Conscious Choice Seattle: Practice Makes Permaculture

Photo by Ritzy Ryciak

Taking Yoga’s Temperature

Yoga remains red-hot, which doesn’t necessarily make every purist feel warm and fuzzy. A 2005 Yoga Journal survey shows 7.5 percent of U.S. adults, or 16.5 million of us now, practice yoga.

That number is up nearly six percent in one year, and 43 percent since 2002. Even more tantalizing, at least to advertisers who are looking for ways to incorporate yoga into, say, car ads, is that the number of 18- to 24-year-olds pursuing yoga rocketed up nearly 50 percent in the last 12 months.

When you’re hot, you’re hot. Another 25 million Americans told independent researchers they intend to try yoga in the next year. That’s a lot of yoga mats, and you can be certain Target will be stocking them.

More yoga-tistics: 77 percent of practitioners are women. About a third have studied yoga for less than a year, while half have studied more than two years.

What’s up with men, who are still not completely embracing the ancient health and healing practice despite such good press as champion pro basketball coach Phil Jackson using it with Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Lakers? The Yoga Journal survey reports that nearly a third of guys say they “don’t think they will get a good enough workout.”
Wrong, guys.

Another 25 percent said, nope, “not interested in the quiet, non-competitive aspects” of yoga.

Might want to rethink that one too.

Still another third say they have a “fear of embarrassment in class.” Yet the only mistake is not being open to trying it. —Bob Condor

April 2005 | Feature Story

Practice Makes Permaculture

Finding your center can do wonders for your garden—and our planet. Your backyard is where a yoga practice and permaculture can intersect.

by Ritzy Ryciak

On a drizzly winter day in Green Lake, Michael Suzerris has paused at a grassy strip of his backyard soon to be transformed into garden beds. We are in the middle of touring his century-old house.

“What is the ultimate in yoga?” asks Suzerris. “What is it all about? The perfect backbend? Is it just about developing yourself?”

All good questions—and relevant coming from a Seattleite who owns Yogalife studios in Green Lake and Queen Anne. His own yoga practice is 15 years in the making.
The word “yoga” means “to join, or yoke, together.” Using breath, meditation and stretching, yoga initiates union of the mind, body and spirit. Lately, Suzerris has been thinking about how to take yoga out of the studio and into the world—but without any ego attachment.

He decided the answer, marrying yoga with the permaculture movement, was right out his back door. As spring blooms, he is applying “the same techniques, exercises and disciplines in yoga” to his surroundings. He invites us to do the same.

“Permaculture is all about doing yoga for the planet,” says Suzerris. “The planet breathes, night and day, in and out. It cycles and goes through seasons."

Permaculture, or permanent agriculture, is an environmental discipline and science practiced all over the world. It is based on three principles: care for the earth, care for people, and the distribution and sharing of surplus. Its underlying theme is finding biological harmony and balance with your environment.

"It is ahimsa," says Suzerris, taking a word from yogic philosophy that translates to “nonviolence to the self and to others."

Suzerris is taking ahimsa—“peacefulness in thought, deed, and action”—and sowing it into the soil and plant life in his garden beds. For instance, using pesticides is not practicing ahimsa.

"When you apply ahisma, you practice gardening in a way that is compassionate,” affirms Suzerris. “It brings the most fruit for your labor."

Both yoga and permaculture focus on finding the balance between effort and effortlessness.

"The permaculture and yoga connection begins by taking time to breathe and be strong in your core,” says Jenny Pell, a permaculture consultant and founder of the Wilder Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Port Townsend that brings permaculture principles to communities the world over. “From that centered place, you can then open your eyes and think about how you can better belong and be welcome where you
live—no matter where you live."

Plus, you can figure out what you are able to plant, grow and tend. As in a yoga practice, you can be tempted to do too much too soon. Remember that balance between effort and effortlessness.

