Free Inner Transition Workshop Wednesday September 4th

Next week, on Wednesday, September 4th at 7pm, Shantree Kacera will present a free workshop as part of the Inner Transition workgroup of Transition Middlesex. It will take place at the Living Centre, 587 Bell's Rd at 7pm.

Cultivating Your Inner Life: Nature as Model and Guide

Have you dug in the fertile soil with your bare hands?



Have a “conversation” with the wind recently?

Drenched yourself in a pouring rainstorm?

Find out how these simple interactions can sustain you in solving the problems troubling you.

Shantree believes the power to nourish ourselves is a gift from nature, which can support, assist and guide us in our everyday life.

Shantree will show through experiential processes how time spent in nature and interacting with the living forces of nature can quiet our minds, open our hearts, and nurture our souls. In these moments of interaction with the Earth, we can uncover the answers to life’s predicaments that have so long escaped us.

Facilitator: Shantree Kacera, D.N., Ph.D. he combines his passion for forest gardening with newly emerging scientific information from many fields - Ecological Medicine, Resilience Science, Deep Ecology, Regenerative Design, Living Nutrition, Deep Organic Medicine, Bioregionalism, Natural Health Science and the visionary solutions from the Bioneers. Visioning to reveal a regenerative path toward better stewardship of the natural world. A spiritual activist at heart.

10 ways to reduce your consumption

Article by Graeme Stuart 



If we want resilient, sustainable communities, we need to reduce our focus on economic growth, materialism and consumption.
While creating a less materialistic world will require major changes to our economic systems and there will be fierce opposition from many vested interested, there are also things we can do as individuals. Here are 10 ways we can reduce our consumption.

 

Photo by Ed Mitchell http://flic.kr/p/7rTxS1 

1. Earn less – the more we earn the more we spend. As our income increases, so does our standard of living and consumption.
2. Compare yourself to people worse of than you. We can always find people who earn more, have a nicer house, or go on more frequent holidays. But we can also always find people who are struggling to feed their families, who have never been on a plane, who can’t afford the necessities of life. We decide who we compare ourselves to.
3. Shop less, and when you have to, try to shop second-hand. It’s simple: if we shop less, we are going to buy less.
4. Talk about consumption with our your kids. We can help our kids to be aware of the way advertisers and marketers try to make us consume more and more. Instead of falling for the tricks of the trade (e.g., buying branded products) we can talk to our kids about how companies are trying to get us to buy things that we don’t need. Our kids can be quite perceptive.
5.  Find friends who help you reduce your consumption. If you have friends who are not caught up in consumerism, it’s much easier to reduce your consumption. Make sure you spend time with people who are into the simple things of life.
6. Grow more and make more. Try growing at least some of your own food, and making things, rather than having to buy everything.
7. Donate more. Donate your time and money to making the world a better place.
8. Turn off the ads (or at least mute them). Consciously resist the power of ads and think what they are saying to us. (We sometimes talk with our girls about what the ads are trying to sell us and whether or not we really need it. This is one way of combating the persuasive power of ads.)
9. Buy quality that lasts. When you do buy things, consider paying a bit more if it means that it will last longer and you won’t need to replace it as quickly.
10. Get involved. Join with others in creating the changes we need to create a less materialist, consumption driven world.

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LondonSOUP - October 10, 2013

LondonSOUP is an awesome event. While you eat a locally-sourced bowl of soup served by top-flight staff in the culinary arts, you hear brief ecological business pitches. Vote with your spoon to see which presenter gets a micro-grant to implement their green idea.

It's simple: Meet. Persuade. Discuss. Vote. Eat. In the heart of Canada's London.

LondonSOUP is put on by some amazing 'soupsters', many of whom met through Transition Middlesex, and Transition Middlesex is proud to support this amazing community event.

Julie and I had a terrific time at the last one, and look forward to attending the next one on October 10th, 2013 starting at 6:15pm (meeting and seating at 5:30pm).

Full details, including discounted early bird tickets.

Face the Change

This is a neat campaign to raise money for a team to go across Canada and assist people in having their local councils introduce mandatory warning stickers at the gas pumps. It's a neat idea to keep climate change at the top of people's minds, so we can all remember to drive less when possible.

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/face-the-change/

How to Build a Rocket Mass Heater

I am quite literally 'stoked' about this workshop my friend Andy's organizing for September 27th to 29th in Guelph.

Rocket Mass Heaters are a safe, cheap, and easy alternate heating source for those of us living in cold climates.

You basically use free, recycled, or cheap materials to build your own heater that operates on sticks and scraps of wood to keep you warm all winter. These things are so efficient, the only real exhaust is a bit of water vapor.For those that know a bit about alternate ways of heating, these basically combine the super efficient burning of rocket stoves with the heat mass principles of masonry stoves, also including a cooking surface. The cartoon above shows you what they can look like. 

So, not only will Andy, who has built several Rocket Mass Heaters, be putting this together, but he's working with the Minga Skill Building Hub and Transition Guelph to bring in Ernie and Erica Eisner, authors of books on Rocket Mass Heaters, and who have installed over 700 all over North America. These guys are stars on the Permies forums.

Tonnes more great info on the website about the workshop. It will likely fill up fast, so register now: http://rocketmassheater.ca/