Ecolution: Have you ever heard of forest bathing?
Ecolution is the Podcast that tries to learn all we can about nature and our environment so we can share it with our listeners. And in this episode we join one class as they go into the woods to try something new - forest bathing.
Many young people discuss things with their parents, but for a lot of us, school is the place where we have the most meaningful conversations with our friends and teachers about the state of our planet.
Throughout Series 5 of Ecolution, we're doing a number of episodes celebrating all that's happening in classrooms across the country. And the first stop on the journey is Stepaside Educate Together National School where we join them on a forest walk with a difference.
Listen to the Podcast on RTÉ, Apple or Spotify now!
And press play up top to watch the Ecolution Vodcast on YouTube, where Evie and our panel dive deeper into what kids are learning in school about the climate crisis - and what more can be done.
On the Podcast
On a sunny morning in Fernhill, third class from Stepaside ETNS walked into the woods - not to hike, or to study trees, but to slow down, breathe deeply, and take part in something called forest bathing. Guided by the calm presence of Orlagh from Forest Bathing Wicklow and Cat from Danu Forest Bathing, the students explored nature in a whole new way - through their senses.
Forest bathing, also known as shinrin-yoku, is a Japanese practice that was first named in the 1980s. It means consciously and mindfully immersing yourself in the natural environment, especially a forest, to take in all the health benefits it offers. It's about bathing your senses in the forest atmosphere, focusing on sights, sounds, smells, and textures to connect with nature and reduce stress.
Nature connection is at the centre of environmental education. Because when we slow down, breathe and reflect, we start to notice what's there. And when we take notice of it, we connect, and really care that much more. And that is the first step we take in wanting to protect the world around us.
Orlagh and Cat have their own podcast called Beneath the Canopy. If you'd like to hear more about what they do or just pick up some tips on how you too could have a go at Forest Bathing you can listen here.
If you'd like to comment or just get in touch with us email junior@rte.ie.
We'd love to hear about your experiences of learning about nature at home or in school. Who or what inspires you? And please, do like/ subscribe/ follow or review wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps!
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Irish Times
34 minutes ago
- Irish Times
Rick O'Shea: ‘My wife and I come from very working-class backgrounds, so we think savings are important'
Rick O'Shea is a veteran DJ and radio presenter who has worked with RTÉ since 2001, currently with RTÉ Gold. He is taking part in Dalkey Book Festival, which runs June 12th-15th. Are you a saver or a spender? If you had asked me that question a few years ago, I would have told you I wasn't a saver, but that was only because there was never money left over to save. In recent times that has changed a little. Both my wife and I come from very working-class backgrounds, so a cushion of savings is something we think is important to have. What was the first job you received money for, and how much were you paid? The only job I have ever had is being a radio presenter. My first full-time job was when I was 19, playing late-night love songs on a local radio station. I think I was paid the princely sum of £60 a week. In 1992 it didn't quite pay the rent on the Bray-based bungalow I was living in. Do you shop around for better value? If it's something big, of course. We had our bathroom completely changed recently and there seemed to be endless months of getting quotes from different companies. If it's something like cereal, or groceries, probably not. READ MORE What has been your most extravagant purchase, and how much did it cost? I rarely buy expensive stuff such as technology or flash clothes, so the only thing I'd ever call extravagant is travel. After a year of hard saving, we went to Japan and South Korea in 2015, and it cost somewhere in the region of €10,000. [ 'I recently bought a sofa worth about €10,000 new for €380 on Done Deal' Opens in new window ] What purchase have you made that you consider the best value for money? On the same trip, I bought what I call my Japanese jumper. It's a long cardigan thing that I bought drunkenly late one night in Hiroshima. I've worn it around the house for the last decade, and there are strict instructions that in the event of my untimely death, I am to be buried in it. Is there anything you regret spending money on? Every nonsense purchase I made in my 20s. I built up a stupid credit-card debt that took years to pay off but it taught me never to do the same thing