‘Angela Merkel thinks we’re at work’.
“Do you remember those lads heading to the Euros in Poland?” says Dermot Whelan, chuckling. “And they were holding up the Irish flag with that sign, they were great craic.”
The year was 2012, and the tongue-in-cheek banner was a reference to the EU bailout when the recession hit the country hard. “Irish people used be geniuses at avoiding work. I think we really had a healthy sense of, ‘well, that’s enough for now.’ But we’ve lost a lot of that, certainly in the last few years.”
Nowadays, we’re all busy, very very Busy and Wrecked, which is the apt title of Dermot’s new book on mindfulness and meditation. In April, it hit the Irish bookshelves and became an immediate bestseller, following the success of his first book Mind Full, released in 2022.
The funny thing is if you asked people what Dermot’s surname is, they’d most likely answer, ‘and Dave’. For years, that’s how Dermot was best known, one member of the comedy duo Dermot and Dave. Himself and best mate Dave Moore kept listeners laughing on Today FM as well as touring the country with their hilarious shows.
“But talking to people on the road, I realised the conversation revolved around this sense of busyness,” says Dermot. It usually went something like this:
‘How are you?’
‘Busy, up the walls, flat to the floor.’
“And there seems to be a sense of pride in how busy we are, like we wear it as a badge of honour.”
He continues: ‘Sure you’re flat out, good for you. You’re on the verge of a nervous breakdown, ah sure that’s great altogether.’
We laugh as we discuss the absurdity of it but Dermot admits in his book that he was that “blue arsed fly”, constantly on the go, and wrecked. So wrecked in fact that he couldn’t get through the day without having a nap in his car. It was a trip to his GP where he broke down crying – and she did too as she was also so wrecked – that really changed things for him (and his doctor who later reduced her working hours).
“The truth is this sense of busyness has become a sort of epidemic,” says Dermot. “And with technology, social media, constant news streams, it’s getting harder for people to switch off and relax.
“There are lots of perks to hybrid working [introduced in the pandemic]. Now many people have the flexibility to do the school drop or run to the shops on their lunch break, but then they’re picking up emails early in the morning, or working late at night – and those lines between work and relaxation time are starting to blur.
"We seem to be always ‘on’, and I think farmers really understand that, rising early, working late depending on the season. But it is important to put up boundaries and switch off.”
Breaking boundaries
Dermot is breaking boundaries himself by bringing meditation to the masses. In 2023, he signed off from radio to focus on a career in meditation training. As well as his books, he has The Mind Full Podcast, (very relaxing) meditations and has just finished a nationwide tour.
Key to his success is that he has flipped the idea of meditation and mindfulness on its head. “There was a time when I was quite cynical about meditation,” Dermot says.
“Like a lot of men, it just wasn’t marketed to me. We’re sold this image of a peaceful person meditating on a mountain, and it’s quite female skewed. I guess I was one of those men who went, ‘you know, unless I’m in the lotus position, with a yoga mat, talking about my chakras, this isn’t for me’. And that leaves a huge amount of people out of the conversation.
“So I love when I meet men after my shows or on the street, and they say to me, that it [his meditations] just clicked. Maybe they didn’t get meditation before because the message wasn’t right or the person delivering it didn’t resonate – perhaps they found it too spiritual or technical. That’s why humour is such a leveller.
When people say after the show, I didn’t know what to expect, I get it, because this isn’t the kind of meditation we’ve been traditionally marketed
“You get people laughing, and they start to relax and open up. Like in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre earlier this year, we had nearly 2,000 people laughing their ass off as I joked about my own experience of burnout and overwhelm. And then, a little while later, everyone was sitting in stillness.
“Comedy and meditation really are related, because they both keep you in the present moment. For example, we’ve all had that situation where we’ve had stuff on our mind, and then we sit down with a friend and have a really good belly laugh.
"And for those moments, your head isn’t in the future worrying, or in the past, you’re just living in the moment. Meditation is the same, it pulls you into the present.
“So when people say after the show, I didn’t know what to expect, I get it, because this isn’t the kind of meditation we’ve been traditionally marketed, but that doesn’t matter, as long as people get something out of it.
“That’s the thing about meditation,” says Dermot, “there are no set rules – you just find what works for you. Mental health, especially in men, is a real problem in this country, so I’m delighted that about 40% of those at the show were men.
