Blogs
Creative Ageing Blogs
Creation Spirituality: what, why, how
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...
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...
Not Fade Away Staying happy when you’re over 64! By Alan Heeks
THE BABY BOOMER GUIDE TO CREATIVE AGEING The late sixties and beyond are a landmark: a good time to choose what you want from the years ahead, and take stock of the story so far. This short, practical book offers you valuable guidance, new skills, and resources to...
Even the old are prejudiced about ageing!
Most of us have prejudices, and most of us have them around old age, whatever age we are! It’s been shocking for me, as an expert on creative ageing, to admit this is true of me.
Not Fade Away: The Story Behind The Book
Alan Heeks shares the roots of his fresh approach to creative ageing... I believe that shipwreck and re-invention are the healthy essence of the mid-life crisis, and I did mine pretty thoroughly. Two weeks before my 50th birthday, I moved out of my 27-year old...
Born to be wild: fresh adventures
Everyday life these days can be uncertain and unsettling for anyone, and getting older may just seem to make that worse. It may feel tempting to settle into your rut, retreat into safety. In fact, you’re likely to be more happy and resilient if you open up to fresh...
Mysteries of elderhood: effects of ageing
Alan Heeks shares his development through the life stages When I turned sixty in 2008, I set a clear intent of moving into elderhood, growing beyond my prevailing warrior-hero approach to life. Ten years on, I can report good progress on my development through the...
Pilgrim without map or boots
Fresh adventures in later years As we get older, we need fresh adventures to keep us growing. Two new experiences I’ve been enjoying are short pilgrimages and retreats. The difference between a pilgrimage and a walk is subtle: I’d say a pilgrim is walking with a...
Dating Tips for Senior Singles
Learn new skills, have adventures…find true love! Picture the scene: I am a newly mature single sitting alone at a table for two, wearing smart casual gear which I hope looks suitable, I am waiting for my blind date, Jackie, to appear. To look my best, I am not...
The Little Book of Hygge
Cosy friendship in all its forms: including tea, cake, candles! Many surveys show the Danes to be the happiest people in Europe and the world, and the quality of hygge seems to be one reason. Hygge, pronounced hoo-guh, is hard to define or translate: friendly cosiness...
Fresh adventures for creative ageing
Discover yourself and have some fun as you grow older. Everyday life these days can be uncertain and unsettling for anyone, and getting older may just seem to make that worse. It may feel tempting to settle into your rut, retreat into safety. In fact, you’re...
Life Threatening Crises for Friends
Alan writes about his experiences of friends suffering from life threatening illness. In the past few months, the wives of two close friends have had late diagnoses of advanced cancer which could be fatal. The husband of another friend has had a stroke. At the...
Age is just a number: Charles Eugster
Charles Eugster is a pioneer in health regimes for people over 65, and well beyond. He has won medals for rowing and sprinting in his eighties and nineties! However, his book offers a lot of help for oldies less fanatically fit then he is.
Vita Sackville-West on Triumphant Elderhood: All Passion Spent
If Vita Sackville-West is known at all these days, it is as a landscape gardener, Bloomsbury bohemian, or as the role model for Virginia Woolf’s Orlando. In fact, she is a superb novelist too: perceptive, witty and elegant.
A Realistic and Positive Book on Ageing: Also helpful for the ‘young-old’
This is the best book on ageing I have read: well-informed, realistic, as well as warm-hearted and inspiring. Marie is one of the leading French experts on ageing: she has been studying this field for years, and draws on some excellent role models and teachers.
A view from age 56: Jane Sanders
My Armenian great grandfather Aram Assadour Altounyan swore by yogurt eating and daily cold showers – and lived into his late 90’s, still working as a surgeon in Syria. A family story is that at 93 he operated on his wife – hands still skilful and steady.
A view from age 71: Gay
Turning 70 was fine. I couldn’t believe it in a way – I kept having to redo the maths to convince myself this huge number related to me. I really like being an ‘elder’! The tricky one for me was turning 50 – neither one thing or the other.
A view from age 74: Giles
It’s the people and the truth and love you bring to dealing to them ALL that count, not your or their appearance, behaviours, plans, status, achievements &c.
How NOT to have a midlife crisis
The ‘hero’ of this book is Tubby Passmore, 58: balding, bulging, and thoroughly lost. Although he’s outwardly successful – well-off, modestly well-known as scriptwriter for a top sitcom, with a steady if dull marriage, Tubby is depressed and confused.
