Edinburgh Wellbeing Festival returns to offer inspirational talks and sessions

After a hugely successful first year Edinburgh Wellbeing Festival returns to the Assembly Rooms on 26 -27 January for another weekend of inspirational talks, fitness classes and workshops to help us all lead healthier and happier lives.

Woman celebrating her achieved goals.

The festival will cover everything from healthy eating, vegan and plant-based diets, to mindfulness, mental health, stress and sleep. There will also be yoga, Pilates and HIIT classes from world-renowned instructors, free health consultations and a wellbeing marketplace with natural beauty products, massage treatments and delicious food.

Cookery writer and anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe will discuss how to eat healthily on a budget, and top vegan cook Aine Carlin will be joined by Paul Kane, head chef at Henderson’s to share their favourite plant-based recipes. You can also join Edinburgh Fermentarium to find out how to be good to your gut, learn how to make sauerkraut and taste some of their delicious products.

Emotional wellbeing is a huge part of the festival. BBC Breakfast’s resident doctor, Rangan Chatterjee will be talking about how to manage stress, Buddhist monk Haemin Sunim will share his knowledge on how to live a calmer and more fulfilled life, and mental health campaigners Natasha Devon and Jonny Benjamin will discuss all aspects of mental health from anxiety and depression to body image and bipolar disorder. Rapper Professor Green, who speaks out regularly about his own mental health issues, asks What makes a man?, and the festival’s charity partner – the Scottish Association for Mental Health (SAMH) – will be fundraising over the weekend.

There will also be workshops on mindfulness, life coaching, parenting, how to cut down on alcohol, positive ageing, breaking bad habits and how to get a better night’s sleep.

The wellbeing marketplace is a key part of the festival. Open from 9am to 6pm each day, you can sample delicious vegan and vegetarian food and drink, shop for natural beauty products, indulge in a relaxing massage and bag some free samples. Enjoy mini treatments from Neal’s Yard and Kiehl’s, tastings from Edinburgh Fermentarium and Henderson’s and expert advice on back pain, posture, sleep and stress.

Edinburgh Wellbeing Festival, Assembly Rooms, 26-27 January, tickets from £27.50, www.edinburgh wellbeingfestival.com

Professor Green – What makes a man?

One of the UK’s biggest rappers, Professor Green has been very open about his battles with anxiety and depression. Losing his dad and uncle to suicide within just two years of each other, Professor Green found himself growing up without a male role model, trying to figure out how to “be a man”. In this event, he explores masculinity, what defines it, and how limiting or expansive that definition can be. Professor Green has presented five critically acclaimed documentaries including Working Class White Men and is patron of charities CALM and Transform Trauma.

Jack Monroe – Cooking on a bootstrap

Jack Monroe shows that cooking on a budget can be nourishing, delicious and above all healthy. Jack is an award-winning cookery 
writer and anti-poverty campaigner. She wrote her first book A Girl Called Jack when she was 24 and had a food budget of just £10 a week to feed herself and her son. She is now a well-known campaigner against hunger and poverty in the UK.

Dr Rangan Chatterjee – The stress solution

Dr Rangan Chatterjee is resident doctor on BBC Breakfast. As a practising GP Rangan has seen first-hand how stress affects his patients. He is on a mission to show that combating stress is easier than you think. In this event Rangan shows how small changes in the way we approach our body, mind and relationships can help us lead more fulfilled and calmer lives.

Haemin Sunim – Lessons from a Buddhist monk

How can we stay calm in a busy world? What would happen if we stopped trying to be perfect? Haemin Sunim is one of the most influential Zen Buddhist teachers in the world with over one million followers on social media and a series of bestselling books. He will share his wisdom on all aspects of life, and how mindfulness can help us in each.

Dr Giles Yeo – The truth about diets

Dr Giles Yeo is a presenter on BBC1’s Trust Me I’m a Doctor and a geneticist at Cambridge University. In this event he asks “why do so many diets fail?” One in five of us will be on a diet at some time in our lives, and over half of us are overweight or obese. However, despite the amount of advice out there, losing weight and trying to keep it off is incredibly difficult. But why? Giles Yeo has spent 20 years studying how genes influence our eating habits. In his new book Gene Eating he tackles the question of why some people eat more than others and whether we can really trust the diets we are being sold.

How to age well – Sue Armstrong and the Ageing Lab: Heriot-Watt University

As we grow older, we experience a decline in our thinking and memory skills, some more than others. How can we stay sharp? Dr Alan Gow, head of research at Heriot Watt University’s The Ageing Lab, and author Sue Armstrong, reveal how keeping engaged in intellectual, social or physical activities, becoming more active and learning new things can reduce or delay age-related mental decline. In her book Borrowed Time, Sue Armstrong tells the story of society’s quest to understand ageing, and where science will take us next. Alan Gow is an Associate Professor in Psychology at Heriot-Watt University, exploring healthy ageing and how we might protect the ageing brain so we can enjoy a good quality of later life.

Fit for life: The ultimate health and fitness panel

You’ve probably heard lots of exercise advice over the years, some of it likely conflicting. To clear things up, the festival has brought together some of the UK’s top fitness experts for game-changing tips to achieve a healthy body and mind. Personal trainers Faisal Abdalla, Carly Rowena and Tracy Griffen will be joined by nutritionist Madeleine Shaw to offer their advice on the best workouts to the kinds of foods you should eat regularly and how to stay motivated. They will also bust the myths around “clean eating” and dieting and explain how to keep yourself fit whatever your age.

Natasha Devon MBE & Jonny Benjamin MBE – a beginner’s guide to mental health

One in three of us will experience symptoms of a mental illness during our lifetime. All of us have a brain, so we all have mental health. The past few years have seen an explosion in awareness, yet there is still widespread confusion. Mental health campaigners Natasha Devon MBE and Jonny Benjamin MBE will talk about their own experiences, and guide festival-gpers through the full spectrum of mental health, as well as how to differentiate “sadness” from “depression”.