a look at
Personal Sustainability by Denise LaBarre
Sustainability is a hot topic, and rightly so. However it is not a new and radical concept; sustainability simply means aligning ourselves with Nature’s built-in ability to maintain balance. Reflections about sustaining our planetary ecosystem extend to our personal ecosystems as well. That means keeping ourselves in healthy balance and replenishing our life force so we can continue to do our good work and play well throughout our lives. Our socialized directive to constantly buy more, do more, and eat more doesn’t work with our bodies. You can’t just get a new one that is faster, shinier, and with more features—unless you call this “death”. Your body already has impeccable built-in self-repair features (healing) and a feedback system for letting you know what it needs at any moment. You have to let it be part of your management team and give it the right conditions. In other words, lead with your heart and guts as often as with your mind. In our busy, over-full lives, it can be hard to find anything to eliminate as we look for ways to slow down, consume and do
6
Living Aloha
|
less. But eliminate and balance we must. Sometimes the hard choice is to not help that organization or not put in that overtime because we need to spend time with our kids. Our kids and loved ones want us to take care of ourselves. They want us to model what good selfcare looks like so they can do it, too. Filling everyone else’s tank without replenishing our own is not sustainable. As my favorite Buddhist proverb says, “The mother of a starving family feeds herself first.“ Bio-diversity is just as critical for us as it is for farming and bees and plants. Eating a variety of clean foods according to the seasons keeps you in touch with the ebb and flow of natural availability. Take time to cook from scratch. Vary your exercise routine. It may be more efficient to exercise exclusively on a treadmill, for example, but that over-trains certain muscles at the expense of others. For the long-haul, you want to mix it up: hiking, surfing, running, or paddling, with non-aerobic exercise like yoga or qui gong.
SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 2014