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I’ve packed a lot into this little life: a nurse (cancer care, Traumatic Brain Injury, mental health); a (PhD) doctor; a teacher; and a patient with a relapsing-remitting neuro-immune illness. Ironically, my PhD studied what it means to live trapped in a sick or disabled human body. How does that affect our mental state and our ability to keep plodding on through life, in the hardest of circumstances? Why does being sick or disabled also mean having to live on the margins of society, excluded from communities of able-bodied people?

When we are sick or injured, one of the first things we notice is that: ‘I don’t feel like myself.’ And both in my own experience and my experience of working with patients, this is the beginning of the crisis point. If the illness or injury doesn’t resolve in what we think of as a reasonable amount of time, we drift further and further from the person we are used to being. I found this to be terrifying, until I was able to come back to myself with acceptance that my expectations of life would have to be different. My work is all about holding up a lantern and guiding you back to yourself, listening to the signs and clues from your body at every stage of the process. I am just the therapist — your own body is the healer.

Being a patient is one of the most traumatic experiences of all my years. Illness has given me the deepest insight into the ways that a health crisis can upend our lives in an instant, and bring changes we had no opportunity to prepare for. My greatest lesson was the experience of losing my old self, and having to hold tight and trust in the wiser, less impatient, more grounded version of me that would emerge.

Systematic Kinesiology, Craniosacral Therapy, Plant Medicine/Herbalism and Japanese Reiki energy healing gave me the most supportive benefits. These are the therapies that I want to offer to you at Imbas Healing Northumberland. I am passionate about researching the types of chronic inflammatory and autoimmune illnesses that are ignored, misunderstood and dismissed by the medical profession. These include: endometriosis; Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME); neuroinflammation; neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinsons Disease, Alzheimers Disease and dementia; chronic migraine; rheumatoid arthritis; Multiple Sclerosis (MS); Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS); and Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) (hypermobility).

My Kinesiology training is certified by The Academy of Systematic Kinesiology, and I was taught by Zena Warburton of Vital Fours in Northumberland. I am always updating and adding to my kinesiology skillset through ongoing studies with the Classical Kinesiology Institute. I am also studying a five year Clinical Practitioner course in Herbal Medicine with The Plant Medicine School. I was initiated into energy healing in 2008 and have dropped deeper into this sacred practice throughout my adult life. I practise it with adults, children, animals, and places in need of healing. More recently I studied in the Usui Reiki tradition up to Reiki Master level.

The experience of caring for the dying gifted me the lesson that our own lives are best lived when we are in a community of mutual support with the people around us. Our ancestors knew that community is medicine, and I have in these middle years of my life been tracing my steps back to the Old Ways of my own ancestral and mystic Irish roots.

Finally, over twenty-five years of studying yoga, pranayama (breathwork), meditation and physical anatomy has given me enormous insight into the health and wellbeing of the body at the physical and energetic layers. A dear friend once described me as ‘a reader of the human psyche’. The junction where muscle, tissue, breath and the nervous system meet tells my hands all they need to know about patterns of health and disease in your body. These findings can be the beginning of the detective work that helps us get to the bottom of the physical, mental, (bio)chemical and energetic health issues (PMCE) that are weighing us down.