Beara.ie

Christine O'Sullivan talks to healer Gretta Murphy for Beara.ie

These arcane lines from a seventeenth century prayer book may need a little dusting off, but the idea of angels watching over us is just as relevant today as in 1662. Far from diminishing over the centuries, there has been a resurgence of interest in angels over the last few years. According to spiritual teacher and healer Gretta Murphy, this is no coincidence. She believes that the angels have an important task here on earth to help us mortals in our spiritual evolution.

Gretta spent her childhood in Beara and has recently re-located back to the area. It is easy to understand why so many people choose to live on the peninsula. This mountainous land remains resolutely untamed; beautiful, peaceful, unscathed by excessive tourism. The most casual of visitors have been seduced by its westerly whispers of a less hurried life. Yet for Gretta, it was not just the scenery or the relaxed lifestyle that brought her back to the place of her birth: she is convinced her return was orchestrated by angels.  And so began a new chapter in the extraordinary life of Gretta Murphy.

Gretta grew up in the pretty coastal village of Eyeries (situated in the north of the Peninsula), in the 1940s and 50s, the second of four children. Her father came from the neighbouring townland of Cahirceem, near Urhan and her mother was from the nearby village of Allihies. Gretta’s father was the Urhan area schoolteacher, as was his father before him. Gretta attended national schools in Eyeries and Urhan and then spent five years boarding at the Ursuline Convent in Blackrock, Cork.

Even as a young child, Gretta had a deep awareness of her own spirituality. She has many early memories of being present at the bedside of dying neighbours and relatives. She recalled one vivid experience from when she was around ten years old, when she perceived the pillar of her neighbour’s gate briefly transform into a rainbow of beautiful lights. She learned shortly afterwards that her neighbour had, in fact, ‘passed on’ at that time. At the age of fourteen her mother brought her to a convent with a view to her entering as a novice. She spoke of her relief when she was rejected due to her young age, because she had always known that she would like to get married.

Upon finishing school, Gretta completed a secretarial course in Cork and shortly afterwards left for London. There she worked as a secretary, married and had three children. Returning to Cork City in 1971, she had her fourth child in 1972. When her marriage ended in 1979 she began working as a legal secretary and in 1982 took up a post at IBEC as information assistant in the area of labour law and secretary to the Regional Director. After a career spanning seventeen years there, she left in July 1998 to embark upon a full-time career in healing.

Gretta first became interested in healing when she encountered health problems of her own. “I seemed to be suffering from a form of severe, prolonged exhaustion. I can remember going to work and being so tired by lunchtime that I would spread out a towel on the floor to rest. I started to worry that I might have ME. I knew that I needed to heal myself“. Gretta was drawn to different energy therapies and as her health recovered she studied to become a practitioner in many of these, including reflexology, reiki, ki massage and bio-energy healing.

It was whilst learning bio-energy healing that Gretta first encountered her ‘spirit guides‘. Struggling with an exam, she felt doomed to failure. In desperation she mentally ‘handed over’ the problem to her spirit guides. She passed with nothing less than 100%.

Nearing the end of her first year of full time healing, Gretta came to the stark realisation that she was not making a living from this line of work. Rather than give in to feelings of despondency, she recalls once again placing her fate in the hands of the angels and made a conscious decision to stop worrying. “I asked ‘if this is my destiny to continue, please show me the way‘. I completely handed over my request and felt a great sense of peace; I no longer had to struggle.”

Sure enough, her prayers were answered within weeks in the form of a man called Jim Zarnowski from the US. Jim was a Master-Instructor in a therapy known as Integrated Energy Therapy (IET), which is a form of healing using the energy of angels. At Gretta’s request, Jim came to Ireland in October 1999 and taught at her centre in Cork. The therapy proved popular and before the month was out Gretta travelled to Woodstock, New York to study the master instructor course with Stevan J Thayer, the founder of IET. Gretta went on to teach IET in Antwerp, Brussels, Australia and Spain, as well as most counties of Ireland. In August 2003 the angels intervened once more and Gretta felt compelled to move to Tramore, Co Waterford, where she lived and taught for five years until her move to Eyeries in November 2008.

