This video is for anyone who wants an introduction to the details of permaculture, how important it actually is, and the impact it can have on a local level, on a local climate, through coming together as a community and using our shovels.
The teacher in the video is Lydia Nielsen, who co-teaches our Permaculture Design Certification at the Yoga Farm each year. Learn more about the program here.
Transcript
We don’t have to wait for all of our governments to get together and sign agreements to reduce our carbon emissions. There are things we can do as communities to bring stability to what is happening on the planet. That is the big message of permaculture.
Permaculture is a design system based on connections and relationships. The idea was put forth by two Australians: Bill Mollison and David Holmgren. They met in a university setting and their joint conclusion about the problem with academia was that it was all very compartmentalized.
They agreed that people could be thinking more interdisciplinarily, looking at relationships and how actions interacted with other fields instead of staying isolated. As their model, they saw the forest as the epitome of this system where things are all connected.
The Forest as a Design Model
If you think about it, the forest doesn’t need to go to the nursery to buy any mulch or any plants. It does not need anything to be hauled away to bags on the curb, or to have anything brought to the dump.
The forest is a self-sustaining system where it provides everything that it needs, and it utilizes and enhances every piece of everything that is given to it i.e through the rain, nutrients and sun. The forests are responsible for why we have moisture and more plant life further inland on continents.
The first pieces of understanding permaculture are the permaculture ethics. There are many ecological design systems that similarly related in their connections, resilience, and self-sustaining nature. Permaculture puts everything into ethics: what are we here to do? We are here to take care of the Earth: to repair, conserve and regenerate.
Designing for Society
We are here to take care of people: we cannot have a healthy planet if we don’t have healthy people and vice versa. To seek peace, to guard human rights everywhere, to love everybody’s children no matter what political persuasion, what country they live in, or how many resources they use.
People care guides to all love and respect each other, see each other, and honor each other from where we are right now. Recognizing that today is a new day and we can all make a new choice, no matter what our past actions. At the end of the day, we all want our children to have a beautiful and healthy place to live.
Share the Abundance
The third ethic is fair share: investing all capital, intelligence, labor and resources to ensure the future of the previous two ends – people and earth care. These ethics outline our mission, right now on the planet, which is getting more and more important every day.
Permaculture Principles
Permaculture also has a set of principles, such as working with nature not against, making greatest change through least effect, and indicators of sustainability that are drawn of self-sustaining, natural systems.
You could spend days or weeks spending time looking into the principles. The principles are filters for design and decision making – is this an intelligent, ecologically and socially responsible thing to do?
If you want to learn more, you can look up “The 12 Permaculture Principles”. Eric Ohlsen of the Permaculture Skills Center in California, has some great videos on these principles.
Permaculture for Resilience
Permaculture helps us build resilience, so when we come into periods of stress, crisis and emergency, we have a default of ethics and principles to follow on the path to rebuilding and healing the planet. In this way, we come to have more security, resources, and resilience without having to steal from others or ravage the planet.
Listen to the full video above for more on the details of permaculture.
Over the last year, the Sivananda Yoga Farm has been making efforts to implement permaculture in our community, little by little. Through our various courses and Permaculture Service Days, our wonderful volunteers and guests have been helping us reach our goals.
One of the permaculture principles is to use small, slow solutions. Because of limited hands on the farm, that is a principles that we have been putting into practice.
We put in small, concentrated efforts when we can in order to serve the bigger picture of sustainability. We also come together when we need to get bigger projects done, because many hands makes little work.
1. Tree Guilds
Adding plants around the base of a fruit trees is called a “Tree Guild,” and helps to create a miniature ecosystem for the tree. We have been slowly adding plants and mulch to our orchard. The goal is to improve the health of the trees and conserve water.
2. Sheet Mulching in the Garden
Sheet mulching is when you layer different types of carbon and nitrogen rich organic materials on top of each other. It has several benefits such as improved water retention, soil fertility, weed suppression and more.
Instead of sending 100% of our cardboard to the recycling center, we utilize large amounts of it on the land for the bottom layer. After that, we’ve added water hyacinth from the pond, animal manure and used straw bedding from our animal pen, raked leaves, wood chips and other plant clippings.
