Mamas Minstrel

Spiritual workshops aim at knowing one’s self at a deeper level, as well as your spiritual path as part of your existence. They are also there to encourage you to gather all the right tools that you need to achieve that spiritual growth.

But why do you need spiritual growth in the first place? Well, the main goal is actually to maximise the use of your lifetime so that you can gradually progress spiritually and ultimately fulfil your life’s purpose. If you are focused on this aspect of your existence, you can have what most people can only dream of – the elusive peace of mind.

Spirituality vs Religion

More often than not, you may misconstrue spirituality as religion. In fact, they are often used interchangeably. However, you can’t be any more wrong as they are completely different things. Spirituality is actually a broad concept of a belief or faith that something is beyond self and life, its meaning, the connection between people, different facts about the universe, and other mysteries surrounding human existence.

In other words, spirituality is a wider perspective that suggests that above life, there is more to uncover beyond what you experience physically or what your senses can gather and respond to. On the other hand, religion is believing and focusing on God or any higher power and is often involving organised rituals and devotions like, but not limited to, prayers.

What Are the Signs of Spirituality?

Spirituality is a complex belief system or path. People define it differently and there are various ways of experiencing it and its benefits can also vary from person to person.

However, for most people, it involves a connection to a higher entity or state. It can also be a connection to nature and humanity. Spirituality can come in different signs such as the following:

• The sense of compassion and empathy.
• The endless quest for purpose and meaning of life.
• Deep connections with other people.
• Aiming to improve the world.
• The feeling of being interconnected.
• The feeling of wonder and awe.
• Finding happiness beyond rewards and material possessions.
• Searching for answers about suffering and what becomes of you after death.

Types of Spirituality

Spirituality comes in different forms and people have varying experiences on how they get in touch with their own spiritual awakening. These may include some or all of the following:

• Breathwork
• Meditation or quiet time
• New age spirituality
• Prayer
• Service to their community
• Spending time in nature
• Spiritual retreats
• Yoga

What Are the Uses and Benefits of Spirituality

People have varying reasons for turning to spirituality and some of these are the following:

• Finding their purpose and meaning in life. 
• Coping with their feelings of anxiety, stress, and depression. 
• Restoring their hope and optimism.
• Finding a sense of community, support, and camaraderie.

While spirituality is more faith-based, research has found several benefits of turning to spiritual activities. One of its most important benefits is that people who are in touch with their spirituality or even their faith or religion are linked to better coping with stress and negative feelings. Another one is that those who are religion or faith-oriented tend to be more friendly and sociable.

Available Spirituality Workshops in AU

Rainbow Light Therapies 

Langwarrin, Victoria – 0401 561923

It offers workshops that are designed for stress and anxiety management that promote overall peace and happiness, family unity, as well as general well-being for kids, teens, and adults alike. Currently, there are two workshops under its spiritual category, namely, Empath Workshops and Crystal Workshops.

Empath Workshops are 1.5-hour workshops that are designed to teach highly sensitive kids, teens, and adults to manage their stress and anxiety. Some of the topics include breathing exercises, clearing negative energy methods, energy protection, grounding/earthing methods, and guided meditation.

On the other hand, Crystal’s 1.5-hour workshops are held all year round and are centred on using crystals as part of managing anxiety and stress. These are exclusive to kids and teens. Parents of kids are encouraged to stay, but not required for the teens.

Soul Praxis

Adelaide, South Australia

Soul Praxis’ main agenda is “Supporting Women’s Soul Work”. It invites a growing movement composed of grassroots leaders coming from different backgrounds, particularly women, who seek a deeper connection between living and leading.

“This workshop was perfect for me. As a business owner, wife, mother and citizen of the world, I wanted to enhance my connection with my loved ones, while also developing my inner strength as a leader. Soul Praxis was amazing and helped me achieve all this and more!” said Sally Greengate, owner of a top Adelaide pressure washing company.

