Sakhya Women's Guidance Cell

Imparting the women to identify self worth 

  A workshop for women of the different Parishes within Vasai Diocese was organized bySakhya Women’s Guidance Cell in collaboration with Commission for Women,Vasai Diocese  on  3^rd August, 2013 at Jeevan Darshan Kendra from 9.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. This workshop was aimed at reaching out to women to enhance their self worth and discover their potentials.

The programme began with registration of the participant. Total participants present for the programme were 87. Ms. Hilda the director of Sakhya gave welcome address introducing the theme of the workshop.

The first session was conducted by Fr. Anthony D’Souza. Fr. Tony beautifully took  steps to make understand our own selves and reach for the Divine within us first in order to gain all that we search for in the externals. He said, men constantly search for peace. He travels through a route of hard work and meditation in search of it.  While he definitely finds temporary fulfilment, it does not culminate into lasting happiness and man continues his search yet again…Never stationery, it is healthy if this search is on and one must look for other options in his or her search by pulling the door if it does not first open when pushed.  In our search Fr. Tony said, we must recognise the need of the hour rather than running after non-consequential things. While we look for Love, Joy and Peace everywhere externally, we do not find it or we find it temporarily only because we do not look for it within ourselves. The Divine is in each of us and if we know this, we will begin our search within and ultimately know ourselves better. As Aristotle rightly said, “Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom”, thus will begin our journey to become a new person

Our upbringing enables us to understand our negative aspect with conditions to do something in order to grow positive. We see the hole in the paper and not the whole paper Father demonstrated. In bringing up children Father went on to say, parents have a great responsibility to ensure the environment is one filled with Love because Love strengthens the positive aspect. If we think negative, we will not be able to view others positively. Our journey within begins by knowing ourselves.

None of us have seen ourselves. What we see is only our reflection. Father fished for answers to his question if anyone has seen himself/herself? Father went on to say; The reflection others see of themselves in us, will endorse their own behaviour in the world. Light, he said has the strength but Darkness has no strength. Hence darkness is not the opposite of light. It is rather the absence of light he concluded. Similarly Fear is the absence of Love and how do we keep this love alive in us. One simple way is by thinking positive because when we think positive our whole body becomes positive. In a family, even if one member is positive, the level of love will be maintained for every other member of the family. Father discouraged negativity, reiterating that it brings in stress thus inviting mental threat and resulting in changes within the body.

The second session began after the Lunch break. Ms. Evelette and Ms Avidha were resource persons of this workshop on  ‘Fabulous Me’.  To the sound of background music, women were asked to walk slowly, jog, walk with small steps, large steps, walk awkwardly and each time women were asked to stop, close their eyes and stay with the feeling. Surely got all of them into the mood of thinking of themselves –everything helped in lightening hearts and everyone thoroughly enjoyed as they became little children in the moment of this activity.

The women were then divided into groups of 10 and each of them got a paper and asked to identify themselves with any object – living or non-living that closely resembled their nature. With the help of crayons and sketch pens they drew fishes, trees, spiritual objects, flowers etc. and two of each group explained to the rest of us why they thought the object resembled them. It surely was an in-depth sharing.

Then the resource persons took them through a meditation session wherein they were asked to imagine sitting in a beautiful environment with a bowl of aromatic oil. This session aimed at getting women to shower lots of love on themselves. As they imagined a calm and serene atmosphere with a gentle breeze blowing, they placed abundant oil on each of our body parts, massaging it gently and lovingly. Along with the oil, they also poured love in abundance especially on the painful parts of our body. It surely gave everyone a tingling feeling of positivity and being loved. Wonderful indeed!

The women next wrote on small chits of paper all the negative within them that they wished to flush out and deposited it in a make belief plastic toilet seat with a definite understanding of it being flushed out and never to return to haunt us in their life ahead. It was surely an enjoyable session for all and many of us were laughing with relief after an enjoyable session.