Welcome to the inaugural edition of the SilverBell Global newsletter – a space for reflection and conversation within our growing community of coaches, clinicians, alumni, and friends.
In this edition, we explore questions of authenticity and wholeness through conversations and essays on digital wellness and embodied healing, asking how we choose integration over division in an increasingly digital – and profoundly human – world.
I spoke with Digital Strategist, mental health advocate, and SilverBell Global’s Social Media Manager Bridget Malcolm about how she mindfully navigates her online presence; recent SBG intern and International Relations Graduate from King’s College London Nami Yu and I explored how to cultivate mindful detachment in digital spaces; and I caught up with Keke Lindgard, Masters of Applied Nutrition student, soon to be Registered Dietician, and SBG’s Nourish Group facilitator about mindful consumption of online content – all against the broader backdrop of authenticity and self-care.
SBG’s Chief Wellness Officer and UAE Consultant Dana Ariss reflects on the journey from patient to healer, bearing witness to Rumi’s words, “the wound is where the light enters”, and our UK Clinical Consultant, Dr. Virginia Graham, sketches a resonant vision of a symbiotic relationship between Artificial and Human Intelligence.
This inaugural edition aligns with the launch of our new website – designed not only as a portal but an experience that reflects the calm, trust, and grounding we strive to achieve in our virtual and in-person work. Digital Wellness is the foundation of SilverBell Global’s online curriculum site, launching in 2026, debuting an exciting opportunity for SBG Coaches to learn from certified Spiritual Director Beata Lundeen in an online course introducing the art of Spiritual Accompaniment for mental wellness.
I hope you enjoy the first edition of our quarterly newsletter. Thank you for being part of the SBG family.
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Mindful Navigation: harnessing the power of transparency and self-care to find authenticity in a digital world.
Bridget and I discuss how she uses honesty and mental health awareness to connect with her followers and reconnect with herself.
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Mindful Detachment: cultivating inner freedom and self-acceptance to flourish beyond digital distraction.
Nami illustrates how she learned to recognize and step away from harmful thought patterns to build a more grounded sense of self online and off.
~ NSB |
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Mindful Consumption: setting boundaries with social media to find self-worth beyond the highlight reel.
KeKe and I explore her journey from comparison to self-compassion as she shares strategies for healthier social media habits and reclaiming your narrative.
~ NSB |
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A trusted colleague and a profound inspiration to me and countless others, SBG’s Chief Wellness Officer and UAE Consultant Dana Ariss is licensed as a Social Counselor by the Community Development Authority in Dubai. Dana’s passion for embodied resilience and culturally resonant care is evident in the programs and offerings she develops to support clients and community, including Root to Rise, a wellbeing program for the youth of Lebanon, and The Soft Landing, a gentle, heart-centered experience to soothe the nervous system and awaken inner resilience. Dana co-facilitated The Soft Landing as an experiential session at the 2025 MENATA conference.
In this moving reflection, Dana reveals how yoga, meditation, and spiritual practice transformed a history of illness and addiction into an embodied, trauma-informed approach to healing – illuminating the truth that our deepest wounds can become our greatest gifts in service to others.
~ NSB
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Etel Adnan
Paysage De Feu, 2017
1925-2021
Born in Beirut, Etel Adnan moved to California in the 1950s and built a painting practice inspired by her cross-cultural experiences and spiritual engagement with the natural world. She creates her intimate, small-scale compositions with a palette knife instead of a paintbrush, which results in rich, geometric fields of color that evoke sunsets, valleys, and mountains. Mount Tamalpais, a peak in Marin County, California, has been a frequent subject. Adnan studied philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris and established herself as a poet, academic, and essayist before she began to make art. A 2012 presentation at Documenta 13 brought Adnan particular acclaim. She has exhibited in Paris, London, New York, Zurich, Marrakesh, and Los Angeles, among other cities, and her work belongs in the collections of the British Museum, M+, the Centre Pompidou, the Sharjah Art Museum, the Tate, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. Adnan has also produced drawings, tapestries, films, and ceramics.