A peach fruit tree guild.
3. Sheet Mulching in the Lavender Fields
We’ve converted our lavender fields from a till system to a no-till system. That means instead of using a tractor and fossil fuels to turn the soil, we lay down sheet mulch to hold the soil in place. It is a method of weed suppression that doesn’t require constantly disturbing the land.
Tilling, when done carelessly, contributes to topsoil loss, nutrients and fertility decreases, and waterways are polluted with agricultural runoff. We didn’t want to contribute to that problem, and also didn’t want to rely on fossil fuels to manage our lavender fields.
4. Continued Food Production
Every year we grow produce in our greenhouse and gardens. Food production continued this year, with a bountiful harvest of greens in the greenhouse last winter.
Because of limited hands, we produced a modest amount of squash and different vegetables in our garden over the summer and fall.
5. Greenhouse Maintenance
We’ve made several repairs and maintenance to our greenhouse, including clearing out Bermuda grass, repairing damaged siding, and making it pest-proof.
Sorry, no programs exist here.
Our greenhouse was full of life in the middle of winter 2018.
6. Seed Ball Making
Seed balls are little balls of clay, compost and seeds. They can be used for no-till gardening. We made several seed balls throughout our Permaculture Service Days and used them in the garden to plant a cover crop mixture of clover, mustard, reddish, oats, vetch, and more.
7. Tea Making
We started a small tea making project using herbs and crops completely grown at the Yoga Farm including lavender, rosemary, mint, lemon balm, and apple. We temporarily halted production over the dry summer months, but plan to start again when possible.
8. Woodchips
Our doors are always open for tree services to dump their excess wood chips here for use in our orchards, garden and grounds. We put that chip to good use to mulch our trees and build organic matter on our soil. That’s one way we turn waste into a resource.
“Permaculture land-use ethics invite us to protect intact ecosystems where they remain and, where ecosystems have been destroyed, to help restore them.” ― Juliana Birnbaum Fox
9. Composting
The Yoga Farm continues composting 100% of our food scraps as we have for the past several years. This year, we temporarily transitioned into feeding our food scraps to the neighbor’s pigs. We hope to harvest an abundance of manure to fertilize our garden soon!
10. Permaculture Work Parties
Or, more accurately stated, karma yoga parties. Starting this December, every Wednesday we invite all the staff at the Yoga Farm to come together for 1-2 hour karma yoga parties in our garden, greenhouse and/or orchards.
Over the summer months, we’ve occasionally been bringing our morning Satsang groups into the lavender fields for peaceful contemplation and light field service.
Sorry, no programs exist here.
Spencer Nielsen teaching his “Ayurvedic Herbs in the Garden” workshop.
11. Engagement in the Permaculture and Farming Communities
We’ve sent representatives from the Yoga Farm to attend the Building Resilient Permaculture Convergence in Hopland as well as the Sustainable Food & Farming Conference in Grass Valley, CA. At the conferences we offered volunteer hours and workshops. We plan to continue community outreach in 2019.
12. More Permaculture Programs!
2017 was our first year doing Permaculture Service Days. In 2018 we started having more Permaculture weekends and courses, which have drawn a lot of interest from the community.
Here’s what we offered in 2018:
Monthly Permaculture Service Days
Social Permaculture Weekend w/ Ryan Rising
Ayurvedic Agroforestry w/ Spencer Nielsen
Yoga of Permaculture w/ Colin Eldridge (Krishna Das)
Intro to Permaculture w/ Colin Eldridge (Krishna Das)
As always, we couldn’t have accomplished these minor feats without the help of our dedicated volunteers and guests. If learning more about permaculture is something you are interested in, or you simply want to join the community in getting your hands dirty, we have multiple short-term and long-term opportunities.
Check out our 200-hour Yoga Alliance certified Yoga Teacher Training Courses offered twice a year in California, 3x in Vietnam, once in China and once in Japan.
