Happy Place Festival 2019

I attended Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place Festival this month, with a friend, motivated by self-care, curiosity and the desire to connect with my friend.

After driving to Manchester, we kicked off the day with some free, cold (but gorgeous) porridge and a smoothie. There were loads of freebies at the festival. It seemed that companies wanting a presence there had been convinced to add a lot of value for attendees.

We headed to a yoga class in a huge teepee, and as yoga is a key part of my self-care, it was a lovely way to start the day. I convinced my friend to do another yoga class at the end of the day too, to book-end it. We pre-booked and paid for these but there were loads of free yoga sessions by the main stage throughout the day also. Thank goodness for the weather.

We attended a ‘Soulful Hoop Embroidery’ workshop, which was essentially backstitching a pre-printed phrase onto fabric - but the idea is to learn the skill and get more creative later I think. We caught several talks and I picked up some helpful strategies for client work. Most notable for me, Dr Heather McKee’s inspiring workshop ‘Slow Down’. https://www.drheathermckee.co.uk/ “Join Dr Heather McKee to learn the science behind why cultivating calm and making small, steady changes can dramatically improve your quality of life.”

I have also already offered Toni Mackenzie’s ‘Negative Thought Stopping Exercise’ (using a rubber band on the wrist) to one of my clients and am looking into training in EFT (Tapping) to support my clients in managing their anxiety.

It was also fabulous to visit the Boobmobile and get info (and tattoos) about breast cancer early detection from the team there. Sign up to their free boob-check text reminder service by texting FEEL to 70300.

I also caught some top tips on healthy sleep promotion, ate some delicious pasta (and some terrible mac n’ cheese), picked up goodie bags and soaked in the atmosphere. I think we’ll go again in 2020.