Some of its workshops include:

• The Soul Flight – it’s a foundational workshop where you will be taught the core practices of the shamanic journey which is a very powerful tool that helps you with your so-called ancestors or spirit guides.
• Dreams as Sacred Guides – this workshop will teach you how to decode and beyond the usual interpretation of your dreams. These guides are very personal in nature and delve straight into your soul.
• Reclaiming the Dark – this is a self-development workshop wherein you will be asked to learn to navigate the cycle of “Life, Death, Life” and delve into the myth of the Goddess Inanna, who is the ancient goddess of love, war, and fertility in Mesopotamian mythology.

The Soul of Nature – this is an eco-psychology and spiritual ecology workshop that explores both the soul of humans and nature. Here, you will be taught to cultivate a spiritual connection between different living and nonliving parts of the ecosystem and to learn to listen to the earth’s voice.

Related read: Ecofeminism in Australia

Spiritual wellness is expanding your sense of purpose and the real meaning of life. This includes your morals and ethics but may either involve religious activities or otherwise. Additionally, it involves possession of a set of guiding principles, beliefs, or values that help you navigate through life. It covers your level of hope and faith, as well as your commitment to what you believe in that makes you hold on to your purpose in this world.

When you get fed up with the hustle and bustle of your daily life or just feel that you have lost yourself in pursuit of all your aspirations, getting that well-deserved rest to reassess everything and recharge your energy should be a top priority. No idea how to do it or where to go? There are plenty of spiritual wellness retreats around Australia wherein you can do exactly just that and even more. You may explore the options below.

Spiritual Wellness Retreats Around Australia

Krishna Village – Eco Yoga Community (Eungella, NSW – +61 457429900)

This place offers Super Soul Seminars which is a series of weekend transformation retreats. These are based on timeless wisdom that has been speaking to the human heart and mind through the years. These retreats include the following:

• The Art of Letting Go
• The Spiritual Science of Attraction
• Overcoming Guilt
• Find Your Flow – Reignite Your Spark
• ​Making Life Count

Billabong Retreat (Sydney, NSW – 02 4573 6080)

Billabong Retreat offers some award-winning retreats that cater to your specific needs. Besides reducing stress and increasing your happiness during your stay, you are served nutritious but definitely delicious wholefood meals. A few of their spiritual retreat offerings are listed below:

• Energise Your Life Retreat
• Love Presence
• Meditation Essentials Retreat
• Self-Care Retreat
• Stress Relief Retreat
• Yoga Essentials Retreat

Blake Bauer International Teachings (Byron Bay, NSW)

Beyond Suffering weekend retreat is located at Temple Byron, near Byron Bay. This retreat caters to those who need body, heart, and mind relaxation and reset. Local woman, Lisa Hayworth, who does pressure cleaning in Byron Bay says “What’s nice about this Beyond Suffering retreat is that Temple Byron is a perfect location for this kind of activity, since it is surrounded by tropical gardens that are also popular for their healing crystals.”

Top Benefits of Spiritual Wellness Retreats

Having Fun

Not all people attending these kinds of retreats have prior experience, so it’s natural for first-timers to feel jittery or just overall anxious, especially if they don’t know exactly what they are getting into. After all, people who go there come from different backgrounds, life experiences, and locations, among others. As such, there are certain kinds of awkwardness around people who you haven’t met before. 

If you are having a hard time coming to terms with yourself and the people you know, how much more difficult it would be around strangers? Good thing, that spiritual practitioners know exactly how to deal with these situations and will definitely break the ice. The most important thing is to allow yourself to let loose and enjoy every moment of the retreat.

Prioritising Your Inner Peace

A retreat is an excellent opportunity to find your inner peace if you are worn down by so many things going on in your life such as work, family, and relationships, among others. This serves as your temporary shelter to shield you from those pressures and heartaches, and also a place to heal.

