[00:00:00] Geraldine Hennessy: Can you explain what craniosacral therapy is and how it works?

[00:00:04] Sara Devoy: So I’m often asked, what is craniosacral therapy? And for me, I just love to say that it’s all about settling the nervous system. And in a way, some people say, Oh, is it just for babies? Do you just deal with mother and babies? And not at all, because, well, we’ve all been babies for sure at one time or other in our lives, but also we’ve all had a nervous system and that nervous system formed way back when at the very moment of our conception, we were all nervous system and we were growing and shaping and being formed biologically, but also by our environment that we were being impacted by. So. It’s a big territory craniosacral and it blends very much with my personal interests and passions and research that I’ve done a lot in pre and perinatal awareness and health.

[00:00:55] Geraldine Hennessy: So you mentioned it there about some of the work that you do, but what are the different types of work that you do?

[00:01:00] Sara Devoy: Yes. So very simply. To come back to that first question, craniosacral therapy is a gentle touch body work that can work in many different levels for people. A client might typically come along and say, gosh, I’ve got these annoying headaches and backache or I haven’t got over COVID or digestive imbalances, hormonal problems, or whatever, all kinds of things, or they might come with a crying baby.

So it’s quite a wide spectrum of needs that craniosacral can address. And I have different approaches available. So it may be somebody may come for what I call a pure craniosacral session, which may be some time to talk and be with what’s present. And also, a body work session, which is fully clothed, lying on a table and addressing certain, shall we say, listening places in the body.

And we’re supporting the body to unwind, to deeply relax. And I think you just experienced that yourself.

[00:02:04] Geraldine Hennessy: I did. Very relaxed. Yeah. Very hard to focus now on asking questions, but anyway.

 You do various different types and you work with adults as well as children.

[00:02:14] Sara Devoy: Yes. So I work with pure craniosacral if you like, but because of my passion and interest, I have a particular interest in the early moments of our life.

And I’m talking about way back into conception time. And I work with people who are looking to have babies. So we work with maybe clearing the path for those who are having conception challenges, people who’ve experienced loss. So there’s so many different phases of life, aren’t there? And the whole process of pregnancy and prenatal bonding is a beautiful thing.

And pre and postpartum, or even for people who haven’t become parents or don’t intend to become parents. Maybe there’s other things going on in their lives that they’re open to addressing. Okay. And sessions will look different if I’m doing a more baby therapy thing. It may look like a madhouse in here.

There’s certainly, I don’t know too many seven year olds that like to lay on a table for a period of time in relative silence. It’s called integrated baby therapy. It’s a lot of gobbledygook words. But effectively, the session is led by the child. A classic one might be, my child doesn’t want to go to school. They don’t like school. I can’t get them out of bed in the morning. Will you fix my baby? Please fix my baby! And I think people have a notion, perhaps, and I have to make it quite clear that I’m not going to be putting them on that bed, pinning them down like a butterfly and pressing points on their brain to make them go to school.

That is not going to happen. But I’m very open with the skills and trainings that I’ve had to integrate different skills. We might look at, okay, so your child has a lot of unmet needs and is displaying certain behavior. And maybe we need to find a way to listen to that and to perhaps find playful ways to be around that.

Yeah. So we can talk about examples A classic, most beautiful one. It’s a very touching one, so I’ll try not to cry. Okay. So the child comes in, I don’t want to go to school, whatever. So the mother’s sitting there and in this particular case, the dad came as well and he wasn’t even sure if he wanted to play with anything and we have a tent and we have a tunnel and we have different things and he was quite clinging to start with to his parents at seven.

And then eventually he got into the tent. Okay. And it was just such a beautiful moment when it came to him going into the tunnel. We weren’t saying, you have to go in the tunnel or you must go in the tunnel, but he came to the point that he thought that, oh yeah, maybe I’ll try this tunnel. And I’m talking about a seven year old.

He actually shouted out to his dad, I can’t do this. I can’t get out of here. And yep, his birth history was a C-section baby. It was an emergency C-section, and he hadn’t actually managed to do that final part of the birth canal for all kinds of reasons. And so, in that moment, I had my, what I call my pre and perinatal glasses on, and I said to the mom, I said, Luke, He is able to get out of that tunnel.

He’s strong. He’s able. He’s now seven, but he may be just experiencing a memory. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. And so we were all a bit in tears. We were holding the moment, wanting to support him. And I said to dad, oh, how would that be if you give him something to push off? Dad was right there and dad gave him something to push off with his hands and it was like we were really saying you can do this honey.

