Archive News
Acupuncturist Linda gets to the point of the problem
Date Published: {J}
It’s nearly 30 years since Linda Heffernan opened her acupuncture clinic in Galway City, becoming one of the first people to bring this ancient form of Chinese medicine to the West of Ireland. At the time, most people didn’t know much about it, and there was a lot of scepticism. But acupuncture has proven successful for treating a variety of problems and Linda is one of the country’s best-known practitioners.
She is also a teacher, who has trained hundreds of people in acupuncture since she established a college in Galway 16 years ago. She has long had a clinic in the city, but six years ago Linda bought a Georgian house in Loughrea with the intention of basing her college there. Now that dream is about to be realised, as the once-dilapidated building has been carefully restored and modernised, using mostly traditional materials and techniques.
Linda was always destined to work in the healing profession. Born in Cork she initially began training as a medical doctor after finishing her Leaving Cert, but quickly realised it wasn’t the route she wanted to take.
She knew people who had been successfully treated with acupuncture for various problems and it piqued her interest.
“I knew it helped people and was good,” she says simply about her decision to train in that area. She went to the UK and attended the Royal College of Traditional Acupuncture in Leamington Spa for three and a half years. Then she went onto further study in London, to qualify in Chinese Herbalism. Eventually, she returned to Ireland and began practising.
“There was very little talk about acupuncture in 1984,” she recalls of her early years in Galway. Linda was one of the people who helped to create an awareness of this healing practice that treats a person on many levels; physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.
“It’s about balancing energy and knowing what needs to be treated,” she says.
Her reputation spread mainly by word of mouth and continues to do so, making her one of the busiest acupuncturists in the West of Ireland.
And then there’s the College of Integrative Acupuncture. When she established it in in 1996, Linda decided that it would offer the most comprehensive training in Chinese medicine possible.
There are two types of Chinese acupuncture, she explains, the Five Element and the Eight Principle, and she studied both.
The five element theory holds that everything in nature is governed by five elements – water, wood, fire, earth and metal. These elements relate to the organs of the body and also connect with the seasons. The elements are all interconnected and in a healthy person, are in harmony.
Another approach is the Eight Principle method, where eight particular principles are used to discover the location and nature of a person’s illness and to correct imbalances in the body.
Linda teaches both approaches, and that’s why she called her school the College of Integrative Acupuncture.
Over the three years, students at the college learn about western conditions and how they can be treated using traditional Chinese medicine – these include asthma and sinus, gynaecological issues, infertility, fungal conditions, multiple sclerosis and many more.
Linda teaches how to diagnose a person’s health by the state of their tongue and by taking their pulse. She also teaches hand morphology, showing how the shape and condition of a person’s hand can be used in diagnosis.
“We also use our sense of smell,” she explains, adding that this is a very important technique in Chinese medicine. It’s not to do with breath or perspiration, but instead reflects the state of internal organs.
“For instance, there is a specific smell for the liver and gall bladder, which is rancid,” she says.
In Chinese medicine, the internal organs are more than flesh and blood. They also perform tasks involving the qi, or vital energy.
According to aupuncture, the body’s organs follow cycles in which the energy goes through 12 internal organs in a sequence.
At various points of the day and the year, the energy of organs is high and, at others, it is low.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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