Drawing on the ancient healing culture of Indigenous people in Central Australia, this book's unique designs will help you move towards clear thinking.Uti Kulintjaku is a project about creating shared understandings between Indigenous traditional healers and western mental health professionals. We come together in workshops to talk about health and healing from both western and Indigenous world views. During these workshops we draw and make art as a way of processing new ideas and clearing the mind. Through our artwork, we want to share with you our experience of moving towards tranquility and clear thinking.

This book takes a creative approach in examining one of the biggest crises of our time: that of mental suffering, distress and anxiety. By bringing together essays and dialogues from thinkers and artists across a range of disciplines, it re-imagines approaches to crisis, support, and care. Amid growing recognition that mental health is not only the province of psychiatry and the health sector, but a concern for the whole community, the book opens up critical new ways of thinking about our internal lives and the forces that affect them. The book significantly advances the way we think about cultural responses to mental health and the understanding of the struggles of inner life. Featuring both theoretical and practical examples of the value of using imagination in response to trauma, anxiety, and depression, The Big Anxiety shows how creativity is not a luxury, but a means of survival.

Offering a new template for future exploration, Susan Greenwood examines and develops the notion that the experience of magic is a panhuman orientation of consciousness, a form of knowledge largely marginalized in Western societies. In this volume she aims to form a "bridge of communication" between indigenous magical or shamanic worldviews and rationalized Western cultures. She outlines an alternative mythological framework for the latter to help develop a magical perception, as well as giving practical case studies derived from her own research. The form of magic discussed here is not fantastic or virtual, but ecological and sensory. Magical knowledge infiltrates the body in its deepest levels of the subconscious, and unconscious, as well as conscious awareness; it is felt and understood through the connection with an inspirited world that includes the consciousness of other beings, including those of plant, animal and the physical environment. This is anthropology from the heart rather than the head, and it engages with the messy area of emotions, an embodiment of the senses, and struggles to find a common language of listening to one another across a void of differences. The aim is to provide a non-reductive structure for the creative interplay of both magical and analytical modes of thought. Passion is a motivator for change, and a change in attitude to magic as an integrative force of human understanding is the main thread of this work.

Traditional Healers of the Central Desert contains unique stories and imagery and primary source material: the ngangkari speak directly to the reader. Ngangkari are senior Aboriginal people authorised to speak publicly about Anangu (Western Desert language speaking Aboriginal people) culture and practices. It is accurate, authorised information about their work, in their own words.The practice of traditional healing is still very much a part of contemporary Aboriginal society. The ngangkari currently employed at NPY Women's Council deliver treatments to people across a tri-state region of about 350,000 sq km, in more than 25 communities in SA, WA and NT. Acknowledged, respected and accepted these ngangkari work collaboratively with hospitals and health professionals even beyond this region, working hand in hand with Western medical practitioners.

Marcia Langton: Welcome to Country 2nd edition is the essential follow-up to Australia’s landmark travel guide to Indigenous Australia, Welcome to Country. In this extensively updated edition, Marcia Langton offers a full range of Indigenous-owned or -operated tourism experiences across Australia, including an expanded directory with 250 new listings, illustrated maps, and photography by Wayne Quilliam. Australia is home to the longest continuing culture on Earth, and Welcome to Country 2nd edition highlights myriad ways to engage and deepen our knowledge and appreciation of the First peoples through travel. Everything from arts centres to tours is covered in this guide, and there are also fascinating insights into Indigenous cultures and histories, as well as etiquette for visitors. This guide also addresses the events and issues facing Australia today, such as as Native Title, the Stolen Generations, the 2020 bushfires, the Black Lives Matter movement, and making a rightful place in the nation for the First Australians. Welcome to Country was the first book of its kind and this updated edition, brought together by a highly respected First Nations scholar and author, is a must-have for every Australian home.

Historical account from the personal perspective of the Uluru Family, of the Anangu people of the Central and Western Desert regions of Australia.

Therapy: The Basics is an introductory book to psychotherapy and its different theoretical approaches. It attempts to demystify and de-stigmatise therapy by answering some common questions posed by prospective clients. lykou presents an accessible overview of psychotherapy and counselling, mapping a variety of the most popular approaches from psychoanalysis and cognitive behavious therapy to embodied and creative therapies, whilst giving an overview of the roots of psychotherapy in traditional and indigenous healing methods. The book also acknowledges criticisms of current approaches, with their neo-liberal heteronormative Eurocentric perspective, and considers where therapy stands in today’s globalised world. The book's structure allows different umbrella theories and their developments to be explored separately but also in relation to one another. This book is essential reading for trainees, a useful reference for qualified therapists who want to deepen their knowledge, a supporting resource for prospective psychotherapy clients, and a companion for readers who simply want to expand their horizons.