Every morning, before getting three kids under 10 out of bed, before the school run starts, before she calls to her father, before she checks on the newborn lambs – before she even opens her eyes – Catherine Callaghan takes just two minutes.

To breathe in. And out.

“I find if I do that before I even get out of bed, all the madness can be going on around me but I feel calm inside,” she smiles, as she ladles out two bowls of homemade leek and pea soup, joking that the recipe is actually an exercise in mindfulness due to the meditative process of shelling peas.

(Inner peas anyone?)

Catherine lives on a small holding in Kildavin, Co Carlow, with her husband Dean and their three children Alex (10), Elizabeth (six) and Pippa (four) and teaches yoga and mindfulness in the community.

However, she is also an ex-army officer, aircraft engineer, world traveller, philosophy and anthropology graduate, carer, sheep farmer – and Irish Country Living’s latest columnist – who discovered that what she spent 20 years searching for was inside her all along.

Mindful living

Indeed, she credits her dad Joseph and her late mother Kathleen – who practised yoga back in the 1970s – for planting the seeds of mindful living.

“They would have always had great hope in that good things would happen for us and that’s the main thing that I would say about mam; she gave me a great sense of self-belief and I carried that through my life,” says Catherine.

Little wonder then that at 17, Catherine was confident enough to join the army, where she trained as an aircraft engineer and served six months in Lebanon. The term of duty, however, whetted her wanderlust, and when denied leave of absence, she “bought” herself out and moved to the UK, before being head-hunted by British Airways and travelling the world.

Yet, at 26, despite a high-flying role – literally – she knew something was missing.

“I had an expense account, I flew business class, I stayed in the Hilton or the Marriott – and it didn’t mean anything to me,” she says, recalling her “eureka” moment on a beach in California.

“I just realised, whatever I’m looking for is not in five-star hotels and it’s not being on the beach in San Diego. It’s not having the world at your feet. It’s not ‘out’ in the world. It’s in me.”

That soul-search led her to Maynooth, where she gained a degree in philosophy and anthropology. It also was the start of another adventure, when she met Dean and they started a family.

However, while they initially settled in Dublin, Catherine felt drawn home, particularly as her mother and her uncle, Martin, a farmer, had a terminal condition known as pulmonary fibrosis, while her father was diagnosed with lymphoma.

“I never wanted to have a regret,” she says of moving back to help care for them.

“I wanted the kids to know that this is what life is really about. Your parents give you such love and care and they deserve that back.”

The transition, naturally, was not without challenges.

Dealing with loss

Taking care of three young children (including a 30-mile round trip to the gaelscoil in Enniscorthy, twice daily) while her husband worked in Dublin, cooking, cleaning and keeping hospital appointments with her parents, trying to project manage building a family home, not to mention taking on Martin’s farm, all took their toll – especially when her mother passed away in 2012, followed by her uncle in 2013.

While dealing with her loss, however, Catherine also realised she had lost a bit of herself.

“My friends used to say to me: ‘How can you cope?’ And I don’t know, but I just did,” she says.

“But what I found after mammy died and Martin died and with daddy, I found that I was stuck in a rut. I felt like I was giving so much care to everybody else that I wasn’t giving any to myself and that’s what was making me unhappy.”

Elaborating, Catherine explains she had lost sight of how to be “herself” as well as a wife, mam and carer. However, she believes it was her mother’s guidance that led her to the library to pick up a yoga book, which in turn inspired her to sign up for a mindfulness course.

“I just got a bit of courage,” she recalls. “It was only going to be three Mondays in a row and then when I went there I realised: ‘This is the first thing I have done for myself in 10 years and I can do it.’”

Catherine gradually learned techniques, from simple breathing exercises to tap into her inner “calm” on a hectic day, to retraining her mind to focus on the present rather than fretting about the past or forecasting the future.

This, in turn, led to gaining qualifications in both yoga teaching and mindfulness, which gave her the confidence to start classes incorporating both disciplines for men, women and children in Kildavin.

And, in a new Irish Country Living series, Catherine will share simple exercises she hopes will help readers find “a little bit of calm in a completely frantic world”.

One of her favourite lines is the Arthur Ashe quote: “Start where you are, use what you have, do what you can.”

There are 1,440 minutes in every day. Catherine says even taking two to breathe deeply will reap benefits. And who needs a studio when you are surrounded by nature on the farm, with exercises that can be done in the tractor cab or at the kitchen sink?

“Mindfulness is broad, but at the same time it’s a very easy concept in that you just have to try and keep your attention on what’s actually happening,” says Catherine.

“Because this is your life, moment by moment, in each moment,” she continues. “This is all we have.”

So, have you got two minutes?

For further information, find Yoga with Catherine Callaghan on Facebook.

>> Month one

What exactly does mindfulness mean? A lot of people say it’s living in the “now”. While that is true, living in the “now” is a difficult concept to grasp. It is not possible to touch the now and, in effect, the moment you bring your attention to the now it has passed, so I don’t necessarily find it helpful to narrow the concept of mindfulness to simply living in the now.

For me, I find it helpful to think of mindfulness as a guideline towards a healthy way of living for your mind in the same way that eating five portions of fruit or vegetables a day is a guideline to a healthy way of living for your body.

Mindfulness does not require hours of meditation: it requires attention to both your body and mind and seeing as our body and mind are the only places we have to live in, it is imperative for our health that we give them both some positive daily attention.

Physical exercise of the month

Simply roll your shoulders back and try not to let them roll forward again (be careful not to stick your chest out). This will give you space to breathe.

While your shoulders are in this position, concentrate on taking a few breaths, just as you would normally do, and then over the course of five or so breaths, try to lengthen your in-breath. If you can keep one hand on your tummy and imagine you are blowing a balloon up in your tummy, it might be helpful.

When we breathe deeply in this way, we trigger our parasympathetic nervous system (more about this next month) and this allows us to feel more calm and lowers our heart rate. If you make a habit of rolling your shoulders back to make the space to allow yourself to breathe more deeply, then your body will automatically keep you in “rest and rejuvenate” mode rather than in “fight or flight” mode, which will reduce general stress levels within your body and, in the long run, will enable you to respond better to situations rather than simply reacting to them.

If you doubt you feel any benefit from rolling your shoulders back, just quickly roll your shoulders forward again and then try to take the same deep breath – does it feel as comfortable and natural? Didn’t think so.

Mindful exercise of the month

This is a simple exercise to demonstrate how to press pause in our crazy, busy lives.

I’m asking you to take two minutes in your day (there are 1,440 minutes in any 24 hour period) when going about your normal routine – out checking stock/paddocks, waiting for the vet to visit or in your home looking out the window.

Take two minutes to look at something in nature around you, another living thing or a cloud in the sky. Pick just one thing and for those two minutes, look only at it. Really look at it. If your mind starts to wander (that is what minds do) resist the urge to follow your thoughts away from what you’re doing and just bring your attention wholly back to the one natural thing you decided to look at.

Do not make any judgements about what you observe, just accept what you see at face value. You might well be surprised at what you see that you did not previously see.

Something to ponder

Life is full of wonder, we just need to take the time to notice it. Even if you’re having a bad day, it’s a bad day, not a bad life. This feeling will pass, this moment will pass, this day will pass and, ultimately, this life will pass. But right now this life is here, completely and fully in this moment – give it all your attention. It will give you back way more than you can imagine.

For more practical mindfulness exercises, visit Catherine Callaghan Yoga on YouTube and listen to Introduction to Mindfulness.