Pilates and sculpt instructor and fashion creator Salma Hilweh on being a hijabi in the fitness space, why she never wants to be the best in the room, the block button that runs 24/7, and how she failed her way into the studio. Stay until the end for an exclusive Araam Mind meditation.
Inspire with Araam · Season 1, Episode 1 · 1 hr 6 min
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Salma Hilweh is a Pilates and sculpt instructor and a fashion creator known for an untraditional take on hijabi style: sporty, edgy, and still incredibly feminine. She has built an audience of nearly 300,000 across Instagram and TikTok by refusing to shrink herself to fit any room. She is also our very first guest. Hiba and Salma recorded for an hour and a half, then kept talking for two more hours after the call ended. This is that conversation.
"I don't want to be the best in the room"
Salma opens with the mindset shift that shaped her year. She does not want to be the most impressive person in her circle. She wants the people around her to be the best so she can learn from them. Her reasoning is blunt: once you are surrounded by people with no goals, your brain normalizes standing still. And standing still, she argues, is worse than going up or down. Going down teaches you something. Going up teaches you something. Staying exactly where you are, surrounded by people who tell you that is fine, teaches you nothing.
Hiba's take: when you feel like you are outgrowing a room, the answer is not to shrink to fit it. Get a different room.
If you are stuck in the gray zone
For anyone in that flat, routine, wake-up-work-gym-sleep stretch of life, Salma's advice is simple. Write down your passions and pick one to expand on. It does not have to make money. "Going up" can start with your mind, your body, whatever pulls you out of the routine bubble. When she feels herself repeating the same days, she goes to her room and paints for hours, alone, with music on, thinking about nothing. The things that make you feel like yourself are worth expanding, and sometimes they turn into a career.
Where the confidence came from
Salma was born in Jordan and lived there for fifteen years before moving to the States. Streetwear was not a thing for hijabis in the Middle East when she started dressing the way she wanted to. Her mom is a big reason she could. At three years old Salma was pairing clashing patterns and colors, her mom would say "you are not leaving the house like that," and then let her anyway. The rule in their house was wear what makes you feel good and comfortable, because you are not dressing to make anyone happy except you and Allah.
She started posting on TikTok in high school. The support rolled in and the hate rolled in at the exact same time, and a lot of her best-performing videos did well because people were sharing them to say this is not what a hijabi should be doing.
On comments, hate, and the block button
Salma's filter for negativity is objective. If a stranger takes time out of her day to tell you she does not like your face, your body, or your clothes, that is not about you. That is stemming from inside of her. The people commenting on your appearance are never the people you aspire to be like. Her rule now: never take it to heart, keep pushing until it does not phase you, and block them. In her words, her block button works day and night, on a 24/7 shift.
The same principle shows up in smaller places. When she first moved, she softened her name so it was easier for people to say. Now she repeats it until they get it right. She used to hesitate before saying she is Palestinian Jordanian, never knowing what reaction she would get. Now she just says it. You have to be mentally prepared for both the love and the hate, and post anyway.
Confident, not cocky
Women are taught there is no in-between: either you are humble or you are cocky. Salma draws the line clearly. If you are bringing people down so you can go up, that is where you are mistaken. If you are so okay with being yourself in any room, in any environment, that is confidence. The second you start measuring yourself against someone else's highlight reel, you are giving away your own barakah.
She is honest about the other side of that too. Earlier this year she went through the lowest few months of her life mentally, and no one knew. She was still posting outfits, still talking to followers, still going out. Nobody has a camera out twenty-four hours a day. Which is why comparing your timeline to anyone else's makes no sense. Some of her friends were married at 21, some at 30. There is no timeline. There is just your timeline.
Failing her way into the studio
Salma wanted to be in fitness since she was a kid tagging along to her mom's Zumba classes and thinking the instructor with the mic was the coolest person alive. She worked retail, clothing, makeup, and fitness stores, and none of it fulfilled her. Two years ago she planned to audition for reformer training at her studio, a trip came up, and she missed it. In October 2025 she auditioned again, got in, and trained from mid-November to March. She failed constantly and in front of people, which she had never experienced before. She got her Pilates certification in March, started teaching reformer, and two weeks before this recording finished her sculpt training.
The hard part was not physical. She had just transferred universities, classes were harder, she had no stable income, and friendships were shifting. Her description of that stretch is one of the best moments of the episode: it felt like being in the ocean with nothing to hold onto, or walking through a storm while some people walk with you and others just stand and watch. Beautiful, she says, but confusing.
Ambition without delaying your happiness
Salma's warning to ambitious women is that ambition can quietly turn into permanent dissatisfaction. If you think "I will be happy when I get this," you are cutting your own ambition short. Getting the thing is not the end step, it is the first floor. You were in the basement, now how do you get to the rest of the floors? But you cannot postpone your happiness until you arrive, because once you arrive you will want more. That is how we are wired. The fix is to be fulfilled within yourself first, with your passions and your hobbies and your people, so that everything that comes after is an addition to you, not something you are chasing.
Hiba shares her own version of this: getting married young, finishing the doctorate she thought would make her happy, becoming a mom, and realizing it did not feel right. Life is a staircase, not a racetrack, and everyone is walking to a different destination.
The leap
Asked where she would be if she had never taken the leaps that felt true to her, Salma says she would not know who she is. When she started Pilates training, everyone around her said the timing was wrong. The question she had to answer was whether she trusted everyone else or trusted herself. Choosing herself set the standard for everything that came after.
Salma's mind, body, and soul non-negotiables
Every episode of Inspire with Araam closes with the same question. Salma's answers:
- Mind: her hobbies. She paints, she reads, and she reads something about the brain every single day. As a self-described overthinker, disconnecting into a hobby is the only way she clears her head.
- Body: movement, any kind. If you cannot get to a class or the gym, walk. Walk around the mall. Consistent movement changes how clear her mind is.
- Soul: prayer. High, low, confused, sad, the first thing she does is pray about it, because no one takes better care of your soul than Allah.
Stay until the end
This episode closes with an exclusive guided meditation from Araam Mind, Visualize a Goal to Feel Inspired, a short visualization that walks you through seeing a specific dua as already answered and resting in tawakkul. Hiba also shares the honest story of building the app herself after six months of trying to hire developers, being too scared to listen to her own meditations, and what changed once she did.
Find Salma
Instagram: @thehelwa · TikTok: @fitsbyhelwa
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This episode is sponsored by Araam Mind, Araam's official meditation and mindset app.