Rejuvinate your body and mind. Experience and progress with daily Yoga classes. Learn the 12 basic asanas and pranayama. Enjoy daily meditation, chanting, and organic vegetarian meals.
“Yoga is permaculture and permaculture is yoga life.”
– Swami Sitaramananda
There is a strong ethical congruence between Yoga and permaculture. Both disciplines are sciences that bolster the philosophy of non-violence, non-greed and right livelihood.
Living in positive relationship with everything and everyone around us is the foundation of yoga life and permaculture practice. In this article, we will examine the links between the ethics of both permaculture and yoga.
The ethics of permaculture are earth care, people care and fair share (or set limits and redistribute the surplus).
Earth Care
Earth care means tending to Mother Earth’s ecosystems and supporting the balance of all life. In other words, Earth Care is about living in symbiosis with natural systems, with the understanding that our survival depends on the health of the whole.
In order to support this ethic, humans must stop polluting and destroying the planet. Furthermore, this ethic points out that we have a responsibility to heal the damage that has already been done using ecological restoration and regenerative design.
People Care
From a permaculture perspective, the way we treat the earth is inextricably linked to how we treat fellow humans. From this understanding, we learn that people care is about dismantling oppressive power structures and building resilient communities.
Fair Share
Fair share is also called “future care”. It is often explained as setting limits to consumption and redistributing the surplus. It implies not only sharing with those who need it when resources are abundant, but also applying self regulation now so that future generations can prosper.
Nurturing the Earth and each other is key to a permaculture lifestyle.
The Ethical Foundation of Yoga
The ethics of Yoga are called the “Yamas and Niyamas,” or restraints and observances. For some, the first step on the spiritual path is disciplining oneself to follow the ethics, which ultimately comes from a place of incredible compassion for all beings.
Yamas (Restraints)
1. Ahimsa: Non-Violence
Ahimsa teaches that all life is sacred. All beings share the same life force, so it is important to cherish and protect all life. This applies socially (people care) and ecologically (earth care). When you hurt or destroy life, you are destroying an opportunity for survival and joy.
Oppression is violence. Hurtful words are violence. Social control is violence. Ahimsa asserts that when you oppress another, you traumatize not only that person, but you hurt every other being in the universe and you hurt yourself as well.
“Although initially we can see how helping our family and friends assists us in our own survival, we may evolve the mature ethic that sees all humankind as family, and all life as allied associations. Thus, we expand people care to species care, for all life has common origins. All are ‘our family’.”
– Bill Mollison, Permaculture: a designer’s manual
2. Satya: Truthfulness
Truthfulness means not only abstaining from telling lies, but also aligning words and conduct with the highest Truth, which is that we are all one. It means only speaking words that lead or point to that one Truth. Following people care means making sure that there is mutual understanding rather than falsehood and lies.
Truthfulness applies to business interactions, in communities, and with ourselves. Truthfulness means never trying to confuse or convolute a situation, or hide the truth by covering things up. As long as your words are used to uphold justice and peace, you are following truthfulness.
3. Asteya: Non-stealing
Non-stealing as it relates to permaculture means leaving enough for all other organisms in nature, not taking land, resources or culture from other people without asking, and never taking more than you need in any situation.
When you eat more than you need to survive, it is basically like stealing from a starving person. We live in a society of over-abundance of food, consumer products, and non-renewable resources. Yet there is still too much waste and people who lack resources. The earth is bountiful – the problem is uneven distribution, not scarcity.
When we take only what than we need, there is enough bounty for everyone.
4. Brahmacharya: Chastity, sublimation of sexual energy
Brahmacharya is a vital practice for the ethic of people care. It is about redirecting our vital energy towards selfless service and spiritual practice rather than constantly chasing worldly pleasures.
Interestingly, Brahmacharya means much than just celibacy. It is a moral code of conduct that teaches to never objectify or take advantage of others. Following brahmacharya means treating everyone as members of one divine family.
5. Aparigraha: Non-greed
Greed is one of the main causes of harmful economic development and ecocide, so obviously non-greed is congruent with earth care. Aparigraha can also be translated as non-acceptance of gifts of bribes.
