Welcome to the latest Mad In Ireland Fields of Healing podcast episode. It seems fitting that as we move into the time of Imbolg the time when ewes are pregnant with their spring lambs, that we are speaking to a sheep farmer and how he has integrated Social Farming into his family’s organic farm. I realise when talking with Matthew that the ‘social’ in the faming programme is key and can incorporated anything from weaving folklore into the names and traverses of the landscape to popping in for a spot of lunch to the local community centre.

Social farming provides a deep connection to the land and the seasons. It increases self-esteem and improves health and well-being on many levels.  The meaningful farm activities that allow people to participate in day-to-day farm activities are only one aspect of the experience.  The beautiful scenery, trips in the jeep, social connections, home cooking, and family welcome add a different level of expertise that is unmatched by any other opportunity, in Matthews's opinion.  Another aspect of social farming is the interaction with the local farming community. Participants can feel at ease and become part of the community while they are out on their placement.  It is a fantastic opportunity for people living in town settings like Dundalk, who usually wouldn't have the chance to work outdoors and be in nature.

Social Farming in Ireland has the potential to grow, transform and support the well-being of many more people across the generations, from teenagers seeking to leave school to older adults.  Matthew celebrated with social farming teenagers who reached important life milestones, and he recently had a lady participate in social farming on her 80th  birthday. Social farming has been proven to be effective for participants across a range of services, including intellectual disability, mental health, physical disability, addiction services, asylum seekers, long-term unemployed and at-risk youths.  

In this episode I am delighted to be exploring the place of the Irish language (indeed any indigenous language) as a field of healing. And no better a man to explore this than with Conor Ruadh, who along with many others is an activist in our reconnection with Irish language and culture. 

Considering language as a field of healing may at first seem strange. Yet within the language of healing and recovery in mental health, we often consider connection, identity, meaning, belonging and sense making as part and parcel of a recovering journey. In this conversation those concepts are central to the relationship between the Irish language and ‘being’. 

The limit of my language means the limit of my world  (Wittgenstein) 

This is a sentiment reflected in the work of many philosophers and communication theorists. Language gives meaning to our known world, who we are, making sense of ‘us’ in relation to ‘other’ creating cultural identity that grounds us in connection and shared meaning making. 

What if all of that is eroded, though colonial cleansing and post colonial shameful perpetuation of that cleansing by the new republic. And a new identity, new meaning making, cultural abys and a disconnect between environmental sense making and prescribed scripts of life replaced a transgenerational identity?

 Simple things, some languages do not have a word for ‘I’ as they only understand and reflect being as a collective. In English you are something specific, e.g. Mad. In Irish something would be ‘upon’ you, tá brón orm [sorrow is upon me], a temporal condition, rather than a branded meaning. 

If language shapes our world, then in Ireland our world is shaped by and through the lens of colonialism. And it is here we will first explore that impact and reality, before thankfully exploring where and how our own language can be a field of healing. 

This episode is slightly longer than usual, though there are two obvious themes, with the first 28mins about colonisation of language and by association a people and the remainder specifically looking at Gaeilge/Irish language as a field of healing. 

We could have conducted this episode through Irish, except the point of this exploration was not to push the Irish language itself, it was to realise the importance of its connection to healing and by its absence, some of the shared indigenous challenges in being human through the linguistic lens of ‘other’.

Welcome once again to Mad in Irelands podcast series ‘Fields of Healing’. This time around we visit the world of music and rhythm as a field or landscape of and for healing. Music is something that many people appreciate in its various guises and it has many forms. If we were to reflect on the impact of music on our lives, we might at the very least notice how different music evokes a range of emotional states; we might even feel that energetic drawback in time to a place when we liked a certain genre or listened to particular songs that remain with us today. We may not have considered the nature of music and rhythm generally as a healing field, yet since time memorial it has played a part in healing rituals. And within the broader eclectic paradigm of healing and how people can and do engage with music as part of their own healing journey, we visit that field. It is vast and at best we can give an Irish sample, in this case from two people who work within mental health services and outside of it, bringing their own version of music and rhythmic healing to the mental health field. We are speaking with Rory Adams, music therapist and Deirdre Howard, Community drum facilitator and hope your interest is peeked by our latest podcast.

We are delighted to be presenting this third episode of Fields of Healing where we discuss a healing field that is becoming more and more visible and popular within Irish healing circles. Shamanism is what many people might think of as something pagan and definitely something from ‘over there’, maybe South America or Siberia or Mongolia, not something Irish. Yes, it is something from ‘over there’ for sure, though more accurately something associated with indigenous healing practices in any part of the world. In Ireland, much of our traditional indigenous healing practices and even words have been disappeared. By various colonial usurpers, latterly by the catholic church and probably significantly influenced by the so called age of reason and science.

Of course, healing practices, medicine men and women, remained in folklore and to a large extent perhaps could only survive within this dimension until recent decades, where we have seen a huge increase in interest and practices grounded in our very own indigenous healing. Celtic shamanism has re-emerged within this development and even still, lost words and descriptions are slowly beginning to emerge that give meaning to these practices. For now, shamanism can and does offer a way of being that encompasses this old and contemporary spiritual holistic healing modality.

What is Family Constellations?

Although we attempt to answer this question in the podcast, to tweak your interest, a version or summary describing Family Constellations introduces us to the podcast and interviewees below.

Family Constellations is a therapeutic modality founded by Bert Hellinger, who spent many years as a catholic priest and teacher in a Zulu school in South Africa. In Family Constellations we explore dynamics and patterns that run through families. The focus is primarily on trans-generational trauma: how the events that affected our ancestors continue to have an effect on us. Our ancestors often had to deal with massive traumas: war, hunger, early deaths, extreme poverty, and the attitudes and strategies they developed to deal with those events can show up in our lives, where they are no longer helpful.

We are delighted to present this first ‘Fields of Healing Podcast’, literally from a field, with the potential to bring healing to many who otherwise may not have the opportunity. This episode is longer than a normal episode. It unfolds as a story that can be paused when the listener chooses and can easily, like a good book, be picked up again when you are ready. 

The background, purpose and public face of Kyrie Farm can be found on their website above. Here in this Podcast, we interviewed three people pivotal to how Kyrie Farm will evolve. John McKeon the founder of this initiative brings the vision and rationale for why Kyrie Farm will be relevant in mental health care into the future. Dr Eoin Galavan is the Services Director for Kyrie Farm and outlines the aspirations for creating a therapeutic farm and what at this stage of collaboration the service will be like. Ciara Glynn brings the voice of experience to all aspects of the services development, as Peer Advisor at Kyrie Farm.

This Podcast will be inluenced and brought to Mad in Ireland by a number of people from Mad in Ireland, in association with Dublin North, North East Recovery College. For this introductory episode Martha Griffin. Triona Byrne and Líam Mac Gabhann chat about their aspirations and plans for Fileds of Healing. Needless to say as the Mad in Ireland collective come to bear on the podcast, we will have  even broader fruitful aspirations. A Rumi poem comes to mind just now, Roughly speaking it goes like this. Somewhere out there beyond right doing and wrong doing there is a field, we will meet you there.