Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Hala Khouri. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Hala, thanks for joining us today. If you had a defining moment that you feel really changed the trajectory of your career, we’d love to hear the story and details.

In 2006, I was starting to burn out in my private therapy practice. I was seeing six to eight clients a day, and I knew I needed to diversify how I was working. Then I was invited in to work on a project with 2 other women developing a leadership training curriculum based in yoga and somatics. I respected these women tremendously and as honored that I was to be invited to work with them, yet I hesitated to say yes. When I reflected on my hesitation, I realized I had this inner voice that told me that if I collaborated with them, they would discover that I was a fraud. I was afraid that I wasn’t good enough, and working closely with others would reveal that. Up until this point, most of my work- as a yoga teacher and therapist, I did on my own. Collaboration brought up other layers of fears for me. I also realized that this was a powerful opportunity to grow in a way that I couldn’t just working solo. So, I said yes and faced my fear of being “found out”. Of course this didn’t happen and all 3 of us felt that we grew in our work exponentially because of the collaboration. For sure there were tough moments, but all of them were opportunities for growth. That experience showed me how important it was to be in community and collaboration with peers in my field. This allows for a level of accountability and learning that is invaluable. It also means we have to be aware of our internalized limiting beliefs and not let them rule our decision making.

Hala, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’ll be honest, when I got the suggestion to name my body of work, I was very resistant. It felt arrogant to say that I had “created” anything, because everything I do, I learned from someone else. And then one of my friends said to me, “Hala, people resonate with your interpretation and translation of all that you’ve learned,” and that helped me reframe why I might give a name to the work I’m doing. How this work evolved says a lot about it
For me it all started in the 8th grade when I would skip school to go the bookstore down the street to read self-help books. I was always interested in psychology and trying to understand the underlying motivations and beliefs people held. Fast forward to college where I was a psychology major, but I found myself very disappointed in the classes in my major. I didn’t feel like they were telling me anything about actual humans. I discovered that I was learning a lot more about the human condition in studying religion and being a personal trainer at the local gym.
The religion classes taught me about how humans make sense of suffering and how that worldview is shaped by the sociopolitical landscape they are in. My work with folks one on one at the gym became a lesson in the mind/body connection for me- my clients tended to open up to me, and then certain movements evoked emotions and helped them process them. I ended up getting the education I needed in college, but not necessarily in psychology classes.
My curiosity in the mind/ body connection led me to train and teach in yoga and other movement modalities for a decade. My explorations took me to Haitian dance, Samba, Capoeira, Contiuum, NIA, Gyrotonics, energy healing, and of course all forms of yoga and meditation.
After I earned my MA in Counseling Psychology, I trained in Somatic Experiencing, a body-based therapy that helps people release and heal from trauma. I was teaching yoga at the time and got asked to teach in Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles by one of my students, She mentored me, and I spent years working with system impacted youth and found a way to bring what I was learning about trauma into yoga with some of the most marginalized people in our community.
In 2007 Off the Mat, Into the World (OTM) was born. OTM was inspired by a group of organizers in the Bay Area working to organize progressive voters more effectively. I trained with them in a model that was about getting folks to find purpose together and build strong social ties in small groups in order to build a network of solidarity. We focused on the yoga community and created a curriculum support this model of small group community building. We also offered leadership trainings because we found that many yoga practitioners wanted to find a way to be of service. My co-founders, Seane Corn and Suzanne Sterling and I developed a beautiful curriculum of embodied, inside out transformation that had people examine their own motivations to serve and unpack any unconscious biases or traumas that may be limiting or influencing them. About two years into doing this work, we got called in by a few people who felt that we need to be more explicit about the impact of power, privilege and oppression. They were right, and we pivoted fairly quickly- we got more educated ourselves, and we brought in teachers from marginalized communities to teach and to help us make our curriculum better. Many of those people became faculty and part of the bedrock of OTM. OTM was a true collaboration of so many people with different lived experiences.
During that time, I was also training yoga and movement teachers to be trauma informed. I met teachers who wanted to share yoga and somatic tools with trauma impacted folks, but they didn’t feel they were having a positive impact. I realized that they didn’t have training in understanding trauma and the nervous system. I developed a training in trauma informed yoga and over the years trained hundreds of yoga teachers.
In 2013 I went back to Pacifica Graduate Institute into their MA program in Community Psychology with an emphasis on Liberation Studies and Eco-Psychology. So many professors and classmates inspired me, and that program became a catalyst for expanding my work into the community in a more skillful and critical way.
After 15 years in private practice and teaching yoga, I’m now focusing mostly on training facilitators and working inside of organizations using my Collective Resilience Model to support them to build cultures that are vibrant, trauma informed and equitable.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

Hands down, I feel like my success is based on positive relationships. I pride myself on having as much integrity as I can in everything that I do. I also value people and relationships and I think I leave a positive impression on people. My reputation is one of integrity, skill and trust. When I decided to start my own consulting business I found that I had dozens of allies and contacts who wanted to support me. It has felt almost effortless (almost!). I know that the strong relationships I have will be the secret to my success.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

When I had my non profit training organization, we created a curriculum to work with leaders. After a couple of years of teaching it, a few people came to us with some pretty harsh feedback. They felt that the curriculum didn’t address power imbalances, systems of oppression and privilege adequately. Some of the feedback was delivered in a harsh way, and some of it more softly. In that moment we had a choice- we could ignore/ write off the critique or embrace it. We chose the latter. We took meetings with our harshest critics and hired some of them to consult with us to make our trainings better. It was a difficult and vulnerable process- we hired people to come take our training and give us honest feedback, and we revamped man pieces of it. This was an incredibly growthful experience and make our work even better. From that point on, I make it a priority to ask for feedback and be open to critique.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.halakhouri.com
• Instagram: halakhouri_somatic
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hala.khouri
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hala-khouri/

Image Credits

Sarit Rogers