Jane Jaffer, Oman-based author, poet, yoga expert, Reiki healer and therapeutic counsellor
It's important for me to find a vent for my creativity. I believe a creative person can fall ill if he or she is somehow unable to express and use his or her intrinsic creative talents
I am a fully qualified counsellor. Through counselling, healing and writing I help others to heal themselves. I want to use my life in a positive way and to be of assistance to others.
I want to help people to transform their pain by turning negatives into positives - in this way, they can move forward towards a more fulfilling life.
I was born in the UK and enjoyed a happy childhood with my parents and brother in Blackheath, southeast London. We went for lovely holidays on the English coast.
At the age of 18 I joined St Osyth's College of Education in Essex, where I trained to become a primary school teacher. I subsequently went on to work at Hornihan Primary School, Forest Hill.
I met my husband, Redha Jaffer, while I was studying. He was a business student in London. We married in 1980 and came to Oman. Initially, I didn't meet any Britons when I came to Muscat.
However, I soon became involved in starting and running a nursery school called the Ruwi Play School, which I subsequently sold to the Muscat English-Speaking School (now the British School) seven years later. I worked there as a teacher until 1996.
During my days as an educator ...
... I became inclined towards issues (of personal) well-being ... paying attention to one's emotional, mental and spiritual health.
I helped to establish a women's self-help support group and a book club in 1984, which I am happy to say still functions today!
Many alternative therapy practitioners passed through Muscat in those days; I asked them to give lectures and conduct workshops and training. Many of us were trained in Reiki healing methods during the visit of a Reiki master.
My interest in health and women's issues ...
... culminated in me becoming the club executive at Samaa, a women's health club. I worked there for 18 months. I helped set up the spa and organised various events there.
(While doing this,) I nurtured a desire to create a centre that would be entirely dedicated to alternative therapies as well as hosting classes and workshops. This led to the birth of the Elixir Holistic Centre in 1998.
Elixir means the essence of life: the centre subsequently became a forum and space (for) multiple purposes: whether it was alternative treatments, therapy, or training courses.
It also became a women's centre that hosted business meetings, toddler groups, dance, yoga, cookery and tap-dancing classes. I eventually added a gymnasium to the premises. We got speakers from all walks of life to do lectures and lead workshops. It also served as a women's space of sorts.
The centre successfully operated for three years. However, (I then spent a few months) away from Oman and returned with new ideas. After my experience at Elixir, I became more interested in dealing with healing at a more personal, grassroots level.
I am a holistic practitioner ...
... in that I try to be sensitive to each patient's unique needs. I often use a combination of therapies and methods that are beneficial to a particular patient's mental or physical make-up.
It is vital to recognise that your biography can become your biology: each cell in your body has a memory.
Your body can reflect the emotional baggage you have been holding on to and this burden can physically accumulate in your body, resulting in (ailments) such as stiffness, tension in the neck and shoulders, weak lungs or stomach problems.
Learning Reiki healing skills was the beginning of my spiritual journey. Training to be a yoga teacher also contributed towards it greatly. In 2005I studied Sivananda yoga at Gaunt's House, Wimbourne in the UK.
I developed an interest in counselling while conducting Reiki sessions, which rely on visualising a patient's emotional landscape. I felt it would be more effective if I integrated counselling into an alternative therapy framework.
Subsequently, I trained to become a professional therapeutic counsellor at the Stonebridge Institute in Devon from 2005 to 2006.
Writing was a foray into yet another world.
I worked at a local bilingual women's monthly magazine Al Mar'a: Shades of a Woman in 2004, its first year of publication. There, I interviewed high-profile women in Oman.
I also participated in poetry and creative writing workshops and discovered poetry to be a wonderful medium for self-expression. For me, writing ... is a very cathartic and therapeutic activity. In fact, I often advise people to deal with unresolved emotions towards particular individuals by writing them letters about their feelings.
The point is to release those emotions rather than actually send the letters. Furthermore, I discovered that writing a book has helped to encourage other people wishing to articulate their own stories through the medium of words.
I have recently associated myself with people who have had particular health/emotional problems to deal with. I wrote Women on Edge, a book of poetry on women's issues, while nursing my father during the last six months of his life.
"We worked together on this book with his drawings accompanying my poems. One of the reasons I wished to publish this book was to showcase his great artistic talents. It was published in 2003.
Writing poetry can be a great form of self-expression; it's a personal moment ...
... exclusively for you, whereas creating fiction requires a writer to be very aware of and sensitive to the greater audience.
"Who will read my book?" This question should always in the back of your mind while writing fiction. Writing my novel Scent of a Rose (published in December 2006) became a process of challenging myself to see whether I could do it.
Could I make the characters come alive? Was the story credible and exciting? I learned so much while writing it. It is important for a writer to write about what you know, whether it is a location, aspects about yourself or personal experiences.
Scent of a Rose traces the journey of a young English girl, Rosie from Brighton, to Dubai and Oman. It explores how different aspects of one's personality may develop in the expatriate setting.
My next writing project is to compile a book of funny stories about expatriate life.
I intend to hold more creative writing workshops for women.
During my last creative writing course, I discovered that the best way to heal yourself is to heal others. Knowing that others have suffered in a similar way to you can be such a relief. Knowing that we are not alone in our suffering always helps.