Permaculture in Practice: The Environmentalist’s Guide to Conscious Living
Turns out I couldn’t just write something short and snappy about permaculture because it’s just too interesting. So this article covers a few things — What is permaculture as a worldview, how it relates to zen and yogic teachings, why this could be the missing puzzle piece in our approach to the climate crisis & how we can start living this now by applying permaculture principles to our personal lives and decisions. If you want to skip ahead to the last part, feel free!
“we cannot change the world if we’re not able to change our way of thinking, our consciousness. Collective change in our way of thinking and seeing things is crucial. Without it, we cannot expect the world to change. Collective awakening is made of individual awakening.”
You don’t need me to tell you that the climate is collapsing. We don’t need yet another alarmist voice summoning the climate anxiety or the existential dread that so many of us experience when we’re bombarded with stories and warnings of the extent of this crisis. Studies have shown that fear in relation to the climate crisis only serves to paralyse. If we’re in a state of paralysis, we’re in a state of non-action. And what we need now more than ever, is action. So in order to incite action, we also need to break out of fear and foster a sense of hope. Not the naively optimistic or apathetic wishy-washy kind of hope, but the kind of hope grounded in a coherent solutions-based vision, to be enacted upon with conviction.
Back in January I attended a permaculture design course (PDC) in Costa Rica facilitated by Sarah Wu and Eduardo Terzidis, and I left those two intensive weeks with just that, a grounded sense of hope for the future. I’d like to share some of what I learnt, beginning with a you-can-start-now approach — in this article I’ll take a look at each of the 12 permaculture principles and explain how you can apply these to your personal life. And given my background as a yoga teacher and practitioner, you’ll see I draw a lot of parallels between permaculture and yoga philosophy. Before we go there, you might be asking, “wait a minute Hannah, what the f*ck is permaculture?!”
According to Bill Mollison* who coined the term in the 70s, Permaculture (derived from permanent agriculture or culture) is “the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems which have the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people — providing their food, energy, shelter, and other material and non-material needs in a sustainable way” (Source- Permaculture News).
*Important note: Bill did not invent permaculture. Permaculture perspectives and practices predate his work by millennia and are still utilised in many indigenous cultures to this day, though not under the shiny banner of ‘permaculture’. There is a movement within permaculture to decolonise and give more of a platform to the indigenous communities who possess this embodied wisdom and have engaged with the land in this way for generations.
Permaculture as a methodology provides us with many tools for reducing waste, creating closed loop systems, reforesting desertified land, restoring soil, air and water quality, and transforming the way we conduct industrial agriculture (see promising research on syntropic farming) that addresses many of the practical concerns of the environmental crisis by seeking to regenerate rather than simply sustain. But the promise of permaculture doesn’t end there. Just as yoga is not just what we do with our bodies in a room with 20 other sweaty strangers, permaculture is not just gardening. Both of these systems are philosophies or worldviews, to be integrated into a way of living, a lens through which to view the world and understand ourselves and our relationship to others.
Permaculture as a worldview takes the perspective that we (humans) are an integrated part of the ecosystem, it is non-dualist in the sense that it seeks to avoid reductionism and the splitting of things into their component parts, in favour of synthesis and inter-connectedness. There is a social component to permaculture; considering how we organise our societies and decision making structures to reflect the core ethics of permaculture — caring for the earth and the people, ensuring a fair share of resources and considering the needs of future generations (interesting to note that these ethics overlap with the definition of intersectional environmentalism as defined by Leah Thomas. It’s a whole-systems thinking approach, and so includes ways that we can tackle the climate crisis from a number of angles, looking not just at restoring land, but providing a lens through which we can view our personal lives and decisions.
So without further rambling, here’s my interpretation of the 12 principles, leaving out explanations of how this applies to the land or your garden - if you’re after that you can find it here or just give it a google.
Permaculture Principles:
Observe & Interact / Prolonged or Protracted & Thoughtful Observation
Catch and Store Energy
Obtain a Yield
Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback
Use and Value Renewable Energy & Resources
Produce Little to no Waste
Design From Patterns to Detail
Integrate Rather than Separate
Using Small and Slow Solutions
Use and Value Diversity
Use the Edge and Value the Marginal
Creatively Use and Respond to Change
Observe & Interact / Prolonged or Protracted & Thoughtful Observation
The important addition to this is ‘without judgment or criticism’. This is the heart of a mindfulness practice. In mindfulness meditation we are called to simply notice what arises in the field of awareness without attaching to it, without grasping it, just noticing that a thought is there and allowing it to dissolve. This doesn’t just apply to a formal meditation setting, but any situation in which we found ourselves getting wrapped up in the stories we attach to various triggers; certain news events, interpersonal issues, controversial conversations. There’s always something to be gained from taking a step back to notice, to listen deeply without judgement. Try it out next time you find yourself facing off with a climate denier (I’m aware that term is problematic and only causes further division, but you know who I’m talking about).
