A new year is the perfect time to reboot your commitment to your health and wellbeing. With North Wexford at the heart of Ireland’s Ancient East, there are coastlines to walk, hills to climb, and healthy food to Taste the Island.
Love Gorey asked some of our top health and wellbeing players to give you their Top Tip for 2020.
Amber Springs Hotel
Joining a gym can be a daunting experience. So, Club Amber at the Amber Springs Hotel have created a small gym environment that is comfortable, motivating and non-judgemental. The motto is that “Fitness is for everyone!”
In the club, a trainer can chat with you about your aims and goals and arrange training appropriately. They will also do a health screening so that your training can be adjusted if you have any past history of injury. PS. Try out the fabulous Cocoon Spa too!
Top Tip
Ensure you get enough sleep. The importance of quality sleep cannot be overstated. Lack of sleep disrupts hormones, mood, and energy along with your physical and mental performance. Insufficient sleep has been linked to weight gain and an overall feeling of being out of balance.
Ashdown Park Hotel
Club Ashdown in the Ashdown Park Hotel is committed to helping you to get the best fitness results. Want to lose weight? Tone up? Build muscle? Lower your blood pressure or reduce back pain? To help you do just that, as part of your Club Ashdown membership, you get six Personal Fitness Sessions plan for FREE! This personal training starter pack includes customised exercise programmes, one-to-one personal training, ongoing motivation and assistance, healthy eating tips and advice on healthy lifestyle.
Top Tip
Take a daily probiotic. Known as ‘good bacteria’, a daily probiotic improves your skin’s health, your gut health and your immune system while preventing various allergies and even Eczema. Provide your body with a good quality probiotic to maintain your well-being and sustain a healthy gut.
The Stables
The Stables is unlike any gym that you have seen or heard of before. Located on a farm, just two minutes from Gorey town centre, The Stables offers a number of fitness and wellbeing options, from Personal Training and their signature Stables Fitness Classes, to Mum and Baby groups, Kids Fitness, Pilates and Yoga.
Their incredibly unique setting, coupled with the experienced, down-to-earth and approachable trainers working there, will help you see improvements in your health, fitness and wellbeing.
Anna’s Top Tip
Owner Anna Syme of The Stables, Gorey
Did you know that exercising in the fresh air can help boost the endorphins that you get when you exercise? According to clients at The Stables, training in our outdoor-based environment provides them with a huge mental health boost and sense of wellbeing.
Vital Health Café
Vital Health Café is producing some of the healthiest food in Gorey with wholesome food all made fresh to create mostly vegetarian and vegan delights for you to try. Great news: learn how to eat healthily – try vegan food for 5 days at Vital Health Café, either sit in or takeaway. All with a healthy discount – choose any two items from the menu for five days (can be non-consecutive!). Sounds great!
Top Tip
You’ll love this Protein Bowl from Vital Health Cafe in Gorey.
Look for fresh options where you can and look at good fats found in nature and plants whilst limiting your meat intake. Life is about healthy choices and you are what you eat.
Wells House
Wells House is launching @wellsforwellness on Facebook and Instagram for all the latest information regarding yoga, wellness and craft classes, workshops and retreats. Revitalise your mind and body, enjoy serene spaces, quiet walks and the sounds of nature at Wells House.
Top Tip
Make it a priority to schedule ‘Me Time’ in 2020, allowing yourself space to grow mentally, challenge yourself physically, or explore your creativity. This will give you the ability to be your best self when you are with your family and friends and to give your best in your work.
Yoga Gorey
YogaGorey is a beautiful dedicated yoga centre in Gorey town. The centre offers daily yoga classes for all levels as well as more specialised courses and workshops. Run by senior teachers Ruth Walshe and David Curtis, it is the home of Vinyasa Yoga Ireland, an accredited 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training School with Yoga Alliance which has been running teacher training programmes in Ireland since 2006.
Ruth’s Top Tip
Ground yourself in 2020, says Ruth Walshe of YogaGorey
“All in the feet”
When the mind is busy, bring your awareness to your feet. Learn to stand evenly on your feet, spreading the weight on the soles of the feet from the baby to the big toe, from the inner heel to the outer heels. Like a good building, an even and steady foundation at our base is essential before we begin to move sequentially through other parts of the body.
If the base is not steady (like a building), neither will the rest of the body or the mind. Regardless of what happens above, our foundation must remain earthed/grounded.
As the base then takes weight, we begin to move out of heads and feel more stable and centred.
In this pose, knees are bent over the centre of the foot, weight is even on both feet and we work to bring the spine upright by keeping our shoulders over the hips and the crown of head stacked directly over centre of the body.
As our awareness becomes absorbed in this activity, there is no room for other thoughts to be in the mind. Yoga uses the body to still the mind … meditation in motion.