Abeer Al-Osaimi, Fadia Al-Marzouq, Nadia Al-Marzouq

Three Kuwaiti women carried in their hearts a great love for Kuwait, and they took upon themselves the task of improving society for the better. Together, they founded Nafas, a center which aims to restore balance and harmony to the lives of individuals who have the desire to live and love themselves in all moments.

3oud.com connects with the founders of Nafas, as they discuss their passion for wellness and the workshops they offer at the center.

Tell us about yourselves. What are your backgrounds?

We come from similar backgrounds, we have educational degrees and a variety of experiences from health sciences and computer science to engineering. The conditions of social life and their impact on our mental health and our sense of responsibility towards ourselves and our family made us search for solutions to all the difficulties we face, so we searched for solutions in books, lectures and various courses inside and outside Kuwait. Here was the beginning when we discovered that the solution is within us, and we must find the best way to show it and the easiest way to apply it and benefit from it so that we can live quietly and safely.

When did your passion for wellness start?

Since childhood, the phrase “a healthy mind resides in a healthy body” reverberated in our ears, and then we read in the Quran “He who comes to God with a healthy heart.” Here, our constant question was how to get the necessary health in order to obtain a healthy heart, a healthy mind, and a healthy body, and the path of knowledge and learning began until our first meeting, which was in one of the transformational breathing techniques workshops. We gathered our passion to learn everything new in the field of mental health.

What motivated you to open “Nafas”?

What we learned was worthy of changing the course of our healthy and psychological lives for the better. Through our communication with people, we found the great need in our societies to raise the level of awareness and empower the individual, in particular the woman, with easy tools that help him/her reach the required inner peace in the fastest and easiest way. This is where the idea of ​​establishing a pioneering center for mental, psychological and social health emerged, with the aim of helping people recover.

How would you describe “Nafas”?

We are proud to say that Nafas is “the safe space for empowerment and strength in the heart of Kuwait”.

What has been the most popular workshop among your clients and why do you think that is?

The O2 breathing class every Monday at 7 pm is always preferred and the demand for it is very high because it is the first and easiest step to learn about the breathing techniques we use and benefit from it immediately, and the opportunity to get to know the participating specialists in the center so that the client can choose after that whom she is comfortable with to complete the recovery journey and what is the method most suitable for her.

How do you work together as a team to avoid challenges you might face?

Love, trust and mutual respect among the team members are the most important principles that help us pass together through challenges and not avoid them, and this is what makes our journey more exciting and beautiful.

There have been a lot of businesses that were affected in the past two years due to the pandemic, but did you find it to be the opposite for you, since a lot of people’s mental health was taking a toll on them?

Yes, we were positively affected, as it moved us to the world of social media, and we used it extensively to spread awareness and communicate with everyone who turns to us. We entered people's homes around the world through the phone and computer screens, and we used Zoom calls to train large groups on various techniques that help them find peace, comfort, and stability during the difficult days of Corona. Here was our great experience in Lebanon, especially after the Beirut port explosion in 2020.

We were able to communicate with numbers of close to 900 people in Lebanon, including doctors and psychological consultants, and they learned through us on the treatment techniques in Thought Field Therapy (TFT), and it was applied to a large segment in Lebanon, and it had a great impact on recovery during the crisis so far.

If you could collaborate with someone, who would it be and why?

It will be a collaboration with my true self. Learning how to reach and understand it is what will lead me to comfort and tranquility and lead me to clarity in choosing what I want, and how to make decisive and courageous decisions for a life of more love, joy and stability. And the positive change that I will make in myself will certainly have a positive effect on whom I will contact and the whole world.

“God does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves”