What is the
Shifaa Method?
An integrated approach to healing rooted in Islamic Psychology and the science of the soul.
The Shifaa Method brings together Islamic teachings, psychological understanding, spiritual practice, and embodied awareness to support a deeper understanding of the human being and the journey of healing.
Rather than focusing only on symptoms, the method attends to the inner life of the person, exploring the heart, soul, mind, body, and the relationships between them. It offers a framework for understanding ourselves more deeply and cultivating the conditions for meaningful transformation.
Developed by Dr. Abdallah Rothman, the Shifaa Method brings together his years of clinical practice, scholarship, and engagement with the Islamic tradition into an integrated approach to understanding the human being and the process of healing.
The method offers a framework for working with the heart, soul, mind, and body, drawing on the depth of Islamic Psychology while engaging with contemporary therapeutic practice. It is grounded in the belief that meaningful healing begins with a deeper understanding of who we are and how the different dimensions of our being are connected.
Rooted in the Islamic understanding of the human being, the soul, and the path of transformation.
Attending to the interconnected dimensions of heart, soul, self, intellect, and body.
Drawing thoughtfully from contemporary therapeutic approaches while responding to the needs and context of each person.
The Model of the Soul
The Shifaa Method is grounded in an Islamic understanding of the human being and the development of the soul.
Developed through Dr. Abdallah Rothman’s research, this model brings together the heart (qalb), mind (‘aql), self (nafs), and spirit (ruh) as manifested in the body (jism), within a wider understanding of natural human disposition (fitrah), the Divine, and the world in which we live. It offers a way of understanding the inner dynamics of the human being and the forces that can move us toward or away from our innate nature.
At the center of the model is the qalb, understood as the spiritual center of the person, embodied in the chest, with the capacity to move toward the lower impulses of the nafs or toward the higher nature of the ruh. The path of development involves purification of the soul, struggle, and refinement of character, with the aim of moving toward greater alignment with inner and outer fitrah.
This model provides an important foundation for understanding how the Shifaa Method approaches psychological, spiritual, and human development.
Holistic embodiment
The method begins from an Islamic understanding of the human being as a single, interconnected reality. Rather than separating the physical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of a person, it understands the jism, nafs, qalb, ʿaql, and rūḥ as dimensions of one living whole. What happens in one dimension inevitably affects the others.
Everything we offer is an expression of this approach, rooted in the Islamic tradition and shaped by Dr. Abdallah Rothman’s ongoing work in Islamic Psychology.
At its foundation is a simple but deeply important question
The first principle of the method
Holistic embodiment
The method begins from an Islamic understanding of the human being as a single, interconnected reality. Rather than separating the physical, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of a person, it understands the jism, nafs, qalb, ʿaql, and rūḥ as dimensions of one living whole. What happens in one dimension inevitably affects the others.
Learn more about The Principles of the Shifaa MethodHeart
The qalb is central to our inner life. It is where perception, intention, meaning, and transformation unfold, and where our relationship with ourselves and the Divine is experienced.
Spirit
The ruh points to the spiritual dimension of the human being and our relationship with the Divine. It speaks to something deeper than our psychological experience and to the sacred dimension of human existence.
Self
The nafs is the dimension through which we experience desire, struggle, attachment, and development. Its refinement is part of the ongoing journey toward greater awareness and wholeness.
Intellect
The ‘aql is our capacity to understand, reflect, discern, and make meaning. It allows us to engage our experience with awareness and to distinguish between what benefits and what harms.
Body
The body is an essential dimension of our human experience. It is where we encounter the world, carry our experiences, and often experience what is taking place within our inner life.
This shapes the way the Shifaa Method approaches suffering and healing. A person cannot be understood simply through their symptoms, behaviors, or psychological experiences. The work is about seeing the person within the fullness of their lived experience and understanding how these different dimensions come together.
At the heart of the method is presence: the practitioner’s ability and willingness to stay with what is present rather than immediately trying to isolate, explain, or manage it. This calls for a spacious and attentive way of working, grounded in the heart and informed by ethical and spiritual discernment.
