Spirit animals: the mystical world of Shayoon and Alexander Yasin.
Long-time former Ibiza residents and wellbeing luminaries Shayoon and Alexander Yasin are the poster children for a new wave of cool, conscious and contemporary healing artists.
In 2020 Shayoon, who is of Indian and Pakistani descent, posted a photograph of herself breastfeeding her son in Ibiza’s Dalt Vila while wearing traditional Indian dress. Her aim was to highlight the lack of choice available to young women of Indian descent: the photo went viral and was printed on the cover of millions of copies of the Times of India, sealing the couple’s groundbreaking reputation. Following a relocation to Bali three years ago, Shayoon and Alexander now attract a high-profile roster of international clients to their to their world-leading healing modality The LightForce Center, holding both in-person retreats and workshops in Bali and around the world, as well as supporting an online community for those looking to heal themselves naturally and awaken to their life's purpose. After an appearance at the Global Citizen Forum – where Alexander rapped alongside Wyclef Jean – the powerhouse couple caught up with L’OFFICIEL IBIZA to talk energy, empowerment and awakening the healer within.
You rather famously met at the Coachella music festival – Alexander, you said it was love at first sight – during the time when Alexander’s apparel label, Spirit Hoods, was at its peak. How did two LA-dwellers end up in Ibiza?
AY. I was born and raised in LA – my father is a film director – and I’d previously been an actor myself. But I’d also been involved in the healing arts my entire life, initially learning about the mind, body, spirit connection through martial arts. I learnt from different masters how to use extra sensory perception, how to manipulate energy, whether it be for fighting in the martial arts sense or for healing. When I met Shayoon, she had been in a very serious car accident in her teens and was still in a huge amount of pain. Through the things that I taught her she was able to heal herself. She had her awakening. She was able to see colour and energy and really started connecting into the quantum field of the spirit world. She began receiving visions of what our life was meant to be. I was running a fashion company called Spirit Hoods at that time. It had become a music and culture phenomenon at the time, with many influential people wearing it. It was a great time in our lives, we grew a lot, but we quickly began to realize Shayoon and I, that there was much more to life. Shayoon started receiving these incredible visions of a centre of light, a golden pyramid of light over an island. And we had no idea what this was but couldn't ignore the reality of what was constantly appearing. So, we started traveling the world. We went to Asia and we went sailing and we went to Europe, to Greece, Italy, everywhere. We were searching for the place. When we landed in Ibiza, everything changed. We had never felt a connection to anywhere like we did there. We knew we were meant to be in Ibiza. It was 2015. I sold my company, we got rid of our things. We left our old world behind and everything in it.
You spent five years in Ibiza, building the original LightForce Center community. What precipitated your move to Bali and how do the two islands compare?
SY. We were right on the cusp of buying a retreat centre in the north of Ibiza, near San Carlos. Our son Ayaah had been born two years earlier on the island and life was really flowing. The day we were supposed to move, our lawyer called and said they’d found some illegal building and that the deal had to be called off. We were in shock. One minute we’re about to move into this place, the next we're on a blow-up mattress in our office with our son. Alexander and I were just looking at each other looking at each other saying, what the hell just happened? We were this close to the dream. We could taste it, you know? We decided to go away for a few weeks to reset. Ibiza was cold so we headed for Bali. In our first week there a man broke into our hotel room and tried to kidnap our child. A week later, Covid hit and no American citizens were allowed back into Spain. So, we turned our pain into purpose and launched our non-profit foundation that helps rescue and heal children from child trafficking. It’s been the craziest three years of our life. Ibiza and Bali are quite similar – both have very real, raw, powerful energies. Anyone who knows Ibiza well will know that the island tests you to your absolute limits. The same applies to Bali, except on an even more extraordinary level. There's an energy in Ibiza that's very crystalline, very clear, very clean. It's almost like you're dealing with one great magnetic frequency. In the same way Es Vedra is a powerful magnetic and energetic point in Ibiza, Bali has many points like this from volcanic activity and different energetic ley lines. The Balinese and Hindu cultures know all about this. You will find many beautiful temples built upon these energy centers. You're dealing with a lot more energetic variables in Bali than Ibiza. We’ve found great passion there but we’ve also had the darkest of times. Alexander’s mother passed away in Bali. It’s been this crazy test, this intense pressure cooker of life and death and rebirth.
You’ve become known for empowering others to be the healer within and have worked with multiple conditions from autoimmune disease to cancers and depression. What have you learnt on your journey?
AY. The most important thing I've learned is that we all have the innate ability to fully heal ourselves, and we must turn inwards if we are to do that. It all starts in the mind. The mind is the propagator of the majority of our suffering, whether it's digestion issues, heart disease or anxiety. Suffering originates in the mind, and the western world is finally beginning to take notice, it's called psychosomatic illness. We see this as the main cause of suffering from our students. We have to look at the mind, at the body - we have to look at biology. We have to learn to detox and flush the organs because they hold memory. Science now agrees that there are neuro networks that form in our hearts, in our stomach, just like our brains. These cells hold memory, so the key for us was to discover how to teach people to release that old memory from the body. And then the healing takes place. We have structured a beautiful program over 11 years, created using elements of all our healing modalities, teachings we have learned from teachings we have learned from medicine workers, shamans, quantum healers and more. We've put it together in our own way and we've come up with something that's effective through a series of different things.
How might that look in real life? Where do we begin on this journey to heal ourselves?
SY. We always say that first you have to start with the morning ritual. It’s the foundation and it will change your game. It actually starts the evening before, with no screens 55 minutes before bed, then no screens in the morning for another 55 minutes. In that morning hour, you're going to make yourself a tea to kickstart your metabolism and then sit with yourself. I always say you have to check in with the yourself before you check in with the world. Then we have a specific meditation. It's called the LightForce Healing Meditation and it’s designed to awaken your senses, to connect you back into yourself, into source, and to leave you feeling rejuvenated and purposeful. But we're not trying to force you to silence your mind or do any of the traditional meditation techniques. This is about intentionally activating your mind and specific parts of the body to create harmony between your energy and your thoughts. It's not passive and it actually activates dopamine by making you think about gratitude. The second part of the process is something we call emotional mapping. And this is the key. This is where the healing gets really good. This about releasing cell memory, so we have to revisit all those times in your life you felt trauma. We have to map it all and then we teach you how to release it. Because that trauma is not happening anymore. It happened for a moment in time and now it's gone, but the system is reliving it as if it was happening now. You're essentially activating the same emotions and playing out the same narratives over and over, stacking them on top of each other. This is when we see disease and dysfunction and addictions and breakdown, which are just ways of trying to escape an emotional reality that we feel no control over. This is just the beginning, but the entire process is profoundly powerful. We know it will change your life. We say this out of the utmost respect, but you can do all the yoga and drink all the green juice on the planet, but nothing’s going to stick until you do the inner work. That’s when the magic starts to happen.
Shayoon and Alexander are currently in Dubai for their work.