Growth period

The word “permaculture” was coined in 1978 by Bill Mollison, a former professor in environmental science at the University of Tasmania, naturalist and founder of the Permaculture Institute in Sisters Creek, Australia. On its most practical level, permaculture introduces the concept of zones to help people design garden spaces that are abundant and functional. There are six zones, numbered 0 through 5, that can be applied to most dwellings.

Within the permaculture community, Zone 0 is considered the household. Zone 0 is certainly one reason to call yourself a gardener even if houseplants are all you grow. For many permaculture followers, Zone 0 has become synonymous with the individual.
"If you don’t have a healthy relationship with yourself, it is very hard to expend that out into your garden,” says Pell. “What is it you want to create, and how much time do you really have for this project? Do you know yourself well enough to imagine what your outdoor space will look like? Most of us don’t."

Zone 1 is the area around your home that you go to every day. It is the pathway between your car and you, or where you walk to gather your mail.

Zone 2 represents the places that you visit every other day. It is where you might take your compost, or the path you travel to dispose of garbage. With each zone, you move farther from your home and visit the area less frequently.

In most permaculture plans, Zone 3 is the farm zone, maybe where you grow vegetables or plant a fruit tree. Zone 4, if it applies, features a forest (or cluster of trees) or pond.
If your dwelling is on a larger plot of land, you eventually enter Zone 5, the wilderness: a place left alone so that nature may do her design.

The science of permaculture teaches people to cultivate the right types of plants in the appropriate zones.

"We want to invite people into their backyards,” says Pell. “Bring the kitchen garden back."

Creating an outdoor oasis

Pell shows clients throughout Washington how to create an outdoor oasis that will connect them to the planet and put food on their tables. One common pitfall of many gardeners is placing their gardens in the wrong location.

"If you are trying to design a kitchen garden that you are going to work in and harvest from,” says Pell, “you have to set it up in a way that invites you and welcomes you and excites you, or you just won’t do it."

Pell uses the “wet slipper omelet test” to explain her point. If your slippers get wet when you go to get herbs for your omelet, then your herbs are too far away.

Pell suggests designing a garden around the path from the front door to your car. She recommends trellises, herb spirals and arched arbors as a way to increase your yield. The poetry of permaculture is that it is a logical approach to garden design. Wastes become resources, productivity increases and eventually, labor is minimized.

Permaculture is based on ethics that get you into your garden so that it becomes a natural extension of your house.

"Utilizing trellises and arbors, you could grow peas and beans and raspberries and graze all the way to your car,” says Pell.

If your space is limited, you can increase your yield by implementing a vertical garden. Place an herb spiral or trellis on the deck of your apartment complex and harvest fresh basil and thyme.

Union of yoga and the planet

Armed with a perfect backbend, ahisma and the design strategies of permaculture, Michael Suzerris plans on creating an abundant garden that brings organic food into his kitchen and union between yoga and the planet. The idea is that when you find you own center, you then have the opportunity to feel the rhythms outside of yourself.

"Wherever you land, you need to learn to indigenize to that place or you will damage it,” says Pell. “You have to care about where you are and delight in the idea that the next person coming behind you will eat those raspberries that you planted."

You have to garden from a place with intention; nature will take care of the rest.
"Don’t just do something, sit there,” says Pell, laughing and quoting Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. “This is a very counterintuitive idea for many Westerners."
But an invaluable approach when planning your garden. It is the idea of observing what is around you. Seeing the flow and honestly assessing how much time you have to put into a project. Within the green places of our planet, simply sitting before planting can be just
as valuable as breathing into a pose.

"What I have learned is that the yoga process is really more about clearing out our obstacles so that we can come to a place of clarity,” says Suzerris. “Permaculture helped me to remember my connection to the universe."

For more information on yoga and permaculture, visit www.permaculturenow.com and www.yogalife.com.

Ritzy Ryciak is a Seattle-based freelance writer and biology teacher who lives on Queen Anne. This is her first article for Evergreen Monthly.

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