Treeheart Process – Seeding Our Future

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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Six big questions for our times
and some ways to explore answers Have you ever had the experience of wandering, lost in the mist, and emerging to find you’re at a vantage point where you can see at least broadly where you are, and where you want to go? That’s the place I’ve reached recently, and I’m sharing my perspectives in the hope that they give you useful insights or provoke you to set me right! Over the years I’ve found ways of progressing through confusion that have helped me here. Although human nature dislikes living with uncertainty, I’ve learned to bear with that discomfort, and wander while holding a question in mind. This leads to useful insights coming to me: a ‘chance’ meeting, a newspaper feature, a dream, a wild new idea. The six big questions below have been slowly brewing and taking shape for several months, and I especially thank the many contacts whose views have helped this process. As you’ll see, there is some connection between these questions. An underlying inspiration is Jem Bendell’s work on Deep Adaptation. If that’s new to you, see my overview blog here 1. How can business be a positive force in climate change adaption? Did you know that 2019 is forecast to be the highest year ever for CO2 emissions? Isn’t that worrying, given all the good things going on to reduce pollution? Business is not the only reason for the continuing rise, but I believe that UK and global emissions won’t start dropping unless businesses change radically. I’ve been researching this issue for six months: although there are several good initiatives underway, there are also many companies in denial about climate change, and many who don’t recognise the scale of the change needed. Hence this is the main focus of my work over the coming year. For more on this question, see leading through storms. 2. How can we improve food security in the UK? This is a massive issue worldwide: I’m focussing this question in the UK because it’s where I live, and there are issues particular to our climate and our current cheap food market. I’ve begun to imagine how food growing could be reshaped to cope with climate change and the probability of shortages of imported food. This may require consumers to invest ahead of market prices. See more in the blog about this 3. What role can local communities play in deep adaptation? Potentially a big one: this might include community food growing, and an equally big issue could be food distribution. If there are shortages, how do we ensure that people who have less mobility or less money get a fair share? I recently held an open meeting in my home town to start exploring this. 4. Does the overall financial system need reforming, and how on earth could this happen? Increasingly, I feel that this question is the biggest elephant in the room. Currently the system seemingly necessitates the exhaustion and pollution of natural resources, and extreme inequalities of wealth. The power of the vested interests defending the system is stupendous. I’m having an increasing number of conversations that confirm the scale of the issue, I’m reading and researching about ‘solutions’ and have found nothing convincing yet. If you have ideas or would like to share in my exploration, please contact me. 5. Who’s hurting most? Redress and regeneration The impacts of climate change in the UK are likely to include major disruption and economic impacts. It’s likely that many people in the UK and other wealthier countries will be preoccupied with their own needs. I’m carrying a painful awareness that globally, those who did least to create the crisis are already suffering the most and will continue to do so. See my blog for some initial thoughts on what I or we could do on one aspect of this. 6. How can more people raise their spiritual resilience? I still believe that most problems offer a gift, and the climate crisis could be a massive invitation for all of us to deepen into faith, prayer, and belief in something bigger than ourselves. If people could stop confusing a personal spiritual path with dogmatic religion, there’s great scope for transforming resilience levels without any financial or environmental impact! See more in the blogs and resources on my website www.naturalhappiness.net
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