This doesn’t mean that we should never accept gifts form others, but to not accept gifts with ulterior motives. This ethic relates to fair share in that we learn when giving to others, not to expect something in return but to just give in the spirit of giving.
When we share our abundant gifts, it brings more joy into our own and others’ lives.
Niyamas (Observances)
1. Saucha: Purity (Internal and External)
Saucha can also be translated as purity or cleanliness. External purity is keeping the body and the environment clean, which helps to prevent disease and keep the mind stay clear and positive. The implications are simple: don’t waste and don’t pollute.
Internal purity means working towards purifying the heart and mind by removing anger, greed, hatred and jealousy. All of your actions will be for the betterment of the world when internal purity is attained.
This ethic is inspiration to design a life that produces no waste, both internally and externally .In these ways, purity relates to the permaculture ethics of earth care, people care and fair share.
2. Santosha: Contentment
Santosha teaches to be content with what we have. When we learn to desire less, we will suffer less. As a result, we will hurt others and the planet less, thus following earth care and people care.
We never know what life will bring us. Practicing contentment helps us cope with whatever comes our way – good or bad.
3. Tapas – Austerity
All practices of Yoga are Tapas. In Tapas the mind and body are trained to do things they might not initially like. Eventually the practitioner overcomes likes and dislikes and enjoys everything. Austerity also implies discipline and purposely living with less than you may be used to.
Application of this ethic supports people care in that it leads a person to have fortitude, cheerfulness, and simplicity. Fair share is more easily applied when people follow austerity because when we all live with a little less there is more to go around. When we consume and use less, the earth is damaged less.
4. Swadhyaya – Study of Scripture / Self-study
Svadhyaya encourages us to actively work on seeing our true nature as spirit through self inquiry and study of scripture. When we feel spiritually connected it will bring inner peace, which will allow our actions to bring more harmony to the world.
Study of spiritual scripture and introspection bestows the nectar of eternal knowledge and wisdom. It supports one on the path towards liberation. It will inspire the aspirant to keep treading on the spiritual path.
This adds a spiritual dimension to the permaculture ethics, helping us to connect with the Truth and the rich teachings of Yoga. Additionally, it adds meaning to our life, which keeps us going happily as we apply permaculture to the world.
Taking time to learn from scripture and look within helps us feel more connected and inspired.
5. Ishwara Pranidhana – Surrender of the Ego
Surrendering the ego means to let go of the selfish and separate nature and contemplate on pure consciousness. One experiences pure consciousness when all phenomena are observed as a silent witness, without attachment, and one rests in a state of pure bliss.
When Ishvara Pranidhana is practiced perfectly, one sees themself as part of everything else. The universe is an organism and your body is just one cell of it. Instead of trying to control things or do everything for your own gain, you devote yourself to humbly serving the bigger picture.
Humans commit atrocities only when they forget their spiritual connection to oneness; only when they identify with the limited Ego. How can you hurt anything or anyone if you know that they are your own Self?
“Cooperation, not competition, is the very basis of existing life systems and of future survival.”
– Bill Mollison, Permaculture: a designer’s manual
Theory into Practice
“A ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory” – Swami Sivananda
While all of these ethics are nice ideas to think about, they only do good if they are applied vigorously in daily life. And to put it frankly, nobody said it would be easy. Applying the ethics takes a lot of dedication, hard work and perseverance.
The ethics require us to be stewards of our actions in every moment. In this day and age of unprecedented ecological destruction and social chaos, applying the ethics is vital for not our survival but also for our happiness in life.
We can radically transform the world by transforming our inner landscape through the Yamas and Niyamas. Similarly, the permaculture principles will help us change the world by guiding our interactions and relationships to be more mutually beneficial.
Yoga and Permaculture offer the tools, knowledge and wisdom to transform the world to embody our highest ethics. Through the regular and sustained practice of yoga and permaculture, together, we can manifest a truly peaceful paradise.
“A person of courage today is a person of peace.”
