mind body planet

Mind Body Plant 21

I know we are all hearing various things about the current presidential race on every issue you can imagine. Every day it seems that there is some new issue being brought up and some big time speech being made on the issue. I will go ahead and just say that I am personally affiliated with the Obama campaign and there are just a couple of reasons for that. One of them being his stance on the issues of those who are oppressed, his views on rising costs of health care and health insurance, and the other thing is his stance on global warming. His policies and views on the issue are quite progressive and it seems to me that he is the only one of the candidates so far that has been fully committed to actually looking and working toward some kind of a solution to this complex and impending issue.

Of course when you look at all of the facts of global warming and the things that have come out of the scientific community, you can validate just about any view you want to. There are as many scientists with their own models for the future out there as there are viewpoints on the issue. Though the consensus is that there is an issue and that global warming is a human caused phenomenon at this point more so that a natural cycle, the effects of that influence are the murky area. Many people believe that we are standing on the doorstep of a catastrophic failure of all of the earth’s systems. Other believe that this is just a normal cycle of the weather on this planet. Then there are the shades in between.

I personally lean a lot farther towards the side of a catastrophic problem looming on the horizon. I think that we have seen enough powerful storms and pollution related problems, that even if the warming is not what does it, the destruction of food systems and ecosystem are what will. We as a species have taken advantage of this planet and turned it on it’s ear. We have lived for much too long and changed too many things to say that we have no power to stop what is going on. Business can adapt, people can change their habits, and society can learn to function without all of its waste. I think I am just one of many right now saying the same thing. This all part of the pendulum swinging the other direction. We had the industrial revolution a hundred and fifty years ago, now we have to have the green revolution today. If we do not make the right decisions here and now, our children may suffer, and theirs may never have a planet to live on.

There are many things in our environment that we all very deeply depend upon. These are what we call the natural resources and I am sure we’re all quite familiar with what they are. IF you read the newspaper at all or watch the news from time to time you will notice that they are mentioned as being sort of ambiguously in danger of becoming depleted. This is true, but the news is designed in such a way that if you don’t actively seek out the real stories, then you are missing the big picture. Most people don’t fully grasp the fact that this planet is in a grave situation right now and is in deep need of better care. Right now though, one resource seems to be popping up more and more as the cornerstone of what may become a global conflict for its ownership and distribution.

Water is without a doubt the most threatened natural resource we have on this planet. It comprises most of the composition of our bodies and so must be consumer by every single human being daily or serious problems will arise. At present, many scientists around the world feel that the situation of our rivers, aquifers, and fisheries are being severely tested and maybe even completely destroyed. In many places water purification is an enormous issue. Water purification may remove: particulate sand; suspended particles of organic material; parasites, Giardia; Cryptosporidium; bacteria; algae; viruses; fungi; minerals such as calcium, silica, and magnesium; and toxic metals like lead, copper, and chromium. Some purification may be elective in the purification process, including smell (hydrogen sulfide remediating), taste (mineral extraction), and appearance (iron encapsulating). Many places around the world need to highly purify their water because of extreme industrial influence on particular streams and river beds. Governments usually dictate the standards for drinking water quality. These standards will require minimum and maximum set points of contaminants and the inclusion of control elements that produce drinking water. Quality standards in many countries require specific amounts of disinfectant (such as chlorine) in the water after it leaves the water treatment plant (WTP), to reduce the risk of recontamination while the water is in the distribution system. This is why in this country many of us choose to filter our water yet again in our homes with tao filters and Brita filters. In other countries though, the option just isn’t there.

All of the statistics point to the fact that the world’s water systems are in crisis. We need to take immediate action if we wish to stop the loss of life that is already occurring due to unsafe or la complete lack of water around the world. According to a 2007 World Health Organization report, 1.1 billion people lack access to an improved drinking water supply, 88% of the 4 billion annual cases of diarrheal disease are attributed to unsafe water and inadequate sanitation and hygiene, and 1.8 million people die from diarrheal diseases each year. The WHO estimates that 94% of these diarrheal cases are preventable through modifications to the environment, including through access to safe water. Simple techniques for treating water at home, such as chlorination, filters, and solar disinfection, and storing it in safe containers could save a huge number of lives each year. This is staggering for us, but many people live with these problems every day and we must do something soon.