Over the days or weeks of your stay, you’ll be taught lessons that will be of great help for you to understand the sense of whatever’s going through your mind, with one ultimate goal: achieving inner peace. Those lessons can be put into practice on your own through prayers and meditation if you are serious about making it your life’s goal to continue maintaining this inner peace. 

Having a Stronger Connection to Yourself

With your plate being literally full, it’s a struggle to allot time for yourself. How often do you get to do your exercise, relax, meditate, or even pray? Spiritual wellness retreats are your chance to connect with your inner self and do it without any distraction for a few days or even a few weeks.

Turning off the grid for once gives you the chance to focus on the now, especially yourself. It gives you a valid excuse to turn off your phones and disconnect from the internet. By doing so, you can concentrate on the current activities that enrich your well-being, inner peace, and spirituality.

Connection to Your Kindred Spirits

Going to spiritual wellness retreats, you are expected to know that you are not going to be there to be alone, but likely, to connect with other individuals with similar situations and seek the same answers that you came there for. Despite these retreats being structured via provided instructions, the main goal is for you to be able to overcome your inner demons and conflicts that are ruining your mental health and stability.

In fact, connecting with people with the same wavelengths as yours is a crucial part of these activities as being able to relate your feelings and experience gives you a sense that you are not alone. You are not an outcast or you are not singled out by the universe and that’s one big sigh of relief. Another important takeaway from all of these is the fact that because all of you there have a common denominator, some of your questions might be answered in real time because it’s possible that your current situation must be someone else’s past that they have triumphantly surpassed.

Sharing Your Experience

When you finally get back to the real world, you are going to have a fresh start but still face the same world. Only that, you have a renewed sense of purpose and at peace with yourself – or at least you try to maintain it that way. Remember, anything you learned from school, you can easily forget if not practised on a regular basis. Learnings from spiritual wellness retreats are no different.

One of the things you can do as practice and perhaps the most noble thing you can do out of this experience after you’ve achieved your goal is to share it with people who are dealing with the same situation. You might not be an expert but some people’s dilemmas might not be as deep as yours had been so a few tips here and there wouldn’t hurt. Also, this can lead to some deeper conversations, which can sometimes be all that some people need.

Different countries around the world have their version of using natural healing using plants, nutrition, homoeopathy, hydrotherapy, remedial therapies, and the likes. These therapies are usually holistic in nature and include practices and medicines coming from a plethora of cultural and historical backgrounds.

Typically, a person needs to actively participate in the treatment when using these methods, like maintaining some forms of diet, exercise, regimens, meditation, and psychological practices. These are unlike taking pharmaceutical medicines that just require you to swallow a pill or two or see a doctor and/or go to the hospital to heal.

There are different ideas behind how these are believed to work, but the very essence is actually the idea that your body has the capability to heal itself. From here stems the long been discussed and highly criticised medical practice of treating the condition and symptoms rather than healing the person. Hence it is believed that it is high time to recognise the value of self-involvement and your personal choice when it comes to treatment, rather than just blindly taking doctors’ advice.

Natural Therapies in AU and Corresponding Courses

Below are some of the widely accepted natural therapies in Australia, the courses to take, and examples of schools offering them.

Acupuncture

This is a form of complementary medicine that originated in ancient China. From the word itself, it involves puncturing or pricking the skin at strategic points using very tiny needles. This is primarily used to relieve or reduce pain, but can also be used as treatment for other physical, emotional, and mental conditions. However, it has gradually been used by a lot of people for their overall wellness, as well as part of stress management.

Course Available at Endeavour College of Natural Health – Bachelor of Health Science (Acupuncture Therapies) – 3 Years Full-Time (Part-Time Options Available)

Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide, Gold Coast, Perth – 1300 462 887

The course includes deep diving into the philosophy and principles of Chinese medicine theory and their manual therapy practices, particularly acupuncture, Chinese remedial massage, moxibustion, and Qi Gong.

