About Ellen and her Ardent Nature

Ardent Nature is my coaching and consulting business that serves the Columbia River Gorge and the greater Pacific Northwest of the United States.  I help individuals, groups, and organizations grow inner-strengths and anchor in their aliveness so they may live with greater ease and joy and aspire toward heartfelt wholesome goals! 

What brings forth your ardent nature?  How do you anchor in aliveness?  How do you experience joy in the flow of Earth's vitality?         I would be honored to learn.

Ellen Donoghue, PhD

I am a social scientist with a core area of research on well-being, resiliency, and the connections between people and nature.  For my coaching services, I draw on my research, the ancient wisdom tradition of Buddhism, neuroscience, and the work of psychologists and meditation teachers, including Dr. Rick Hanson, author of Buddha’s Brain, and with whom I have completed his Foundations of Well-Being training.

I am often asked “Are you a life coach?” I refer to myself as an “Aliveness Coach,” a blend of wellness coach, life coach, and empowerment coach. I empower people to anchor in their raw aliveness by drawing on their innate strengths as they cultivate new ones to create a lasting senses of ease, joy, and aliveness.

I began studying the connections between people and the environment in the Columbia River Gorge and the greater Pacific Northwest of the United States in 2000, after working and conducting research in Central America and Southeast Asia on community-based and collaborative resource management.  Well-being and resiliency were core areas of my research.   

I am an avid outdoor enthusiast, including in some extreme environments and fringe sports such as dog mushing throughout the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. I am most “at home” when I am surrounded by millions of acres of wilderness. 

I am fortunate to have had a number of beloved teachers, mentors, and loved ones who have positively enriched my life and my journey.  The most influential teacher throughout my life has been the natural world and my connections to it.  My sense of connectivity to all beings has been cultivated while spending hundreds of thousands of miles on foot, bike, skis, sled, kayak, and raft in the wild places of our earth.  Some people consider outdoor pursuits a “recreational lifestyle choice.”  For me, being outdoors is as essential as drinking water or brushing my teeth.  If I am not in nature every day my spirit shrivels.  The natural world has been my source for cultivating a lasting sense of equanimity.  It is my refuge.  It has been the greatest “constant” in my life.  As poet Gary Snyder said, "Nature is not a place. It is home."

Lifelong pursuits in activism, science, outdoor adventure, and personal inner discovery led me to my current passion in which I coach individuals, groups, and organizations to cultivate strengths such as resiliency, gratitude, compassion, confidence, and grit, and to learn to minimize anxiety, fear, and judgement.  I draw on my research as well as Buddhist psychology to help people grow inner-strengths and live authentically from heart-based places of resiliency and joy.  As the motto of my business suggests, with Ardent Nature services you will “anchor in your raw aliveness” and cultivate your joy in the vitality of life.   

I include this necessary disclaimer. I am neither a psychologist nor a licensed counselor. I am a PhD social scientist whose core research focuses on understanding dimensions of well-being and resiliency.  Receiving coaching to grow inner-strengths and learn healthy mindfulness practices is not a substitute for psychological treatment where it is warranted, as you no doubt know.

I would be honored to be part of your personal growth journey or to help empower your group or organization to grow inner-strengths and live free from fear, anger, judgment, and doubt and abide in peace, calm, confidence, grit, gratitude, and compassion.

Ardent nature

Ardent Nature is my invitation to you or your organization to join me in cultivating inner-strengths to create a lasting sense of wellness, enhancing resiliency, calm, compassion, joy, confidence, grit, and goodwill at the individual level which in turn enhances the well-being of relationships, groups, organizations, communities, etc.  When we cultivate personal inner-strengths we shed our tendencies to judge, blame, and fear thereby enhancing the well-being of all beings we encounter.