“I was talking to these lads that are farming after a show, it was spring, and they were telling me about how their sleep was so disrupted during the calving season. So I was sharing with them techniques around tactical breathing.”
This breathwork is used by the military and athletes where there is a structured pattern of inhaling, holding and exhaling your breath to help manage stress and focus.
“I mean soldiers use tactical breathing when they can’t sleep – because there are bombs going off. And these lads were talking to me about trying to get back to sleep after a cow calved. So they were saying, ‘right, well if it works for soldiers, sure I might as well give it a go’.”
Dermot is keen to stress that meditation is a powerful tool that can be accessed anytime, anywhere, and there’s no right or wrong way to do it.
“Let’s get back to the image of the beautiful woman sitting in the lotus position on a mountain. That’s not the reality for most people. It can be done out walking the fields or sitting at your desk.
“And people do get frustrated sometimes. You sit down and say, right I’ll clear my mind there for 10 minutes but it keeps bouncing around, thinking what’s in the fridge for dinner or when do I need to change my electricity provider? Then suddenly you think, oh no, I’m doing this wrong. And no wonder – we live in a busy world, with lots of shiny apps and technological distractions so it can be hard to switch off.
"But it’s simply about bringing it back to your breath when your mind starts to wander, and the more you do that, the easier it becomes. And science tells us, the more occasions we can bring our attention into the present moment, the happier we are.”
Dermot Whelan, author of Busy and Wrecked. \ Claire Nash
Natural de-stressors
Finding our natural de-stressors is also very important. “Even if meditation isn’t your thing, and you think it’s for the birds, that’s fine. But think about what you need in life to feel better, recover and recharge.
"For example, on my way here, I knew I had a busy day ahead, so I rang one of my oldest friends, and we chatted about a golf trip that we have coming up, and immediately, I felt happier and more relaxed.
“When we’re busy, we can lose touch with those people who are our natural de-stressors. Our world starts to get very small – it could be an old friend that you don’t want to bother, because they’re probably busy too, or we don’t play that five-aside football anymore, or maybe we gave up the book club.
“But in this busy world, we have to fight to protect those natural de-stressors and connections because those little pockets of happiness can make all the difference.”
Busy And Wrecked is out now, available for €17.99 from easons.com and nationwide,
published by Gill Books.
‘Angela Merkel thinks we’re at work’.
“Do you remember those lads heading to the Euros in Poland?” says Dermot Whelan, chuckling. “And they were holding up the Irish flag with that sign, they were great craic.”
The year was 2012, and the tongue-in-cheek banner was a reference to the EU bailout when the recession hit the country hard. “Irish people used be geniuses at avoiding work. I think we really had a healthy sense of, ‘well, that’s enough for now.’ But we’ve lost a lot of that, certainly in the last few years.”
Nowadays, we’re all busy, very very Busy and Wrecked, which is the apt title of Dermot’s new book on mindfulness and meditation. In April, it hit the Irish bookshelves and became an immediate bestseller, following the success of his first book Mind Full, released in 2022.
The funny thing is if you asked people what Dermot’s surname is, they’d most likely answer, ‘and Dave’. For years, that’s how Dermot was best known, one member of the comedy duo Dermot and Dave. Himself and best mate Dave Moore kept listeners laughing on Today FM as well as touring the country with their hilarious shows.
“But talking to people on the road, I realised the conversation revolved around this sense of busyness,” says Dermot. It usually went something like this:
‘How are you?’
‘Busy, up the walls, flat to the floor.’
“And there seems to be a sense of pride in how busy we are, like we wear it as a badge of honour.”
He continues: ‘Sure you’re flat out, good for you. You’re on the verge of a nervous breakdown, ah sure that’s great altogether.’
We laugh as we discuss the absurdity of it but Dermot admits in his book that he was that “blue arsed fly”, constantly on the go, and wrecked. So wrecked in fact that he couldn’t get through the day without having a nap in his car. It was a trip to his GP where he broke down crying – and she did too as she was also so wrecked – that really changed things for him (and his doctor who later reduced her working hours).
“The truth is this sense of busyness has become a sort of epidemic,” says Dermot. “And with technology, social media, constant news streams, it’s getting harder for people to switch off and relax.
“There are lots of perks to hybrid working [introduced in the pandemic]. Now many people have the flexibility to do the school drop or run to the shops on their lunch break, but then they’re picking up emails early in the morning, or working late at night – and those lines between work and relaxation time are starting to blur.
