“We wrote letters to our uterus, and for me, that moment changed everything,” says Habiba*, a health coach trained through the Rahma project for women’s health, in her conversation with Egyptian Streets. “I sat with the paper as if my uterus was a person right in front of me, and I began to speak to it: ‘You matter. You are valuable.’”
In her letter, Habiba* promised to care for her uterus and to always stand by it. Rather than a burden, she now sees menstruation as a vital part of her health, her strength, and her identity as a woman. To her, the uterus deserves the same love and care she gives her family and home: with attention, gentleness, and above all, compassion, or rahma, which means mercy, in Arabic.
“Women’s health, whether physical, reproductive, or mental, is rarely valued,” she says. “What matters is fulfilling your duties: running the house, raising the children, caring for your husband, even if it costs you your own health.”
When asked who supports them, most women often reply, “No one. Only God.” She adds, “But that is not enough. Self-care matters too. You must have compassion for yourself.”
For many Egyptian women, especially those in rural areas, the simplicity of their surroundings sustains a deep connection to spirituality and faith. While spirituality is often overlooked in contemporary Western approaches to health, the Rahma project for Egyptian women’s health — a SEKEM initiative focused on human development — shows that spirituality and health practices can be intertwined, as at their heart lies compassion, not only for the body but for the inner soul.
“With so much pain in the world today, we asked ourselves: how can we reflect the most vital value of our time?” Nana Woo, founder of the Rahma project, tells Egyptian Streets.
“In Arabic, ‘rahm‘ translates to ‘womb’ or ‘uterus,’ which also shares its roots with the Arabic names of God, like ‘Ar-Rahman‘ (The Most Compassionate),” she explains. Both words share a connection that highlights the uterus’s role in nurturing and sustaining life, a value that equates to divine mercy and compassion.
“For us, it’s not about turning away from suffering,” Woo says, “but about praying together as one and moving forward with compassion.”
As renowned scholars of integrative medicine, such as Rachel Naomi Remen, note, helping, fixing, and serving are three distinct ways of seeing. Helping views the other individual as weak, while fixing views them as broken.
But serving with compassion sees a person as whole and complete. It is this spirit of service, rather than helping or fixing, that shapes the foundation of the Rahma project.
The Birth of Rahma: A Bridge Between Self-Care and Medical Care
A woman’s body was, and still is, bound up in every aspect of the economy and politics.
The supposed weakness of a woman’s body has often been used as justification for excluding her from the public sphere. From societies that police a woman’s body to others that hypersexualize her and reduce her body to a commodity, a woman’s body has been controlled, traded, and exploited.
In response, governments and development practitioners often turn to legislation, policies, or employment opportunities. Yet while these measures are vital, what is too often overlooked is a woman’s right to fully own her body, cultivating her own practices of self-care and building a personal, autonomous relationship with it, independent of others.
“I feel like people are treated as if they’re only a body,” says Maha*, another health coach trained in the Rahma project. “If someone feels unwell, the response is often to just go to the pharmacy, buy a painkiller, and assume that’s enough—whether it’s right or wrong doesn’t seem to matter.”
Women often manage their reproductive health outside formal health facilities, within the privacy of their own homes. Yet paradoxically, it is in these same spaces that many struggle most to practice self-care, which is why it can be difficult for women to care for themselves privately and independently.
Ethnographic studies reveal that policies and programs often overlook how and why people are already practicing self-care in their daily lives. The result is a disconnect between the care promoted by healthcare professionals and the self-management already taking place at home and in communities.
“Women’s empowerment is often framed as ‘let’s give them skills so they can work,’” says Woo. “But here in the Rahma project, empowerment takes on a deeper meaning: helping women find peace and awareness in their own bodies, their health, and their mental state, so they can truly draw on their own inner resources.”
Self-care interventions, then, must complement rather than replace interaction with the health system, which is precisely what inspired the creation of the Rahma project in 2024: a model that extends beyond delivering healthcare services to also support self-care practices that women can embrace within their own homes.