You’re strong. You’re able and he actually managed to shunt out of this tunnel himself, okay, into his mom’s arms. But he just readed his birth. To say it in plain, he was doing an action replay and he just got a little bit stuck on that particular point. Mm hmm. And he just needed to renegotiate it. So there’s these kinds of scenarios, right?

 You could say birth games. So that’s the kind of thing that can happen in a, you could say it’s a play therapy type session, but we’ve got that extra awareness and holding, with understanding the history and looking at the way that the child is responding.

[00:06:38] Geraldine Hennessy: Was it a good experience so for him then in the end?

[00:06:41] Sara Devoy: Oh was a huge release. And it was just understanding that he might need to do that a hundred times. With some situations, and there might be sibling rivalry going on or difficulties in the family like that. So, it might be that one person never gets their voice or the other one is being too dominant or something like that.

So in a therapy situation, it might be that child just needs to make sure that they stand on the table or they shout a lot. And we want to really welcome that because let’s face it, we live in a world that it’s not really acceptable to shout.

[00:07:17] Geraldine Hennessy: Give them the opportunity…

you

[00:07:18] Sara Devoy: know? So we just explore what is that nurturing need that they absolutely need.

[00:07:24] Geraldine Hennessy: And how did you become involved in this type of therapy?

[00:07:26] Sara Devoy:

Yeah, that’s a nice question, Geraldine. In a way, this is a full circle moment for me. Okay. Because way back when, before most people were born, back in the 90s, I did a therapy. I trained in a therapy originally, a holistic therapy called polarity therapy.

And, I was probably the only person in Cork City doing therapy, apart from a few massages and a couple of acupuncturists. There wasn’t many other people around. But it wasn’t the time for me. I needed to do something different first and probably have my lovely three children as well before I was in a way ready to be a therapist.

So it took me a time. It took me a long time part of life’s journey, but always in the backburner since the 90s, I knew that there was something else that I needed to explore, and I was working on that experientially for myself, and I have to say, it wasn’t until my mother died, that I really came full circle, and knowing that this was what I absolutely needed to be doing.

[00:08:28] Geraldine Hennessy: Okay. It was just one of those kind of lightbulb moments- that this is what I need to do, is it?

[00:08:32] Sara Devoy: It totally was. I’ve always been, I should say, a spiritual person right the way down to when I was a young person. I’ve probably been doing yoga since I was 10 and ended up doing world religions and anthropology and all of that at university.

So I always have a strong sort of spiritual streak, but it was that question of purpose And I’m sure I relate to other people on the podcast as well of what am I supposed to be doing with my life essence, my potency, like I was trying this and trying that and not sure exactly what it was. And now sitting here now with you, I really feel this is who I am.

I need to live this and express this and share that with others.

[00:09:16] Geraldine Hennessy: And how does craniosacral therapy differ from other forms of body work or massage therapy?

[00:09:21] Sara Devoy: Hmm. Uh, that’s a big question as well. I guess the primary thing for me, and what really drew me towards craniosacral therapy, is the idea that health is always present in our bodies.

And I can give you very clear examples of this that are so tangible to me. And right now I can really feel it in my hands. So, in a way, some therapies may be more orientated. And my father was a doctor, my mother was a nurse. There might be that allopathic need to fix people. Whereas this is very much about how can we allow the body’s potency to find balance and to, you could say realign itself and to express itself more fully.

So it’s more about not so much what’s wrong with me, but what’s right with me. And how can I find that? How can I allow my life force to flow like a river, to move like an ocean, to blow like the wind? What would that be like if my body and soul was expressed with that great freedom of being.

[00:10:28] Geraldine Hennessy: It was actually one of the parts that I found different when I was taking part in the session there was you were saying about what, what part of your body does it feel good and as opposed to always focussing on the negative.

Yeah. You’re focusing on the positive side of it. Yes. And that kind of stuck with me actually when you were doing it. It’s nice to focus on the positive sometimes as opposed to always on the negative.

[00:10:52] Sara Devoy: It totally is. And this is quite a strong example, but I’ve had the good fortune to work with a few people with very critical illnesses, in fact, a very close friend of mine who had motor neuron disease.

