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Making Permaculture Stronger

Sometimes I find myself inside a dialogue that deeply meets me where I am and lifts me up to a place with more clarity, more vitality, and more possibility. This episode with Pamela Mang was one of these. Pamela is long-term friend and colleague of past guests Carol Sanford, Joel Glanzberg, Ben Haggard, and Bill Reed. She has been working in the space of regenerative design, resourcing and development for many decades. Co-founder of Regenesis Group, she is co-author (with Ben) of the 2016 book Regenerative Design and Development. She is also part of the faculty that runs The Regenerative Practitioner (TRP) programme.

In this dialogue Pamela helps me grok the tetrad of regenerative development that Regenesis works from in relation to my own work on Living Design Process.

From this paper which in turn sourced it from Regenesis group.

https://youtu.be/UJdnMghawTY

Upcoming TRPs in NZ and AU

Enrolments for the next Australian programme for TRP are open July 15th - August 19, 2022 and the programme commences on September 7th, 2022. Contact me if you'd like to be connected to Drika, Alana or Lara who are the AU co-hosts. 

Enrolments for the next New Zealand programme are open July 15th - August 13th and the programme commences on September 2nd, 2022. I am considering enrolling myself so I may see you on the course. Contact me if you'd like to be connected to Lucy-Mary who is the NZ liaison. 

Quotable Quotes

Now for a few things Pamela said that I was moved to write down here:

Design should be a vitalising process. It creates new vitality, new energies that can source different orders of health, different orders of understanding and so onPamela Mang

Pamela Mang

The secret about these frameworks is that they don’t replace intuition. They hone itPamela Mang

Living Design Process

Find out more about the Living Design Process Pamela was resourcing me to look at through the tetrad framework here – the next online course of Living Design Process kicks off August 6th 2022 (why not complete before your TRP and make this a year of next-level learning!).

Support the Making Permaculture Stronger Book Project

This episode also marks the launch of a crowdfunding campaign to fund the creation of the Making Permaculture Stronger book – here’s the video and here's a link to the campaign page. Support us and feel the good vibes that follow :-).

https://youtu.be/1O8KY_Rb-2U

Living Design Process and the Tetrad of Regenerative Development with Pamela Mang

Enjoy part of two of this rich dialogue about bringing Living Design Process to professional permaculture design consultancy. Will make more sense if you listen to Part One first.

An aerial photo of the Mayberry project which is mentioned in this episode and is a good example of a design process that uses earthworks and trees to create beautiful organic spaces in between...

Bringing Professional Permaculture Design Work to Life with Alec Higgins – Part Two (E78)

Many thanks to Alec Higgins for prompting this exploration. In the first of two instalments, we develop premises for transitioning into professional permaculture design work. Enjoy and to learn more about working with Living Design Process please visit www.LivingDesignProcess.org - the next course starts in August and you can learn more about it here.

A photo of the early development of the project I explored with John Caruthers here. From drone footage by Peter Watts

Bringing Professional Permaculture Design Work to Life with Alec Higgins – Part One (E77)

It was an honour to connect in this episode with Daniel Christian Wahl to explore what it means to align with life's regenerative impulse.

Here's Daniel's book Designing Regenerative Cultures, his Medium Blog and here's his wonderful youtube series Voices of the Regeneration.

Early on Daniel mentions Christopher Alexander's Challenge to Permaculture. A few times he mentions Henri Bortoft's book The Wholeness of Nature.

Daniel Christian Wahl

Enjoy, thanks to Daniel for visiting Making Permaculture Stronger, and thanks to our mutual friend Clinton Callahan for connecting us.

Daniel Christian Wahl on Aligning with Life’s Regenerative Impulse

In this lively second conversation (find the first here) Clinton Callahan and I dive right in to swap notes on the dynamics of living creation processes. We cover creating from fear, chaos, and the groundless void as well as feelings, the unknown, the phoenix process, surfing the wave you are are, and much else.

https://youtu.be/qKNGwiqGxTo

You can find out more about Clinton at his website here and during our chat he mentioned fearclub.org, rageclub.org and possibilityteam.org

Creating from Fear, Chaos, and the Groundless Void with Clinton Callahan (E75)

On March 17, 2022, at 85 years of age, Christopher Alexander passed away peacefully in his home in West Sussex, England.

This post celebrates his life, and for me, personally, the sheer magnitude his work has had on the course of my life, including Making Permaculture Stronger as a project. If any of you have been touched by this project, then you have been indirectly impacted by Alexander's life-long quest toward life, beauty and wholeness. Find out about who Alexander was here and here and here and here. Learn about Alexander's direct influence on my (Dan Palmer's) work, and on this very project here and here.

A Poem

Thank you to Ann Medlock, a past client (and hence collaborator) of Alexander's, for permission to share these photos and this poem here:

Alexander sculpts a building

out of air and wisdom

waving his hands

squinting his eyes

to see what only he and God can see

in this clearing on the bluff.