Read more about Islamic Approach to Living Fully and Spiritually Awake
The method also recognizes that therapeutic work is not only about what the practitioner does. It is about how the practitioner learns to be in the therapeutic encounter. Developing this capacity requires ongoing cultivation of embodied attentiveness, spiritual orientation, and the qalb.
The human being cannot be understood by looking only at the mind. To understand the human being, we must understand the soul.
Dr. Abdallah Rothman
Five principles hold the work together. They are not techniques. They are what a practitioner returns to when the room becomes difficult and there is no obvious next step.
The human being is not a set of parts to be treated separately. Body, heart, mind, soul and spirit move together, and what surfaces in one is rarely only about that one. The work holds all of it at once.
Healing is not the construction of a better self. It is a return to what the person was created upon. This gives the work a direction, not wellness as an endpoint, but alignment with a nature that is already there.
The person is not a problem to be resolved. They are a soul in motion. Refinement of the nafs and the slow work of tazkiyah continue long after the presenting difficulty has settled, and therapy is one stretch of a much longer road.
Difficulty is not treated only as a malfunction to be cleared away. Hardship can open what ease does not. This is never a reason to remain in harm, it is a refusal to treat what a person has carried as meaningless.
Rahma is the ground the work stands on. It shapes how the practitioner meets the person, and it shapes what the person learns to extend to themselves. Shame can move someone for a while. It cannot heal them.
There is serious work being done in psychology and in Islamic counseling. The Shifaa Method stands alongside it, and differs in three specific ways.
It does not add Islam to a model built elsewhere.
The familiar approach is to take an existing therapeutic framework and layer Islamic language over it, a verse here, a supplication there. The Shifaa Method runs the other way. It begins with the Islamic understanding of what a human being is, and builds the therapeutic work outward from there. The order is the difference.
It is a way of being, not a set of techniques.
There is no protocol to follow and no sequence of steps to complete. This is why practitioners trained in different modalities can take it up without abandoning what they already know. It changes what they are looking at and what they are listening for, not the tools in their hands. The method asks more of the practitioner than it does of their toolkit.
It does not stop at relief.
Reduced symptoms and restored functioning are welcome, and they usually come. They are not the destination. The work is oriented toward alignment with fitrah, the state the person was created upon. Relief is what happens along the way. That orientation changes what is measured, and what a practitioner keeps working toward once the presenting difficulty has quieted.
The Shifaa Method is at the heart of everything we do at Dar al-Shifaa.
From our therapeutic work and learning experiences to our retreats, meditations, and community spaces, the Shifaa Method provides the grounding framework through which we understand the human being and approach healing.
Everything we offer is an expression of this approach, rooted in the Islamic tradition and shaped by Dr. Abdallah Rothman’s ongoing work in Islamic Psychology.
The Shifaa Method Training
Level 01 — Where you begin
Explore the core concepts and principles that underpin the Shifaa Method. Understand the Islamic spiritual psychology framework and its application to modern therapeutic practice.
Explore Level 01Level 02 — Putting it into practice
Develop practical skills through guided exercises and supervised practice. Learn to integrate heart-centered, somatic approaches into therapeutic work with clients.
Explore Level 02Level 03 — Into your practice
Advance to supervised clinical practice and deepen your understanding. Integrate the Shifaa Method into your professional practice with ongoing guidance and mentorship.
Explore Level 03It brings together Islamic spiritual psychology, embodied presence, and applied therapeutic practice to support real inner transformation.
Each level builds on the one before it, guiding learners from foundational concepts to practice application, and eventually to advanced supervision.
Applied Practice
Theoretical Foundations
Clinical Integration
Emergencies: If you or someone else is feeling suicidal or in immediate crisis – do not use this website. These resources can provide you with immediate help worldwide.
© 2026 Dar al-Shifaa, a project of DAR Labs. All rights reserved.
© 2026 Dar al-Shifaa, a project of DAR Labs. All rights reserved.
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