How to grow through a pandemic

Resilience skills for these bewildering times

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Natural Happiness

Learn how to grow your own wellbeing by parallels with gardening and ecosysytems.
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Resilient Futures

As life gets more uncertain we need more resilience skills to stay happy and enjoy the future.
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Creative Ageing

Getting older can be exciting bewildering and scary all in one day.

Alan’s work offers plenty of insights

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What’s the secret to happiness?

How can we stay happy when there’s too much change and uncertainty? Are there ways to bounce back and thrive if everyday life and work is getting us down? Do you want to keep growing as you get older? How can you dig into your fears about the future and become more resilient? In this website, Alan Heeks offers practical answers to all these questions and many more!

Alan’s unique approach involves understanding human nature, and learning from parallels in the natural world around us. For example, balancing our roots and fruits (resources and outputs) composting waste energy (such as stress), working with uncertainty instead of overriding it.

This website offers you a wide range of online resources, details of upcoming events with Alan Heeks, past issues and a free sign up for Alan’s e-newsletter on natural happiness and resilience, informative and entertaining blogs, and information on Alan’s books and projects.

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Foresight: future flourishing through super-resilience:

The present is already so demanding that most of us don’t want to consider the future. But surely the rapid changes and rising pressures we face now are likely to continue, and increase? Alan has been researching and leading trainings in resilience for several years: the skills to grow through problems and keep thriving, not just cope and get by. Super-resilience means the new skills we may need to stay happy in spite of new and bigger challenges of the years ahead.
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Natural Happiness

The times we’re in are tough: it’s clear that we need new approaches and models to thrive in all this. Natural Happiness is a simple, practical approach which can help in your life and work, and for work teams and communities.

Natural Happiness will show you how to cultivate your own human nature, and tend yourself like a garden: deepen your roots, and grow fruitfully through all kinds of weather. Alan Heeks has created a unique model, the Seven Seeds of Natural Happiness to help you do just this. Organic gardening methods offer us many useful parallels for growing our own happiness, such as: If you’re overstretched, you need to nourish your roots or prune back your branches. ·

Natural Happiness Resources
Natural Happiness Blogs

Alan’s new book: Not Fade Away- staying happy when you’re over 64

When you’re over 50, 60 or 70, you may have exciting new freedom and choices, but you may also be facing losses and uncertainty. As you reach mid-life and beyond, it’s a good time to take stock, clear away old issues, and make fresh choices that help you to enjoy the years ahead. Alan has been exploring these topics for several years, and can offer you a lot of useful resources, including his two books on the subject:

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Future Conversations – Taster session – 16 June 2020

What is the present situation telling us about our future? What are the new possibilities? Are you interested in exploring how we can build better communities and build our resilience? We're inviting you to an online taster session to preview this 6 week...
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Seeds of Hope

Finding positive growth in crisis times Online workshop Wednesday 20 May, 2.00-5.00 pm With Alan Heeks and Karim Hadden  Any crisis brings opportunity as well as loss.  This half-day online group is a chance to find and nurture seeds of hope: for yourself, for...
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Online workshop: Deep Adaptation to Climate Change and Coronavirus – How body heart and soul can grow through a crisis

Saturday April 18, 9.30 - 4.30 (4 sessions) with Alan Heeks and John Harley Deep Adaptation is a different way to engage with the climate crisis, created by Jem Bendell. It means adapting to climate impacts, as well as trying to reduce them; facing the emotional...
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Deepen your Roots

Resilience, Connection and Joy for crazy times  ​Five online workshops: Wednesdays April 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 4.30-6 pm, 4.30-6 pm With Alan Heeks and Karim Hadden  In stormy times, we all need to deepen our roots and find more resources, more...
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Deep Adaptation: a spiritual exploration

March 20-22, 2020: Hazel Hill Wood, near Salisbury With Alan Heeks, Jake Farr and Karim Hadden Deep Adaptation is the term used by Jem Bendell to invite us to face the radical changes climate change will bring within the next decade. This weekend retreat will focus on...
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Connecting with Soul

A 1-day workshop in Bridport: Saturday February 1, 2020 With Alan Heeks, Linda Heeks, John Harley This is a chance to explore different ideas of what the soul is, and various ways to contact it. One aim is to see if soul contact can guide us in clarifying our life...
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Deep Roots and Earth Care

Celebrating Samhain : a time to take stock, honour the land, the Ancestors, and nourish ourselves November 1-3, 2019: Hazel Hill Wood  With Agatha Manouche and Alan Heeks  As we reach the end of the cycle of the year, it helps to appraise the depth of our...
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The Odyssey of Manhood

A men’s weekend about the long journey to find yourself September 6-8: Hazel Hill Wood, near Salisbury With Alan Heeks and John Harley Men are often trying to reach a goal, or figuring out what to aim for. Maybe as we get older, we see that the journey is significant...
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Upcoming events

We’d love you to join us on one of our events in the UK or abroad. We hold spaces to connect like-minded people and explore a range of different topics for personal development.
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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...
Read More

