Resilience Skills – Seeding Our Future

Don’t let lockdown grind you away! Staying cheerful in covid year two

Despite my resilience skills, I’ve had to keep digging deep to sustain my mood, especially in these recent winter months. Whilst there’s hope for easing restrictions soon, lockdown has a cumulative grinding effect. So here are my tips for the next few months. Mindful exercise: enjoy your outdoor time to the max, with all five … Read more

Covid vaccinations: a touching flavour of Dunkirk spirit – Plus tips to avoid side effects

Having my first covid vaccination was a moving experience, which I hadn’t expected. I’m so proud of the NHS for organising on this scale and speed, and touched by all the volunteers who made it possible. As I cycled to our local surgery on a freezing Saturday morning, there was a steady flow of pedestrians … Read more

Your Resilience Toolkit

What is resilience, and why does it matter? Resilience is the ability to stay calm in high levels of change and challenge, to bounce back when something difficult happens, to face up to a problem and find a good solution. It’s a set of skills to help you maintain your wellbeing and happiness even when … Read more

The Diamond Process: drawing on both sides of the brain

As we try to handle ever more complexity and uncertainty in our lives, co-creative skills are essential. Co-creativity is about both-and, combining action and reflection, balancing your needs and aims with the realities of the situation and other people in it. One way of developing co-creativity is through the left and right sides of the … Read more

Adapting to climate change and covid – reflections on a retreat

From 6-8 November we held a virtual retreat to focus on different spiritual approaches to climatechange, Covid and other challenges we all are facing. It was a fascinating and welcome opportunityto get people together and explore ideas and feelings. As I think about this retreat I remember that in times of crisis for thousands of … Read more

The Seven Seeds of Natural Happiness

How can you stay happy when there’s too much change and uncertainty? Are there ways to bounce back and thrive if life is getting you down? Natural Happiness uses skills from gardening and organic farming to help you cultivate your own wellbeing. The Seven Seeds approach grows from Alan Heeks’ experience of creating gardens, a … Read more

Resource Toolkit: Personal Energy Audit

This can be a powerful process to help you understand your sources and uses of physical, emotional, mental and inspirational energy. Gardeners and farmers manage the energy mix for their land, and you can do this for your personal ecosystem. Asking yourself “How’s my energy?” may be too loose to be useful. When professionals … Read more

Resource Toolkit: Creative Conflict Resolution

Many challenges involve conflict. This process is one I’ve used often myself, and have taught in training groups. You can use the gist in minor conflict, and the full process in major ones. Here we move on to human skills which can help you to compost difficult situations. We often regard conflicts as bad, or … Read more

Mapping your wild margins

This matrix can help you recognise and value wild margins in yourself, or you could use it for a group such as a work team. Start by listing a few activities, skills, interests which may seem marginal and unproductive. Then explore how they could help you, and how you can sustain and integrate them. Download … Read more

Getting Centered Amid Confusion: The Treeheart Process

Life and work get more confusing year by year, and that’s unlikely to stop in future. Spending time in Nature is a great way to reduce its stress and find clarity, but what do you do when you have to make a decision, in your workplace or at home, within the next few minutes? The … Read more

Grow your own Happiness

60-90-minute online workshop Cultivate your wellbeing with gardening skills! Available for group bookingsWith Alan Heeks In these stormy times, we need new skills to stay happy. A cultivated ecosystem, like a garden, is a role model for human nature: this workshop shows how gardening methods can help you grow your own happiness and deepen the roots of your resilience. For example: Mulching and pruning to nourish your rootsComposting stress as a source of energyUse gardening skills like observation and creativityFind new ways to adapt to the climate crisisDraw inspiration from Nature to guide you in uncertainty Alan Heeks has over 25 years of experience exploring Natural Happiness with groups. It grows from creating a 130-acre organic farm and education centre at Magdalen Farm in West Dorset, and from gardening with his wife at home. In this online workshop, Alan will describe the Seven Seeds of Natural Happiness, and participants will have a chance to try some of them out. Alan is happy to take bookings for this event from environmental, community and other groups, at a time of their choosing for a moderate fee by negotiation. CONTACT LINK
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NATURAL HAPPINESS: cultivate your resilience with the Gardener’s Way

July 9-11 2021: at Hazel Hill Wood, near Salisbury With Alan Heeks, Jane Sanders and Marcos Frangos How can you stay happy when there’s too much change and uncertainty? This workshop shows you how: to cultivate yourself like a garden, and grow your own wellbeing by learning from natural ecosystems, using Alan’s unique Natural Happiness model. In this workshop we’ll explore these questions, with the natural ecosystem of this magical wood as our guide. Our methods will include: nourishing our roots; composting problems; using co-creative skills to work with nature; growing inspiration; and ecosystem insights about community. Along with workshop sessions, there will be solo times in the wood, plus good food, campfires and songs to nourish us. This will be a residential group at Hazel Hill Wood: if Covid restrictions prevent this, it will be run with a series of online sessions with personal time in between. We will explore how to grow resilience for individuals and communities, especially in response to the climate crisis and the related pandemic. If you are interested in using this model in your professional work with individuals or groups, Alan will be happy to offer you advice and support: the content of this workshop relates to his fourth book, which is planned for publication in late 2021. Alan Heeks has been exploring resilience with people and nature for many years, and has led many groups on this theme, drawing on experience of resilient natural systems from creating an organic farm and setting up Hazel Hill. Jane Sanders has over 25 years’ experience in working with a mindfulness based approach to wellbeing with groups and individuals, and has also incorporated deep ecology, ecopsychology and the wisdom of natural systems into her work in many different settings, including numerous groups at Hazel Hill Wood. Marcos Frangos is widely experienced in group facilitation, coaching, counselling and constellations work. He was General Manager of Hazel Hill Wood for 5 years, and has co- led many groups there with Jane and Alan. Cost including food and accommodation: £220, concessions £180. We will share cooking and other community tasks. To secure a place, we will need a deposit of £40, £30 for concessions: if, nearer the time we have to run this as an event online event, your deposit will cover the cost of this, or you can receive a full refund. Hazel Hill is a magical 70-acre conservation woodland and retreat centre, 7 miles from Salisbury. It has simple, yet beautifully crafted off-grid wooden buildings with lovely indoor and outdoor group spaces, basic accommodation in bedrooms and sleeping lofts (or camping), good hot showers and compost loos. See more at www.hazelhill.org.uk For bookings and enquiries: Please contact Carol Nourse via email on: naturalhappinesscontact@gmail.com
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Composting: the upsides of your downsides

