Tag: caring

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Dr Kim Loo on Permaculture, Joy, Wellbeing & Medicine

Dr Kim Loo is an active carer. She is inspired by her Permaculture garden, her Permie pod helpers and her patients. Kim is a member of Doctors for the Environment and other climate advocacy groups. She has noticed a big shift in people’s appreciation of the connection between health and the environment. In this interview she shares a lot of great ideas and encourages us to get active and finding joy.

What does Permaculture do for you?

Dr Kim Loo said “well I suppose in a way because my family are Buddhists and in a way it kind of aligns with Buddhism anyway in terms of the principles and the concepts, And it was just lovely to actually finally go to Permaculture and realize there’s a whole lot of people who are aligned with what I line with which is to protect nature work with nature and rewild my garden. I’ve never been super structured with my garden. I get edible plants that grow in outside areas. I leave them alone.

I’ve been a Doctor for 35 years now. We’re actually about to have our 35 year reunion from Sydney University Medical School. Health can’t be seen in isolation. Because health is impacted by all the systems around health. And the way that I approach health is the way a lot of my friends, who are doctors, approach Health.

Core of health – Biological and Social Determinants

We look at the core of health and the biological determinants of health. So, I ask what their family history is: whether there’s any vascular disease, whether there’s an anxiety depression, diabetes, cancers. Then I look at their health in terms of what they currently have how they live.

Then I also actually look at the social determinants. Because the social determinants of health is super, super important. My mother’s a social worker. So, being really cognizant of social determinants is really important. This includes where people are born, where they live, where they go to school where they work. And really how a person is supported. This framework determines how well they recover from any sort of mental or physical illness.

Commercial Pressures on health

And also then I look at the commercial determinants of health. This includes the tobacco industry, the alcohol industry, gambling industry, the processed food industry and the fossil fuel industry. All these industries are powerful Industries. They have deep pockets. And large marketing teams who don’t consider the health of the population. I ask ‘do they have gas at home inside the house? Indoor gas can cause asthma in kids and sensitize them for house dust mite. And I ask people to consider little details like not to idle near school drop off and pick up because their kids will be sucking in all that air pollution.

Environmental Determinants

And then I look at the environmental determinant of Health which is clean air water healthy soils, stable climate and a healthy ecosystem so you look at where they live do they have a space for walking in nature. Do they have a garden when I see a patient to look at all these determinants of health.

“If you don’t understand how people live,
you can’t actually look out of them effectively”
Physician Dr Kim Loo

How can people live well?

People can live well if they have to have somewhere safe to stay. And they can adequately keep warm when it’s cold and keeping cool when it’s hot. They have people around them to support them. And they have access to fresh food and skills to process fresh food. Because fresh food is more expensive than processed food. And wellness is also about how much they move during the day. A lot of people are quite sedentary. So, it’s good to get people to be ‘behaviourally activate’. Also, wellness depends on how they sleep.

Finally, we live well from having something that brings joy. With a hobby people thrive and not just live.

Advocacy for Systems Thinking

I’ve been in systems advocacies for the last 10 years so because it can feel quite overwhelming when you realize it is a systems problem. Because not everyone completely understands this. And there’s so much disinformation at the moment around. I encourage all my doctor friends. I’m in doctors for the environment. We do multiple things including trying to insert climate change into the medical curriculum in all the universities we have a sustainability team that looks at emissions from the really the hospital sector 7% of emissions in Australia from the healthcare sector. Not many people know this.

We also have ethical investment arms where we do internal lobbying and shareholder activism. A lot of banks own fossil fuel shares. We also continue lobbying for every single tree that’s going be cut down because the loss of biodiversity in Australia is terrible. So, we work with other groups like World Wildlife Fund.”

Kim Models Wellbeing

Kim continues “My tea each day is lemon Myrtle and lemongrass ’cause I’m trying to wean myself off coffee. I show it to people and they say ‘oh my God it smells so nice just to have create your own tea from your own garden. Once you establish this, it’s cheap. Instead of buying bags of drinks you are actually getting stuff from your garden. There’s a lot of groups that working together in alliances. This wasn’t happening 10 years ago. Now there is a network of people working together which is a great thing. Every time we have a local permaculture pod get together, sitting down eating with other people, we are creating a community of people who understand and care.”

Learn more about creating a lifestyle that is healthy for you and the environment. Enrol in our Permaculture Courses.

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Permaculture on a Shoestring

Do Permaculture design on a shoestring. Harness natural energies, turn waste into a resource and boost social connections and well being.

A chicken fairy god mother
Be a green fairy god-mother.