Catch and Store Energy
None of us have limitless unbounded energy accessible at all times. There are a number of ways to make the most of your energy limited resources - tending to your energy, (or prana or chi, the life force in your body) by moving, particularly through practices like yoga, ecstatic dance, qi gong or tai chi - promotes the circulation of energy within your system so that it doesn’t end up stuck or stagnant. That’s catching energy. Knowing when and how to rest is relevant to storing that energy, and understanding what types of rest work best for you (social rest, physical rest, intellectual rest) and at which moment is vital to maintaining the energy you need to bring presence to the moments that matter. The more mindful we are with our energy, the more energy we have available to us to direct towards the causes, conversations and people we care about. It’s also worth considering ways in which we unconsciously leak energy; see the next point —
Obtain a Yield
This is akin to the basic business principle of Energy Returned on Energy Invested (EROEI); making sure you make a profit on whatever goods you’re selling so that you’re not operating at a loss. The same goes for personal relationships; it’s generally a red flag if you’re leaving interactions feeling drained of energy. The people around you should fill your cup and leave you feeling energised and inspired. The beauty of this is it’s not a zero-sum game, it should be reciprocated, in that your friend / partner / person should also leave the interaction feeling that they’ve gained rather than lost something. So choose your people wisely - that old trope that we are the average of the 5 people we spend the most time with often holds true - let those 5 people be ones who bring out a quality in you that you want to make space for.
Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback
A hard one to put into practice sometimes, because our egos tend to really not like being told that we’re wrong or that we could do things better, but this is an essential component of growth and self-development. The self-regulation part is about being conscious of, and noticing our patterns and habits (See point 1), and identifying without judgment where we might be stuck or doing harm. Accepting feedback is allowing others to do the same thing, to pick up on and point out where something could be working better. The trick is to not take this personally. What can I learn from this?? A phrase that really stuck with me — “let’s normalise changing our opinions when exposed to new information” — it's the only way we allow for growth, it allows us to become more compassionate, considerate beings, and prevents us from getting stuck in dogma or relegating things to the hopeless realm of “that’s just the way it is”. No social justice or political movement has ever created change without this happening on a mass scale.
Use and Value Renewable Energy & Resources
In yoga there are a few principles regarding restraint and non-grasping and in my lived experience, one of the ways in which I find these principles to be challenged is through the consumerist culture that underpins capitalist society. The way I choose to challenge this is in being particularly conscious of the things I choose to consume so as not to create harm (non-harming or ahimsa being another key principle in yoga), and that harm extends from factory worker’s conditions to the release of toxic chemicals in the environment. It covers every purchase decision from food to books to clothes to furniture. I mostly lean towards second hand wherever I can, seek products with minimal packaging and companies that are transparent about the conditions of their workers. This approach contributes to a closed-loop system, also a key principle of permaculture, and ties in nicely to the next point —
Produce Little to no Waste
The more we make use of renewable resources and rely less on single-use items, the less waste we produce. During the PDC we were introduced to 13 R’s, as opposed to the three ‘Reduce Reuse Recycle’ we were taught in school. Applying some of these to the way we treat our possessions not only brings us into closer relationship with the things we own and the value that they have in our lives, but also may teach us to be resourceful or creative in ways we might not have thought about before. When something breaks, rather than throwing it out, we can repurpose or reimagine it into something else. As Edu and Sarah reminded us on the PDC, “There is no such thing as waste, just misplaced resources”.
Design From Patterns to Detail
When looking at how you want to live your life it makes sense to think big picture first — the values we want to live by, before getting stuck in the figuring out how it all works, like how to build a self-sufficient yurt and what chicken feed is best for our hens that we don’t have yet. Sometimes when we try to figure out the details first, we fall into the problem of ‘paralysis by analysis’ - another term used in permaculture, whereby we spend so long trying to figure out every last detail that we never even start the project to begin with. See point 9 for more on this.
