Bringing outback meditation to the world
Source: outback-meditation-aboriginal-women-create-mindfulness-app, 2019-03-17,
QFWF hoofdredactie
Een inspirerend voorbeeld van interculturele levenskunst, waarbij de oude wijsheid van traditionele geneeswijzen van Aboriginal ‘healers’ samenkomt met Westerse geneeswijzen in een ‘app Smiling Mind’ ten behoeve van (geestelijk) welzijn van Aboriginal communities, in het bijzonder jongeren.
By Katrina Bevan
On a warm Alice Springs morning, Wanatjura Lewis closes her eyes, puts in some headphones and gets ready to relax and meditate.
Key points
- Women from the NPY Women’s Council collaborated with the team behind Smiling Mind to create the app
- It combines the skills of traditional healers with interpreters and western mental health professionals to improve wellbeing
- The app is being trialled in remote Central Australian schools
She is listening to an ancient language that is being put to a very modern use.
Teaming up with the producers behind mindfulness app Smiling Mind, women from Central Australia’s NPY Women’s Council have helped create recorded meditations in Kriol, Ngaanyatjarra and Pitjantjiatjara languages.
The aim is to help combat mental health and trauma issues in Aboriginal communities, particularly among young people.
“This is for them, our families, to learn about all of these things that will help them look after themselves and keep them healthy in body and mind,” the council’s Nyumiti Burton said through an interpreter.
“We made this for our children, so their thinking could become clearer.”
The meditations have already been downloaded thousands of times and are also being trialled in schools across the APY lands in remote South Australia.
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