Whisper #0 - This Fire Has a Name
I don’t write to explain — I write to remember.
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.
Thanks for reading The Whispered Letters!
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