Future Outlook: beyond resilience

RESOURCE SHEET This sheet highlights resources relevant to Alan Heeks’ workshop at CCC19, and for his work generally. IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE It seems that there is little research on impacts, using the latest data on the acceleration of climate change itself. Many...
Read More

The 8 Dimensions of Super-Resilience: How to grow into the 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 evolutionary challenge? This is what I’m calling...
Read More

Enjoying your elderhood

The term elder is used with various meanings: I’m using it to invite you to connect with the mature wisdom in yourself, and in our ancestors. Traditional tribal cultures, such as the Native Americans, Celts, and Bedouin, had great wisdom, including the role of the...
Read More

Deep ecology: a way to face the future

If you’re working with hazardous materials, you need good methods and equipment. The future really is hard to face: it can easily feel bleak and overwhelming. Many people feel pain and despair about the state of the world and the environment, and blank out to avoid these feelings.

One of the best processes I’ve found for facing this pain, and moving on to face the future constructively, is called Deep ecology.

Read More

Seeding our Future Project

Resilience and wisdom to stay happy in the years ahead PROJECT OVERVIEW INTRODUCTION: The present is already so uncertain and demanding that most of us don’t want to consider the future.  But surely the pressures and changes we face now are likely to...
Read More

Discerning, Valuing, Tolerating

Here are some specific ways to handle a crisis situation, whether personal, local or national.   Discerning Beware of scapegoats and puffball simplistic solutions: they both pop up in many crises. Realise that you and other are heated about this situation, and...
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...
Read More

Cycles of progress map

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...
Read More

Using humour to defuse tensions

Do you ever feel that you spend hours in a state of high alert, where one more hassle feels like the last straw? The research quoted in our November issue (book blog - Your Brain On Nature) shows that many of us do indeed spend far too long in this state. To help you...
Read More

Resources

In this section you’ll find a range of processes and resources I have created which can help you to grow your own natural happiness and resilience.
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Creative Ageing Blogs

Creation Spirituality: what, why, how

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Align your own creative power within the divine The essence of creation spirituality is this idea: that the creation of our world was not a one-off event billions of years ago: it is a process continuing in every moment, and each of us can contribute.  As Neil...

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Enjoying your elderhood

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The term elder is used with various meanings: I’m using it to invite you to connect with the mature wisdom in yourself, and in our ancestors. Traditional tribal cultures, such as the Native Americans, Celts, and Bedouin, had great wisdom, including the role of the...

read more

Natural Happiness Blogs

Learning to Unlearn

Learning to Unlearn

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Yes, it's a paradox, but our ways of thinking, our habitual responses, are so deeply set that a deliberate effort of unlearning is needed if we want to see things as they are, and be able to find a fresh response. I've been exploring Sufi teachings for over thirty...

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Resilent Futures Blogs

Looking back from 2042

Looking back from 2042

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Coronavirus was just the start… I was just 12 back in 2020 when the First Plague happened. What’s strange looking back is that everybody thought this was just a terrible one-off crisis. At first, they told us the lockdowns would be a few weeks, but actually in the UK...

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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...
Read More

Future Outlook: beyond resilience

RESOURCE SHEET This sheet highlights resources relevant to Alan Heeks’ workshop at CCC19, and for his work generally. IMPACTS OF CLIMATE CHANGE It seems that there is little research on impacts, using the latest data on the acceleration of climate change itself. Many...
Read More

The 8 Dimensions of Super-Resilience: How to grow into the 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 evolutionary challenge? This is what I’m calling...
Read More

Enjoying your elderhood

The term elder is used with various meanings: I’m using it to invite you to connect with the mature wisdom in yourself, and in our ancestors. Traditional tribal cultures, such as the Native Americans, Celts, and Bedouin, had great wisdom, including the role of the...
Read More

Deep ecology: a way to face the future

If you’re working with hazardous materials, you need good methods and equipment. The future really is hard to face: it can easily feel bleak and overwhelming. Many people feel pain and despair about the state of the world and the environment, and blank out to avoid these feelings.

One of the best processes I’ve found for facing this pain, and moving on to face the future constructively, is called Deep ecology.

Read More

Seeding our Future Project

Resilience and wisdom to stay happy in the years ahead PROJECT OVERVIEW INTRODUCTION: The present is already so uncertain and demanding that most of us don’t want to consider the future.  But surely the pressures and changes we face now are likely to...
Read More

Discerning, Valuing, Tolerating

Here are some specific ways to handle a crisis situation, whether personal, local or national.   Discerning Beware of scapegoats and puffball simplistic solutions: they both pop up in many crises. Realise that you and other are heated about this situation, and...
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...
Read More

Cycles of progress map

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...
Read More

Using humour to defuse tensions

Do you ever feel that you spend hours in a state of high alert, where one more hassle feels like the last straw? The research quoted in our November issue (book blog - Your Brain On Nature) shows that many of us do indeed spend far too long in this state. To help you...
Read More

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