05/11/2016
MASTER OF SURVIVAL
As much as we want something, life itself often wants to offer us something completely different. In some periods it is important to answer YES, to surrender to the circumstances and to accept them. Walid Daw learned that as a young man, when he found himself as a student without a single familiar face around. Left all by himself he has learned how to have faith in himself and in life, and thanks to his long-lasting work –now he knows how to create exactly the life he wants.
Director of the Swiss Core Energetics Institute, that has a branch founded in Novi Sad, Walid Daw has a rich biography and a wide education. He is among the people with enough character and strength to, starting from themselves, change the world.
He is a doctor of clinical psychology with numerable diplomas in the field of psychology, but also an actor, a pantomime and a writer. Walid has spent his whole life studying human soul, subconscious, movement…At first motivated by the need for his own healing, and later on lead by the desire to help others in the same way he’s continuing to expand his knowledge and his views. Apart from continuing at Core Energetics Institute in Switzerland the work of John Pierrakos, founder of the psychotherapeutic modality, Walid is also a gestalt therapist, Siddha yoga practitioner, licensed trainer for bioenergetics, transpersonal therapy and several other modalities. He was fortunate enough to learn directly from great teachers and founders of different modalities for self healing – John Pierrakos, Alexander Lowen and Baba Mukhtananda.
DEVASTATING SENSE OF NOT BELONGING
Walid Daw was born in Israel out of a mixed marriage of a Palestinian man and a Lebanese woman. He remembers his growing up as a very turbulent one, full of uncertainty and insecurity, that scared him deeply and has shaped a part of his life greatly. Multiethnic surrounding he grew up in on the one hand had offered great diversity and taught him to understand and accept differences, and on the other hand Daw family had a feeling of not belonging.
"My grandfather, a bighearted man, has taken in Jewish refugees from Poland and Romania to live with us. To us they were very exotic and growing up in the enviornment where there were so many different cultures was very exciting. In the region I lived in there were also Muslim refugees. It was a big community of people of different religions trying to live together"
While he was growing up Israel was flaming into war, they were occupied, and he could see soldiers on every step of his way. Fear was in the air, people had to be very careful about what are they saying and to whom, and were even careful about which language they used.
"The atmosphere of great distrust ruled. It wasn't that people only distrusted others they distrusted themselves, little own state or police. When you grow up in such an atmosphere where you don't have the possibility to learn how to trust others you can't learn how to open oneself to something later in life. For many years I have carried a deep feeling of not trusting anyone or anything. I didn't even trust myself, feeling of insecurity was devastating, I belonged nowhere - I didn`t feel like a Jew or Christian or Muslim, but I carried all those influences inside. Jewish culture shaped me greatly, but on the other hand I went to the catholic school and spoke an Arabic language."
At the age of 9 his parents sent him to a boarding school in Nazareth. Although at first leaving parents’ home had left him feeling rejected, later on he regarded it as an experience that had shaped him. „In the few years I have spent in the boarding school I have made much progess. I've learned a lot about discipline and spirituality that hides behind religion. When, at 13, I came back to the village I grew up in I felt smarter, and with much more knowledge and experience than my peers. I spoke languages, I’ve learned that strangers are not unfriendly, on the contrary, that they can be my friends. I learned how to believe in myself, as living without parents left me with no one else to rely on. I have developed talents that I've discovered thanks to my friends in boarding school."
RESPECT AS A BASIC NEED
Already at that time he began writing prose and poetry, and one of his poems got publish in the local newspaper. It turned out that the poem was politically incorrect and as a result he was expelled from school. He never regretted expressing his opinion, even today he is proud of always feeling like a fighter for justice and equal rights for everyone. "I wanted to be heard, noticed and respected, to prove that I am one of them instead of feeling inferior. That urge stayed with to this day."
Although he was several times expelled from school Walid, hungry for knowledge was always a good student and stood out in activities. He was one of the first people in Israel who formed at theater that included both Jews and Arabs. To him it was important for people to connect and work together, instead of always staying on opposite sides.
He started acting during seventies in Jerusalem, and he continued his studies in Italy, after finishing high school. That part of his life was also full of fears and insecurities, and a feeling of hunger as he was going through jobs that barely provided means for survival.
BELIEF IN GOOD PEOPLE
Completely alone in a new environment, without a single person to rely on, Walid for the first time in his life surrender to the belief that everything is going to be all right. After years of distrust, finally he resolved to experience what it is like to believe in good outcome and letting others to prove their nobility. "Even when it seemed that there was no one I could turn to, people who helped me in different ways appeared even though I didn't ask anything from them. There were moments when I literary didn't have anything to eat, but thanks to god and good people I have always got through. That is why I like to say that I'm a master in survival."
