The basic philosophy of Living Gently. I define Living Gently as a voluntary manner of living which pursues a positive, satisfying life that is considerate, noble and easily managed and that seeks to produce as small an impact on the environment as possible. It is a lifestyle chosen not only for personal satisfaction, but also for the good of our fellow inhabitants of Planet Earth: animals, humans and plants. It involves frugality but goes beyond.
What do the frugal use of money and living a life with minimal impact on the environment have in common? Quite a lot in fact, for there is a strong connection between living with a minimal environmental impact and living a sound economic life. It is no coincidence that economy and ecology have the same root – eco which denotes home.
A look at the origin of the Natural Step concept as created by Dr Karl-Henrik Robčrt, one of Sweden's leading cancer researchers and former head of the nation's top cancer institute.
Environmental philosophies have evolve as the humans moved from hunter/gatherer into producer/consumer. Once it was apparent that ignoring environmental degradation could not continue, the first age of pollution regulation, the Age of Ignorance waned. Searching for solutions, we entered into the Age of Dilution. It soon became apparent that the growth of human populations, continued industrial and agricultural growth, and the production of exotic chemicals would force the Age of Dilution to be a short one. The birth of the Age of Exclusion has been a traumatic one as we have realize that we may have little time to affect change.
In 1997, I sat down with Robert Bateman, renowned wildlife artist and conservationist, to talk about the state of the world as we saw it then. A decade later, his words remain very relevant.
I have often used the technique of cropping a picture to focus on the central point or theme of the photograph, to eliminate the extraneous and distracting elements. I had no idea that the technique could be applied to one's possessions with similar success.
Did you ever feel, by winter's end, that the walls are closing in on you? That your rooms seem more claustrophobic? Perhaps what you are feeling is not a symptom of cabin fever, but a call for spring cleaning. More precisely it can be an internal call for decluttering your home of unneeded stuff.
Time is an elusive entity. Some even say that there is no such thing as time except as perceived by the flow of events. Our perception of the passage of time can change with the blink of an eye. Time stands still; time flies. Time drags on. Where did the time go? I just need a little more time! We had a great time! If only I had the time.
I have often said, "When times are tough, go back to the basics." For me, the basics of financial peace of mind are best summarized in David Chilton's book, The Wealthy Barber and Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin's book Your Money or Your Life.
We humans call our species homo sapien, thinking man, but many anthropologists believe that a better choice may have been homo ludens, playing man. Play, or recreation, can cover many facets of our life, including our work, and in doing so, give us new energies and pathways to fulfillment.
Stress, we all have it. Some of us have it more than others. Stress can drain the body of energy, depress the immune system, create states of disease and rob the mind of focus.Too much stress is definitely not a good thing. So, in this stress-filled world, how can we best find relief? It may sound funny but laughter is the number one prescription for stress relief.
I believe that increasing our knowledge and wisdom through lifelong learning enhances the quality and comfort of life. Lessons can come from formal education or can come from nature.
FOOD: one of the three essential elements for life, the giver of energy, the gift of the heavens. The story of food is the story of humankind. Its many chapters are as varied as the individuals that populate the planet.
We all face many decisions daily. Most are easy choices, a few require long and thoughtful contemplation. Then there are the nagging decisions which defy quick resolution but are really not worth more than a few minute's contemplation. Here is one way to make those nagging decisions.
Some time back, I was featured in an article in the local newspaper that looked at my changed lifestyle to one of simpler pleasures -- a change to a more personally fulfilling life despite a reduction in annual income and spending. In the interview I had said my goal was to reduce annual expenses. Here are some thoughts about the process.
Living meagerly, knowing that it's a choice that need not last forever,
can be an exciting and rewarding challenge. It provides the opportunity to develop empathy, gratitude and creativity.
For nearly 14 years of my working life, I was a long-distance commuter, making the daily journey of 100 kilometres (60 miles) each way. During this time, I developed two insights about the practice from two different perspectives.
