In 2019 Kat Farrants made new discoveries about living a healthier, happier, more sustainable life. She shares her findings in this article on taking small steps to change.
In 2019, I decided to make new discoveries: to explore the different ways to take yoga off my mat and learn from the people who know, how to live a conscious, happy, healthy and sustainable life, this led me to launching the Champions of Change podcast. Last week, I wrote about how taking an attitude transformed my capacity to contentment and happiness. This week, I want to share what I’ve been learning about environmental sustainability.
New Discoveries: Permaculture
I’ve started to delve into Permaculture. Now I only discovered permaculture by going to Suryalila on retreat. This retreat centre which is the brainchild of our amazing MFML teacher Vidya Heisel and offers a sanctuary for us humans to explore our creativity in freedom. Suryalila also offers an earth sanctuary through Danyadara an organisation aiming to reverse desertification through permaculture and to offer local farmers education about alternative methods. But that discovery deeply changed me too. I’ve found out from Vidya in our Podcast about the link between our farming methods and topsoil degradation. Which leads to desertification. Literally, one third of the world is becoming a desert.
When desert forms, we can’t just plant a tree and go back. When it’s gone, it’s gone forever. The food for our children and grandchildren just washed and dusted away. Again, it seems impossible for me to be a yogi, someone interested in union, in connection, and not see the connection betweenwhat we choose to eat, the things we choose to buy, and the effect that those choices have on the earth. This earth which we all rely on as our home, our shelter and food source.
Permaculture and Yoga
What permaculture has taught me is that the principles: earth care, people care and fair share, are a part of yoga. And this is an absolutely fundamental set of principles for every part of our lives. For our yoga practice on and off the mat: in our houses, our gardens and in the businesses we run and support. When we choose to support each other in these principles, that leads to a sense of the impact we have on the world and on each other.
The reason why I’m particularly excited about our newest challenge, the Small Steps challenge, is because it is so easy – it’s especially for the busy people. Those of us who spend much of our lives overwhelmed, overworked and way too stressed. We want to be healthier and happier, and live more sustainable lives, but somehow, these things can seem so out of reach. Sometimes we are busy, we are exhausted and before we know it a week, a month, a year has passed by. And then we realise haven’t given our practice back to ourselves. We haven’t done the simple things that really can so help our lives.
Small Steps Challenge
The small steps course is there to help us all to realise that we don’t need to make the giant leap when it comes to new years resolutions, or goal setting. It’s the smallest steps, the smallest changes in our habits which can have the biggest impact on our daily lives and on the planet too. This is the best of new discoveries. In the small steps challenge we’ll be sharing short classes that we can all fit into our busy lives. But we’ll also be on the Movers Group supporting each other and holding each other accountable to the changes we’re making. We’ll be on a weekly facebook live chat to discuss the themes of the week and how we’ve all got along.
Yoga off the mat
It’s also the challenge where we bridge the gap between the shapes, between the yoga asana, and how we live our yoga off the mat. Where we can all find the aspects of yoga philosophy that spread into all of our lives.
I really do hope that you’re as excited as I am about it and that you’ll join in.
About Kat Farrants:
Movement for Modern Life’s fabulous founder Kat Farrants lives her yoga and her own yoga practice informs how she develops MFML. Kat wrote this post using inspiration of how she can take the small steps to move into a happier, healthier and more sustainable life. Please do join her on this journey and explore with us your happiest, healthiest, most sustainable life.
Leave a Reply