Messages from our guests
/We want to share with you all the love and the kind words that we have received from our guests. Sometimes it's hard to describe what Jiwa Damai is, so we let them!
Volunteers learning about compost
/Teaching our new volunteers how to prepare for hot compost. The right mixture of dry leaves and fresh greens sprinted with left overs from our coconut oil production and EM. The pictures show the cutting small of the materials used.
A Permaculture Design Course with a transpersonal approach
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Permaculture provides a design system which allows to move deeply into our abused eco-systems and release its inherent potential. Ethics of earth care, people care and sharing surplus are one of its unique contribution in our today world. They actually point the way to a new paradigm, from survival and lack of, to abundance and sharing.
Permaculture caught my attention quite a number of years ago, when searching for a system to develop the Jiwa Damai gardens in Bali. The book that introduced the practice touched me deeply. I came to respect permaculture’s inherently intelligent and wise approach to regeneration as a way to return to a healthy balance with the earth as a living being.
For the past 10 years, I immersed myself into Bill Mollison’s design concept, translating it by learning through doing into our beautiful Jiwa Damai garden. Over time, inviting known teachers, participating in various trainings, and delving deeper in its principles and methods, I introduced permaculture training into Jiwa Damai’s/Lagu Damai foundation educational offerings as well.
Papaya harvesting
/Nata and Komang just harvested some of our Papayas. If they are very young, we use them to make a most delicious vegetable dish. They have to be green and they taste a bit like asparagus. When they begin to gently yellow a bit, they are harvested as a fruit, placed in a dark corner to turn bright yellow the outside. These special Balinese papayas have an orange fruit flesh. It kernels , crushed and bitter tasting,are a known natural medicine for any kind of liver ailments.
Balinese offering
/The priest form the neighboring village misdoing his offerings at one of our Balinese temples prior to teaching the sacred drawing workshop. He is offering flowers, rice and an egg to bring in the right spirits for protection and well being.
Delicious food
/Delicious salad from our gardens with our red beats, Daikon and of course the beautifully tasting yellow cherry tomatoes. This is crowned with our own dressing, lime, mustard and oil or the soy dressing with rice vinegar, ginger and olive oil.
If you are interested in holding a workshop at Jiwa Damai, send us an email at contact@jiwadamai.net.
Discovering the Balinese nature
/"At Jiwa Damai I felt as part of the nature, not apart from nature", says Bernardo, our volunteer.
Bernardo is a yoga teacher but he also had the chance to work closely on our mushroom project, taking care of them and planting them. He also worked with the coconuts and prepared the natural coconut oil. For Bernardo, Jiwa Damai was the place where he had his first woofing experience.
"Jiwa Damai starts from the idea of a retreat. I felt that I could work on my emotional part, even having people around. It offered me the time to reflect on my own life. I visited Bali, I went to the south, the east, the west, but Jiwa Damai is the only place where I managed to reconnect with the Balinese nature. It is the nature that really creates the uniqueness of this place", says Bernardo.
While Bernardo was a volunteer at Jiwa Damai, a yoga teacher training course was also taking place. "As a yoga teacher myself, I can see why doing the course here is more interesting. This place enhances the experience of the training. You get more connected to the environment", says Bernardo.
Originally from Brazil, Bernardo has traveled before to India and Thailand. His next stop is Malaysia. We wish him all the best and we are very grateful to having him as a volunteer at Jiwa Damai.
Review of 2016 at Jiwa Damai
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Time seems to speed up and the intensity increase. So many different activities are taking and took place at Jiwa Damai and the Lagu Damai Foundation.
The garden, aside from going us our wonderful virgin coconut oil is now providing for our health the powerful Moringa leaves, dried and filled in capsules. The mushroom production is growing slowly and we held the first organic market in our village.
We invited the whole village in the village meeting hall to share with us a health day, providing nourishment for body and mind in the prevention of diabetes and high blood pressure. Power point combined with healthy foods were welcome by old and young. During this year, three intensive long term Yoga teacher training were hosted by our team and all organic nutrition provided from our permaculture gardens were transmuted into wonderful, much reclaimed vegetarian dishes by our cheerful kitchen fairies. A certification training (Permaculture through the Heart) was offered as well.
The sacred painting class with our local priest was another means of going into a deep meditative state while working.
Aside from hosting guests and retreats, the first small building will be erected at Awan Damai (peace of clouds) in the mountains at Gunung Sari. It will be simple, built partially with bottles and natural materials and provide the basis for our next adventure, the Earthship. Situated on a wonderful site, overlooking the sea from high above, sunrises from the east to the sunsets in the West. The access is only possible by motorbike. The land is of immense beauty and more land is available for sharing with like minded.
Margret, our founder, a transpersonal psychologist is offering now the HeartSelf-Intelligence meditation online on our website. Please sign up to unfold the qualities of the heart and learn how to love yourself on a deep level and live well in these turbulent times.
The cleaning process
/The cleaning up process after the powerful storms is done by 12 daily workers and our own team. There is so much to clean and to rearrange. Here we are burning some the Bamboo left overs from cleaning the more than 200 Bamboo which were felled by the storm.
The new salad plants, after re-creating our garden soil which was flooded away by the large storms are waiting to be reinserted lovingly into the earth in our mandala and butterfly garden. They will need initially protection with a plastic roof until the plants are big enough to not be destroyed by the strong rains.
Balinese ceremonies
/Wira, our president of the Lagu Damai Bali Foundation, held a very important celebration and ceremony in his compound. Being the eldest son in the family, he inherits all what comes with this. The responsibility to take care of the property, the parents and the family temple. In this particular ritual he was handed the rights to hold ceremonies in the house temple from his father and was blessed by a very high Brahman priest.
