How Ireland’s seas and rivers are becoming spaces for healing: ‘It changes how we pay attention to our bodies’

There’s a westerly wind on Carlingford Lough, but the forecast that threatened a splashy day has smoothed out, and the keelboat is cruising along gently.Gary Bailey is at the tiller and Michael Dunne is sitting high on the starboard side, talking about his recovery; he’s been clean for 19 months.“I don’t know if I would have made it without the sailing,” Dunne says. He is a man who has had a lot to deal with in recent times, as three members of his immediate family died within months of each other.Dunne is open about the challenges of getting clean and dealing head-on with the issues the substances he once used helped to mask. The water, he has found, has helped a lot.READ MORE“When I started my recovery, I couldn’t sit still on land, let alone close my eyes. It didn’t help that I had 20 cans of Red Bull in me. Now, on the sea, I just chill out. I can meditate,” Dunne says. “I can’t put into words what it does to you.”Through Turas, an addiction support service in Dundalk, Dunne got involved with Sailing Into Wellness, a not-for-profit social enterprise that delivers therapeutic sailing programmes around Ireland. It was how he met Bailey, and the two became fast friends.Bailey, a tall man with a great grin, says, “I’ve been clean now for two years and seven months. One of the first things I did in my recovery programme was to start sailing. I couldn’t believe it. Being out at sea, I found that natural high that I was looking for.”After learning the basics, Dunne was chosen for the Sailing Into Wellness New Horizons two-year programme, which has led to him completing six overnight voyages around Ireland.New Horizons, which enables participants to earn sailing certificates, is financed by the Department of Justice’s Community Safety Fund. The fund directs proceeds of crime seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau and the Garda into innovative local projects aimed at building stronger, safer communities.Sailing Into Wellness, a not-for-profit social enterprise, delivers therapeutic sailing programmes around Ireland Sailing Into Wellness works with a wide range of organisations, including the Cork Simon Community, Tiglin and youth development group Foróige “I’ve met people from all over the country, from all walks of life, on those trips,” Dunne says. “Sailing is teamwork, and it’s individual responsibility. You’re looking for something to replace the drugs, and when you’re out there at sea, it’s proper living. Sober living.”For Dunne, who has dealt with addiction his whole life, the Transformational Recovery Programme offered by Turas alongside learning to sail has recalibrated his direction of travel. He has gone back to college, regained his driving licence after an earlier ban, and says it has opened his mind up to new things. Never having been interested before, he now goes pier jumping and kayaking and does regular “mental health swims”.Sailing Into Wellness works with a wide range of organisations, including the Cork Simon Community, Tiglin, which helps people overcome addiction and homelessness, and Foróige, the youth development group.Why combining water with wellness works so well is something Tessa Kingston, a psychologist, psychotherapist and senior instructor with Sailing Into Wellness, is always trying to answer.“I definitely find it easier to connect out there,” Kingston says. “For clients, there’s the personal development side; people might come with anxiety or fear, and they overcome it just by stepping on the boat. There’s the social connection; on the boat we all genuinely need each other, and there’s the physical regulation of the water and the waves, which helps flush out the high levels of cortisol we are all walking around with.”For decades, environmental psychology has explored why humans feel better outdoors, but most of that research has focused on green spaces like parks, forests and mountains.In recent years the attention has turned to blue spaces, and the question of why water makes us feel happy has been studied more closely.Easkey Britton with children at surf school in Donegal “From neuroscientific studies, it’s been shown how even just looking at the sea can slow brainwave activity, reduce rumination or worry and create a mental state similar to that experienced during meditation,” says Easkey Britton, Irish surfer, author, artist and marine social scientist.That state is known as Blue Mind – the term was coined by marine biologist Wallace J Nichols in his 2014 book of the same name. Nichols’ science-backed work explored how water shifts humans out of a Red Mind state, where we are stressed and overstimulated, into a Blue Mind, which is calm, creative and peaceful.“Water asks something different from our nervous system. You can’t multitask in the sea. Water doesn’t heal because it’s magical. It heals because it changes how we pay attention,” Britton says. “How we pay attention to our bodies, our breath, our emotions, the world around us, that’s the heart of it. ”Sailing Into Wellness is part of a growing range of blue space groups that are intentionally using the sea, lakes and rivers in a therapeutic way to help people deal with mental health challenges, as well as overcoming physical limitations.It is a progressive and growing area, and facilitators in Ireland are engaging a wide array of therapeutic applications.New Wave Wild Project, an adventure therapy practice in Co Kerry, combines therapy with outdoor activities Jasmin Stallard: 'The water can really help to put you into a state where you are more comfortable with processing things. It’s very subconscious' “Rather than someone coming to our office and talking about their difficulties, we spend the time doing something together, paring things back and taking the time to really notice what is going on in the body,” says Jasmin Stallard, an integrative psychotherapist who runs New Wave Wild Project, an adventure therapy practice in Kerry, with her husband Phillip Stallard.New Wave works mostly with individuals, but also does family and small group sessions that typically last for four hours, and combines therapy with outdoor activities.