Open Heart Meditation Traralgon in Traralgon, Victoria | Non-profit organisation

Open Heart Meditation Traralgon

Locality: Traralgon, Victoria

Phone: +61 487 001 434

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• Medical and health
• Non-profit organisation
• Alternative & holistic health service
• Meditation centre
• Public service

19.01.2022 Good evening everyone. A sweet reminder if you would like to come along to our weekly Thursday evening online Zoom session at 7:30pm Just click this link a couple of minutes before the session starts to join. https://bit.ly/EveningOHMZoom

02.01.2022 Here is the link for meditation tonight on Zoom at 7:30pm if you feel to join. https://links.trueheart.org/ohm-evening

01.01.2022 Https://bit.ly/OHWJuly2020

01.01.2022 My Open Heart Journey by Yalda Cassidy Psychotherapist BPsych MA Counselling Many of those who have known me for at least 10 years or more are often surprised t...o see the life I live now and the person that I am, in comparison with who I was. I was easily liked by people because of my flexibility and caring nature but my lack of boundaries made me moody, unreliable and flaky. Relationships were hard to maintain because I expected too much of others and could never ask for what I actually wanted but attempted to have my needs met through manipulation. I would never, ever, admit this at the time of course. Nevertheless, I did have some very good friends and we bonded by a general sense of displacement, boredom, excessive partying and drinking while ticking some necessary boxes to stay in the good graces of our parents. Most people would say that I seemed quite happy although my life was a roller coaster filled with constant drama, and I would have agreed. In my early thirties, I said to one of my best friends this has been the best 1.5 years of my life! He looked at me alarmed, like I had gone mad, and said honey, I don’t mean to be mean but in the last 1.5 years, you were kidnapped, raped and your husband left you TWICE the last time, when you were 3 months pregnant! How on earth can you say that it has been the best year of your life? I’m sure that you are now wondering the same thing so let me rewind a bit to explain, as I did to him, how the spiritual programs that were shared by Irmansyah Effendi not only saved my life but changed me from within. It’s quite funny to look back now on how and why I joined open heart meditation but the reality is that I wanted to become a healer. I had already done my Psychology degree and my Masters, I was quite successful in my private practise but I became increasingly aware that there were some gaps, some holes within me that became glaringly obvious whenever I touched on subjects that related to the meaning or purpose of life, and other existential matters. I lacked a spiritual connection. I lacked wisdom. I didn’t believe in energy and all that wou wou and any mention of religion made me quite frustrated and agitated. I was born a Muslim and raised in a Christian society. In my teenage years, I rejected both religions because it upset me that people from 2 religions, which were in essence quite similar, chose to more often fight over the best or right way of worshiping God instead of just agreeing that there is a God to whom we should show our gratitude in various ways. My immature mind decided that it means that God isn’t real, all religion is bad and I decided to turn away from all religious matters and anything that required faith or believing in God. Growing up and for the most part of my adult life I always used to say I better get some answers about life, death and the purpose of it all after I die, otherwise this would all be a massive waste of time. This statement worked for me in my teenage years but the more I moved into adulthood, the more I longed for the truth. But my stubbornness and rigid opinions about spirituality caused me to ignore the part of me that was searching for answers and proceed to search for meaning in all the wrong places; in big parties, fancy cocktails, unhealthy relationships and so on. That is until yet another relationship that I had given my heart and soul to ended abruptly. I recall crying like I had never cried before until there were no tears left. I was just so tired. Tired of everything. And in the midst of the drama, that question surfaced again what is the point of everything?. This time, instead of internally responding with a witty remark, I stayed quiet. It felt like I had nothing left to say, so I fell asleep. When I woke up that morning I was exhausted but I could feel love, not from anybody but rather, it felt like it was all around me everywhere. Life still sucked and I was heartbroken but there was reassurance and support in it. As I got to work that day, the sadness closed in more again and I had to explain to my manager that I could not work that day. She told me to lie on my own counselling couch (how ironic) and offered me some Reiki. I had no idea what this was but I was too exhausted to reject it. To my surprise, after the Reiki, I could feel the weird air love more strongly again. So I asked a few questions and decided to Google Reiki attunement. I thought I could combine whatever this was with counselling and be more effective. This is how I found Reiki Tummo, a modality founded by Irmansyah Effendi and I proceeded to attend a workshop that very weekend. I was instantly struck by the calmness and kindness of the Reiki Tummo instructors. They didn’t say much or