From South Korea to Egypt
For Woo, the path to the Rahma project began long before she arrived in Egypt in 2019. Growing up in South Korea’s strict and competitive education system, she began to sense that development could not simply be reduced to grades, wealth, or economic progress. Real growth, she realized, is also a spiritual and emotional journey; one that asks us to nurture compassion as much as ambition.
“Classes started at seven in the morning and ended at eleven at night,” she remembers. “I could not understand why we kept following a system that does not make any sense.”
The personal and social problems she saw her peers facing—problems that often resulted in psychological and physical illness—motivated her to turn to social art and human development. It was there she began to pursue a deeper question: how can we create a healthy society where each person can listen to their true inner body and voice?
While development practitioners and policymakers rush toward an imagined future, and while many people chase material gain above all else, Woo moves in the opposite direction. She pauses, turns to the present, and begins with the most fundamental questions: who are we, as human beings and as a species, and what role do we truly hold in the world today?
At just 23, Woo made herself a promise: she would leave Korea for 15 years and then return to contribute to social transformation.“I’ve now been away for 16 years,” she says with a smile.
“I know the shining light of Korea—K-pop, K-drama, and the cultural wave, along with companies like Hyundai and Samsung that have driven the country’s economic growth. However, I also see the shadow: the high suicide rate among teenagers, influenced by the competitive educational system, and the low birth rate, which, in my personal opinion, reflects the cost of such rapid development without enough focus on inner development,” she adds.
After moving to Emerson College in England to study Social Eurythmy—a system of physical movements for therapeutic purposes—she knew this would be her path. Her curiosity to learn from other cultures eventually led her to Egypt, where she had a life-changing encounter with Dr. Ibrahim Abouleish, the late founder of SEKEM, a pioneering sustainable development community established in 1977.
She was drawn to SEKEM’s “economy of love” philosophy, which centers on cooperation, respect, and shared well-being, because it aligned with her belief that development should bring people closer to love and compassion, not distance them from it.
“When I met Dr. Abouleish, I was struck by his vision that sustainable development must also be rooted in spiritual values,” she says. “It’s not about dogma, but about viewing spirituality in a way that connects to human development. That drew me to Egypt and made me want to be part of this community.”
At the SEKEM Training Academy for human development, Woo began working closely with women in factories and rural villages. She brought art into their lives through painting, music, and movement as a path to healing. Many had never believed they were capable of such expressions, yet these simple practices reminded them that creativity belongs to everyone and can be practised by anyone.
“At SEKEM, we say every single human being is an artist, whether a factory worker, a cleaner, or a student,” she explains. “Slowly, art became a tool for inner development, for critical thinking, and for self-expression.”
The hunger for this kind of self-expression, she found, was especially strong among women in villages. “They were so motivated, often more than city people. They wanted to do something for themselves, to feel good in their bodies again.”
In 2022, she joined the Integrative Health Center at Heliopolis University and also offered her therapeutic work at the SEKEM Medical Center.
She first understood the impact of her work when a woman who had endured years of chronic pain came to her after being prescribed antidepressants. Through that experience, she realized that self-care practices can often be more transformative than relying solely on medical treatment.
“After just a few sessions of breathing and movement, she no longer needed antidepressants,” Woo says. “It revealed to me a deep gap in our medical system, so often what people truly need isn’t more medication, but the chance to breathe, to move, and to be heard.”
Out of these experiences, the Rahma Project was born in 2024. Woo and her team began training 12 women from local villages, mainly in Sharqia governorate, to become health coaches. These women now lead small circles that include around 30 to 40 women each, guiding others through movement, nutrition, and conversations about womanhood, reproductive health, menstruation, and even female genital mutilation (FGM).
“Some think women’s empowerment is about fighting with men or imposing an idea. That is not our approach,” Woo explains. “We are creating spaces for dialogue, where women can ask questions, share wisdom, and support one another, starting with our own health and gradually extending to our children, families, and society.”
