The Irish College Conference

We were delighted with the turnout with 45 people signing up. Many of the attendees there had already done a course with the College and some new people too.

We were delighted to have Sarah and Hara offer workshops alongside the Irish tutors and practitioners.

It was a very full schedule with a variety of workshops and experiences on offer, from our opening ceremony with Dr Noirin Ni Rian and an Irish water blessing and sound baths, voice work, drumming, healing story workshops, kirtan and song sharing and reconnecting to our Irish indigenous songs - it was very powerful indeed!

We were very happy with the venue and location and received some wonderful feedback from the participants.

Thank you all for your support and encouragement.

We hope to run it again next year.

I recently attended the Irish sound healing conference in Co. Clare, Ireland and I want to share my deep gratitude to the team who led the event. In particular to Lucia, Jane, Clare and Katie and of course to Cait. What an experience! It was very different to the UK conferences I attend each year. Equally wonderful, but really different. We were all together in every workshop and ceremony. There were no parallel sessions, like we have at our CoSH and Transpersonal Psychology conferences, so we were immersed together in the energies of sacred sound and together we were taken on a very different journey to any I’ve shared before.

There was some really deep work happening in the spaces between and within us. Through experiencing sacred sound as an agent of healing, nurturing and transformation we were carried between so many realms of being and different emotional states. Among many powerful and wonderful experiences, we explored the energies of grief, loss, remembrance and renewal, for our ancestors, for ourselves and for the lost language, people and lives of Ireland.

I really wanted to share something of this experience with you, my spiritual communities, as it has had a profound effect on me. As some of you know I am currently an Ordinand in the Interfaith Ministry with One Spirit Interfaith Foundation (OSIF) and will be ordained on 26th July, in just a few weeks time. So I am currently deep into the alchemical process of this journey of ordination. What I had understood to be a wonderful weekend gathering of sacred sound practitioners and then a holiday touring Ireland, was actually transformed for me, by the power of these sound healing practices, combined with my ever deepening spiritual path and prayer practice, into a transformational pilgrimage.

At this point I wish to briefly explain what I have discovered to be the real meaning of prayer. It is a game changer! I have learnt that it simply means keeping the lines of communication open, alive and vibrant between me and my own particular notion of the Divine, or Holy Love, as I like to call the Cosmic Consciousness. It is most powerful and effective if done daily. As often as possible, I find. Particularly if I start each day with my own nature based communion. I feel it is this connection to, communication with and openness to the sacred in each moment and in every thing that allowed this holiday to become so much more.

This was my first visit to Ireland, and I travelled with my husband, who is very unwell and whom I care for. We had wanted to visit Ireland for a long time, and it is challenging for me to find people to support him when I go away, so it seemed like a wonderful opportunity to see Ireland together. But I was totally unprepared for the profound effect that the sacred sound, and Ireland herself, would have on me.

My workshop was the last one of the weekend, and followed after the only other one that morning - “The importance of indigenous approach to sound healing”, by Cait Ni Riain, a very talented singer and facilitator. During this workshop Cait spoke about the importance of using the indigenous language and practices of the land where we live in our sacred healing work. I am in total alignment with this and was intending, synchronistically, to share some Welsh language chants that I had written, as I live and connect to the earth in Wales.

During Cait’s workshop we were learning to sing, in Irish, part of a very powerful and deeply sad, traditional Irish folk song. This brought up a lot of grief in the participants, who shared some of their losses, because their families’ land, homes, family members and language had been lost, stolen or destroyed by the English who colonised Ireland in the past. There was so much grief, loss and trauma in the room.

I was deeply moved by this, as well as by the power of the Irish language itself, moving within me, as we sang the words in a tongue I had never heard or sounded before in my life. I was astonished at the depth of sorrow and waves of painful but beautiful, sacred emotions that flooded my being, as the Irish sounds resonated in my being, as I heard people’s stories and listened to Cait sing the entire song through for us. Her voice was incredible, carrying all of the meaning, potency and grief of a culture and country raped by the British so many years ago. I felt the wonder of the healing taking place in the space, as elements of this language were being restored to the consciousness of the people after so long. It heightened for me the importance and preciousness of each unique language, culture and landscape that together contribute to making the earth and its global community so rich and varied.

Following on after this intense experience with my own workshop was one of the most challenging things I have ever done as a holder of sacred space. But during the ceremony, as we reconnected to the Holy Love within each of us, to the Divine Feminine in creation; breathed sacred air and shared sacred breath together; blessed the sacred waters of our oceans and rivers together; and sang and drummed our love, gratitude, healing and appreciation to the earth, I can see now that it enabled us to begin to ground and centre again, after a really powerful and special weekend. One that I won’t forget.

After the conference my husband and I left on our trip around Ireland in our little campervan. Over the coming days, as we marvelled at the variety and beauty of the landscapes, I also noted all the shrines and altars, monuments and sacred spaces dedicated to the Catholic deities of Mary and Jesus and also, importantly, to those who lost their lives fighting to save Ireland and its culture from the invaders. I stood and honoured their courage and their pain, moved by my new connection to the depth of those losses. I stopped and prayed at many of the sacred spaces dedicated to Mother Mary, the mother of love, the mother of sacrifice and of suffering, and I began to understand something of the unique relationship that the Irish have to this beautiful face of the Divine Feminine.

I had not had a good relationship with the Catholic Church before this trip. But after praying and reflecting at the Mary shrines, in the Atlantic ocean and Irish Sea, by a wildflower meadow in the Glen of Aherlow and on the banks of a river in the Monastery City of Glendalough, I began to feel, understand and really appreciate the enduring love people have both for the land of Ireland and for Mary, the Mother of Mercy, the Holy Queen.

I also have been held by the Divine Mother in my pain. I too have turned in my suffering to God and received his/her blessing and love. I have always known that we are never alone in our darkest moments. Knowing that we have a loving, tender, compassionate mother, who understands our losses, our pain and our trials, and who can and does hold us through our suffering is deeply comforting.

But after this weekend, this trip and this personal pilgrimage, after my training as an Interfaith Minister, and my years as a Sound Healer - KNOWING THAT WE CAN ALSO BE THIS FOR ONE ANOTHER - that is truly inspiring.