PRESS RELEASE: Meditation Tackling Mental Health Epidemic Head On
The BIG Sit.
A national fundraising event towards mental fitness & resilience during Mental Health Month – October 2022
The statistics on mental health and suicide are enough to stop any conversation and make you reflect upon your own life.
Suicide is the largest cause of death for Australians aged between 15 and 49 and more than 3000 people take their own life each year. Beyond Blue’s latest statistics reveal that one-quarter of Australians will experience an anxiety condition in their lifetime, and 1 in 6 Australians are currently experiencing depression or anxiety or both.
Mindfulness meditation is now recognised as an effective treatment for mental health issues like stress, anxiety and depression. Studies show that benefits include reducing stress, improving sleep and increasing focus. Mindfulness provides us with the means of cultivating greater and more objective awareness of our own emotional landscape and a greater awareness of others and our external circumstance (smilingmind.com.au)
The Sit community, a registered Not for Profit in Australia believes that practicing daily meditation and mindfulness can go a long way toward building mental fitness and supporting people to feel more connected.
They host FREE, secular, accessible and inclusive meditation sessions – every Saturday, at 6.30am in 16 different locations across Australia. People, from all walks of life, come to enjoy the peace and tranquillity of ‘The Sit’ at sunrise. The sessions are run by passionate volunteers and provide attendees with a mainstream meditation experience, focused on fostering mental fitness, and a sense of connectedness to each other and their environment.
The Sit. Co-founder, Jason Partington says: “Instead of knee-jerk reactions to elevating challenges in community mental health, it would be great to see a more significant allocation of our Government’s funding and resources focussed on supporting people to manage their lives proactively through practices like meditation and mindfulness”
In October, Mental Health Month 2022, The Sit Community will be organising a fundraising event called ‘The BIG Sit.’ 28, ten-minute daily themed and guided meditations will be available for participants to attend live, on-line or to download from the website. The aim of this initiative is to enhance mental fitness in stages towards the final event – ‘The BIG Sit’. On Saturday, October 29th a thirty-minute live meditation will be led by Jason Partington and Big Sit Ambassador, James Mathison (Australia Idol and The Project). This event will also be available online across Australia.
The Sit is an NFP organisation that was founded in 2018 by Jason Partington and Mike Britton in Avalon, NSW, in response to a year of increased suicide rates in that area. Both Mike and Jason realised the importance of creating an opportunity for individuals to feel not only a sense of belonging to the community and the environment but to feel supported and energised to meet daily challenges with confidence.
This nationwide program seeks to make meditation as easy and accessible as possible to everybody to encourage a daily habit of meditation for life.
The Big Sit creates an opportunity for people to participate in the development of their mental health and well-being while contributing to wider efforts to support those at risk of attempting suicide.
Sign-up for this daily practice during the month of October and help to raise funds for the charity organisation, The Sit community.
Event details
Start: October 1 2022
Concludes: October 29 2022
We are taking a grass-roots, bottom-up approach to a global Shift in perspective, by creating over 1000 interconnected Sit communities across the world.
We believe that real change starts from within, and that by supporting people across the globe to make a conscious Shift, together we have the capacity to positively affect humanity and the world.
Our global vision is being realised every day – one community, and one person at a time.