Have you ever dreamed of living to be 100? Have those dreams been tempered by a belief that the majority of those years will be spent in ill health and reduced capacity, eventually ending in a nursing home waiting for death to finally come?
A world of magic engulfs the practice of reading to a degree even wider than the art of daydreaming. In daydreaming, we are limited by the breadth of our own mind. In reading we can enfold into our universe the minds and dreams of every woman and man who have ever set their pens to paper. Reading allows you to soar with the eagles by removing the restrictions of the physical world from your soul. And that, my friend, is magic.
Weather and various atmospheric phenomena are, in my opinion, the most sensual aspects of life. We see weather, we hear weather, we smell weather and occasionally taste weather, and we definitely feel weather. We often stop listing the senses there, but other physical senses also respond to the weather, as do many mental and spiritual senses. I combine them all under the umbrella of having a weather eye, being sensually aware of the weather around us.
The storms of the past week have long filled in, but the winds of one yet to come push rollers across the high-tide beach. I sit...my jacket rustling in the wind...and I feel a spirit moving through me, rustling my soul in sympathetic response. I have known and still find science and poetry intermingled when my Weather Eyes are looking up. In many ways, shapes and spirits, weather brings to me rapture, wonder, a connectedness with the divine. In essence, Enchantment.
The act of walking is one of the great exercises, but walking can also be moving meditation or a stimulus to mental activity. Walking is true magic, a transformer of body mind and soul.
First and foremost, I am a weather watcher, but I also enjoy looking past the lower atmosphere toward those sparkling dots in the heavens. Star-gazing — and planet-watching — can be a very rewarding experience, particularly when you allow yourself to transcend time and place.
In Expanding the Mind we intend to explore topics on all aspects of learning and mind enhancement what I like to call Transpersonal Education. I firmly believe that learning is a life-long practice which starts at birth and does not end with a diploma or certificate some twenty-five years latter but with our death. Rather than start out on some specific topic, I have decided to let some of my teachers speak.
Serendipity is a fun way to improve your knowledge base and your life. I have realized that the processes of formal education have become too structured and misguided, and therefore usually stifle the creative process. Since learning to direct my own education, I have discovered that following the path of serendipity provides the most fun and the greatest and fastest gain in knowledge and wisdom.
Learning brings joy and ecstasy to living from the playfulness of learning as well as the sense of accomplishment. Where there is joy, the quality of life increases exponentially, the immune system is enhanced and the future looks brighter. Learn to make learning a part of your everyday routine and you will stay forever young in mind and spirit.
Recreation and education are strongly linked companions. Recreation must thus be an active stance, not a passive one where we let others control our actions and thoughts. In active play, I open myself to all possibilities — some I quickly embrace, others I find uninteresting. By expanding my mind through learning and play, I am re-creating myself.
When I look at all the wisdom surrounding me today, I find so much that strikes a resonant note within. Sometimes it inspires me; sometimes it gives me comfort; sometimes it guides me to a decision or action. Whatever my response, I wish to keep many of those thoughts for easy future reference.
One device that can be used to enhance and balance the thinking process appears to speak to both sides of the brain: the metaphor. The metaphor consists of word images connecting an idea to something it cannot be. It allows us to replace one kind of thought with another, usually one which is more familiar.
Recreation and education are strongly linked companions. Recreation must thus be an active stance, not a passive one where we let others control our actions and thoughts. In active play, I open myself to all possibilities — some I quickly embrace, others I find uninteresting.
Are you tuned in to the feelings and needs of your body and emotions? What is the sound of the music of your soul? How many of us use music to reduce our levels of stress or to buoy a sagging soul? It has been said that music can still the savage breast. How true. And music can do much more. It has powers of healing for body and mind.
Breathing is energizing. When the air is clean, the lungs strong, and the body relaxed, the body can develop to its peak potential, acquiring a greater sense of power and balance, awareness and mental sharpness. When the rhythm is right, all is in harmony. Deep and rhythmic breathing will assist our bodies to heal, promote relaxation and improve mental and emotional functioning.
