What's New

Happy  New  Year!! We began 2026 on New Years Day at 7am with BetterTogether@7, enjoying the stability of mountains and freshness of flowers…very Tasmanian!

Here’s the recording, for you to use in your ongoing personal practice:

These two qualities – equanimity and beginners mind – have traditionally been grown and nourished using  practices like the Mountain Meditation (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yW_-d84Igxw) and open eyed outdoor practices that invite concentration with elements of the natural environment (you might like to have a go with  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWlRWB0WULE )

We will be exploring nature and nature metaphors in the upcoming Refresh Your Self sessions at Pelverata and Hobart Botanic Gardens, so sign up and stay tuned for blogs about those events! And you might like to challenge your attention span by watching the Echidna reel on our Facebook page 🙂 https://www.facebook.com/reel/1117800926977569

Being with Nature invites us to slow down and take time to discover its wonders and moments of awe: perhaps this might be your intention for 2026? If you’re not aware yet of why we need practices to support our capacity for attention, check out this podcast on All In The Mind https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/allinthemind/fighting-for-focus-age-of-distraction/105034906

Are you interested in developing your mindfulness in nature practice? Please send us a message and we can send more resources and opportunities your way!

Wishing you a wonder-full 2026

The MPA team

Seventeen people practiced together with Miranda at the Ulverstone Surf Club on Sunday for our booster session – such an amazing place to sit and watch the weather (like our thoughts and emotions and sensations) change moment to moment, especially as it did on a windy Sunday! We offered something a little different in this practice session by exploring individual mark marking with a pencil and paper – noticing our reactions to repetition and increasing playfulness, watching our different personality and preferences show up. Some of us found the repetition to be safe and soothing and others restrictive or something else and again different reactions were observed as exercises became more playful and individual. There was interesting discussion around how our body expresses itself and our uniqueness in all that we do and how insights are available in basic, simple tasks when we pay attention. We were really able to see in this session, how when we set aside time to practice, we can learn so much about ourselves. And it was fun!

If you’d like to do more Mindful Art practice with Miranda, you can contact her at Mindful Mud

For December’s BetterTogether@7, Miranda led a practice of ‘friendliness’ towards our experience for our 20 min 7am practice on the 1st day of the month. Moving gently through the body, we were invited to have a friendly attitude to each part of our body, breath and experience in the moment. Friendliness is a doorway to self compassion, and being able to be present to our experience with curiosity, instead of reactivity. 

You might like to try bringing friendliness to the moments of your day, to your body, and even to your thoughts and emotions as they present themselves during this month.

“Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience.”

― Jon Kabat-Zinn, Arriving at Your Own Door: 108 Lessons in Mindfulness

To find out more, check out this video featuring Jon Kabat-Zinn.

We wish you a friendly festive season and hope to see you next month at 7am on the 1st of January, ready to start the new year with freshness and stability.

A Morning of Mindfulness in Dunalley – by Josef!

Last weekend we gathered at the Dunalley Community Hall for our three-hour “Refresh Yourself” mindfulness retreat. The space was bright and welcoming, and with the sun streaming in across the water, it set the perfect tone for slowing down and reconnecting.

Across the morning, we moved through a series of different practices. We begun the first half of the day with mindful movement, settled into a guided body scan, and then into sitting practice, before finishing with mindful walking in the grounds outside the hall, surrounded by the beautiful views of Dunalley. We paused halfway through for tea and coffee, giving everyone a chance to stretch, sip, and settle into the simple pleasure of slowing down and being present. The second half of the day followed much in the same way, before closing with a gratitude practice, which began with the body, and expanded gradually to different areas of our lives. Each practice throughout the day offered its own way of softening tension, settling attention, and arriving more fully in the moment. At the end, we closed with a group discussion about what we had noticed, what shifted, and what we wanted to carry back into daily life.

Thank you to everyone who joined, it was a real pleasure to practice with you, and I greatly look forward to the next opportunity to refresh ourselves together.”  – Josef

PS: a little pic of Neal the Seal not noticing, not shifting, but very much appreciating a relaxed state of being at Dunalley…

Christine and Tracy had the opportunity to present the MPA story at the National Rural Mental Health Conference this week. It’s a great story: a tiny business started in NW Tassie, when two incredible women had a great idea, and got backing by Primary Health Tasmania back in 2017.

Then 2000 Tasmanians gave the time and made the effort to participate in the courses, and let us know how significantly the skills of mindfulness made positive changes in their lives.

This is the story we told the conference; and between the lines we were saying: if this has been so helpful for so many over the last 9 years across the population, then maybe, just maybe, it might be a good idea to continue here, and wherever in Australia the evidence-based mindfulness courses can be taught, so that even more people can learn the skills that enable us to meet the challenges of modern life with skill and confidence. 

We told them about the Research we are undertaking, with the hope to add to the evidence base for Mindfulness skills journeying with us for the long term – maybe for life. So if you haven’t had a chance to complete the survey, don’t forget to jump online here and help us out. We hope to be able to present the initial results at another conference next year!

We also heard many presentations that affirmed the importance of delivering mental health services in the places people live, like we have been doing for 9 years , driving around this beautiful state of ours. While mindfulness gets a lot of mentions in other presentations for its effectiveness, we were the only organisation actually teaching mindfulness courses, and doing so for free, for all Tasmanians. So if you’re here in Tassie, sign up for a course if you havent already and tell your friends as well!