What is Meetup?

Meetup, which began in the USA, is an international network of local communities that meet offline about their shared interests and passions.

The Meetup website and phone App acts as an infrastructure for like-minded people in the same geographcal area to get together and network, socialise, share experiences and learn together.

The Meetup website claims: from book clubs to craft brewery crawls to coding workshops, we help people do more of what matters to them—inspiring and impacting millions of lives.

It doesn't cost anything to register on the Meet-up website and you will be asked to create a brief profile, identify the geographical area where you would like to meet up with people and 'tag' areas of interest to you.

Meetup will then flag up groups that closely correspond with your requirements.  There is no monetary fee for a member to join a group (membership will ensure they are informed when a new event is uploaded by that group) but there may well be an attendance fee to the meetings.

It's also possible to set-up your own Meetup group(s) - which Joanna has done - and there is no administration charge until there are at least 50 members to your group.  Because they are being flagged up to interested members who match your target audience, this could happen quite quickly but this doesn't guarantee attendance to your events as people will need to be interested in the meeting topic and available in order to commit.

Once a group has 50 members, there is a six-monthly licence fee, as at August 2018 this fee is around £79, making a total annual fee of £158.  Whilst there is no hard and fast rule on charging for attendance to the events, as there is likely to be a licensing fee, venue hire charges and sometimes speaker/presenter fees, many organisers do charge an entrance fee.

Register or log in to Meetup here

Joanna's Meetups

Joanna Bristow-Watkins is Organiser for two Meetups in the London and Surrey area. Generally for a standard Meetup, Joanna charges a flat fee of £15 to cover advertising, licensing, venue and other event costs.  If it is a full training course, or other longer event where the venue fee will be higher, and where a trainer/presenter fee, course notes is supplied and/or certification may be involved, the costs will be higher.  This will be clearly stated on the event page.

Joanna's Harmony Healing, Harmony in Nature & Forest Bathing (separate Groups for Surrey & London):

London Angels, Nature and Wellbeing Networking

Joanna believes that our predecessors saw Angels and Deities (both Goddesses and Gods) as manifestations of Nature. For more about her background, see About Joanna on her Harmony Healing website.

This Meetup is dedicated to helping us align more closely with nature through various celestial intermediaries but will also allow for the discussion and demonstration of other complementary wellbeing 'tools' which help to connect us to nature, such as alchemy, crystals, sound, breathwork, networking, sharing and talking therapies.  Joanna believes that a portfolio of approaches allows for a more flexible and personalised toolkit for members to improve their wellbeing from a physical, mental, emotional and spiritual perspective. 

Joanna is an authority on Ancient Egyptian Alchemy.  As many of you may know, Ancient Egypt was known to the local inhabitants as Khem (or Khemit/Khemet), so Joanna favours the description 'Khemitian Deities'. 

Interestingly, the Khemitian names for their Deities was Neter/Ntr (spelled either way 'phonetically' as heiroglyphs did not include vowels) with the plural being Neteru.  Joanna believes that our word nature is derived from this.