Wandering Into Wellness

His work in famine-stricken Darfur gave him the opportunity to save countless lives through community-based nutrition schemes, where he won international awards for the creation of effective delivery systems for the life-saving Plumpy-Nut nutrition bar. He has wrestled with dairy and other commercial lobbies, NGO’s, and the might of the WHO to bring sustainable food systems and food sovereignty to...

Guess how many menstrual care products get dumped in landfills, rivers and oceans every year...no, higher....1 trillion. Yup can you even imagine it. Emily Ewell set out to change all this when she founded Pantys period underwear, with a mission to support women's menstrual health, and to do it while removing tonnes and tonnes of CO2 from our atmosphere. If you want to know how to use these revolu...

Close your eyes. Imagine a mother. We bet it doesn't contain a sexualised image of a woman. But why not? Our traditional concept of motherhood is one of a selfless nurturing woman, we cleave it apart from the sexual woman who created the child, but why do we do that? Why is sex such a dirty word? Cos sex makes children right? Brianna Mercado is a woman who stands with amazing grace in the midst of...

In a moment where our nation is once again poised to make one leap forward and take two steps back in equality and human rights legislation, we had a very special conversation with a lady whose very DNA is at the core of the issue of children's and parents' rights.   Ranae Von Meding's own journey with fertility clinics and the arcane legislation and policies that surround parenthood for LGBT+ cou...

A tiny word, but oh how disallowed it is. For mothers especially, setting boundaries around your time and work and responsibility and duties is more than unsettling, in fact it's so challenging that conversations around a mum's vast remit of expectations are things that usually don't happen thoughout the entirety of a lifetime. A lifetime spent struggling to meet expectations of selfless devotion....

***warning this episode contains mild sexual references as part of an educational resource*** We are living in a secular state. Or are we...? Sarah Sproule is an occupational therapist with a difference. Her online presence focuses on how to have conversation with our kids about sex as they start to become curious. Without feeling uncomfortable. Without running away.   Her work has been profoundly...

When you see an image of a mother breastfeeding her toddler, what does it make you feel? In this podcast we are discussing the realities of extended ( or more accurately 'Natural Term' ) breastfeeding in the western world. Given UNICEF's statistics that 77-91% of women in countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal, Rwanda and Malawi are breastfeeding over 20 months, you could be forgiven for thinking tha...

Where Has Yoga Gone Wrong And Are We Dead From The Neck Down?   Kind of a prickly set of questions but we found the BEST lady to try to paddle our way towards an answer.   Somatic movement is a lost language in most of our endeavours. Whether mindlessly bingeing another Nextflix series, or deadlifting our PB, the usual result of human experience is ill health. Tanya Fitzpatrick as a yoga teacher a...

Are you a mother already? Or a mama to be? We know the struggle is real. Mums all too often get stuck in that "keep calm and carry on" mindset, burying their own needs in the daily struggle to keep everyone else happy and catered for around them. This isn't the sign of a connected, healthy and compassionate society. We don't think anyone in their right mind wants this to persist. So how can we see...

Nobody can tell Denis Healy he doesn't do enough for our planet. From planting literally thousands of trees and flowers every season around his organic farm in west Wicklow to preserving and introducing new wetlands and watercourses, Denis' farm is a flourishing empire in celebration of the bounty of nature.   To many of those out there in our capitalist society, Denis may just seem plain crazy, r...

***This podcast contains conversations around infant loss. Please be careful of who's listening*** Let us tell you a story about bravery. A story of grief. Of loss. And one of true courage. This is also a story of finding joy in what can seem like dark and heavy times A story of a life that although cut short in the cruelest of ways, still inhabits the world and plays a role the family they were j...

No time in life requires more support than early motherhood - for child and parent alike, the journey starts out with huge pressures on both nervous systems as life throws more and more on a pair that just need to take rest and seek connection. Through her own trauma, losing a child soon after birth, Sara came to EFT and with the help of this powerful tool she processed and released the grief and...

