All things considered ...

“…A growing recognition that we need a spiritual response to the ecological devastation of our planet is taking shape under many banners: spiritual ecology, deep ecology, Earth-based spirituality, eco-psychology, feminist ecology, creation spirituality, Gaia consciousness, and Dharma Gaia to name just a few. Thinking about all these variants, it occurred to me that they can all be considered as a kind of yoga of the Earth - Earth yoga…

The practitioner of Earth yoga seeks to know this body upon and within which we live as we seek to know our own bodies. So the practice of Earth yoga might best begin with that portion of Earth closest to you, your bioregion or watershed. How many of us know, for example, where our water comes from and where our water, after we’ve used it, goes? How many of us know the contours of the body we live on? Yoga teaches us, among other things, to care for our bodies as sacred, inside and out. As we come to know the body of Gaia as intimately as we know our own, we discover places that have been wounded, polluted, poisoned and that need to be restored and healed. This is karma yoga, the yoga of work and action…”

For the full essay, and suggested Earth Yoga practices such as ordaining trees, the practice of personal landscape, hugging trees and suggestions for an Earth Yogi’s bookshelf, see here

A brief introduction to deep ecology by the wonderful John Seed.

Good post, this part was especially pertinent:

‘…Get Off the Internet and Into Real Life

Back in the ’60s, a string of civil rights sit-ins began when four students from a black college in North Carolina sat down at a whites-only Woolworth lunch counter. In the end, about 70,000 students participated in sit-ins that spread across the state. As Malcolm Gladwell points out in a recent New Yorker article, the action didn’t start with lots of Twitter followers. It started with lots of flesh-and-blood (as opposed to Facebook) friends.

The strong social bonds and long-standing mutual trust gave those first four students the bravery to stand up for themselves. Gladwell says that the strong ties of real friendship and community—not the weak ties of the virtual world—are necessary to make us feel supported enough to take meaningful risks for our values.

I ran a blog at NoImpactMan.com and many thousands of people came there to discuss their views on and methods of environmental living. It was a good thing. In the absence of real-life communities of shared environmental values, the blog provided a lot of people with some measure of community support. But the stronger, more action-oriented communities are formed in my work when people come together for our No Impact Weeks.

One of the most accomplished friendship-based communities I am familiar with, 350.org, the grassroots climate organization, began with a group of students who lived together at college and then in the Bay Area. They have grown their little house party into an international organization of hundreds of thousands of climate activists. They use the Web to aggregate the actions of thousands of friendship-based groups. But the point is the actions taken by small communities of friends or neighbors—not the information sharing.

So use the Internet, of course. But use it to get people to do things in real life. What if the many hours spent leaving angry comments on the Huffington Post were instead spent gathering once a week in a coffee shop. Sooner or later, real action—as opposed to real, um, clicks—might occur. Get people to come together. They need each other…’

I like the term Sustainism – maybe we do need a new “ism” to rally behind (or perhaps Ferris was right and no good can come from any ism?!) .. though this article rightly points out the need for far more than symbols and branding.

Nike want to make the world better through sport, including sharing the technology they use for their environmentally preferred rubber through a Creative Commons license.

Pretty cool stuff. Check out what else their doing: http://nikebetterworld.com

Here’s a talk I gave a few months ago, in which I argue for a new definition of progress. I argue that we should not just be aiming to “sustain” our current way of life. Instead, we should be looking for a way of life that is both better for the planet and better for us. In other words, happier planet and happier people.

Put another way, should we really be looking for ways to make junk food containers compostable (i.e. the now defunct Sun Chips bag)? Or, given that many children in our food deserts don’t have access to fresh fruit (i.e. food that is good for them), shouldn’t we instead be putting our energy into getting the already-compostable apple into kids’ hands?

Should our goal really be as limited as to make junk food “sustainable?” Or do we want a regenerative way of life that is—yes, better for the planet—but better for us too? If you look up “sustain” in the dictionary, you’ll find it means “to bear the weight of.” Do we want to figure out how to “bear the weight” of corporatized life the way it stands? Do we want mere “sustainability?”

Or do we want something better?