Farsi Initiative
Since April 2021, we’ve worked with leaders in the Farsi-speaking community to bring mind-body medicine training and healing to over 12,500 children and adults from the Iranian and Farsi-Speaking Diaspora.
Support and Engagement
CMBM’s mission to build population-wide trauma healing programs has already enabled us to train hundreds of Farsi-speaking clinicians, educators, and community leaders. Yet the need across the Farsi-speaking diaspora and within Iran, remains profound.
Our vision is bold and necessary: to train hundreds more, and ultimately thousands, equipping trusted local leaders with evidence-based mind-body skills that foster healing, resilience, and community connection in the face of ongoing stress, displacement, and trauma.
Our Farsi-language training initiative—led by CMBM Faculty Members Noshene Ranjbar, MD, and Shahine Tavakoli, LPC, LMFT—began in March 2021 as part of our first-ever Global Professional Training Program in Mind-Body Medicine, a five-day intensive training that brought together more than three hundred professionals from around the world.
Expanding this work at scale requires partnership. If you or your organization are interested in helping us significantly broaden our reach, regionally and globally, we invite you to consider meaningfully supporting this initiative. Large-scale support will allow us to deepen training pathways, expand supervision and mentorship, and sustainably grow a network of Farsi-speaking practitioners equipped to serve their communities for years to come.
CMBM is proud to collaborate with the nonprofit EARTH in supporting this community. EARTH focuses on serving individuals who have been marginalized and oppressed — including women and girls, minoritized or racialized persons, and others seeking access to healing resources. If you are inspired to contribute at the grassroots level, we also encourage you to learn more about and support EARTH’s important work through their website.
Together, through both systematic investment and community-driven efforts, we can expand access to trauma healing where it is urgently needed.
Please contact development@cmbm.org to learn more.
Impact
Since April 2021, we have achieved the following through our model of self-care, awareness, and group support:
- 12,500+ children and adults have been served in groups and workshops
- 204 professionals have completed our Professional Training Program in Mind-Body Medicine
- 170 professionals have completed our Advanced Training Program in Mind-Body Medicine
- 100+ individuals have facilitated at least one 8-week group with clinical support from CMBM faculty
- 550+ 8-week groups have been facilitated by trained participants for children and adults in 15 different countries and 37 cities in Iran
- 17 professionals have become Certified in Mind-Body Medicine
Recipients of our scholarships from Iran and the Farsi-Speaking Diaspora represent the above Iranian provinces, and reside in the above countries around the world.
“Just as many little girls in the Middle East, I grow in a very harsh situation. I’ve experienced war, I witnessed my grandparents house collapsed in a missile attack. I lost two aunts and one uncle because of the political situation. Now I’m 49 and still see those scenes in my nightmares!!! I wish there had been people who could help me to pass those days easier. To give me the power to protect my soul. And to hold my hands when I was frightened.
CMBM has made it possible now. Thanks to them, we have gained the power to pass through.”
ANONYMOUS PARTICIPANT, IRAN
“I was pleasantly surprised to have brave men participate in our groups. The effect of these very simple techniques was more transforming for our men in the group than it was for women in our group in IR. In a patriarchy men and women are all victims. Hard to tell which carries the heavier burden… It was my experience, and it was expressed by male participants in the group that it was the first time for them to feel safe enough to express their most agonizing inner old wounds.”
ANONYMOUS FACILITATOR, IRAN
Farsi-Language Self-Care Practices
During difficult times, self-care is more important than ever. Take a moment to ask yourself what you need in this moment: Is it movement? Slow, deep breathing? Time in nature? Try one of these brief, beautiful mind-body practices, led in Farsi by psychiatrist and CMBM Faculty Member Noshene Ranjbar, MD.
