Body&Soul offers wellbeing experiences to festival-goers

Festival season is often synonymous with tired limbs, late nights and minds a-buzz with the myriad shows, sights and sounds from every corner.

While dancing your socks off, watching the sun rise and soaking up every last bit of the atmosphere is par for the course, more and more festival-goers are choosing to indulge themselves during the downtime. Many music festivals are now diversifying their offering to include much more than just headline gigs, and the rise in wellness and holistic arts has provided a clear opportunity to add to the ever-growing roster of festival activities.

Body&Soul’s Wellbeing programme has provided a counterbalance of calm to the hustle and bustle of the typical festival weekend since its inception. Tucked away in a repository of serenity behind the woodlands, Wellbeing at Body&Soul takes place at The Sanctuary and Immerse Spa Experience.

Nicola Staunton, manager of The Sanctuary, has been working with Body&Soul since its first year when she used her yoga instructor training to move from the production team to the newly minted Wellbeing Programme. Seven years later, Nicola has watched Wellbeing at the festival grow from an unusual prospect to a welcome opportunity.

"People were coming to music festivals expecting to keep going at a fast pace all weekend without much sleep, not hop on a massage table and get kneaded with amazing smelling oils," she says. "Now people are really planning all the different levels they want to experience and we now get advance bookings, whereas originally you had to convince people to attend a yoga class."

The Sanctuary’s programme is made up of soothing therapies and treatments such as deep tissue massage, acupuncture and new arrivals such as Lomi Lomi Massage - a whole-body oil massage with rhythmic strokes that gives the sensation of many hands working at once - and Ayurvedic Yoga Massage, where your body is brought into a series of assisted yoga positions to allow deep stretches, increased mobility and aid with postural imbalances.

Alongside holistic therapies, the Yoga Salon also features unique workshops aimed at opening the mind and encouraging you to connect with your body through both modern and ancient approaches. Sound of the Heart - Kirtan uses call and response chants from around the world to get your lungs working and experience the unity of group chanting. Meanwhile, for those of us that find a good night’s sleep increasingly evasive, John G is on hand to provide a workshop on sleep, how to quieten the mind, let go and nod off with ease.

The Immerse Spa Experience has group hot tubs, revitalising seaweed baths and cascade showers to wash away the night’s excesses. Held in the quieting surrounds of Ballinlough Castle’s stunning 17th century grounds, strung up with fairy lights and accompanied by homemade lemonade, this is an al fresco spa experience like no other in the country. Not only this, but the cost of experiencing a holistic therapy is lower than in clinical, city-based spas and you can attend with friends, enjoying the group energy cultivated in the therapy tent.

For those who have never owned a yoga mat, and don’t subscribe to chakra based treatments, there are plenty of inexpensive and approachable workshops. The Natural Born Movers workshop, led by breakdancer Karol Szarek, takes inspiration from dance to martial arts, which encourages people to find new ways to move their body. The Medicinal Plant Ramble will teach attendees about our native Irish wild plants, how to identify them and ways to use them in natural treatments.

Bosca Beatha is a traditional wood-fired sauna that has popped up at some of the most beautiful scenic spots around the country. With no appointment necessary you can rock up, strip down and enjoy an invigorating sauna in the woodlands.

It’s not just festival-goers who make use of Body&Soul’s Wellbeing programme. With many therapists returning year on year, the festival production staff try to make time in their schedule to see their favourite therapist.

"We consider ourselves an acupuncture point for the wider festival; the ripple effect of what we do can be felt throughout the festival. And we really consider it a huge privilege to offer this service in such an amazing environment," says Nicola.

So if you’ve ever found yourself awakening stiffly in your sleeping bag, flower crown askew and head pounding this could be the perfect way to refresh and revitalise yourself before heading back into the festival for round two.