And it was such a gift. I was so pleased and I’m still so pleased to this day to have had these skills Because I was able to hold her body and to feel oh Okay, my best friend is actually dying. Sorry. I didn’t expect to be so emotional about it of course, it’s relatively recent, but I was holding her body. And I felt this is a gift to her body.

She could feel the connection between us. She couldn’t speak. We could just see each other. And I could feel the life force was still very present in her body. So my job wasn’t to take away her ailment, but to be really fully present with her and to feel that expression. And there was joy in those moments together.

[00:11:47] Geraldine Hennessy: Must have been a lovely moment of connection between the two of you.

[00:11:50] Sara Devoy: Totally. So that word connection is so key. Like how can we connect with our body in whatever state it’s in and know that it’s always seeking health. It’s always seeking the very best configuration possible in that moment.

[00:12:06] Geraldine Hennessy:  And what role does the mind body connection play in craniosacral therapy?

[00:12:09] Sara Devoy: My understanding is that we have somatic memory, body memory, and that even when we were in utero, and not every craniosacral therapist has the passion that I have for the pre and perinatal period, but it’s very well established that we do have memory and body memory, and so that’s pre verbal memory.

And sometimes we don’t know why we’re a little bit prickly about being touched on our right shoulder, or we really don’t like it around certain areas of our body, but sometimes these are birth memories. And sometimes we touch our bodies in certain ways when we’re speaking. And we might touch our chest, we might touch our, you know, the temples, or we might feel a bit compressed.

We say, Oh, I just really feel uptight. And these might actually be pointing to early memories from when we did feel a bit restricted. We did feel a bit limited in some way.

[00:13:06] Geraldine Hennessy: And what are some common misconceptions about craniosacral therapy that you encounter?

[00:13:12] Sara Devoy: I guess the biggest one is that I’m going to find a magic button and I’m going to stop your baby crying.

Yeah. Or something like that, that it’s going to be a quick fix. And. like most therapies, it’s quite a reflective process and that people that would come to me often one session they may come for, but if people are interested in a deeper dive, they can see that it’s more of a companionship. We’re working together and perhaps the biggest thing that people would think is that I’m going to fix them.

Whereas in a way we work together with that. Okay. And that’s the exciting thing and relating it to the nervous system. Once again, we need to be in companionship to heal. It’s a bit like that feeling of being, hopefully that doesn’t happen to any of us, but being on an airplane and worried we’re going to crash.

We’re like the deer in the headlights. Is this going to happen? And of course we look to the air hostess. Oh, she’s okay. So I can regulate myself. I can calm down now. Okay, if she’s okay, then I’m okay. And so that’s a parallel for this work. Okay. I feel something in my body. I feel stressed, but Sarah’s feeling okay.

And the system then starts to homogenize, if you like, our systems calm together. And that’s part of the magic is we tend to settle in relation to others.

[00:14:39] Geraldine Hennessy: And after a session, obviously your client will feel a certain way. Do you feel a certain way?

Sara Devoy: I do

Geraldine Hennessy: Do you feel tired. How does this experience reflect on you as a person?

00:14:48] Sara Devoy:

I have to say it’s the most mindful or heartful moments of my day. And I find it extremely settling. Because if I’m in kind of action mode, I’m going to fix this person mode. The person’s going to feel that compressive force, they’re going to feel my tension. And if I’m working on someone’s lower back, for example, and I’m feeling a little tension, I say, Oh, come on, Sarah, how’s your lower back feeling?

Isn’t it time that you breathed into your lower back? So, it’s very much a kind of a mutual process that if I get into doing… it’s not going to work.

[00:15:26] Geraldine Hennessy: Okay, okay, fair enough.

[00:15:27] Geraldine Hennessy: Craniosacral therapy can address a wide range of physical and psycho emotional traumas, illnesses and conditions.

Can you give us some examples of these and how craniosacral therapy helps alleviate them?

[00:15:38] Sara Devoy: Yes, I guess with every single case, Geraldine, there’s so many layers to each one of us.

So perhaps the easiest one would be to say I experienced wonderful benefit from craniosacral myself. And when my father had died, I didn’t know that there was a body mind connection. I just thought there was a problem with my back. So I was in my twenties and I went to a craniosacral person. I said, yeah, there’s this horrible feeling and it’s right here and it’s right behind my shoulder blades.

 And I feel it when I do this, and I feel it when I do that, and it’s so tight. And she was very kind and very gentle, but she said, you know what, it’s not really your back. There’s more of you than your back. And she was very gentle and very kind. And I went to her for a number of times.

