Life doesn’t always slow down when we need it to. This free online mindfulness course for Tasmanians offers space to pause and steady yourself in the middle of it all.
This evidence-based 8-week course is designed to reduce stress, anxiety, and low mood, while building resilience and wellbeing. If you’re curious, here’s a bit of a guide to what each week includes.
Week 1: Recognising the present moment: you get to see how autopilot works, and be able to choose to step out of it so you can enjoy each moment as it is. You’ll meet the body scan and gentle movement.
Week 2: Perception and how we make sense of the world: introducing the SIFT technique! It’s a bit of an inside look at the way the brain puts together all the data it can find to make sense of what’s happening to us, and in us.
Week 3: This week we meet a range of new practices and have a go, and just notice how that feels for us. Mindfulness practices are a bit like a smorgasbord, where you get to try them all and decide which you prefer.
Week 4: you get into the nitty gritty of how Mindfulness practices offer a new way of being with difficult experiences, that helps us stay calm, and build our tolerance and respons-ability to the hard stuff.
Week 5: This is when we really look closely at our thinking, which is often where we’ve been giving ourselves a hard time. We also start a new set of practices that open up our awareness, building on the previous concentration practices.
Somewhere in here there will be a 3-6 hour Day of Mindfulness where you have a mini retreat together and just enjoy the practices in a way where you can go a little more deeply over the time. Your teacher will tell you more about this.
Week 6: We turn attention to how mindfulness helps us in interpersonal relationships, and get to workshop some ways of listening and being open to others.
Week 7: this week we put it all together and plan some of the ways you want to make some mindful changes in the areas that arent serving you so well anymore.
Week 8: well this is time for celebration, and relaxation! The course is intensive, and when you do the daily practice, you really do change the way your mind and body respond to your daily life in new and improved ways. Its worth taking a moment to notice the ourney you’ve been on, and plan how these skills can stay with you for the rest of your life.
After the course? The you get to keep in touch with us through ongoing Refresh Your Self mini retreats around the state, and through monthly ‘BetterTogether@7 online 20 minute practice sessions. We also have statewide musters from time to time, and if you’ve completed a course you’ll be on our email list and will hear all about these opportunities as they come up!
And the best part? The online courses are free and you can join us from the comfort of home! The next course starts on the 15th September at 11am and registration is essential. To register and see other courses we have on offer, check out our Find a Course page where you can also sign up for our waitlist if there is currently nothing suitable.
This program is supported by Primary Health Tasmania under the Australian Government’s Primary Health Network.