Imagine that you can tap into a major new source of energy and insight, that’s already within you: it’s free, abundant, and just needs a bit of effort to process it. What’s more, you’ll be creating benefits out of problems that drain energy and pollute your inner ecosystem. This is what composting offers you. The ancient alchemists sought to turn base matter into gold. Composting in gardens and farms achieves this. It starts with rubbish, animal crap, rotting vegetable matter, even weeds. All this “waste”, useless in these forms, ends up as humus, highly fertile, rich in biological activity, able to renew the earth’s vitality. Recycling your waste gives your garden a free source of energy which raises the vitality and resilience of your soil, and avoids the pollution and depletion caused by artificial fertiliser. Physical composting takes several months – but the human equivalent can happen in minutes, days or weeks. Plant and animal waste usually looks bad, and smells worse. Yet it’s a major supply of natural energy, if only we can change its form. And the same is true of human energy waste: composting this is a vital element of super-resilience. Human Energy Waste This may be a new idea for you, and it’s an example of how the natural happiness approach can help you see your life differently, and discover new resources. By human energy waste, I don’t mean car exhaust fumes or old plastic cups: I mean personal energy that’s stuck or stagnant in a negative form. Here are some examples: Physical: stress and toxins that build up in your body, due to anxiety, unhealthy food and drink, etc.Emotional: negative feelings like anger or depression, and unresolved conflicts.Mental: habitual worrying, going round in circles in your mind, about big issues or everyday ones.Inspirational: a sense of hopelessness or pointlessness about aspects of your own life and work, or the state of the world. Most of us carry a lot of negative energy, stuck in our ecosystem. The first two steps are starting to notice it, and having faith that you can compost at least some of this into a source of positive energy. Five Tips for Good Composting in Practice There are several methods of composting. In this chapter, I’m referring to hot aerobic composting, because it offers the best parallel for the human system. This summary of the main principles of hot aerobic composting shows how they can apply to human energy waste. To get the benefit of the composting process, waste materials have to be gathered, sorted, and brought together. This is an investment of labour, and when you’re dealing with smelly waste it may not be very pleasant! In the same way, your first step is to identify and gather some of the waste in your life and work. This requires patience, good observation, and resilience. Your waste may include difficult feelings and festering situations that smell nasty, and you might rather bury them. 1. Gathering your rubbish You need to see where it has been buried, suppressed or thrown out. Start with physical waste, reviewing tensions and health issues. Then consider mental waste: insoluble problems, unresolved questions. Why did that friendship or that project fail? Facing such questions reveals their emotional content: many issues that may seem quite rational also involve our feelings. Observe your feelings as clearly as you can: this is part of the collection stage. Next, gather the emotional waste, identifying negative feelings and where you feel stressed. Go into this, identify the sources, such as particular situations or relationships. Keep breathing as you do this, aerating the compost. Explore any negative feelings, such as fear, anxiety, uncertainty, anger. Think of these waste feelings as a flow of energy that is stuck, and see what outcome would unblock them. Possibly you are angry because someone has not acknowledged you, or fearful because you haven’t faced the implications of a problem situation. Negative inspirational energy can be the most depleting and difficult to face. A sense of pointlessness is like a major pollution problem: pervasive and hard to clear. Use the parallel with air pollution: it can arise from one main source like a dirty factory, or from a diffuse problem like road traffic. Either way, a systemic change is probably needed: a switch to clean energy sources and processes, and more recycling. In counselling it is often said that expressing a problem is already half way to resolving it. Gathering and identifying your waste issues is a significant step in the recycling process. And avoid judging yourself or the issue as far as possible. 2. Sorting and Heaping If you’ve done your gathering thoroughly, by now you may be feeling rather daunted and overwhelmed. The sorting stage should help. In garden composting, you don’t put all waste on the heap: some stuff is hard to break down, or simply unsuitable. Especially when you’re starting on human energy composting, pace yourself, and don’t tackle the big issues too soon. Build up your skills and confidence by starting on smaller, easier issues, and getting some early wins. Typically physical and mental issues are easier to compost than emotional or inspirational ones, and work or practical problems may be easier than family and community issues. In human composting, some issues may be so big that you need professional help: for example a marriage breakup, or a life-threatening illness. Be realistic about the issues you can tackle yourself. You build your compost heap by facing your waste issues fully and deeply. If this leaves you feeling overwhelmed or despairing, just allow the feeling, observe it, and don’t deny it or judge it. Keep your sense of purpose and perspective: remember that you are more than your feelings. Adapt the Buddhist mantra: “I feel fearful, but I am not my fear.” And ensure that you have support available to you. 3. Air Supply A plentiful supply of air is essential to fuel the biological activity in the hot aerobic composting […]
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