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Growing up, I spent countless hours in therapy and psychiatrists’ waiting rooms – the beige sofas, the fluorescent lights, the uneasy glances exchanged between people waiting to be “seen”. I was medicated at a young age and shuffled from one type of therapy to another. Nothing seemed to work. Beneath it all, a ferocious eating disorder raged, a drug habit was forming, and alcohol became my constant companion.
Eventually, I found myself in treatment – twice. Still, nothing worked. Not until years later, when I found yoga and, for the first time, heard the quiet whispers of my body in savasana. Tears would roll down my cheeks, pooling at the nape of my neck. I felt something. I didn’t yet know what healing was, but I knew I had touched it.
I signed up for my first yoga teacher training, and again, the tears came. The kind that dissolves something old and unseen. The wisdom of my body kept calling me back. I was learning to feel, to be myself again. Later, I trained in meditation with one of the first non-Tibetan teachers authorized to teach Mangalam Yantra Yoga, a Buddhist yoga and meditation practice. There, I discovered the stillness beneath thought, the vastness of quiet, and how loud my mind had always been.
It was new terrain – intimate, grounding, and utterly transformative.
In India, living for a month in an ashram, I found a connection to something greater, a higher power, that changed everything. It reoriented my life toward service, presence, and faith. And trusting in my body’s capacity to heal. A few weeks ago, my colleague Mary and I represented Silverbell Global as Silver Sponsors at the Middle East and North Africa Trauma Alliance (MENATA) Conference in Dubai.
MENATA is a collaborative network dedicated to strengthening trauma-responsive care across the MENA region. Through research, education, advocacy, and regional partnerships, MENATA bridges clinicians, communities, and systems, fostering culturally sensitive, locally rooted approaches to healing. At its heart, MENATA recognizes that trauma is shaped by our histories, identities, and environments, and that true healing must be inclusive, relational, and collaborative.
As part of the conference, Mary and I facilitated an experiential session called “The Soft Landing.”
The session aligned beautifully with MENATA’s 2025 theme, The Role of Spirituality in Trauma Recovery. It honored each participant’s unique spiritual framework – whether grounded in a relationship with God, a Higher Power, or a felt sense of sacred presence.
Designed as a trauma-informed somatic flow, The Soft Landing offered a gentle, heart-centered experience to soothe the nervous system, invite presence, and awaken inner resilience through breath, movement, and stillness. Rooted in feminine flow and inspired by the practices offered at Silverbell Global’s integrative retreats, it invited participants to reconnect with the wisdom of the body to remember safety, belonging, and connection. The experience was born directly from my own personal healing journey. The conference was also graced by Dr. Gabor Maté, who offered a keynote on compassion fatigue in clinicians and the importance of self-care, reminding us that to truly heal others, we must also tend to ourselves.
Healing is not linear: it’s relational, embodied, and spiritual. It lives in the spaces between us in community, in connection, in the courage to feel again. For me, standing in that room, facilitating movement and breath where once I sat frozen on beige sofas under fluorescent lights felt like a remembrance, a coming home.
Dana Ariss |
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I first encountered Dr. Graham’s work when a mutual colleague recommended her Professional Doctorate in Practical Theology on the spirituality of the 12 Steps, titled Addiction in Eden: Alcoholics Anonymous and Theology. I was so moved by Virginia’s writing that I asked to meet her – and we’ve continued the conversation ever since. A leading expert in behavioral health for over three decades, Dr. Graham brings a vast perspective to SilverBell Global as our UK Clinical Consultant. Committed to helping clients discover and apply spiritual and relational resources to their emotional pathology, Dr. Virginia Graham supports individuals, groups, and families in recovering and restoring the authentic self through the therapeutic process.
