Lisa Brown is a Registered Psychologist, Yoga Teacher (IYTA), Certified Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction Teacher (Brown University, USA) and Trained Mindful Self-Compassion Facilitator. She is dedicated to helping people connect with their innate capacity for healing and wellbeing through practices which integrate ancient wisdom and modern science. As an Adjunct Lecturer at Charles Sturt University, Lisa taught mindfulness and retreats for post-graduate students and has a deep interest in the conjunction of western science, Buddhadharma and earth-based wisdom traditions in health, healing and trauma recovery. Her training as a Yoga Teacher provides integration of somatic healing practices, as mindfulness and meditation can be challenging when the effects of trauma are held within the body. Her teachers include Jon Kabat-Zinn and Saki Santorelli of the Centre for Mindfulness, and Lama Tendar of the Medicine Buddha Centre in Victoria. Lama Tendar introduced her to expansive possibilities through Tibetan Buddhism and how understanding the mind and cultivating the energy of compassion creates an alchemy of healing and transformation. As well as facilitating Mindful-Self Compassion groups and workshops, Lisa is a student of the Insight Meditation Dharma Teacher Training Program mentored by her friend, colleague and teacher Mal Huxter.
“I feel a strong connection with social and environmental activism and find inspiration to contribute to the resilience and development of our inner resources in meeting the challenges we face to find balance collectively on the planet.”
I find immense joy in being a grandmother and connecting with beauty through poetry, music, art, community and the beautiful Gumbaynggirr country where I’m blessed to live and work. It is my aspiration to contribute, as part of a collective, to a future where we remember our potential as human beings and our interconnectedness with all things to allow for the healing of relationship with ourselves, each other and the rivers, oceans, land and sky.”
Shirsha Marie is an Integrated Somatic Psychotherapist (IBP) with over 35 years of experience teaching a range of internal martial arts styles. She is a Senior teacher of the moving-meditation arts of Tai Chi and Qigong and holds advanced Black Belt qualifications in Hapkido, Hapkiyusul, Wu Shu and Soo Bahk Do. In her teaching, Shirsha integrates Eastern systems of cultivating physical and mental energy with Western somatic psychotherapeutic processes. Her inclusive approach enriches heart, mind and body and provides a vibrant, well-balanced path of personal development. In 1986, Shirsha founded her own martial arts and meditation school, Heart Mind Centre in Byron Bay, and there for three decades taught a great many dedicated students. Since then, along with her therapy practice, she continues to teach the gentle system of Qigong for self-healing and awareness in action, and the Yang Style of Tai Chi in the traditional lineage of Cheng Man-Ch'ing and Huang Sheng-Shuan. Her teachers include Patrick Kelly of Nine Clouds Taiji, Grandmaster Mathew Sung Su Kim of Australian Hapkido, Professor Wou Jong Woong of Korean Hapkido, Grandmaster Kim Yun Sang of Korean Hapkiyusul, Roger Cotgreave of Still-Point Tai Chi & Qigong, and Andrea Alexander of the Institute of Body Psychotherapy. Shirsha is currently undertaking Post Graduate studies in Somatic Psychotherapy, and is a student in the Insight Meditation Mindfulness and Compassion Teacher Training Programme in Australia.
“I am dedicated to providing an embodied path of meditation, with practical and accessible tools to find inner stillness and peace in an ever-changing world. I bring to my work a distilled essence of the peaceful power of martial arts, the calm strength of Tai Chi, the relaxed aliveness of Qigong, and the loving wisdom of Somatic Psychotherapy. Teaching people how to build resilience, regulate the nervous system, balance emotions, boost the immune system, open the heart and still the mind is a great privilege and joy.”