Yert Crazy

I’m back at home today everyone and I am really missing my former abode in Ithaca. The week was very fun and I am now seriously thinking about it as a place I will look for jobs when I graduate. The only down side to that is that I hear the job market in Ithaca is very hard to break in to. I will certainly keep my hopes up though. For now I am looking ahead to the future, namely the semester which starts next week, and I want to move on with this blog. There is obviously still some run off from my week of fun and sun and so I will be bringing back our discussion of green home building. My friend Jamie who just moved to Ithaca will be the first topic on this discussion actually.

When Jamie was in college he lived for a year in what is called a yert. This was a project as part of his educational experience and he got credit for the experience. Basically a yert is a type of housing that comes from the areas of Mongolia and the steppes mountains. It is a small round house that is designed to be easily broken down and moved. At least that was the way the nomads of the time did it and still do today. What was different about this design was that it was not meant to be moved. This home was made with a green roof, or garden on the roof, it was constructed with very sturdy, heavy wood and metal parts. Though it was different hat that of the nomads, the point was that it was completely unconnected to modern housing. There were no lights in the house and there were no distractions. It was also built in the woods as to seclude it even further from all things civilized. 

This is just one design, but right now there are tons of options when it comes to homes built with the earth in mind. The point of homes like this is really to lower the ecological footprint of the inhabitants and the creation process. This can be done in a variety of ways. Some things like building with recycled materials or from minimally processed materials. Some types of materials like compressed straw bales are being used to compose the walls of homes as they are quite efficient with heat loss and retention. There are also homes being built out of material known as cob, which is essentially cob, clay, and straw. As the days go one the designs for the more high tech ideas increase, but these are options that are much more accessible to those without much money to fund such a project. 

I’m out of time for today, tomorrow we’ll come back with a little bit about a natural resource that is fast becoming one of our most precious natural resources. 

Cornell madness

So this week has been a lot of fun and I wish you all could have been here with me in the wonderful Ithaca, New York, but unfortunately we can’t all be in paradise or it would be quite crowded. I finished off my final day today with a very interesting trip on to the campus where my friend Mckenzie will be getting her masters degree. This was an invitational so different departments were set up around campus handing out promotional items and pamphlets about their programs. The Cornell campus is amazing. It is probably the most beautiful college campus I have ever seen. The whole campus is built around a lake and the gorges that have rivers carving through them. The main path is a big loop around the whole thing and it is mostly shaded and surrounded by rivers and beautiful plants that are native as well as planted. There is one section of campus just devoted to gardens and each one has a theme. Each one displays plants of the various seasons. Of course the spring garden did not look so well since it is quite hot right now, but the rest looked really beautiful. May favorite was the one called the plantation which was devoted strictly to those plants one would find on a Caribbean or South American plantation style farm. That was the first time I had ever seen a banana tree or a coffee bush, and when I saw them I was sort of struck by the influence these sort of invisible plants have had on my own life. As we walked around the campus we came upon her building where she will have her office and take most of her classes. Right behind the building is a huge construction site and I was a little curious so I asked about it.

The building that is going up on the campus is what is called a Leed certified building. Basically this building was designed to fit the criterion of the LEED certification of energy efficiency. The United States Green Building Council has laid out a strict set of guidelines that are meant to constraint the building design to make it as clean and efficient as possible. The certification goes on a scale from just certification all the way up to a platinum status for the best designs. The rating goes on credits given for things like Sustainable sites, Water efficiency, energy and atmosphere, materials and resources, indoor environmental quality, and innovation and design. All of these things are weighed together to see what kind of impact this building has during its construction as well as what kind of impact it will have as it stands. I think that this is amazing for Cornell and I hope to see more buildings doing this in the future. For now though this is the first one that I have seen.

