Are You Spiritually Bypassing?
I was FaceTiming with my sister, Maysoon, in Yemen, which we now do almost every day. Reminiscing about our core memories growing up, it’s such a unique thing that can only be done with a sibling. I feel so grateful for a bond so strong that 18 years of disconnect could not break. I was telling Maysoon that a very famous actor came to my yoga class the other day, and everybody got excited. I told her how celebrity sightings are part of normal life after living in Los Angeles for more than 18 years now. I also mentioned that, having lived in the same neighborhood, I run into a specific major movie star on a regular basis. He was a childhood Hollywood hero of ours—the kind of famous movie star that even my illiterate grandmother in Yemen knew by name. The multiple-Oscar-winning kind of famous. I promised her that next time I see him, or any of our famous childhood favorites, I’ll ask for a photo and send it to her, something I have never done in my life.
Months later, there he was, casually crossing the cereal aisle in a Tommy Bahama camp shirt with his teenage daughter. I passed by him as I normally do, then remembered my promise to my sister. I paused, turned around, and asked for a photo. He was friendly and immediately agreed, and his beautiful daughter took our photo. We started talking, and he mentioned my bald head and asked if it was due to cancer treatment. I told him the story about me and my sister. In his very famous witty way, he said, "I have something growing in me, but I won't let them test it. Because once they test it, that's when it starts to spread. I have a friend who was diagnosed with cancer. He went to Arizona to a holistic center, and I went with him, and they got it. He's completely cured!" This wasn’t the first time I heard a story like this—people healing the holistic way. I told him my insurance doesn’t cover traveling to a holistic center in Arizona or the treatment. He shook his head and said, “Ah, fuck insurance! That’s how they get you.” I thanked him for the photo, and we parted ways.
For me, my biggest obstacle was financial resources—convincing my insurance to approve my access to a decent medical team. Initially, they were sending me to a doctor’s office behind the 7-Eleven in a neighborhood I wouldn’t dare walk through alone. I often wondered how affluent people, with access to the highest level of care, didn’t get the care they really needed early on, eventually getting recurrences, and some end up dying. Through my conversations, I realized there was a pattern in beliefs. Conversations like:
“Well, the first time I got it, I told my doctor, there’s no way I’ll do chemo. Then, when I got it again, I told them I’ll do chemo, but there’s no way you’re taking my beautiful breasts. Then, when I got it the third time, I gave in and did a full mastectomy.”
Since my diagnosis, the outpouring of support from people has been heartwarming. We are wired to love and support each other—it has been my saving grace. My biggest fear when I first got my diagnosis was, I don’t have any family here in the United States. How am I going to do something like this alone? I questioned every decision I made in my entire life that lead to that moment. But I couldn’t have been more wrong! People rallied around me in ways that maybe, if I had family, they wouldn’t have. Something like this truly takes a village to get through, and my acts of service in teaching yoga and doing good in the world paid off in the most beautiful way. Then I noticed my inboxes and conversations filling up with advice on how to heal:
“Maha, use essential oils every day.”
“Maha, I feel called to share with you that fasting has been proven to cure cancer.”
“Maha, stop eating meat immediately”—which I have avoided for more than 18 years, by the way.
“Maha, it’s because you don’t eat meat. You have to start eating only meat—Keto diet.”
“Maha, there is this powerful healer. I’ve seen with my own eyes how he completely healed—yes, you guessed it—another famous Oscar-winning movie star who had a brain tumor.”
“I’ll send you this podcast.”
“Have you read this book on how to heal yourself?”
“I wouldn’t do chemo if I were you.”
Even comments from strangers on social media when people see my hairless head and face: “Oh no! You shouldn’t do chemo.”
The yogis of Tibet are ordinary individuals who have spent years in isolated retreat, living in caves on top of high mountains and surviving on just one bowl of rice a month. They dedicate their entire lives to practicing secret, self-transformative physical and mental exercises, and through these techniques, they have developed extraordinary control over both mind and body. One of these master yogis shaved his head, a sign that he was preparing for death. The Dalai Lama heard of this and summoned the yogi, asking him to live a little longer to pass on the sacred teachings. Bound by extreme secrecy to maintain the purity of their practices, their culture is vanishing. Although the yogi’s soul was done with its current incarnation and was in agreement that his journey on this planet was complete, he graciously agreed and promised to live five more years, and he did just that.
Trust me, I’ve tried to heal myself! I’ve practiced advanced techniques of meditation, breathwork, yoga, eaten healthy, used organic products, spent time in nature, read books, and surrounded myself with loving people for most of my adult life. But despite practicing and teaching yoga for years, I don’t live in a cave in Tibet—I live in one of the busiest cities in the world, Los Angeles. I’m stuck in traffic, working in front of a screen for long hours, paying bills, and dealing with the demands and stressors of modern life. That level of yogic mastery, though available to everyone, requires pure dedication and almost total renunciation, stepping away from the regular day-to-day life.
I know people giving advice mean well and love me dearly. But once you hear that “C” word, navigating through that initial shock, with no clear sense of direction, it felt more overwhelming than helpful receiving such random advice.
Yoga teaches us about balance—that anything in excess is not healthy. The “either/or” approach—holistic versus medicine—never resonated with me. Just like my teacher Bryan Kest used to say, "yoga is like a buffet: take what you want, and leave what you don’t". The same applies to modern medicine.
Being a spiritual leader myself, I have seen and experienced firsthand the profound impact that energy healing can have on many levels. But spiritual bypassing to avoid medical care can be particularly harmful when it leads to neglecting critical treatments like surgery, medication, or psychological therapy, under the assumption that spiritual methods alone will heal all aspects of the self. It’s essential to recognize that balance is key, and addressing all layers of your being is crucial for true wellness.
