Pax Centre offers a small group training program aimed at enhancing wellbeing and mental fitness. This course is delivered by Pax Centre directors Claire Kullack and Dr Jon Laugharne and is a carefully crafted program which educates and equips you with the understanding and practical tools needed to manage stressors and life challenges with confidence and flexibility, thus enhancing wellbeing and productivity.

Individual courses cost from $499. Find the next course on our courses page.

Enhancing Wellness and Mental Fitness is also available as a corporate course.

about the enhancing wellbeing and mental fitness course

The training aims to:

  • Increase knowledge and understanding about the neurobiological impact of stress and psychological trauma on the mind, body, relationships and functioning

  • provide you with a tool kit of practical and effective yet easy to use wellness enhancing and early intervention techniques (to combat stress) that can be easily implemented into your daily routine - whether at work, or at home

  • demonstrate the importance of enhancing and maintaining our wellness via early intervention and preventable measures

  • provide you with a confidential and supportive environment to debrief about work place stressors.

Psychoeducation module

Psychoeducation may include:

  • Stress continuum/ Acute v chronic stress

  • Poly Vagal Theory: Impact of chronic stress on brain/mind/body: neurobiological effect and physical illnesses

  • Symptoms of stress/chronic stress/psychological trauma

  • EMDR therapy

  • Lifestyle and work-life balance

Activities may include:

  • Exploring your existing strategies and identifying areas requiring improvement

  • Considering commitment to change

Imagery module

Our brain is a powerful organ. And we can use this to our advantage. If confronted by bothersome experiences, memories or images, we can use our brain via our imagination to recreate the image. This enables us to regain power over the image, allowing us to control the image rather than image controlling us, our feelings and emotions.

Imagery exercises may include:

  • Calm Place Imagery

  • Pixelation exercise

  • Container Imagery

  • Recreating the bothersome image/memory through perceptual change

  • Rapid Rewind technique

Somatic exercises module

Listening to our bodies and learning to clear the stress on a body (somatic) and emotional level. These techniques are based on the work of leaders in the field such as Peter Levine, Bessel Van der Kolk and Stephen Porges.

Somatic exercises may include:

  • Mind Body Reprogramming tapping technique: an acupoint tapping method which helps reduce stress and anxiety, and gives clarity around complex problems and issues

  • Slow breathing exercises (based on Peter Levine’s work)

  • 5 senses Mindfulness with stillness and movement

  • Light stream meditation

Beliefs and Self-Talk module

  • Embracing and acceptance of self

  • Reframing unhelpful or negative self-thoughts

  • Impact of critical self-talk on our mood, behaviour, perception, decisions and functioning

  • Normalising normal anxiety: escape/avoidance vs acceptance without judgement

  • Where are you on the curve demonstration -mild-moderate-high stress- freeze and how to prevent the freeze

  • Control v’s ‘out of control’, and letting go of what we can’t control -using our energy to focus on within instead of what we can’t control on the outside

  • Dare to be average explanation – unrelenting standards/unrealistic expectations v’s achievable expectation -bell curve diagram with outliers