The first Healing Grounds is in the making – With this blog I hope to inspire other visionaries to just do it

“A dream can’t fail”

Isabella Brouwer

I have been trying to pinpoint the moment when I stopped dreaming, thinking, writing and talking about Healing Grounds and started doing. Surely the call from Sanne Kok, founder of Campus Zonnestraal, on February 2nd 2024 has been a key turning point. She invited me to bring the Healing Grounds initiative to fruition on Zonnestraal Estate in Hilversum, Netherlands, and doing so she gave me the final push to start reaching out to health professionals to get started.

But before that call, I have gone through a process where in the end I was ready to “just go and do it”, and in that process I let go of my fear for Healing Grounds to fail. As long as it was still a dream it couldn’t really fail, but now I actually started working on it, now it can fail. To deal with these risks I’m turning the big Healing Grounds vision in a small workable concept. And I hope to inspire other visionaries to do the same.

I have a background in the startup scene, so naturally I’m building a MVP (Minimum Viable Product) of Healing Grounds. It’s a curated network of health professionals who complement each other’s therapies. Covering physical, mental, emotional and spiritual therapies on all topics of Maslow’s pyramid. Next we’re (yes, the team grew!) figuring out how we’re going to match Healing Grounds visitors to the health professionals. We have a process set up for it, which we’ll be iterating as we’ll learn. Healing Grounds will be a learning organisation.

The Zonnestraal Estate is absolutely amazing and well suited for Healing Grounds. There’s already a lot more happening there, so Healing Grounds can benefit of visitors who are already around. And there are facilities like a coffee house and restaurant.

To conclude, there’s a location, health professionals and visitors. We’re thoroughly enjoying the process of fruition and what better season to see it grow than Spring?!

Rethinking Prosperity, Happiness, and how to stay within planetary boundaries

Over the past century, especially in the West, humanity has gained wealth and prosperity at the expense of the Earth. We’ve exceeded planetary boundaries for our own gain. Although this isn’t sustainable in the long run, it’s challenging to let go of the material wealth, luxurious goods, and travels we now enjoy. The majority of people are conservative; they want to maintain their current lifestyle and ensure the same for their children

This realization helped me understand the agonizingly slow pace of behavioral change despite the clear environmental and ecological crises.

On a side note: Besides slow pace of behavioral change, it also helps me understand why many voted against their own best future. Many people are thinking short-term and have a strong aversion to loss. An example, I write this during one of the wettest winters in the Netherlands, and there’s a lot more extreme weather in other countries which makes these environments unlivable, leading to migration. I see a disconnect among my fellow citizens. Many fear migrants impacting the economy and housing but fail to realize that it’s their own lifestyle contributing to environmental and ecological issues which on its turn is partially causing migration.

Happiness Comes from Within

However, possessions don’t bring lasting happiness. True happiness comes from within, and while basic needs must be met, the pursuit of luxurious goods and excessive consumption isn’t the key. Safety, belonging, esteem, and self-realization, as highlighted in Maslow’s pyramid, are more crucial. I would like to add another layer on top: experiencing oneness with all living beings and the Earth.

That’s why I want Healing Grounds to be a sanctuary for fostering this true well-being and finding lasting happiness. To support people on all layers of Maslow’s pyramid, with the ultimate goal of helping them experience oneness. And in this way, I expect to accelerate people to move towards a sustainable, healthy, and happy life.

maslow's pyramid
Source: Vecteezy

True Pricing – Aligning Finances with Planetary Boundaries

There’s something else I think will be instrumental in accelerating behavioral change towards a life within the planetary boundaries, which is True Pricing.

Currently, we don’t pay the real price. Industries produce cheap goods, consumers pay a small price, and the real costs, such as environmental cleanup, are shouldered by the government through taxes. This is inherently unfair.

To rectify this, polluting companies should bear the costs of cleaning up the environment. This may lead to increased prices for their goods, and consumers may either stop buying them or reduce their consumption. On the flip side, ethically and ecologically produced fresh food, which aids the Earth’s recovery, should be priced more affordably. This approach can help low-income families adopt healthier lifestyles.