Elderwoman: book by Marian van Eyk McCain
From Elderwoman, I conclude that one of the big gender differences in elderhood is that women face it more collectively. Men often face the challenges of ageing alone, and need new skills to find the collective support and wisdom they also need.
Life lessons from the movies: Hope Springs
One of the interesting things about this film, like Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, is that its main target audience is clearly the over fifties.
Exploring elderhood at Findhorn Foundation
In February 2013, I brought a vision to fruition: co-leading a week-long programme at Findhorn Foundation on elderhood.
Amour: French film about love in old age
Stunning is a word much over-used, especially by estate agents, but stunned is the best way to sum up my feelings at the end of this film.
Natural Happiness Blogs
Resonate or Rescue: Choose Your Response to the Covid Crisis
I’ve had many feelings about this crisis in the past six months, but two have consistently troubled me. I feel guilty about my relatively privileged and easy situation. And I keep reproaching myself that I should do more to help others who are more severely affected....
Learning to Unlearn
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...
How much could you discover in a Wiltshire wood in February?
The Hazel Hill Wood Volunteer Building week February 17th-23rd 2020 Are you seeking fresh inspiration, practical knowhow, interesting contacts or just some fun? You can find all these and more at Hazel Hill, a magical 70 acre woodland retreat center and educational...
Working with Nature in Mind
Reclaiming our mental health and well-being through systemic thinking and ecopsychology practice. Guest blog by Roger Duncan We are currently living in strange and unsettling times, where it seems that contemporary culture is sleepwalking into a spiralling series of...
Brexit: An Uncivil War – TV docudrama
In hindsight, what could possibly go right? This 2-hour programme from Channel 4 is well worth seeing. Not only will you learn how we all got into the Brexit crisis, it will show you how the present and future game of politics is played. Let’s start with what this...
Southern Morocco: a great place to learn about the roots of happiness
For many years, I’ve found that trips to so-called less developed countries give me priceless reminders of how to live more happily back home in 2018 Britain. This was certainly true of the group trip I co-led to Morocco in November 2018. I called this trip the Roots...
Donald Trump and the Second Coming
This guest blog was written by Maria Trap, and is reproduced with her permission.It seems a suitable Christmas blog, though the plan’s not quite working as hoped… After more than 2000 years since the birth of his son God felt that it was more than time to stage the...
Re-learning daily happiness in Morocco
It starts with the way people greet you, seeking a real connection: with eye contact, a slow warm handshake, and the traditional blessing: A salaam alaikum, Peace be with you. I’ve been fortunate to visit North and East Africa many times, and I’m always struck by two...
How can we get beyond compassion fatigue?
The UN’s hope in designating this day, on August 19, is to ask all of us to remember and support the large numbers of people caught up in humanitarian crises around the world, and the many brave people who are involved in relief work, mediation and more. For myself...
The Overstory by Richard Powers
If you love trees, you’ll find this book fascinating: it’s a rich exploration of both trees and people, as individuals and groups, and how closely these two species affect each other. The Overstory follows the stories of a variety of humans – the common thread is that...
Lifestyle sustainability: The New Green Frontier
Why are consumer attitudes to energy saving, and even those of policy makers, so preoccupied with home heating? I think it’s because this is a pretty easy, safe, non-controversial sector. Who could possible object to pensioners getting help with loft insulation, or...
Football as a map of the inner life
Deep insights from the World Cup With all the excitement of the World Cup, it seems appropriate to use football as a guide or metaphor for the inner life, or as one book title puts it, the game of life and how to play it. The image of the club is like your image in...
The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
Amazingly, this book is an international bestseller. For me and others who have worked with UK woodlands for decades, it has felt like a benign backwater of our society, but may its time has come. The sign that this could be true is the superb recent BBC TV...
The Why and What of Natural Happiness
Alan has been leading groups on natural happiness and resilience at Hazel Hill Wood, near Salisbury for years. He writes about 'The Story Behind Natural Happiness'…For four years the focus of my learning and teaching was resilience. I believe it's a crucial skill set...
The Power of Habit, by Charles Duhigg
Blog written by Lynn Murphy… I'm curious about habits, about what I do and why I do what I do even when I don’t want to! And why the habits that I don’t want seem to be ‘stickier’ than the supportive habits I’d prefer to be running my unconscious life. This interest...