10 Permaculture Living Skills on a Shoestring

  1. Live with principles
  2. Get clean energy
  3. Cut the waste
  4. Use resources well
  5. Build biodiversity
  6. Breathe cleaner air
  7. Save water
  8. Creatively Make-do
  9. Invest in Social justice
  10. Start positive

1. Apply Permaculture Principles

Apply Permaculture Principles to Everyday Life. Multiple functions for each element in the design is a key principle. “If I can’t get at least 3 reasons for having something, I’m not having it.” says Permaculture Elder Judith Collins. And then, integrate the elements, so that nothing sits alone in the system. Everything connects and contributes to the other things. For example, the bushes shade the paths. These paths are shaped to direct water. The water nurtures the garden. The garden attracts birds and insects. This give us joy. Then, we share joy and food with others.

This also applies to skills. These skills have many uses beyond the home. They can be applied in the workplace and for the good on your community.

2. Get Smarter Energy

https://www.saulgriffith.com/ promotes electricification for better future universal energy systems

Change to better energy sources such as solar systems. Saul Griffith explains how electrifying our energy network builds better future energy systems for all.

Permaculture Elder, Judith Collins EarthKeepers, Buxton, NSW

3. Cut the Waste – Stop Buying Stuff! And Grow

Judith Collins of EarthKeepers challenges us to know where our food comes. And if you really need to buy something, check out local makers and support the markets rather than so called ‘super-markets’. And farmer Gerard Lawry at EagleRiseFarm points out “There is no co-incidence that the supermarkets present their fresh foods to look like market stalls”.

4. Use Resources Well

Now that you have decided what to waste cut, look to see what other waste materials from the home can be converted. Identify and reduce your waste by conducting a home audit.

If you don’t have much space, you can use Bokashi to convert your food scraps, if you have a balcony, then you have room for a worm farm. If you have a garden, there is room for worms, compost and chickens. Grow food in wicking pots or rain gardens.

Utilise things more by saving the seed from the foods you eat. Get creative by repurposing stuff that you can no longer use. Mend, redesign your clothes. Then when they are finally no longer useful, compost them.

5. Build biodiversity

Design your life to blend with the surrounding wildlife. Build awareness of the natural world. Stop to smell the wildflowers. Find the unique perfumes of native plants. Create space in your domain for wildlife. You don’t need anything, not even a shoestring, to enjoy nature.

6. Cut the Chemicals – Breathe Less Toxins

Stop polluting your home. Cut out chemicals by using low toxic cleaners. You can easily make your own cleaning fluids. In fact, vinegar and sodium bicarbonate will clean nearly everything. Another permaculture principle is to start small so you can feel successful. You can do this right now, in your home. Try sprouts, food and herbs, and making your own vinegar. For outside the home, try minimal disturbance techniques to handle weeds. Get to know how nature works and work with her.

strawberry guava

7. Save Water

Saving water is vital because clean water is a valuable resource during dry periods. Plants and animals depend on clean rain water. So do the river systems. We can contribute to the healthy rivers by building carbon in the soil, planting trees and supporting insect life. A basic start would be to create birdbaths. Next, install rain gardens. Catch and store rainwater in a tank or direct it to a pool. Something that takes a bit more research but is radical and resourceful is to install a compost toilet and an outdoor shower.

redirect path water to reduce erosion

8. Get Creative and Make-Do with Shoestrings

There are various types of waste. And this includes having too much stuff because stuff demands requires storage and maintenance. Other forms include wasted opportunities.

Simple steps to cut waste are to seal out drafts. Mend things like leaking taps or frayed clothes. Learn to use basic tools, how to sew, tie knots and make do.

Use paper mache and old cotton rags in the garden to create swales, cover weeds or feed the worms. Good soil can be created from food scraps and paper waste.

Above all use the shoestrings – walk, cycle and use public transport. These simple steps keep us fit and reject the the fossil fuel industry. Plan to make your next car an electric car.

cockatoo dropping a macadamia nut
cockatoo enjoying a macadamia nut

9. Invest time and effort in others

Invest in a Circular economy by spending your money on products and services that are created locally. This builds social justice. Social justice is a vital part of reducing the pressures on our planet. Without social justice, we get more pollution, more harmful chemical use and more frequent environmental destruction through wars.

Be generous and kind. Fix stuff before you give it to charity. And be generous. Better still, fix things for others. Repair cafes are wonderful ways to link skilled retirees with young people in need. Better still, show a young person how to do stuff. Or help a local family that needs a hand. Have an informal meeting with neighbours and find out what your community needs and has the passion to do.

10. Start Positive, Act Now

Knowing how and where to start is a skill in itself. Stuart Hill recommends we do one thing before we go to bed that will move us closer to our goals. Starting small is one way to achieve this. He encourages us to take action by refreshing our mindset. This enables us to make bigger changes. If it requires us to lie boldly to ourselves about what we can achieve, then do it.

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Make Your Career in Permaculture

Richard Telford made a career in Permaculture by putting his values and ethics into his work. He works with a “just do it” passion and commitment to meet the need.