– Bill Mollison, Permaculture: a designer’s manual
“Permaculture is a creative and artful way of designing our lives, where wastes become resources, productivity and yields increase, work is minimized, people and nature are preserved – all by thoughtful planning and a respectful approach to life. Thus embraced, we create an environment where all may thrive for untold generations.”
– Bill Wilson
Every single person on this planet can benefit from learning about permaculture and applying it in their lives and communities. Permaculture practitioners are greatly needed in the world today because they are directly solving global issues such as social inequity, soil infertility, climate change, water and food shortages.
A Permaculture Design Certification (PDC) course is a wonderful way to train how to be a practitioner of permaculture. A PDC is designed for students to deepen their your learning and to gain practical skills. It is a 72-hour or longer training that provides an internationally recognized certificate.
Summer 2023 garden at the Sivananda Yoga Farm.
Any PDC will offer a formalized educational opportunity and an internationally recognized certificate. Below are 10 reasons to take a PDC in general. After that, there are 5 things that set the PDC offered at the Yoga Farm apart from other courses.
1. It helps you become an effective designer to solve real-world problems
Permaculture Design Courses offer a simple yet effective model for design. They offer a structure and method to fall back on when designing to address the challenges of our time. For example, this video series shows how permaculture designers have addressed challenges such as water shortage.
2. It will change the way you see the world
PDC students learn how to read social systems and landscapes in ways that see challenges as opportunities. Students learn how to assess hydrology, landforms, climate, sun exposure and more, which will help them determine the parameters for effective sustainable design.
3. It will give you practical knowledge and experience
A permaculture design certification is like a kickstart on the permaculture path. It goes deep into permaculture design methods. It is also a great life experience and can also serve as a good resume builder.
A PDC student observes a flower in the Yoga Farm’s permaculture garden.
4. It can enrich your career path
There are so many aspects of permaculture that can be persued. The permaculture career path is like a tree, with each branch presenting opportunities for income and right livelihood.
Many PDC graduates end up working in environmental restoration, community projects, organic farms or homesteads. People who already have jobs can benefit from applying their permaculture knowledge to increase efficiency and find more meaning in their work.
5. Provides a constructive outlet for creative passions
Permaculture designs are not only functional; they are beautiful. Whether you are designing a community garden or sustainable home, there is lots of room for creativity and aesthetics in any permaculture design.
6. It teaches you how to foster positive relationships with communities and the natural world
As Jono Neiger sums up in his book The Permaculture Promise, “Permaculture is about rebuilding much needed relationships with the people, land and systems that support us.” Permaculture is all about positive relationship. A PDC teaches you how to live in positive interactions with nature and fellow humans in your life.
“Permaculture is about rebuilding much needed relationships with the people, land and systems that support us.”
– Jono Neiger
7. You will meet people who have similar interests
Most students who end up taking a PDC are there because they are interested in and passionate about similar interests such as organic gardening, community resilience, nature connectedness, environmental activism, alternative economies, experiential education… the list goes on.Taking a PDC is a great way to meet like-minded individuals and build your network of changemakers.
Students have fun in the permaculture garden at the Yoga Farm.
8. It is fun
Permaculture Design Courses are packed full of engaging learning activities and interactions that are both stimulating and nourishing to our sense of awe and wonder.
9. It is inspiring
In the course content you learn a lot about people and projects that are doing really, really inspiring work. Many students leave PDCs feeling motivated with a renewed sense of purpose in life.
Permaculture design courses at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Farm in the beautiful countryside of Grass Valley, California are life-changing. Our PDC offers a synthensis between Yoga life and Permaculture that is truly powerful and inspiring.
Yoga helps you build stress resilience and inner peace, which leads to outer peace. Yoga and Permaculture work in harmony to support us in the journey towards inner and outer resilience.
Daily Yoga Classes are an integral part of our Permaculture Design Course.
Two delicious, organic, vegetarian meals are served daily. The Ashram diet is Sattvic, or pure, which means that the food is prepared using only high-quality ingredients meant to awaken and calm the body and mind.
