This week I chat with Niamh Gallagher – Niamh has many skillsets, she is a Reiki Master & Teacher, a Healing Practitioner, a Meditation Teacher, & Yoga Nidra Facilitator – but the qualification she lists that I like most of all is her listing of Life Experience! 

It is clear Niamh has faced challenges in her life, but she has also had the courage to explore what it all means and to explore the fictional version of life we are often sold by family, society, and popular culture. We can often be offered truths in our younger life that transpire to be fiction, or do not correspond to how our lives are going – and that can be detrimental to our sense of self, identity, and belonging. It can feel like the rug being pulled out from underneath you. And you are left alone to make sense of this adult version of life. This is what led Niamh to explore alternative medicines like Reiki to find support, healing, and renewed strength.  

TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• Do we have coping mechanisms for when life doesn't follow the idyllic life trajectory?
• Recognising life as a series of cyclical seasons, rather than one linear process 
• Niamh shares how family trauma and subsequent health problems led her to explore alternative medicines 
• How stress as a young child replayed out in her body in her twenties - the body remembers
• Reiki likened to a bubble of care, calm, and relaxation
• A spiritual connection to something Higher awakened a curiosity to question all aspects of her life 
• What does Reiki 'feel' like?
• Mirroring back one's 'Essential Self', not who we think we are supposed to be  
• Connecting body organs and illness to particular unresolved emotions in our body 
• Shift in parenting/teaching to be more honest with children and admit our mistakes
• The isolation of new motherhood - a traumatic, unsupported shift in life for mothers
• Where are the communities supporting new mothers? 
• "It takes a village to raise a child" .... so where is our village?!
• We all need to think creatively about how we can raise children and continue to participate in the workforce
• The penalties women pay once children come along 
• The silencing of so many of women's rites of passage throughout life - the tyranny of shame
• Reclaiming women's power and celebrating women's bodies 
• Caring work and healing work has been undervalued in society
• Reclaiming women's intuition and wisdom - validating our gifts and place in the world 
• A need to build a network of female support and mentorship 
• Important to honour the feminine and masculine within one body 

RESOURCES MENTIONED:
Niamh Gallagher's website: https://niamhgallagher.com/
Reclaim Leadership programme: https://niamhgallagher.com/reclaim/
Elizabeth Lesser: https://www.elizabethlesser.org/about
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