Integrate Rather than Separate
Sounds like non-duality to me! The more we can understand that everything functions together as an integrated whole, not as separate units, the better. Less us-them thinking, less of this is good and that is bad. Less polarisation and more unity. Notice where you slip into this way of seeing the world; particularly when you’re exposed to things you disagree with, how can you challenge the feeling of division that arises?
Using Small and Slow Solutions
Have you ever tried to drastically change your life from one day to the next? Piled 12 new years resolutions on top of one another? What happened? Did it work or did you slip back into your old habits a week later? One of the pieces of advice I give to people who struggle to establish a daily meditation practice is to habit stack, to take something they already have a habit of; let’s say you drink coffee in the morning. You could stack meditation onto it; starting with a 5 minute meditation while your coffee is cooling down or while it’s brewing, and allowing that to evolve into 10 or 15 minutes over time. Maybe with time you’ll add a candle or some incense, maybe you’ll get curious about this practice and start bringing it into the rest of your day. Slow and steady wins the race. (Though there’s no winning in meditation, of course).
Use and Value Diversity
Principles 10 and 11 are linked in my mind. This one applies to personal relationships, as well as interests and experiences. The more diverse our relationships are (in terms of age, race, cultural background, gender identities), the more perspectives we open ourselves to, the richer our experience of the world, and the less prone we are to bias, judgements and prejudices. The same goes for our experiences and interests; when we diversify and step outside of our bubble we get the chance to see the world in a new way, and come to understand the value of difference. We become more compassionate beings, with a richer experience of life.
Use the Edge and Value the Marginal
‘The edge’ in Permaculture refers to the point at which two different things meet - this happens at various scales from the micro to the macro (at a macro scale, Costa Rica is an edge where tectonic plates pressing together brought up a mountain range and brought together two eco-systems from the south and north of the Americas, creating a uniquely diverse ecosystem). Applied to our social systems, the marginal are those who exist within that edge — where two cultures or sets of preconceptions meet — and they are often marginalised, those who end up ‘othered’. It’s our refugees, our disabled populations, our neuro-divergent folks, the gender queer. Valuing the marginalised means seeking to understand the nuances of their experiences, amplifying the voices of those who are not being heard, and making space for them at the table. It’s about equity rather than equality. If biodiversity is a signifier of the health of an ecosystem, then human diversity signals the health of our social systems.
Creatively Use and Respond to Change
This last one speaks to one of the fundamental truths acknowledged by many eastern schools of thought; the Vedic tradition, Buddhist philosophy and Zen teachings all make reference to the inevitability of change. The only thing that we can be certain of is that things will change. Time is always moving, seasons are always in a state of flux, people change, places evolve, the planet is changing, solar system, universe. And so what do we do with that knowledge? Our ability to rest in that knowledge is what sets us free. Accepting that we are in a state of change opens us to the possibility of creative vision, for a future that, to return to the ethics of permaculture and intersectional environmentalism, cares for the earth and the people, ensuring a fair share of the earth’s resources for current and future generations.
Final Thoughts
Now, I can imagine what you’re thinking, this vision isn’t possible within the current system. The system isn’t working, or perhaps it is working a little too well for those in power and those making a profit from the abuse of the earth’s resources. Either way, there’s a global demand for a worldview and accompanying solutions that can bring us back from the point of no return (if we haven’t crossed that line already).
Permaculture as a worldview reflects both zen buddhism and yoga philosophy in that it is not about separating parts but seeing the individual as an integrated part of the whole - that’s also what’s needed for the environmental movement, we need to understand ourselves as part of the ecosystem, not as something separate from it. That it’s not the whole system that’s at risk, and therefore not just the environment that we need to protect, but our place and our quality of life within it. The planet would continue to exist in some form even if humans no longer existed, but in many ways, when we are in a good relationship with the natural world, humans can actually help the natural world thrive. We need each other.
Integrating these principles into your way of living will inevitably effect how you engage with the world, and over time may change the way you view the world, and the ways the world is changing. If we can see the effect of small and slow solutions in our personal lives, we will also understand that the small things we do to care for the planet will also have an impact in time. How we relate to the planet begins with how we treat ourselves and others. System change begins with personal reflections, then community action. From there we approach the bigger conversations with the higher-ups and those in charge. From a place of mutual alliance with the earth and one another.
(All images sourced via unsplash, apart from the photos of Sarah and Edu, which I took during the PDC)