The Book of Joy: Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu
Lasting Happiness in a Changing World This deep and delightful book, published last year, became an immediate best-seller worldwide. The wisdom of these two great men in their eighties is surprisingly fresh and practical, and relevant for all of us in handling daily...
World’s happiest countries
It’s not about the money! The Happy Planet Index for 2016 again puts countries in Latin America and the Asia Pacific region at the top of the list, ahead of more ‘developed’ Western states. Unlike some other rankings, the HPI includes such factors as ecological...
Why people need Nature more than ever
Insights from the book Your Brain on Nature. My top tip for Earth Day is to read this brilliant book, and give it to your friends. If more people realise how absolutely crucial Nature is to their own wellbeing, hopefully more people will act to take care of our Earth....
Stress, Wellbeing, and how Natural Happiness helps
Pictured: Alan with a group at Hazel Hill Wood. Recorded levels of stress have grown a lot in recent years, and we’re seeing evidence of more stress in all age groups. One of the best antidotes is an approach I’ve evolved, called Natural Happiness: it’s a range of...
Meaning, Purpose, Connection: what does spiritual mean to you?
I know the word spiritual is hard for some people. Replace it with inspirational if you prefer. I’m persisting with it because I believe that spiritual aspects of life and resilience will become more vital for most of us in the years ahead as turbulence grows.
Pilgrim perspectives: Camino di San Benedetto
I vaguely imagined that a pilgrimage is walking along a dedicated route with some kind of special intent. It is that, but far more.
Low-cost health care: Zimbabwe style
The Guardian recently reported a touching story about the Friendship Bench in Zimbabwe. At a minimal cost, it has helped thousands of people suffering mental health problems.
A Buddhist View of Friendship
One of my favourite concepts in Buddhism is metta: this word is usually translated as loving-kindness, but its root meaning is the nature of a friend.
Book Blog: Your Brain on Nature by Eva Selhub and Alan Logan
This is an important and exciting book in my view, as it gives extensive research validation for the natural happiness approach, and the aims of Hazel Hill Wood as a natural learning centre.
Community with Nature: people in a field
It’s often said that the only real way to learn about community is to experience it, and this week was a good example.
Why we all need comfort zones
Do you have too much change and uncertainty in your life? It seems that most of us do, and it’s unlikely to get easier soon. Instead of hoping that the overload will go away, it’s wiser to explore how to handle it better. One good way is comfort zones…
‘A really positive uplifting weekend’
This was a wonderful weekend, combining Alan’s natural happiness model, Jane’s gifts in mindfulness and eco-psychology, and the sheer magic of this wood at bluebell time.
Great Dream: Ten Keys to Happier Living
This is published by Action for Happiness, probably the biggest UK network focussed on happiness.
Resilient Futures Blogs
Food Security: Opportunity, Research, Action
It’s easy to feel disempowered these days, but this is an issue where we can all do something. Food security means reliable access to enough good quality, affordable, sustainably produced food. Many experts believe that food shortages and price rises will be a major...
BOOK BLOG: From What Is to What If, by Rob Hopkins
We Need to Reclaim and Reboot our Imaginations As the Covid crisis continues, there are many influences nudging us towards brain mush, despondency, helplessness. This well-evidenced book from Transition Network’s founder highlights those influences, and offers plenty...
Looking back from 2042
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...
After 7 Months of Covid, What Have We Learned?
Can we trace an emerging future? Surely most of us have often been bewildered and disoriented in the past seven months. If someone had shown us a picture of life in Covid a year ago, we would never have believed it. Trying to make sense of the story so far, and where...
How Everything Can Collapse: by Servigne and Stevens
If you want to understand how our future could unravel... I highly recommend this book: it will give you a clear sense of why societies might well collapse, what that could look like, and to some extent how we could prepare for this, or adapt if it happens. ...
Growing community from the roots: how Future Conversations helps
There are shedloads of good processes and theories about raising community resilience: applying them in practice is harder, especially in disadvantaged communities struggling with everyday needs. Future Conversations started as an unproven idea in Summer 2018: a...
Community resilience: systemic solutions
Research, reflections, riddles and more! As the pressures on all of us keep rising, we can see mounting discord about best priorities and solutions. One of the few topics on which almost everyone agrees is that increasing the resilience of local communities is...
Nine positive ways to use your lockdown time
The lockdown has given most of us a gift of more time. You may need no help in filling it with worries or distractions, so here are my ideas about the positive possibilities. Radiate love: My experience of the lockdown is that simply sending out love is one of...
