Growing up in Ireland in the 1980’s and 90’s, the catholic church was the most powerful institution in the country. It had a vice like grip on it’s people with thousands flocking to the monolithic churches each and every Sunday morning for the weekly installment of Catholicism. Fast forward to today and the picture is very different.
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Let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of the Happy Pear lads, Steven and David Flynn and their chain of plant based food cafes and outlets so when I heard that they were opening another outlet in Dublin airport, I was super excited as now I can finally get fuss free wholefood plant based grub on the go before flying.
They have 3 other stores – the 1st is in their hometown of Greystones in Co. Wicklow, another in Shoreline in Bray and a relatively new one in Clondalkin in West Dublin. I’ve been to all three cafes and they are great. The food is great, the staff are great and there is an energy to these shops that is missing from traditional conventional cafes. An energy that says this is something different and that energy seems to resonate from the staff in all three of these locations. It’s good and different.
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This one has been on my “to check out” list for quite a while now. On a recent staycation in Ireland, we were visiting our much loved city of Cork in the south of Ireland. It is here where I first came across floatation tanks, also known as isolation tanks or sensory deprivation tanks. They are named so as they aim to cut off all external stimuli to allow the body and mind relax, rest, repair and recover as part of a therapy known as a REST (Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy).
I can’t think of a time in history when a service like this was more required. With our 24/7 on demand, always connected modern day mess we call a society, finding a place where you can remove yourself from all external stimulation can be very difficult to find. No phones, no internet, no advertisements, no emails, no whatsapps, no facebook, no people, just you. Imagine!
Here’s what happened when I tried this.
3 years. 3 marathons.
As someone who was never that sporty as a kid and who never ever thought he could do even one of these, I’m super proud of these medals.
I decided to run a marathon in 2016 after getting a redundancy from a company and deciding that, for the first time in 17 years of working, I would take the opportunity afforded to me and take an extended break from the corporate world. I soon discovered that without some kind of structure to your day, life can become pretty unproductive very quickly. Running and training for a marathon gave me the structure that I needed. It gave me a personal purpose to get up in the morning which is vital to a fulfilled life.
For the last 8 weeks, I’ve been reading “Bliss More” by Light Watkins. #blissmore
I first came across Light Watkins while out training for Dublin Marathon 2018 and listening to the Rich Roll podcast. If you have time, watch the interview on YouTube. The interview itself is much better in visual but this time out, I was just listening to the audio.
I have dabbled in the black art of meditation before I came across Light and this book. I’ve used guided meditations (Jon Gabriel, Sharon Salzburg), I’ve used apps (Headspace, Insight Timer, Calm) and I’ve even done a course in mindfulness. All of my previous endeavors into meditation has started in good faith, in fact, they started out of a need to manage stress in a better and more natural way but I never felt any progression with these approaches, even the mindfulness weekly course I did. I went through the motions, listening attentively to the guided instructions, anchored in the breath, same time, same place each day for as long as you can stick to it. Long story short, I never really felt that meditation held any water for me. Until now…
On a recent long weekend away to the sunny south-west county of Cork, I went to check out the latest addition of vegan cafes to open up in the Rebel County. Cork is becoming more and more trendy and hipsterish these days with craft breweries and vegan food outlets starting to appear with more frequency. One such outlet is the Quality Vegan Café.
Here’s my take on this experience.
A while back I joined up to a local CrossFit in Dubin, Ireland. On first impressions, I was fascinated by how different this felt vs a traditional gym. In fact, for a long time, I didn’t really consider it a gym at all. It was way more than that. A tribe, a box, a lifestyle.
A couple of stand out observations from my time in CrossFit…
Recently I had cause to engage the services of a Nutritional Therapist or a Nutritionist for short. I wrote about this experience briefly in Going Gluten Free but I wanted to reflect on the whole experience here.
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The Health Project 