again. I have a credit card now as they're handy when it comes to checking into hotels on holidays, but I never use it otherwise. Do you haggle over prices? Not really. I think you either have the gene for that or you don't. My father is the exact opposite; it's in his blood. The man loves nothing better than a good haggle over €1 or €2 at a car-boot sale for an album he is interested in. Do you invest in shares and/or cryptocurrency? No to both, probably because I view them as gambles that I'm ill-equipped to take. I'm exactly the sort of person who would invest in stocks the day the market crashes or into a pump-and-dump crypto scheme. I'm sure some people do very well at these things, but I'm not wired that way. Do you have a retirement or pension plan? When I started working in RTÉ in 2001, one of the few smart things I have ever done was say yes when I was asked if I wanted to enrol in the pension plan. I'm also the sort of person who never takes it for granted that I'll make it to 65, so who knows, it may all have been a terrible waste of money. [ Rick O'Shea: 'I was never passionate about the idea of being on the radio' Opens in new window ] What was the last thing you bought and was it good value for money? Tickets to the stage version of My Neighbour Totoro, the new Conor McPherson play The Brightening Air , and the upcoming production of Stephen Sondheim's final musical, Here We Are – all in London and all for my birthday. With very rare exceptions, spending money going to shows in London or on Broadway in New York has always been good value over the years, regardless of how much it costs. Have you ever successfully saved up for a relatively big purchase? All the time. Holidays, solar panels and even our car all came from our savings. We don't have loans out for anything at the moment. If we can't afford it, we save for it and wait. Have you ever lost money? No, I don't think I ever have. Are you a gambler and, if so, have you ever had a big win? I have a deep-seated cynicism about big gambling companies. A huge part of their business model is taking advantage of people with addiction issues who can least afford it. I couldn't stomach money I had to work hard for just disappearing down the drain, no matter the small chance of an upside. Remember, the house always wins. What is your best habit when it comes to money? And your worst? I like to think my best habit these days is having the spare money to give to causes online when I see them. I work with a couple of charities, and I'm painfully conscious of how hard fundraising is these days, particularly in a mainly post-cash world, so if I see a cause I care about online, the odds are I'll donate. My worst habit is probably subscribing to things I don't read. I recently had a subscription to New Scientist magazine that was read one week out of every six when it arrived in the letterbox. How much money do you have on you now? I have gotten into the terrible habit of not really carrying cash on me. There's €60 in my wallet right now, and it's been there for over three months. In conversation with Tony Clayton-Lea
Irish Examiner
10 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
Culture That Made Me: Music legend Brush Shiels picks his touchstones
Brendan 'Brush' Shiels, 79, grew up in Phibsboro, Dublin. In 1967, he formed Skid Row, Ireland's seminal rock group, which briefly included Phil Lynott on vocals, and Gary Moore on guitar. The band released two acclaimed records, Skid and 34 Hours, before disbanding. He fronted a show, Off Yer Brush, on RTÉ television for two seasons, 1986-87, and he has released several solo albums. He will perform at Connolly's of Leap, Co Cork, 6pm, Saturday, June 14. See: Save the Last Dance for Me We lived in one room on the Phibsboro Road. Beside us was a pub, across the road was another pub. We had no radio. Seven nights a week, people came out of the pub and would sing for another two hours. Some fella used to sing, 'If I can help somebody as I pass along … Then my living shall not be in vain' again and again. Right at the railings, about a yard away. That's how I learned Save the Last Dance for Me and all these songs – from people singing them outside. After that, we got a radio. I started listening to Saturday Club with Brian Matthew on BBC. I remember hearing the very first Beatles live programme, Too Much Monkey Business. It must have been '63. The Beatles had harmonies and a sound I'd never heard before. I loved them for that. Bob Dylan I couldn't believe Bob Dylan when I first heard him. To this day when I hear Like a Rolling Stone, it has the same effect on me. I've learned hundreds of Bob Dylan songs. I love Desolation Row, A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall and Mr. Tambourine Man. I still have the same fascination for his use of lyrics and symbolism. Until he arrived, it was Elvis, Cliff Richard, songs like Take