Healing is different from the quick fixes so often offered by development work. In healing circles, the aim is not to prescribe solutions, but to create a space of acceptance; of making peace with oneself and with life, and of learning to seek meaning even in the midst of suffering. This kind of healing arises through presence: through deep listening, and through the simple act of holding another woman’s hand.
At its heart, it is a spiritual practice, and it is this spiritual core that grounds the Rahma project.
For Woo, the power of healing was revealed in one particular encounter, where two women, from completely different backgrounds and speaking different languages, connected through presence and compassion alone.
The encounter was with a 70-year-old woman in the village, a mother of nine children born naturally, who Woo fondly calls “malikatuna (our queen).” Despite her age, the woman attended movement sessions every week, her body still strong and agile. When she had to miss a session because of eye surgery, Woo decided to visit her at her home.
“She lived in a space maybe one and a half square meters, just a carpet on the dusty and sandy floor, a small television in the corner, and unfinished walls,” Woo describes. “But when she greeted me, she held my whole head in her hands and kissed me. In that moment, I felt I was receiving a blessing.”
In a single moment, through the smallest of gestures, Woo felt a presence and a love that rose above labels and the narrow ideas of what a “developed” society should or should not look like. It was this sense of connection and compassion that she hopes to bring forward through the project.
“The way she kissed me, it was pure loving-kindness, no judgment, just presence.”
For Woo, that moment crystallized the true essence of the Rahma Project: compassion, connection, and recognizing the wisdom within others.
Inside Rahma’s Healing Circle
For many women, the idea of seeing their own uterus—or even understanding the form of their reproductive and physical body as a whole—remains unfamiliar.
From the bones to the vagina itself, so much of it goes unacknowledged. Often, when a woman looks at her body, her first instinct is to notice its outward appearance. But when she looks deeper, she discovers that her body is far more intricate and layered than appearance alone could ever reveal.
Research also shows that many women in Egypt have limited knowledge and inadequate self-care practices when it comes to vaginal health. A 2013 survey of 220 female university students revealed widespread confusion, and in many cases, a complete lack of awareness, about reproductive health and access to related care.
The Rahma Project begins by unmasking the woman’s body, inviting her to scan every part of it, to recognize it not as something separate from herself but as an inseparable part of who she is.
Rather than viewing the body only in terms of motherhood, the project helps women see it as a whole, interconnected, and complex entity. It guides them in tracking shifts in their energy levels, emotions, health, and bodily desires, empowering them to respond to these changes with greater awareness.
When Laila*, one of the health coaches in the project, gathers women into a circle, she does not begin with medical jargon or complicated terminology. Instead, she begins with a question: “How much did you really know about your body, about anatomy, contraceptive methods, and reproductive health?”
For many of the women in the room, knowledge is often passed down from mothers, grandmothers, or relatives. Yet this kind of inherited, top-down knowledge is what the Rahma Project seeks to transform. Its vision is to create a space grounded in dialogue and open-ended questions, where understanding can grow beyond the limits of family traditions.
Through one-on-one visits and circle sessions, health coaches meet each woman in her own home. The encounter begins with a moment of presence and meditation, followed by an intimate conversation about how her body feels and how her mind and spirit are carrying her that day.
Each session then introduces a central theme that brings the idea of integrative health to life, guiding women to apply it in their daily routines and move toward a more balanced, healthier way of living.
Afterward, the women are invited to reflect, completing a simple checklist or journal with faces that express different emotions (such as satisfied, happy, optimistic, and more). They are also asked to choose a single word that captures how they feel in that moment, creating a record over time of the project’s impact.
For Heba*, the training marked the first time she encountered her body as something to be studied, understood, and respected.
“Before the project, my information wasn’t enough,” she admits. “I only knew small details about contraception. I saw a skeleton for the first time in my life. I studied its structure, from the bones to the uterus. Before that, I had no background at all.”