The meals are also prepared using Ayurvedic herbs and spices. Ayurveda is a sister science of Yoga which addresses healthy living, diet and herbal medicine. Vegan and gluten free options are also offered, along with an Ayurvedic tea served at each meal for digestion and a happy belly 🙂
Lydia Neilsen and Spencer Nielsen teach the Permaculture Design Course at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Farm. They are both seasoned teachers and practitioners at the Regenerative Design Institute, a renowned permaculture education center in California. Lydia has over 20 years and Spencer has over 10 years of experience in permaculture design.
5. Pristine natural environment and close by attractions
The Sivananda Ashram Yoga Farm is situated in a Blue Oak Woodland, which is a beautiful ecosystem in the rolling foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Nearby to the Ashram are a multitude of popular hiking and swimming spots, such as the Yuba River and Beale Falls (A.K.A. Fairy Falls). The Yoga Farm is only one hour from the California capital of Sacramento and just two hours from the majestic Lake Tahoe.
Permaculture education is a profound life-changing endeavor that offers a plethora of opportunities for service of Mother Earth and all of her creatures. Yoga supports us in bettering ourselves and serving the world in positive ways.
Together, Yoga and Permaculture are both transformative practices which are utilized for benefit of all beings. We hope you will soon experience that transformation for yourself.
It was a brisk spring morning during an Ayurvedic Agroforestry course taught by Spencer Nielsen at the Sivananda Yoga Farm. A dozen or so students huddled around the greenhouse, which bolstered beds full of large chard and kale greens.
Spencer had a station set up with a variety of native and medicinal herb seeds sprawled on a table. Next to the table rested a wheelbarrow full of a dark, rich looking compost. Spencer explained to the students that “In the biodynamic tradition, essentially what they use to start seeds is plant-based compost. They mix in various materials such as soil, vermiculite, and popped mica, which adds a little bit of minerals and retains moisture. They also add waste products such used coconut husks to add organic matter.”
Spencer teaching at the Yoga Farm during an Ayurvedic Agroforestry Retreat.
Spencer was very knowledgeable on the subject, and guided the class in preparing a nutrient rich preparation for medicinal and native herb starts. The students continued to mix compost and prepare several seeds for planting, such as Holy Basil, Calendula, and California Poppy. The sprouted seeds eventually that ended up growing in the greenhouse and some were transplanted into the fruit and nut orchards.
Permaculture Design Course
After the course we had a chance to catch up with Spencer to ask about the upcoming Permaculture Design Certification (PDC) course. If you haven’t heard of a PDC before, it’s a comprehensive 72-hour certification that trains one to be an ecological landscaper.
Like a Yoga Teacher Training, a PDC can be very life transforming. It completely changes the way one observes and interacts with the world, such as how to design one’s life based on patterns in nature. It teaches the student practical skills and knowledge on how to regenerate the earth, build community, and grow food. It is a great opportunity for someone who wants to make a difference in the world in the realms of sustainability or social and environmental action.
Check out a video we made from segments of our brief interview with Spencer below, as well as a full transcribed version underneath. Om Namah Sivaya!
Can you tell us more about the PDC you are teaching?
In 2019 we’re going to be teacher a two-week permaculture design course. One week will be in April and the second week will be in June. Being offered here at the Sivananda Yoga Farm will be a really rare opportunity to dive deep into classical Yoga and permaculture at the same time. There’s a lot of permaculture courses that will share yoga practice, but in this course we will have the opportunity to participate in a full yogic lifestyle. The regular rhythm at the Ashram includes Satsang, Yoga practice, and yogic foods. Between those, we will be mixing in permaculture content in the classroom and on the farm. The farm includes orchards, organic vegetable garden, and some other pieces that have existed at the Yoga farm for quite some time, such as a greenhouse system and a photovoltaic system (solar panels).
Being offered here at the Sivananda Yoga Farm will be a really rare opportunity to dive deep into classical Yoga and permaculture at the same time.
What makes the Permaculture Design Course at the Yoga Farm special or unique?
