Ixi Avíla presents a two-hour workshop in the Snoösphere exploring the role anxiety plays in the modern world, and how we can manage it in order to move on from a stressful life to a satisfying one. Her aim with this workshop is to help other like-minded women release tension and learn to manage their internal state, so they can start the process of moving from stress to satisfaction.

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Ixi Avíla is the founder of Satisfaction, an Emotional Intelligence Coaching Program for Women. Before becoming a coach, Ixi experienced serious anxiety throughout her teenage years. Slowly, step by step, she armed herself with a selection of resources and tools.

Nowadays, she is still occasionally visited by anxiety but by understanding it and working with it rather than against it, she has learned that she can be in charge of her own experiences and prevent anxiety from sabotaging her life. 
 

 

This project is presented as part of 'The Big Anxiety', a new kind of festival, fostering adventurous collaborations between artists, scientitsts and the broader community to address some of the big challenges in mental health. The festival invites neurologically and culturally diverse audiences to explore the range of anxieties that permeate contemporary society. Spanning over 20 venues across Greater Sydney, the festival aims to be a transformative force in both arts and health.

UNSW Art & Design is one of the main festival hubs with four new exciting exhibition venues open alongside the two major exhibitions in UNSW Galleries: 'SCIBAR', a responsive environment that changes with the mood of visitors (by Super manoeuvre architects and robotics artists); the travelling 'Mobile Mood Lab'; The Parragirls 'Memory Project' in the 3D immersive EPICentre; and a new project on anxiety in Muslim and migrant communities led by artist Khaled Sabsabi.
 

Image: Lull Studios, Snoösphere 2017. Installation view, 'The Big Anxiety', UNSW Galleries, 2017. Photos: Silversalt Photography