From 1 to 31 October, Nowra will host HERE in Nowra 2026, an international festival of Vedic wisdom. Meditation teachers from across Australia and overseas are coming to town, and hundreds of visitors are travelling from interstate and around the world to take part. Locals can join free public talks at the Nowra Showground throughout the month, and no meditation experience is needed.
“We are so excited to invite people from all over the world to come to our beautiful town,” said organiser Barron Hanson, a Vedic Meditation teacher who returned to his hometown to build a meditation community. “People are saying ‘something is happening in Nowra’ and it is.”
“You don’t need to have meditated before or know anything about Vedic philosophy,” Mr Hanson said. “Come along to a free talk at the Showground, bring a friend, and see for yourself what so many people in the Shoalhaven are talking about.”
The festival grew out of Be Here Nowra, a not-for-profit community organisation with a simple goal: to have 1% of Nowra meditating regularly, which is about 300 people. Research suggests regular meditation can help reduce stress, improve sleep and support wellbeing, and the organisers believe those benefits ripple out from the individual into the wider community. HERE in Nowra is working with the University of Wollongong to study the effects of collective meditation on community wellbeing.
The free Wisdom Talks run on evenings across the month from 6:30pm at the Nowra Showground Committee Room. Highlights include “What If Work Didn’t Have to Feel Like Work?” with Brett (Saturday 3 October), “Leadership Lessons Learnt” with Lozz on military leadership and resilience (Sunday 4 October), “The Wisdom of Laughter” with Issy (10 October), “Friendship: The Greatest Kind of Love” with Rachel and Susan (16 October), “The Wisdom of Sound” with Mike Watts (17 October), “Sleep Deeper” with Dylan (30 October) and “Acquiring Baseline Happiness” with Limor (31 October). For anyone curious to learn, a free Introduction to Vedic Meditation runs every Sunday morning at 10:30am (4, 11, 18 and 25 October).
Across the month, people can also join:
- Free Wisdom Talks and introductory sessions at the Nowra Showground
- Meditation courses for all levels, from complete beginners to advanced practitioners
- Workshops and advanced programs, such as Exploring the Veda
- Social gatherings to meet like-minded people
The festival closes with 20 Minutes of Silence, a free, multi-faith community meditation at the Nowra Showground Pavilion on Saturday 31 October at 9am. People from Islamic, Christian, Buddhist, Sikh, Vedic and First Nations traditions will sit together in shared silence. Organisers expect it to be the largest mass meditation ever held in the Shoalhaven, and everyone is welcome, whether or not they’ve meditated before.
People can come for one talk, a weekend or the whole month. The full program is at here-in.world, and updates are on Instagram at @here.festival.
