The Cavan Centre is a Community Development project offering residential programmes to marginalised and disadvantaged communities, groups and individuals of all ages.
Since 1977 the Centre has been delivering a range of educational, creative, recreational and activity programmes aimed at targeted users with the aim of encouraging them to reach their potential and enhance their social and personal development.
The Cavan Centre is located near Ballyjamesduff in county Cavan and is open on a year-round basis.
Its amazing how the drumming at Sankalpa has taken off! Every Friday Tom Quinn facilitates a tribal drumming workshop and as you can see when the sun permits we take it outside.
Drumming has many benefits! Its a form of deep emotional and spiritual communication to and from the soul. It facilitates each of the participants to find their own rhythm! This is so important in life. It helps to develop team work and good group communication. It confronts the addictive rhythm involved in drug use and challenges each of us to listen deeply to our own rhythms within!
Tom Quinn not only teaches drumming, but supports and encourages each of the participants to deepen their sense of self and become more proactive in their own lives.
What has making a face cream got to do with addiction or rehabilitation? Answer = discovering your own power!
We are all affected by marketing. ’Look younger’ ‘feel better’ ‘be more confident’. We become convinced that happiness is in things and not in us, and become consumers rather than citizens. We take the anti-depressant rather than look to the root of our sadness, we buy the expensive cream because were worth it and gradually we become more and more helpless over our own lives!
The very act of creating something is empowering and healing. Making something for ourselves raises our self-esteem, increases our self worth, and nurtures our self belief!
So why not start with our face cream!
Not only will you feel better and save money, its actually good for your skin!
We all want to look younger these days. This simple anti-ageing eye mask has helped Tom O Brien the manager at Sankalpa to look like he must have the least stressful job in Finglas! Unfortunately he was unavailable for the photo shoot that went with this post!
Art therapy is a form of psychotherapy that uses art making as part of the therapeutic process. It is useful in recovering from addictions because it is a psychodynamic therapy that addresses the root of drug-related issues rather than trying to solve the drug use alone. Using art in therapy can help to get around defences, which are very often verbal in nature. Clients can, with the help of their therapist, begin to identify patterns and experiences from their lives that have made them who, and how, they are today. Sometimes people with similar experiences can have very different outcomes – some people turn to drugs, while others might become depressed or develop eating disorders and so on. Using art in a therapy session can feel less confrontative that talk therapy, because if you don’t feel like talking, or don’t know what to say, you can work on an art work instead – you will still be expressing something, but it can feel easier. Sometimes people begin to talk about, or express through art, things they weren’t aware they were feeling or thinking, because making art somehow gets to the heart of things. Our experiences are not stories, so they cannot always be expressed in words. Sometimes we need to be creative in finding ways of expressing ourselves, and in finding resolution.
