Permaculture Principles for a Healthy Mind and Body

You may know that I'm invested in permaculture and sustainable living. There are  several key principles to permaculture, such as observing and interacting with food and environment, catching and storing energy, obtaining yields, self-regulation, and using renewable resources. Each of these principles can be applied to your health as well as your lifestyle. In this episode I'll cover how to:

• Observe and Interact with our foods, our environment, and our mind
• Catch and Store Energy
• Obtain a Yield
• Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback
• Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services 
• Produce No Waste
• Design from Patterns to Details
• Integrate Rather Than Segregate
• Use Small and Slow Solutions
• Use and Value Diversity
• Use Edges and Value the Marginal
• Creatively Use and Respond to Change

As you begin to understand these principles, you can begin to use them in all areas of your life - not just your garden.

Transcript

Magic Barclay: 0:43

Welcome back to A Magical Life. I'm your host, Magic Barclay. And first of all, welcome back to season two of A Magical Life. We have been so inundated with requests to go back to listener questions and addressing things that you want to know. So, All season two. That is what we need to do. We will be asking you to jump onto Facebook at a magical life podcast and send us your questions. What do you want to learn about? What do you want to hear about? What do you want to really explore in depth? We'll do all that for you and bring you a tailored podcast with a personal shout out, if you wish. Now, season two. Exciting stuff. As I said, before we get going, please do like, subscribe, share, and leave us a review. Let us know what you think. Now, today is all about the permaculture principles. Now, in permaculture, we use systems of nature. So we use soil, we use animals, we use companion planting. We bring in good bugs to defeat the bad bugs and keep our produce nice and safe and healthy and tasty. And there's a lot of little intricacies in the permaculture principles. So what I thought I'd do today is. teach you how I apply the permaculture principles to health. Yes, they do cross over a fair bit. So what we're going to talk about today is, as I said, the permaculture principles, but looking at them from a different angle, how we can improve our health and how we can be more ethical and sustainable and using what we in permaculture call closed loops. So not necessarily relying on supplementations and things like that, but looking at what we already have and how we can use it. So let's get started. Permaculture principle number one is observe and interact. How does that apply to health? We need to observe the foods that we're eating. We need to interact with the foods that we're eating by growing as much as we can. We need to look at our environment. How are we growing things? Are we growing things in pots? And that's fine if you're growing in pots and all you have is a balcony, you can still observe and interact with the foods that you're eating. For example, you can be growing your own herbs. Now, most herbs have medicinal properties. So in an environment where all you have is containers to grow in, you can still grow your medicine. Things like rosemary and lavender. All rounders for the body. They have so many functions, things like time, things like parsley and dill. They don't take up much space to grow. And so you can not only create a beautiful environment, observe and interact with your own medicine and foods. Now, the other thing with observe and interact. is our mind. And we have a system called the P N E I system. Psycho neuro endo immunology system. So that is our limbic brain, the P, our nervous system, the N, our endocrine system, the E, and our immune system, the I, and they all interlink. So how can we observe and interact with each other? With our mind through the PNEI system, we can start by watching what we say to ourselves, watching how we think about ourselves, and really negating any self inflicted negative consequence. Because when we do things like that through our thoughts and our feelings and our words, our nervous system reacts. And when our nervous system reacts, it gets to a point where it can't take the load anymore. It calls in our endocrine system. So our hormones go off balance. When that happens, it has a direct link to our immune types. We've talked about immune types a lot before in season one. And, you know, so, you know, Maybe I'll do another podcast on those soon, but this can have a very long lasting effect on us. So permaculture principle number one, observe and interact with our foods, our environment, and our mind. Permaculture principle number two is catch and store energy. So how do we do that in health? Well, we have these little powerhouses called mitochondria. So are your mitochondria feeling safe to produce energy? Or are you heading to a cell danger response? Now again, I think through this season I will elaborate a bit more on what some of these things are. But if your mitochondria, so the powerhouses in your cells, are not able to feel safe, And remember, your body has one job, that is to keep you safe. They're just not going to produce the energy that you need. So you will feel tired, lethargic, depressed. So how can you catch and store energy? Well, you need to feed your mitochondria the right things. So here's where we link back up with principle number one. Principle number two, obtain a yield. We all want the what's in it for me, don't we? And this is what this is. Are you prosperous in life or do you feel like you're going backwards? Now this will link directly to your PNEI system. Maybe things aren't going the way you envision them or you hope them to be at this point in time. What you need to say to yourself is I'm happy where I am. But I'm also happy to grow and improve and better my situation. Allow that to come in, allow your body to prepare and your mind to prepare for growth and prosperity. Of course, if you feel like you are