Right-wing – Seeding Our Future

Right-wing chaos: control through fear

Naomi Klein’s 2018 book, No is not enough: defeating the new shock politics, is the most lucid, convincing, and alarming account I’ve seen yet of what Donald Trump is really about, and much of it is relevant to the numerous other right-wing leaders gaining power in these chaotic times. She’s clearly right that Trump excels … Read more

Emerging from emergency

Hopes, joys, skills, support for life beyond lockdown Saturday July 17: 2-5pm, BridportWith Alan Heeks and John Harley In recent weeks, we’ve had a big loosening of lockdown, with hopefully more to come soon : so how will we use our new freedom? This workshop offers a hopeful, supportive space for us to explore: harvesting what we’ve learned, and forming a vision of the life we’d like now, as individuals and in our community. Our afternoon will include processes for exploration, sharing time, skills tips, and a simple ritual to help each of us step into the future. The covid pandemic has probably brought some blessings as well as setbacks for all of us. The outlook ahead is uncertain in many ways, but is also full of opportunity. Right now is a unique chance to learn from lockdown, and grow from it. Leaders Alan Heeks has been helping individuals and communities with resilience and wellbeing for many years. In Bridport, he started the cohousing project, and the Bridport Food Matters initiative on food security. John Harley is a facilitator, drama therapist and Unitarian minister who is passionate about creative and holistic ways to engage with the climate crisis and the current pandemic. Venue: The Yellow Room, Chapel in the Garden, East Street, Bridport. This is a large room which we’ll keep well ventilated. We’ll discuss any other covid-related guidelines at the start of the group. Cost: £10, concessions £8. Bookings and enquiries: Contact Alan on data@workingvision.com or 07976 602787.
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Woodland Resilience Immersion Retreat For Doctors

Nature-based ways to resource yourself and your practice Tuesday 20th July at 5pm until Thursday 22nd July at 5pmSingle accommodation. Vegetarian food locally sourced where possible. Total £275 The impact of prolonged overload, COVID working and the stress of facing ever-rising demands with shrinking resources, is calling us to respond creatively. This Woodland Resilience Immersion will offer you some insights and skills, and different ways for raising resilience and nourishing wellbeing. In 2018, Westminster Centre for Resilience recognised that health professionals need something more than the typical half-day resilience session in an urban training room. Hazel Hill Wood is an off-grid conference centre set in a 70-acre wood near Salisbury. Hazel Hill Trust and Westminster Centre for Resilience have jointly developed a woodland retreat programme. We have many years’ experience of delivering nature-based resilience programmes for front-line services. The next two-night, 48-hour residential Woodland Immersion will offer a unique combination of our teams’ expertise. There is growing evidence for the benefits of Nature contact in offsetting high levels of stress, ‘Directed Attention Fatigue’, information overload, and excessive ‘screen time’. The pilot programmes at Hazel Hill – evaluated by Westminster Centre for Resilience – showed statistically significant impacts. There is a brief summary below. Find peace in a beautiful 70-acre woodland – healing/nourishing in its own rightTry a range of ‘forest bathing’ and mindfulness techniquesExplore what nature’s cycles can teach us about our resilience as human ecosystemsTime to experience some movement, including some brief practical conservation workTo feel nourished by being part of a transitory community of shared experienceApplying the neurophysiology of the recovery responseCampfire circles: personal/professional stories of living in turbulent timesTime for resting and to share good food FACILITATORS David Peters worked for many years as a GP, and since 2000 in a range of professional and research roles in the NHS . He co founded and directed the Westminster Centre for Resilience (WCR), where he is now Emeritus Professor. https://www.londonfirst.co.uk/newspublications/blog/what-a-university-can-do-resilience-and-leadership-in-challenging-timeshttps://www.westminster.ac.uk/news/westminster-centre-for-resilience-in-conversation-with-michel-van-der-bel-of-microsoft Marcos Frangos has many years’ experience as a person-centred counsellor, and in groups working with ecosystems as a model for human resilience: http://www.wellspringchange.com For information please email David Peters. Link to Nourishing the Frontline Resilience: Intensive Preliminary Evaluation
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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:

Deepen your roots, nourish your fruits with the Gardener’s Way July 9-11 2021: at Hazel Hill Wood, near Salisbury With Alan Heeks, Jane Sanders and Marcos Frangos As restrictions ease, we’re facing new freedom and possibilities. How do we stay steady and make fruitful choices, serving ourselves and the bigger picture? This weekend is a wonderful chance to explore these questions, in a magical wood and a supportive group, using Alan’s unique Natural Happiness approach to learning from ecosystems. This workshop is designed to help us all find clarity, stay centred, and see how we can grow and contribute in these exciting and worrying times. Let’s remember the hopes of shaping a better future after the pandemic! Our methods will include: nourishing our roots; composting challenges; using co-creative skills to handle uncertainties; cultivating our 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. We will explore how to cultivate wellbeing and resilience for ourselves and our 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 2022. See more at www.naturalhappiness.net/books. 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: £240 per person, concessions £190: this includes a single bedroom. If two friends or family members share a bedroom, the cost is £220 per person. We will share cooking and other community tasks. To secure a place, we will need a deposit of £40, £30 for concessions: in the unlikely event that covid rules prevent us running the group, you will receive a full refund. Timings: from 4pm on Friday afternoon, finishing by 2pm, after lunch on Sunday. Covid precautions: although all Covid restrictions will hopefully be lifted by July, we are planning a number of precautionary measures for this group. These include: option of single bedrooms for everyone; sessions run outdoors where possible, and with plenty of ventilation when indoors; scope to maintain 1-metre distancing if desired. We will agree together at the start of the group guidelines we’re all easy with. 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. Please note there are deer ticks at the wood which can carry Lyme disease: we will brief you on precautions in the joining instructions. See more about the wood at www.hazelhill.org.uk. For bookings and enquiries: Please contact Carol Nourse via email on naturalhappinessoffice@gmail.com
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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.
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