Striking a Balance

Winning Magazine's Editor in Chief Katarina Kroslakova reflects on our much-anticipated Balance issue.

Photography by Pierre Toussaint.

Welcome to the Balance Issue. I hope you’re reading this with your feet up and your phone out of reach. Setting aside time to actually relax (read: not firing off work emails or envy-scrolling socials) is a good first step to a more balanced life. “Phones are exhausting our brains, while the rest of our body wastes away,” proclaims the website of the charismatic extreme athlete turned health guru Wim Hof, who is our cover star this issue.

Wait, I hear you thinking, what does anyone who self-describes as an “extreme athlete” and who advocates going for a leisurely dip next to an iceberg have to do with balance? A lot, it turns out. As revealed in our story, his world-famous “method” aims to maintain internal equilibrium in the face of external stressors.

Other balancing acts this issue include architectural ones, with Stephen Crafti spotlighting the latest projects that weigh the glamorous grit of inherited industrial buildings with the polish of contemporary interiors. Jeni Port visits the winemakers who are restoring nature’s balance, welcoming back flora and fauna into their vineyards so as to cut out pesticide use. And the author Lance Richardson profiles the brewers who are shaping their businesses around environmental balance, in one case funnelling off the CO2 from the fermentation process and feeding it to microalgae to make a dent in climate change. And Helen Hawkes examines the boom in corporate wellness programs, which suggests that enlightened — and a little desperate — employers are finally listening when Gen Z and millennial workers complain about work-life balance.

Balance in the glass is a beautiful thing. As Cara Devine reveals in an extract of her new book, the secret to every cocktail is nailing the proportions of three components she names “strong, sweet and bitter”. Her simple formula is a game changer, no matter what you have in your fridge or drinks cabinet.

Finally, Louise Coghill travels to the remote town of Churchill in the Canadian Arctic, where the local tourism industry — built around sightings of the aurora borealis, polar bears and beluga whales — is aiming to strike a critical compromise between the needs of humans and those of its animal inhabitants.

Hopefully we’ve got the balance right between sharp reporting, indulgent recipes and feet-up entertainment.

Enjoy the issue.

This is an extract from an article that appears in print in our eighth edition, Page 10 of Winning Magazine with the headline: “Striking a Balance”. Subscribe to Winning Magazine today.