Resources
The first four Resources below, with blue headings, form part of the Resource Toolkit for Alan’s forthcoming book. Below this, with green headings, you will find a range of Resources for general use.
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...
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...
The Hero’s Journey: an archetypal growth map
The five stages of positive change It was the American anthropologist Joseph Campbell who coined the term hero’s journey to chart the archetypal stages of change which he identified through many years of research. In his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, he...
Resilience Toolkit: Some Basic Methods
What is resilience, and why does it matter? Resilience is the ability to stay calm in high levels of change and challenge, to bounce back when something difficult happens, to face up to a problem and find a good solution. It’s a set of skills to help you maintain your...
Cultivation Cycle checklists
For gardens and farms, every stage of the cultivation cycle and all four seasons are important. This holds true for people’s work and life generally, but we often over-focus on some stages of the cycle, and neglect others. This quick checklist will help you see how...
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