Ayurveda

A natural system of medicine that originated in ancient India, around 3,000 years ago, Ayurveda literally translates to “knowledge of life”. It revolves around the idea that sickness and diseases are a result of a person’s stress level or imbalance in their consciousness. This kind of treatment encourages you to improve your lifestyle through natural therapies and certain interventions to reclaim the overall balance between the mind and body, as well as the spirit and the environment. It involves internal purification, coupled with some herbal remedies, meditation, yoga, massage therapy, and of course, a special diet.

Course Available at Australian Institute of Higher & Further Education: Advanced Diploma of Ayurveda

Parkwood, Western Australia – (08) 94173553

The course includes, but is not limited to the following:

• Foundation of Ayurveda
• Ayurvedic Lifestyle and Nutrition
• Ayurvedic Pharmacology
• Ayurvedic Bodywork and Remedial Therapies
• Ayurvedic Dispensing
• Ayurvedic Nutrition
• Manage Ayurvedic Treatment
• Ayurvedic Diagnosis

Nicole Mason, a top roof restorer in Perth, tells me that she found this diploma to be super helpful and very comprehensive.

Chinese Herbal Medicine

Traditional Chinese Medicine or TCM is a large healing system where Chinese Herbal Medicine is a part of, besides acupuncture, exercise, and massage dietary advice. These herbs are prescribed to treat imbalance in energy otherwise known as “Qi” that is believed to run through the meridian points of the body. While not everyone may believe the efficacy of these, there are studies that have shown that they actually work in treating a wide variety of disorders. Perhaps some of the most successful are those that pertain to gastrointestinal and gynaecological conditions and disorders.

Course Available at Sydney Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine: Bachelor of Traditional Chinese Medicine – Chinese Herbal Medicine – 4 Years Full-Time

Melbourne VIC – +61 3 9925 2000

The course includes a full range of modalities of Traditional Chinese Medicine, including the theoretical aspects of acupuncture and Chinese Herbal Medicine and dispensing them that comply with the SUSMP and CITES herbal restrictions. It also includes practical training when it comes to safe application, among others.

Hypnotherapy

Otherwise known as a hypnotic suggestion, hypnotherapy is a kind of therapeutic practice that utilises the so-called “guided” hypnosis. This is to aid the person in reaching a trance-like state of focus or concentration, as well as reduced heightened suggestibility and peripheral awareness. The situation you will be in when under the spell is like the one you experience when you are totally engrossed in reading a book, watching a movie, or listening to music. It is even similar to being deep in your own thoughts while doing meditation. Contrary to what you might have in mind, people under hypnosis are not really under anyone’s control, but rather, the hypnotherapist helps them relax and divert their attention in discovering and using their own resources to achieve whatever physical pain they want to manage and behavioural changes they want to achieve.

Course Available at Hypnotherapy Training College – Diploma of Clinical Hypnotherapy & Applied Psychotherapy

Mindcare, Queensland – +61431547908

The course module includes the following theoretical lessons (as posted on the website):

• Introduction to Clinical Hypnotherapy
• Understanding hypnosis and the therapeutic approach
• Working within a hypnotherapy framework
• Facilitating the art and science of clinical hypnotherapy and applying psychotherapy

Remedial Massage

This is a type of massage where a wide array of skilled techniques, such as compression, deep strokes, effleurage, skin rolling, and wringing, is used in manipulating a person’s soft tissues. It is actually designed to address issues pertaining to both the superficial and deep tissues of the body. However, just like any type of massage, remedial massages can also be aimed at relaxation, even if you don’t have any underlying condition. However, it is mainly aimed at pain reduction and normalising soft tissues and muscles of the body.

Course Available at Aminya Natural Therapies Academy: Diploma of Remedial Massage

Marcoola, Sunshine Coast Campus – (07) 5450 5077

The course includes a four-day Foundation of Massage, six-day Remedial massage, and three-day Sports massage classes.