Healing Grounds Manifest v1

We, well-being and healthcare providers (or healers), unite in dedication to the following principles, with the aim of creating a healing environment at Healing Grounds:

1. Aspiring to Oneness: We recognize that the ultimate goal of Healing Grounds is to help humans experience oneness, to feel connected with all life on earth, including themselves. Through this connection, we strive for humans to care for oneself, the earth, fellow humans, animals, and plants. Our efforts are directed towards promoting well-being on all levels.

2. Supporting Self-Healing: We acknowledge that individuals are inherently capable of healing. Our role is supportive; we facilitate and guide the natural healing process that is inherent in each person.

3. Mutual Knowledge Sharing: We commit to learning about each other’s therapies so that we can effectively refer patients to one another. Through collective knowledge, we strive for a holistic approach to well-being.

Important Additional Information:

Healing Grounds is specifically designed for individuals with vague a-symptomatic complaints that may not find immediate answers from general practitioners. For more information, visit www.healinggrounds.eu. Individuals often recognize very early when something is not in balance.

Please note: Healing Grounds is not a substitute for a general practitioner. We primarily focus on the early stages of complaints or situations where a general practitioner has diagnosed no illness.

Are we Healers? Or Healing Coaches?

I’m wondering whether those who help individuals with vague, non-specific complaints are actively healing them or simply guiding them towards self-healing. Even in cases of a broken bone, healers don’t introduce new bone cells; they stabilize the bone by casting it, sometimes even operating and using screws and bolts, but the body itself handles the actual bone growth. When administering herbal medicine, we intervene in the body, yet the question arises: is the body healing itself, or is it the medicine doing it?

And thus I wonder, do we categorize ourselves as healers, or are we more aptly described as healing coaches?

At Healing Grounds, my vision is for people to sense empowerment. It’s not about laying out problems and expecting healers to magically solve them. Instead, individuals should feel empowered to take charge of their healing journey, with everyone at Healing Grounds there to support and facilitate this self-healing process.

Living a sustainable life is costly… and worth it

We have gone beyond the point of no return in living a more sustainable life. Not there yet by far, just booked a plane ticket to see my bff in Canada coming Feb, but inconsistently living more within our planetary limits. And this is costly, not just in terms of money, but let’s be fair we’re not paying the true price by far yet anyway. But also in time, it simply costs more time to live more sustainable. Let me make a list of some of the things we do that cost us more time:

  • We try to do as much as possible by bike or foot, also when it rains, there’s only bad clothing no bad weather.
  • We don’t use a dryer, in summer we use the sun and wind and in winter the laundry fills our attic. Upside: we don’t (need to) iron which is also a energy saver again.
  • Refillable handsoap, the pump needs cleaning every now and then. The container needs to be refilled with water and 2 tablets.
  • We order and pick up produce from local organic farmers, ordering is easy online, but pick up is fixed on a 1 hour time window on Saturdays. We also volunteer 1 hr a month to keep this organization going locally. Upside: 77% of our money goes straight to the organic farmers, 10% goes to the local organizer and there’s a 13% platform fee.
  • The produce from the organic farmers needs to be cleaned, there’s actual dirt and the occasional baby slug hiding in our veggies. Upside: we eat more with the seasons and get inspired by whatever is available. Love that.
  • Next spring we’ll upgrade our own vegetable garden beyond the tomatoes and zucchinis we had this year and plant a lot more.
  • I try to make as many personal care products myself, and keep adding product to this list. I recently stumbled upon this webshop in NL which sells ingredients but also offers great recipes, a community, and for the non-DIYers they sell finished products.

Why have we gone beyond the point of no return in our sustainable life? Because we are aware now, we can’t and don’t want to close our eyes for the suffering that goes behind cheap, plastic, single use products and non-organic produce. And let’s be honest here, the time I used to save by using and buying these products wasn’t spent on doing more sports, meditation, work, or family life. It was spent on Netflix or other screen-time. And all the listed chores above work perfectly well with headphones on and a good podcast or together with kids.

