By: Natalie Johnson
Some people need a single wake-up call to change direction. Dr. Q needed two, decades apart, before he found the one that stuck.
Dr. Q Moayad is the founder of the Indian Palm Leaf Reading Institute, a Nadi reading institute that brings palm leaf readings to clients outside India. Long before readers and interpreters depended on him for a living, he was an eight-year-old forced out of Iran during the revolution and a 16-year-old sitting in a cancer ward with little explanation of what was about to happen to him.
“Cancer made me the person I’m today,” Dr. Q says. “It put me on a trajectory where I want to experience things, period, because you never know how much longer I can live.”
He remembers the treatment as relentless and largely unexplained by the physicians of the time. He spent three years learning to endure whatever came next, a skill he says has stayed with him ever since.
“My pressure point is very high,” he says. “I learned for three years to bite the bullet, and it will go away eventually.”
Adulthood brought its own reversal. Dr. Q spent years building an international tour operator business, only to lose it in the global financial collapse through no fault of his own. A few years later, his body forced another stop. A fever spiked to 108 degrees, his heart rate climbed to 180 beats per minute, and doctors moved him into intensive care with myocarditis, a serious inflammation of the heart.
“Will I die?” he remembers thinking. “I don’t have a child, I haven’t planted a tree yet, I haven’t done so many things that I wanted to do.”
It was in that hospital bed that a close friend suggested something Dr. Q had never considered: a Nadi reading, an ancient Indian practice believed to reveal a person’s life path from palm leaves inscribed generations ago. He agreed, mostly out of curiosity and a wish to, in his own words, fix his karma. Buried inside that reading was a single line he brushed off at the time, that he would one day bring the practice to the West.
He did, though not on purpose. Dr. Q shared his reading with friends and family, who wanted readings of their own. They told their friends, who told more people, until strangers with no connection to him at all were asking for help.
“There was no real plan,” Dr. Q says. “You cannot plan it to begin with. You cannot plan, I’m going to start a Nadi reading institute. How could you?”
To keep helping people outside his own circle responsibly, he formalized the business on February 16, 2016. He describes it less as ambition and more as a response to strangers asking for something he had no legal framework to give them yet. The Institute grew slowly at first, treated more like a calling on the side than a company, until 2020 handed him something he never expected: time.
With his other career paused during the pandemic, Dr. Q dedicated himself fully to the Institute for the first time. He built relationships with prominent voices in the space, including Arielle Ford, Reverend Bill, and Craig Hamilton Parker, who began sending clients his way simply because they trusted his integrity. What had been a small operation grew into a full-fledged institute, now supporting roughly 20 people who depend on it for their income.
Running it has never been about money, Dr. Q is quick to point out. He does not own a car.
“As long as I can buy a cup of coffee when I want one, I’m a happy bunny,” he says.
What keeps him going, he says, are the emails. Clients write to tell him a reading pointed them toward a marriage, a child, or work that finally felt meaningful. Dr. Q answers every message personally, even the ones that take hours to explain properly, because he considers it, in his words, good karma work.
The Institute has since produced a book, Nadi Astrology, distilling more than a decade of research into something Dr. Q insists had to be entertaining, not academic, to actually help people. A separate foundation, created a few years ago, now supports Dr. Q’s next project, a cow donation program that lets clients fund a cow for a family in India, providing sustainable income for years from its milk.
“I always say I’m just a regular guy,” Dr. Q says. “You do not need to be born a champion. All you need to do is accept, embrace, and wish to become a better human. Everything else unfolds.”
To learn more about Dr. Q and the Indian Palm Leaf Reading Institute, visit IndianPalmLeafReading.com or find him on social media.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute medical, psychological, financial, legal, or professional advice. References to Nadi readings, spiritual practices, personal experiences, or individual testimonials reflect the perspectives of the individuals featured and are not intended to guarantee specific outcomes or results. Readers should use their own judgment and consult qualified professionals when making decisions related to health, personal wellbeing, or other important matters.
