Catherine has been teaching Mindfulness for over 15 years and is mainly based in Cork. She has a Masters degree in Mindfulness Based Approaches to Health awarded by the University of Wales in Bangor. She has been working in the health care field for over 40 years. She originally trained as a nurse and midwife and spent a number of years working in Papua New Guinea, running a small bush hospital. On her return to Ireland she became interested in preventive health care.

She studied Shiatsu (acupuncture without needles) in London and worked as a Shiatsu therapist for many years and co- founded the Irish School of Shiatsu in 1991. She is also co – founder of Slainte Pobal – an organisation bringing health education to women in areas of disadvantage in Dublin.

Catherine has had a keen interest in meditation for over 40 years. Over the years she has done many retreats in silence, both with groups and alone, and has experienced great benefit from these.
She has studied meditation with many interesting and well known teachers.

Catherine has observed over the past number of years the importance of self compassion as a very specific practice to support mental and emotional wellness. She is interested in research in this area and has completed a training programme in Mindful Self-Compassion with Dr. Christopher Germer and Dr.Kristin Neff who are two pioneers in this field.. Catherine is a Trained Teacher in Mindful Self-Compassion.

Catherine teaches a valuable programme called Interpersonal Mindfulness Practice - teaching presence in relationship. This course brings mindfulness into realtionships. Our lives are webs of social relationships and communication and this brings both tensions and great joys. We are all relational beings and social interactions can both hurt and heal. Developing greater interpersonal mindfulness skills allows us to be more present with others and to see more clearly the areas of tension, unease and suffering and to find skillful ways to change unhelpful habitual ways of interacting.

SInce 2005, Catherine has been facilitating Mindfulness courses – Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Mindful Self-Compassion (MSC)- for groups and individuals and more recently Interpersonal Mindfulness Practice course.
She also runs weekend and week - long Mindfulness /meditation retreats.

Catherine has done a lot of study of Insight Dialogue which is an interpersonal meditation practice (the work of Gregory Kramer) that encourages mindful dialogue as a way to recognise and release automatic and habitual ways of relating, allowing communication to improve and opening up more space to bring clarity and compassion into interpersonal relationships.