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The Kilkenny Observer Friday 22 April 2022
kilkennyobserver.ie
Opinion AS I SEE IT MARIANNE HERON
Every now and then I come across a mind-boggling fact. Here’s one: a mature native oak tree may host many hundreds of species. Imagine that; whether you are a bird or a beetle, a mouse or a moss, a fungi or a fern, you can call that tree home. One of the venerable trees in question was pointed out by Mary O’Neill-Moloney, head guide at Kilmacurragh during a tour of Kilmacurragh, National Botanic Garden, Co Wicklow. I must admit my count of tree residents hadn’t got much beyond the occasional bird or squirrel. Nor had I realised just how old some trees can be. Some of the yew trees along the yew walk at Kilmacurragh, where a monastic settlement was founded by St Moochorog in the in the 7th Century, date back to Tudor times. Usually, I am more focussed on the ‘treeness’ of trees, a bit like Shinrin-Yoku, the Japanese healing art of forest bathing. This is a mindful way of connecting with Nature and allowing the senses to take in the pleasures that woodland offers. I have some special bathing companions and am lucky enough to live close to some truly giant trees — Sequoiadendron gigante-
There be giants : why we need more trees um (picture) . In their native habitat in California where they were discovered in 1853, they can grow to 300 feet high, the largest living organism on earth. With a girth of up to 70 feet they aren’t the easiest of trees to hug. But standing under one of them
gazing upwards and taking in the resinous scent of tree armpit (branchpit?) certainly helps me to put the world in perspective. These giants also bring home to me what trees can do for us. We are forest poor in Ireland, a country which
How you defeat your anxiety with hypnotherapy ANDREW MCDONALD HYPNOTHERAPIST
YOU have two major parts of your mind. The conscious and the subconscious. The first is responsible for all the things you do deliberately, the second for everything you do on autopilot. All purposeful action is controlled by your conscious. All your behaviours and habits by your subconscious. Which do you think is more powerful? If you said your subconscious, you’d be absolutely right. This is why it is so difficult to overcome anxiety with your conscious mind. It’s the equivalent of an unarmed, infant human child going up against a fully grown, adult gorilla. There’s only going to be one winner. Yes, I know David beat Goliath, but he did that with a sling full of shot, not a right hook. Anxiety is a way of being. It is a behaviour. A habit. Smokers find it very difficult to quit, right? Again because they are trying
to defeat an unconscious, habitual behaviour with their conscious, deliberate mind. In the battle between autopilot v purposeful action, the former has an infinite advantage. What if you could turn all that on its head? You can. And it’s easier than you ever imagined. All you need is to manipulate a natural physical process to your advantage. In other words, use your subconscious. Here’s how. You know that feeling just before you fall asleep? That point where you aren’t fully conscious but you aren’t completely unconscious either? Chances are, if you’re reading this, you experience that every day. That’s the point where your conscious and subconscious are in harmony and communicating most effectively with each other. Now, whilst it would be a bad job to start the chatter going between these two parts of the mind when you’re trying to fall asleep, it’s perfectly possible to reach that state at other times of the day. This is where hypnotherapy comes in. Hypnosis
is not weird, nor is it magical, all it does is relaxes you into that between consciousness and unconsciousness state where the real work can begin. Once you are in hypnosis, just like when you are at that point between being awake and falling asleep, your conscious and unconscious minds are speaking to each other. At that moment, the purposeful action you want to achieve, being less anxious, can inform your habitual behaviour of its desires. This is why a hypnotherapist will hold a consultation with you prior to an appointment. To find out exactly what you want to get out of life. A discovery meeting where you express how you want to defeat your anxiety, why and what life would be like for you if anxious thoughts and behaviours were no longer part of it. It is those ideas that a hypnotherapist will then speak back to your unconscious mind when they have you in that deeply relaxed state. From there, your conscious thoughts become subconscious behaviours and habits. A life without anxiety awaits.
was once 80% covered by native forests, before wholesale felling for ships, buildings and industry began from Tudor plantation onwards. Now we have only 11% of land under forest compared with the European average of 30%.
Aside from their value as habitat, the trees we do have can be a cost effective way to offset carbon emissions, pulling CO2 out of the air, binding it with sugar through photosynthesis and releasing oxygen. In a year, an acre of forest can absorb twice
the amount of CO2 emitted by the average car’s annual mileage. The trouble is that we don’t have enough of the right kind of forests. Only 1% of our forest coverage is of native trees like oak, birch and elm, the rest is mainly a monoculture of Sitka spruce, fine for commercial use but which can be a source of carbon release rather than a carbon sink when bog or wetlands are ploughed up and drained in order to plant them and when they are felled. Dark and densely planted, they are also an inhospitable environment for wildlife flora and fauna. There is growing awareness of the importance the Amazon Rain Forest and its value to the planet as carbon sink and the threat posed to it by agriculture. But we need to be more conscious of the need to plant more trees and our own native rain forests. Trees thrive better together as a community, supporting each other, exchanging nutrients via their root systems, often aided by the mycorrhizal networks of fungi. Spring has a way of making us more aware of the gloriousness of trees.In the next couple of weeks my view the nearby valley will be transformed into a patchwork of colour from pink to acid green as trees burst into leaf. Just now there is a blackbird singing a veritable symphony at the top of a larch tree, announcing his territory. He might be praising trees too.
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