These Chains from My Heart, and The Beatles were all kiss me quick numbers and meeting girls. When Dylan came along, it was a different way with words. I never looked back from that. He was my biggest inspiration. We Gotta Get Out of This Place Funny enough, I started off on the guitar because of The Shadows and that sort of stuff. Then around 1965, I started to hear other things. There was a baseline in The Animals' We Gotta Get Out of This Place, something about it influenced me. It spiked my interest – what you could do with the bass. Chuck Berry There was a bookshop up the road. It had a box of music magazines, all the same, called DownBeat. I got them for next to nothing. They were about jazz in America, like Duke Ellington, Count Basie. My mind went back then to this film I saw when I was about 12 called Jazz on a Summer's Day. It was about the Newport Jazz Festival. This film had a big effect on me. It had all the greatest jazz musicians in America at that time in it. In the middle of it all, this guy Chuck Berry came on, and he does Sweet Little Sixteen. When I saw Chuck Berry I realised that's the only way to do it. Brush Shiels. Night Train The jazz thing was always in the back of my head. I was interested in why the jazz scene was so big in America. A lot of it was hard to follow. I could follow them singing the melody, but once the solo came in and went off on a tangent, I didn't really understand it. Then I read in one of these magazines – I became an expert after reading 72 DownBeat magazines [laughs] – that Ray Brown, the bass player with the Oscar Peterson Trio, was the man to listen to, and the album to listen to was Night Train. That Night Train record changed my life. That's where I went next. Unison Blues DownBeat magazines also said, 'There's a great bass player called Vinnie Burke. Have a listen to him.' He had a track called Unison Blues which is the origin of the Skid Row way of doing things. A lot of the ideas about playing, I got from Vinnie Burke, his bass lines stood out. The sax, the bass and the piano playing the same line in unison gave it a particular sound, which, ultimately, I could hear in Cream and Jimi Hendrix. Lucky enough I came across Gary Moore when he was only 15 and he knew exactly what I was talking about. Phil Lynott Phil Lynott performing with Thin Lizzy at Cork City Hall in 1982. Picture: Irish Examiner Archive The first time I got in touch with Phillo, I got the bus out to his house. I knocked on his door. I went in to say hello to him. He told me he was listening to The Velvet Underground. I said, 'Forget about that.' Then he said, 'Paul Simon's I Am a Rock'. I said, 'No, if you want to come along, we'll try this Jimi Hendrix thing, which is going to be the next big thing.' A couple of days later, he sang Hey, Joe, and that was the start of it. Phillo had film-star appeal. Back in the 1960s, he lacked a bit of confidence, but the potential was unbelievable because he had everything else you needed. But life being the way it is, now he's gone. Somebody said to me once, 'How well did you know him?' I said, 'Well, he came on my honeymoon with me.' That's how close we were. Led Zeppelin Skid Row loved Led Zeppelin. We were playing in the Whisky A Go-Go in Los Angeles in 1970. Who turns up only John Bonham, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, Rod Stewart, Ronnie Wood. We're playing away and John Bonham wants to get up to sing, and Robert Plant says, 'I'll play drums.' So, the two boys got up. These lads from a band called Slammer – I knew them – took photographs and bootlegged the gig. You can still get it on YouTube. You can't buy it. The sound was just noise, but it's up there. John Bonham Led Zeppelin in 1973: From left to right, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bonham (1947 - 1980), John Paul Jones. (Photo by) John Bonham had a particular way of drumming that we hadn't heard before. It was thunderous. It sounded like an elephant stampede, like a wildebeest with an outboard motor on its back. Carmine Appice from Vanilla Fudge had a similar style. It was the start of all these great drummers like Ginger Baker, the way of doing it with the two bass drums, even though it had been done years before in jazz. It got lost along the way, but very fast playing made a comeback. Charlie Parker Charlie Parker – one of the great saxophonists, one of my biggest influences solo-wise – was in this café once, and Hank Williams' I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, was playing. Somebody asked Charlie Parker, 'Why do you keep putting that on?' He says, 'It's the words, man.' Like he's soloing all night. He's no problem soloing. So, when somebody is singing something like that, and he has felt that bad himself, and put it into words, he wants to listen. A lot of sad songs are about when somebody puts into words what we're all feeling. There's beauty in it.
