Natural Happiness

Learn from nature to grow your wellbeing and resilience

 

How can we stay happy when there’s so much uncertainty around? The answer is to cultivate yourself like a garden, and grow your own wellbeing by learning from nature.

Natural Happiness is a simple, practical guide that supports people in their personal lives, in their work, and in making sense of wider issues: it’s all in Alan’s new book, see more here.

People are organisms: constantly changing, and with interactions between physical, emotional, mental, and inspirational aspects. In cultivated ecosystems, such as organic farms and vegetable gardens, we can see how to shape and steer an organism to achieve the outcome we need, and this is a great guide to cultivating human nature.

Organic farmer, conservationist and social entrepreneur Alan Heeks has developed a way for people to cultivate and maintain their own sense of wellbeing and happiness, drawing on his own experiences.

Alan comments: “Having set up a 130-acre organic farm and education centre, I realised that people and teams can learn a huge amount about human sustainability from the parallels with cultivated ecosystems.”

Alan has since created a 70-acre conservation woodland, an acre of organic garden in his hometown, founded a community food security project, and runs workshops on personal resilience and adapting to climate change.

For more about Alan’s planned fourth book, Natural Happiness: Use organic gardening skills to cultivate yourself, click here.

For further reading on the Natural Happiness way, click here.

To receive regular info and updates, subscribe to the Natural Happiness newsletter, click here.

To get in touch with the Natural Happiness Office, click here.

Natural Happiness Online: small groups and coaching

Linked to the upcoming publication of his Natural Happiness book, Alan Heeks is offering two formats for online groups (or in person in Dorset).

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Natural Happiness e-newsletter

Our latest Natural Happiness e-newsletter is all about exploring different viewpoints, to help you expand your sense of the ‘reality’ you live in. Click the button below to read more.

Natural Happiness e-newsletters are issued every couple of months, and bring you insights, resources, event news and bonus blogs.

The Seven Seeds of 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.

Alan Heeks has created a unique model based on what he calls the Seven Seeds of Natural Happiness, which stress different ways of enhancing and supporting your wellbeing inspired by nature, gardening and farming, for example, nourishing your roots; compost your troubles; cultivate community.

Read more about the Seven Seeds here.

Organic gardening methods offer us many useful parallels for growing happiness and the Seven Seeds are a distillation of what Alan has learned over the last 30 years.

Growing through uncertainty: resilience insights

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.

 

Here are some resources that may help you:

Finding the gifts in Bewilderment

Deep Adaptation and climate change

Looking back from 2042

The 8 Dimensions of Super-Resilience: How to grow into the 2020’s

Natural Happiness: Use Gardening Skills to Cultivate Yourself

April 19-21, 2024 at Hawkwood Centre for Future Thinking, Stroud   In these uncertain times, this workshop will help you deepen your roots and grow your resilience. With sessions in Hawkwood's gardens, you'll experience how organic skills like composting,...

Facilitated Workshops for Professionals

The Natural Happiness model is highly relevant for professionals of many kinds, including managers, coaches, hospital doctors, and consultants. Alan can deliver sessions from half a day to 2 days, tailored to your needs. In fact, Alan evolved this model through...

Natural Happiness Online: small groups and coaching

Alan writes: Linked to the upcoming publication of my Natural Happiness book, I am offering two formats for online groups (or in person in Dorset): Small groups: a mini-workshop of 1-2 hours, using Natural Happiness approaches, tailored to the group's wishes. A small...

Tailored Retreats in the Welsh Mountains

A tailored retreat means that an individual or small group choose their own dates for exclusive use of a magical small retreat centre in Wales. Alan will run a couple of sessions each day, drawing on his unique Natural Happiness model, and tailoring the retreat to...

Natural Happiness for Gardeners

Natural Happiness for Gardeners 60-90-minute online workshop Cultivate your wellbeing with gardening skills! Available for group bookings With Alan Heeks   In these stormy times, we need new skills to stay happy.  A cultivated ecosystem, like a garden, is a role...

Events

We’d love you to join us at one of our events. We create spaces to connect like-minded people and explore a range of different topics for personal development and have started doing workshops online.

Resource Toolkit: Conflict Resolution Process

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...

Resource Toolkit: Community Mapping Process

The four-stage approach I’ve set out below may look elaborate, and you could go through it more informally. Communities of various kinds are likely to become very important for all of us in the uncertain years ahead: the benefit of a thorough review is getting clarity...

Resource Toolkit: Embodiment, sound and movement

As you can imagine, these topics are hard to cover in a book. Many approaches of this kind are best experienced in sessions with a teacher, or at minimum from their videos. I’ve learned most in this area from Neil Douglas-Klotz: you’ll find a range of video and audio...