Listening to something

we cannot hear, he brings into being

a house so solid, silent and calm,

so embracing, consoling and inevitable,

that it draws in and restores

every open soul that finds its way here.

And many do.

Pilgrims who have heard,

who’ve seen a photograph,

who sense that here there is something

mysterious, rare, perhaps even inspired.

On a clear blue afternoon

we sit at a long table in the sun,

the house embracing this garden

and all of us who bask here

amid the calendulas and ferns.

Feasting on tabouli and cold birds,

we talk of poetry and paintings,

of terraces in Tuscany and homemade wine,

of our work, our passions, our quests.

We are friends, gathered here

by the grace that emanates from this holy place.

At Christmas, the clan assembles.

The tree, dressed in familiar ornaments,

touches the coffered ceiling

and sends the scent of balsam to mingle

with fire, roast and cakes.

Thick walls hold out the cold, the wind,

and every danger of the world we know.

Comets cut across the high windows

as we are drawn in and held fast, together,

blessed by the house that Alexander made,

while listening to God.

Three Examples of Directly Alexander-Inspired Design Processes

https://vimeo.com/456075580/0e4846f331

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2k35m_Q9xg&ab_channel=MakingPermacultureStronger

https://youtu.be/l8lffVxj7DI

Some Quotes

Here I share a selection of some of my favourite quotes from Alexander's many books.

The Timeless Way of Building (1979)

You are alive when you are wholehearted, true to yourself, true to your own inner forces, and able to act freely according to the nature of the situations you are in.[...] To be happy, and to be alive, in this sense, are almost the same. Of course, if you are alive, you are not always happy in the sense of feeling pleasant; experiences of joy are balanced by experiences of sorrow. But the experiences are all deeply felt; and above all, you are whole; and conscious of being real.To be alive, in this sense, is not a matter of suppressing some forces or tendencies, at the expense of others; it is a state of being in which all forces which arise in you can find expression; you live in balance among the forces which arise in you; you are unique as the pattern of forces which arises is unique; you are at peace, since there are no disturbances created by underground forces which have no outlet, at one with yourself and your surroundings.This state cannot be reached merely by inner work.There is a myth, sometimes widespread, that you need do only inner work, in order to be alive like this; that you are entirely responsible for your problems; and that to cure yourself, you need only change yourself. This teaching has some value, since it is so easy to imagine that your problems are caused by "others." But it is a one-sided and mistaken view which also maintains the arrogance of the belief that the individual is self-s...

Celebrating the Life and Work of Christopher Alexander

In this episode Brianne Vaillancourt and I explore the the edge between Possibility Management and Permaculture. In particular we explore the potential to harness conscious feelings in our design work. Having started this conversation back in episode fifteen with Clinton Callahan, I feel joy to be going there again. Joy because the clarity of the distinctions I have learned in Possibility Management contexts are contributing so much to my work in design, holding space, and my life generally.

Brianne Vaillancourt & Dan Palmer

Learn more about Brianne (and sign up to her newsletter!) through her personal website.

Learn more about Clinton at his personal website.

Learn more about Anne-Chloé Destremau, who Brianne mentions, here.

Learn more about Possibility Management, Rage Club, Fear Club and Mage Training which are all mentioned. Something that wasn't mentioned, but I was thinking of during the episode, is this site using the term Whole Permaculture to explore the Permaculture-Possibility Management bridge.

If you are interested in learning more about Possibility Management in an actual training experience, I recommend this online Expand the Box training run by my friend, colleague and guide Vera Franco.

Huge thanks to Ellen' Schwindt for the musical intermission - below is a video of the larger composition I sample. Let me know if these things work for you and I'll get them in more often!

https://player.vimeo.com/video/529143485

Possibility Management and Permaculture with Brianne Vaillancourt￼

In this episode in was my pleasure to get to know permaculture consultant Eliosa Lewis from New Climate Culture. I thoroughly enjoyed hearing about Eloisa's journey and work and look forward to having her back.

Here is a link to Kevin Bayuk of Project Drawdown that Eloisa speaks so highly of.

Here is the crypto token She talks about: https://icube.finance

I look forward to your comments (including questions for future conversations with Eloisa) and at the start I mention online events on Holistic Decision Making and Living Design Process you can find out more about here.

An Emergent Dialogue with Eloisa Lewis

In this episode it is my great pleasure to welcome Carol Sanford back to explore her brand new book Indirect Work.

To support and celebrate the book's launch, Carol has offered a giveaway offer exclusively for listeners of Making Permaculture Stronger. If you listen to and then share this episode on your website or any of your social media channels (such as sharing from the Making Permaculture Stronger facebook page), and then let me know about it, you go into the draw to access:

A free copy of Indirect Work posted to your doorA free ticket to a 90-minute Q&A on Indirect Work with Carol 10am PT, May 2, 2022 ($200 value)The link to download a pdf Self-Assessment for Regenerative Integrity. $100 value

There are also a bunch of different offers for buying different numbers of books here on Carol's site.