And there was a number of other issues that I had as a result of this tension, right the way down to, uh, I think it’s probably useful to say, I wasn’t menstruating, I stopped menstruating at that time, all around the grief of my father, and I thought it was all to do with my back, but when I’d gone through this process of experiencing the benefits of the craniosacral, the connection and trust with the therapist as well, believe it or not, my period started coming back, my back softened, my heart had opened.

I had to grieve a lot for my father, so that was important, to see the layers that can be held in any place. Of course, sometimes it’s literally like your neck is in a pickle, and let’s give it a stretch, but sometimes there’s layers and layers to it all. To keep it really tangible, the thing I love about craniosacral is that it is actually dealing with the nervous system. And this thing that everyone’s talking about nowadays, they’ve cottoned on to this vagus nerve thing, right? And the vagus nerve does exist. It’s real. It’s buzzing. It’s alive.

And it tends to innervate a lot of the important areas of our body. It comes right here from our brain stem, particularly down on that left side. And it comes down. It comes right through our heart. It comes right the way down into our digestion. And part of what the nervous system is doing all the time. It’s checking. Am I safe? Is it okay to let go? So if we go back to the tigers running in the jungle or we’re chasing tigers, that’s when our nervous system fight and flight mode is on it’s not really the time when you’re going to be resting and digesting. You’re not going to be having a picnic when you’re chasing a tiger. Yeah. So isn’t it possible that your bowel might be a bit constricted and tight during that time?

And so working with the vagus nerve… when I say working with it, we might do that with lots of different ways, but holding and being present to key areas in the body where that nerve passes through. Inevitably in a session, we might hear bubbling and gurgling and stuff like that going on.

And that’s quite interesting. And how does that impact people’s life? They might sleep better. They might digest better. They might feel happier. And there might be a bit more of an oxytocin flow. Okay. Okay.

[00:18:50] Geraldine Hennessy: And your expertise in the pre and perinatal period is notable. How do early experiences during this period impact our somatic memories and overall health and happiness?

[00:19:00] Sara Devoy: Our pre and perinatal life to me is a gorgeous time. Just to remember that the same heart was beating that we have now when we were four weeks in utero. So if there was an element of shock, little detail, I sometimes ask when people come, I say, was your conception easy? So they have a choice to tell me, Oh my gosh, my mom was in a right old situation at the time. She had support. She didn’t have support. I think they were expecting a boy and I came along or whatever. And all of that I feel is highly relevant. It feeds right into our early beliefs about ourselves. Maybe we spend our life not wanting to be seen because we’re not quite sure whether our family had capacity for us.

And that is something that we can just gently be with. We may have been shocked when we actually came into the world and that may have a habit of repeating and repeating until we actually have time to acknowledge and address it. And there’s always time to repair things. That’s the most gorgeous thing.

Um, again, it’s probably, easier to speak personally, but I can tell you that I didn’t really bond and connect with my mother until she actually was dying in my arms. Which sounds crazy, but actually it was the most joyful thing for me to be present with her at that crucial moment.

[00:20:30] Geraldine Hennessy: So do you feel that moment, I suppose, when your mother passed away, has been pivotal to you moving forward now?

[00:20:37] Sara Devoy: Totally. Okay. Totally. Yeah, for me personally, my mother’s death was a new birth for me. Because we really connected. I feel, as strange as that might sound, that I was, trying to connect with myself and who I was and my purpose and my passion probably for most of my life. So I was a late developer you could say in some ways but I thought what is it that I’m supposed to be doing and somehow it all clarified as I was present but as my mother was there resting in my arms and we had tremendous support locally from GPs and everybody else.

But it was just so right. It was so right. You can tell by the accent, I was born in England. My grandmother comes from County Clare. Okay. This is why I’m here. Okay. Okay. And everything came together in that moment.

[00:21:26] Geraldine Hennessy: Okay. You’ve got your purpose.

[00:21:28] Sara Devoy: Yes. Like I was home. My mother was home.

 It couldn’t have happened anywhere else. It happened here in Ireland. It happened right here in my home. Oh gosh, lovely, yeah. And right the way down to the place that I do my sessions in was actually built with a view to her coming to live here. And that actually didn’t come to pass, but it’s a great blessing that she blesses this space.

[00:21:50] Geraldine Hennessy: Can you describe what a typical craniosacral therapy session looks like?

