The good weather in the UAE this time of year just brings with it far more “must-attend” events and activities than any one weekend warrior, socialite or sporting enthusiast can even humanly handle. And yet we try to.
It’s when we get caught up in this whirlwind of external activity that we lose sight of what’s going on beneath the surface, and this neglect is where bodily illness and discomfort sprouts from.
The only way to survive the season is through balance; making sure you devote equal parts of your time and energy to work, play and recovery (recovery being the most important). And so we’re grateful in the capital for a couple of girls who have launched a series of weekday wellness workshops offering a mid-week tune-up.
Follow The Feel Good is Abu Dhabi’s new ‘hump day’ hangout, or healthy reminder, for any and everyone just looking to tune in and tune out from the hustle and bustle of the work week and weekend; to re-align and recharge from the inside out in order to better tackle it all.
Held within the Majlis at Zayed Sports City, each session tackles three key pillars of wellness – nutrition, exercise/movement and meditation practice – and is as easy and interactive as it is educational. Best of all, it is led by people we can all relate to; three friends, average Irish expat working professionals, who, just like us, are on a journey of learning, self-love and healing, and clearly are just passionate about the topics and sharing what they’ve learned about them.
“Initially the idea for this came about after the three of us decided regroup and recover check out follow the feel good to… to put together a wellness event as a fundraiser for our football club (Abu Dhabi) Na Fianna,” says Laura, the group’s ‘mind coach’, “and that proved to be really popular, a mixed group of about 60 people. The feedback was overwhelming and humbling so we decided to bring it back and open it up to the public after summer.
“None of us have any particular qualifications but we each have something here we are just very passionate about, topics that we regularly discuss with our friends anyway. The idea behind Follow The Feel Good is for it to be very informal, very human. And the fact that we’ve set up in a lovely circular, carpeted room here makes it more communal.
“We are just trying to provide a space for people to listen to themselves,” she adds. In the first session held this past week, Laura, who spent some of her 20s soul-searching through Asia, led us through a Body Sweep where, while simply sitting, we tuned in to deep breathing and focused on how each body part felt in the moment.
We tried to energetically breathe fresh oxygen, or new life, into each part, and were taught other quick-fix tips for achieving easy mindfulness throughout the day, anytime, anywhere.
Each week there is a key message and the day’s was clearly about learning to practise presence and in-the-moment awareness, listening to our body’s needs by assessing our vitals; in other words, “checking in” rather than “passing ourselves by”, as we tend to do on busy days.
Mary, the squad’s designated “kitchen queen” and blogger at Facebook page Vanilla Kisses, shared her longstanding struggle with food, starving herself in the past to fit an ideal, and therefore suffering long term internal and digestive damage because of it. She told us of her journey to recovery and to studying Nutritional Therapy as she now believes food is a cure-all.
As a teacher here in Abu Dhabi, she is passionate about passing on knowledge to people and is keen to share her food know-how with the community during these meetups.
“My bad relationship with food led me to self-loathing and wanting to be someone I wasn’t. Then my digestive problems got so bad I just had to give it all up to sort it out,” admits Mary. “Doctors said it was something that everyone had and that it would be a lifelong struggle, basically, but prescribed me different things to ease it. Personally, I’m not one for going down the medicinal root because it didn’t help me.
“As a teacher here in Abu Dhabi, I love helping people, making their lives better, and that’s always been a priority (putting others first), but now I know that to really help people I have to help myself first, and through nutrition I’ve done that. I’ve completely transformed not just my body but my mindset and feel completely energised and empowered.”
Mary shares details of her favourite healthy ingredients and local store purchases during these sessions. Even better, for this past week’s talk on digestive health, she prepared, brought and shared the recipes for simple healthy treats, such as her fibre-rich “Life Changing Bread” (like many, gluten doesn’t agree with her), and a surprisingly unhealthy-tasting batch of clean brownies we’re now eager to try in our own kitchens.
And everything is astonishingly easy to make. Among many things, she stressed the importance of not rushing through our meals; of sitting down at the table and really properly chewing our food (a whopping 20 times per forkful is recommended), as well as eradicating any distractions such as the television or phones from sight/reach.
She also bit into common sayings such as “you are what you eat”, saying rather that “we are what we absorb”, because she has learned from experience that eating healthy foods doesn’t necessarily mean that your body absorbs their nutrients – it’s a matter of eating the food properly, chewing, slowing down the act, and remembering that our stomachs aren’t equipped with teeth.
Because we don’t break it down properly, a lot of the food we ingest simply stays in our stomach and ferments for hours because our stomach can’t handle what we’ve given it. And we make its task even more difficult when drinking water with meals (not recommended). Let’s just say we were glad we brought a notebook to the session.
Finally, third member Nicola, a paramedic with a fondness for hula hooping and yoga, led the group through a short but sweet blood-flowing yoga sequence. The fact that it was conducted in a circle with us all facing each other made it somehow more inclusive and energising. There were laughs, it was lighthearted and we left the room very uplifted.
“If you’ve been putting off trying yoga, this is a great place to step onto the mat without fear or intimidation; to “follow the feel good”, as Nicola says, who also plans to throw in some hooping sessions, too.
“Follow The Feel Good is not just a title, it’s literally about following what feels good on the inside and outside. We just want to help create less stress in the world and make people smile.”
All in all, we didn’t expect the session to be such an eye-opener, but because it was so personal within a friendly group of people, it ended up being so. We can’t wait to head back to this “casual classroom” next week to grab a gulp of our new mid-week tonic.
