Healing and Wisdom Circle with Dr. Samar Zebian
Taking place online on every alternate Sunday afternoon, the Circle will offer you stories and wisdom about a new topic each week. You are invited to join us as we gather to explore new ways of seeing ourselves, each other and our place in the more-than-human world.
Event Theme: Hate Motivated Incidents, Fear and Belonging
About the Circle
The Stories are the connective tissue that unite us: stories about who we are, what we are becoming, where we belong and with whom we belong. You are invited to CCMW’s Healing and Wisdom Circle to offer your stories and wisdom about the topic/theme of the week.
Speaking from personal experience, we gather to explore new ways of seeing ourselves, each other and our place in the more-than-human world. By doing so, the invitation is to break free of old stories rooted in hierarchical authority patterns and the feeling that we are separate and disconnected from our Real selves (psycho-spiritual physical selves), our cultural heritage, from one another, from wider Nature and the pulse of life.
You are invited to let go of personal expectations, to become fully attentive to others in the circle. This practice helps us bring forth new ways of seeing, thinking and feeling as we listen more deeply to ourselves and the connective tissue between our stories. Find out more here.
About Dr. Samar Zebian
Dr. Samar Zebian was born in Lebanon and emigrated to Canada in 1971 and spent 29 years in Ontario before she returned to Lebanon with her family to work in academia and in the field of therapy and wellness. During her time in Canada she was an executive member of the CCMW board for several years. By nature, she is an advocate for women’s empowerment in the Muslim context and far beyond.
In 2000 Samar received her doctorate in Cognitive Science from Western University (Canada). She received the International Triandis Award for her dissertation research on how mathematical thought and number sense is shaped by cultural artifacts and processes.
Upon graduation she returned to her native Lebanon and was appointed as an Assistant and Associate Professor, and held the position of Program Director in the Psychology Departments at the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese American University for the past 17 years.
In 2017, she transitioned into a second career in psychotherapy and spiritual mentoring. Part of this journey involved training as a Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC) teacher with Chris Germer at Centrum Voor Mindfulness in Amsterdam. She leads MSC courses in Lebanon and abroad and in NGOS, universities, health care settings and in the community.
Samar researches how compassion meditation and the Mindful Self Compassion program influence psycho-physiological processes and well-being and is currently at the beginning of a project to translate the Mindful Self Compassion Workbook and Teacher’s Manual into Arabic. She has a daily MSC practice and has been meditating and on a spiritual quest for decades. For her, compassion is the quintessential ingredient in healing, the self-realization journey and in peaceful co-existence.
In addition to her work in the field of compassion, Samar is a Solution Focused Brief therapist and a Spiritual mentor in Lebanon, Arab world and for online clients in North America. In 2018 she co-founded Beit Insan, a unique and innovative center for transformational healing which is premised on a humanistic, rather than a medical model, approach to personal and collective wellness.
More recently she is collaborating with an international group of professionals (healers, therapists, graphic designers, architects) to open a healing pod to provide the community with a safe place to recharge and get grounded and reawaken inner peace, love and happiness.
She has spent the last two years of her life practicing and assisting in nature therapy/bathing groups and studying the healing potential of communing with nature.