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Healing Through Catharsis: Ashira Darwish

Ashira Darwish is the producer of and a central voice in SAND’s 2024 film Where Olive Trees Weep. A Palestinian journalist who worked for fifteen years with the BBC, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, she was beaten by Israeli soldiers badly enough to be left paralyzed, healed herself, and founded Catharsis Holistic Healing, a trauma therapy project rooted in Sufi active meditation. Two years on from the film, now in exile from Palestine, she joins Michael Reiley to talk about rage, spiritual bypassing, why the healing world is as colonized as everything else, and why her work begins from continuous traumatic stress rather than post-traumatic stress. The episode includes a clip from the film and closes with the studio recording of her song “Tatajallah.”

Topics

  • 00:03 Two years since the film
  • 00:05 When the US stopped being safe
  • 00:10 Healing from people pleasing
  • 00:14 The volcano
  • 00:18 The rage that is permitted
  • 00:22 One tribe
  • 00:27 Clip from Where Olive Trees Weep
  • 00:34 If we are truly one
  • 00:40 The healing world is colonized too
  • 00:44 How Catharsis got its name
  • 00:47 The accidental ashram
  • 00:51 The children of Nabi Salih
  • 00:56 Continuous traumatic stress
  • 01:02 “Tatajallah — Ashira’s Song فلتتجلى

Ashira Darwish is a Palestinian healer, journalist and human rights researcher. She worked for fifteen years in TV and radio in Palestine, with the BBC, Internews, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. She is the founder of Catharsis Holistic Healing, which offers free trauma support to Palestinians in Palestine, in Gaza and in exile, and has trained practitioners across the Arab world.

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