Counsellor’s Life – Ruth Donnelly
Ruth Donnelly is a holistic counsellor in Maleny who works with body-based psychotherapy, integrating mindfulness and artistic therapies, deep levels of change arise through the awareness and energetic transformation that occurs. Ruth has been a QCA member since 2006. She offers a heart-centred approach to healing trauma, developing emotional well-being and spiritual growth. You can view Ruth’s website http://www.heartmindconnections.org
YOUR PASSION
- Your favourite hobby? Cricket
- Favourite sports player? Virat Kohli
- Guilty pleasure – Chocolate, not so guilty just a bad idea!
- I can’t live without – First answer that comes to mind is friendship, community
- The charity I support? Good Fortune Trust, Tibetan Buddhist nuns and monks
- Next travel destination? None planned but it would be ‘back home’ to England
- I love the sound of… Running water, my partner singing, the birds and insects singing
- I would like to learn – To play the piano
- If I could rid the world of one thing it would be… Greed
- I have a fear of… Losing my freedom
- My hidden talent is Astrology
- Before I die I must… Wake up and embrace life
- My writing inspiration is … aha, one of my almost totally blocked areas in life still:) I once wrote a good essay at school inspired by listening to music and the images and feelings it evoked… just once!
INSPIRATIONS
- Favourite TV shows? Test cricket, Montalbano, Mad as Hell, Yes Minister
- Singers – My partner, Tommy Leonard
- Movies – Don’t really watch these days but most recently I love ‘La Belle Verte’
- My superpower would be… Ability to see me and others clearly
- What makes you laugh – Absurd intelligent comedy, like the British do so well
- People I admire – Dalai Lama, many spiritual teachers, some of my trauma clients, innovators, people following their path
- What inspires you?
People reaching out to each other, kindness, resilience, bright sunny peaceful days, the sky, the ocean - The best advice I ever got? To quit my job as an accountant – my GP recommended :)
- The worst advice I ever got. “You’re making a big mistake, you will regret this’ – response from my boss when I did quit!
- Ultimate dinner party guests? Just my good spiritual friends
HOME
- Favourite room in my home? Veranda
- Most treasured possession – My passports, my astrology and Buddhist books
- Favourite drink? Chai in winter, affogato in summer
- Midnight snack? Not my time of day to eat
- Favourite takeaway? Indian but not sure I can still eat it! So, then sushi
- Signature dish to cook? Buckwheat pancakes with fruit
- Best place ever lived. Maleny – here and now :)
- The best part of the day – The quiet times
COUNSELLING
- Preferred or most-liked counselling/psychotherapy framework
Buddhist and body-based psychotherapy - What are you most proud of with your counselling work?
Trusting my own judgement to go where we need to go in sessions, to allow co-creative transformation to occur - Favourite counselling book
The Sanity We Are Born With, Chogyam Trungpa. Full Catastrophe Living, Jon Kabat Zinn, In Place of the Self, Ron Dunselman. Spiritual Emergency, Stan Grof. - Most expensive counselling workshop that you have attended
Professional training in Dru Yoga and in Acutonics - What do you take with you in your counselling room – Buddha
- Self-care strategy for yourself- Know my limits
- What did you struggle with when you first started counselling?
Finding a suitable venue that matched my therapeutic method and my finances - Favourite counselling quote
With a wish to free all beings
I shall always go for refuge
to the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha
until I reach full enlightenment.
Enthused by wisdom and compassion,
today in the Buddha’s presence
I generate the Mind for Full Awakening
for the benefit of all sentient beings.
As long as space endures,
as long as sentient being remain,
until then, may I too remain
and dispel the miseries of the world.
His Holiness the Dalai Lama
along with ‘sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will make me go in a corner and cry by myself for hours’ – Eric Idle
9. Advice to new counsellors
– Do your inner work as a basis for helping others
– Connect, allow space, connect, stay present to the unfolding moment with the session – ‘therapeutic presence’
– Remember all beings have buddha-nature potential – including the client and including you
– and Never Give Up!
10. Hopes for the counselling profession
That originality and courage prevail over bureaucracy
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