Category — SPIRIT

Damian Smyth is giving up everything.

He and his wife Victoria Groom are giving up their rented six-bedroom house in the British countryside, their tennis court, their swimming pool, even their Audi convertible.

In fact, they are almost finished giving away all their possessions as the prepare to promote Damian’s new book, DO NOTHING!
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“We’ve had enough of living from the ‘outside-in’,” said Damian, a graphic designer who is reinventing himself as a life trainer.
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Sweating cleans the pores

• Slow down and reduce outdoor activities, especially during the hottest part of the day, from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

• Dress for summer. Wear lightweight, light-colored clothes.

• Drink plenty of water or other non-alcoholic, caffeine-free fluids. Check with your doctor if you are on diuretic medications or have a problem with fluid retention. (more…)

Alleluyah – The London Sunday Times has discovered unplugging.

‘Welcome to our “always on” society,’ journalist Laura Atkinson informed readers yesterday.

‘Whether we like it or not, we’re now used to “bleisure” (the blurring of business and leisure). Our work lives bleed into our social lives, and being constantly connected — whether to our smartphones, tablets or just the office in general — is par for the course.

What if the constant wall of noise — Twitter, Facebook, email, conversations — means we’re never scratching beneath the surface, where our real creative juices lie? (more…)

Corsicana - a great place to go off-grid

Lot of stuff about off-grid toilets in the right wing media at the moment.

At the top of the tree, Fox News has been contemplating the horrors of composting toilets. At the other end of the media power spectrum, the Sun newspaper in Corsicana Texas has been railing against men who defecate in the wild.

We had a conversation in our office the other day about men who want to leave their modern lives and go “off the grid,” says the papers prim writer.  Essentially, the women in our office were wondering why anyone would want to sacrifice indoor plumbing, while the guys were simply saying “who wouldn’t want to?”

Meanwhile at Fox they are sniggering about the crazy people who compost their poo: (more…)

Its easier than you might think

The third National Day of Unplugging, begins at sundown today (Friday).

We’re overdoing it with our go-to gizmos, unpluggers argue. We’ve become distracted, unavailable, oblivious, twitchy, obsessive, needy and, in some ways, insufferable. We need, they say, to give it a rest.

The National Day of Unplugging was started by a New York-based nonprofit called Reboot, which is working to reinvent Jewish traditions and culture in ways that resonate for a new generation of Jews and others. The unplugging idea appears to be gaining traction, says Tanya Schevitz, Reboot’s San Francisco-based national communications manager. (more…)

No docs, teachers, social workers

California March 2nd — Redlands mom Lara Carlos is part of a parenting movement that bucks the mainstream.

Her three children, ages 7, 6 and 4, have never touched fast food. They were breastfed well into toddlerhood, carried close to their mom in a sling and are home schooled.

The Carlos kids, whose father, Kerry, is an acupuncturist, have never been seen by a medical doctor or taken antibiotics. Discomfort from illnesses is eased with herbs and chiropractic adjustments, never Tylenol. The youngest was born at home with a midwife, as will a fourth baby due any day (more…)

Todd Ganovski, with Bishop Wayne Boosahda (right)

As of today, Todd Ganovski doesn’t think the world will end anytime soon.

But he does believe that trouble — either a natural disaster or economic crisis — is coming. And he thinks God wants him to help people prepare for it.

Ganovski is co-founder of Emergency Provision, an eBay site based in Tennessee that sells emergency food supplies online and through church networks. He thinks recent disasters like the flood in Nashville, the tsunami in Japan and the earthquake in Washington, D.C., are signs from God that a major disaster is on the way.

“If it does happen, I don’t want to have to jump through FEMA’s hoops to get food,” he said. (more…)

This December will be 4 years for us living 100% off grid, I can tell you it’s been quite the adventure, my only regret is that we didn’t do this earlier. Let me recap what we have been doing these 4 years…

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Homesteading, it’s a buzzword that means different things to different people, back in the day, it meant getting land for free as long as you lived on it and improved it for x number of years. It was a way to get people to move west (in the USA), back when travel was slow and painful, even dangerous.
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