A one day Healthcare & Educational Programme with Michael O’Doherty & Tom Griffin providing you with leading edge skills enabling you to transform stress into vitality, better health & creativity.  It will take place on Saturday 4th February 2012 at 10.30am to 5pm at the Kempinski Hotel, Estepona, Spain.  More Information

A personal development programme providing you with leading edge skills enabling you to transform stress into vitality, better health and creativity will take place in Killarney on Friday evening 10th & Saturday 11th February 2012. More Information

Michael O’Doherty, Just Imagine NEWS, December 2011

“He said, ‘It’s sh*t or burst now so we might as well get engaged while we’re here’,” says Tina with a laugh, adding that the relationship had been going on “for ever and ever” up to then. All was not lost though, because after he bought the ring, Michael proposed properly on one knee at the top of the Empire State Building. They went to Las Vegas with 15 friends in 2006, and were married at the Bellagio hotel, where they had a ball for five days.

Michael and Tina are very warm and engaging, and there is something very soothing about being in their presence. This is probably what makes them so successful at their work, and they have a host of celebrity clients and people from all walks of life. They are both from Doonbeg in Co Clare, and while there is a 10-year age gap between them, they knew each other from around the town. When Tina was 19, she was suffering with migraines and went for treatment to Michael’s Plexus bio-energy therapy clinic in Ennis. Treatment there involves using a system of unique hand movements to locate energy imbalances in the body, balancing it, and working on a programme of changes that may need to be made around visualisation, diet, exercise and rest.

Tina became interested in the methods of treatment, and started working there in an admin capacity, and after two years, began training as a therapist. She says that as a boss, Michael treated her very nicely, and he says that while he thought she was very pretty, he was attracted to her caring personality. As he was a committed GAA fan, the fact that she played corner/wing forward for the Clare Ladies’ team was an added bonus.

It took a year for Michael, the fifth child of 10, and Tina, the youngest of two, to get together, and both say that that even though they were working together, it never caused a problem for them. Nor did the age gap, because although Michael says, “Tina came into the world after me”, she counters with, “Yes, but he waited until I came in!”

“We never lost our own individuality,” says Michael, “and I think that’s very important. Like me, Tina never drank or smoked, and sport was a huge common interest as we were always going to matches. She has always been very supportive of me, because, while I’m all go, she has a calming effect on me. I’m always out messing, and she slows me down. She also gives good advice, even if I haven’t always listened to her in the past.”

Michael didn’t like school so left at 15, and studied catering before joining the Air Corps. He then worked as a prison officer for 11 years, and says that although the people were fantastic, he never found the job to be creative enough for him. He had a love for martial arts, and was very involved in kick-boxing, so went to what was then known as Yugoslavia with his friend Tom Griffin to learn about how the body functions from an energy perspective. They learned how to use this to help people to have a better quality of life, and began studying it when they returned to Ireland . They set up a clinic and began achieving great results through the bio-energy work. In 1990, their work was featured on The Late Late Show. There was a massive response.

“It was a great platform, and people were flying in from all over the world for treatment,” says Michael. “When Michael Flatley attributed his recovery from the mystery virus, that stopped him dancing, to us in 2008, it had a huge effect as he is such a well-known personality and the story was covered internationally. Demand is huge because people are looking for ways to confront the stress and anxiety they are feeling today, and are also looking to prevent illness and cope with everyday problems.”

Today Michael and his team run clinics in Ennis, Dublin and Cork, and also travel around the country. Flatley recently did the honours in opening their clinic in Harley Street in London. The ceremony was attended by people such as Cilla Black and Ian Carmichael, Queen Elizabeth ‘s hairdresser.

Michael and Tina spend about 10 days each month at the London clinic. They say that while it’s a great life, the work can be very intense, as they could be working with someone who is terminally ill or who has a sick child.

The couple have just released a DVD, Just Imagine — A Life Without Illness, and next February, will travel the country giving one-day programmes to teach people to work with energy and transform their own emotions. They work with people who have a whole range of emotional and physical problems, and also with parents of children with special needs. They have achieved remarkable results.

“We’d hope eventually to reduce our workload and find a bit more space and time for ourselves,” says Michael, adding that they have no plans yet to start a family.

Both are big animal lovers; they have four cats and a pomeranian dog called Tiger. The couple, who live in Ennis, relax by walking and mountain-climbing. They recently returned from a trip to the US, where they revisited Las Vegas to celebrate their fifth wedding anniversary.

“Michael is a very good person, who can never say no to anyone,” says Tina. “He’s always trying to help people, and no matter where we go, he is emptying his pockets to help people on the street. What drives him mad about me is that I’m never on time, and what drives me mad about him is that I’m running around getting ready and he’s already out in the car.”

“It’s amazing how she can be up and out early when she’s going shopping though,” laughs Michael. “The neighbours always know that Tina’s late when they hear me hooting the horn.”

