Deepening the Senses
Personal Development Workshops & Programs
Introduction
Deepening the Senses is an immersive, transformative experience, a space of exploration where we build connections and reconnect with our inner world and soul self.
It is a facilitated space of guided ritual, deep reflection, and learning. Deepening the senses is cultivated with care and honed over many years to create an intentional space where we cross into the inner realms, responding to the call of the soul, and drop down into the ‘subtle body,’ which speaks to us in the language of metaphor, symbol, and images.
The Deepening the Senses experience shares knowledge, skills, and resources from depth psychology, psychotherapy, philosophy, literature, and art with you in an accessible, practical, and creative way. It weaves a visceral tapestry of experience, incorporating embodiment practices, rich visual meditations on images, music, poetry, stories, Irish mythology, and songs, and memorable sweeping images and footage of the beautiful Irish landscape. Deepening the senses is intended as a voyage of soul and discovery, where we explore what Patrick Kavanagh, the Irish poet, called “the true Gods of sound and stone”.
Here, we can catalyse the change and transformation we need in our lives, expanding our understanding and experience of our inner world and soul selves.
-
The inner world is the realm of the unconscious—what Carl Jung called the Shadow. It is a deep reservoir of forgotten feelings, silenced thoughts, instinctual urges, and ancestral memories that dwell outside our everyday awareness. Though unseen, this inner terrain profoundly shapes our behaviours, choices, and sense of self.
Jung distinguished between the personal unconscious, composed of our unique psychic imprints, and the collective unconscious, a vast inheritance of archetypal images and mythic patterns shared across humanity. The unconscious reveals itself not in logical sequences but in symbols, metaphors, and dreams. These are the native language of the soul, a kind of mythopoetic grammar through which the inner world speaks.
The Shadow—often misunderstood as only dark—also holds the gold: our unlived potential, the vitality of our exiled selves, and the wild wisdom we once buried to belong. It is both wound and guide, guardian of the parts of us that await reclamation and integration.
The collective unconscious, meanwhile, offers a more primordial inheritance. Its archetypes—such as the Mother, the Hero, or the Crone—are ancient energies that shape how we dream, suffer, heal, and grow. These are not just symbols but living patterns, echoing across time and psyche, asking to be reimagined in our lives.
Deepening the Senses invites us into this inner world. It is a journey of listening inward, of standing at the threshold of mystery with reverence. Here, we begin to attune to the symbolic life, to re-enchant our relationship with ourselves, and to catch sight of the gleaming threads—long hidden—that call us toward greater wholeness.
What is Deepening the Senses?
Deepening the Senses is the overarching approach I have developed to support the journey of individuation—the lifelong psychological process of becoming more whole—through the lens of Jungian Depth Psychology and the ancestral wisdom of the ancient Gaelic world. It is a grounded and embodied path, rooted in sensory experience and shaped by the mythopoetic imagination.
This work is expressed through international one-to-one Depth Work, as well as personal development courses, programs, workshops, and retreats. It draws deeply from my background in Psychotherapy, Jungian Depth Psychology, and a lifelong engagement with Irish mythology, folklore, and Irish Heritage. I am a native Irish speaker, who grew up in the South Connemara Gaeltacht.
Depth Psychology Perspective in Deepening the Senses
Shaped by early wounds and the cultures we inherit, many of us exile parts of ourselves to feel safe, leaving us estranged from our inner life and true self. Jung called individuation the reclaiming of these suppressed aspects, bringing them into consciousness for deeper wholeness.
Deepening the Senses supports this journey through embodied ritual and mythopoetic practice, opening pathways to ancestral memory and symbolic life. Rooted in psychotherapy, Jungian depth psychology, philosophy, poetics, and the arts, it is further nourished by Ireland’s living heritage—its mythology, folklore, language, music, and landscape—woven into an immersive experience of soul.
When we listen to mythology, we step out of linear time into mythic time—a dreaming space where the psyche softens and symbols speak. This symbolic language allows us to become more attuned to our inner landscape, to the archetypal energies that shape our lives, and to the parts of ourselves that are calling for attention, healing, and renewal.
Through this work, we build a relationship with the imaginal and inner realms. We begin to re-enchant our connection to life and engage more intentionally with what within us is ready for transformation. In doing so, we may arrive—slowly, tenderly—at what Seamus Heaney once called “a new purchase on yourself.”
The Exile Within
There are times in life when we feel estranged from our truest self — when a quiet ache stirs in the soul, a longing that cannot be named. It is the ache of inner exile. As Kierkegaard once wrote, “I believe that there is a longing in my soul that searches the whole world.”
This is the call of the soul, beckoning us home — not to a place, but to a deeper sense of self, to the forgotten or forsaken parts of us that long to be seen, reclaimed, and re-membered.
It supports the journey of individuation by drawing on the wisdom and richness of the ancient Irish Gaelic world, opening a channel of memory that we traverse into the inner realm and the symbolic life.
The path of individuation is the slow stitching together of what has been scattered — our memories, our lineage, our inner instincts and knowings. In that stitching, we begin to ask: Who are my people? What are the stories I come from? Where is the ground of my belonging?
