Celebrating 10 years of The Novara Centre

When we opened The Novara Centre ten years ago, our goal was to give clients a wide range of options for health and well-being under the one roof. We had seen similar models of Integrative Health work very well in England, The Netherlands and the US and we wanted Irish people to have the same opportunities and choices. We believe that there can be several strands to health and well-being and what works for one person may not work for another. While one person might be best served by taking part in a group class ( such as yoga, mindfulness or Pilates ), someone else might need one-to-one support. Also, a key excitement for us has been in noticing how a combined approach provided a synergy of benefits to the client.

When we started there were just twelve people working from the centre and now there are over thirty. One big area of growth has been services for children and adolescents. As parents ourselves we believe in the need to empower and support parents and their children. As well as offering play therapy /psychology and psychotherapy/CBT for children and adolescents we also run parenting courses and mindfulness workshops for parents too.

I think one of our biggest learnings has been how passion and interest do not necessarily equate to business acumen! Having opened just before the recession, it quickly became a very bumpy ride. We remain grateful that ten years on, Novara is still here and we hope now that the centre can continue to grow. We are very happy that so many of the practitioners who work from Novara are with us a long time and we continue to welcome new practitioners. We see the success of the centre as being very closely linked to the high professional and ethical standards that these practitioners bring to their work, within the centre’s warm and welcoming atmosphere.

While we love our current building on the sea-front, with its light and sea-views and spaciousness, at the same time our dream would be to have wheelchair accessibility and more space for our child and adolescent work and and to be able to offer as many choices as possible, for example, to make new therapies such as music therapy available to people.

Watch this space!