What are Deep Community Groups?

What are Deep Community Groups? They are a weekly structured investment of two hours of proactive social engagement devoted to sharing and cultivating meaning, connection, growth, and empowerment in our lives. “Deep” not in the sense of obscure, but deep in the sense of not superficial. A time to talk, explore, laugh, cry, and celebrate the fact that life is an adventure. Deep in the sense of enriching the roots, soil, and groundwater of our lives’ ecosystem. Deep in the sense of what matters most, what fortifies, troubles, inspires, pains, heals, awakens, and uplifts us.

Society has grown up and is no longer content with the hierarchical religion that used to assist our search for meaning, peace, and beauty while also giving us the experience of community so foundational to our happiness. Therapy, for many, is not a workable substitute precisely because it does not provide a proactive emersion in social engagement in what matters most, and the therapist-client relationship, in its way, is no more egalitarian than hierarchical religion. In a time of societal imbalance, high anxiety, and conflict with the laws of nature, the good medicine and nourishment for the soul we need is the practice of egalitarian collaborative cultivation of deep community. By making room in your week to participate in Deep Community Groups, you add dimension, diversity, and resilience to the ecosystem of your happiness and what we enjoy and harvest in deep community together then seeds your life beyond with all kinds of new growth.

My name is Hank Edson. I am the proprietor of Family Tree Mediation. For fourteen years, as an attorney-mediator, I have been devoted to helping families navigate and constructively collaborate and communicate about change, conflict, and challenging circumstances in their lives. I am celebrating the start of my fifteenth year in business by expanding my concept of the family tree to embrace the notion of community and our need for deep, not superficial, community in our lives. I am also a certified permaculturist (organic gardener), a former middle school teacher, a board member of the International Association of Sufism, a poet and an activist. Thus, my experience cultivating meaning, connection, growth, and empowerment individually and collaboratively is multi-dimensional and rich.

Each Deep Community Group has room for eight people, in addition to myself, and meets once each week for either two hours or an hour-and-a-half, depending on which class you sign up for. The cost is on a par with the average Yoga class, with a twenty-four-week commitment, equaling $1800 for 48 hours, or $37.50 per hour, plus a 2% processing fee, generally less than the amount the payment processor will deduct from your payment.

Why Deep Community Is In Short Supply

• A 2023 survey conducted by the Associated Press-National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago found that “Only 10% of all adults have a great deal of confidence in organized religion, a percentage that has been in steady decline in recent years, with confidence now at half of what it was in 2016.”

• That same year, the United Surgeon General published a report finding that loneliness in America was at epidemic levels and had a negative impact on life expectancy as great as cigarette smoking. Is there a connection between these two 2023 reports? One interpretation is that we Americans have lost our main platform for deep community in the process of growing out of hierarchical religious organizations that inevitably conflict at some level with our egalitarian national crede.

• Also, although we used to enjoy purpose-driven community in a workplace  in which employees and companies used to practice a mutual loyalty to each other that manifested itself in life-long careers, pensions, and company pride, today, In our rapidly changing economy, the predominant experience for many is often alienation, job-insecurity, and stress.

• At the same time, the political climate of our times has become steeped in a divisive negativity, our confidence in the media and our ability to discern fact from fiction, and the alienated conflict our industrialized society maintains with the natural world all further isolate us from each other and the ecology of deep community.

• Also, as rates of depression also increase, therapy is not always the right modality for addressing the root cause, and often its cost is prohibitive. For those suffering depression related to isolation and loneliness, the therapist-client relationship can be as dissatisfyingly hierarchical as organized religion, but occurs in a private venue between just the client and the therapist, where the therapist maintains boundaries around his or her own self-disclosure..

Positive psychology and common sense suggest that for many, what is needed is simply an investment in time spent actually engaging in deep community. And, not withstanding our current societal environment, the really great news is that, dispite the challenges we face, we are very much empowered by the gift of life and the genius of human nature to find our truth and contribute it to the cultivation of a thriving deep community wherever we are. Nature thrives where we follow its cue. Change begins with us. Change is possible in each breath. And change that combines individual self-development with the collaborative cultivation of egalitarian deep community is how we do our best for ourselves and our society, steering a wiser, more joyful course in life focused on being present with each other and celebrating the unfolding miracle that we each are. 

Invest in Your Self; Take a Chance on Others

Register now for one of our Deep Community Groups starting in the New Year. What a great way to start 2027 off by creating space each week over a six-month period dedicated to being present with others who are looking for a depth of engagement with life beyond their private thoughts in a setting of social connection and growing deep community. Just click the Register Now button to the right that works for you.

Call the Facilitator, Hank Edson

If you have questions about joining one of our Deep Community Groups, you are very welcome to call me at (650) 762-TREE [762-8733] or email me using the email form on our Contact Us page.

Hank Edson, J.D.        CALL: (650) 762-8733

Proprietor of Family Tree Mediation
Serving Redwood City, Atherton, Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Mountain View,
Los Altos and the wider Peninsula & San Francisco Bay Area.