conflict – Seeding Our Future

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

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

Earth Visit Report from Prostetnic Vogon Jelfs

To: Controller, Zone 581, LIP Group. (Less Interesting Planets) Your Greatship, I grovel before you as I make this report. This is the scheduled 50-year update on my visit to Earth in 1969. Your Greatship will recall that in 1969, the outlook here was promising. Many people were thinking about quality of life, there were global initiatives for sustainability, and the superpowers were talking about peace and disarmament. At that time we began our experiment with Technological Dominance, to discover if humans could withstand the manipulative, addictive power of Vogon technologies: the internet, social media, mega-materialism. Our decision to channel our interventions through a few crazed politicians and self-obsessed entrepreneurs has proved very effective. You will be gratified to know that the idea of implanting a Vogon personality in a few of the humans leaders has proved highly disruptive. Men called Trump and Putin are behaving in truly Vogonic ways, leaving other leaders bewildered as to how to deal with them. You will be gratified to hear that Earth is a mess. All but a small minority of humans are entirely submissive to our technologies, and believe that this IS reality. The environment is well on its way to complete ruin, with minimal popular resistance. Your Greatness will recall our idea of a Phase 2 for the experiment, to begin in 2020. If Phase 1 was massively successful, as it has been, we could consider disrupting our technologies, to give the humans a chance to fight back. The resulting conflict could be entertaining. I must report that if we allow Phase 1 to continue unchanged, it is possible that the small aware minority will become better organised. They have some understanding of the effect of our technologies, and they hope to create things called “self-sufficient communities” which are shielded from outside influence. There is also a small possibility that these aware minorities will learn to use our technologies for their own purposes. One risk with social media and the internet is that they can be used to reduce the power of malevolent autocrats. Most countries on Earth are still “democracies”, which should mean that a large number of dissatisfied people can vote for something better. It is entertaining to note that technology plus the power of a few rich people cancels this out. One reason for the Phase 1 experiment on Earth was to test out methods to subdue disruptive populations on other planets. Given our success, I recommend that Records Group document our work for use elsewhere. With grovelling adulation Vogon Jelfs