A companion piece for Breathing the Air giving an energizing breathing exercise. Good times to do this exercise is in the morning upon rising and at night before going to bed. In the morning, it is a good energizer to start the day. Before bed, it helps to relax you.
On my way home yesterday, I glanced upward and noticed the first blossoms had emerged on the cherry trees. Changes abound in the mood of the bird population as well. If they are singing their hearts out, it is serious stuff: mating season has arrived. My thoughts, however, were not on sex, mating or reproduction; they focused on play. Play of greater than Olympic proportions. Play unfettered by rules and expectations. Play more child-like than adult.
Have you ever really watched a small child play, preferably one who had not yet bought into parental messages of values? Give them a box, a few pieces of wood, a blanket, a pot and watch their imaginations go and grow. You don't always know what will emerge next from their fertile imaginations. They see and think things our adult eyes are blind to.
While on a recent walk, I chanced to pass a park where a young father was playing with his child with a large ball. As he watched the joy on his offspring’s face, he remarked with a smile to a companion. Best three dollars I ever spent!
Now that the leaves have fallen and the holiday season approaches, I am again faced with the dilemma of Holiday gift giving, and I am sure that you are feeling the same. We have been caught in the more is better syndrome which defines successful giving more by how long the receiver must take to open all the gifts rather than the satisfaction received from any single gift.
In the beginning there were three Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. The original concept of the Three Rs was intended to reduce the amount of waste being sent to landfills. It was soon apparent, however, that there were many other Rs which could be undertaken to reduce the amount of waste and pollution we each produce.
I have seen several references to the story of the Hundredth Monkey. The story first appeared in Lyal Watson's book Lifetide, but may be more well known from the opening of Ken Keyes' book The Hundredth Monkey. For those of you who do not know the story, here is a synopsis.
It's tempting to look outside ourselves for answers to life's big questions. If we could just read a book or go to a seminar to discover our true purpose, it would make things so much easier. While the answers that others have found may inspire you, ultimately you have to answer life's big questions for yourself. A personal journal is the perfect place to begin figuring out your hopes, dreams, and visions.
Author Richard Mahler explains to us the importance of slowing down in our daily lives. He emphasizes "stillness" as a key to gaining calm in a hectic world.
Summer, that vibrant season when life is active, expanding, producing. There is new growth everywhere. There is new life feeding upon that growth. There are storms and there are calm periods. There are periods of heat and drought and hours and hours of sunlight. And there are times when the living is easy.
For millennia, the summer season has been the most active season of the year for humankind. The concept of summer as a "kick-back and rest" season has coincided with the growth of the leisure industry. Unfortunately, we tend to pack our leisure time as hectically as we do our work time.
Autumn is a good season for beginning to live gently. It is the time for harvesting the fruits of winter planning, spring planting and summer husbandry.
With the autumn harvest over and stored, we look to the winter season for time to sit back and rest from our labours. Winter looks both backward and forward. Winter gives us time for rest, renewal and review at the ending of the old year. Winter also allows time for planning for, and dreaming about, the coming year, a time when we choose those seeds we wish to plant in the approaching spring.
This day starts in the darkness of night, which is fitting, with me in the midst of a midwinter night's dream. This night, I can enjoy many hours of visions of sugar plums dancing in my head, for it is the 24-hour period north of the equatorial zone with the most hours of darkness. On this ultimate day of rest, even the mighty Sun stands momentarily still in the sky.
The North American way of life today is not designed for the slow, natural pace of our bodies. Its fast pace with demands at every turn stresses the body and mind which, if uncontrolled, will eventually lead to a feeling of despair and dis-ease. If not alleviated, stress can cause one or more chronic diseases.
A while back, I had the opportunity to address a group of school teachers. In one presentation, the speaker showed us an overhead presenting an illustration that he felt was ideally designed for his students, but he did not know the illustrator's name. I knew the minute the slide went up, before he had even mentioned its anonymity: it was a work of Eric Sloane., artist, cultural historian and weather artist.