Now, a little taste of what this book is all about. Carol explains that:

indirect work is building the capacity in people to consistently think at higher levels in order to create innovations for advancing specific contexts and streams of activity. This capacity allows us to become instruments for the regeneration and evolution of the living systems within which we are nested—to become effective change agents.Carol Sanford

Here are a few of my favourite passages in the book.

For example, every time we try to solve a problem, dividing it into its components to understand it better, seeking to figure out its causes in order to address them, we fall under the spell of classical mechanics. Every time we translate something into a replicable (and therefore scalable) procedure or recipe, we’ve stepped into a machine universe. This is so pervasive in Western and now global culture that it becomes invisible to us. It can be very difficult to get our minds to shake off this continually reinforced pattern in order to question our fundamental shared beliefs about how the universe works.

Earlier I said that this book was addressed to well-intentioned people who seek to make the world a better place through the instruments that are available to them, such as business, social activism, or creation of policies and institutions. I also said that most of these efforts are likely to be compromised or fail because they still operate from an old paradigm, within which the world is assembled from discrete pieces, each playing its part in a cosmic machine. Our machine-based metaphors are so pervasive that we hardly notice them: input, output, feedback, leverage, rewiring, reprogramming, metrics, ideal state, and on and on.A living or regenerative paradigm has a very different character and uses correspondingly different metaphors. It starts with an image of the living, dynamic, and unfolding universe, in which each entity is endowed with the spark of life and an innate capacity for growth and evolution with regard to how it expresses itself. Working from this paradigm, one doesn’t attempt to push the world and its inhabitants to an ideal state—that would be coercive and life denying. Rather, one encourages and enables living beings to discover and express their innate potential as contributors to living communities. For those of us who truly want to transform the world, it is the regenerative paradigm that will enable us to do so.This confronts us with an important question. Are the underlying beliefs, assumptions, patterns, and language that characterize my culture derived from a machine or a living systems paradigm? And if I want to cultivate a living systems culture, what must I do I to help with the shift? (note - Carol answers this question in our conversation!)

Consciousness is the necessary antidote to our overwhelming tendency to engage in automatic habits of thought and behavior. In its absence, these habits extend to the most general reaches of our collective understanding of the universe, itself, conceived of by Western Europeans in the time of the Renaissance as a giant clockwork.

Carol Sanford on Indirect Work (E71)

In this episode I re-release an interview Millie Haughey recently did with me for her own podcast which is called Unplugged, Tapped In.

We explore the idea that most of us are trapped in the all-pervasive cage of mechanical worldview without even realising it and what becomes possible when the cage is seen and the door out is located. This will be a theme of some upcoming writing and solo episodes also.

In the intro I mention Millie's interview with my dear friend and long-term Making Permaculture Stronger collaborator James Andrews.

I also mention this episode in which I interviewed the founder of Possibility Management Clinton Callahan (or see as youtube here).

During the chat I mention Carol Sanford a fair bit too.

Sourcing our Creation Processes Outside the Mechanical Cage with Millie Haughey

In this episode pioneering regenerative thinker Carol Sanford rejoins me to share a living systems framework she calls The Seven First Principles of Regeneration.

Sketch by Dan based on Carol's description

Resources to Deepen Learning

My first chat with Carol (also see these follow up words from Carol)My second chat with Carol where she shares her four levels of paradigmCarol's websiteThe Deep Pacific Change Agent Community (That Dan is part of)A series of articles in which Carol applies the Seven First Principles to educationCarol going through the principles in a different way on her Business Second Opinion PodcastCarol's book The Regenerative Life in which she goes through the seven first principlesWholeness and the Implicate Order by David Bohm

Carol Sanford.

A few transcribed lines from the episode

Thanks to MPS patron Jon Buttery for pulling some comments that stood out for him from the chat (with approx times):

13:36 – "I don’t want you to be disappointed that after a year you haven’t got them [the seven first principles], that’s a good sign"

18:57 - "You can’t go do – in the sense that you’ll change something – you have to go think a different way and you have to start in a different place"

22:43 - "The word ‘systems thinking’ is thrown around for a lot of things that are machine based" 

23:23 – "There are no feedback loops …. we impose those kinds of ideas"

24:05 – "A fragmented view … we assume … if we get good enough … somehow we’ll see how they all relate" 

26:53 – "What is the work this place does in this planet? … what is its story?"

30:23 – "Watch yourself making lists"

32:26 – "Fragmentation is the basis of every problem on the earth"

38:40 – "It took me literally a couple of decades to learn to see essence. … it’s a different way of seeing the world"

The Seven First Principles of Regeneration with Carol Sanford (E55)

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