going backwards and we all have times in our life when that is the feeling, don't verbalize that to yourself. Don't dwell on that. To obtain a yield, we need to keep growing, just as our gardens would need to keep growing to obtain a yield of produce. So, we need to set the scene for ourselves so that our bodies feel prosperity, feel that moving forward, feel that there is growth. Our next permaculture principle is apply self regulation and accept feedback. Well, this kind of speaks for itself. So when we're growing our food or our herbs or our medicines or whatever it is we're doing with our permaculture life, we accept that sometimes things get stuffed up. Now I'm gonna put my hand up here. I live on a property with tank water. I got so nervous about how much water I was using that I didn't water my garden enough. I needed to apply some self-regulation to how I felt about using the water, knowing that water is the big picture, right? Water is what helps me grow my garden. And so I accepted feedback. My son actually said to me, water isn't that expensive to buy and buy the tank. Let's work out a plan. around rainfall so that we're buying in less. We're growing less water thirsty crops when we have less water. And he was a hundred percent right. So I applied this, how we apply this to our health. Self regulation is key with our health. So what we need to do is. You know, it's okay to have the treats every now and then, but we need to say to ourselves, that's a sometimes thing. That's a reward for, you know, living by the 80 20 rule. 80 percent right. 20%. Maybe not so right. We need to put that self regulation in place and we need to accept feedback. If someone says to you, do you know what, maybe you just need to take a break. Maybe you need to drink a bit more water. Listen to it. Don't take it as criticism. Maybe they're coming from a great place. so apply self regulation and accept feedback. Our next permaculture principle is use and value renewable resources and services. So, in the garden, of course, we do this. This is closed loops. We try and see what renewable resources we have, like compost, like our food waste going into the compost, or into a worm farm, or into something where it can decompose, break down and become nutrients for our soil. We might also save seeds. We might also grow more than we need so that we can barter and trade for things that we don't have. Now, how this applies to our health? Well, we have doctors and mainstream medicine, and they're actually the epitome of lack of renewable resources. Right? They prescribe medications which are often toxic. They patient blame. Right? The rise of idiopathic or unknown disease is just incredible, and there's a lack of care and services which is increasing. Now, I'm not just doctor bashing here. They are time poor. They have, when they do their study, they have a certain amount of time to learn a whole heck of a lot. And then when they go into the system, they only have a few minutes to see each patient, and they have to see so many patients per hour. So, you know what, their system isn't renewable and sustainable, but yours can be. So you can do things like growing your herbs. As I mentioned earlier, you can do things like taking time for yourself and listening to your body. You can do things like maybe barter. As I said, Maybe you have chickens, backyard chickens, and they lay too many eggs for you to eat. So you can trade that with someone that might have too much silverbeet or too many potatoes growing or whatever. You can also trade for help. So maybe you just don't have time to clean your home. You've got chicken eggs. So you can ask one of your neighbors, Hey, can you come and give me a hand? I'll pay you in eggs. There's a lot of things we can do. And particularly with our health, we need to make sure that whatever we're doing, we're using and valuing our own renewable resources and services. So don't just spend money on something that is a You know, a one time enjoyment, look at, is this going to help me later? Is this renewable? And what I mean by that is, by sure, go out and, you know, have a lovely meal. But maybe make that a lovely family meal, where you are now sowing the seeds for discussion and an open, loving relationship with your family, and that is renewable. That is using a resource, which is going out for dinner and turning it into something that is healthy for you. Okay. The next one we have is produce no waste. Now, when we're growing herbs, for example, we can benefit from. Both the medicinal side and the food side of herbs, right? And growing things can make us happy. So for example, lavender and all rounder I mentioned before can actually calm your kids, your pets, your chickens, help deter pests whilst attracting key pollinators. And it's beautiful. What does it do for our health? Well, it is great for balancing our nervous system. It's great for balancing our immune system. It's very calming on us. So it helps stop that fight or flight syndrome coming into play and we're producing no waste from it. Everything that we cut off, we don't use, whatever can go back into our compost. Now, applying this bit more to our health. produce no waste. With this, we need to look at what we're eating as well. So we need to eat less stuff that's wrapped in plastic because that's producing waste. It's also releasing microplastics. We need to do things like stopping drinking bottled water. We need to get a filter. Now I have a portable filter that I take everywhere with me because I don't drink tap water because, well, that's a story for another day, but I won't drink bottled water because of the microplastics. I recently did a kitchen audit. In my home and I got rid of all the plastic chopping boards for the same reason. Now we got a lovely timber chopping board, which we absolutely adore. Hint here, don't drop it on yourself on your toe. I haven't done that. It hurts. Uh, but we are reducing our need for plastics. And so we're closing a loop there. We're producing no waste. We have very little. Unrenewable. and things like that. So if you're going