Blog

Book blog: The Body Keeps the Score – Bessel van der Kolk Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma   Do you have a view of what trauma is, and how widespread it is? I used to think it was something awful that happened to a small minority of people...

How to go deeper with green prescribing: The Seven Seeds of Natural Happiness   Green prescribing typically supports wellbeing through Nature contact: what I’d like to share with you is some pioneering methods which have evolved through two non-profit education...

Why we all need collective power   You may wonder why I see community as important in the field of spiritual purpose. It’s a belief that has only emerged for me in the past few years of mounting turbulence. It’s now very hard for lone individuals to sustain their...

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...

Nourishing body and soul: Reinventing spiritual community   We live in a time of impending crisis, when I hear many people urging the need for sanctuary, hospicing, and a deeper sense of community. Implicit in such words, but rarely discussed, is the huge...

Improving food security and affordable housing supply   There's a widespread view that strengthening local communities will be crucial in the years ahead, to help us all to adapt to increasing levels of disruption, including food supplies, utilities, weather...

Growing wellbeing from the roots I see green prescribing as one of the more hopeful innovations by the NHS in recent years. This blog explains briefly what it is, and shows how my Natural Happiness methods can contribute to it. NHS England’s website has a whole...

Prompted by months of low ratings, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has announced a radical change of routes with a new manifesto based on the organic growth principles of Alan Heeks’ new book, Natural Happiness. Posing with his lectern beside a tree in St James’ Park,...

Feedback on the book, workshops and coaching   Endorsements for the book Natural Happiness is inspiring and practical. Based on decades of hands-on experience, Alan Heeks entwines gardening strategies with mindful exercises that are proven to improve your...

I believe it is stress and related anxious feelings which pull us away from joy, and I have learned a lot about the physiology of stress by co-leading resilience workshops for doctors alongside Professor David Peters, himself a doctor, and an expert in this field. I...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Insights from new Future Risks report   It's hard to make sense of the future outlook: there are so many issues, risks and trends which could worry us, at every scale from local to global. And we have to discern real news from fake news, objective facts from...

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...

One of the reactions I bring to my challenges is a search for understanding, and systemic solutions. In recent years, I've reached the painful conclusion that the climate crisis is too large, complex and alarming to be understood. Systemic solutions are absolutely...

How the universe story can give us hope   Berry has an unusual, eloquent, and valuable view of how we humans got into the current crisis, and how to move out of it.  This view is powerfully presented in the ‘Dream of the Earth’, one of his many books. Thomas...

What I mean by magical thinking is an utter disregard for truth and reality, the delusion that I can make facts just by saying them, thinking them into reality. A great example was Donald Trump telling officials that he could eliminate secret documents just by...

A doorway to the subconscious, spirit world This short, readable book opens a doorway to different ways to see everyday life, through the medium of fairy tales and fables. Claudio is passionate and persuasive about the power of these stories, perhaps overlooked...

Subtle discernment for confusing times Imagine you're in a dream where you're trying to drive somewhere. Your satnav goes off. You realise you don't have an old-fashioned paper map. There's no mobile signal, so Google is no use. As you look for road signs, you see...