This pertains to the branch of feminism that explores the relationship between women and nature. In other words, ecofeminists relate genders to the way the relationship between humans and the natural world works.

Just like feminism, it is an intellectual critique inasmuch as political activism. It is a social movement that argues that the underestimation and oppression of women in society and the environment’s degradation are both a result of patriarchy and capitalism. In short, ecofeminists believe that the culture of power and domination brought about by the unequal treatment of genders is the same motivation that leads to environmental exploitation.

But what is the view of Australia about this? Let’s find out.

What Are Capitalism and Patriarchy?

In the social system patriarchy, men are the ones that hold the predominant power and key roles in different social and political fields. On the other hand, capitalism is the economic and political system in which the trade and industry of a country are controlled by private sectors to gain profit of their own instead of the state.

The depth of ecofeminism lies in the principle that prioritising the economy and putting society in the backseat because of the goal of growth and profit results in the creation of consumerism and commercialism. For ecofeminists, this is the essence of capitalist patriarchy. Everything seems to have a price tag and nothing has any value.

Capitalist Patriarchy – The Intersection

According to ecofeminists, when capitalism and patriarchy meet, they encourage domination such as men over women, and the manic looting of resources so as to have control over nature. This domineering becomes so strong that it eventually becomes a seemingly never-ending cycle until, perhaps, the world decides that it’s enough.

Additionally, they see that it’s the same masculinist mentality of corporate greed that doesn’t care much or at least seems indifferent to the destruction of the earth as long as it gets what it wants, is the very same mindset that denies women their rights to their own bodies and sees the prolific abuse and savagery against them as the way to go. In short, on both occasions, they rely on similar dominance in order to shove their way to power.

In the end, the victims of both are the most vulnerable sectors such as locals and mostly women. Due to this vulnerability, women are more exposed to every form of violence imaginable. 

As an example, when global companies turn to cheap labour production in other developing countries, where workers are predominantly young women, in the worst working conditions, and criminally low wages. Ecofeminists maintain that without this violence and exploitation in pursuit of wealth and power by men, capitalism wouldn’t have these obsessions for growth and profit at the expense of women.

What Is Australia’s Stand on Ecofeminism?

As the country is currently in the thick of weighing its stand about misogyny and sexism, there’s another socio-political movement that Australia is looking deeper into. A shift in focus is slowly taking shape as the earth is at its turning point where the degradation of our environment that goes with growth and profit is almost directly proportional to the way women are treated unfairly in society.

Australian women all around the world have become so fed up with this “tired, stale, fight” and what’s at stake has clearly become bigger than ever that they felt like at least a mitigation has to be taken. These women definitely want change, an alternative, or a so-called paradigm shift.

The big question is, is there an alternative to what is currently going on? Is there any hope? Fortunately, ecofeminists are very optimistic that they can make some changes.

Current Situation in Australia

There are around one in every five women in Australia of at least 15 years old who have experienced some form of sexual violence at some point in their lives. On the other hand, it is much higher in terms of physical violence as there are one in every three women who have experienced it, starting from age 15.

The unfortunate part of all of these is the fact that there is very low reporting and as a consequence, low conviction of these sexual-related violent crimes. These, in effect, make these events a never-ending cycle of oppression for women and the perpetrators getting the upper hand in terms of justice.

A lot might not have been aware but this issue has been widespread. However, instead of them being entirely visible for everyone to see, they seem to have been hinged obscurely in the justice system that they’re supposed to hold in high regard. How is this even possible in this day and age? That’s the mystery that surely has to be uncovered.

With this, ecofeminists propose a new vision for our world and to have a cultural and economic model to end this cycle. What the world needs right now is to create a world that’s sustainable, nonviolent, and with equality. It doesn’t need to grow at the expense of women and the destruction of nature. And with that, count Australia in joining the movement.