Because of the context at the Yoga Farm, as well as my own passions, we will be integrating teachings of Yoga and Ayurveda into the course content. We will explore various systems through elemental perspectives of Ayurveda: Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Ether. We will look at how the teachings of Ayurveda fit in to permaculture, and how they are appropriate to individuals’ constitutions as well as landscapes. We will also touch on Yoga philosophy as well as sister sciences of Yoga such as Vastu (which is like a Vedic version of Feng Shui) and Jyotish (Vedic Astrology) in order to deepen a whole systems perspective.
Daily Yoga Classes are an integral part of our Permaculture Design Course.
Can you tell us about the teachers of the course?
The teachers will be myself (Spencer Nielsen) and Lydia Neilsen. We’ve been teaching and working together for about a decade. We both teach permaculture design courses at the Regenerative Design Institute in Bolinas, California. We both do design work for clients, we both work with edible, medicinal and habitat plants a lot. We are really excited to bring this course forward to you.
Can you tell us more about the daily schedule during the course?
The design course content will take up a large chunk of the day. Every morning and evening there is Satsang, which includes meditation, chanting and spiritual teachings or lecture. There is also a daily 2-hour Classical Yoga class, including Pranayama or breathing exercises. There will be two organic vegetarian meals included each day. —For more information, please visit our Permaculture Design Certification (PDC) course page. We hope to welcome you to the Sivananda Yoga Farm soon, where you can learn how to build inner and outer resilience through Yoga and Permaculture.
“Permaculturists can grow food just about anywhere, repair environmentally damaged lands, design lovely and long lasting green-buildings, produce power, run successful, people-oriented businesses,and build authentic community -all by using the same fundamental permaculture principles and applying the three Permaculture Ethics:
Care of People – Care of the Earth – Share the Surplus.”
Permaculture is a creative and artful way of designing our lives, where wastes become resources, productivity and yields increase, work is minimized, people and nature are preserved – all by thoughtful planning and a respectful approach to life. Thus embraced, we create an environment where all may thrive for untold generations.
We as humans have the ability to re-design the world we live in. All it takes is desire, know how, will, and time. Even if it takes 50-100 years, the change can begin with each one of us right now and the effects of our work can have beneficial consequences for generations to come. (Permaculture at the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Farm)
Consider this: The ratio of tensile strength-to-density of spider silk is approximately 5 times greater than that of steel, while a single thread, wrapped around the earth, would weigh only 1 pound (16 oz.).
Also, the amount of sunlight that intersects our earth in 40 minutes is equivalent to the total, global-annual-consumption of energy (400 quads).
Permaculturists look at facts such as these and ask the question, ‘If there is that much energy available, and if a spider can make something so strong simply by eating crickets, what kind of world can we create for ourselves and our neighbors if we work hand-in-hand with the natural systems surrounding us?’
The goal of permaculture is to create harmonious relationships with all aspects of our life, to learn how to live abundantly well without hurting or polluting our surroundings and actually leave the planet in better condition than when we arrived on it.
To be clear, permaculture is a lot more than just food production. A thorough study of permaculture invites us to look at our homes, our uses and sources of energy, our methods for providing food and comfortable shelter, our work, our relationships with others, and even our relationship with ourselves.
As in Yoga, permaculture is essentially a spiritual approach to living consciously, harmoniously and healthfully on the planet. We can heal this planet. We can live lightly and we can live well. We can each make a difference… a big difference.
‘For practitioners of Yoga, permaculture can offer a practice in which our external actions express the core yogic teachings of the unity of all creation and the yamas and niyamas. For practitioners of permaculture, Yoga offers an understanding of our basic spiritual nature which underpins all our actions.’
— Swami Omkarananda
‘Sampling the Yoga tradition at this unique yoga ashram will help students better appreciate the connection between spirit and the natural elements that surrounds us at all times.’
— Bill Wilson
Nationally Recognized Permaculture Instructor
Yoga Teacher Training Course
Check out our 200-hour Yoga Alliance certified Yoga Teacher Training Courses offered twice a year in California, 3x in Vietnam, once in China and once in Japan.
Rejuvinate your body and mind. Experience and progress with daily Yoga classes. Learn the 12 basic asanas and pranayama. Enjoy daily meditation, chanting, and organic vegetarian meals.
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