Noor Jawad has been a healer and an integral part of the alternative medicine community in Milwaukee area for over 35 years. As a founding contributor to CORE El Centro, a current member of the Milwaukee-based Share Collaborative, and the owner of her own private practice offering life coaching, she has helped many people discover new methods of healing.
Jawad believes in the holistic approach to medicine—helping her clients improve the health of their body, mind, emotions and spirit. Without working on all the parts of oneself, she explains, we become imbalanced and can’t be fully present in our everyday lives.
The path to a healthy mind, body and spirit was not always clear for her. As a child, Jawad was often sick, in and out of doctors’ offices, and was prescribed a lot of medications in an attempt to solve her illness. Because she was often weak and unhealthy, she grew up introspective and developed an interest in alternative healing practices.
Mind and Body
Constantly reading and researching throughout her adolescence, she became fascinated with how the mind and body worked. Her grandmother also acted as an influence, teaching her how to make natural remedies and tea using tree roots. She began experimenting on herself, looking for ways to improve her health without using traditional medicine. “I had a lot of hospitalizations and medications that served a purpose to a limit but didn’t really get to the core issues and help me heal,” she says.
That’s a big part of where our society’s health system is broken, Jawad explains. Standard medications and antibiotics put a band-aid on a health problem, but don’t address the fundamental factors causing the issue. In her practice, she’s focuses on the origins of her clients’ health concerns and begins her healing process from there.
Her practice extends beyond working with individuals. In her work with the Share Collaborative, she teaches culture reverence to teams within organizations, which enables the organization to support their employees who are Black, Indigenous and people of color. Through the Cultural Humility to Cultural Reverence training, Jawad helps employees become aware of their cultural biases and understand how institutional racism may show up and be damaging to their organization.
“Learning how to have reverence with human beings and their uniqueness, versus their differences, is what Cultural Humility to Cultural Reverence is all about,” says Jawad. This is a different type of healing – a cultural healing that addresses the root problems in our institutions and can benefit people in future generations.
Whether it’s one-on-one healing sessions or trainings with organizations, Jawad stresses the importance of awareness. To be our best selves and truly thrive, we must be aware of our cultural biases, how our hierarchal structures can be damaging, and be aware of our body, mind and spirit.
The decades of time Jawad has committed to improving the health and wellbeing of people has undoubtedly had a significant impact on communities throughout Milwaukee. “Being an influencer and a supporter for others to evolve is very enriching and very rewarding,” she says while smiling. “I really feel that my whole life has prepared me to do this work.”
Read this story on the Shepherd Express, part of the column Hero of the Week.