In yoga science, the concept of the Koshas provides a helpful framework for understanding the different layers of your existence:
Annamaya Kosha (Physical Body): This is your physical body, which requires proper nourishment, exercise, and yes, sometimes medical intervention. If you neglect this kosha by avoiding medical care or proper treatments, you can harm your health. Yoga, medicine, and balanced nutrition are all necessary for healing at this level.
Pranamaya Kosha (Energy Body): This layer represents your breath and life force (prana). Yoga, breathwork, and energy healing can support this kosha, but they cannot replace the need for physical interventions when your body is in distress.
Manomaya Kosha (Mental Body): This kosha relates to your mind and emotions. Psychotherapy is one way to heal this mental layer, helping you work through emotional traumas, cognitive patterns, and psychological distress. Ignoring your mental health in favor of “just thinking positive” or “rising above” emotional pain is a form of spiritual bypassing. Psychotherapy can support your mental healing, while holistic practices provide additional emotional resilience.
Vijnanamaya Kosha (Wisdom Body): This kosha represents your intuition, wisdom, and insight. It encourages you to discern what type of healing you need. Sometimes, wisdom means recognizing that holistic practices alone aren’t enough and that seeking medical or psychological help is a wise and necessary step.
Anandamaya Kosha (Bliss Body): This is the deepest layer, connected to your experience of unity and bliss. While holistic practices can help you connect with this kosha, you cannot bypass the other koshas to reach it. Balance between your body, mind, energy, and wisdom allows you to experience the fullness of this layer.
When you combine holistic practices with medical care, you support your body’s ability to recover and strengthen your mind’s capacity to heal. Finding balance between holistic practice and necessary medical or psychological care ensures that you nurture and heal each layer of yourself. True healing comes from acknowledging the need for both inner spiritual work and external support from doctors, therapists, and other professionals. Yoga teaches that every kosha is important, and addressing all of them creates harmony and health.
I am aware that this is a controversial topic. Yes, the system is rigged, and funding is massively biased toward research that supports pharmaceutical products. Unfortunately, the collective consciousness is not yet in a place where there’s enough funding to support holistic approaches. I truly believe that if the holistic field were backed with the same financial resources, it could be the way of the future and could unleash our superhuman natural capacity for healing, longevity, and preservation.
For now the combination of both approaches worked well for me, and I am not by any means giving medical advice to anyone here. I am simply sharing my experience. I feel fortunate that I live in a day and age that this level of treatment is available to me.
All I’m saying is that if you are a human being living in the regular human world, use common sense and take the best of both worlds, claim your mind back and make decisions based on data and research. Be mindful of where you're getting your advice from—especially in this age of social media influencers. It doesn’t matter who’s saying it, whether they’re a rockstar on TV or part of a widespread cultural phenomenon and trend. If you follow the masses, you step on other people’s shit. The masses do what’s easy; the master does what’s difficult. Each body is different, and everyone responds uniquely to medicine and treatment.
Things eventually worked out for me, and I gained access to the best medical team there is. A team that educated me and didn’t give advice. As the saying goes, “those who speak do not know, and those who know do not speak.” I chose the 90% survival rate, trusted my doctors that developed a comprehensive treatment plan, and yes, it included chemotherapy. These highly recognized, Ivy League-educated super doctors, who have dedicated their entire lives to treating breast cancer and have a proven track record of curing patients, had no issue saying “I don’t know” when they didn’t have specific answers to the many questions I was asking. They not only embraced holistic approaches but highly recommended them and were fascinated—even curious—to learn from yours truly, what yogic techniques I was practicing because the results were outstanding.
I combined my powerful yogic practices with the medical treatment plan, and it has served me well. During my chemotherapy infusions, I would close my eyes and meditate, asking my cells to cooperate with the chemotherapy. I visualized the cancer cells dissolving and new, healthy cells being born, filled with vitality and strength.
I went to weekly acupuncture sessions with the incredibly knowable doctor, Derek Plonka at Insight Wellness Clinic in Santa Monica. It played an instrumental role in keeping my Chi balanced during the days when I experienced intense chemotherapy side effect symptoms.
I gave it a try with the medications that my oncologist prescribed for me to help manage my symptoms but didn’t like how they made me feel. I found my yogic practices of meditation and pranayama (breath-work) to be more grounding, and ended up not even needing Tylenol after my surgery.
The morning of my lumpectomy surgery day, I practiced Bless Your Day meditation, where I visualized my surgeon and all the nurses surrounded by healing light that is guiding their hands as they operate on me. As if they were a conduit through which healing is transmuted into my body. I visualized my surgeon, delivering the good news to me, that even though there was only a 5% chance that my lymph nodes that originally tested positive for cancer, would be completely cancer-free, that I would receive that healing. Guess what? That’s exactly what happened! She said, she's never seen anything like it in her entire career, and she's been doing this for a very long time.
Most importantly I stay connected to the good in my world. One day, I was in the parking lot after teaching my yoga class at The MINDRY in Malibu, when the car next to me rolled down their window. “ I just want to say that you saved my life. Seeing someone like you getting diagnosed with breast cancer, I was like if it could happen to someone like her, I better get checked. Which is something I've never done before. I made an appointment with my doctor, and had a simple routine exam that included a pap smear. They ended up finding something, but it was precancerous. I had a procedure right away and they caught it. The doctor said that it's good that they caught it early, otherwise it would have been life-threatening. I didn't have to go through chemotherapy or any other treatments. So I wanted to thank you! You are such a powerful inspiration to us all”.