THE RETURN TO WELLNESS, A STORY FROM THE HEART OF LEBANON

as told by the voice of my Sound Healing Sanctuary.

I often say that wellness in Lebanon is not something new.
It is something ancient that simply lost its way.

Long before we had hashtags, studios, or imported mats, this land breathed its own medicine.
Our ancestors understood the body as an ecosystem, the soul as a landscape. They practiced tibb nabawi, Prophetic and Islamic medicine, herbal knowledge, energy work, lunar rituals, bathing practices, fasting cycles, and communal healing.
And before that, even further back, Phoenicians, Greeks, Romans—everyone who passed through this stretch of Mediterranean earth, carried some philosophy of balance: air, fire, water, earth; mind, body, spirit.

Wellness was not an industry then.
It was a worldview.
A way of belonging.

WHEN THE LAND LOST ITS BREATH

Then came the centuries of upheaval, empires, mandates, divisions, followed by the wars that tore Lebanon into pieces.
During those times, healing became a luxury. Survival took its place. People leaned on cigarettes, on nightlife instead of night-prayer, on a culture of noise rather than one of introspection.

Western medicine, with its brilliance and limitations, dominated the narrative. It saved lives, but it also pushed our ancestral knowledge to the margins. Holistic healing became something “old-fashioned,” “unserious,” or even “dangerous.” The whispers of our ancestors were muted beneath machines, hospitals, and the rush of reconstruction.

YOGA, ENERGY, AND SOUND HEALING

Yoga’s Entry and Early Resistance

Yoga as a formal practice first rooted itself in Lebanon around the year 2000, when the Beirut Sivananda Yoga Center opened in Gemmayze. Its founder, Nabil Najjar, returned from New York, bringing with him a love for Asana, breath, and stillness.

But the path was not free of opposition. Many religious leaders—Christian and Muslim alike—expressed suspicion, denouncing yoga as non-Christian or esoteric. From an anthropological viewpoint, these reactions were predictable: an imported spiritual-practical discipline challenged local religious worldviews. To survive and spread, yoga in Lebanon was often reframed not as mystical ritual but as fitness, stress relief, or sport, allowing the practice to grow quietly.

By the 2010s, more studios appeared, and yoga began reaching a wider audience. The perception shifted: yoga was less an “esoteric threat” and more a practical way to breathe, move, and heal.

The Rise of Energy & Sound Healing

Parallel to yoga’s growth, a softer but powerful current also emerged: energy healing and sound healing.

• Energy Healing: By the early 2010s, workshops in practices like Tibetan Energy Clearing appeared in Beirut, combining visualization, subtle energy work, and spiritual clearing. These practices drew both curious seekers and skeptics.

• Sound Healing: For many years, sound healing in Lebanon was marginalized. One of the earliest voices was Sophia Kosma, who offered sound therapy in Beirut using instruments, voice, and vibration. Her work, pioneering yet niche, was always treated as peripheral, “nice but not serious.”

Now, I have created a Sound Healing sanctuary, the first of its kind in Lebanon, a home for frequencies, vibration, and presence. It counters the loud, smoke-filled, night-driven, traffic-heavy, politically tense culture we live in, a culture that rarely allows the body or the nervous system to rest. This sanctuary is not just a business; it is an act of resistance. A cultural repair.

Anthropologically, what’s happening is a re-indigenization of healing. Practices that might have been imported are deeply resonant with ancient Lebanese sensibilities: ritual, vibration, and spiritual embodiment. Resistance from traditional institutions is fading as more people seek reconnection to self, community, and the land.

THE PROBLEM OF THE RISING, UNREGULATED FIELD

But with growth comes distortion.

Today, wellness in Lebanon expands faster than our capacity to ground it. Social media rewards aesthetics over ethics. Anyone with a ring light and a feel-good quote can call themselves a healer, a yogi, or an energy worker.

This makes our work harder.
It makes the field confusing.
It disrupts trust.

The irony is painful: we fought for decades to reclaim ancestral knowledge, only to watch it commercialized, diluted, and sometimes performed without roots or responsibility.

Healing the Invisible Wounds

In a country that has endured relentless wars, explosions, and political chaos, the wounds are not just visible—they are deeply felt in the body and mind. Many people carry PTSD, anxiety, and the weight of ancestral trauma that has passed through generations.

It is no wonder, then, that alongside yoga, energy work, and sound healing, there is a growing interest in ceremonial, plant-based, and nature-centered practices—rituals that honor the body, the spirit, and the land. These are approached carefully, in safe, guided settings, often inspired by traditional medicine and indigenous wisdom, focusing on intention, mindfulness, and emotional release rather than substances.

Lebanese seekers are looking for medicine that restores balance, that helps them process trauma, reconnect with their own bodies, and reclaim a sense of safety and wholeness. It is part of a broader movement: wellness here is not just about fitness or beauty; it is about healing generations, restoring the soul, and remembering a lineage of care that our ancestors practiced long before modernity arrived.

And Yet—The Essence Survives

Despite the noise, something real is happening. People are waking up. People are remembering.

Not another gym-branded yoga class. Not a spiritual trend imported for aesthetics. Something rooted. Something that could counterbalance the noise, pollution, political tension, and emotional aggression that saturate our culture.

So I built a Sound Healing sanctuary in the forest—the first of its kind in Lebanon. A home for frequencies, vibrations, breath, and presence. A place where silence has permission to exist. Where the nervous system can hear itself again.

I created it because this country is loud. Cigarettes clouded the air, traffic screamed, nightlife pulsed relentlessly, and the political and emotional weight of our daily lives pressed down on everyone. And loud countries need sacred quiet places.

This sanctuary is not just a business; it is an act of resistance. A counter-culture. A cultural repair.

Even with the unregulated chaos in the wellness world, the inconsistencies, and the diluted practices, the heart of this movement is sincere: Lebanon is healing. Slowly, quietly, imperfectly.

Here, wellness is not a trend. It is a lineage, a return, a remembering. We are not inventing healing; we are restoring it to a land that once knew its value. And the work continues, with sound, with breath, with intention, and with the hope that one day, wellness in Lebanon will become not just an industry, but again a way of life.