Resource Toolkit: Natural Communication

Natural Communication provides the skills to express yourself, hear others, have a fruitful conversation. These methods are part of my overall Natural Happiness model using gardening analogies. All this is closer to gardening than you might think: both need a dynamic...

The Seven Seeds Ecosystem Model: Cultivating resilience and sustainability for people and organisations

The Seven Seeds is a unique approach using parallels with cultivated ecosystems to help individuals, teams and organisations to grow their resilience and their sustainability for both human and environmental resources. Alan Heeks has evolved this model through many...

Self-help Process: Circle of Voices

This is a method I’ve evolved for integrating multiple viewpoints: see Chapter 4 for a fuller introduction. Before you do this process, read this briefing thoroughly, and get clear on basic decisions such as aim, location, and who’s involved.  Set aside more time than...

Community insights from ecosystems

Community insights from ecosystems Cultivated ecosystems shape natural processes to achieve outputs for us humans: we can learn a lot from the community aspects of Nature. Community on the farm Wild margins: This is one of my favourite principles in organic systems....

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...

Resource Toolkit – Change the Story

If you’re setting an intention for positive change, changing the story is an important part of shifting you or someone else out of a habitual response. One of my biggest insights since turning 60 has been the way repeating stories shape our lives. The older we get,...

Nourish Your Roots: The Tree Test

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...

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.

Natural Happiness Blog

Is Earth a Karmic Enterprise Zone?

Is Earth a Karmic Enterprise Zone?

An extra-terrestrial view of our perplexities   When even slightly plausible explanations fail, it's time to try some which look highly off the wall, so give this one a test flight. It came to me in a dream while on holiday in the wilds of the Pennines. In my...

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Exploring the Future, some more…

Exploring the Future, some more…

Why organic navigation is better than analytical prescription In recent years, I've spent quite a lot of my time exploring the future outlook: recently, I feel I'm getting some valuable insights, but I've also been pondering why I spend so much time on this. It feels...

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Deepening with the Earth

Deepening with the Earth

How to nourish yourself with Nature connection Aiding our wellbeing through Nature contact has become a truism, but as life keeps getting more uncertain and demanding, we truly need to deepen with the Earth, for both emotional and physical health. That's what this...

read more
Seeing life differently

Seeing life differently

Raise your spirits by changing your view Can I invite you to take a couple of minutes, and ask what gives you your sense of reality? Maybe your physical surroundings, other people, and news media and social media. But remember that most of us seek out others who share...

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Losing control – the nomad way of living

Losing control – the nomad way of living

A different approach to future happiness One of my big life-changing experiences was co-leading a dozen retreats in the Tunisian Sahara with Bedouin guides. They had grown up as true nomads, moving around the desert with their camels and goats, but now living mostly...

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Book blog: The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler

Book blog: The Mountain in the Sea, by Ray Nayler

Communication insights from an octopus If you’d like to appreciate the upsides of present times through a book about a dysfunctional future, this novel could suit you: but that’s only half its story. Without being at all didactic, Ray Nayler draws us into a deep...

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Faith, hope and clarity… in uncertain times

Faith, hope and clarity… in uncertain times

These days, it's easy to be worried, but it takes some skill and conscious choice to stay positive. That's what this blog hopes to help with... Your top worry may be personal, national or global: in one sense, it's all the same problem, the shift from an era of...

read more

Resource Toolkit: Conflict Resolution Process

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...

Resource Toolkit: Community Mapping Process

The four-stage approach I’ve set out below may look elaborate, and you could go through it more informally. Communities of various kinds are likely to become very important for all of us in the uncertain years ahead: the benefit of a thorough review is getting clarity...

Resource Toolkit: Embodiment, sound and movement

As you can imagine, these topics are hard to cover in a book. Many approaches of this kind are best experienced in sessions with a teacher, or at minimum from their videos. I’ve learned most in this area from Neil Douglas-Klotz: you’ll find a range of video and audio...

The Seven Seeds Ecosystem Model: Cultivating resilience and sustainability for people and organisations

The Seven Seeds is a unique approach using parallels with cultivated ecosystems to help individuals, teams and organisations to grow their resilience and their sustainability for both human and environmental resources. Alan Heeks has evolved this model through many...

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...

Resource Toolkit – Change the Story

If you’re setting an intention for positive change, changing the story is an important part of shifting you or someone else out of a habitual response. One of my biggest insights since turning 60 has been the way repeating stories shape our lives. The older we get,...

Nourish Your Roots: The Tree Test

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...

Composting: the upsides of your downsides

Imagine that you can tap into a major new source of energy and insight, that’s already within you: it’s free, abundant, and just needs a bit of effort to process it. What’s more, you’ll be creating benefits out of problems that drain energy and pollute your inner...

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...

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...

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