Our Story

At Collective Being, we envision an Australia where everyone is connected, well, and thriving. Working in partnership with key health and community services across Victoria, we facilitate body-based mindfulness programs that support people to navigate their mental and physical health with increased awareness, capability and insight.

About us

Founded on the principles of trauma-sensitive care and mindfulness, Collective Being is the only organisation of our kind in Victoria. Our commitment to delivering high-quality, impactful body-based programs has garnered strong community trust, evidenced by enduring partnerships and consistent high demand for our services.

Over the past six years, we have refined our practice as a leading wellbeing educator and service provider. Our team are highly trained and skilled at working in complex clinical settings, with interpreters, in multi-use day services, educational services, crisis housing and justice settings. Our professional development workshops and trainings up-skill practitioners to integrate somatic tools and strategies into their work.

Beyond our core services, we extend our support through free and low-cost public programs, events and collaborations that support people to be well, connected and thriving. This year, we're excited to launch our new Community Wellbeing Fund, aimed at offering further subsidised and free programs to under-resourced organisations and underserved communities.

Our approach

Safety, dignity and belonging

At Collective Being, we understand that people must feel safe, dignified and a sense of belonging to be well. Our wellbeing programs utilise a well-researched and considered evidence-base, integrating an action-research approach that enables our team to be responsive to the needs of each group. Our facilitation approach is trauma-sensitive, mental health aware, and gender and culture responsive.

Acknowledging the ongoing harm caused by human-designed systems, including colonisation, institutionalisation and individualism, we believe that decolonial and community-focused approaches to wellbeing are foundational for both individual and collective healing. As an organisation, we are committed to ongoing (un)learning and adaptation in our practice. For us, this is the work of trauma-sensitive care, mindfulness and embodiment in action.

Four foundational practices

Working with children, youth and adults, our skilled program facilitators introduce participants to four core wellbeing practices that they can adapt and utilise in support of their wellbeing: Movement, Mindfulness, Breathwork and Embodied Inquiry. With a focus on nervous system regulation, stress-relief, resilience and connection, these four practices are adapted in age-appropriate, gender and culture responsive ways.

Three core states

Throughout the course of a Collective Being program, participants are supported to experience three core states:

  • Resourced with a toolkit of embodied somatic and mindfulness practices;

  • Resilient through practices that support adaptation, dignity and regulation; and

  • Connected through the relationships participants build with themselves, their bodies and the more-than-human world.

Our impact

Over the past six years, we have worked with over 6000 people and 30 different organisations, including hospitals, crisis centres, rehabilitation services, housing services, youth outreach programs, schools, legal services, state government and clinical settings. Participants tell us that our programs support them to:

  • feel calm;

  • feel connected;

  • experience peace; and

  • develop transferable wellbeing skills.

In 2023, we conducted an evaluation of our programs. This evaluation demonstrated that for respondents:

  • 100% learned somatic tools or strategies that they will use again to support their mental health. 

  • 97% identified that they made choices about which practices or movements they participated in

  • 87% identified that the program supported them to increase their awareness of feelings or sensations in their body during the sessions.