I just wanted to leave that trip for you all with a nice pleasant note for the future of Ithaca. It will just keep getting better up there are hopefully here as well.

Something’s Fishy

Hey all. I am still here up in Ithaca New York and I’m still loving every minute of this trip. This morning we got up and we did some harvesting of squash and zucchini. Then after breakfast we cleared some brush and did a little bit of weeding in the garden. After lunch we went for another hike, this time on a different trail. We came eventually to another waterfall and lagoon type of thing and we swam for a good long time. After a while I started to get hungry and my friend Jamie got out some fresh veggies that she had cut up before we left. We munched on those for a while until we had finished them all. I knew I was still hungry so I suggested that we walk back to the house and make some kind of a meal. On the hike back I was hurting. My head hurt and my legs were cramping and my back started to ache. I tried drinking lots of water and that type of thing but it didn’t help and so I just suffered on until we got home. When we got back to the house I sat down and tried to think of what I may have done that might have just drained me of all of my energy and left me in this sorry state of affairs. Then I remembered my diet. I have been a vegetarian before, for about two years, but now I don’t eat that way. Since I started staying at the house I have been eating their diet which is almost totally vegetarian. I had stopped my lifestyle as a vegetarian for this exact reason and I think that this is why I had this little episode today.

When I take a step back I can really see that my diet now is not just an omnivorous diet, but a diet centered around the vitamins and minerals in those foods. One of the foods that saved my life I think after I stopped being a vegetarian was fish. The first food I ate to break my habit was salmon and then I began taking fish oil supplements. Now I see that there is a huge value in these supplements that I was always missing out on when I was a vegetarian. Fish oils contain lots of omega-3 fatty acids which are great for the brain. The fish oil is also good for cholesterol, heart health, and blood pressure. I know that I after I began to take them I was feeling one hundred percent better and a lot of my aches and pains went away fairly quickly.  The fish oil companies did go through a little hype which may have given them a bad wrap, competing with promotional mugs on the counters at health food stores, claiming to be cure-alls. But the fact is that it is a valid and healthy supplement that was marketed badly for a short time.

Tonight I went to the store and bought myself a little salmon steak and cooked that up. I am already felling a lot better. I hope that anyone who needs this in their lives will hear the call.

Cooperative Market

So today since I am down to just one or two more days here at the community house, I am going to talk a little bit about Ithaca and what sorts of ways this little college town is making same amazing strides in the fight against ecological degradation. The people of this little community from the college to the surrounding areas, are all quite obviously devoted to creating and maintaining something quite special in their town. With the farmer’s market I talked about yesterday I saw what I can imagine to be the goal of any market and any community around the world. We are all trying to make this world a better place and make it so that the beauty around us is protected. It seems that the people of Ithaca, surrounded by their famous gorges and waterfalls, are constantly reminded about the power and beauty of nature. Thus this sense of natural awareness demands of them a certain level of respect and responsibility to take care of what is around them.

One such idea is all over the area of Ithaca , and that is the cooperative community or business. A cooperative organization, or co-Op, is basically an organization that is maintained and owned by those who work within the established place. One great example of this is the grocery store that I went in to today. This store was owned by ever single person that worked there. That means that all forty or fifty people that you could see stocking shelves or cutting meat, was an owner of this business. That means money coming in to the store goes right back in to the community and not to a company headquarters or something like that. It also means that they are much more responsive to the needs and desires of their customers. Inside this store there were bulk herbs and spices, and bulk grains all along the walls. Most of the coffees , and many of the products, were fair-trade and Organic. Then there were a huge number of locally produced goods. Anything from yogurt to toilet paper made by local people could be bought and sold there. This freedom to choose what goes on is something that you do not find with a large company who sells all over the country or the world.

Another aspect of the same idea is something here called the eco-village. The eco-village is a place outside of town which is owned and operated by it’s inhabitants. They are also a zero waste community and they do much to help with eco-actions around the community at large.

My time is up for the day folks and so I will leave you with lingering visions of this utopia I have painted for you up here in Ithaca.

