Meet the Cork woman promoting  wellbeing at the beach 

THE morning sky was a wide open blue when Fiona Loughran arrived to the Dock Beach in Kinsale.

She is renowned for her devotion to nutrition, yoga, women’s circles, massage, and pilates, and glided along with flowing attire, carrying a basket of ceremonial items.

Fiona strikes me as a leader and a woman that has forged her own path. She hails from Bishopstown and spent her youth outdoors.

A natural environment is where she finds solace, and if it’s possible, where most of her work takes place.

What’s interesting about Fiona and what separates her from other yoga/wellness folk, is how multifaceted she is; from nutrition to fitness, pilates, massage, yoga, and women’s circles, to gatherings and events of different forms.

I wanted to know how this person came into being.

“From a young age, as young as ten or so, my mother took me to meditate with the Brahmin nuns in Bishopstown, so I was introduced to this from an early age,” she says,

We sat on mats at the beach and as we chatted she casually lit a stick of incense and pierced the surface of the sand with it. She unpacked a variety of items from her basket and assembled an altar before her,

“An altar can consist of anything that’s meaningful to you, and it’s for alter-ing your state of being, refocusing into yourself," Fiona explains.

When I finished school at 17, I did a year course in Holistic Therapy, and the holistic approach has always stayed with me, as you can tell with the many layers of my work.

“I was professionally modelling during my teens, and to be modelling lingerie at 15 and 16 - such a young age - is a strange thing. To have all those people looking at you, with cameras and lights pointed at you, there’s a mental detachment that comes along with it, so a lot of what I was doing after that was to actually return to the body.”

Fiona used yoga as a means to return to the body,

“Yoga is a breath-centric practice, developing a conscious relationship with your spine both on and off the mat,” she explains.

“Everything I do is an invitation. If you want to come along and just lay in the foetal position, you can. I just want people to reconnect with themselves because we’re so externalised, everything is outward, I like to bring people back inside.”

In her mid-to-late twenties, or her ‘Saturn return’ as she calls it, Fiona decided to leave an unfulfilling life and took a leap of faith by moving to Majorca.

“I only had a small bag with me, not knowing what was going to happen and if I would return or not.

“One day I was sitting in a café and I just thought I’d love a music festival so I asked a man beside me if he knew of one and he walked off and returned to me with a flyer for one.”

This moment, she explained, caused a domino-like series of events in her life that introduced her to new people, took her on superyacht adventures around the Caribbean, and also enabled her to work in a studio in Majorca continuing her practice.

“I developed a beautiful relationship with a dear friend where we shared practices with each other in his studio,” says Fiona.

“We looked after each other’s bodies, so I would massage him and he would perform acupuncture on me, which mainly consisted of me crying!” she laughed.

Fiona is down-to-earth and not afraid to laugh and inject humour into her practice.

The beach was covered in seaweed, which was unusual,

“What do mermaids smoke?” she asked with a wide grin. “Seaweed!”

After her adventures in Majorca, the Caribbean, Thailand and Bali, Fiona felt like it was time to stop moving and returned to Cork, settling in Kinsale.

At first I was like ice - cold - aaahhh! I thought I would have the comforts and friendships of home, but they weren’t really there, so I set out to form a community and to find those bonds.

“I have a close circle of friends and we go on our own retreats where we look after each other. We don’t include too much structure, we let things flow.”

Interestingly, Fiona has started a men’s circle called Wild Beings Being Seen, which happens in the forest.

“The ceremony takes about three hours and it is beautiful, allowing men to be vulnerable around the feminine, because it’s me and my friend that host it, I think it is really special.

“The thing I want to do, and what is across all my work, is to remind people how amazing they really are!”

Fiona’s core message is positive and her passion radiates. It’s difficult to see where works stops and life begins with her, as they are both at one with her; she lives and breathes it.

Fiona can be found from 7am teaching yoga at the Dock Beach, Kinsale, on Wednesday mornings during the summer. She hosts and participates in a variety of different events, all of which can be found on her Instagram account - @healthyfiona.