A Dublin-based psychotherapy service is moving its centre to Killaloe, Co Clare, where a sanctuary will be created for people who need to spend time on their own.
The East Clare Counselling and Therapy Service will incorporate a school for trainees in the profession. "At the moment we have a training group in Ennis and they want to go on and be completely trained," Ms Alison Hunter, the founder of the centre, said.
The Amethyst Resource for Human Development has been based in Killiney, Co Dublin, for the past 20 years and received charitable status in 1991.
It specialises in pre- and perinatal psychotherapy, an approach which explores the relationships between birth trauma and a range of difficulties in adult life including criminal behaviour, learning disabilities, hyperactivity and child, alcohol and drug abuse. Often the therapists work with seriously ill people who are frightened of dying.
"Most psychotherapists and counsellors would only look at present day counselling or what took place back to childhood.
"We work from pre-conception right through and help people to die," Ms Shirley Ward, a director of the centre, said.
She gives an example of a woman of 67, who was having difficulties and found out that she was a breech birth. "She turned around and she said, 'now I know why I do everything ass backwards'. Breech-birth types cannot get things in order," she said.
Bringing the problem "into consciousness" is the first step towards resolving it, she added. "It can cause difficulties with people's lives. They think they are going mad."
An adviser to the Association for Pre and Perinatal Psychology and Health in the US, she has incorporated into her practice the work of the late Dr Frank Lake, who coined the phrase: "The womb is a room with a view."
She now trains psychotherapists and healers and is the principal lecturer for the training courses.
Ms Hunter said a gap in services for the region was one of the reasons why the new centre was being established. It is hoped the centre will be built on a four-acre site at Ballybrogan, overlooking Lough Derg, to provide a place where students can gain practical experience under supervision.
She describes the proposed new centre as the base for her "retirement career". "I shall never retire because I do not have a pension. I knew I had to be in the right place."