Turning a negative into motivation

Last Wednesday marked the election day in the Netherlands, where we cast our votes for the parliamentary candidates. My choice was in favor of the most progressive green party we have, the ‘Animals Party’ (Partij voor de Dieren in Dutch). I have been actively supporting this political party, a level of involvement I had not experienced before. The urgency to address the escalating climate and nature crisis compelled me to take action.

Sadly, the majority of my fellow countrymen voted for (far) right political parties, which could easily lead one to feel disheartened, upset, or even contemplate emigration. I found myself wrestling with these emotions and thoughts for a considerable time. However, it dawned on me that this situation only strengthens the resolve to bring Healing Grounds into existence.

A person deeply connected to nature, other beings, and the well-being of our planet would not align with short-term, fear-driven political choices. Such individuals recognize our interconnectedness and the collective responsibility to care for all living beings and our shared home. So onwards with my mission, keep positive thoughts, and stay away from politics?!

A business model for Healing Grounds

In April ’23 I had an interesting meeting with a real estate developer who has somewhat of a focus on health and large estates. As does anyone when I bring up Healing Grounds he was also interested in they idea and understood the need for it. But also the question arose: what about the business model. As he told me there are many people working on similar concepts, but they all struggle to find a working business model.

Specially the idea that when you arrive at Healing Grounds you sit on a table with all the healers around and together find the start of the healing journey is expected to be quite hard to make financially sustainable. I presented some ideas I have, how the pay could also be in kind, via working or sleeping space for example. But as you might expect from a real estate developer this doesn’t sound very profitable, which it might not be indeed. This doesn’t scare me, I feel more and more people will value wellbeing over maximum profitability and new models will arise in the coming future. But I also liked the challenge to think of more profitable models.

During our discussion a came up with the idea of an AI driven platform that helps people to find their way in the jungle of different kind of healers. This platform would need to be filled with data and input from the healers at a certain place. Next the AI would have a conversation with the person seeking care, and help them figure out which healer could be most suitable to start their healing journey with. This platform could be white labeled and used by other Healing Grounds too. Backed by the healers who pay a small fee to keep it running, scale is at matter here of course. Later when many Healing Grounds’ healers have put their data and input in it can help a person seeking healing to find the right healer and the right Healing Grounds for their healing journey. (I dare you to make a sentence with the word healing more than this one ;-)).

Any thoughts about this business model? Curious to hear your ideas and experience with this.

The antidote to polarisation, welcome to the twilight zone

If everybody would eat a 100% vegan diet, the world would be a much better place, period. No animals would suffer in the bio industry, no forests cut down to make place for agricultural land to feed the animals in the bio industry, no carbon emissions from bio industry, healthier humans, less cancer. You could even imagine less hunger in certain countries if we would fairly distribute the food that we so efficiently distribute to farm animals now. The many sport champions on a fully vegan diet proof that we are very capable of living a healthy life without letting animals and the world suffer.

However. It is not easy to switch to a full vegan diet. It is about changing and replacing habits, finding new products, developing new taste, discovering new family favorite recipes. And thus it takes time to make the vegan switch. And I feel we need to have more respect for this time when you are ‘in between’. The time after you’ve lost your ignorance, but before you have adjusted your life to your new standards. And this might take up to years, where you are improving every day, week or month, might even have a setback, you’re just not there yet. This time is the twilight zone.

The twilight zone isn’t only valuable when switching diet, it comes with many changes we will need to go through in the next couple of decades. Think about the switch from a growth economy towards the post growth or green growth economy. The switch from traveling by air as if getting on the train towards greener modes of transport, or slow traveling.

It will take time in the twilight zone, where we fail and adjust, where we have fallbacks and giant leaps forward. And what doesn’t help is polarisation in the debates around these subjects. We need to acknowledge the value of the twilight zone and how millions of people eating vegan a few days has a bigger impact than thousands of people eating vegan 100%.

So support your fellow humans who are taking big or small steps towards a more sustainable, nature friendlier, human friendlier and animal friendlier world everyday. In the end it will make a difference.

