Alan Heeks, Author at Seeding Our Future

The 9 Dimensions of Super-Resilience: the key to enjoying your 2020s

April 12, 2024March 1, 2021 by Alan Heeks

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 challenge? This is what I’m calling super-resilience. Currently, I see many individuals, communities and work teams struggling … Read more

Don’t let lockdown grind you away! Staying cheerful in covid year two

March 18, 2021February 23, 2021 by Alan Heeks

Despite my resilience skills, I’ve had to keep digging deep to sustain my mood, especially in these recent winter months. Whilst there’s hope for easing restrictions soon, lockdown has a cumulative grinding effect. So here are my tips for the next few months. Mindful exercise: enjoy your outdoor time to the max, with all five … Read more

NATURAL HAPPINESS:

July 12, 2021February 16, 2021 by Alan Heeks

Deepen your roots, nourish your fruits with the Gardener’s Way July 9-11 2021: at Hazel Hill Wood, near Salisbury With Alan Heeks, Jane Sanders and Marcos Frangos As restrictions ease, we’re facing new freedom and possibilities. How do we stay steady and make fruitful choices, serving ourselves and the bigger picture? This weekend is a … Read more

Covid vaccinations: a touching flavour of Dunkirk spirit – Plus tips to avoid side effects

March 18, 2021February 10, 2021 by Alan Heeks

Covid vaccinations: a touching flavour of Dunkirk spirit Plus tips to avoid side effects Having my first covid vaccination was a moving experience, which I hadn’t expected. I’m so proud of the NHS for organising on this scale and speed, and touched by all the volunteers who made it possible. As I cycled to our … Read more

Ruminating on the 2020s

March 18, 2021January 8, 2021 by Alan Heeks

Guest blog by Palden Jenkins Here are my thoughts on the next ten years and beyond. There’s a combination of a historian, futurologist, astrologer and seasoned observer coming through here, and long hours in bed have meant a lot of time to ruminate on these things. I think the 2020s are going to be both … Read more

Food security: how your community can take the initiative

March 18, 2021January 6, 2021 by Alan Heeks

There are many aspects of the Covid and climate crises where you may feel disempowered, dependent on government responses. However, food security is an issue where individuals and communities have scope for positive action now! Britain’s food self-sufficiency has declined from 80% to 60% in the past thirty years. We’re especially vulnerable on vegetables and … Read more

Your Resilience Toolkit

March 18, 2021December 30, 2020 by Alan Heeks

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 wellbeing and happiness even when … Read more

The Diamond Process: drawing on both sides of the brain

March 18, 2021December 30, 2020 by Alan Heeks

As we try to handle ever more complexity and uncertainty in our lives, co-creative skills are essential. Co-creativity is about both-and, combining action and reflection, balancing your needs and aims with the realities of the situation and other people in it. One way of developing co-creativity is through the left and right sides of the … Read more

Adapting to climate change and covid – reflections on a retreat

March 18, 2021December 23, 2020 by Alan Heeks

From 6-8 November we held a virtual retreat to focus on different spiritual approaches to climatechange, Covid and other challenges we all are facing. It was a fascinating and welcome opportunityto get people together and explore ideas and feelings. As I think about this retreat I remember that in times of crisis for thousands of … Read more

Tamarisk farm, Haypenny Market Garden and Edible Gardens at St Mary’s Primary

July 31, 2024December 14, 2020 by Alan Heeks

by Candida Dunford Wood and Rosalind Reynolds-Grey Tamarisk farm is polishing barley and experiment with millet Adam Simon says ‘It’s all about increasing resilience. The more we have support from the local community, the more we can experiment with new crops that are suitable to a changing climate.” Just as farmers need to be adaptable … Read more

Current Events

Faith, Hope, Resilience | Saturday November 9

A reflective day With Alan Heeks and Simon Lockett How can we find our steady centre in these uncertain times? Where do we place our faith and our hope? What would spiritual resilience look like, for us and our communities? This day of exploration and support will include times of prayer, meditation and sharing, with periods outside for walking contemplation as a micro pilgrimage, and for communing with Nature as a micro vision quest: recognising the power of space and silence. Our venue is Garn Farm, a conservation smallholding and woodland near Longtown, in a beautiful valley overlooking the Black Mountains. We’ll have a warm indoor group room with woodburner and kitchen, and wonderful spaces outside. See more at www.warmthandwonder.co.uk. Alan Heeks has many years’ experience exploring Nature and faith as sources of resilience, and is deeply interested in how communities can deepen to help us adapt to climate change. Simon Lockett is a pioneer in re-introducing pilgrimage to Herefordshire, and has a long-standing love for contemplative prayer and spiritual connection with the natural world. Practicalities Cost: £40, concessions £25. Bring lunch to share. Timing: Arrive 9.30am for 10am start. Finish 4.30pm. Venue: Garn Farm, near Clodock, Longtown, Herefordshire HR2 0PD. There is some overnight accommodation at Garn Farm: contact Alan about this. Bookings/enquiries: Contact Alan Heeks, , 07494 203014. Group size limited to 12 people.

Featured Blog

Spiritual purpose and community

Why we all need collective power YouYou 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 spiritual beliefs, as well as a healthy, realistic view of life in general. Why? Because what we experience as ‘reality’ is largely a fabrication, manipulated by social media, big business and the elite. I don’t see this as a conspiracy: it’s simply in their interest to convince us that we’re isolated, vulnerable and dependent. We know that people’s beliefs and behaviour are very heavily shaped by the society around them, so even if you minimise your direct exposure, you’ll be affected by the collective, unless you live as a recluse or in an off-grid community. A meditation and sharing group at Hazel Hill Wood What I see growing in parallel with the rise of fake news and false reality is a deep need for spiritual purpose. This grows partly from a reaction to manipulation by the materialist system, but more deeply from the climate crisis, which as Jem Bendell (Deep Adaptation) and others have observed, is at root a crisis of spiritual meaning and purpose. If our familiar world is unravelling, what are we here for? What spiritual purpose means for me is having a reason for living which tries to serve the highest good of all, which gives me a sense of meaning, and lifts me beyond self-centred concern with my material needs. You’ll find a new Spiritual Purpose section on my website which explains this more fully. It also shares the vision for the Searching Spirit Centre, a spiritual community helping people to explore this theme, which I hope to co-create in the next few years. Get in touch if you’d like to get involved (). You may see spiritual purpose as an individual choice, a personal path: to some extent I agree, but these days collective exploration and support has a key role to play. I’m an advocate of Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects approach: she too regards groups as vital in enabling us to work through our climate distress, and find our personal and collective path. Another reason why the community aspect is important is in putting our spiritual purpose into practical action. The scale of the issues ahead for us all is beyond the capacity of individuals and nuclear households. We’re all going to need to share material resources, and lean on the collective power and emotional support that communities can provide. For many people, it seems the word spiritual is confusing or alarming: perhaps because they confuse it with organised religion, or because the word is used in so many different ways. My other major project currently is about Community Resilience, and if I’m working with a community group, I’d avoid naming the spiritual aspect, but explore it with them implicitly. There’s plenty of evidence that groups of all kinds are more together and effective when they have a strong shared purpose. Most community groups aim to serve the greater good of their locality, and the wellbeing of the people in it. Serving these aims amid mounting challenges is what I’d call a spiritual purpose. Whilst the Searching Spirit Centre will be open to working with community groups, my guess is that its clients will mostly be pioneering individuals, of any age, but hopefully many young people, who can then act as catalysts within larger groups, helping them to find their collective power and inspiration in these times of crisis and opportunity.