Mindful Living Revolution: How to Live Sustainably from the Inside Out includes a book, an online course, a blog, and workshops. The mission of the project is to provide a mindfulness-based experiential education in both environmental and personal sustainability (mindfulness, resilience, self- compassion, and compassionate action). The project explores mindfulness with the self, community, and the planet, and shows how mindfulness is an antidote to the environmental, social, and spiritual crisis of our times. This groundbreaking book and course merge the practice of mindfulness with a radical re-education about global sustainability and ultimately offers the path of interconnection and sustainable design as a way of life.
We’re at a turning point in history, facing environmental, economic, social, and spiritual breakdown. Most people feel a sense of guilt and despair about the state of the world rather than a sense of empowerment. People are beginning to understand that we don’t act in isolation, that our every action impacts a larger whole; however, a larger education is needed, about how to relate with ourselves, each other, and our planet more consciously. Mindful Living Revolution offers an experiential education that people can integrate easily into their daily life, through practices, inspiration, understanding, and empowerment to help people make the shift to a simpler, more compassionate, and interconnection-based life.
Mindful Living Revolution includes a book, Mindful Living Revolution: How to Live Sustainably From the Inside Out, a blog, an online course, and workshops so far offered in California, New Mexico, Oregon, and New York.
The book and online course are presented in 3 sections: Mindfulness with the Self, Mindfulness with Community, Mindfulness with the Planet.
The book includes 19 chapters, such as: Cultivating a Down-to-Earth Meditation Practice; Conscious Consumption: The Art of Satisfaction Without Consumerism; Mindful Eating, Zero Waste: Leaving Not a Trace, Lesson; About Peace Through Farming, How to Have a Kinder Work Life, Compassionate Communication; Mindful Leadership in Changing Times; Natural Beauty; Sustainable Design as a Way of Life; and more.
Some of the areas we explore are:
1- How to quiet the mind, cultivate conscious compassionate awareness, and develop and deepen a grounded meditation practice. These skills enable us to navigate life's ups and downs more easily.
2- How to let go the beliefs of the conditioned mind and the passive consumer mindset and meet the challenges we face today in a more engaged empowered and compassionate way.
3- How nature really works...What are the principles of sustainability and what do they have to teach us about ourselves?
4- What do living systems have to teach us about how to design our own communities, how to work together in more ease and harmony?
5- How to bring mindfulness practice to every aspect of our lives, including our relationship with the self, our communication with others, our work life, and our lifestyle choices.
6- How to be mindful leaders in our careers and in our communities, led by interconnection rather than the separate self (ego).
7- How to cultivate resilience, both personally and as communities, during a time where there is a lot of unknown about the future of life on this planet.
8- What the state of non-judgmental awareness has to offer us in working with the self, each other, and the ecosystems we inhabit.
9- An invitation to do the the inner work and outer work at the same time which allows us to take passionate responsibility for the world we live in . This gives us the opportunity to experience a deeper sense of peace, purpose, and freedom in our lives.
Twenty years ago, disheartened by the level of consumption in the city I grew up in, I set out on a journey to explore solutions for living a more sustainable life. I became an organic farmer, studied sustainable design and intentional communities for many years, and lived close to the earth. I noticed, however, that even in the environmental movement there was a degree of burnout, stress, and competition that did not seem ultimately sustainable, and I wanted to explore questions of inner peace and community cooperation to a deeper degree. I became a Zen monk for 7 years at a center that merged the practice of mindfulness and sustainability. This experience changed my life completely. Fifteen years after leaving, I returned to L.A. and began teaching a workshop series called "Sustainability from the Inside Out," merging mindfulness practice and sustainability. The impact of these workshops has been tremendous. Witnessing the exceptional effect that these experiential workshops have on people's lives, individual anc communities, immediate and long-term, I became deeply inspired to publish this book and develop the capacity to reach more people with this work. This is a pivotal time in history and we need all of the education and support for conscious living and awareness that we can get. This work is powerful, down-to-earth, and transformative. The shift we need to make is so much easier than we think.
Please help me to share this work with a wider audience and support people in creating a kinder and more sustainable world.
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