This is continued from The Best of Both Worlds(Part-1)
Q : As a women we have wear different hats - like that of a mother, a daughter, a business women, so how can meditation help women manage all these roles with ease?
Iman Mutlaq : Very easily! Once we delve deeper and get to know ourselves and understand what works for us, life becomes easier. Multiple roles, which we all play, can sometimes turn out to be stressful. The reason people feel that they can’t manage them well is because they are overwhelmed and can’t manage their time well and most of all they are neglecting themselves. So everything just adds to the other and they feel like they are running and running and can’t handle all their roles.
Meditation calms down the system and allows the body to release stress. Once the body is calm, the whole system is calm and so one’s approach is calm and focused and then multiple roles fall into place.
Q : You have been a single mother, has meditation helped you being a better mother?
Iman Mutlaq : For sure! Raising two boys on my own has definitely been a challenge but I learnt to not over react, to understand them better to empathize with their different stages of life.
Meditation helps in self-reflection which helps me further in outer reflection which means live life with easy and approach issues calmly and this is a successful formula for all parents’ not just moms.
Q : Could you share one of your very unique meditation experiences?
Iman Mutlaq : I was doing the Advance Meditation Course and my meditation experience was like opening my laptop after a very long time and finding all programs minimized. It was like going through each program and see what to delete and what to keep.
This was one of the most powerful experiences in my life. The advanced meditation course just pushed the limits of how far into myself I could go. And the further in I went, the more I understood that there is so much happening in my sub conscious without me realizing that.
Issues in life simply make us go from happy to sad, sad to happy moments. So these minimized “programs” working in the background needed to be closed.
The advanced course made me reach that level and see all these programs and realize that the time has come to work through them and just shut them down. When that happened, I never had to go through any major swings of moods or feelings. That is not to say that I am not affected by life or emotional – of course I am. But the issues that affect me are issues that I am aware of. And therefore can tackle them immediately and move on.
Every night I sleep soundly and I wake up energized and ready to tackle my day with a big smile on my face!
Q : In an Obama Summit, you have spoken about the upliftment of women in Afghanistan. Do you think meditation can also add to the upliftment of women there?
Iman Mutlaq : Meditation can help everyone; and definitely women in Afghanistan can benefit from meditation simply because meditation will allow them to relax, shed the stress, understand themselves internally and not wait for someone to define them and tell them who they are and what they can be.
They will understand it on their own and with that meditation comes strength and with strength comes the courage to go out there and make something out of their lives. They will believe in their potential and that is the success for their upliftment.
In order to empower and help women, we founded the International Association for Human Values (IAHV) in Switzerland and Washington, DC. We then opened an office in Amman, Jordan to support the women in the Middle East and currently we are involved in projects with women in Iraq and Libya and then moving on to Afghanistan to provide women with projects and options for empowerment. Naturally included in our programs will be a focus on meditation.
Q : Would you like to give a message for women reading this interview
Iman Mutlaq : I would say every woman must take out at-least 15 minutes every day to just sit and delve deeper into herself. She will rise up ready to tackle the world and enjoy it! Just like we eat and sleep and talk we also must meditate.
It is not a thing to do when we have some spare time. It is a must in our daily lives It’s a recipe for success whichever way we looked at it!
