It was when I was living in San Francisco back in 1990 that I first discovered yoga and alternative therapies. There was nothing really happening in Ireland at the time in terms of alternative lifestyles, and I was hugely inspired by my time there.
Yoga has grown in popularity worldwide since then and the research now shows that regular practice can reduce stress and boost the immune system. People who practise yoga are much healthier and stronger, both physically and mentally, and it would be great to see it integrated into treatment programmes.
I moved back to Dublin with my husband, Brendan, after 10 years in the US, just as the Celtic Tiger was starting to crawl. Even then, every property we looked at was way above our budget.
It was definitely fate that brought us to Leitrim. I had always been a singer, and when I put an ad in Hot Press magazine saying "singer available", I got a call from Dromchoir, north Leitrim, asking me to send a tape.
I’m from Rush, north Co Dublin, and had never even been in Leitrim or heard of Dromchoir, but I ended up getting the gig and we moved down.
I fell in love with the place on my first drive through north Leitrim and couldn't believe that I had never heard about it – the scenery is stunning. When we first saw Ard Nahoo, the house was a three-walled ruin and cattle had been grazing on the land for the previous 30 years. We were told to knock the house and build a bungalow when we bought the site, but without sounding too hippyish, it was always our philosophy to be earth-friendly.
We would never have seen the potential in the house (named after Lough Nahoo which it overlooks) only that a friend of mine had taken an equally old, ruined cottage and turned it into something beautiful. The place was pretty much a wreck, but we put our wellies on and went to work. It was a huge project and all so new to us back then, but we have done a lot of building and restoration work on the site since then.
When I was pregnant with my first son, Daragh, I decided to move my physical therapy business from Sligo five miles away to Ard Nahoo, where we had been living for seven years at that stage. We converted the barn into Ard Nahoo Health Farm and opened in June 2001.
Since then we have grown from a relatively small health farm to an award-winning eco retreat, with people coming from all over the world for yoga retreats and teacher training.
The main building, which we still refer to as the health farm, houses a yoga studio, treatment rooms, a relaxation room and a sauna. In 2007 we did another massive renovation, extending the health farm, and opening three new wooden eco cabins. The cabins were built using sustainable principles with cedar from Donegal, and are insulated with hemp, heated by wood pellet stoves and powered by wind turbines.
We won the Green Awards 2015 Small Organisation of the Year and the EU Flower Award for sustainability. We are very proud to be on the National Geographic stay list and to have been named as one of the top 10 retreats worldwide by the Guardian.
Whether I’m working or not, I practise yoga for about an hour most mornings. My working week starts on a Tuesday, which tends to be a very busy day with correspondence and administration. I meet the staff to plan and discuss the week ahead. We may have guests arriving midweek; and most weekends we have teacher training, a yoga retreat or workshop taking place.
We also have guests coming to stay in the eco cabins for our residential or day packages or guests who just want to get away to the country. Every Tuesday evening, I teach two yoga classes that have been running for more than 15 years. I love it. Some students have been coming for many years and we have built up quite a community and have become good friends.
On the weeks that we run our advanced teacher-training module, there are long days of teaching 9am-6pm, including Sunday. When that is not happening, I work in my portable office midweek preparing class and course notes and catching up with correspondence.
One day a week, I head into Sligo, where I treat myself to lunch in Sligo’s only vegan cafe, Sweet Beat, before heading back to the Leitrim hills.
On the day before a retreat or training, I usually have an Uisce Hour. This is a 30- minute session in our infra-red sauna followed by a soak in the hot tub. It is a great way to physically prepare for the intensity of the work.
If I’m not travelling or attending a teacher-training course out of the country, my weekend follows a similar pattern. I get up at 6.45am, put the heating on in the studio, light the masonry stove before my students arrive and have a short practice before breakfast. I teach from 9am until 1pm and then again from 2pm to 6pm.
I love being around my trainees; they are so enthusiastic and they work so hard. I watch the transformation in them over the course of the programme and am truly humbled to be part of their self-development path through yoga. On Sundays, to celebrate the end of a great weekend at work, I jump in the hot tub with my husband, before having dinner and a glass of bubbly.
In conversation with Michelle McDonagh