Did you know: At the 1 minute mark post partum, midwives make a judgement of a newborn's state of health with a scoring mechanism known as the APGAR test? Well. This is not that test. We scrambled around looking for a birthing expert to consult on our podcast. But silly us - one was there staring us in the face - Lydia's own midwife Ali Murphy came on our podcast to talk all things birth in the wa...

Essential oils are harmless.  FALSE. Essential oils are powerful plant extracts.  TRUTH   In this brief but comprehensive walkthrough, Eliane, our resident aromatherapy expert, takes you through what oils are safe for use with kids, and how to use them.   From soothing our stressed out young folk, to preventing winter ailments, you'll want to have a pen at the ready as Eliane brings you through th...

Our new slot pitches our guests to consider and confront some unusual aspects of their or their partner's birth process. First up - Ed Stafford - Adventurer, survival expert and all round wilderness guy. Catch our full length deep dive with Ed Stafford on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts🚀💯 @yogawithlydia   @thehopsack @edstafford

You can imagine Ed might have been talking about himself at one time when he says, "I find tough guys quite comical". From a conventional rugby playing, beer drinking, macho-man-adventurer kind of background, Ed Stafford has come a long way. Through his treks up the Amazon and most crucially his solitary time whilst making the TV show "Naked & Marooned", he got to spend a lot of time disassembling...

Laura Kehoe believes in innate human soundness. But she also see the systems we've created that allow psychopaths to reign, and that reward behaviours of domination and control.   In this revealing conversation you'll start to see how simple the switch is. How much we have to have faith in human kindness. But how having that faith isn't enough now. That it's decisive action that needs to be taken....

Eliane is the ACTUAL aromatherapy expert we've been waiting for.  Practicing for over 30 years now - she was talking essential oils before the berlin wall came down.  So when you hear her recommendations - this is not a half assed influencer with a 2 day weekend course in the topic.  This lady has written more than 10 books on essential oils and their various applications - from immunity to female...

Maya Duncan is an old soul in a new way. By the tender age of 19, she has already been down a long path with health. Having come through some serious struggles with eating disorders in her early teens, through a supportive family environment and many hours spent in self analysis during therapy she has developed a toolkit and a mature attitude to her food habits that hasn't involved leaving her lov...

From her own journey in birth, Layla experienced the support given by a post partum doula, almost without even knowing it was happening. After leaving the German maternity system where this care is offered to mothers as a standard practice, and coming home to Ireland to have her third baby, she felt the other side of neonatal care with a degree of shock, recognising the trauma that can be experien...

How much do we really look after our eyes? No not the cosmetic alterations, not the billion dollar industries that put our eyes front and centre in the world of aesthetic beauty. We mean the ACTUAL eyes. The fine muscles in and around the eyes rarely get the attention they need. Taking in billions of images every second and coping with light and shade, a constellation of colour imagery AND trying...

"I’ve very little advice for you. Be yourself, everyone else is taken!" - goes one of the lines from his open (and very candid) letter to his younger self. And that's exactly how he is, WHO he is, and honestly the energy from him is magnetic.   Seeing Jamie in this new role, generates a real sense of pride, not just in his personal evolution and transformation - it's a validation for the resilienc...

In our first podcast back post lockdown from Covid 19 we got to speak ( whilst socially distancing so allow us any sound issues please) to the women’s health whizz that is Elaine Barry. Elaine is one of the physio day the Milltown Health Clinic here in Ireland and specialises in an up and coming area of women’s health: internal pelvic floor work. When lydia was pregnant she went to try out this ty...

On a short trip across to us from her new homeland in New Zealand, Aisling Jackson (Browne - heehee!) stopped in to chat with us regarding all things birth.     Aisling's transition to hosting women's circles seems as natural to her as breathing is to most of us.  With what seems like a ready made ability to play this role of creating space and hosting women in this time of vulnerability, growth a...

Challenging questions prompt tricky true feelings, and in the spirit of Wandering, we don't seek to disguise these, instead delving into those feelings, that discomfort that comes, and work through the awkward moments. FYI this video was recorded pre-COVID, summer 2019 :)