“ My whole life I have spoken about creating an internal world that can be manifested around me and encouraged others to do the same. That is what Freetown is to me. The idea that who you are could be in direct opposition to what is ‘normal’ is madness”. —Muhammad Muwakil, Freetown Collective
In this interview with Caribbean Wellness, Muhammad Muwakil gives his perspective on how some of us interpret the term normal and comments that there is no one response for normal because what is normal for one person may not be normal for another.
He comments on the education pipeline which we built as a society and asks the question: “What are we trying to produce on the other end?” What should come out from the other end of the pipeline is a human who can add to our society.
He shares his strategies for maintaining mental wellness and comments on the benefits her has derived from “free diving”. It is like yoga on steroids and integral to him exfoliating and pushing negative energy out.
He dares us to find stillness in ourselves because there is a “you” waiting to flourish in each of us and we owe it to ourselves to find that inner being.
Muhammad Muwakil is an advocate of deep belly breathing to balance our lives. It has been discovered that people who take deep breaths progress and live longer. So when we get stressed, our breath becomes our normalizing strategy. Deep belly breathing lowers your heart rate and blood pressure, brings you consciously back into the moment, and improves your decision-making.
So, every now and then, remember to take a deep belly breath.
Dennise Demming 