Archive News
Miriam taps into body’s energy field to aid healing
Date Published: 07-Mar-2013
Bio-energy is a healing therapy that is difficult to explain to people who have never heard about it but one practising therapist and her clients can testify that it works.
Knocknacarra based Miriam Lynch says it had a huge impact on her life at a time when she needed a boost as well as a new direction in her life. As it happens the bio-energy therapy became her new life as she is now entering into her fourth year as a practitioner.
The therapy was introduced to the West of Ireland by two men who still maintain rooms in Merchants Road where Miriam helps out from time to time.
Basically, the therapy, which is based on the Chinese chi energy, works on the energies of the body. If the energy flows become stagnant, disturbed or imbalanced, this can lead to sickness, not just of the physical body but also the mental, spiritual and emotional aspects.
Recent studies show that the person’s primary responses to stimuli take place first in the energetic field, not in the sensory nerves or in the brain. These correspond with earlier findings that the body contains a complex electrical system that regulates the activity of the internal organs and is the foundation of health.
Miriam explains that she never claims to heal anyone but rather stimulate the person’s energy field by her work so that the body starts to heal itself. That’s why she tells her clients that sometimes they have to give the bio-energy a chance to work as people respond differently. Some respond immediately and feel the benefits after the first session while others take more time.
Originally from Mayo, Miriam came to Galway after spending seven years living in London, followed by a few years living in Dublin and then Shannon.
She worked in the IT business and she was made redundant twice, the last time in 2009 from Hewlett Packard where she was a project manager.
Miriam found working for a large multi-national very stressful. “I tried different therapies for my fatigue and stress and it wasn’t until I came across bio-energy here in Galway that I found a solution. That was the one that worked for me and then I wanted to find out more about it. So I did and decided to do a course on it and become a practitioner.
“After all those years doing IT, it was lovely to be doing something different and I also did a diploma in anatomy and physiology.”
She was looking for work and wondering what new direction to take with her life after redundancy when she started her course which took place one weekend a month in Dublin.
Though she knew the IT sector was under pressure, it was still a shock when she was faced with the decision to take redundancy. Around the same time, her father died. It was a time of great change for her but she acknowledges now that it was a crossroads and she has no regrets about changing direction.
During that transformation, when she spent time on the course, she met lovely people, people who were like-minded and open to new experiences, new directions. These people she met were all on their own journey, like her, so she didn’t feel as alone and in fact she ended up enjoying those first early months of uncertainty.
Family and friends were supportive, which she says helped. And yes, she did find it hard in the beginning to explain exactly what she was taking the course in.
“Up to recently, I would find it hard to explain bio-energy but it is scientifically proven that the body has energy fields and if these are balanced and free-flowing, the body will be healthier.”
She subsequently did a deeper course with one of the Bio-energy therapy founders, Tom Griffin. This was in the Hidden Mind Programme, which is specifically aimed at children with AD-HD. or who have autism or special needs.
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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