First prize: Help those less fortunate   An extraordinary Catholic priest in Australia, Father Bob Maguire, is running a competition with a top prize that ‘guarantees happiness.’  See: http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/nov/24/father-bob-offers-people-chance-to-win-happiness-guaranteed He is is offering a third-placed prize of five nights in a chain of high-end hotels, with the second-placed prize being five flat-screen TVs. However, it’s […]

Spring is hopefully just around the corner and so is a great prompt to introduce Horticultural Therapy to Hay Farm. We have such a beautiful setting here, with 12 acres of farm land, so it is perfect for those who feel that this therapy might help them. Horticultural Therapy is an active process which engages […]

The peace that passeth all understanding The Heart is the messenger of Life, I discovered that with my spiritual partner Carmel in the summer of 2005 while working on the creation of a new spiritual workshop in a small cottage on the wild and beautiful Beara Peninsula in West Cork, Ireland. We had been earnestly […]

Not so long ago Alcoholics Anonymous was regarded with condescension by many professionals working in the addiction field. A common view was that science-based techniques, like Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) had made the Anonymous Fellowships seem like a quaint and outmoded quasi-religious cult. At the same time, there were encouraging signs of scientific method being […]

The liver is the master organ and the recycling centre of the body. Amongst its many jobs it is responsible for eliminating harmful toxins, breaking food down into energy, manufacturing and disposing of excess hormones, producing bile, fighting infections, balancing blood sugar and storing nutrients. If our liver is functioning less than optimally or is […]

‘Natural recovery’ is a term used to describe recovery from addiction without the help of professionals. It’s a term that rather implies there’s something unnatural about the professional or even AA route. However, other terms that have been used are also problematic, given that they all embody an explanation of the phenomenon that is open to question. For example, Tuchfield (1981) was one of the first to describe what he called “spontaneous recovery”, although the recovery his alcohol dependent respondents described were generally the product of a sense of shame that had grown over a long period of time, even if the ultimate decision was sudden.

A man had been walking in the desert for so long that he could no longer remember where he came from. He was truly lost & without hope, and laid down in the sand waiting for death to take him.

Just then the figure of a woman emerged from the shimmering heat and took his hand. “Come with me” she said. She helped him to his feet and they walked for some time until they came to a village where she took him into her house. “You can stay here with me.”

The woman nursed him back to health and soon he was well enough to help her with the household chores. One day she asked him to go to the market and bring back food for their evening meal. “Gladly, but I have no money” said the man.

Can something so seemingly harmless and widely available really be so bad for us? The answer is yes. Sugar is not just bad for us; in reality eating too many refined sugars too often is one of the root causes of many of the chronic health conditions hitting new heights in western cultures including type […]

We have all experienced that deep sense of unfulfillment, that emptiness that is just crying out…screaming to be filled. In these seemingly dire circumstances, we immediately start working out new ways to fill ourselves once more, to fill this seemingly unbearable emptiness. The behaviour is familiar: find someone or something new to make a new […]

For a long time, when dealing with depression, psychotherapy has worked with the past and psychology has worked with the present to manage symptoms. More recently some therapies have begun to look into the future for a solution.