Sara Salam
Creator of Luminous Warrior
Sara created Luminous Warrior with the intention to offer individuals a powerful Sacred Space in which to heal, transform, and empower their lives. Sara uses various tools and techniques to help people connect to their inner power. She acts as teacher, healer, and guide to help individuals become more aligned with their heart, mind and actions. Sara offers effective tools that integrate easily into Krav Maga training while also promoting healing and personal empowerment.
In the context of Luminous Warrior, Sara offers her skills to help Krav Maga instructors become more inspired and more skilled when teaching classes, which, in turn, helps schools retain and engage their membership base, enhance their instructors overall well-being and feelings of efficacy while teaching.
Sara believes that there are three areas that can be addressed more directly in the Krav Maga world:
- Retention of upper level students
- Professionally and effectively addressing students who have been traumatized and/or attacked
- Engaging folks who are not drawn to the physical aspect of Krav Maga but need skills to reduce risks of being attacked
Sara has helped numerous Krav Maga students heal, transform and empower their own lives. When she began receiving phone calls from Krav Maga instructors at other schools about how better to address trauma and healing, asking about how to deal with students who have been traumatized, and how to be able to retain upper levels students and keep others more engaged. It was then that she begun to think about ways to offer the Luminous Warrior skill set to other instructors and schools in a more profound and direct manner.
Sara’s approach is engaging, professional and skill-enhancing, while staying true to the core intention of Krav Maga and integrating the needs of our societies at large.
Background
After Sara’s sister died in a tragic car accident in 2005, Sara was diagnosed with PTSD, suffered from depression, developed cancerous cells, and lost meaning in life. Through the help of Shamanic Healing, ceremonies, energy medicine, brainwave development, and physical self defense training, Sara healed her depression, flashbacks and other dis-eases. It was through experiencing self healing that she transformed her life. In 2010, Sara started refocusing her life on the creation of Luminous Warrior.
Approach
Sara offers a whole-brained and integrated approach to the mind-body-spirit connection. She combines her expertise in self defense, personal safety, Shamanic Healing, emotional self care, brain functioning, and practical spirituality to offer a unique combination of techniques and tools that address the whole person. Sara’s tools are both practical and powerful and integrate the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of an individual.
The tools, wisdom, and knowledge Sara offers help individuals remember their place in the Universe and connection to Nature. By combining modern science with ancient traditions, she creates powerful and effective experiences that are at the heart of true empowerment.
Sara is passionate about helping Humanity to evolve. She believes that we each have the capability to create sustainable, authentic, vibrantly fulfilled, deeply meaningful, and joyfully peaceful lives.
Qualifications
Self Defense
Sara has over 20 years of athletic experience. She earned her certifications as an Expert II Instructor from Krav Maga Worldwide in 2010 and as Fit to Fight Coach in 2012.
Sara is an expert in advanced self defense techniques, including defenses against guns, knives, sticks, and other weapons. She is further certified in handgun personal protection tactics, and is considered an expert in personal safety and self defense.
Sara no longer trains in Krav Maga and instead focuses on teaching self defense as a way of empowerment and healing. Her approach to self defense addresses the continuum, from awareness, to avoidance, self defense, and self care.
Experienced in trauma management as well, Sara has worked as a certified rape crisis counselor, completed programs such as Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) and IMPACT, and has been working with healers and caretakers in trauma centers and nonprofit organizations over the past decade to bring deep healing, transformation, and true empowerment to men and women all over the world.
Shamanic Healing
Sara earned a certification as Master Practitioner in Energy Medicine and Luminous Healing through the Four Winds Society, one of the leading training institutions for energy medicine in the world. Her advanced training includes Shamanic techniques such as Advanced Soul Retrieval, Advanced Destiny Retrieval, and Advanced Shamanic Tracking techniques.
Other Qualifications
Sara completed private brainwave development training with Anna Wise, author of Awakening The Mind, and she continues to search out ways in which to elevate her consciousness and refine her practice as a Shaman, Healer and Sage.
She continues to train in additional healing modalities and has completed trainings to work with therapeutic-grade essential oils and crystals.
Education & Professional Experience
Sara graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Maryland with a major in psychology, and earned an M.B.A. from Georgetown University. Before founding Luminous Warrior, Sara spent 10 years as a senior consultant for Towers Watson.
Sara also serves as the Director for Personal Safety and Emotional Self Care for Global Journalist Security (GJS), a new kind of consulting and safety training organization comprised of veteran journalists, press freedom advocates, and security training professionals. GJS provides a different approach to security for journalists, human rights defenders, and NGOs. Read more here.
Sara is a member of the Healing Touch Professional Association and the DC Time Bank.
Living Life
Luminous Warrior is a living sanctuary for Sara. She spends a significant amount of time creating Sacred Space, setting intentions, and conducting ceremonies for Luminous Warrior programs and community.
Sara believes that practicing what she teaches and embodying her practices are essential to being of service with integrity, authenticity and purpose. Sara enjoys meditating, conscious movement, working with her mesa, spending time in ceremony, laughing, dancing, connecting with nature, and creating transformational experiences for the Luminous Warrior Community.
Sara’s Q&A Blog
Sara occasionally answers questions and offers her opinion on various topics in her Q&A Blog. Feel free to browse the topics or contact Sara if you have a question that you would like her to write about in her blog.
Find out more
Sara is available for private sessions, speaking engagements, customized seminars and workshops.
You may also enjoy this 10-minute YouTube video in which Sara speaks about what inspired her to create Luminous Warrior: