Stories of Hope: An Interview with Shumaila Hemani, PhD
This is part of a series featuring individuals who share their life experiences with mental health issues. Recently, I asked composer and musician Shumaila Hemani about her journey and her current activities. Here’s our interview:
DS: Tell us about when you first started becoming aware of concerns related to your mental health. How did these issues continue to affect you before you sought treatment?
SH: It was in 2015 when I came back from my home country of Pakistan and back to Canada. In March, I received the opportunity to perform twice at the Banff Arts Center as part of the World Music Residency. This performance was reviewed highly by the Calgary Herald, but when I came back home, I reached out to the counselor and cried deeply.
Why was I so sad after such a breakthrough? It took me a couple of sessions to understand that an encounter on my research site in 2014 in Sindh, Pakistan resurfaced a trauma from 2010 that I had not fully healed from. The years to follow deepened the trauma and crisis.
In 2010, I had been accepted for my Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology at four top schools in the US and Canada. I decided to start my Ph.D. at a top Ivy League school, but unfortunately my relationship with my mentor did not work and I left. When I came back to Pakistan in December 2011, I re-applied to schools and re-initiated my PhD at the University of Alberta in Fall 2012. The entire process was very traumatic.
Fortunately, during this time in 2012, the Universe sent me many gifts that allowed me to heal from the trauma. I met my teacher: Ustad Hameed Ali Khan Sahib from the Gwalior gharana who was a master musician from the royal heritage, and he took me as his student that initiated a new journey for me as a Sufi performer.
I also delivered a paper on the Shah jo Raag, the sung poetry of Shah Abdul Latif Bhitai based on my performance-learning with Faqir Jumman Shah, a dervish at the shrine of Latif in 2009. This paper at the annual conference commemorating Shah Latif won me a lot of applaud from scholars and people within my culture. With re-acceptance at the University of Alberta for my Ph.D. with full scholarship, the universe gave me one more chance to follow my inner calling to pursue the study of music.
However, in 2014, when I went back for field-research and met a student from the same Ivy League at the research site, pursuing the same topic, using the same methodology, and talking to me as if we are both working together, I did not quite know how to respond.
Upon return to Edmonton, I shared the sense of trauma at having my research being plagiarized with my mentors as well as with the Dean of Graduate Studies at my institution, but they said that it would be a difficult case to prove, and it was not taken further. Therefore, the feelings of oppression and trauma continued.
DS: What was the turning point that led you to decide to seek help?
SH: In October 2015, I started seeing dark spots very strongly and I reached out for mental health support offered to graduate students at my university. This was the turning point because it culminated in short-term counseling and later on-going counseling for a few months (while I could afford it).
I also shared my trauma with my Ph.D. mentor, Prof. Regula B. Qureshi and she said one thing that helped me to divert these thoughts. She said, “Shumaila, you are an embarrassment of riches. I don’t know any graduate student who has conducted as much research as you have and possess your level of rigor and understanding. Wait till your research gets published. The scholarly community needs to know what you are made up of.”
DS: What has your treatment consisted of, and what have you found that has worked well for you?
SH: My treatment consisted of counseling, journaling, meditations, and creative expression. It worked out well as I wrote a song: Anticipating that was featured in Cross-Canada tour for Suicide Prevention Awareness & Hope in 2020, initiating a new path for me to externalize my trauma and become the hope that I have been seeking.
DS: How are things going for you now? What challenges are you still facing? What have you learned that has helped you stay positive and healthy?
SH: In 2019, I became a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Alberta followed by a position as a Music Faculty at the Semester at Sea, Spring 2020 voyage that suddenly ended as a result of COVID-19.
None of my work is published because academic journals keep rejecting my work for one reason or another. Recently, in an edited volume in which my chapter was very close to publication, I was pushed to refer to the work of the people who should have been citing my research that was started in 2009, way before anyone in the discipline knew about the topic.
The people who have followed my work have been honored in the discipline whereas I am being increasingly muted in the discipline as well as my culture where I have the status of ethnic and religious minority. The level of prejudice that I am experience as an independent scholar is very high and that has increased my suicidal thoughts.
I lost my institutional affiliation with the University of Alberta in July 2020 because of COVID as the Faculty of Extension did not renew my contract. As an independent scholar with no institutional affiliation, I have been at even a greater risk. However, what has allowed me to stay positive and healthy is listening to my intuition. When I find myself in crisis, I reach out.
But the universe has been my protector, and with the help of my intuition, I have re-directed my path. In the Fall 2020, I designed a course: Sufi Singing for Self-Empowerment & Hope that I have been teaching via my website combined with a short production for Alberta Musical Theatre’s World of Stories, a live stream for New Works Calgary, and a commissioned soundscape composition: Once Upon a Time in Kobe, Japan that will be released soon. I am also releasing my album Mannat supported by Edmonton Arts Council’s Cultural Diversity Award next month. This album is a culmination of my journey in Sufi music.
DS: You’ve been active in mental health advocacy and/or social media. Tell us about your involvement in those activities.
SH: I have been offering courses in Journaling for Emotional Resiliency at the University of Alberta’s Faculty of Extension. And my course: Sufi Singing for Self-Empowerment and Hope brings ways of empowering yourself to heal from trauma.
I have also delivered workshops on cultivating your inner ear and offer meditations to help people connect better with their intuition because I have found strengthening one’s intuition to be the best tool for healing from injustice and trauma.
My songs: Anticipating, Living with purpose, and Baydaari (Awakening) (upcoming) are examples of how self-expression and intuitive awakening can align us with our life purpose and vision and keep us on the side of hope even when life is throwing us in despair.
DS: What would you like to say to encourage others who are still working on their journey of recovery?
SH: I would like to encourage people to do inner work of healing because that will open up blockages and create new pathways for them. Connecting with your intuition through practice of mindfulness meditations and of listening to music that inspires you at a very deep level is significant on the road to recovery.
It is important to have the resources that make you feel safe and protected when you are feeling vulnerable and when you experience a trigger. For me Sufi singing and my meditative practice have been key in my healing and recovery and you can also learn about these resources on my website.
About Shumaila
Shumaila Hemani is a Pakistani-born Sufi singer-songwriter, acousmatic composer, and Ethnomusicologist who earned a Ph.D. in Music from the University of Alberta, Canada. She draws upon her research and learning from master musicians in traditional genres from Muslim heritage with acousmatic compositions of South Asian soundscapes and spoken word. With the accompaniment of South Asian rhythms, Hemani’s Sufi performances take the audience into a meditative state and spiritual ecstasy that expands existential horizons and creates a deeper connection with one’s intuition. Her award-winning piece, “Perils of Heavy Rainfall,” brings together sounds of rainfall with poetry about the monsoon season. Anticipating, her original song (2019), was featured in Cross-Canada tour for Suicide Prevention Awareness & Hope. You can connect with Shumaila via her website, Facebook, Instagram, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube and Spotify, and join her meditation practice on Insight Timer.
Thanks so much to Shumaila for sharing her inspiring story of hope!
Would you like to share your story of hope? I plan to feature more personal accounts like this from time to time on my blog. If you are interested in sharing your story, please notify me via my contact page. Also, please subscribe to my blog and feel free to follow me on X (formerly Twitter) or Instagram, “like” my Facebook page, or connect on LinkedIn. Finally, if you enjoyed this post, please share it with a friend. Thanks!