Healing Life
Life’s challenges can exert a heavy toll on both our physical and mental well-being, often contributing, over time, to chronic or other serious illness. Healing begins with the mind.
Tara Institute is a Tibetan Buddhist Centre offering a non-sectarian healing programme which draws on a broad range of healing traditions, contemporary approaches, and the experiential practice of meditation,
making it accessible to all.
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Healing is not a quick fix. It is an evolving process of awareness, compassion and integration that reveals greater shifts over time.
The Healing Group gives us a break from having to do it alone. Our programme is structured to provide an anchor and support throughout the year.
Held fortnightly on Thursdays - 11.00am to 12.30pm.
Each session includes:
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Guided meditations
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Explanatory talks
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Group sharing and discussion
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Followed by light refreshments and time to chat
The structure of each session is relaxed and informal. Every session is complete in itself but also sequentially builds on previous ones.
New Programme for 2026
Our new programme is not so much about presenting new material, as about exploring how we relate to our life experience moment by moment.
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This year the emphasis is on creating a conducive space in which we can move beyond concepts and personally connect with ideas we may already know. Hearing about something is not enough, and even inner reflection has its limits. Meaningful change arises when we have the conditions to embody and integrate these insights at a deeper level.​
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The value of these sessions lies in having the space to take stock of where we are in our lives; to acknowledge what is currently manifesting for us – including the challenges of illness and disturbing emotions – while also benefitting from the mutual support that comes from open discussion and shared experience with others.​
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As the sessions unfold, we are invited to recognise the conditioning and behavioural patterns that shape our responses, and shape our life – the unacknowledged or blocked emotions that can contribute to ongoing pain and imbalance.​
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By exploring each topic, we examine these darker, often hidden aspects of our lives. As Carl Jung observed, “Only the one who goes through this darkness can hope to make any further progress.” This insight speaks directly to the healing process.​
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Our darkness or ‘shadow’ may reveal itself through projections onto others, mood swings, addictions, neuroses, and/or physical illness. With awareness, compassion, and support, we will investigate how these patterns operate within us and explore ways to soften and loosen their hold, creating the conditions for greater well-being to emerge.​
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Everyone is welcome to attend.
MEET OUR TEAM
Kathi Melnic
Healing Group Facilitator
Drawing on contemplative practice, therapeutic insight, and lived experience of navigating life’s
challenges, Kathi creates a compassionate and inclusive space where the group can explore illness,
emotional struggle, and personal transformation.
William Liew
Mindfulness Presenter
While emphasising direct experience William offers a grounded and accessible approach to cultivating clarity and emotional balance in everyday life, helping participants develop practical skills to meet stress, uncertainty and personal challenges with greater ease and understanding.
Kerry Whitlock
Wellbeing Presenter
Kerry brings a warm and thoughtful approach to wellbeing and reflective group work, encouraging gentle self-inquiry and compassionate engagement with life’s transitions and emotional complexity, supporting participants in strengthening health and resilience, connection, and self-understanding.
Judy Mayne
Guest Speaker
As one of the Healing Group’s guest presenters, Judy brings warmth, insight and depth of life experience creating a welcoming space and supporting participants to reconnect with their own inner resources through reflection, discussion, and group connection.
A Testimonial from Kerry
Having attended the Healing Group in 2025 as a presenter, I have been both amazed and deeply impressed by the group’s openness and willingness to learn and explore the concept of healing across a wide range of modalities. Each session is warm, friendly, and genuinely supportive, creating a safe space to explore the blocks and obstacles that can affect our health, inner peace, and happiness. The sense of trust and shared intention within the group makes it a truly special environment for growth and healing.
2026 SESSION PROGRAM
Each session invites a compassionate exploration of challenging mind-states, including those we may be unconsciously inflicting upon ourselves. By bringing awareness to these patterns—without judgement—we create the possibility of loosening their grip. Healing unfolds not through avoidance of the shadow, but with gentle, perseverance, meeting it with honesty, presence, and care.
