A rewarding and eloquent book that focuses on our connection with nature and how it can bring us back to ourselves, to become more grounded and aware of the world around us. Dr Ruth Allen is a psychotherapist, writer, speaker, and adventurer. She is very aware that we don’t all have equal access to nature, yet she shows that access is possible and encourages us to forge relationships with our natural environment. She has: “suggestions, tools, approaches and inklings” and I found an accessible, satisfying read that really spoke to me. She introduces her own story with nature, followed with a guide on how to use the book, stating: “You don’t have to be wealthy, athletic, ‘outdoorsy’, from an adventurous family or of any particular age demographic, gender, ethnicity, nationality or sexuality: the words over the following pages are for all of you.” Beautiful photos accompany her guidance, suggestions, and activities. I feel that this is a book you can take your time with, dip in and out of, or just get on and do, be, and find what strikes a chord with you. Balanced and wise, Grounded helps us to explore our relationship with nature, and I’m pleased to recommend it as a Liz Pick of the Month.
‘It became essential for me to go back outside and to be in nature again in order to reconnect with the innate love that had been buried by the pressures of life. I needed to return to the basics, to remember what I loved and why, in the hope that in doing so I would find who or what I was trying to be: the person that was strong and capable, robust and focused….The one who was safe with myself’.
Reflecting on nature's unknowable and mysterious qualities, Grounded explores how we can therapeutically benefit from a deeper connection with nature, finding within it balance, stillness, solitude, resilience, contentment, activity, fearlessness - and our own wild voice. In addition to practical exercises and mindful activities, there are personal stories and thought-provoking questions that will help us understand what it means to be alive in the natural world, and in the moment.
Ruth Allen PhD is a qualified outdoor counsellor/psychotherapist, person-centred therapeutic coach, and an experienced trainer and facilitator. She specialises in outdoor practice, nature connection and the power of relationships. Ruth has a particular passion for radical approaches to therapy, going against traditional pathologizing and medicalising practices that puts the diagnosis before the person and their context. Her methods include an emphasis on healing outside a clinical environment. Underlying every aspect of Ruth’s work is a desire to reduce stigma and normalise an ecology of care
Alongside her therapy work, Ruth is a keen adventurer. In autumn 2018, she ran solo and unsupported across the Bosnian Dinaric Alps (an assumed world first). In 2020 she had planned to return to the Balkans to run the Dinaric Alps again from Montenegro to Albania. Day-to-day she enjoys the small adventures and can be found biking and running in the UK uplands. Ruth enjoys inspiring people through new adventures that combine her love for place, people and purpose.