It’s an honor to have Dr. Graham contributing her deeply curious, insightful, and graceful voice to our newsletter as she explores how human wisdom and artificial insight might work together in the service of care, connection, and love.
~ NSB
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Sonia Delaunay
Rhythm Colour no. 1076
1885- 1979
Sonia Delaunay was a French artist born to Jewish parents who spent most of her working life in Paris. She was born in the Russian Empire, now Ukraine, and was formally trained in Russia and Germany before moving to France and expanding her practice to include textile, fashion, and set design. While living in Paris in the 1910s, Delaunay and her husband, Robert Delaunay, began to explore the visual properties of contrasting colors – colors opposite one another on the color wheel. The pairing of two such colors, they realized, heightened the optical intensity, making both colors appear more vivid than they would on their own. Studying color inside and outside of the studio, in their own creations and in Parisian museums, galleries, and exhibitions, Delaunay and Delaunay pursued a shared passion for hues made brilliant, even dynamic through their relationships to each other.
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No longer a mere concept in healthcare or indeed anywhere else, AI is increasingly integrated into our daily lives and, undeniably, here to stay. The pressing question isn’t whether AI will play a role in the future of healthcare; rather, it’s how we, as healthcare providers, can harness AI’s potential without succumbing to misuse. Surely the goal should be how to use Artificial Intelligence to enhance Human Intelligence rather than viewing them as potential adversaries.
AI has an incredible capacity to augment what humans can do by processing vast amounts of data far more quickly than humans can. By automating mundane tasks, AI frees us up to engage in more creative and complex tasks – from developing innovative ideas to offering empathetic patient care through relationships. Harnessing the unique powers of AI doesn’t mean we replace human touch – we enhance it, allowing the best of both worlds to coexist. This cooperative relationship can also spark a profound shift in how we think about mental health. Perhaps we need not pit the Minnesota model against trauma-informed care or cognitive therapies against more psychodynamic practices and instead focus on integration rather than fragmentation. How might we use AI-driven insights to facilitate this very process? Imagine how AI analysis of an individual’s emotional patterns could deepen a clinician’s relational understanding of a particular case, creating a better care plan.
These points reveal a bigger issue: the need for a broader worldview, one where inclusivity and acceptance vanquish exclusivity and judgment. The challenge is clear: are we humans capable of rising to the occasion and working synergistically with AI in this context? The battle need not be about HI versus AI; rather, the answer to this question centers on our willingness – or not – to collaborate and embrace the complexities involved. I often see different paradigms fighting as if they can’t coexist. Still, the most effective interventions arise when we dissolve these boundaries and allow various approaches to complement and enrich one another.
Dissolution of boundaries is one way to understand the uniquely human experience of love, a multi-faceted wonder, often experienced through that most potent brand of connection we call intimacy. Dare we use the information made available through engagement with AI to better understand this connectivity, thereby enhancing our grasp of it? If, in doing so, we prioritize unity and integration over fragmentation, we are that much closer to our goal: not to choose sides, but to work with systems that harness AI’s strengths while honoring the invaluable qualities of human warmth, empathy, and intuition.
Embracing this vision requires courage. It takes courage to acknowledge that the path to innovation can be messy. Yet, this very messiness is where growth occurs, both personally and collectively. By facilitating collaboration among disciplines such as psychology, the social sciences, AI development, and more, we can create frameworks that reflect our complex realities without oversimplifying them.
Collaboration doesn’t mean the demise of human intelligence; it means forging a new identity – richer, deeper, and more nuanced. Let’s think big: instead of separate factions debating the merits of human versus artificial intelligence, let’s rally our resources to create an integrated vision. Together, we can find balance, fostering a future where technology is about completion rather than division, and, instead of cynicism, hope.
Dr Virginia Graham |
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Thank you for sharing this moment with us – to pause, reflect, and care for our minds, hearts,
and spirits together. May your holidays be safe, peaceful, and full of the gifts that matter most.
In creativity and connection,
Natasha |
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