Gretta explained to me that IET can be learned and practiced by anyone. It is a therapy that works with the energy of angels to clear suppressed emotions that may be held in the body at a cellular level. IET practitioners believe that suppressed emotions are the primary cause of illness in the body and that they may even be the result of trauma experienced in a past life.

Gretta described a typical IET treatment, which takes between forty-five minutes to an hour. The client lies down fully clothed on a therapy table and the treatment usually begins with an explanation of where suppressed emotions reside in the body. She expounded: “suppressed guilt is held in the top of the head, distrust in the third eye, shame in the throat, grief in the lungs, feelings of threat in the back of the neck, ‘shoulds’ in the shoulders, heartache in the heart, resentment in the spleen, anger in the liver and gall bladder, stress and powerlessness in the stomach and adrenals and fear is held in the kidneys”. The therapist will then attune to a higher consciousness to communicate with the angels. By way of a light touch to certain points on the body, suppressed emotions can be released. Gretta reports that many clients experience a great sense of peace after a session which facilitates deep cellular healing. She claims to have had great success in treating illnesses such as depression, arthritis, bulimia, viral infections, psoriasis, ulcers, emotional problems and alleviating pain.

Gretta has also trained in a therapy known as ‘magnified healing ’, which she told me is a very powerful method of high frequency healing - another fascinating topic that deserves an article all of its own.

Gretta is a petite woman, neat and softly spoken. She possesses the tranquil composure often seen in those with a highly developed spirituality. She has struggled over the years to accept the dogma of organised religion. “Any religion that says this is the right one is excluding all others. Jesus said ‘wherever one or two of you are gathered together in my name, I am with you’. Spirituality is enshrined in every religion; every religion includes love, compassion, forgiveness and being non-judgemental. Living a spiritual life is encompassing those virtues into my life and I teach them in all my therapies. We are moving into a time of unity rather than separation. Unity is about finding the commonalities between each of us and honouring them. Instead of focusing on the ways in which we are different from another person, country, culture or religion, we find similarities that we share. Healing is inclusive, honouring all. I work with many great beings of light, for example Jesus, Mother Mary, the Buddha and Kwan Yin.”

Though my short time with Gretta offered only a brief glimpse, it seems her world is an intriguing fusion of the terrestrial with other realms and beings of cosmic proportions. The idea of communicating with angels may seem far-fetched to some, calling to mind biblical images of winged, haloed beings hovering in the ether (Gretta smiles at this as she senses them as ‘energies’). However, our society is becoming increasingly secular and as the dominance of organised religion lessens, many people are looking for something to fill the void. Perhaps the increasing interest in angels is symptomatic of this very modern need. Gretta asserts that their popularity is an outward reflection of an escalation in their unseen workings on earth. I can’t help but envy Gretta her faith and certainty in these otherworldly beings. What a wonderful relief it must be to simply hand over problems to the angels in times of indecision and difficulty; to transcend the earthly bounds and connect with a loving presence.

As my interview with Gretta drew to a close, she suggested we perform an ‘angelic heartlink’ as a nice end to our meeting. With eyes closed, her calm instruction guided me to send a golden thread of love and gratitude to my angels, then to receive their love into my heart and internal organs and finally to beam out the love to loved ones, friends, family and all humanity. As I began to settle into the meditation, strangely enough I did become aware of a sensation like white light streaming into the top of my head. Overactive imagination? Quite possibly. Less explainable was the feeling of a benevolent ‘presence’ above me and a change to my spatial perception of the room. Some may put it down to an easily suggestible personality. But, who knows? Maybe I just had my first meeting with an angel.

Gretta is available for healings by arrangement and will be teaching IET and Magnified Healing at Croi na Feile Healing Centre, Canfie, Ardgroom, Beara - the dates below for 2009. For further dates and information visit http://www.alchemygretta.com Email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or call 027 74499.

Certification Training in Integrated Energy Therapy (IET)

August 22nd, 23rd & 24th

October 24th, 25th & 26th

Magnified Healing Practitioner & Teacher Training

September 12th & 13th

Magnified Healing Third Phase ‘Light’ Healing

October 3rd & 4th