Internship: Permaculture Through the Heart

BALI Internship: Permaculture Through the Heart

May 15 - June 14, 2013

This innovative program blends the core principles of tropical Permaculture gardening with Self exploration from a transpersonal psychological perspective. "Experiencing Permaculture through the heart" presents a unique opportunity to combine class room Permaculture learning with “hands-on” experience, complementing the active physical engagement with the soil with an inner attitude of loving alignment with the earth. The internship is a combination of personal growth processes, allowing our heart energy to flow into our work with the earth, environment, water, soil, plants and people. This program is the first of its kind, working with the psychological framework of the mind, theoretical Permaculture principles, design and planning, planting, harvesting and food preparation - all in alignment with the heart energy.

“Permaculture through the Heart” is a modular seminar. You can choose if you want to book the entire program or if you only want to book the 1. and/or 2. week.

Join us !

For more information please inquire at:  info@jiwadamai.net and visit our website 

www.jiwadamai.net

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Yoga class at Jiwa Damai

Permaculture through the Heart

BALI Internship: Permaculture Through the Heart

May 15 - June 14, 2013

This innovative program blends the core principles of tropical Permaculture gardening with Self exploration from a transpersonal psychological perspective. "Experiencing Permaculture through the heart" presents a unique opportunity to combine class room Permaculture learning with “hands-on” experience, complementing the active physical engagement with the soil with an inner attitude of loving alignment with the earth. The internship is a combination of personal growth processes, allowing our heart energy to flow into our work with the earth, environment, water, soil, plants and people. This program is the first of its kind, working with the psychological framework of the mind, theoretical Permaculture principles, design and planning, planting, harvesting and food preparation - all in alignment with the heart energy.

“Permaculture through the Heart” is a modular seminar. You can choose if you want to book the entire program or if you only want to book the 1. and/or 2. week.

Join us !

For more information please inquire at:  info@jiwadamai.net and visit our website

www.jiwadamai.net

permaculture through the heart

with a little help

...from our friends... Jiwa Damai is developing and blooming. ;-) One of our great volunteers, Justin from Chicago, gave a wonderful contribution to Jiwa Damai.

Justin helped us very much to improve our website and to promote our organic products. He designed a new label for our products, for our product line, and photographed all the items. He then uploaded all pics, along with new product descriptions to our website.

TERIMA KASIH !!

IMG_0939

Check out the excellent work he's done:  www.jiwadamai.net/our-products

banana-02 Kopie

chili-02 Kopie

coconut-02 Kopie

coconutflour-02 Kopie

honey-02 Kopie

jackfruit-02 Kopie

TERIMA KASIH !!

Cleansing of the lotus pond

pond

Recently we had to clean the lotus pond at Jiwa Damai, since it was overgrowing with weeds.

Aitor and Justin, our two volunteers, as well as Wira, Jiwa Damai's coordinator, were getting ready to get into the mud of the lotus pond. To avoid possible skin irritations they covered their legs with large plastic bags, which are held at the top of the legs with tapes.

Preparation to work in the mud

However once they were in the pond, they found the mud quite agreeable and liked to walk and work in it, more like a mud bath.

Lotus pond

The growing weeds were pulled out and then the roots separated from the leaves which are used as mulch for our garden. In the ponds also grow large amounts of cancun, Balinese spinach which we use in our kitchen. Most probably we will eat Balinese spinach for the next three days. ;-)

Galungan Celebration on Bali

Penjor_2

For this years Galungan Celebration our head gardener Ketut built together with two of our volunteers the panjor which is erected at the entrance gate to Jiwa Damai.

A huge Bamboo is cut and then decorate with all details along the stem and the top. A little alter is created to give offerings to the gods. The panjor remains put  for 3 weeks and looks very wonderful.

Penjor

Tradition demands, that each house in the village  places one in front of their entrance.

Penor_3

River bank erosion control

During the last very strong rainy season lots of damage was done on our premise at Jiwa Damai.  The heavy rainfalls caused lots of erosion, especially at the banks of the small river which is flowing through the permaculture gardens. We had to take care of this erosion and stabilize the river banks. To reduce the powerful impact of the torrentious rains on our lands, we reinforced the borders of the river with sand bags.

Wira, Maha, Suecha and one of our volunteers, Fred from Canada, are doing this extremely demanding heavy work of shoveling the river sand into bags and placing it on the banks. Eventually there will be four layers of sand bags on top of each other.

erosion (1)

erosion

erosion (2)

Farm work at Jiwa Damai

Field work

Our team and one of our volunteers, lovely Susann from Germany,  working in the permaculture gardens, and bringing bamboo leaves to the compost.

