Honoring the Mind: Our Approach to Mental Wellness

For generations, Muslim women and women of color have carried the weight of resilience. 

We’ve survived in systems that were never built for our care. We’ve navigated pain in silence, wellness in fragments, and healing on our own.  We’ve been praised for our strength while being denied softness. We’ve been told to be grateful, to keep going, to pray through the ache without ever being asked what we need to feel whole.

But here, at Niya, we say enough. 

Our mind is sacred. 

Mental health is not only emotional. It is biological, spiritual, cultural, and communal. It lives in our bodies, as stress and trauma shape hormones and pathways in our brains. It lives in our communities, in stories passed down, in the weight of expectations, and in the unspoken rules that tell us our struggles are invisible. 

And it lives in our spirits, in prayer, ritual, movement, storytelling, and rest,  practices that ground us in resilience, joy, and belonging. 

At Niya, our approach honors the mind as sacred. We recognize: 

• The science: Understanding how stress, trauma, and biology transform our brains and bodies. 

• The systems: Recognizing how racism, sexism, Islamophobia, and silence deepen wounds and dismiss cries for help. 

• The spirit: Cultivating care through prayers, rituals, rest, community, movement, and cultural practices that restore the heart and mind. 

This is a space where knowledge meets care. Where education empowers. Where women of color are supported to understand, advocate for, and reclaim their mental health on their own terms.

Your mind is not broken. Your struggle is not a flaw. The ache you carry is real, and it is worthy of softness, of support, of sacred tending. 

Welcome to Niya. This is your space to breathe, to learn, to heal.