Weeks 1–3: Foundations of Healing Awareness
Week 1 – Resistance: The Gateway to Healing
Understanding our resistance to suffering and existence as the core obstacle to healing.
“Releasing resistance is the key to healing and awakening”. (Ken Bradford)
Week 2 – Confusion and Unawareness: Seeing Clearly
Exploring how lack of awareness fuels destructive patterns. Turning inward to clarity and what is.
“Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” (C. Jung)
Week 3 – Conditioning and Conformity
Recognising layers of conditioning and the loss of personal discernment. Beginning to differentiate one’s authenticity – inner presence - from learned behaviour.
Weeks 4–7: Presence and Inner Freedom
Week 4 – Living in the Past or Future
Week 5 – Control
How preoccupation and expectations create dissatisfaction. Learning to be “live” rather than on automatic replay. Finding presence.
Examining the need to control life and others, and discovering the healing power of allowing.
Week 6 – Projection and Taking Things Personally
Seeing how we project unowned aspects of ourselves onto others, and reclaiming responsibility for our inner world.
Week 7 – Fear
Exploring fear, including around death. Understanding the body–mind connection and cultivating inner safety through facing reality.
Weeks 8–11: Emotional Pain and Reactivity
Week 8 – Anxiety, Tension and Agitation
Week 9 – Depression, Despair and Loss of Heart
Week 10 – Anger, Trauma and Unresolved Pain
Week 11 – Resentment and Forgiveness
The dilemma of worry and nervous system activation. Deepening stillness and silence as medicine.
The alchemy of sadness – how presence reveals the hidden magic.
Understanding anger as a protective response and a gateway to unhealed wounds.
How holding resentment affects health and relationships. Forgiveness as a healing process, not a demand.
Weeks 12–15: Self-Relationship and Life Challenges
Week 12 – Self-Criticism and Doubt
Week 13 – Arrogance, Pride and Failure
Exploring the inner critic and its impact on confidence and well-being.
Two sides of the same pattern. Releasing vulnerability beneath pride and fear of failure.
Week 14 – Loss and Grief
Week 15 – Dependency, Martyrdom and the False Self
Honouring the pain of loss and uncovering hidden gains.
Recognising emotional dependence and cultivating self-trust. Letting go of self-sacrifice rooted in fear, duty, or idealised self-images. Reclaiming authenticity, inner strength and purpose.
Weeks 16–19: Relationships as the Mirror
Week 16 – Judging and Blaming
How judgement separates us from others and ourselves. Learning to see our own mind reflected back.
Week 17 – Conflict, Discord and Intolerance
Working with relational tension. Moving toward understanding, gratitude, and harmony.
Week 18 – Jealousy and Competitiveness
Week 19 – Betrayal and the Shadow Side of Loyalty
Transforming comparison and unworthiness into rejoicing and self-respect.
Reclaiming integrity, discernment and choice
Weeks 20-23: Desire, Avoidance and Acceptance
Week 20 – Compulsions, Addictions and Obsession
Week 21 – Boredom, Distraction and Dissatisfaction
Understanding avoidance strategies and softening fixation.
Exploring restlessness and desire. Cultivating presence and contentment.
“Forever is composed of nows.” (Emily Dickinson)
Week 22 –Loneliness
From disconnection to belonging. Penetrating the illusion of separation.
Week 23 – Healing as a Lifelong Process
Reflecting on the journey, integrating insights, and cultivating acceptance as the path forward.
Tara Institute appreciates a facility fee of $5 - $10 that goes towards the running of the Centre.
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You may register online or call the office on 9596 8900. You are making no commitment but providing your email address will enable us to notify you of updates or unavoidable changes prior to each session and send you information regarding special upcoming events.
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To enquire about joining, please email healing.group@tarainstitute.org.au, or click here to register.
We look forward to seeing you there.