For further information, visit www.justimagine.ie or call 065 684 1844

- Andrea Smith

So says Irish-American dance great Michael Flatley, who in 2009 was cured of a mystery illness which had plagued him for three years after visiting Clareman Michael O’Doherty, co-founder of The Plexus Healthcare System and the “Just Imagine” initiative, described as “a network of powerful and effective healing techniques that work by rebalancing the life energy within.”

What started as a curiosity trip to the former Yugoslavia in the late eighties has turned into a life’s work for O’Doherty, a former prison worker. In the Balkans, he observed an energy technique primarily used in martial arts, which he immediately sensed could be used to better not just athletes but also those suffering with illness and stress.

In the 20 years since, The Plexus Institute, which O’Doherty co-founded with Mayo’s Tom Griffin, has satisfied customers from all walks of life, establishing a great deal of credibility when it comes to treating conditions which patients have previously thought “lost causes”.

At their clinics, which now number Cork, Dublin and Ennis in Ireland as well as a new London office, the primary aim of the therapist is to locate a person’s energy imbalances using a series of hand movements. From there, the patient undergoes a rebalance of their energy system, which in turn “activates the body’s own potential to heal itself.”

”It all started when we got a slot on The Late Late Show in Ireland in 1990; we received one of the strongest responses ever to a health issue on Irish TV,” O’Doherty told The Irish Emigrant recently. “Within a short time we were featured on the 6 pm news, and it really took off.”

O’Doherty, who has worked with a number of top class athletes including Premiership soccer stars Alan Shearer and Gary Kelly and Kilkenny hurling great DJ Carey, says that his consecutive four-day private treatments are designed to complement conventional medicine. Coupled with balancing their energy, practitioners provide an educational program for each patient, explaining changes which need to be made to their lifestyle.

“We look at other ways to confront illness, stress and worry. We know conventional medicine has a huge role to play, and our treatments can go hand in hand with it,” he says.

The Flatley turnaround is something he will always be associated with, and when the dancer discussed the nightmare time between 2006 and 2009 which saw him cancel tours, he had no doubt as to who was behind his comeback.

“I saw every specialist that there was to see but we couldn’t come up with an answer. He is not a magician, just a great man. He worked on my energy and in two hours I was better. By the morning I was a new man – he just cleared the energy block.” Flatley told Britain’s ITN about the period.

Currently in the US to set up a series of seminars, O’Doherty says interest in his work has snowballed here since the very public Flatley “cure”. The Plexus Institute also trains people to treat their own patients – creating a large network of available practitioners in the process – and this is something he feels could be hugely beneficial to the Irish community in the US.

“We empower people by helping them to make small changes to their lives which make a huge difference.” he says.

For more on Michael O’Doherty’s work see JustImagine.ie or Plexusbio-Energy.com. To contact Michael call [Ireland] 353 65 6841844 or email info@justimagine.ie.

Published in The Irish Emigrant, October 2011
http://www.irishemigrant.com/ie/go.asp?p=story&storyid=10115

Michael Flatley discusses being healed by Michael O’Doherty – ITN

Click here to watch the video.

Excerpt from Hello Magazine interview, June 2010
While at Castlehyde & weeks after his marriage, Michael faced the biggest crisis of his career, perhaps of his life. “I began to feel more & more listless, as though energy were draining out of me. One morning I couldn’t get out of bed.”

 A spell in a private London hospital failed to confirm many people’s suspicions, that he had some sort of debilitating virus. “All they could conclude was that I was burnt out & shouldn’t attempt to dance for the foreseeable future,” says Michael.

 Bloated & exhausted, he cancelled a tour & returned to Ireland. “I was scared. It’s a very uncomfortable feeling lying on a couch unable to summon up the energy to have a conversation with your pregnant wife.” With nothing to lose, he decided to see an energy healer who cane from Co. Clare. “He was a specialist in Eastern Medicine. He gave me a full examination, worked out what he called my energy field & asked me to sit down.

 “As soon as he began working on me, I felt a tingling sensation, followed by intense pins & needles. I fell asleep for two hours, then the specialist asked if I fancied a walk down the drive, something I had been unable to contemplate in the months lewading up to the consultation. It’s a mile & a half long & uphill. I got half way along & I felt great. On the way back, I even jogged for 100 yards. I couldn’t believe the change in me.”

 UNBLOCKING ENERGY

When Michael woke up the next morning, much of the bloating had subsided. Within days, he was going on runs. “I can’t explain how the specialist achieved what he did, other than to say he found a way to unblock my energy, to release it again positively within my body. I threw all the drugs I’d been given into the bin. I’d seriously come to believe I’d never dance again.”

 Michael today is tip-top trim. He can slip into jackets he wore when Lord of the Dance was conceived in the mid-1990’s. “I train every day – weights, cross-trainer – & play 18 holes of golf most mornings. I’ve got energy to burn.”