At the age of seventy-eight, in a moment of whimsey, Benjamin Franklin wrote An Economical Project, a discourse on the thrift of natural versus artificial lighting. Over two centuries later, nations around the world use a variation of his concept now known as Daylight Savings Time to conserve energy and more fully enjoy the benefits of daylight.
Who was this man who had come out of the Northern Ontario wilderness to take 1930s England and North America by storm by exhorting the glories of the wilderness and the plight of the beaver?
I have been practising the Art of Napping since I was a newborn so I have a lot of experience — over half a century at last count. I was a kid napper until my teens when I truly began to perfect the art. I can proudly proclaim I am a napper.
What is in a name? Shakespeare told us a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but would it sound as pretty if it were called a grakering? Perhaps, once we got used to it.
Whether warm Spring weather will be with us soon is still unknown to the super computers at the weather service offices. But out in the fields of North America, the answer my friend is blowing in the...oops, wrong thought. The answer is lying under the sun because "The Shadow knows!" Most particularly, the shadow of that subterranean species Marmota monax.
Lawns and Weeds is fine topic for Spring, for what is the first thing almost every North American homeowner and municipality equate with Spring? No, not baseball or hockey/basketball playoffs. Lawn care and maintenance.
My cousin Poor Richard once said: "A penny saved is a penny earned." I have not always followed his advice in my life, but lately one British monarch and several American Presidents wince when they see me coming, knowing that I will squeeze them tight should I get my hands on them.
"Money, money, money." There, did I get your attention? I got mine. Now what? My boss says the focus of this article should be money and personal finances. If I knew much about money, this column wouldn't be called Poor Keith's Almanac!
When I sat down this morning to write this almanac, I could think of nothing to write about. Then the light bulb went on — okay, it flickered a bit before giving the idea light. I would write about Nothing.
I looked over my copious research notes and found none that I could quickly fashion into a column, so I decided to share some of my years of research with you. I looks forward to the work with an almost joyous feeling: a definite state of perhappiness.
Stress, we all have it. Some of us have it more than others. Stress can drain the body of energy, depress the immune system, create states of disease and rob the mind of focus.Too much stress is definitely not a good thing. So, in this stress-filled world, how can we best find relief? It may sound funny but laughter is the number one prescription for stress relief.
I first met Karen Skowron just after I started Living Gently Quarterly. Our conversations led to several articles and poems by Karen published in past issues. Karen has many wonderful ideas on how to live a gently lifestyle. She is a lifestyle consultant with a background in psychology, and a superb writer. In addition, Karen, the originator of the term Natural Habitat Houses, has turned several urban properties back to a more natural state and advises others on changing lifestyles.
Home sprouting can supply a delicious, varied fresh harvest quickly and inexpensively without the environmental disadvantages of commercial agriculture and shipping. Sprouts are easily grown and easily digested, and contain an abundance of vitamins and minerals as well as simple sugars and amino acids.
It's about time we declare war on food waste -- and none too soon, if you ask me. According to US Department of Agriculture figures a few years ago, American households are responsible for 14 million tons, or 28 billion pounds, of food waste per year. That's 280 pounds of food per household tossed into the trash annually.
While some winter clothing evolved silently in antiquity, several have histories that sparked my interest as much as they warmed my body. Two were invented of necessity: one by a group of British women during wartime; the other by a Maine lad of fifteen.
In most of North America, cold and wintery weather are common. Our home is our refuge from the cold outdoors, its basic function to maintain a comfortable thermal environment for those living within. Comfort against the winter cold requires using some energy consumption. But energy consumption is expensive both to our bank account and to the environment. If we can reduce our level of energy consumption without sacrificing comfort, we will not only save ourselves money but also reduce our environmental impact.
Thermal comfort is a very subjective feeling affected by the physical laws of heat transfer. While we cannot strictly define what exact combination of environmental factors will produce comfort for all, we can define what the major contributing factors are and act to alter their influences.
I have recently added many of my lifetime collection of photographs and art works to an on-line shop where you can purchase notecards, posters, and greeting cards, etc. of my best images.