This journey often brings us to a threshold where the past is not gone but flowing quietly through us — through gesture, language, memory, and the very landscape of our being. In Deepening the Senses, we return to this ground, cultivating a felt sense of rootedness and soul belonging.
The ancient myths speak of exile and return — of setting out into the unknown and finding one’s way home changed. These are soul journeys. We are no longer who we were when we began. We return fuller, truer, more whole — not simply back to where we started, but deeper into the home within.
The Ancient Gaelic World
Deepening the Senses is an approach that is grounded and embodied, rooted in sensory experience. It supports the journey of individuation by drawing on the wisdom and richness of the ancient Irish Gaelic world, opening a channel of memory that we traverse into the inner realm and the symbolic life.
This is facilitated by ritual as well as a rich visual meditation informed by insights from the field of depth psychology, psychotherapy, philosophy, poetics, literature, and art. It interweaves Irish culture, history, mythology, folklore, music, language, and landscape into an experience of the soul.
When we listen to mythology, we step into a timeless, dreaming time, out of the rational concrete into symbolic life. This is the world of metaphor, symbol, and imagination. It softens our ability to be more receptive to our inner environment, the energies of life, and the archetypal patterns living through us.
Through this Deepening the Senses work, we build a relationship with our inner landscape, a re-enchantment with our inner lives, and an intentional engagement with what needs quickening, change and transformation to support us to return to a greater sense of self. In this way, we can arrive at some new understanding of ourselves, or what Irish poet Seamus Heaney called “a new purchase on yourself”.
-
I grew up on the West Coast of Ireland, in the south Connemara gaeltacht, a unique part of the world where Gaeilge, the Irish language, is the first language of the majority of people living there. I didn't learn English until I was five years old. It is a beautiful wild landscape of mountains, lakes and the Atlantic ocean, and Oscar Wilde famously said of the region, “Connemara is a savage beauty”. This region is famous for its rich Gaelic heritage.
It is a stronghold of Irish cultural continuity and indigenous knowledge. Renowned for its rich tradition, this region preserves a wealth of folklore, mythology, and ethnographic memory, including legends of the Otherworld and tales rooted in pre-Christian cosmology. It is a cradle of sean-nós singing—a highly ornamented and unaccompanied vocal tradition—alongside a living repertoire of traditional music, communal storytelling, and poetic expression. It has a rich culture deeply connected to the ancient Gaelic world. Many well-known writers, philosophers, and artists have visited Connemara over the years, some living for a time amongst the people, to be closer to its unique landscape and ancient rich culture.
Growing up there has enriched my own life. Listening to the ancient sean nós songs, stories, customs, myths, legends, and music was part and parcel of life so I feel fortunate to have had a childhood immersed in that rich culture, Landscape and ancient gaelic tradition.
Deepening the Senses is my desire to share that culture and spirit and, as a Psychotherapist, to support how that connection can nourish and guide you on your personal development journey of individuation to return to your sense of ‘home’ within.
Online Course Series
A Journey Inward
A Journey Inward is a series of online courses that explore the Self-Abandonment Wound and how to support yourself in healing the wound of unworthiness and embracing life—mind, body, and spirit.
A Journey Inward Courses
-
Embodiment, Soul and the Celtic Spirit
Healing the Wounds of the Abandoning Self
-
The Cailleach's Descent to the Underworld
Crossing the Dark Seas of Loss into Strange Country
-
Resting Under Brigid’s Mantle
Cultivating Sanctuary and Self Compassion in Daily Life
-
Awakening Bealtaine
Embracing Our Authentic Power
A Celebration of Granuaile -
Celebrating the Harvest at Lúnasa
Taking Your Seat at the Banquet of Life
-
The Great Mother
The Guardian of the Well
Nurturing a Relationship with the Great Mother Archetype - Embodying your Sensing, Intuitive, Soul Self. -
The Dark Mother
Entering the Sacred Grove
Encountering the Shadow in the Mother Wound -
Blessing the Waters
The Inner Child
Embracing the Inner Child - Cultivating the Great Mother Within -
Kindling the Fire
Reclaiming the Ancestral Story
Embodying Sovereignty & Agency - Honoring the Ancestral Lineage
NEW! Seasonal Program
Walking Between Worlds
Coming Early 2025
Are you yearning for a sense of meaning and belonging in your life? Do you wonder about the inner mysteries? Do you yearn for a deeper connection to your embodied self and the world around you? Do you desire to realize your wholeness, to know contentment in your body, so that you can open to life’s wonder and beauty? Are you drawn to learning more about ancient Gaelic Celtic culture, its folklore, ancestors, language, stories, and mythology, and experience how it can help you unearth your depths, personally and in the collective psyche, and awaken your inner wisdom?
These seasonal programs are developed to cultivate a sense of wonder and beauty. A deepening into the inner sanctum of the symbolic.
“As we look we feel the presence of a lost world. We are out of touch. We have no bridge on which to step across so many centuries.”
What Past Participants have said...