Dr. Rosina-Fawzia Al-Rawi was born in Baghdad and spent her childhood in Iraq and Lebanon. She is the author of Grandmother’s Secrets: The Ancient Rituals and Healing Power of Belly Dancing, Divine Names: The 99 Healing Names of the One God, and Midnight Tales: A Woman’s Journey through the Middle East. She holds a PhD in Islamic studies. She completed her Arabic, Islamic, and ethnological studies at the Universities of Vienna and Cairo and has been teaching Sufism for over 20 years. She holds workshops in various countries and her books were translated into Arabic, German, English and French. Al-Rawi’s workshops, classes, and training courses are based on knowledge drawn from psychology, spirituality, cultural anthropology, and medicine. They are underpinned in particular by a body of knowledge known as Sufism, which has been collected and passed down over centuries, especially in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Dancing, meditation, breathing techniques, traditional Sufi-practices such as zikr, whirling or working with the Divine Names all focus on opening the heart and embedding oneself into the great universal laws, beyond egocentric and social norms, connecting body, soul and spirit. In Vienna she set up a center for female spirituality, where seminars, workshops, and personal support on the path to self-discovery are offered.

Majed Seif is a New York-based visual artist specializing in Arabic calligraphy, Arabesque and other Islamic arts. He currently teaches Arabic calligraphy at the United Nations and at New York University (NYU). Majed was born in Jerusalem and obtained a Bachelor's degree in archaeology and history from Birzeit University and a degree in Arabic calligraphy from the Institute of Fine Arts in Ramallah, Palestine. He is also a graduate student in archaeology and anthropology at Hunter College in New York City. He has participated in numerous art exhibitions and workshops in Palestine and the United States.