Carnival of Soul

Club Soulgenic, which focuses on emotional, social and mental wellbeing as well as physical health, offered advice sessions on resilience, positive thinking and mindfulness, yoga sessions and high intensity cardiovascular work-outs.

In the evening participants were joined for the club’s signature Gears ’n’ Gloves spinning and boxercise combo class by Jersey-based saxophonist Keith Saxman, who gave a freestyle performance during the work-out.

Club fonder Dr Glenda Rivoallan said that World Mental Health Day was the perfect day to celebrate her company’s philosophy of holistic well-being.

‘Soulgenic and the concept behind it is that we value a holistic approach to well-being, so that is not just physical fitness but also social, mental and emotional fitness,’ she said.

‘So for us World Mental Health Day was a great day to celebrate. The day went really well and all of our classes and workshops were fully booked,’ she said.

‘We know that if you have a healthy body you have a healthy mind, and vice versa. We had practical sessions and decided to showcase our Gears ’n’ Gloves spinning and boxing combo class, which we have had really positive feedback about.

‘The class really seems to help relieve tension and stress, so we thought that would be a great one to do.

‘I’m a great believer that music makes people happy and with people coming together to focus on happiness and mental health, I thought it would be a really nice idea to introduce some music to the class.’

Dr Rivoallan said that a key theme of the mental health workshops was resilience.

‘If people develop resilience it really helps them cope with things, so we did some intro talks on it,’ she said.

‘We look at three domains of resilience – how people think, how they feel and then putting in place strategies to help them consider how they are thinking,

‘We also look at emotional health and the ability to handle your emotions. It’s very much about good tips that we can give them, things like your ability to come back and bounce back from things.’

A key message of this year’s World Mental Health Day was suicide awareness and to be mindful that every 40 seconds someone in the world takes their own life.