Ithaca Farmer’s Market(2)

Yesterday I was talking to you all about the farmer’s market, or trying to at least, here in Ithaca, New York. The main farmer’s market here is held every Saturday in the morning until around two or three when everyone starts to really thin out and go home with their produce and things. I got a chance to go to the market here for the first time yesterday and I must tell you that it made our markets here look kind of funny and like small children trying to do something greater than their means. Though our own local markets are doing well on their own, I can only hope that with the current developments in the minds of people around this country, that the organization and sense of community at home will grow.

After our chores in the morning, which today included picking the melons that were ripe and the beans that were so crispy, we had piled in to the vehicles. Off down the road in our veggie cars, we drove through downtown Ithaca and on to the market. When we pulled n to the parking lot there were almost no spaces left anywhere. When we finally got two they were not in sight of each other. The first thing that I noticed about this market was that it had it’s own building. This was not like back home where it is a converted parking lot or a street that has been closed for a few hours. No this was a huge wooden structure with a big farmer’s market sign on the front. It looked like it could have been a nice sized strip mall if it were all closed up and made of concrete or something.

The farmer’s market was just amazing on the inside. There were booths for everything. It would be like if you were to gather up all of the various vendors from around our town’s markets and put them in one place, then add another twenty or thirty unique booths. I got lunch at this organic Cambodian booth and I bought enough local Organic produce to fill up my big cooler on wheels. The thing that blew me away the most though above all else about this market was that it as a whole was devoted and committed to being a no waste market. At each entrance there were two cans for waste. One bin was for compost and one bin was for recyclables and there was a sign over each one showing what should go inside of them. Then there was a small can just for coffee cup lids which are a unique type of recyclable plastic. I mean this was like a conservationist’s dream. I certainly recommend that all of you out there take time and check this market out.

Ithaca Farmer’s Market

Good evening all. I am back at the computer tonight after a long and wonderful day here in Ithaca. If you didn’t read form yesterday, I got here two nights ago to an intentional community that my friends are a part of. I’m staying here until the 23^rd so I may have lots of different things to tell you about. Expect plenty of inspired entries since I am surrounded by a very amazing community of people. Today our itinerary was basically just one item. I wanted more than anything to see the famous Ithaca farmer’s market.

This morning there were some chores to get done before we could do anything else. I was more than happy to help out with some tasks since I want to eventually live in a community like this and because I am staying here for free. My task for the morning was to collect up the eggs that had been laid in the hours before we got up. So around seven I went out in to the yard between the garden and the woods where there is some flat grass and I collected about thirty eggs. These chickens are grass fed and totally free range so their eggs are significantly larger and of better quality than normal eggs that you would find in any supermarket. There were no duck eggs but we had plenty of eggs for my friend Jamie to make her amazing eggs Ranchero. She made them with onions, green peppers, and garlic from the garden as well as salsa that another housemate made this morning.

After breakfast we all pilled in to the car which is another topic which I might need to discuss at length. My friends Jamie and McKenzie who used to live here in town before they graduated, bought a new car about a year ago. The car they found on Craigslist and it was like a dream come true. It was a 2000 Volkswagen Jetta that had been converted to run on vegetable oil. Every week they used to pick up oil from shops around town and then just filter it at night in their back yard. Then they simply pour the oil in their car and go. They go through a tank of gas about once every month or so when they have been driving a lot. This summer though they have only put in one tank of gas and just a lot of vegetable oil. The van that the others took is also powered by vegetable oil and they actually converted it here themselves at the house when they all moved here. The process I hear is not hard if you have a mechanic on hand and so I think that this is where we should be moving if we want to really becoming independent of oil consumption.

I just realized I have made a bit of a mistake and took too much time going off on my little veggie oil tangent and I have run out of time for the day. I will continue this story tomorrow and maybe I will have some new things to talk about as well and keep me from the topic even longer.

