Archive News
Norah’s hands-on approach to therapy has roots in car crash
Date Published: {J}
Norah Ní Cadhain from Leitir Móir is a woman with a mission – and it’s one which has the potential to improve lives everywhere.
Norah, who has just been appointed as Irish Representative for the internationally renowned Complementary Therapists Association, representing over 9,000 complementary therapists in the UK and Ireland, wants to teach people how to use life-improving techniques such as massage at home.
She is well positioned to do that, being qualified in a wide variety of skills, including basic massage, pregnancy massage, sports massage, palliative massage, reflexology, aromatherapy and Reiki. She is also an instructor in baby massage and a complementary therapy tutor.
And her studies don’t end there. London born Norah, whose parents come from Connemara, is currently completing a diploma in Irish in Árus Uí Cadhain in Carraroe, which is run by NUIG.
Reared between Camden Town and Connemara, Norah had a deep love for her parents’ birthplace and finally achieved her dream of moving to Leitir Móir three years ago. Although she spoke some Irish, she felt it was important to achieve fluency, especially as she wanted to be able to treat and teach people holistically in Irish as well as English.
Norah’s passion for massage shines through as she lists its many merits, yet it was a passion she discovered by accident.
“A few years back I was in a car crash and my back was injured – I had whiplash,” she explains. She went to a physiotherapist and a chiropractor and while their efforts initially brought some relief, they failed to solve the problem.
At the time she was working in the corporate world of import and export in the UK and although she was able to continue in her job, her back hurt like hell. Eventually, she was given the name of a therapist who did remedial massage. Manipulation of her muscles gave her relief like no other treatment had.
Norah began to recognise its benefits, and when she saw an ad for a weekend introductory massage course she wanted to do it. Sensing her enthusiasm, her partner bought Norah the voucher for her birthday and it opened up a whole new world.
“I knew that minute I was never going to do anything else. I absolutely love every minute of my work. I always had lots of money but never had work I loved. I do now.”
She immediately booked for a foundation course with an accredited college, starting off with holistic massage and continuing on to develop an amazing array of skills in the complementary health area.
These included Indian head massage, reflexology, immunity care and subtle energy, palliative care and counselling skills among others. She practises reflexology which is recognised by various health insurers. Her work also includes physical therapy and sports injury and is a serious business.
“I do body work, I’m not into beauty,” she explains.
Throughout her career as a therapist, Norah has worked on a voluntary basis for various charities including Baby Massage Ireland, Children with Leukaemia, the Irish Centre in London, The Irish Massage Therapists Association and the Connemara Marathon. She also does presentations for local charities and businesses and onsite massage services in the corporate and charity sector. Recently, she was on duty in the film studios in An Tulach when the film Na Garda was being shot.
She also treats people with special needs, working in Tigh Nan Dooley in Carraroe and with the Brothers of Charity in Casla. Treatments such as head massage and reflexology are very effective for people with Down Syndrome as they assist in relaxation, says Norah.
“I have one man with Down Syndrome who gets his feet done and then he goes outside and smokes his pipe,” she says.
Doing this sort of work in Connemara has brought huge fulfilment to Norah. As a child, Leitir Móir was central to her life, as the family travelled there from London three or four times a year. She knew from the age of seven that she wanted to move to what she regarded as home. The link was strengthened when her parents returned to Connemara 15 years ago. And it was around that time she met her partner, a local man who moved to London to be with her, before they eventually settled in Galway.
When she began training in complementary therapy Norah realised that she had to have a strategy for returning. That meant working in England until she earned enough money to set up in business in Connemara.
In fact, she was so well prepared that she able to start work the day after she arrived in Leitir Móir. She set up in a fully-equipped treatment room beside her house and business has expanded steadily since then.
For more, read page 25 of 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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