Yet beyond anatomy and scientific lessons, the sessions evolved into life lessons and self-care practices that can be applied in her day-to-day life. “I was always someone who pressured herself. Everything had to be perfect: the house, the kids. But I never listened to my body. That was the biggest change. I started to listen. To feel what I needed at a certain moment,” she notes.
The change, she explained, reshaped how she raised her children. “I learned not to argue in front of the children, so it wouldn’t affect them psychologically. I also began to understand them more. We, as Egyptians, don’t usually listen to each other. Everyone just talks and leaves. But I started listening,” she says.
Learning to track their hormonal and menstrual cycles also empowered women to speak more openly with their husbands about their emotions and their bodily needs.
“Something I’ve taken from the sessions is recognizing the difference between women’s and men’s emotional and bodily needs,” Sherouk*, another health coach, shares. “I began communicating with my husband, telling him, ‘This is how I feel right now.’ And now, he has started helping with the housework, and even follows my menstrual cycle alongside me.”
One of the most emotional moments in the training was an exercise where women wrote two letters: one to their daughters about menstruation, and one to their own uterus. It helps them build a more intimate relationship with their bodies and with their daughters, allowing them to speak more transparently about taboo topics like menstruation, relationships and reproductive health and womanhood.
For many, the exercise was their first attempt to frame menstruation and reproductive health not as shameful, but as natural, even sacred. It was also a chance to rewrite the messages they wished they had received as girls.
“For my daughter, I wrote that menstruation is something natural, something she shouldn’t be afraid of, that I’ll always be beside her,” Habiba* explains. “It felt very real, as if she were sitting right in front of me.”
Moving Forward with Compassion
Compassion essentially stems from the Latin word “compati,” which means “to suffer with.” For health coaches, this means walking with people through their pain and being partners with the women participants, rather than experts who dictate information to them.
Recognizing this, the project addresses the painful realities some women endure by creating a strong circle of support. Female circumcision, for example, was discussed openly, sometimes for the first time.
“My sister wanted to circumcise her four daughters,” Nourhan*, one of the health coaches, says. “After this project, I convinced her not to, and I explained to her in detail about the harm it causes. The training has reduced circumcision cases a lot in our community.”
After the project’s training, some women discovered they had been circumcised and had to grapple with that pain. Coming to terms with their own experiences allowed them to educate other women in their community. The issue was deeply personal for many of the coaches who were circumcised, yet they now take on cases and help defend girls in their community.
“I was circumcised myself. When I found out it is a crime, and that doctors say so, I took a stand,” she says. “Now I have a hotline number to report any attempt. If a father even thinks about it, I can defend the girl. This is considered a real danger, and we stop it.”
Early marriage is another deeply painful topic that health coaches have to navigate with sensitivity, guiding women through their experiences with compassion.
“In our rural areas, a girl can be only 14 or 15, yet her family wants to marry her off quickly,” says Ashrakat*, another health coach in the program. “Before the age of 18, marriages are not legal. And if problems happen, she cannot claim her rights.”
She recalled a case where a woman was forced to remarry her husband officially at 18, just to register the child she had already borne. “These are serious difficulties. Girls are deprived of their rights. Even in my own family, they used to marry daughters before 18. I held many sessions until they changed their minds.”
Meeting at the Human Level
For many of the women and health coaches, the essence of the project lay in the way it made them feel. It invited them into self-care as an act of devotion and reclaiming of the simple joy of being alive despite life’s hardships.
“We learned about reproductive health, sure, but this project was also about psychological health,” explained Habiba*. “It taught us to give ourselves room to rest, to figure out who we are, what makes us happy, and what makes us sad. Most importantly, it showed us how to communicate our emotions.”
A sense of grace came from discovering the body’s own mercy – its own rahma. It was a new kind of prayer, one spoken through tenderness, through compassion, and through the smallest gestures of human touch.
“We designed activities suitable for them, but in the end, what mattered most was values,” Woo says. “We always meet at the human level, on mercy, sustenance, love, and compassion.”
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