I grew up on a sheep farm in a small mountain village in the West of Ireland. Green fields, rivers, mountains, and a way of life rooted in simplicity, community, and a deep relationship with the natural world. That early formation — of belonging to a place, a land, and a people — shaped everything that came after. Including the loss of it.
The crossroads that began the work
At 26, working in the US, I visited the Mayan pyramids in Cancun. Something shifted in me there — a confrontation with my own limits, and at the same time a quiet sense that something much larger was calling. I didn't know what it was. I didn't have words for it yet.
Two years later I moved to the Netherlands. What seemed like an opportunity became something more demanding: a genuine crossroads. The Dutch culture's emphasis on the individual clashed deeply with my community-rooted Irish upbringing. The freedom was real — but beneath it was a growing isolation, a disorientation, and an inner darkness I hadn't anticipated.
What I didn't know then — but understand clearly now — is that this was not a failure. It was my first real encounter with what I now call the crossroads: the place where the old no longer holds and the new has not yet revealed itself. The place where, if you can stay present to it, something essential begins to emerge.

David Whyte

My search took me across Europe — living in Poland for several years, continuing to go deeper into what life was asking. Then came a health crisis. Severe symptoms. Hospitalisation. A pivotal decision to follow a path of holistic healing rather than conventional medication alone.
That decision changed my life. And it opened my eyes to something I have never stopped exploring: the relationship between what the body carries and what the life is going through. The symptoms were not separate from the transition. They were the transition, speaking in a different language.
Healing my own deep-seated beliefs, emotional blocks, and somatic disturbances — that work is what led me back to what I now call inner home. Not a place. Not a fixed state. But a quality of being grounded in yourself, clear about what matters, and moving in a direction that is genuinely yours.
That experience is the foundation of everything I do.
Over the past fifteen years, working with people across Ireland, the UK, the US, and the Netherlands, I have developed an integrative practice that holds three things together:
Applied Biomagnetic Therapy — a precise, body-based approach that works at the bioenergetic level, addressing the physical dimension of what people carry. I trained as a certified practitioner and have seen remarkable results, including in cases where nothing else had moved the situation.
Somatic awareness and nervous system work — understanding how the body holds what the mind has not yet processed, and how to work with that directly rather than around it.
Structured transition and direction work — the Crossroads Program and individual journey work, which support people in understanding the stage of transition they are in, recognising the patterns keeping them stuck, and finding the direction that was pointing toward them all along.
What has become clear over years of practice is that these three are rarely separate. The person with unexplained fatigue is almost always also at a turning point in their life. The person who cannot find direction is almost always also carrying something unresolved in the body. The work that truly helps addresses both — and finds the connection between them.

Herman Hesse
Every significant transition in my own life — the move from Ireland, the years in Poland, the health crisis, the career changes, the work with refugees and community projects — has taught me the same thing in a different key.
The crossroads is not the problem. It is the invitation.
The difficulty, the symptoms, the stuckness — these are not signs that something has gone wrong. They are signs that something important has not yet been heard. And when you begin to understand what they are communicating, the path forward becomes clear in a way it could not be while you were still trying to resolve the surface.
This is what I help people find. Not a plan imposed from outside. Not a resolution to a problem. But a return to themselves — to the inner ground from which genuine direction, genuine energy, and genuine life become possible again.
If you would like to know how to feel truly at home in yourself then please book a 60 minute free online session with Mark. Click here for more details.
Short Introduction Video - Mark Mcdonnell Therapy
This video gives a short introduction to the three main aspects of my healing solution.
Discover how I can support you to get back to living the life you wish for.
Victor Frankl
"What I am looking for in a therapy is to feel seen, to feel safe, and to have a foundation to explore together what is within me. Not knowing what the answer is. Someone who helps me see myself in a new way and is willing to dive deep with me. And also not just settle for an answer. As if it stops there? .....And I think you provide this in a very special way that can help me, and other people, a lot."
E van M
"Whats unique about this process is its scientific basis and this gives trust in its effectiveness... I was surprised when you discovered a trauma I was not aware of in my 5th year that led to the elimination of my symptoms... " Marjolijn
"I experienced the therapist's attention, interest, and calmness as very pleasant, as well as the treatments themselves. I found it to be very pure and could 'embrace' it without expecting specific results, in the sense that it just felt right, even if it didn’t turn out as I had hoped. I knew it would still be good... That you take the time before and after the treatment, explain where necessary during the treatment, and do it with so much attention and concentration is really nice."
E. P
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