Aboriginal women create mindfulness app in language, bringing outback meditation to the world
Posted Sat 16 Mar 2019 at 1:19pm
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. Mixing the new with the old The app features singing, meditation and breathing exercises. It's the latest project created through the council's Uti Kulintjaku wellbeing and mental health program — the title translates to "to think and understand clearly". Rene Kulitja listens to meditations she helped create, available in Ngaanyatjarra, Pitjantjiatjara and Kriol.(Supplied: NPY Women's Council)It combines the skills of ngangkari, or traditional healers, with interpreters and western mental health professionals to improve mental health literacy and wellbeing. "We realised that we didn't know any of the ways that western medicine thinks about a lot of things," Ms Burton said."We were working with doctors who started to explain terms like mental health, and they talked to us about trauma, and we had no understanding of that in the way that they did." Ms Burton said the program has helped develop her understanding of those concepts and allowed her to share them with others when they are dealing with conflict or stress. "Now I say to [family members] 'I think maybe you're getting upset about something that's in the past, it happened ages ago and there's different ways to deal with it'," she said. "I explain some of the things I understand now to them and it seems to help people think about things in a different way." Bringing traditional healing to millions Fellow NPY council member Rene Kulitja from Mutitjulu said transferring the physical healing process into a compact app was not as difficult as it might seem. "We know a lot about how to deal with things when they might seem hard," Ms Kulitja said.The Smiling Mind user base numbers around three million people. Chief executive Addie Wootten said the collaboration with the NPY Women's Council had been smooth and inspiring. "I was really excited to work with the ngangkari, the women in the program, to really try and understand how mindfulness could be translated into their language in a culturally appropriate way," said Dr Wootten. She said the company had been contacted by other communities wanting to do something similar.
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Aboriginal meditation is being used to heal minds in the modern world
Posted Fri 11 Aug 2017
Miriam Rose Baumann says Indigenous people are comfortable with silence.(
ABC News: Monica Luethen
)
The senior elder and NT Mother of the Year says Indigenous Australians are "comfortable with silence" and have a deep connection to themselves and nature that other Australians can learn from.
"It's not just an Aboriginal thing, non-Indigenous people have it as well," she said.
"It's just that people haven't been made aware. I'm talking about that special thing that we have that's in the pit of our stomach.
"It's your spirit that I am talking about and if people are given that opportunity to say that there's a special thing about you and an important one, it needs to be awakened."
Talking for hours
Under a huge mahogany tree in the centre of Nauiyu, Ms Baumann sits down for hours to yarn with her guests, an experience she says is crucial.
Away from work and even their mobile phones, it does not take long for visitors to open up about the stress of life back home and question how Dadirri can help them.
"I think (Dadirri) is a sense of being in the moment, of being aware of everything that's in that moment and I just find that really hard to do," high school teacher Kerry Drever said.
"We encourage it and we try to step up practices of being in the moment in schools now, but it's really hard."
Teacher Gab McMahon shared similar concerns and opened up about the pressure of being a working mother with three young children.
"I find it very difficult and I would like to be at one and put my mind at ease, but I have three little kids and I work nearly full time and I feel that I need to do it," she said.
"I need to do it for my own mental health, however I find it very difficult to do."
Talking under a tree is a crucial part of the cultural tour.
As the Territory's first fully-qualified Indigenous teacher, Miriam Baumann knows what it takes to live and work in two worlds.
She tells the group it all comes back to knowing who you are.
"I wouldn't want to be in your shoes," she said.
"I know what it's like in the city, so if I go back and live in the city I've got to learn a new way of accepting where I am and also continue to live with who I am.
"You have to look into yourself and find that spirit, there's a spring within you, within me.
"The spring that I talk about is your make-up."
It's not just Dadirri that Miriam Rose Baumann hopes to get through to her visitors — she wants people to leave with a better understanding of life in Aboriginal communities.
"Sometimes there's negative stories that go out about us and there should be more positive stories," Ms Baumann said.
Through the Miriam Rose Foundation, high school students from around Australia also spend time in Nauiyu, and local children are supported to go to high school interstate.
"It's an education in itself because our kids have to grow up in being able to live in two worlds. For us to do the cultural education, I suppose it's also to make them strong to be who they are, be strong in their identity and to also know how the western society lives," she said.
Supporting local children to study interstate is Ms Baumann's biggest motivator and she says education is the key for Nauiyu's youth.
The Cultural Connection tours are booked out for the rest of this year.(
ABC News: Monica Luethen
)
Getting attention globally
Her work with Dadirri is getting attention around the world and with mindfulness all the rage, Ms Baumann says it's helping achieve goals back home.
Her calendar also hasn't been busier, with invitations to talk about Dadirri around the world. "I'm not as famous as the Dalai Lama," she said.
"I'm a bushie. I think there are people out there that are thirsting for Dadirri and I don't mind.
"If it changes one person's life, to make them feel that there is a way of healing, that's beautiful.
"Whether they are teachers or family groups that want to come and spend time with me and understand what Dadirri is about, or students from schools from various states, that's reconciliation for us here."
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