"We seem to be always ‘on’, and I think farmers really understand that, rising early, working late depending on the season. But it is important to put up boundaries and switch off.”
Breaking boundaries
Dermot is breaking boundaries himself by bringing meditation to the masses. In 2023, he signed off from radio to focus on a career in meditation training. As well as his books, he has The Mind Full Podcast, (very relaxing) meditations and has just finished a nationwide tour.
Key to his success is that he has flipped the idea of meditation and mindfulness on its head. “There was a time when I was quite cynical about meditation,” Dermot says.
“Like a lot of men, it just wasn’t marketed to me. We’re sold this image of a peaceful person meditating on a mountain, and it’s quite female skewed. I guess I was one of those men who went, ‘you know, unless I’m in the lotus position, with a yoga mat, talking about my chakras, this isn’t for me’. And that leaves a huge amount of people out of the conversation.
“So I love when I meet men after my shows or on the street, and they say to me, that it [his meditations] just clicked. Maybe they didn’t get meditation before because the message wasn’t right or the person delivering it didn’t resonate – perhaps they found it too spiritual or technical. That’s why humour is such a leveller.
When people say after the show, I didn’t know what to expect, I get it, because this isn’t the kind of meditation we’ve been traditionally marketed
“You get people laughing, and they start to relax and open up. Like in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre earlier this year, we had nearly 2,000 people laughing their ass off as I joked about my own experience of burnout and overwhelm. And then, a little while later, everyone was sitting in stillness.
“Comedy and meditation really are related, because they both keep you in the present moment. For example, we’ve all had that situation where we’ve had stuff on our mind, and then we sit down with a friend and have a really good belly laugh.
"And for those moments, your head isn’t in the future worrying, or in the past, you’re just living in the moment. Meditation is the same, it pulls you into the present.
“So when people say after the show, I didn’t know what to expect, I get it, because this isn’t the kind of meditation we’ve been traditionally marketed, but that doesn’t matter, as long as people get something out of it.
“That’s the thing about meditation,” says Dermot, “there are no set rules – you just find what works for you. Mental health, especially in men, is a real problem in this country, so I’m delighted that about 40% of those at the show were men.
“I was talking to these lads that are farming after a show, it was spring, and they were telling me about how their sleep was so disrupted during the calving season. So I was sharing with them techniques around tactical breathing.”
This breathwork is used by the military and athletes where there is a structured pattern of inhaling, holding and exhaling your breath to help manage stress and focus.
“I mean soldiers use tactical breathing when they can’t sleep – because there are bombs going off. And these lads were talking to me about trying to get back to sleep after a cow calved. So they were saying, ‘right, well if it works for soldiers, sure I might as well give it a go’.”
Dermot is keen to stress that meditation is a powerful tool that can be accessed anytime, anywhere, and there’s no right or wrong way to do it.
“Let’s get back to the image of the beautiful woman sitting in the lotus position on a mountain. That’s not the reality for most people. It can be done out walking the fields or sitting at your desk.
“And people do get frustrated sometimes. You sit down and say, right I’ll clear my mind there for 10 minutes but it keeps bouncing around, thinking what’s in the fridge for dinner or when do I need to change my electricity provider? Then suddenly you think, oh no, I’m doing this wrong. And no wonder – we live in a busy world, with lots of shiny apps and technological distractions so it can be hard to switch off.
"But it’s simply about bringing it back to your breath when your mind starts to wander, and the more you do that, the easier it becomes. And science tells us, the more occasions we can bring our attention into the present moment, the happier we are.”
Dermot Whelan, author of Busy and Wrecked. \ Claire Nash
Natural de-stressors
Finding our natural de-stressors is also very important. “Even if meditation isn’t your thing, and you think it’s for the birds, that’s fine. But think about what you need in life to feel better, recover and recharge.
"For example, on my way here, I knew I had a busy day ahead, so I rang one of my oldest friends, and we chatted about a golf trip that we have coming up, and immediately, I felt happier and more relaxed.
“When we’re busy, we can lose touch with those people who are our natural de-stressors. Our world starts to get very small – it could be an old friend that you don’t want to bother, because they’re probably busy too, or we don’t play that five-aside football anymore, or maybe we gave up the book club.
“But in this busy world, we have to fight to protect those natural de-stressors and connections because those little pockets of happiness can make all the difference.”
Busy And Wrecked is out now, available for €17.99 from easons.com and nationwide,
published by Gill Books.
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