Pro-active approach to health

As the New Year really takes hold, Nicola Corless spoke to energy healer Michael O’Doherty about plexus bio energy, the need for healthcare reform, taking responsibility for one’s own health and the silent impact of the recession on the body.

Doonbeg man Michael O’Doherty believes in the Sudanese proverb, “health is a crown worn by the well and seen only by those who are sick”. According to the former prison officer from West Clare, health is what matters most and, over the past decade, the excesses of the Celtic Tiger has left its scars; some people got scratched, while others got mauled.
“Over the last 20 years, we have lived in this country and in the world, in a very hurried vibration and we have enjoyed the fruits of the boom but now we are seeing the health problems associated with that. The amount of business people we see coming into our clinics with back problems, depression, panic, digestive problems, headache or chronic fatigue. These are all people who would have been regarded as having plenty of money but yet are suffering as a result of the way they have pushed themselves over the last 20 years,” he claims.
“We have to come out of this recession with our health and I believe we need to educate society to understand that for anybody today losing a job, it is often like the diagnosis of a serious disease. It has the same impact as a death in the family because they are in a situation that is new to them. Many have mortgages up to the hilt, they have a family, they might even have a sick child. How do they cope with the stresses and the strains of that?” he continues.
Society, Michael answers, needs to try to find ways of learning to relax, something that can be as simple as doing breathing exercises or getting out and walking.
According to Michael, it is not just business people who are coming to his clinic feeling the pain of the recession, it is young people too, many of whom have never before experienced job loss.
“When you are told you haven’t a job or you are told that there is no work out there for you, you have two choices; one, you stay and become part of the dole system or two, you emigrate and try to seek better work and a better job for yourself and a better future for yourself. Many people will do that and that is the saddest thing about it. The emotional trauma around that is very negative,” he outlines.
“The emotional impact of losing a job or emigrating is that people are going to feel stressed, they are going to feel down, they wonder what is going to happen next,” he says.
To help people overcome this trauma, family support is vital, Michael believes, but so is education.
“We need to educate them to understand how the body reacts to that in the form of tension and depression and anxiety. Do we want them to go down the road of taking anti-depressants? I believe not. I just think we need to create programmes where we can get to these kids and begin to educate them. Even if it is only a weekend and this is what we try to do, you take people in and explain to them how trauma at any level impacts upon the system in a specific way, back pain, headaches, tiredness, depression,” he explains.
According to Michael, the recession is taking a heavy toll on people’s physical and mental well-being.
“We don’t have a vision. There is no vision being created for young people in this country. Our Government lacks hope, it lacks vision and, while there is that economic problem there, we still need to deal with the human side. The human side is the emotional mental health of our society.
“The only way we can deal with that is by creating programmes which teach people how to deal with emotional trauma, to teach them techniques to release emotional stress, to teach them breathing techniques and to teach them the importance of exercise. What we don’t need is people becoming alcoholics out of it. We don’t need to see a complete generation of our most intelligent people immigrating and that is what is going to happen, unfortunately,” he continues, adding “if you are 25 or 55 and you experience a trauma, if you know what to expect from it, understand what is happening, then it is easier for you to avoid the pitfalls.”
An individual, pro-active response is vital to overcome any health problem, mental or physical, he says.
“For people who are ill, it is important that they have some perception or vision of themselves recovering because the body takes that onboard. When you have a condition for five, 10, 15 years, every morning you wake up and it is there ahead of you. Your brain programmes itself around that so what we have to try to say to people is that working with the energy helps to rebalance that but then we have to teach them that what they think and what they feel has a direct effect on their body,” Michael explains.
Every trauma, no matter what it is or when it occurs, has an effect on a person’s well-being, although this may not manifest itself for several years, Michael believes.
“Everything a mother experiences while she is pregnant, the child experiences. If a mother goes through shock, trauma and stress when she is pregnant, the child experiences that also. If a baby is born under duress, no matter what type of duress it is, that child’s system responds like you or I. What we are seeing is that that stress is manifesting often in the likes of digestive problems, sleep problems or colic-type problems. We are seeing that the stress of the birth can have a direct effect, not just in the immediate future, but I believe that there are implications for further down the road to possible health problems. Let’s be honest about this, medical doctors will tell us today that if you leave a child out in the sun and it gets sun-burnt badly, what will happen that child 20 or 30 years later, he could get skin cancer. What we know is that something that you experience today can have effects 15 or 20 years down the road. So it is not implausible to suggest that a negative experience a child might have at birth or afterwards can manifest itself as a problem down the road,” he suggests.
Michael believes that there should be greater research into the impact of childbirth and types of childbirth on children.
“The medical system is doing a fantastic job in ways but it is under tremendous stress and strain but I do believe that if you have a weakness in the foundation of your house, you have a crack all the way up. I do believe that any degree of shock or stress or trauma that a child may experience at birth for whatever reason, even if it was a necessary trauma, I still believe the implications need to be addressed, we can’t just dismiss them,” he adds.
He believes there is a need for an urgent reform of the health service. The Irish health service is overstretched and under-resourced for what is required from it, he says.
Michael thinks there should be greater choice for people in terms of their healthcare. He wants people to be able to choose to get treatments that are outside the realm of mainstream medicine under the national healthcare system.
“I suppose we are at that point in life or in evolution or in society where people need to have more choice. I heard that in the UK they can no longer afford anybody coming into the National Health Service. What they have done in the UK is they have created National Health Choices. I believe that is what we need to do here in this country.
“I believe our Government needs to create more choice for people and let these options and practitioners be monitored and worked through the national health system here. I have no problem with that and to look at the value of other therapies out there and how they can help people with the problems that exist today with regard to health and how that can reduce the cost of healthcare to the State, particularly now when we are in recession and the health bill is phenomenal,” he states.
“The health bill and the cost of the national health system is phenomenal and can no longer be afforded and I believe the time has come when we need to provide choice but what I really feel we need to provide is education for people. We need to make people responsible for their own health. We need to get into our schools and educate children. We need to educate parents about the importance of diet, about the importance of taking time to relax and teaching their children how to relax,” he concludes.
Michael O’Doherty released Just Imagine, A Life Without Illness, late last year. The book looks back on the past 20 years, the development of his clinics, the practice of plexus bio energy and some of the people he has helped along the way. Among his plethora of well-known clients is Lord of the Dance, Michael Flatley, soccer player, Gary Kelly and former Clare hurler and Waterford manager, Davy Fitzgerald.