What Richard Knows

Richard knows “You can create a career for yourself in permaculture using your previous experience. Most people have some kind of Interest or career before they get into Permaculture. And then, they have some kind of crisis point where they go “what am I doing?… This doesn’t align with my values!”.

And so, rather than dropping a career, embody principles and ethics into your whole being. So that, everything you do aligns with permaculture.

First Step

Find somebody who’s practicing what you’re interested in and work with them. Gradually try and embrace it. Incrementally improve the way that you do things.

Richard’s Career Path

Richard tells his story. “Well I was working in advertising as a graphic artist in the early 90s. And I built up my skills and a career in that over a number of years. And found that the people I was working with, and things I was doing really didn’t align with my values. So, I just decided to hit the road and go exploring.

Richard and his Kombi Van

So I bought an old Kombi – a 75 VW Kombie van. And hit the road traveling around Australia with a plan to travel around for a year. I did some freelance work. As I was going, I came across permaculture. I actually saw a sign on the road that said Permaculture with an arrow on it so I followed the sign and saw another one another one and ended up at Bill Mollison’s place [in Tyalgum]. And Bill was teaching at PDC at the time I poked my head in. He gave me a grumpy old look. So, I had a look around and went on my way. I think that started my journey of interest in permaculture and I continued traveling around Australia.

Richard with his restored Kombi

Travelling and building skills

The plan was to go for a year and it ended up taking me about five before I got back. But I got involved with the Rainbow gatherings up in Cairns. And some of the protests from there. That was really amazing. Because it showed me that if you really want something to happen you’ve got a put in. And do it yourself. It was also my first real experience of intentional community.

We travelled across in a convoy after the Rainbow gathering to Darwin. And got involved in some of the protesting up there at Jabiluka. And I discovered the book ‘Introduction of Permaculture ‘ by Reny and Bill. I started to see suburbia in a completely different way and asking “why aren’t we growing food in the streets?”

Darwin Jabiluka protest

Questioning Everything

In the Jabiluka protests and that was really questioning the way society exploited natural resources. And I produced a zine we called ‘Tribe’. It was the first time I’ve really using the skills to do something that I believed in. So, I continued traveling around Australia and ended up down in the southwest W.A. (Western Australia). I became involved in the protest to save Karri and Jarrah forests in the southwest.

Finding Connections

Northcilffe Western Australia Lane Forest Protest

I made a connection between the Jabiluka protest and the saving the old growth forests. I saw that it was all part of the same problem. And one thing that I really got from the protest was it was quite aggressive. Coming from the protest side it was very confronting to be telling the timber workers that they shouldn’t be doing what they’re doing. There were lots of really full-on protests happening. Forest workers coming into the sites and bashing people and things. And I just didn’t want to get involved in that.

Action – The Tree Sit

I thought a tree sit would be a pretty safe way to to approach it. And it gave me a ‘ticket in’ to go for respite at Carter’s Road. So that was the beginning of a whole other journey at Carter’s Road Community.

Meeting Leaders

I met up with Jody Lane and Chris Lee and a bunch of other amazing Margaret River forest protesters. And the house that they’d set up as a respite for Forest protesting became an unintentional community. It was a permaculture-based unintentional permaculture community. I guess it had a dozen residents or so. There were a whole bunch of other people coming through the place fairly regularly. When I arrived the core members were about to go away for a Joanna Macy retreat. They needed somebody to look after the place while they were away. So, I offered to do that for two weeks and ended up staying there for about two years!

Mentors

During that time David Holmgren was traveling down the west coast. I was really curious who this other fella was. Because, I’d only heard of Bill. And so, I went out to meet and hear David speak. I offered for David, Oliver and Su to come over and see what we were doing at Carter’s Road (now called Fair Harvest). We showed them what we’d been working.

I let David know that I wanted to do work if he needed help with graphics, graphic artwork or design let me know. David told me that he was putting together a book about the principles and wanted some help to design the icons. So, that was the first permaculture project that I did – the Permaculture principal icons.

Driven by Passion

My passion is really around visual communication. And helping people get an understanding on different levels. So, you get initial sort of grasp of what something is and then you can go deeper and deeper if you so desire and that sort of aligns really well with with visual communication and the way an advertisement’s set up because, yeah, sort of grabbing someone’s attention and layering depth into that. After doing the icons I was interested in how do you present that information in a way that’s a bit more digestible to people because the the book was pretty hard going. I think for a lot of people – especially as an entry level book. It’s not really suitable.

Permaculture Principles website

Seeing the Need

At the time I was searching for how to find out more about permaculture and everything I found on the internet was really around people’s projects and farms and things like that it wasn’t really anything that just explained what permaculture was. So I looked at incorporating the icons and work that I did and the work that David did and the essence into a website which is the permaculture principles website.