[00:21:54] Sara Devoy: Yes, I can. It may take many forms though, and it can also work online. So, I don’t know if there is such a thing as a typical thing. And as I have a few other modalities, perhaps I should expand into that as well. One of my real passions is thing called birth recovery.

 And we can do that in many different ways. It may be an adult wanting to recover from their own birth, or it may be a mother seeking to recover from the labor that she endured. It may have been something that she hadn’t expected to happen to her body, feelings of great powerlessness, or whatever happened.

And these things tend to plague us, despite having perhaps, hopefully, a healthy, beautiful child. We may still have unwanted thoughts about what happened to our bodies and we may need to just clear the slate a little bit. So there’s a process that I do called traumatic birth rewind and it works brilliantly online.

So that’s something I love to share with people. So a session can look like that. An online session can be working with issues of anxiety and so forth in a very embodied way. So what does embodied mean? In a way, tracking exactly what’s happening in our body at any moment. A craniosacral session does sometimes involve a little walk by the river.

Because sometimes I say to people, you know what? Do we want to go in a room? Or do we need a little bit of nature to heal us first? And I have a unique space here where we walk together by the river. As we do, we tend unfold and unravel some of the story, what needs to be said, what needs to be let go.

And we might even spend ten minutes down by the river, if the weather permits, to just look at nature, be present, and to reflect how that is impacting our being. Then we come to the room. Then a person will probably lie on the table, covered by lovely warm blankets. They can lie on their side if they’re pregnant, or it feels easier.

Yeah, and in terms of what happens, it’s very unique, and It could be like a dear neighbor up the road who had an unfortunate accident or had a car crash and their body is held in extreme tension. They don’t even know they’re holding the tension. And just by allowing themselves to rest on the table, you can literally feel the sand is just sinking to the bottom of the glass.

There’s that ease. There’s that melting coming through. And this, I can say there’s one particular neighbor now coming in his early seventies and he found great relief from just the simplicity of the work. Non invasive. It’s extremely non invasive.

[00:24:45] Geraldine Hennessy: I suppose the simplicity is where the power is as well.

That’s what I felt like when I was doing it there. It was just, it’s very simple, but I knew what was happening. But at the same time, it was an unusual experience, even though you’re might just been putting your hands on me. It didn’t feel like normally what someone would be like if they were putting their hands on me, it didn’t feel like that.

Simple, but very powerful.

[00:25:07] Sara Devoy: Yeah, and I have to say I’m a little bit irreverent Geraldine. I know some people’s idea of therapy is a little bit serious. I’m going to have to go there and I’m going to have to bear my soul or talk about my childhood or, oh gosh, I couldn’t go through all that junk again.

Sometimes I feel it’s about finding the spark of joy. In fact, mostly I feel it’s about finding the spark of joy. Sure that happened to you. We don’t even need to troll through that, because it’s a body based therapy. Even if somebody had some horrendous scenes or scenarios, or was even in a war zone, whatever the situation, we can just be present with how their body is right now.

How can we track back to that health? And how can we find what I call oxytocin moments. Mm, mm, mm. And bring those in. Okay, okay.

[00:25:58] Geraldine Hennessy: Can you share a success story or case study where craniosacral therapy made a significant difference for a client?

[00:26:04] Sara Devoy:  From time to time, I have the wonderful opportunity of meeting people who want to go the long mile. And that is such a joy, because I met a lovely couple that was struggling. to have their baby, their first baby. And we were on the journey together with that.

And that is such a joy to see them at the other end now with their stunning, gorgeous little human being and all the flow and ebbs along the way. And in order to address that, we were looking at their history. What was blocking the way, did they have feelings about conception and all of that?

So, surprisingly, yes, it was about their health and their wellness and all those other factors, but it was about, okay, was there something in their prenatal history that might have been a kind of a difficulty? For example, looking, did their mother have miscarriages? Did anyone die? Was the things what we say in the field that might be influencing.

And on that pre and perinatal topic once again, isn’t it interesting, that the egg that actually we came from was resting not only in our mother, because the eggs of a female are fully present at five months of age in utero. That means that the egg that produced us was actually resting in our grandmother.

And I know my grandmother, bless her, was under a lot of pressure. I believe that we receive a little bit of those through the epigenetics. We receive a little bit of the anxiety, a little bit of the pressure. But we do have a choice. That’s the good news. To recognize it and say, Oh, that habit of being a busy bee all the time.

That isn’t actually my truth. That isn’t who I really am.

