A FEW years ago a friend introduced me to the comforting delights of therapeutic massage. There’s nothing like a skilled masseuse getting their clever fingers into all your knotty, tense muscles and smoothing them out like silk.
Afterwards you feel like a new woman. At least, that’s the idea.
My massage experience has ranged from the sublime – a traditional Chinese massage in the red-light district of Amsterdam, where the therapist actually walked along my back, ironing out the tension with the weight of her body – to the bland and disappointing: your cranked-up shoulders are crying out for attention, but the therapist is inattentively stroking the underside of your knee.
Worst of all was a session at a Dublin salon where I was ushered into a stuffy cell by a masseuse who was streaming with a cold. The massage, which was brief and to the point, was punctuated by loud sniffs every five minutes.
But when massage is good, it’s very, very good, which is precisely why I keep returning to Bernie O’Donnell, the resident holistic therapist at Rathmullan House in Co Donegal.
O’Donnell is unlike any other masseuse I have encountered. While she offers a wide range of treatments, tailoring each session to whatever the individual wants, I find that the best thing to do is simply climb up on her couch and put myself into her magic hands.
There’s no pussy-footing about with O’Donnell: she gets straight to business, realigning, pummelling and manipulating stiff, recalcitrant joints and muscles into shape.
You never know where her fingers will alight next: an invigorating rub on the nape of your neck, a curious plucking sensation on the lower back, a firm sweep across the arch of your foot.
It is an intense experience, not for the faint-hearted. You really feel that she is getting into the deep mechanics of your body and returning them. But your reward, at the end, is a feeling of wonderful lightness and wellbeing.
O’Donnell has been at Rathmullan House for so long that she has become an institution, and many people are willing to travel great distances to have one of her treatments.
“Someone arrived at Rathmullan by boat once, hadn’t been back for years, and asked was I still here,” says O’Donnell. “They said ‘oh yes, of course she is’. I’m part of the furniture now.”
O’Donnell has lived in Rathmullan village for many years, and her grown-up son and daughter, as well as a young granddaughter, also live close by. She was inspired to start learning therapeutic massage after having a particularly good treatment herself, while on holiday in Greece in the early 1980s.
She did her first course in 1984, and since then has acquired qualifications in many areas, from reflexology and Ayurvedic approaches through to reiki and the Bowen technique.
She describes her own style, which is constantly evolving as she develops new practices, as as “a mixture of deep tissue, sports and Shiatsu massage”.
One of the things I enjoy about a session with O’Donnell, apart from the physical treatment itself, is her gentle advice, delivered with a smile. It never feels forced or intrusive: more like a general life philosophy, a few pointers for better wellbeing.
Much of it is common sense, learned from childhood onwards at her grandmother’s knee, she says. “My grandmother always did the right things. She was always chasing us with the big tablespoon and the bottle of cod-liver oil. We’ve gone too far forward, we need to go back to those old remedies. When it came to food, my grandmother never ate or drank at the same time, because she said you wouldn’t be getting the full nutrients. And she ate her meat and her vegetables separately too. In the old days they knew all this, they knew it was good for you.
“They knew how to sow and grow things: it was all self-sufficient, all organic. Imagine – a stew with peas in it from your own garden, that’s divine. That’s the best way to live.”
The need to give ourselves a break from the constant demands of modern life – the mobile phone, the e-mail, the 24/7 shopping – is another of O’Donnell’s suggestions. “Times are bad at the moment, so we need to reconnect with the family and with home.
“Even Sunday lunch has gone for so many people, now that the shops open on Sundays. But it takes you away from your family, and it takes away your last pennies.
“Do a family thing instead – go for a picnic, get outside somewhere, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in the city or the country.”
She also advises her clients to make small, practical changes to improve their physical and mental energy. “Go out for a walk or a cycle, you can’t buy the feel-good factor that will bring you. Do it on a regular basis, not in fits and starts. Try something like reflexology once a month.
“Stretching is important: yoga, pilates, anything at all. T’ai chi kept me sane when the children were small. Don’t wait until there’s a problem, it’s all about prevention, keeping stress and strain at bay.
“Don’t say you don’t have the time, you must find the time. You know, in order to help others, you must maintain yourself.”
After a nurturing session with Bernie O’Donnell, your limbs feel longer and looser, and life always seems that little bit brighter. I know I’ll be back for more.