Transformational Resilience by Bob Doppelt
How individuals and communities can grow through tough times This is one of the few books I’ve read on climate change responses that I’d call encouraging and inspiring. Doppelt is an unusual character, who works as both a counselling psychologist and an...
Looking back from 2042
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, actually in the UK it...
Finding the Gifts in Bewilderment
I invite you to imagine that the bewildering, alarming events of recent weeks, especially coronavirus, have positive aspects which we need to discern: why not try? Like me, you may have attempted to make sense of all this by rational means, and failed. The gifts...
Deep Adaptation and climate change: An intro into the work of Jem Bendell
Since late summer 2018, several authoritative voices have been telling us that the outlook on climate change is a lot worse than most published forecasts suggest, and that we urgently need to understand the implications. The most useful of these voices in my view is...
Book Blog: The Ecology of Commerce by Paul Hawken
This is how business can be the driver of positive climate change In my frequent episodes of anxiety about climate change, this is a favourite book I turn to for encouragement. Amazingly, it was published in 1993 even then, the climate crisis and the pivotal...
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...
Deep Adaptation and climate change: 2020 plans
I’ve been closely involved with Jem Bendell’s Deep Adaptation approach since November 2018: it hasn’t all been easy. I’ve gained a lot: better information, a clearer framework for my ideas, and a network of colleagues. But I’ve also been living with weekly doses of...
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...
Deep Adaptation and climate change:
An intro to the work of Jem Bendell Since Summer 2018, several authoritative voices have started telling us that the outlook on climate change is a lot worse than most published forecasts suggest, and that we urgently need to understand the implications. The most...
Food Security for local UK Communities
What can we do to prepare for problems? In his work on Deep Adaptation, Jem Bendell is clear that disruption of food supplies is the most likely first major impact of the climate crisis on the UK and that he expects this to cause major societal disruption in the next...
Book blog:Perfidious Albion by Sam Byers
If this is our future, we should be worried… You may not be surprised to know that there’s been an upsurge of dystopian fiction recently. It’s not usually a genre I go for, but I saw good reviews of Perfidious Albion, and it is indeed perceptive...
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...
Thriving on Chaos
Still useful, 24 years on! This catchily-titled book was published in 1987, and was a management best-seller for years. Even then, new technologies, speed of change, intensifying competition were big issues. Whilst Tom Peters’ insights may not address all our current...
Where are the benefits in even more Chaos?
We’d better find them, since it’s already happening! You might call me an anxious optimist: I worry a lot about the state of the world, but I cling to a belief that there’s an upside to the challenges, if only we can find it. That belief is hard to sustain these days,...
To raise your wellbeing, learn from extremes
Insights from a Woodland Resilience Immersion for GP’s This is embarrassing for me to admit as a resilience expert, but I have been struggling to sustain my own wellbeing and morale in recent months. The combination of huge, apparently insoluble problems on the...
A wider, wiser view of the climate crisis: Charles Eisenstein book:
Climate, a new story Charles Eisenstein is a charismatic American writer and speaker, who has a devoted following. I’m not such a fan, but I do recommend his new book, and I was impressed by his session at the Findhorn climate change conference (see my blog on this...
Business and climate change: finding constructive responses
I try to follow the climate change debate closely, and there seems too little well-considered exploration of how the business world can best respond to the current crisis. One reason may be that this looks like an impossible issue. There are massive vested interests,...
A Sufi View of Climate Change
I’ve been exploring Sufi spiritual teachings for over twenty years, and felt it might be useful to explain how these help me to live with and respond to the climate crisis. My sense is that a spiritual path and practices can help a lot in this process. So what do I...
This needs many mainstream miracles:
An update on the climate crisis The rapid rise in awareness of the climate change crisis since summer 2019 has been remarkable, and so are the causes. The Swedish teenager Greta Thonberg has been an extraordinary catalyst, leading to the school strikes. And grassroots...
Worried about the forests? How we can help
Have you seen David Attenborough’s excellent recent documentary on climate change? The most shocking part for me was learning the extent of deforestation still going on across the world, and his statement that 30% of all emissions are due to deforestation: presumably...
Seven Ways to Build Resilience by Chris Johnstone
Raising resilience has been a focus of my work for several years, and Chris is one of my inspirations. Sometimes I wonder if the troubles of our times will keep growing faster than our capacity to handle them, but Chris’s book offers us all the chance of a big step-up...