Ithica

This week I have gone on vacation. For the first time since I came to college I am going to take a little bit of time off. I am coming up here to visit some of my friends and we’re staying at their new home which is an intentional community right outside of the city. I got in last night from the drive and didn’t get to do much more than come inside and hit the bed because it was pretty late. This morning though it was a different picture. I was greeted at breakfast by the owner and all of the members of the community which I believe number at ten. The grounds only comprise two small houses, but they’re located n six acres of land. Of course our breakfast was totally Organic and vegetarian. The ingredients were all from the garden or were made right here on the grounds of the community.

After breakfast we got to go out and really get the full tour of the grounds and I can’t tell you how amazing it really was. This time of year with the weather being as it is, this area is just perfect. We walked around in their two acre garden and I saw all of the things that they had growing. I saw the new scarecrow that they had put up just yesterday and the melons that are ready to be harvested. After the garden we moved on to the woods. As we walked to the end of the woods we passed lots of free-range chickens and ducks that they use for eggs, which is the only meat product that is eaten on the grounds. About fifty yards in to the woods is a little eco tree house that was built from a couple of fallen trees and recycled waste from the main house. Then we went back to the house because they wanted to take me on a little hike.

After we got ready we walked down to the eco house again and then on a trail beyond that. For about an hour we walked through steep climbs and rocky falls through some amazing woods. Every once in a while a creek would sort of spill out a little bit between some rocks. Then all at once we came out on to this huge running creek. Then we followed the trail to its end at a lagoon at the base of a waterfall. We spent the rest of the day diving from the top and sunbathing on the hot rocks. It was simply an amazing day.

Now we’re back at the house and we are sort of winding down for the day. Tomorrow we’re going to go out and look at the town and let the rest of the housemates fill in for the loss. we’re going to try to go to the huge farmer’s market that they have here and I will be sure to tell you all how it goes.

Yoga Resources

If you are someone like me then you have certainly noticed the extreme growth in popularity of magazines and websites that are meant to disseminate the practice of many, and still climbing, different styles of yoga. Though now we are just awash in it, I still think that it is funny how much can be taken for granted right now. When I read books by guys like Ram Das and he bears all of this knowledge and wisdom as if we have not heard any of it before, but today it is a completely different picture than what he was dealing with at the time. Just twenty years ago people sort of knew what yoga was but unless they had gone out and tried it, it was probably still a very vague idea. Now anyone who has walked through a magazine aisle in the supermarket has seen at least one yoga pose as they glance across the covers. If you have dug a little bit further you will find that the internet is also awash in many stable as well as many budding yoga websites for both the world-wide practices to the one room studios around the country. A lot of the early popularity of the websites came from the base of people reading the magazines but now, as with television as well, people have begun to convert their primary source of information gathering to the web. Though this hasn’t stopped magazines from functioning, it has prompted the bigger names to turn their website in to a source completely separate from the magazine as well as a supplement to the hard materials.

My favorite of all of the internet websites is the site for the magazine called Yoga Journal. Their website simply Yogajournal.com is a huge resource for the beginner and a great supplement for the teacher or experienced practitioner. Basically built around the premise of yoga teachers giving out their own advice and wisdom on the nature of poses and the ancient art form of yoga, this site gives you everything you need. Constantly updating articles reach in to every area of practice on and off the mat. The special section built simply around ayurveda medicine is a huge wealth of knowledge on the ancient Indian form of healing and general health in the modern world. Though all the while preaching about a form of discipline that is over two thousand years old, this site provides you with a modern idea of what yoga means for all of us. Also, as a yoga teacher and student , I feel that the constantly updated takes on all of the poses is great because it allows anyone coming to the site to find something a little different within what they have been practicing all along.

Something interesting that I am seeing lately also is prenatal yoga and simple yoga for toddlers. Parenting and integrating yoga at a very young age will open their minds to this medium early.

If you are out there surfing the net right now and would like to learn a bit more about yoga, please check this or any of the other yoga websites out. As with any other topic on the net, the bigger the site the more information swirling around and so you may just want to try the big ones and not get scared off. I certainly recommend this site in particular because it has been of huge value for myself and other students I have taught in the past.