The Heart Space

Sarah-Joy shares her therapeutic approach

The Heart Space – a sanctuary in Penang

I discovered the Heart Space in September 2022, after searching for a psychotherapist in Penang. The homely holistic centre provides a healing sanctuary and offers a wide range of therapies. You can read about the centre here.

I decided to ask the founder, Sarah-Joy Amin for interview for two reasons. Firstly, I was curious about her motivations for starting up this lovely therapeutic space. Secondly, after receiving holistic counselling and psychotherapy from Sarah, and finding immensely helpful, I wanted to find out more about the therapy.

Sarah-Joy Amin – Founder of the Heart Space in Penang

Motivation

What was your motivation for creating the Heart Space?

I’ve always felt a deep desire to run a holistic space where different healing modalities could be offered for body, mind, soul and spirit. For over a decade I had attended various sessions/workshops at different holistic healing centres in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, and really loved the feeling of being uplifted in such healing environments. Just coming into such a space begins our healing process.

My motivation for setting up Heart Space actually came from the heart. Sounds cliché? Well, it was in the midst of the covid lockdowns and when I was finishing my studies in Holistic Counselling and Psychotherapy. My offerings first started as a monthly online zoom session at the “heart space” as I knew people were stuck at home, faced many new unimagined challenges and could benefit from heart-felt support. Already then I had invited several other healer/facilitator friends to lead different meditations online so we could support the Penang community. Interestingly, many others joined from out of state as well.

It was always my life intention to serve and help transform people’s lives into one of wellness, freedom and joy. So when I completed my Holistic therapy training, and a dear friend and client urged me to start up a healing space using my little homely apartment, the idea resonated. I was encouraged to take a leap of faith, and started with whatever skills I had. While I didn’t have all the resources initially, my heart was in the right place. I had a vision of a space in Penang that would serve people of all walks of life as we don’t have many holistic centres in Penang. From the beginning, I also welcomed other like-hearted practitioners.

It didn’t take me long to think of a name as I was already using it during the zoom sessions in 2020/21.

A multifaceted approach to healing

One of the things that I learnt about you by coming to the Heart Space for both holistic counselling and workshops is that you are experienced in a range of therapies and the approach you take is multifaceted – can you explain more about this and where your experience has come from?

What healing modalities I’ve developed come from my own healing journey since 2010 and various metaphysical courses that fascinated me over the years. I’ve always been interested in spirituality and esoteric teachings as a child, so when my own healing crisis called for ways to heal myself I explored several healing pathways, deepening those that made a difference to me like chakra yoga, inner dance, energy and sound healing and psychotherapy.

As with many healers, they turn to learning various healing arts when they seek ways out of personal crisis and deep traumas. Mine was not much different. Having a firm belief in the holistic nature of life and knowing that a being human is more than physical matter, but also energetic, mental and spiritual, I developed a keen awareness that healing would need to address all these aspects of a person.

My first deep training came from my yogic master in 2013 as I learned about the chakra system, the energy body of person, the universal principles of material and spiritual realities, as well as ways to move the body and breathe so that the entire system of a human being would be brought into alignment and eventually restoring wellness.

About the same time as my yogic training, I was also deeply involved in Inner Dance, an awareness sound healing practice that moved energy from inside out. This modality taught me how our bodies are conscious and that energy moves throughout our body shifting physical, emotional and energetic blocks as well as stimulating the rise of kundalini (vital life force in our main central channel). It was a revolutionary period for me to heal so much trauma and to understand the power of sound, frequency, touch and vibration in healing the body, mind and spirit.

In 2016, I also attended a two week spiritual channeling and Chakra multidimensional energy healing course with Solara Anra, a global galactic channeler and sound and energy healer in Spain. The training helped me to build on the chakra understanding I had from my yoga training and offered an added dimension of channeling information from the infinite universe (or divine field). It was yet another revolutionary step in my own growth and development of inner healing skills.

Over the years teaching yoga and offering energy healing sessions I realised that many limitations in my students/clients came from their minds and limited belief systems as well. This led me to undertake studies in holistic counselling and psychotherapy in 2019. It was an amazing course that resonated with my own spiritual perspectives and added another dimension to my other healing modalities I trained in after my yogic teacher training.

Holistic Counselling & Psychotherapy

When I arrived in Penang, I knew that I wanted to engage in some kind of talking therapy for my own personal development and healing and when I came across your Holistic Counselling & Psychotherapy, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. From working with you I now understand you use a combination of traditional psychotherapy with energy work. I found this method to be very powerful and I always leave the sessions feeling like a weight had been lifted off my whole being.

Can you explain more about how you work with clients and how this differs from traditional counselling?

Such a great question, thank you! Firstly, from my training and past experiences, I view a person holistically. For new clients coming for counselling, it makes sense to start with the familiar which is more conventional talk therapy until the client is comfortable. This also allows me to get background information on the issue presented, while observing the client’s body “talk” and energy.

Once a certain comfort level is achieved between the client and myself and depending on the client’s issue, I would explore if the client is ready to go deeper into less conscious aspects which often involves an observation of his/her own body and energy sensations, visions, sounds, dreams, etc.

This deep holistic awareness of the client comes from the Process Work training I received at Metavision Institute, Australia. Process Work approach pays attention to all that is seen and unseen, spoken and unspoken, obvious and less obvious, so we can engage the more unconscious parts of the person’s psyche. Very often other more silent parts of us are giving us signals and information, but if we limit ourselves only to what is obvious (what is spoken) we miss out huge amounts of subtle information (eg. deeper hurts, suppressed emotions, mental-emotional patterns or triggers, and old stuck energies) that is so needed for the holistic healing process.

My yogic training has also taught me to observe the body, the energy and the breath of a person a lot more. This allows me to stay more conscious in a therapy session as I follow the client’s entire process (physical, verbal, body signals, movements, voice tones, etc.) as they present it.

Once the client is more open to a deeper process of unconscious revealing, releasing and rebalancing, I would then use Process work techniques which seem quite similar to energy work. However, not all clients are ready for this deeper process, so it may take several sessions or not at all. Thus, as a therapist, I need to respect the client’s willingness or readiness, and apply other methods if they are not receptive to Process work. For those who are open, the healing is much more dynamic, deeply clearing and awakening, as you have experienced!

More recent and progressive therapies, especially trauma therapy, now place greater attention on working with the body. More recent research is revealing that the body carries much of our unconscious mind where trauma energy is stored and unconscious patterns are played out. This is where the juice for therapy lies. The healing journey requires us to pursue this juicy (shadow) aspect.