Volunteer work

After the work is done, we are all eating together with our team. The food was prepared by the wife of Wira on occasion of her sons coming of of age at 12 years ceremony.

Food

Two of our three Balinese dogs, Angrek and Blackie,  are looking on.

Lumbung and dogs

Awakening to the sounds of Nature

Awakening to the sounds of nature

After spending my time in Bali's tourist centre of Ubud it was a relief to arrive at Jiwa Damai. Upon descending the stairs into Jiwa's dining area I was immediately overcome by the tranquil surroundings. Smells of frangipani and other flowers abound as do the vibrant colours that go with them; greens, yellows and pinks that one rarely finds outside of the tropics. Terry, one of the resident Woofers, showed me the expansive gardens and led me to a Lumbung situated in the heart of the organic garden.

Awakening to the sounds of nature (1)

As you can see by the photo a Lumbung is essentially a bamboo hut with no walls. Instead of walls a mosquito net hangs to offer some protection from those irritating, and often sleep-depriving, insects. It was so exciting to get to bunk out in nature, protected from the rain and insects but still able to feel the gentle and often cooling mountain breeze.

Awakening to the sounds of nature (3)

I awoke the next morning early to the sounds of roosters off in the distance, running water from the river nearby and various birds up in the treetops. It was magical. Another of Jiwa's local residents, Orchid, the cat, had snuck into the Lumbung the night before and was sleeping near my feet. Needless to say I welcomed my new friend.

Awakening to the sounds of nature (2)

Lying there I felt a deep sense of calm and an appreciation for the serenity that is Jiwa Damai. Of course, there was much work to be done, but it was nice to really take in the environment before starting the day!

Berish Bilander

Balinese temple ceremony

A special highlight at our first week volunteering here at Jiwa Damai was an invitation from the staff  to attend two temple ceremonies. We left here late afternoon with 2 cars, but in order to attend we had to dress in traditional Balinese clothes.  Our guide for the evening and the President of Lagu Damai Foundation, Wira, brought sarongs, udengs (headpiece for men), ribbons and a blouse for us to dress in.  Finally, Astri picked some beautiful flowers that we wore behind our ears; now looking a bit more like the locals, we were ready.

Intaba and Daniel with Balinese hosts, dressed and ready to go

After a good hour drive we arrived at the first temple, Pura Ulun Danu Batur, the main sukas and water temple in Bali.  Out of our car windows we could see myriads of people with offerings on their way to the temple.

Locals making their way to bring offerings to the temple

We walked through a stunning carved gate to find ourselves in a big courtyard where a band was playing music.  A group of mostly older men performed a warrior dance with symbolic spears.

Traditional Balinese dancer inside the temple

It appeared we were the only foreigners that were welcomed to the inner- temple, which we can attribute to our Balinese friends.

Once inside we watched as offerings were presented to the Gods.  We kept a small box made out of banana leaves containing flowers and incense in front of us.

Various offerings presented throughout the ceremony

Sitting on the floor we meditated for brief periods throughout the ceremony.  At the end of the ceremony we took some rice out of a silver bowl, put it on our forehead and then ate a bit.  Afterwards, we were blessed with sacred water.  The sun had already set while leaving the temple and the full moon came up behind Mount Agung; the scenery was just breath-taking.

We set off to the second temple ceremony at the Mother Temple of Besakih.  The Besakih Temple is the largest and most important temple in Bali and is at the base of Mount Agung.  We had the honor of experiencing a second ceremony there as well before heading back.

Beautiful Mt. Agung with moon rising up as we were leaving

We were very tired after the adventure and slept in our car seats the whole way back to Jiwa Damai.

Two french wwoofers in Jiwa Damai

Salut, Nous sommes Raphael et Audrey de France. Jiwa Damai est magnifique, tellement relaxant et idéal pour faire du wwoofing. Nous allons y rester un mois.

Deux de nos projets sont :

Le premier consiste à numéroter avec de la peinture tous les cocotiers de la propriété, et ce n’est pas une mince affaire, il y en a  plus de 300.

Le second projet est de venir en aide à Ketut, le jardinier. C’est interessant de travailler avec lui, il nous apprend beaucoup de choses. Ça donne envie d’avoir son propre potager !

Hi,

We are Audrey and Raphael from France. Jiwa Damai is a really wonderful place, very relaxing and ideal to do Wwoofing.  We’re going to stay one month.

Two of our projects are :

First, to paint numbers on all the coconut trees. It’s a big project, in fact, there are more than 300 coconuts trees in Jiwa Damai !

An other project is to help Ketut, the gardener. It’s interesting to work with him because he’s teaching us many new things.

This stimulates us to create our own garden back in France .

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Ketut