When the World Feels Too Heavy to Carry
Welcome. What you’ll find on this page is a gift from Dr. Ibrahim Jaffe to The Shift Network community: a short teaching and guided practice for the moments when the weight of the world feels like more than you can hold.
You don’t need any background in Sufism or any particular tradition to receive it. Come as you are, with whatever you’re carrying. That’s exactly what the practice is for.
A 15-minute practice for real inner strength, with Dr. Ibrahim Jaffe
In this teaching, Dr. Jaffe draws on the 1,500-year-old Shadhiliyya Sufi tradition to answer a question so many of us are living with right now: how do we stay standing in times of upheaval? He introduces Al-Qawi, the divine quality of strength that breaks through obstacles, and then guides you directly into the experience of receiving it. Find a quiet place, close the door, and give yourself the full 15 minutes.
Download the Meditation
The guided meditation from the video is yours to keep as an audio recording. Download it now, while you’re here, and save it somewhere you can reach it easily, like your phone.
Then use it. This practice isn’t meant to be experienced once and remembered fondly. It’s meant to be a companion. Reach for it whenever you feel the weight returning: when the news is too much, when you can’t sleep, when something in your life is asking for more strength than you seem to have. Each time you listen and recite, you draw the strength in a little deeper, and over time, as Dr. Jaffe teaches, it stops being something you visit and becomes something you carry.
There is no wrong time and no maximum dose. Whenever you need strength, it’s here.
About Dr. Ibrahim Jaffe
Dr. Ibrahim Jaffe, MD, is a Western-trained physician and a recognized master teacher and guide in the Shadhiliyya Marifa Sufi order, a lineage of heart-centered spiritual practice reaching back some 1,500 years. For more than three decades, he has bridged these two worlds, pioneering an approach to healing that addresses illness and suffering at their spiritual and energetic roots. He has taught thousands of students around the world, including many physicians, psychotherapists, and health practitioners drawn to a path that honors both science and spirit. His teaching centers on a simple conviction: that divine love and light are real, available, and able to transform any human life that opens to them.
This video and meditation are a gift. Share the practice with anyone in your life who is carrying more than they can hold.