Practices for self-protection

1. Keep yourself grounded, balanced and energetically and spiritually vibrant.
Keep the balance in your life between activity and rest/sleep; work and pleasure.
Cultivate your: Breath – Rhythm – Magnetism and light radiance – Mind power – Subtle centres – Trust and confidence in God – Awareness of cosmic/planetary energy patterns and group dynamics

2. Know yourself:
– What is my body telling me? Through its energy, feelings, images
– What needs am I not taking care of? Physically, emotionally
– How am I leaving myself open? eg negative self-image, self-doubt can be causes of:

– driving myself too hard, stress
– having weak personal boundaries
– being vulnerable through projection and transference (the ‘door-bell test’)

– What are my hooks? ie with what kinds of situations, emotions, people do I lose my balance?
– What is my soul’s yearning?

3. Make your healing environment clean and clear , physically and energetically. Beauty.
Before a client arrives, prepare the space with prayer, candle, incense

4. Follow good practice for ending a healing session
Cleanse the room energetically and spiritually

eg walk clockwise around the couch or chair 3 x with a candle saying the Invocation
could also carry incense and sprinkle drops of water
you could also walk around the whole room 3 x saying the Invocation
Express gratitude for the healing received. Ask for purification of all energies

Release the client’s energies from oneself:

Wash hands, wrists, arms with running cold water or light
Sprinkle water or light all over oneself
Prayer

Wazaif and practices for protection

1. For mending brokenness
Ya Jabbar : (pronounced yaa Jab-BAR) The Repairer
‘Al-Jabbar is an expression of divine power that allows you to accomplish things or to act in the world. It is a healing strength. It carries the root meaning of setting a broken bone to heal it. Al-Jabbar means the strength to continuously heal all things all the time, the strength to heal brokenness. It is compelling, but only in the sense of stabilizing you in a consistent direction of movement.
When recited, Ya Jabbar empowers the sincere practitioner with an enduring strength so that nothing can shake you. Through embodying this quality your existence becomes unified. It is the mender of our fractured existence.

‘Al-Jabbar is the mender of bones, but it also means to set the backbone as a chiropractor might do. It is divine strength but a strength, first of all, to act on the world, and secondly, to act on the world with a specific purpose and effect, which is to heal. And it is the kind of strength to do this healing again and again, continuously. It never loses heart. And that means, no matter what comes up in the news, you continue to heal that. It is the power to fix whatever is in need, to heal what is broken.’

2. For Support, help, guidance
1. al-Madat ya Murshid (pronounced al-MAA-dat ya MURshid). Asking Murshid to help and protect one.
2. Pray for protection to Murshid, Christ, Archangels Gabriel and Raphael, and your special spiritual guides.
3. Ya Wakil (pron yaa wa-KEEL) The Trustee, (Pir Vilayat:) The Guardian Angel
Al-Wakil is the only one who is worthy of complete trust in every affair. For Sufis, tawakkul means complete trust in Allah. It is a station, not a passing state. Recitation of Ya Wakil calls forth protection that is full of reliability. It is steadfastness along with resilience and lack of defensiveness. It has cohesiveness. It brings solidity without rigidity. Invocation of Ya Wakil is a remedy for those who have deep issues with being able to trust.

3. For lifting one up out of attack or danger, and repelling attack
1. Ya Rafi – Ya Dafi
Ya Rafi: The Uplifter, the exalter
The One whose wisdom chooses the ones to be uplifted. The One who uplifts and elevates mankind above petty desires and selfishness. The One who makes it possible to rise above the differences and distinctions that divide mankind.

Ar-Rafi is the only one who raises beings through spiritual stations, by which they draw near to Allah. It is the only cause of such exaltation. Ar-Rafi is the exalter; it facilitates movements to the higher planes. It allows you to transcend lower states, opinions, prejudices, and even to overcome obsessions. Through its activity, a traveller on the spiritual path goes through every single healing process until they are truly free.
Pir Zia: The name ‘Raphael’ may come from the divine name Ya Rafi, to elevate.

Ya Dafi: The One who repels attack

2. Ya Mu’min (pronounced yaa MU’-min) The Remover of Fear, The Giver of Tranquility
The One who offers us a real faith and a trust that is free of all fear, craft and deceit. From the root we learn that al-Mu’min is a divine gift that allows us to feel safety, confidence and security in our hearts. It allows human beings to have trust in God alone and not to be taken in by secondary causes, or what appear on the surface to be the causes of conditions.

4. For dealing with projections
Ya Nur – Ya Munawir to deal with projections eg from a client onto a therapist. Feel light and strength radiating out from inside

5. For protection
1. Say the Invocation while drawing a circle of light around yourself. Starting in front of you, draw the circle clockwise on the ground with your right index finger (when you get as far behind you as you can, you have to turn to pick up the same point by reaching round from your left side to complete the circle, always with your index finger). Do this 3 x.

2. Ya Muhaimin (pron yaa mu-HAI-min) The Protector
Al-Muhaimin is the divine quality that preserves the essence of a thing from corruption through all the vicissitudes of time. The eternal in the thing, the purity of what it is in reality, is protected from being harmed by any temporal cause.

3. Aman (pronounced a-MAAN) Sanctuary, safety, protection, healing. It is not preceded by ‘Ya’. It may be said 11 x.
It may also be used in a crisis situation including a mass crisis like the Haiti earthquake

[Explanations of Ya Jabbar, Ya Mu’min, Ya Muhaimin, Ya Rafi and Ya Wakil are drawn from Physicians of the Heart by Wali Ali Meyer et al]

6. Other sufi practices which especially help with protection
Zikr
Practices with light

7. Practices from other traditions
Draw a cross of light and a circle of light around it over each chakra, from Crown to Base

Take a shower, imagining the water to be drops of coloured light of the whole spectrum, feel the light carrying away any negative energy or undesired attachments down the drain, and purifying your aura and energy, leaving it clear and light.