to the produce store or the grocer, you want to do things like paper bags that they have for mushrooms. Use those for anything that you're buying rather than the plastic bags or take your own reusable bags. And next permaculture principle is design from patterns. Now with our health, just like in a permaculture garden, we need a plan. So in my permaculture garden, I have a seasonal plan. So I have autumn, winter, spring and summer. I've drawn a map of my garden and I use tracing sheets as overlays for each season. So I know exactly what's been in the ground. I can rotate my crops between. The leafies to the root vegetables to the nitrogen fixes, things like that. So how do we do this with our health? Chasing symptoms is not sustainable. You need to plan your success. So what we're looking for here is root cause. We need to speak to a holistic coach or a holistic counsellor who can help us identify root cause, or who can help us design the sustainable plan. And our team at Holistic Natural Health do exactly that. So I will leave some details at the end. But what you need to do with your health Is plan for success. I'm sure many people have heard the term failure to plan. And if you have what that leads to is a lack of success. So what we're doing here is we are planning for the success of our health. What do we need to do? Do we need to address our immune type? Do we need to address something like mold or some other nasty invader like LPS, which is a bacteria? Yeah. Do we need to? Look at things in our home. Are there toxic things here that we need to replace? So planning is very important. And design from patterns to details. Well, in permaculture, we use patterns and we use images. Edges. And so what we do here is we look at soil types and water consumption and pollinators, and we plan where things are going to go. And edges, we look at the edges of the garden beds. Can we fill those with herbs? Or with flowers like a calendula, that can not only keep the soil in, but help give nutrients, help bring those pollinators in. How do we do that with our health? Exactly the same way. Planning is key. Our next principle is integrate rather than segregate. Now, what we need to know here is that no system works alone. Remember that PNEI system, okay? So that's, sorry, the pathway. It's four systems working together. No system in your body works alone. Joint pain, It is not always just muscular, it's not always just skeletal, it's not always just nerves. It can be a whole lot of those. It can be lymphatic as well. It can be a sign of stress. It can be an adrenal rush, it can be an endocrine problem because when you have a hormone imbalance you will get niggles and aches and pains. So no system works alone. Integrate rather than segregate. The next principle is use small and slow solutions. Your health takes time. This is not a sprint. Okay. This is a marathon and you want to make it to the end of the marathon by taking time to appreciate your health, but also taking time to boost it and understanding that It's not going to happen overnight. By treating root cause, sometimes that can seem to take a bit longer than we'd like. For example, if we consume a pill, we expect it to be instant, right? But by treating root cause, it can take some time. And it's not. What are we doing when we're treating root cause? We're not just chasing a symptom. We're looking at why this happened, how we can stop it happening again, and how we can better our lives. Our next principle is use and value diversity. Sticking with one health protocol can actually switch off your body's healing phase. So if we go one particular direction for too long, We can just completely switch our body off from healing or we can drive it the other way. It can start responding in a negative way. No supplements or vitamins or minerals should be taken without re evaluation and a break. Now the other thing that happens here is when we take a supplement for too long or indefinitely, our body might actually switch off the process. That we're taking the supplement to help boost or regenerate. The body says, well, if you're bringing that in all the time, I don't need to do that. So use value and diversity. Our next principle is use edges and value the marginal. Now, I spoke about edges before. So we look at the edges of the gardens for many, many reasons. And in health, we must look at how we interact with the environment around us. And just to hint here, just because someone's your family doesn't mean they're healthy to be around all the time. So our health journey should help those around us. As well as us, and it needs to be a bit of a give and take here with the edge. So the edge is on one side, people around you, on the other side, you. We need to intermingle there with respect. We need to make sure that our health is being boosted by the interactions that we do have by the people that we are surrounded by. And we need to make sure that our environment creates those healthy edges. Our final permaculture principle is to creatively use and respond to change. All change is good, even when it's not. Now, it sounds confusing, but a change in symptoms in our body tells us a message. And so we need to listen to what that message is. We need to decipher it and we need to respond to the change. Now, this is the permaculture principles applied to health. What do you think? Do you think you can apply these to your own life? Do you think you can be more sustainable and renewable with your own health? We often talk about how we can be, you know, more sustainable in our environment. How often do we think about that for our own health? Just a thought. This was your episode two of season two of A Magical Life, Health, Wealth and Weight Loss. Please do like, subscribe, review, share and jump onto Facebook at A Magical Life Podcast and let us know what else you want to hear about. And to all my permaculture buddies out there, let's just be a little bit more mindful of Everything we do for our gardens, we must do for ourselves. Thank you so much for listening. I will speak to you in episode three.