The world needs changemakers and therefore we need to take care of them

One of the target groups I want to focus on with Healing Grounds are changemakers. People who give their (working) life to animals, nature, underrepresented humans or other good causes. What they are doing is so important, specially in face of the many crises today. They are leading human kind to see things in another light. They are lifting our veils to free us from our collective ignorance. Collective ignorance towards the pain and suffering we inflict upon other beings and nature. Pain and suffering we (unconsciously) inflict by the products we buy, the banks we choose, the way we travel. Changemakers help us see our share in the problem and our responsibility for the solution.

Changemakers generally have underpaid jobs in terms of money. They are, like many people in the workforce, prone to burnout. But the value they add to our earth is so enormous, that we cannot afford to loose them. If not changemakers ourselves, we at least have a responsibility to take care of the changemakers out there. Therefore I would like to invite them to come to Healing Grounds, as soon as they feel something is off. To hopefully keep them on their feet saving our world.

To understand what it’s like to be a changemaker I have interviewed some. One of the things I learned is that they are not willing to travel very far to visit Healing Grounds. It should be reachable in a carbon neutral way, in half a day travel preferably. This is one of the reasons why I would like to see many Healing Grounds. My dream is that in 20 years time everybody is able to reach a Healing Grounds within half a day traveling in a carbon neutral way.

About quitting the news

I believe everything is connected and everything we do or think has influence. Let me first explain three important physical insights before I move on.

  1. Everything you do or think has influence.
    One of the smallest particles scientists have uncovered on earth are atoms. When you think of something, anything really, signals are traveling in your brain. These signals are electrical or chemical and are build up out of elements which are build up out of atoms. There’s an absolute amount of atoms in the world, which I believe means that when you have a thought, you are influencing the world, because you’re moving atoms. It could be very small, but every thought and action has an influence.
  2. The smallest parts are vibrating, they are not static.
    Atoms consists of protons, neutrons and electrons. These electrons are almost the smallest particles we know of. There was an experiment where electrons were shot against a plate with a hole in it and another plate in the back. Scientists expected a pattern on the back plate mirroring the hole in the first plate. However it didn’t, the pattern of the shot electrons was wider than the hole, which proves the electrons are moving. Scientists say you can compare this movement with (radio) waves or vibrations.
  3. Higher frequencies make happier healthier beings.
    If nothing is static, it becomes easier to accept everything might have its own frequency. Positive words and thoughts have a higher frequency than negative words and thoughts. The result can be seen in Emoto’s pseudo scientific rice experiment for example. Not only words and thoughts, but also the physical body, thoughts and probably a lot more has its own frequency. And quite possibly these all benefit from higher frequencies.

I like how science and pseudo science is coming closer to spiritual beliefs, how it’s demystifying those beliefs in a sense. Taken the three points above into account I believe happy thoughts have a bigger than just personal influence in the world. “Raising the earths vibrations” always sounded a bit vague and abstract to me, but given these recent meta physical progressions I believe that it might be an actual thing. If more and more beings raise their frequency with positive thoughts and emotions it might raise the earth’s frequency which could then benefit the frequency of other beings. This also means a war for example is devastating beyond the obvious, because it lowers the earths frequency.

Now what does this have to do with quitting the news?

Some time ago I noticed I was starting to feel really low after digesting negative news. Feelings of despair, of powerlessness against the negative things happening in the world. Low vibrations or frequencies. I used to think that these feelings were a form of privilege and therefore misplaced. But when taking into account the possibility that one’s thoughts and feelings might have an actual influence on the world, isn’t it a responsibility to try to foster happy thoughts and raise the earth’s vibrations? And that is how I justified to quit following the news (beyond my personal mental health, which could or should have been enough too maybe). And I quit most social media too by the way. I’m only to be found on web3, LinkedIn and I read financial news. Enough to still get drawn into negative vibrations every now and then, but not as much anymore. Plus I don’t feel guilty about not following the news, because no woman in Afghanistan is helped with me sobbing over here, but hopefully one day her daughters are helped with a higher frequency of the earth.

I’m not a scientist by the way, so I welcome your respectful and loving comments.