“We could do a session on the beach doing something very active like raft building, or paddleboarding. We could do a deep dive into rock pools, bringing magnifying glasses and looking in at all the little treasures that are there,” Stallard says. “The water can really help to put you into a state where you are more comfortable with processing things. It’s very subconscious.”Stallard often hears clients say how hard they find it to switch off in normal life, which is full of the distractions and demands that come from an always-on tech lifestyle.By spending time on the Kerry coast, there is space to slow down, to feel the water, or just listen to it. “We often block out a lot of what is going on for us, but this allows time to really tune in and there is so much therapeutic benefit in that.”Although New Wave works with people of all ages, its client base is predominantly young people.“We really have to rethink how we do mental health and how we provide services to people, especially young people who have difficult circumstances or complex cases,” Stallard says. “We need to do it in a way that really appeals to them and follow through with that.”Liquid Therapy, a Donegal-based not-for-profit, teaches surfing to young people on the autism spectrum. Photograph: Daragh Gorman Liquid Therapy runs multiple programmes from four-day surf camps to wheelchair-accessible surf experiences. Photograph: Daragh Gorman Responding to what people need, and being adaptable, is key to making blue spaces and their benefits accessible to as many people as possible, says Tom Losey, chief executive and founder of Liquid Therapy, a Donegal-based not-for-profit that teaches surfing to young people on the autism spectrum.Liquid Therapy runs multiple programmes from four-day surf camps to wheelchair-accessible surf experiences. The charity’s A Drop In The Ocean programme was developed following conversations with parents whose teenage children loved surfing and were struggling with social isolation as a consequence of the pandemic.“A couple of parents were coming to us saying that they were really worried about their children and asking us to do something,” Losey says. Liquid Therapy worked with a psychotherapist to develop a health and wellbeing surf programme to help develop young people’s resilience, confidence and social connection.“In that programme before getting in the ocean, you draw a line in the sand, and then you indicate where you are: above the line, on it or below. And then you do the same thing after getting out of the sea,” Losey says. “We find that there is an improvement every single time.”[ Wild retreats for rest, reconnection and renewal: ‘People feel burnt out by our connection to technology’Opens in new window ]Founded in 2011, Liquid Therapy has grown year on year, teaching nearly 500 participants in 2025. The group has been a pioneer in helping children reach their aquatic potential, launching Ireland’s first seated surfboard for children with mobility challenges, and alongside the Children’s Disability Network Team Donegal North successfully established wheelchair-accessible beach and ocean pathways for children with complex needs.“We are very family inclusive,” says Losey. “We run a programme where mothers and daughters learn to surf together. Some of the kids might have mobility challenges, but we can adapt the surfing in a thousand different ways. Once they’re on a board and they’re sharing a wave with their mum, going at speed together, it’s amazing because then suddenly they have this really rich shared experience.”‘We need to see the link between the health of the environment we live in and our own health’— Easkey BrittonWhile this is still an emerging area, Ireland is positioning itself as an enthusiastic leader and was successful in its bid to host the 11th International Adventure Therapy Conference in Kerry in 2028. Held every three years, the conference brings together clinical and therapeutic practitioners, educators and researchers from across the globe.The increased demand for education in the blue care area has also been recognised by Atlantic Technological University (ATU) on Ireland’s west coast, which is now offering a Bachelor of Arts in Outdoor Education with Therapeutic Applications.Stephen Hannon, a lecturer on the course, says that when ATU first developed its outdoor education programme 30 years ago, people used to talk about conquering nature. Now there is an understanding that humans can’t overcome nature; we need to work with it.Easkey Britton teaching surfing in Co Donegal He sees the success and longevity of blue space therapy as being dependent on the understanding that humans have responsibilities to the water.“Our underlying message is that blue space should not be understood and commodified as a wellness product, but should be understood as a living environment,” Hannon says.He emphasises that humanity flourishing is dependent on nature flourishing, and it’s important for people to have a relationship with the sea rather than treating it as a resource to mine.“It sounds corny, but if we see that we’re not the only living being, and we see the sea as equally living, we begin to treat it differently,” Hannon says.The sentiment brings to mind a quote from Jacques Cousteau, the French undersea explorer and co-inventor of scuba diving, who once said “people protect what they love”.Luckily, the love people in Ireland have for the water is particularly strong, believes Britton, who sees Irish people as having a deep cultural and ancestral relationship with water, one that has shaped our stories, our sense of who we are and our sense of place.“But that relationship is at risk unless we take care of the water that we depend on,” Britton says. “We need to see the link between the health of the environment we live in and our own health.”She points to the recent data from the Environmental Protection Agency, which found that almost half of Ireland’s rivers, lakes and estuaries are polluted.“The future of blue space therapies goes hand in hand with the big shift towards nature restoration that is so desperately needed,” she says. “We just can’t be well in a sick sea.”