As part of the Alef Trust’s Conscious Community Initiative, Tending to the Body and Soul is a pioneering project led by Lahore- based psychologist and facilitator Ayesha Iftikhar. Her work offers participants a space to journey through grief, healing, and resilience, rooted in authenticity and collective care. In this interview with Charles Daniel McDonald, Ayesha reflects on the emerging curriculum behind the project, the qualities essential for facilitators, and her vision for longer term systemic change in mental health care.
In scaling this initiative, are you developing a formal curriculum or training model for facilitators? What qualities or competencies are essential for those delivering this work?
The goal is to develop a formal curriculum, a course that can be replicated and shared as a journey. My inspiration comes from large scale programmes such as A Course in Miracles. While my project is on a smaller scale, the idea is to create a framework that could be used by groups in different contexts to engage with the same psychological concepts and practices.
Facilitators would require specific training, but above all, what I have found most powerful is vulnerability and authenticity. In my earlier Alef Trust project, Journey to Self, participants emphasised how different it felt to have a facilitator who was fully human in the space; sharing stories, joining in vulnerability, and being part of the group rather than a detached observer. That openness helped people to go deeper much more quickly.
Alongside this, facilitators need a wide “window of tolerance” – the ability to hold deep and sometimes turbulent emotional processes without becoming overwhelmed. It is essential to “walk the talk”, to be prepared for grief, discomfort, or even resistance from the group, and still remain grounded, present, and hopeful.
What does this inner preparation involve for you personally?
Before every session I engage in spiritual and energy practices that strengthen my grounding and nervous system regulation. This helps me to carry a presence of steadiness and trust.
For example, I often guide participants through a six-week exploration of grief; personal, collective, cultural, even grief for the world itself. These sessions can be profoundly intense, with people disclosing abuse, trauma, or deep losses they have never spoken of before. When the “boat” of the group feels unstable, I must remain steady, trusting the process and believing in the resilience that emerges on the other side.
Facilitators need to accept that they may not always be liked, that discomfort is part of transformation, and that holding space sometimes means carrying the group through turbulence. But when done within a trauma-informed and spiritually sensitive framework, people leave with relief, connection, and renewed resilience.
How does your approach differ from more mainstream mental health models?
In Pakistan, where most health care is paid out of pocket, long term therapeutic support is rare. Internationally, too, the insurance-driven model often offers only six to twelve sessions. This favours short term, surface level interventions.
My work challenges that approach. Transformation takes time, months rather than weeks, allowing people to move through grief, reflection, and renewal at a sustainable pace. It is not about quick fixes or toxic positivity. It is about honouring wounds fully, and then gradually moving towards hope and joy. Participants often describe this as life changing, not because of grand promises, but because they felt genuinely held through a deep and honest process.
What systemic change do you hope to see?
I would love to see mental health systems value depth over speed. Rather than superficial coping strategies, we need spaces where people can engage with grief, collective wounds, and the complexities of their personal histories.
This requires facilitators who embody vulnerability, fearlessness, and hope. I think of them as “hope merchants”, not pretending to have reached the light at the end of the tunnel, but trusting that together, we can journey towards it.
And what comes next for you and Tending to the Body and Soul?
Looking ahead, I feel called to explore collective trauma in greater depth. Living in Lahore means confronting daily realities such as air pollution, power shortages, political instability, and economic uncertainty. Alongside global crises from wars to climate change, these conditions create a constant atmosphere of collective stress. I believe healing must therefore also be collective: resilience and activism rooted in community and solidarity. This will be the next frontier for my work.
Ayesha’s reflections remind us that transformation is not found in shortcuts, but in honest, sustained journeys through grief, vulnerability, and resilience. By modelling authenticity and holding space with courage, she offers a vision for mental health care that is profoundly human, and urgently needed in today’s world.
Discover more about Alef Trust´s Conscious Community Initiative projects, here.
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