Carmel Heaney was born in Dublin on the 21st July, 1924, the eldest child of Rosanna and Timothy O'Leary. She was educated at the Holy Faith convent, Glasnevin and at University College Dublin from which she graduated with an M.A. in History. After some years as a junior Civil Servant and in radio programming, she entered the Department of External Affairs (later the Department of Foreign Affairs). Her foreign postings were in San Francisco, Geneva and Boston where she was Consul General. She was a delegate to several sessions of the General Assembly of the United Nations in the 1970s.

In 1970 Carmel married Henry Heaney, a Boston architect. She retired in 1989 and lives in Dublin. She leads a weekly philosophical discussion group, The Colloquy, and is an occasional contributor to the Irish Times.

Myriam el Kettani worked in the corporate world for over twenty years before training in humanistic psychotherapy and Focusing. She is a Focusing Oriented Therapist, and a person-centred practitioner. Myriam facilitates humanistic encounter groups for adults and/or adolescents. She also facilitates leadership support and collective intelligence development groups. Myriam lives in Morocco.

Focusing Oriented Therapy by Neil Friedman is available on World of Books and Amazon.

Báirbre Meehan is a Focusing-Oriented Coach and Coach Supervisor. Her practice is informed by 25 years in people management in roles such as CEO, organisational/leadership development and finance director. Her coaching journey began 12 years ago, at a time when her personal-development journey led her to focusing and from there the integration of these powerful ways of working naturally emerged.

Báirbre self-funded a research project measuring the impact of a Focusing-Oriented Coaching approach on people with Low Mental Well Being (MWB). Referrals came from medical doctors, psychotherapists and word of mouth and quantitative measurements showed very significant MWB improvements, maintained over the longer term.

Focusing-Oriented Coaching is Báirbre’s passion and she is devoted to developing and sharing it with others. Báirbre regularly runs Focusing-Oriented Coaching programs, teaching coaches, therapists and helping professionals how to use Focusing in their work. You can contact Báirbre at bairbre@pause.ie

To understand more about Focusing-Oriented Coaching in practice, here is a link to an article Báirbre has written 'Life wants to live: Focusing-Oriented Coaching' www.pause.ie/news This article first appeared in the July 2024 issue of Coaching Today, published by the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.