HEALING AFTER COVID – TRAINING LAUNCHED AT MAJOR CONFERENCES

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020, causing shockwaves of isolation and trauma throughout Australia, Kultchafi Managing Director Ara ‘Julga’ Harathunian made a commitment to support the healing of individuals and communities right across the nation.

Two years later, an innovative and ground-breaking Healing Circle Work Facilitator Training program was officially launched on 9 May at the 13th National Closing The Gap First Nations Health Conference held on Queensland’s Gold Coast.

The training will be showcased again at the National Rural Health Alliance’s 16th National Rural Health Conference in August and at the 23rd International Mental Health Conference being held by ANZMA (Australian and New Zealand Mental Health Association) in September. It is suitable for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, and has been developed from the wisdoms of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Ancestors of Australia.

“My wife, Aboriginal Elder Aunty Cheri ‘Yingaa’ Yavu-Kama-Harathunian, devoted her life to the development of Healing Circle Work right up until her passing in December 2019. We had always committed to share this work for the highest good of others,” said Mr Harathunian.

“Healing Circle Work is not a therapy, but therapeutic outcomes are experienced. It is a healing process based on an ancient Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander methodology.

“Participants learn to live life in the moment, recognising and understanding their own spirituality, and reaffirming themselves. It is suitable for any trauma, and for Indigenous and non-Indigenous men and women.”

Aunty Cheri was an Elder of the Taribelang, Bunda, Gooreng Gooreng and Kabi Kabi peoples. She had been a women’s hostel supervisor, a foster parent, worked in prisons with male sex offenders and was experienced in suicide prevention, gender issues and supporting spirituality.

Mr Harathunian sits on a range of Aboriginal Boards, was CEO of leading community health service IWC from 2002 to 2021, and has been a Director of QNADA (Queensland Network of Alcohol and Other Drug Agencies) for more than eight years.

“I have seen first-hand the vital need for a rollout of this Healing Circle Work process,” he says.

Aunty Cheri and her co-facilitators delivered Healing Circle Work to more than 500 participants over many years, helping them to transform their lives.

“We knew we had to share the capacity of delivering Healing Circle Work as widely as possible, and the way to do that was to teach the process to suitable facilitators living and working in our communities, no matter how rural or remote,” said Mr Harathunian.

“Potential facilitators can include psychologists, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals, as well as counsellors, support workers and other frontline providers of social and Emotional Wellbeing (SEWB) supports.

“At this time of pandemic-induced trauma, isolation and anxiety, this is a methodology that is vital to communities. In 2020, our task at Kultchafi was to work out how, in a nation that had been ‘shut down’ by COVID, we could get the training out. We had to get innovative.

“With the pandemic have come a range of new online platforms that has enabled us to create an interactive blended learning model that includes Zoom meetings and videos. Working with a dedicated team, the end result is quality, intensive, self-paced training.

“It provides detailed knowledge of the process of: Creating a Healing Circle; Facilitating a Healing Circle, and Delivering activities and ceremonies within a Healing Circle.

​​“The Facilitators can then take this healing process into their communities to support individuals and families, enabling participants to experience a restorative and health-giving sense of wellbeing to themselves and others.”

Find out more at www.kultchafi.com.au/healing