Forget the pub. The place to be? Your yoga mat. Nikki Walsh meets a new cohort of Irish mothers high on their own breath and asks: is wellness the new craic?
At school gates across the capital, forty-something women in organic cotton and Birkenstocks are raving about last night’s breathing circle, while others are off to yoga. Now the school hall is the venue of choice on Friday nights, with evening wellness courses being advertised on the class WhatsApp that blend meditation with breathwork or yoga. (Week One: Becoming Available, Week Two: Creating Space, Week Three: Letting Go…). Now, anyone who is anyone has a spiritual practice, with women who once scoffed at therapy and self-exploration handing their children over to their husbands so they can go on seven-day silent retreats.
You will find them in Brother Hubbard or 3FE, avidly sharing stories of healing breakthroughs over a chai latte. It’s not just a Dublin thing. At Roots Wellness studio in Ballina, Mayo, founder Niamh Glackin incorporates breathwork, meditation and mindfulness into all her yoga classes. Her clientele? Women juggling work, kids and obligations. “I see women trying not to lose themselves on that journey,” she says. “Thirty years ago, our mothers didn’t have these outlets. They would have felt all this rage, in that constant battle between what we want to do, what we can do and what we are supposed to do. Now there’s so much awareness. Particularly since COVID. People tell me they will do anything to get a bit of calm.”
Offering group workshops and retreats, women are making deep friendships. “We learnt in the pandemic that the nuclear family doesn’t really work,” says Niamh. “At Roots Wellness, we are building community, too. You cannot underestimate the effect that it has on your mental health. It’s all part of what wellness is about.”
No one would have dreamed of doing this at twenty. “I was too busy drinking,” says one forty-something mother of three, cheerfully. Others were carrying too much trauma to ever think of “going in”. But thanks to motherhood, peri-menopause, and big life events such as redundancy, illness or divorce, more and more women are carving out time to breathe or chant. They are bang on trend, with Instagram awash with somatic practices and the kikes of Brené Brown urging every mid-lifer to drop their armour.
“At some point that armour no longer serves us,” she tells us. “The weight of the armour is too heavy. It’s not protecting you; it’s keeping you from being seen and known by others. This is the developmental milestone of midlife. It’s not a crisis, it’s a slow, brutal unravelling.” For Reiki master Alvagh Cronin, a woman’s forties are supposed to be a time of spiritual exploration. “As we
grow and evolve, we move up the chakras,” she says. “We begin with the mother chakra, the root chakra, moving on up to the crown chakra in our forties. This is when we connect with the divine, with our purest knowing. This is when we find our true path.”
“Thirty years ago our mothers didn’t have these outlets. They would have felt all this rage, in that constant battle between what we want to do, what we can do and what we are supposed to do. Now there’s so much awareness.”
For those who have sought out a spiritual practice, whether it be yoga or breathwork, the effects are almost always profound and far-reaching. Breda was 41 when she was diagnosed with a serious blood cancer that sent her into an emotional, physical and mental spiral. She believes breathwork saved her life. “I now see my illness, as difficult as it was, as a gift,” she tells me. Her healing journey began with talking therapy, before she met Nadia Haugh, who specialises in breath work.
“Nadia creates the safest space,” she says. “With her, I released so many difficult and stuck emotions. This has freed me up to participate in my life so differently. I have faced many more challenges since my ‘before and after’, but I did not fall as hard. In fact, with Nadia’s help, I was able to garner lessons from each one and grow. I was also able to recognise my strength even in the moments when it looked like I could never get back up… all I need is the time, space and safety to feel the pain. Then release it. And slowly heal. Nadia brought me back to life, but one without the shackles of the past. Now I live free, as I. I’ve broken a cycle of pain and trauma handed down to me through generations, and I’m raising my children without passing it down to them.”
Her cancer, which she was told was incurable, has not returned. With a long waiting list, Nadia has set up a breathing circle in a yoga studio in Dublin’s Blackrock. Here, men and women swap stories of intense transformation, with some making career pivots, from jobs in corporate sustainability to becoming breath-workers themselves. “There has been a profound shift in consciousness,” says Nadia. “People want to go deeper. They know there is something within them that is not quite right.” Couples find they are showing up differently in their relationships. “We were playing roles,” one woman tells me, “now we are learning out who we really are.” There’s a hint of something evangelical in everyone’s voice, the barest hint of religious fervour.
Could spiritual wellness be the new church? “We have to believe in something,” says one mother of two. “Catholicism is over.” Whatever the motivation, it seems for now at least that a new generation of Irish women is on a path that feels a little less repressed, a little less Irish. “I move differently,” says one mother. “I’m definitely a bit freer. I laugh more.” So who needs vodka? Now it’s all good vibrations. Welcome to the new softening.
This article originally appeared in the Autumn 2025 issue of IMAGE. Have you thought about becoming an IMAGE subscriber? Our Print & Digital Magazine subscribers receive all four issues of IMAGE Magazine and two issues of IMAGE Interiors directly to their door, along with digital access to all digital magazines and our full digital archive, plus a gorgeous welcome gift worth €75 from Max Benjamin. Visit here to find out more about our IMAGE subscription packages.