even interact much with me but I felt welcomed and wanted. I felt that air love there again and realised that I was feeling a strange sense of happiness that wasn’t related to anything that was happening, it was just there. In all honesty, I couldn’t feel much of the Reiki Tummo energy and I didn’t feel or know what was going on most of the time but the happy, joyful feeling was unmistakeable. I left the Reiki Tummo weekend workshop feeling partially healed from the hurt and pain of separation. So I continued on to the next weekend workshop and by the time I completed my third weekend workshop a few months later, I felt like I was a new person. I felt like I was healing from wounds I didn’t even know that I had, and the recent separation, which was ongoing just resolved itself in the gentlest way. At this point of my open heart journey, I had no feeling or clear experience of a relationship between my heart and its Source. I understood that we were relying on the Love from the Creator to open our spiritual heart and to improve our connection with the Source of Love; with God. I recall that the instructors of the Reiki Tummo workshops clearly and frequently reminded us to not do anything of our own but to rely on the Love from the Source of Love, which we could refer to as God, the Creator, Father, Allah or any other terminology that was in accordance with our beliefs. In my case, I had no beliefs so it all went over my head and I didn’t think much more about it, which was also fine. It wasn’t until the day that I was kidnapped and knew in my heart that the only one who could get me out alive was God, that I reached out with a single thought saying help, and felt an immediate response back in the form of being blanketed in Love and calmness. I knew logically what was happening and what could happen but I felt so loved and protected that there was not room for fear or anxiety. I just had to follow along and see how the story paned out. For someone who had spent her whole life rejecting the notion of a Creator or God, it was quite overwhelming to experience such an instant connection and response. But you know how it is, when you have spent your whole life rejecting something, even the most real and convincing experience can sometimes not be enough to change your ways, beliefs and attitude immediately. It did however make me want to explore it further and experience more if it and so I made sure I attended further programs offered by Irmansyah Effendi. These included Open Heart Meditation Workshops. In the meantime, I went to therapy, because surely you must have a lot to work out following a traumatic experience like that. As I attended my therapy sessions, it became clearer that while I recall every event and did not dissociate during any of it, I feel like the experience somehow was not able to seep in to my being or my sense of self. Somehow, neither the memory or the perpetrations themselves raise any anger, hate, disgust, shame etc and the most prominent part of recalling the events that took place is a deep, heart-felt gratitude for life and realising how much I had taken my life for granted. While the events were abhorrent, I could wash it off after and move on emotionally, mentally and physically unscratched. I was truly protected, like that spray that you spray onto suede and leather, protecting it from getting permanently stained. Therapy only highlighted how much I had changed as a person since beginning the Natural Way of Living programs. Without even intending on changing, my perception of why things happen in life had changed. My reaction to negative events and experiences had changed in a way that allowed me to get unstuck from negative thoughts and emotions more easily. Perhaps one of the most important changes that had occurred was that I didn’t easily feel like a victim, regardless of the situation. This was however still to be tested. A little while after my therapist made it clear to me that, whilst welcome to continue, I did not need therapy with regards to recently experienced events, I reunited with my husband and I fell pregnant. As you already know, there were no happy endings yet. Three months later, my husband informed me that he was unable to stay in our relationship and needed to leave immediately. I stayed in bed for 3 days...shocked, paralyzed with disbelief and sadness. I didn’t want to talk about it but I knew I couldn’t stay in my negative emotions because it wasn’t good for my baby. For the second time in my life, I turned to God. I felt the warm blanket of calmness and knew immediately what to do. I called one of the Open Heart Meditation instructors and very briefly explained what had happened and that I was stuck, needing some guiding to feel my heart more clearly. That’s exactly what I got. No one was much interested in the story of the drama, just kindly understood that I was struggling and offered to guide me to relax and allow my natural connection to my heart and to the Source of Love to be felt more clearly. After we finished the guided open heart meditation I stayed in that beautiful space, the strong emotions that had paralysed me melted away. I realised that I felt sheepish and ashamed and that there was no need to follow those emotions. I could feel the joy and miracle of having a new life growing inside of me and that all in all, life was still beautiful just not the way I had planned for it to be. As I drove home smiling that night, I reflected on my experiences of being surrounded