In 2008 David Arnold was working to put together the permaculture calendar. It was all about the same kind of thing – helping people get an understanding of what the design principles were. So, we worked together on developing the calendar. And have merged the calendar in with the website over the years the principal’s website. Initially it was really just sort of a summary of the principles and ethics. I worked with David and Su’s son Oliver Holmgren on a upgrade to the site and we started to develop a store for the Holmgren Design website. I was selling books from under my bed!

https://au.permacultureprinciples.com/product/retrosuburbia/

Achieving Goals

When RetroSuburbia came out, that’s when the business sort of really took off. So, we started employing others. We’ve got Christine Cahusac handling all of the sales and we’ve been developing the distribution side of the business for selling primarily David’s books but also other permaculture self-published books. And I’ve also been involved working with David and Su in producing doing the artwork for RetroSuburbia – quite a number of their titles.

https://au.permacultureprinciples.com/product/earth-restorers-guide-to-permaculture/

Earth Restorers Guide to Permaculture is the latest book – the most recent one that I was involved with. I worked with Emma O’Dell who now works with us as well. She handled the artwork but I was sort of directing that with her. So it’s managed to tie together all of my interests really particularly the RetroSuburbia project because the house that I’ve built here in Seymour – Abdallah House is one of the featured case studies in the book and lots of the things that I’ve been doing are in that book. It helps to tell my story. I’ve managed to do the artwork. And now, I’m distributing and selling. And it’s the whole box and dice in that book for me!

Learn more about Permaculture with us. Enrol in our Permaculture Design Course.

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Permaculture – a Mind to Connect

rooster crow

Permaculture thinking helps us connect with each other and with nature. principles. The ethics defy the notion of self-sufficiency. Instead, they foster respect and build community. Kerrie Anderson of Synergy Permaculture Australia lives and grows on the Central Coast of NSW, Australia. Her work has nurtured hundreds of others learn, grow and thrive. Here, in her own words, Kerrie tells us how she works to efficiently connect with others.

Kerrie Anderson talks about Mindfulness in Permaculture

Ethics at core of everything

The strength of Permaculture is the three ethics at the core of everything we do. And while they might seem quite simplistic to people, if you’re just looking at them from a superficial level. Of course, the deeper you delve, the more complex you realize they are. And they are all-encompassing. And that was definitely the aha! moment for me. Having an ethical foundation or centre is probably a better way to describe it. Because we know it’s not a building block it’s literally core to everything we do. So it informs all my decisions in my life and and that makes sense to me to bring them back to those three core ethics.

Strive to Connect

Somebody once asked me what’s my superpower with permaculture? I think it’s connection. So, connecting people with the content of what permaculture is and and really the feeling, like I really always try and work with my heart. Obviously, the head’s very important and the knowledge and and the skills that just working with the heart of why do people want to learn more about permaculture why do they want to weave it into their life and base their life around it. Then creating that with the heart really inspires people and enthuses people. And for me, that’s really central. A lot of people have the misconception that permaculture is is about just organic edible gardening, which of course we know, is much broader than that.

Kerrie Anderson teaching

Some people think that they can express their permaculture as a lone individual, creating that self-sufficient lifestyle. But, once you really truly understand permaculture and work with the ethics and the principles you see that’s completely the wrong model. It’s about Community.

Kerrie Anderson

Build to Connect

Permaculture is about connection. Not just with the planet with nature, but with human nature as well. So, I realized very quickly that social permaculture, actually yes, is an area of permaculture that’s really often overlooked. But is so critically important we can get every other aspect of our practice, you know, spot on. We know the ideas, we’ve got the design down, and know the principles and ethics and we’re working with them. But if we’re not working with people in an effective and meaningful way, learning how to accept diversity in human behaviour and human interaction. And how to work with groups and how to connect with people about this message. Then, we’re not going to go anywhere as a permaculture movement.

social permaculture elements
defining their own connections – social permaculture design determined by the members

We have to lead by example. For me, I guess coming from a Healthcare model where I was that old-fashioned nurse having to care for people, learning a lot about human nature in that medical system and human frailties and and how to communicate with people well. That helped keep me in good stead. But also my personal practices of practicing heartfulness meditations helps.

Socialising whilst building a cob wall

Connect with the Good stuff

I’m always about trying to let go of patterns that don’t serve my behaviour. And in my communication doing better and being aware of other people. And aware of how they’re feeling in certain circumstances has been fundamental. So, I think that really helped inform my teaching style and who I am as a person. And I keep trying to always bring it back to that. So, even if you’re on the head level staff and you’re giving the theory and getting the practicing with students that you’re always very mindful of that people care. And with the Permaculture fair-share ethic. And most of all, you’re modelling that. By having that consciousness of diversity and and designing the coursework for everybody.

Find out more about Kerrie and her work at Synergy Permaculture Australia.

We research, share, and teach permaculture online. Thanks for supporting us.