Italy was significant to him because there he for the first time he felt free. He started dealing more with himself, exploring his personality, developing talents, painting. Thanks to a wealthy lady who liked his paintings he managed to travel to Switzerland where a woman he fell in love with during her stay in Italy was waiting for him. Even though the relationship didn't last Switzerland remained his final destination, a country he chose to live in and where later on he met his second and third wife.
"In Switzerland I fell in love for the second time and married a smart and beautiful woman, who I unfortunately couldn't take care of. In that period I was narcissistic and focused only on myself. I wanted to become a successful actor and pantomime and I've invested all the time into myself. Following my desire for fame, I left for USA on a call and then my wife decided to leave me."
That started a period of loneliness, sadness and depression that often troubled him even in younger days. Although he was successful and his pockets were finally full his soul was empty. Once again the feeling of not belonging caught up with him - he had no one to return to in Switzerland, and in America he was all alone. Devastated by sadness and with a broken heart he decided to go to Hawaii, to regenerate and try to connect with himself. It turned out that it was the right decision at the time.
COINCIDENTAL ENCOUNTER
"Sitting on a beach, feeling down, I watched a man practicing yoga. Afterwards he came to me and said "You look very sad, young man." I didn't even want to talk to him, but he was persistent, he knew there was a way for him to help me. He took me to Baba Mukhtananda, founder of Siddha yoga, with whom I connected at first glance. That was the moment my journey towards myself, towards spirituality and self-healing."
The encounter at the beach was a kind of initiation for the work he will be doing to this day. Although his acting career began to flourish he felt that he wasn't wholeheartedly in that work and that he wanted a big and radical change. With the first goal of healing old wounds, curedepression that has been exhausting him for years, and to free himself from the narcissistic part of his personality, he embarked on a journey into studying different therapeutic modalities.
One of the first schools he graduated from was from a gestalt modality, but it wasn't enough for him. As an actor and a pantomime he was well acquainted with body language and non-verbal communication. His long-lasting involvement with body and movement helped him immesurably with integrating new knowledge from body psychotherapy. He immerged himself into studying bioenergetics that he learned directly from its founder Alexander Lowen.“ Even though I thought that I knew much about body, through working with Lowen I have deepened my knowledge significantly. I've learned a lot about energy exercises, and at the same time I was practicing Sidha yoga. Through meditations, singing and mantras I was learning how to connect myself to the higher consciousness, to cultivate love in me.
RECONCILING PASSION AND SUBTLETY
After bioenergetics he got acquainted with Core Energetics method, whose founder was John Pierrakos, Lowen's close associate. After the training he remained Pierrakos's assistant until the end of his life. "I was a close friend with Pierrakos and before he left, I promise to him that I would continue to develop his school. I have contributed a lot to the theoretical, structural and conceptual part of this method. Core Energetics is a path of love, path towards developing human resources, the capacity of the individual for love, self-healing and help others in their healing. For me personally this method was a revelation and has led me to the core of my being. If you understand the mystery of life, if you can connect to the vital energy within it is pure, essencial spirituality. It is not a discipline or any kind of hocus-pocus, it is knowing the beauty of life, the power of existence. When we recognize the vital force within us, we become aware that we are made out of it, that she is taking care of us, that she makes us alive and keeps us alive.
After thorough self-development through Core Energetics thing in his life started to stabilize. Depression that was cyclically returning and weighing him down became past, his material circumstances significantly improved, finally he became successful, recognized and what was most important fulfilled with the work he was doing. He came back to Switzerland where he got married and got two sons that are today 18 and 16 years old. Besides seminars and trainings he gives all over the world he is also an author of three books, and is currently working on the fourth one that will carry a title The power of heart. "I see a human being as a link - a bridge between heaven and earth. Earth energy is full of passion and fire and divine is subtle and gentle. These two energies with different polarities unite in our heart and you have to know how to receive, unite and develop them. It is a way a new energy is created, an energy that helps us live more fully, to improve and to create. I have spent a long time working with it and have personaly succeded, and now I hope that what I know and have experienced will help others become aware of their power and to put it in use in the most noble way."
MANIFSTATION OF INNER BEAUTY
"When I was in Australia giving a seminar, an elderly man was working on the garden outside. He didn't understand much about spiritual things that were the subject of the seminar, but has very much understood life. After a couple of days he came to me and said: "I know what you do...it must be something about cosmetic treatments." I asked him how he came to that conclusion, and he answered "I've watched people going in and out and I've seen that they look much prettier at the end of the day. Their face completely changes." I feel very fulfilled to have the opportunity to help people and that the changes they experience are so obvious."
