Carmel is a
- Spiritual Guide or Spiritual Director
- Cross- Professional Supervisor
- Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant
- Contemporary Beguine
Certified Spiritual Director/Guide
Carmel is a Certified Spiritual Director/Guide with the All Ireland Spiritual Guidance Association and Spiritual Directors International. Her training for this ministry includes an internship training over many years with Dr. Maureen Conroy. She has also trained as a Soul-Based Counsellor and holds a Diploma in Counselling, a Teacher Diploma in Dancing the Rainbow and certification in Mindfulness Training, all of which are a resource for her work as a spiritual guide/director.
As a practitioner of spiritual accompaniment she has twenty years of experience to bring to this ministry. As a spiritual guide she offers a Contemplative, Creative, Celtic and Compassionate approach, all of which are features of the An Croí Spiritual Guidance training which blends and builds on the teachings and training of Dr. Maureen Conroy with the experience and research of Dr. Geraldine Holton and Carmel herself.
Spiritual Guidance is for anyone who wishes to grow in their relationship with the Holy One, the Great Mystery or whatever way this Divine power is named by individuals. Whilst her Catholic background has had a major influence in her own life, her approach to spiritual guidance is inter-spiritually inclusive and holistic.
Certified Supervisor (Reflective Practitioner)
Carmel holds a masters in ministry that specialises in Supervision and she is a full accredited member of the Supervisors Association of Ireland.
Certified Life-Cycle Celebrant
Carmel is a trained and certified ‘Life-Cycle Celebrant’ for weddings, funerals and other life transition. She was drawn to this training because of her recognition of the changes taking place for many Irish people who were no longer wanting to get married in the church. The alternative at that time was a secular ceremony in a registry office or a humanists ceremony where there was no place for spirituality. Carmel felt that while Church participation was declining dramatically, and understandably so, Irish people still have a strong spiritual sense and she wanted to provide ceremonies that honoured that spiritual core. Her training, which took place in the United States, equipped her for inter-spiritual ceremonies across traditions where ultimately the creation of a ceremony is in service of the people involved regardless of their tradition or indeed non. Since her training in 2014 the landscape has changed dramatically and many now are training as celebra
Contemporary Beguine
Click below for link to An Croí Beguines
An Croí Beguines
Contemporary Beguine and co-founder of An Croí Beguines Ireland
Carmel, along with Geraldine Holton, are Ireland’s first contemporary beguines and made a public commitment to becoming a beguine in December 2017 at An Croí Wisdom Institute. To identify as Beguines was to align themselves with an eight-hundred-year old women’s spiritual movement that has almost disappeared and to affirm their own spiritual journey that had up until then often been described by others as ‘beguine-like’. It was a seed that had been growing for many years and today a group of women interested in this re-visioning of the medieval beguines have continued to gather regularly for conversation, contemplation and ritual as they imagine what a beguine lifestyle might look like in the 21st century.
Geraldine Holton and Carmel Boyle are inspired by a new energy among some women who seek a common spiritual approach to everyday life that is both meaningful and purposeful. The new An Croí Beguines Ireland is a way of responding, just as the original beguines did, to the contemporary spiritual, social and economic landscape. It speaks to those with a strong desire to live a deeper spiritual life that is both inward and outward looking.
An Croí Beguines, while inspired by the original beguine movement, find a unique expression in an Irish and contemporary context today. An Croí Beguines hold a vision of a new inclusive expression of church that honours the mystical tradition, gospel values, the contemplative life and the spiritual experience of women.