An ET view of earth
The Only Planet of Choice: book blog Are the mysteries of life on earth explainable from other planets? Someone once said, when you try to understand a situation, start with the probable, move on to the unlikely, and if need be, look at the almost incredible. This...
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...
Raising Community Resilience: how future conversations can help
In the past seven years, I’ve discussed the future outlook with dozens of groups, formal and informal. There’s a huge range of views on what may happen, and how to prepare for it: but everyone agrees that strengthening local communities will be crucial. For several...
Dreams against Despair: Thomas Berry and the power of myth
Dreams, in the sense of inspiring visions, and myths, in the sense of powerful beliefs, have a huge influence on our world. Think of Mandela and Gandhi: two lone figures whose dreams overturned a myth which upheld a powerful Establishment. Deep down, I feel a lot of...
What we think about when we try not to think about global warming
There’s a Permaculture principle called the ‘edge effect’ which describes the incredible richness and diversity that is to be found where two habitats meet … for example the edge of a forest. This book brought this to mind as I experienced the weaving together of psychology and climate science – economics, and deep ecology.
Why our front-line services need re-visioning
All of us depend on front line services: they include health, local authorities, education, care, and a myriad of voluntary sector organisations such as charities, help networks, and community groups. They are a safety net, and as stresses grow for most people, we...
Seeding our Future: a progress report
It’s now 6 years since I started my first project on future resilience, and 2 since the current one began. Now you can benefit, in a few minutes, from a few of the insights which several man-years of work have provided. These projects have been going long enough that...
Learning from our Future Fears
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley I decided to re-read this book because several futures experts see it as a perceptive view of where our world is headed. Having read it, I can recommend the book as superbly written, and full of provoking insights. Brave New World is...
Trees and Carbon Reduction
Crisis fatigue wears all of us down, so you may not be too aware that climate change is worsening. Our weather is a clue. For a useful objective update from the US National Climate Assessment, follow this link. Trees and agriculture have a major potential role to play...
Front-line extreme: natural resilience for junior hospital doctors
Of all the front-line services we depend on, hospitals are among the most crucial, and a large hospital will have several hundred junior doctors. These are young men and women, from mid-twenties into thirties. They start right out of university, and the first two...
How to stay afloat in the sea of Technology
Technology is clearly a vast subject: we’re all being affected by many different technologies, without being aware of them. What’s really alarming is that the motive behind most of the rapid change affecting us is simply profit. Here are the headlines for my practical tips…
Technology Power: for whose benefit?
Guest Blog: As part of Alan’s Scanning our Future project, Jeremy Green and Fred Barker were commissioned to research the potential UK future impacts of new technologies over the next 15 years. This blog is a summary of some of their conclusions.
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostrom
Book Blog: I am hesitant to recommend people to read this book: if you already find the future scary and complex, be warned that this book explores some of the more extreme elements of that future.
Carbots, carebots, therabots and more…
Whilst robots and artificial intelligence are just one of a swathe of major technologies which will impact our lives in the next 10 years, I’ve chosen to focus on them because they are likely to be one of the most visible and unavoidable big changes on the technology front.
RESILIENZ (German) and RESILIENCE (English) – where´s the difference?
Guest Blog by Daniel Körner of Wisdom Tree…Recently, my attention was drawn to the topic of resilience and how this concept has been taken up differently in the two cultures where I live, the UK and Germany/Austria.
Dare to Imagine – delving into super-resilience
In October 2017 I co-led a weekend at Hazel Hill Wood called Dare to Imagine: Growing into the Future – exploring super-resilience with Nature’s help. When we gathered round a campfire on the Friday evening, I described this as a quest: a shared search for something valuable and elusive. It was certainly a fruitful adventure.
What is Post-Traumatic Growth? By Miriam Akhtar
The title may sound heavy-duty, but this excellent short book should be relevant for a lot of people. Miriam’s list of what can cause trauma is very inclusive, and her book is an easily accessible introduction to a range of wellbeing and resilience methods.
Book Review: Active Hope by Macy and Johnstone
I have taken part in workshops led by both Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone, and regard them as two of the best teachers on personal resilience in a full sense of the phrase. Working in depth with this book could be a good start to exploring super-resilience.
A hopeful dream of 2030: The National Elf Service
In December 2029, the UK’s National Health Service shut down permanently, without any protest. It had been replaced by the free of charge, private sector National Elf Service, now emulated across the globe.