[00:27:52] Geraldine Hennessy:  And how do you customise treatments for individual clients?

[00:27:56] Sara Devoy: I guess I do my best to listen. Yeah. That is probably the key with all therapy. And really try and fine tune what is it that people want. Okay. So sometimes when people come I would ask them, could we spend a moment being with an intention and then what is it they’re really looking for is it that they want just to feel easier in that shoulder. And if it was easier in the shoulder, what would life be like. Try and open the door a little bit rather than just about fixing that. But what is it you’re really stretching into. What is it that would bring you joy?

[00:28:30] Geraldine Hennessy: Okay. And how do you integrate craniosacral therapy with other modalities or approaches in your practice?

[00:28:36] Sara Devoy: One of the very interesting things to integrate in my practice and I feel I need to name it as clients come along is something called aware parenting because I’m a mom, I have three wonderful human beings and we live in the countryside, fortunately, because they were full throttle at times and so bless the trees and the birds, they had a lot of screams and laughter and shouts and all of all of that.

So, when I meet a mom who is trying to stop her child crying, perhaps for me, so I can do my work, I have to press pause and say, you know what, it’s really interesting that your child’s expressing their feelings right now, but maybe they’re actually trying to show us something. And by looking at the way, if we’re talking about a very young baby, they don’t make random movements.

They’re not touching their nose in between their two eyes randomly for no reason. We think, oh, it’s because they want to sleep or they’re pulling their left ear, their right ear. Is it because they’ve got an ear infection? Maybe it is, but those movements are actually happening even when they don’t have an ailment.

They might be peddling their feet. They might be doing what’s called conducting in a certain kind of a way. If someone has a young baby, they might relate to that. So I create curiosity with the parents because I believe that the baby has memory and maybe memory crying. So rather than colic, they may be doing something to do with memory crying that we can really be present with and, and help them to heal from that.

[00:30:19] Geraldine Hennessy: So is it like a way of, I suppose, not just trying to fix the problem, maybe taking a step back and taking an overall look at it as opposed to just saying, Okay, you don’t want to just stop the child from crying. Maybe let’s just try and see. Is your child trying to say something else?

[00:30:34] Sara Devoy: I suppose we’ve got this idea in our culture that a good baby is a quiet baby. And my understanding that a good baby is a baby from the 60s like me that was put out in the garden. I was told, yep. I’m not really coming for you.

So you can just do your thing down there. And when I’m ready to feed you, I’ll bring you in. So was I a good baby or was I a child that was silenced? That’s the question. So I’m all about children expressing their feelings and their emotions in a safe way. I feel we have a right to do that. It’s our life force.

So even if a child is burning down the house, I don’t think that’s a bad child. I think that is a person that has a need to express and the mother listening to this might be saying, Oh my God, my child has obviously got a lot of needs and they really need to eat all that Nutella when I’m not looking and there’s all of that stuff, but there’s a playful way of being with that.

Okay. And I didn’t know about that at the time 24 years ago. I just discovered aware parenting and I love it so much I decided to become an instructor about two years ago. Okay. And it’s just an amazing thing to offer parents. How can we resource ourselves? How can we enjoy our kids a bit more?

Yeah. Because let’s face it, it’s hard enough.

[00:31:51] Geraldine Hennessy: It’s a struggle sometimes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Speaking from experience. Okay.

And if you could give one piece of advice to someone who wants to improve their overall wellbeing, be it physical or emotional, what would it be?

[00:32:04] Sara Devoy: Self compassion. Okay. Yeah, just, I don’t always do this.

I’m a human being, but just see if you can just catch yourself with a thought. And just be curious about it. Wow, I’m really giving myself a hard time. I’m hammering myself on the head. That I’m not good enough. I go to this gorgeous art class in Skibbereen. Amazing teacher, amazing crowd, but I give myself such a hard time in that art class.

So, it’s like catching ourselves in those moments and saying, okay, so there’s a really small part of me, perhaps that needs something right now and having an ongoing inquiry. How can I meet that need? How can I acknowledge and have compassion for that? And I’m talking about a really junior part of ourselves.

So it’s having a building up a relationship in a way, reparenting ourselves. Okay.

[00:32:57] Geraldine Hennessy: Okay, a very positive way to end the podcast, Sarah. So thank you, Sarah, for chatting to us in the Cork Creative Podcast. If you’d like to find out more about Sarah and her work, You can find links to her website and social media on corkcreative.ie