by a blanket of peace and calmness every time that I wordlessly call God from my heart. I had clearly experienced this during the Open Heart Meditation and Reiki Tummo Workshops but my scientific mind attributed those experiences to the meditation workshop itself and the energy in the air of being with so many people in a workshop or retreat. I reflected on the resistance I felt in admitting that I experience the same feelings and connection when I’m by myself and that my experience is real. And so, I asked myself an important question: Am I so proud and stubborn that I am denying myself all these wonderful feelings, experiences and heartfelt guidance because of a decision I made about spirituality when I was 12 years old? I decided to swallow my pride and give myself a chance to feel happy, joyful and content from within. It took me many years of repeating the cycle of getting stuck in drama, trying to deal with it on my own, making things worse or getting stuck in negative emotions, surrendering and asking God for help, feeling the guidance and following it even if I dislike it, things resolving themselves better than I could have imagined, realising that it is all real. Repeat. With time however, the cycles got shorter and less intense. I began to recognise the footprint of my own stubbornness and arrogance. After repeatedly feeling how much love and support there is available for each and every one of us, I realised how often I reject it. One of the biggest examples was visible in my relationship with my mother. She would often offer to do things for me out of love. Little things like offering to brush my hair or helping me with my clothes and I always used to get annoyed and brush her off with I’ve got it mum. After one of the workshops with Irmansyah Effendi, I realised that ever since I thought myself to be an adult, I began rejecting my mother’s love for me. Similar to the way I reject love and help from God. I rejected my mother’s love because it made me feel like a child, unequal. But perhaps it is ok to be loved like a child and maybe some relationships aren’t meant to be equal. I never noticed that the most meaningful way that I could repay my mother for her love and care was to accept her love and let her love me. After allowing this to happen more frequently, I could see how happy it made her and it was the beginning of a beautiful change and repair in our relationship. So I started to learn how to accept help and love when it was offered. Would you like a hand with your bags? Yes please, let me help you do your hair OK mum. It doesn’t sound that difficult but I know that there are a lot of people out there, like me, who also have some misguided sense of independence that means that you have to do it all on your own. Through opening my heart through these Natural Way of Living programs founded by Irmansyah Effendi, I realised that there is so much support given in each moment so that we can flourish and fulfil our destinies, and that there is no glory in doing it on your own; there’s only emptiness. The habit of saying no soon became easier to break and saying yes took its place. Patterns of feeling like a burden, not being good enough, self doubt and other constant downers melted away effortlessly. I say effortlessly because I never intended for those things to change. The only effort I had to make was to keep following my heart and to trust its guidance. I only had to keep attending the programs offered by Irmansyah Effendi to relax more and to try less. I repeated the Open Heart Meditation and Reiki Tummo Workshops many times and also helped at the Community healing clinics. However at that time perhaps the biggest effort was to not throw the towel in out of fear that I will somehow fail in God’s eyes. To my surprise other aspects of my life started to change as well. As I had less negative emotions, I didn’t need to use food as a way of distracting myself from them. My unhealthy food habits began changing by itself as I felt happy in life. The night time itch where I used to pace around the kitchen searching the cupboards for something to eat, when in fact I was just bored, got less and less with time. Not because I stopped eating yummy things but because I stopped being bored. How can you be bored when you are happy, joyful, feeling loved and grateful? At this point, my daughter had been born and my ex husband and I had managed to establish a good relationship in which we allowed each other to parent our daughter the way that it worked for each of us. I will not lie; my ex and I are like chalk and cheese and the mutual respect did not come easily. We rarely have the same approach to anything in life and we both think that we are right. So this particular journey that we had embarked on was fraught with complications and disagreements. Our saving grace however was once again what we had learnt in the workshops with Irmansyah Effendi (Irman) ; to look at things with our heart and when we still cannot see, to ask God for guidance and help. With this attitude, I could see that no matter how different his approach was from mine, it was clear as daylight that it was out of love. Instead of focusing on our differences, we could both see that our daughter was, and felt, truly loved at both our houses. We could agree that in the end, feeling loved was what she would remember, not whether she had milk or water with her food. We learnt to appreciate each other’s differences and our daughter learnt that different