JCI Belfast were delighted to host our ‘Health and Wellbeing’ conference at the National Football Stadium @ Windsor park recently, bringing together our members, stakeholders and leading speakers from the Health and Wellness industry. Based in the Danny Blanchflower suite of the stadium we started our night with the attendees enjoying unique views of the famous pitch as well as taking advantage of the great hospitality available at the venue – Many thanks to our main sponsor for the night, The Irish Football Association for providing such an excellent space! Compere for the evening, William Redpath (JCI Belfast, Local President) kicked things off with a game of ‘Human Bingo’, which to the uninitiated is simply a clever way to get people on their feet and networking after the long day in the office! It went down great and made sure everyone had a chance to get introduced before we started the main part of our evening. William followed this up with a short introduction about the development and growth opportunities available locally and internationally within the organisation, before introducing the night’s first speaker, Ben Heron. Ben is an up and coming personal trainer & is building his own brand with #skinnytostrong – He talked to us about ‘understanding your body’, which was a presentation centred around how important it was to know how you respond to different diets and training if you are to create sustainable change. We were delighted to hear that Ben encouraged treats (in moderation)! Bridgeen Rea-Kaya was next up and gave us an insight in to the world of mindfulness, via her teaching methods with Immeasurable Minds. Bridgeen led the conference in a group meditation, which for many was the first time they had taken part in anything of that nature. It was particularly interesting to hear Bridgeen comment on the increasing popularity in this practice in the context of the 24/7, connected world we live in today – Food for thought! After breaking for some very healthy food and refreshments we heard from Chris Magee, who is a life and performance coach at Chris Magee Coaching. Chris talked to us about how lifestyle choices affected your health and provided a high-level overview of some the core things that affect our physical and mental wellbeing. Chris was also good enough to answer some of the audience questions after we took a few minutes to discuss some of themes of his content within the groups. To round things off we heard from Derek Reilly and Patrycja Jurkowska, who are ‘Vegan in a Suit’ and JCI Dublin members. ‘Vegan in a Suit’ is a food and lifestyle blog based showcasing a plant-based diet and discussing the effect it is had on the diets of the authors. In what is a very interesting and fashionable topic at the moment it was great to hear about Derek and Patrycja’s journey to veganism, their motivations for doing it and how they have kept it up over a year! Really impressive and cool to see that with the right planning a better diet is within reach for everyone. Overall we were delighted to put this event together and get such a good turnout and reception. Health and wellbeing are such important topics for us all that we felt as if we had to be part of that conversation and provide some great value to our members – We are already looking forward to making it even bigger and better next year!