months of coding day and night, I tasted again the joy of creating something from nothing.

The joy that had first drawn me to engineering before systems and rejections buried it. I started teaching yoga online through the same platform I built with my own hands.

As people struggled with working from home, I found myself thriving— combining two aspects of myself I never thought would meet:

The engineer and the yogi finally sat in the same room.

Not as strangers.

Not as competitors.

Not as an impossible choice.

But as two expressions of the same fire.

The Fire That Knows Your Name: Beyond the How's

If I am to give you one lesson from this entire journey, my dear reader, it is this:

Don't get obsessed with the "how's."

Yes, getting the mechanics—the tactics, the applications, the CV, the strategies right, will eventually get you there.

But that is the longest path home.

The shortcut?

Learning how to BE before DOING.

Firing applications like a machine gun at every job posting was a waste of energy.

I was doing everything correctly—by the book.

But here’s the truth:

Deep down, I was panicking.

Every rejection cracked my self-worth a little more.

I was questioning my value.

The anger I aimed at the world was really splintering me from within.

The social pressure from friends and family—about my stubborn ways—

made my self-doubt grow… eerie.

Like a fog that crept in quietly and stayed too long.

I was brute-forcing my way through life, fueled by fear and unworthiness.

Anxiety kissed me, hugged me each morning and I couldn’t peel her face off mine.

Looking back, the younger me was a raging fire.

If he had just paused for a moment—checked in with how he truly felt—

he might’ve broken down…

…and finally healed.

But he didn’t.

His wound became a dirty fuel.

Being angry with a world that doesn't see your worth only reflects that anger back into your bones.

I learned this the hardest way possible—a path I hope to save you from.

Life is a learning process, and some lessons burn before they illuminate.

Aligning internally.

Understanding your emotions.

Finding safety in your Being.

And then—only then— Doing whatever you need to do.

This is the keystone to reaching your goals at light speed.

My dear reader, Your path won't look like mine.

Your fires will burn different colors. But know this:

The systems that reject you don't define your worth.

The labels that confine you don't contain your fire.

And the path that seems impossible might just be the one that leads you home to yourself.

Where your different selves— the rebel and the builder, the seeker and the finder— finally recognize each other as one.

But first, you must recognize yourself not in what you do, but in who you are beneath all doing.

That's where your fire has always burned.

That's where your whispers have always known your name.

Next time, I’ll whisper where the job application counter finally stopped.

But here’s the truth:

When one counter ends, another begins.

This time, the journey wasn't about chasing, but what happens when the fire you feed starts burning you from within.

Today, I remember the journey that brought me here.

To you, my dear reader.

This is not just my story.

It’s an invitation to write yours too.

To remember who you truly are.

My name is Safwen. I also go by Saf.

But names are just containers.

What matters is what burns inside them.

I am the fire that learned to speak when it was still called anger.

Born on the Dream Island of Djerba—half Tunisian, half Lebanese—

a child of Africa and the Middle East.

The first word that ever left my mouth wasn’t "mama" or "baba." It was "WHY," shouted in childhood rage when my sister took my toy.

For 17 years, I channeled that fire through martial arts.

Shotokan Karate taught my hands discipline, but it didn’t protect the boy inside from bullying. Some wounds we carry like prayers—reminders of what shaped us.

I speak to you now as many selves, integrated:

• Martial artist.

• Software engineer.

• Writer.

• Yoga teacher.

• Guide.

A constellation of identities that once felt like an impossible choice— until I realized they were all different notes in the same breath.

The engineer in me graduated, then rebelled.

While others commuted to glass buildings, I worked from home—ten years before the world knew what "remote" meant.

Coming from Africa, this path wasn’t just unconventional. It was wilderness.

I submitted 10,000 applications. Endured 1,000 interviews.

Collected rejections like stones in my pocket for the sole reason of "We don't recruit people from Africa".

Started at $30/week.

Ended as a six-figure tech lead.

And still, something was missing.

In 2013, both my wrists injured in a spectacular fashion.

I couldn’t drive.

Couldn’t hold a plate.

For someone whose body was always in motion, stillness felt like death.

That’s when yoga found me—not as enlightenment, but as necessity.

A soft place for a restless soul to land.

Curiosity became devotion.

Devotion became calling.

A calling became a daily practice.

One night after a great encounter with a traveller of the world, I spun the globe in my room, closed my eyes, and pointed.

INDIA.

I booked a one-way ticket with money I didn’t have, to a future I couldn’t see.

What followed was nearly a year of adventure inked in fear, faith, and a curiosity to discover.

I still have the journal entry: “If I survive this, I can survive anything.”

I received my first yoga teacher training where yoga was born.

Then carried those teachings through India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Berlin— teaching, volunteering, working jobs of all types: A waiter, a cook, a hostel host, a horse trainer..

I taught people how to breathe while learning how to breathe myself (sometimes panicking over it myself) .

When COVID swept in and the world halted, I returned to code.

Built platforms for the yoga studio where I once taught.

For a moment, both worlds touched.

Then, in 2023, the breakup: I was let go from tech. (I’d tell you more, but there’s an NDA guarding that story.)

And in the sudden silence of unemployment, I heard my whispers calling after a crisis of:

“Who are you without the job ?”

The inner work never stopped.

Heartbreaks.

Childhood wounds.

Masculinity.

Toxicity.

Shadows.

Each era brought a teacher.

A lesson. A layer.

From the primal masculine fire of Elliott Hulse,

to the soul-centered clarity of Danny Morel.

My body kept remembering—

training with world-class movers like Jon Yuen, Jeremi Fein, and Abdelwahed Moncef.

In 2024, I completed my 300-hour yoga teacher training with Daniel Rama at Vikasa Academy in Thailand.

The circle closed.

The student became the teacher.

Again.

And even with all these experiences, the noise inside me remained. You’d think by then I had mastered silence—but truthfully, I hadn’t. Not until a dear friend, Barhoum the Believer, taught me what true silence meant. In one moment, everything I’d ever practiced dissolved into something deeper: real Silence.

I didn’t leave software engineering.

I wrote the code for this sanctuary you’re reading.

But I realized: the struggle of being many things was never real.

It was noise.

Fear.

The shadows I hadn’t hugged.

The engineer still writes code.

The writer still pours words.

The yogi still sits in silence.

The guide holds space for all of them.

In a world that teaches we must DO to BE—

I help people remember how to do from their being.

I teach movement, breath, and stillness.

Not as techniques.

As remembrance.

Because that’s how I found my way back to myself.

And maybe—just maybe—

It’s how you’ll remember yours.

Because the whispered path back to your essence…

doesn’t have to be walked alone.

There will be yoga classes.

Guided meditations.

One-to-one guidance.

Not to change who you are—

but to help you remember.

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