places have different rules. Today, almost 6 years later, I can wholeheartedly say that I am truly grateful that he is the father of our child and our family is perfect exactly the way it is. Knowing who I was 6-7 years ago, prior to learning from Irmansyah Effendi, I would not have been able to recognise this or the other many wonderful things about our family. When the opportunity appeared a few years ago to become a Secrets of Natural Walking instructor, I was grateful to accept it. During my training, I had the opportunity to spend more time with Irmansyah Effendi (Irman) and to see how tirelessly he works to help more people with their health and happiness. I experienced the patience, love and kindness in which he teaches. Irman’s humbleness and fantastic sense of humour makes my heart smile, and to this day, I have never heard him separate himself from us in any way, always using the words we and us. Watching Irmansyah teach itself has made me a better person and a better parent. I have often, year after year, asked the same question in different ways (hoping for a different answer), yet he answers with so much love and patience in a new way as if it is the first time. I try to remember this often as I find myself frustrated with others. Being able to share what I have learnt during the last 7 years, since taking my first Natural Way of Living workshop, feels particularly important in today’s world. More frequently, people are looking for meaning and purpose in life. We are all searching to belong and to be unconditionally loved. Increasingly, people are caring more for one another and are taking stance against injustices, prejudice, violence and so forth. However, we are still coming up against the age-old problem; our approaches to ending these problems differ. So what do we do? We fight over the best way of creating change, similar to the way people of different religions fought over the best way of worshipping God. So we have come full circle. Many years ago, I rejected God because of the way people fought over how to worship God, today, I turn to God for help instead. I do this because I can see that it was never God, spirituality or religion that was the problem. Today, we are still behaving in the same way, fighting each other in the name of solving the world’s problems; same behaviour, different banner. This is where the programs offered by Irmansyah Effendi are so important. It is through learning from Irmasyah Effendi that I realised that there is always a better way. We can always find the best solutions to presenting problems no matter how impossible they may seem, but only if we are willing to look through the eyes of our heart and rely on the guidance from God through our heart. I can today happily use the word God without internally cringing even though I still don’t subscribe to any religion. This change happened after I attended a retreat with over 400 people, out of whom many were Muslims, Christians, Catholics, Hindu’s, Buddhists and those not subscribing to any religion. I experienced spending days with people of all walks of life and spiritual backgrounds praying, enjoying the open heart meditation and enjoying being loved by the same Source of Love. I have more than once had tears in my eyes while watching a Muslim woman guide a Catholic nun, and vice versa, to enjoy their hearts more freely. This was when I knew beyond a doubt that my deductions as a 12 year old were wrong and what I really needed to reject was not God, it was the temptation to be right. To insist that my way is the best way. The programs offered by Irmansyah Effendi through Natural Way of Living reflect diversity in interest, preference and ability as well. The Reiki Tummo path appealed to the helper in me and helped me get familiar with spirituality in a way that was fun and not overwhelming. I later also completed the Open Heart Meditation workshops to get to know and use my spiritual heart better and to begin relying on the Love from the Source of Love. The Secret of Natural Walking workshops inspired me to allow my body to function more in accordance with how it has been created and to experience the beauty of this physical body. The higher workshops and retreats allowed me to recognise my connection to God and to get to experience what it means to be loved by the Source of Love, the Source of us. Together, the teachings and programs by Irmansyah Effendi have taught me that that Love is far stronger and gentler agent of change than any other force. I have experienced the changes in me, my life and in those around me, as a direct result of opening my heart and being guided to stay in my heart more often. I have realised that happiness, joy, gratitude and life satisfaction has nothing to do with our external circumstances, and that hardship and drama disappears when you live from your heart and ask for help when you misstep. Almost 7 years has passed since my friend questioned how those turbulent 1.5 years could have been the best years of my life at that point. Today, I know that he understands; because I found Unconditional Love. I once read the heart searches for the Love it was born to know so my advice to you is; put your concepts, ideas and expectations aside for a day or two and pick a program that appeals the most to you. If it resonates with you, great! I look forward to reading about your journey one day, and if it doesn’t, that’s fine too. There is nothing to lose. Yalda Cassidy Psychotherapist BPsych MA Counselling