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FORGIVENESS WORKSHOP: Begin the New Year Feeling Empowered and Joyful
HEAL YOURSELF: From Emotional Pain, Anger and Resentments
Presenter: Chaya Sara Brand, LMSW Psychotherapist/Life Coach/Educator. This spiritual and experiential workshop will enable you to experience the transformative healing power of forgiveness.
• Let Go of the Past
• Gain Peace of Mind
• Be Free
• Heal Your Heart
• Heal Your Body
• Experience Joy
Session 1: Tues Sept 1, 8 PM
FORGIVENESS: HEALING EMOTIONS AND RELATIONSHIPS
Session 2: Thurs Sept 3, 8 PM
FORGIVENESS: OPPORTUNITY FOR EMOTIONAL AND SPIRITUAL GROWTH
Suggested donation per session: Members $5, Public $10 /Shaarei Tefillah Congregation, 3600 Bathurst Street
Chaya Sara Brand, LMSW / Psychotherapist/Life Coach/Educator / chayasara4u@gmail.com
• Master of Social Work degree from Yeshiva University
• Private practice
• Over 40 years international experience
• Facilitating emotional/spiritual healing and growth
• Expansive, eclectic approach
• Synthesizing Chassidut with psychology
• See Linked-In or Facebook for more info
Synopsis of the Forgiveness Workshop:
This Workshop is helpful for anybody who harbours feelings of anger, resentment, blaming and judging of others. I think that means most people would benefit.
Forgiveness begins with an intention, sometimes, just wanting to want to want to forgive in order to let go of the pain. Forgiveness is connecting to the Divine within, and Divine in the other, to have empathy and compassion for your own pain or disappointment and yet after holding them accountable to find compassion for the other person’s wounded-ness.
Forgiveness is not about condoning the behavior or needing to reconcile. It is recognition that we all fail and fall. We all too often react because of our fears, needs, and misperceptions.
Humans are complex. We have a Higher or Divine Self (HS) and we have a Lower Self (LS) and we have the Adult self that I refer to as the Present Day Aware Adult that has the freedom and responsibility to choose our behavior.
Forgiveness means to me, the ability to choose (PDAA) to release the need (usually fear based) to hold onto the ‘story’ or drama with all its accompanying emotions and beliefs connected to the past. I can choose as a PDAA to withdraw my energy from the past and the dramas (LS) to be fully present. I choose to trust and accept that whatever happened (or happens), is an opportunity for healing and growth and is part of Higher plan. I no longer feel like a ‘victim’ (LS) with all my judgements resentments and grievances. I am truly free when I’m not trapped in the past.
Forgiveness, is being At-one-ment, ie. at one in the present moment with self, at one with the other, at one with G-d’s Plan. It is a place of love, compassion, acceptance, peace of mind, healed heart, empowerment.
Elul is the time and opportunity for healing by releasing grievances and resentments. Teshuva means to return to Hashem and to reconnect to your forgiving inner higher divine self.
“Forgiveness Workshop: with Chaya Sara Brand This spiritual and experiential workshop will enable you to experience the transformative healing power of forgiveness.
WILL TO FORGIVE: “Forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person.” By Gail Lichtman, Jerusalem Post
Traditionally, Elul is the month of slichot, when we ask friends and family for forgiveness in preparation for Yom Kippur. Elul holds out the possibility to wipe the slate clean, to begin our relationships afresh with the New Year. Yet, this spiritual opportunity is often wasted on superficial forgiveness.
“People go through the process without having it really affect them. Forgiveness is a gift for cleansing – between ourselves and G-d and between ourselves and man. We have to make reparations with man before we can come to G-d for forgiveness,” says Chaya Sara Brand, an integrative psychotherapist who, for the past twenty-two years, has been conducting Elul workshops on forgiveness.
Under the title, “G-d Forgives – Can You?”, Brand, a Canadian-born social worker with 36 years experience and a degree from Yeshiva University, helps people get rid of years of destructive anger and pain, through forgiveness.
“There is no statute of limitations on hurts and grudges,” she states. “We have to learn how to let go – how to forgive – for our own sake. Holding grudges makes you literally sick.”
Borrowing from Alexander Pope- to err is human, to forgive is divine, Brand notes that “forgiveness is totally irrational. If someone has done something that needs your forgiveness, then logically they have done something terrible and they don’t deserve to be forgiven. But forgiveness transcends the human ego. It is divine and G-dly. It means getting in touch with G-d and that’s hard work.”
According to Brand, forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person. “It means that you are letting go of the hurt and the anger. You are now in the realm of G-d. While the other person still has to take responsibility and rectify his act, it is now between him and G-d, a matter of teshuva.”
But how does one forgive the seemingly unforgivable? There are several steps that Brand recommends. “First, you need to acknowledge your pain and anger. Anger gives you energy. Use it well. It is like water. You can either drown in it or use it to quench your thirst. This energy can give you the power to take control of your life. If you put yourself in the role of the victim, you give others power over you – the power to hurt you, even from the grave. By forgiving, we take back the power to control our lives.”
Brand compares this with holding a microphone. All of a sudden someone plugs the mike in and the electric charge surges through you. You have two choices – you can either hang on to the mike waiting for someone to disconnect the power or you can let go on your own. Forgiveness is letting go on your own.
“We have to want to want to forgive so we can be at one with Hashem,” she notes. “Ironically, it is not the stranger who has hurt us the most, but those closest to us. We have to see the other person not through our own ego but through a higher eye. Look at the other person as weak, needy, vulnerable, insecure, limited, etc. – in short all the things we can find in ourselves as shortcomings.”
Brand recommends separating the person from the event. “The event may be unforgivable, but we can forgive the person for being human, for having lapsed. But first we must recognize in ourselves that we are not perfect and we too lapse and err.”
Brand often tells those trying to forgive to visualize the other person as a child with fears and hurts. She says to place yourself in the other person’s shoes and ask yourself how you would have reacted given the same background and circumstances.
“Express your hurt, resentment, anger and desire for an apology, even if only in an unmailed letter.” She does urge those trying to forgive to contact the other person if at all possible. Very often that person is just as anxious for reconciliation as you are only he or she does not know where to begin. “Sometimes just thinking about forgiveness sends out such positive energy waves that you are contacted by the other person,” she claims.
Brand doesn’t insist that those forgiving have to resume any type of relationship with the other party. “You can forgive someone without liking him. You only have to decide to let go of the hatred. Reconciliation is entirely up to the parties involved. You want to find peace of mind and feel cleansed by letting go.”
Brand notes that in English, Yom Kippur can be seen as the Day of At-one-ment. “If we are truly repentant, we will walk out of the synagogue on Yom Kippur at one with Hashem, having been forgiven. G-d guarantees this. But we can’t reach this stage of one-ness if we are consumed with anger and pain. We need to use the power of Elul for growth and healing between us and our fellow man, Hashem has given us this mechanism for healing in order to help us attain the oneness we seek with Him.”