About Khalifah Alia

Khalifah Alia Michaels is the Southwest regional representative (New Mexico) for SMI-USA.

Khalifah Alia has been dancing along the Sufi path for 20 years after meeting Murshida Rabia and Murshid Saadi (of the Ruhaniat) at Matthew Fox's Institute of Creation Spirituality (ICCS) in Oakland, California. She is a teacher, ordained minister (Cheraga) and healing conductor of the Sufi Movement International.

For more than 35 years, she has been involved in the human potential movement and has explored different spiritual paths — including shamanism, Judaism and Kabbalah, Taoism (including Tai Chi and Chi Kung) and mystical and contemplative Christianity. She graduated from ICCS with a Master's in Creation Spirituality and from Tacheria: Interfaith School of Spiritual Direction.

In addition to her Sufi activities, on the mundane level, Alia works as a freelance technical writer. She also creates religious art (including religious icons from the Christian Orthodox tradition). (To see her artwork, visit www.aliamm.com/prayerfulimages/.) She's currently involved in a Hebrew chant leader training with Rabbi Shefa Gold in New Mexico.

She has worked as a massage therapist, hospice chaplain and was an adjunct faculty member at Naropa University in Boulder, CO where she taught online classes in spirituality and comparative religons. She also has been a dance leader for the Dances of Universal Peace. She has a long-term interest in various forms of bodywork and alternative medicine, dance and language studies.