Featured Post – Seeding Our Future

The 9 Dimensions of Super-Resilience: the key to enjoying your 2020’s

Would you agree that for most people, life and work have become a lot more demanding and uncertain in recent years? And is that trend likely to grow in future? If so, what’s the positive response to the challenge? This is what I’m calling super-resilience. Currently, I see many individuals, communities and work teams struggling … Read more

Deep Adaptation and climate change: An intro to the work of Jem Bendell

Back in 2018, the sense of urgency about the climate crisis rose sharply, helped by several key voices, including Greta Thunberg, and Professor Jem Bendell. Whilst he strongly supports all efforts to reduce climate change, he cites extensive scientific evidence that it is too late to avoid serious worsening. Jem uses the term Deep Adaptation … Read more

Ex Africa semper aliquid novi: hopes, fears, news on African farming

The Latin tag comes from Pliny the Elder in the 1st century AD, and means There’s always something new from Africa. It was painted across the Bedford truck in which I travelled from Algiers to Nairobi (via the Sahara, Congo, Rwanda and more) in the 1970’s, which is where my love for Africa began. In … 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

Friendship Tips

Cultivating a garden takes some dedication and skill, and friendships need this too. One of the big improvements in my 50s and 60s has been more and better friendships. These friendships oil the gearbox of life: lubricating changes and crises which could be overwhelming. They also top the cake, through the pleasures of companionship and … Read more

Cycles of progress map

Natural Happiness Resource This tool is an invitation to map your progress over time, including the ups and downs, and to celebrate both, and see if there are any cycles involved. During my 20 years in business management and my Harvard MBA studies, progress was always defined as linear and upwards. Nobody had good ways … Read more

Current Events

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

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

Featured Blog

Can elephants evolve?

Why reshaping the finance system is key to climate change. Since late 2018, my work has increasingly focused on climate adaptation: Jem Bendell’s Deep Adaptation approach has deepened my view of the crisis, but has also helped me to see ways I can respond actively. You can see more about my 2020 plans here: Throughout this time, I’ve had a rising sense that the elephant in the climate change room is the financial system. By now I’ve had numerous conversations about the elephant: even one with Gail Bradbrook, co-founder of Extinction Rebellion. I was relieved that she believes the financial system can be transformed without it needing to collapse. However, no one, including Gail, has given me a credible view of howmajor reshaping might happen. Why do I see this as key to the whole climate crisis? Just put these three points together: Almost everyone agrees that the 2020s are Last Chance Saloon for climate responses.Despite all the good initiatives, 2019 was the all-time peak year for CO2 emissions, ie this major driver is still worsening.It’s clear that globally, business has more power than most governments: and business operates within a system that requires profit maximisation, and does not charge a fraction of the environmental costs that business creates. If this leaves you despondent, try reading an old favourite of mine: The Ecology of Commerce, by Paul Hawken. He eloquently shows how business alone has the power to make the huge, rapid changes we need as a climate response. And the key to unlocking this power is to change the rules that business plays by. Recently, I’ve been chewing hard on how to effect a change in the rules. My insights so far are to find and use the pressure points for systemic change, and to harness the profit motive rather than choke it off. My guess is that the pressure points for this change are: The Uber Rich: Whilst their influence is largely invisible, I believe it is one of the biggest. If the uber rich realise that their personal survival is in jeopardy, that no amount of money can insulate them from what’s ahead, they could enforce huge changes very quickly. This begs the questions: where and how to reach the uber rich; what evidence and arguments would engage them; and what specific demands would one urge them to make, and to who?Financial institutions: I see plenty of evidence of concern in this sector, which is geared to assessing and minimising risk. There is already some pressure from institutional investors, the insurance sector, and governing bodies like the Bank of England, demanding greater response to climate change from businesses. Within this large sector, where are the pressure points, such as organisations, individuals, networks, who are opinion leaders? What proposition for system change could be put to them? I’m all too aware of the massive vested interests and inertia in the current financial system. But my contacts inside that system consistently report a sense of desperation: most individuals know radical change is really urgent, but as employees of their organisation, they can’t see how to do it. And let’s remember that systemic changes usually start out looking quixotic, with a handful of people outside the system. This blog is a call for connection. I suspect that others are further advanced in this exploration than I am, and if we can join with each other to create coordinated proposals and to infiltrate the system, the changes we need may come to pass. Where are the opinion leaders and gatekeepers, the role models and precedents?! If you’d like to join the conversations, please contact me.