Sunday World
10 hours ago
- Sunday World
Fair City actor Paul Ronan ‘heartbroken' after divorce from Hollywood starlet Saoirse's mum
Fair City actor Paul confirms he is 'heartbroken' that he and his wife Monica Brennan have parted ways. Paul helped his talented daughter at the start of her career Paul told the Sunday World about the row over the Aghade bridge Saoirse Ronan's parents sadly divorced just weeks before the Hollywood star happily announced she was pregnant with her first child. So reveals the Oscar nominated actress's father Paul in an exclusive interview with the Sunday World. Fair City actor Paul confirms he is 'heartbroken' that he and his wife Monica Brennan have parted ways. And he discloses the couple have been separated for 10 years. 'The divorce came through a few weeks ago,' announced Paul, who plays postman Anto Collins in the RTÉ soap. Asked how he feels about the conclusion of their marriage, Paul becomes reflective. 'I feel like, I don't know, it's a strange feeling,' he ponders. Saoirse with her mum Monica and dad Paul 'The barrister asked me when it was over, 'how do you feel?'. I said, 'I don't know, it's a weird feeling, of feeling happy but wanting to cry, sick but wanting to throw up, but wanting to jump for joy'. 'It's just a combination of a bunch of feelings, you know. It's moving on. I have done that as far as the relationship is concerned. 'To know that it was all over and not hanging over your head. It's a new chapter and it's a new opportunity for a new start.' The 60-year-old Dubliner becomes emotional when talking about the separation. 'I am heartbroken about it,' he sighs. 'We separated 10 years ago, it was 2015. And now we are divorced, just in the last few weeks.' Paul does not currently want to talk publicly about his relationship with his famous 31-year-old daughter. Saoirse showed off her baby bump last week The only reference he wanted to make public about her was that 'I taught Saoirse to swim' in the nearby river Slaney, where she grew up in the house Paul and Monica once shared next to Aghade bridge, four miles from Tullow. He now lives there alone and is in dispute with some neighbours about access to the river. Saoirse is the couple's only child, and last Friday week announced she and her Scottish actor husband Jack Lowden were expecting their first child. Paul and married Monica Brennan in 1992, having met her in the 1980s. "My mam and dad left school at 15 or 16 and have been working ever since. My mam was a cleaner and a nanny and my dad worked in a bar and then was an actor, with a proper job for years," Saoirse once said to The Mirror. Paul told the Sunday World about the row over the Aghade bridge News in 90 Seconds - June 1st "We weren't poor but we didn't have money. So, I knew the value of money from an early age. I knew that whatever we had, it was because of sacrifices made by them. So, I think that's given me a great appreciation for money." Monica played a major role in Saoirse's early career, accompanying her on set as a chaperone when she was underage. The star's mum has credits in a couple of her movies, including Atonement, for which Saoirse as a teenager gained one of her three Oscar nominations. Monica now lives in Dublin, Saoirse in London (she also owns a house in Ballydehob in west Cork), and Paul has moved back to Co Carlow after spending much of the last three years looking after his elderly parents in the capital. Saoirse admits there is a huge bond between her mother and herself. "We've always been very, very close, but when I moved away a few years ago to London, where I lived for a year and a half, I remember feeling so homesick,' she recalls. "I always need to talk to her, but she really helped me through it and helped me to get the courage to keep going with it. Paul helped his talented daughter at the start of her career "I had such newfound respect for my mom once I left. When you're on your own, you don't have anyone to clean your clothes, you don't have anyone to cook for you, you don't have anyone at the end of the night to give you a cuddle. "So I think then my appreciation for her went through the roof. We're best friends." Saoirse and Paul appeared side by side on The Late Late Show in a joint interview in December 2010. They recollected how she got into acting and they recalled working together on RTÉ's The Clinic. "From the age of two I spotted something in her. She was an amazing kid, very friendly and sociable. More so than any kid I have seen,' Paul told Ryan Tubridy. "Eventually, when she was seven or eight, I put her in a short film I was doing. They needed a kid and I said 'I have got one'.' He also took her on set when he starred in The Devil's Own and Veronica Guerin, and got her a role alongside him in the TV series The Clinic. "In the scene [in The Clinic], she was nearly knocked down by a car. I knew the stunt guys but we were still nervous so they put me driving the car. I was glad to be around when she was filming her first scene, it was a big honour,' he raved. He always knew she would make it big in acting. 'From the day she was young, she was always a very confident little child — and I knew she'd make a good actor. I loved it so much that I encouraged her and I put her in a short film when she was five years of age,' he told the Irish Star's Chic. 'She was on set with me a lot — pretty much with everything I ever did, I was bringing her and her mother on-set. So, when she was making her own films and doing plays with her friends and stuff, I saw that she was really into it. 'After the short film, I introduced her to my agent and we started doing auditions. Her third job was with Michelle Pfeiffer in I Could Never Be Your Woman, and from there, that was it.'
