Table of Contents
What You Will Do
- Identify the different categories of invisible structures and consider how they affect our work.
- Revisit the concepts of zones and sectors, applied in our designs for invisible structures and for our inner landscape.
- Understand that permaculture is more about the relationships between components than about the components themselves.
Two kinds of Invisible Structures
This section by Heather Jo Flores
There are two types of invisible structures that need to be considered in every whole system design: the “emotional landscape” and the “social landscape.” You can think of this as the invisible structures outside of yourself, versus the ones inside.
The social landscape
The social landscape includes everything from your stakeholder and client relationships to economics and right livelihood to social justice and decolonization, and we will get into each of these topics in other classes, later on in the course.
The inner/emotional landscape
The remainder of this class will focus on your “inner landscape.” If you have already taken the Emotional Permaculture course, you’ll discover that most of what follows will be mostly review for you. Click here to skip to the stuff that isn’t part of that course. If you have not already taken that course, here we go!
Cultivating a designer’s mindset toward your inner landscape
What is Emotional Permaculture?
Whether you call it self-care, zone 00, or your inner landscape, it’s all about using ecological design principles and strategies to master our mindset and thus, our behavior.
Unfortunately, even the most adept ecological designers often fail to recognize the essential social elements within any community, and almost completely misses the importance of the designer’s mental health and emotional well-being.
I believe that, if we can tighten our design, and spiral all the way inward to gain a mastery over our emotional landscape, then the big picture will snap into place much more clearly, and perhaps we might even have a chance at survival as a species.
All cataclysmic inevitabilities aside, ecological design, in practice, whether agricultural, structural, social, emotional, or any combination of the above, is simply loads of fun. An ecological life, on any scale, is filled with wonder and abundance!
There is truly no place I would rather be than out in the yard, moving stuff around and trying to figure out how to always make my home and garden more beautiful, more productive, less consumptive, less wasteful.
I especially love the emotional stuff — sit down with some brainiac friends and have a look at any list of permaculture principles. Ask yourselves how they apply to human relationships and you’ll have days of lively conversation about it.
When you train your mind to remember permaculture theories, to pull them out like a master craftsperson would pull out her favorite chisel, then you begin to see everything around you in a different way.
These slow, steady changes in the way you experience the world shouldn’t be taken lightly, nor should they be rushed.
One step at a time, we become adept at Caring for the Earth, Caring for the People, and Sharing the Abundance that spills forth from every corner of the permaculture path.
Where do we begin? With our own behavior.
Some questions to ask yourself and think about:
- How do you limit your own yield?
- Is your “emotional landscape” designed for resilience and sustainability?
- How can you maximize your creativity as a designer by being more mindful to self-care and emotional health?
This is important not only to your own work, but also if you plan to interact with others on a project. If you aren’t well-designed in your own self, you won’t be of much use to the team. We’ve all had those experiences with somebody who had a solid skill set in the project at hand, but was emotionally challenging to work alongside. Don’t be that person!
Allow all of what you learn in this course to support you as a human, the designer.
Permaculture principles, revisited
The same principles that help us design tangible systems, help us understand and shape the invisible structures in our projects. Whether you’re working on your inner landscape, developing a decision making structure for your collective, or working out the economics and legalities of your site design, remember to return to the principles again and again, and especially whenever you feel stuck.
Think about the core principles that permaculturists and ecological designers use, now considering the invisible social, emotional, economic, legal, and political aspects of your goals. Imagine how these principles can help you solve problems.
Now, let’s add a few more tools to your toolbox. These particular principles (many of which are referred to as “attitudinal principles”) are especially powerful when building invisible structures to be resilient, productive, and effectively support the tangible, delicious designs you create. Examples:
- Start small. Give yourself a break. Take a bath, spend time alone. You can’t save the world all by yourself, so don’t beat yourself up if all you can do is a little bit each day. Self-care is important, and you matter.
- Find a niche. If everything feels like an uphill struggle, you might be on the wrong hill. The key to turning competition into cooperation is to find and fill the niche that is right for you.
- Prohibit waste. Be diligent about what you bring into both inner and outer landscapes. Remember that unused surplus is waste, so don’t hoard emotions or opportunities any more than you would hoard food you can’t possibly consume. Keep things moving and the abundance will flow.
- Slow and steady wins. Permaculture, on every scale, is a daily practice. Take your time, stay the path, and obtain a yield when you can.
- Catch and store energy. Make sure you eat a healthy and balanced diet and get adequate shuteye, so that your inner landscape stays replenished and balanced, and you are strong enough and healthy enough to carry on implementing your design.
- Seek and value feedback. Overwhelmed? Confused? Frustrated? Seek help! Solicit the opinions and advice of others impacted by your design. And listen.
- The problem is the solution. Usually. Sometimes a problem is just a problem, and you have to be careful not to bypass the real struggles of others with this principle. But often, if you peel back a few layers of the problem at hand, the solution will be revealed. It’s worth a try!
- The designer limits the yield. Your attitude, your choices, your body, your boundaries and more will limit your yield. By the same token, limiting your own growth and consumption is an important responsibility, so take a careful account of your boundaries and make informed choices accordingly.
- Mistakes are tools for learning. Fall down, get back up. Keep trying and you’ll learn way more than if you give up.
- Meet needs with multiple resources. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket! If your whole inner landscape depends on the approval of your parents, your partner or your boss, you’re not going to be very resilient. It’s normal and healthy to care what others think. But spread your dependencies around and build a core of self-worth to fall back on and nobody will ever be able to pull the rug out from under you.
- Focus on relationships, not components. Permaculture is all about relationships. Boundaries and relationships. So whenever you have an issue, remember this. Permaculture IS relationships. Fix the relationships and you fix the system.
(Ignore the “Day 1,” “Day 2,” and “Day 3” labels on the videos–it’s because they are part of that other course.)
The chart below contains the 9 principles that I mentioned in the video. I’ve simplified the classic “principle” phrases and picked my favorites to use in this workshop.
Using a design process helps us to make sense of things.
As you move into the creation of your student design project part of this course, you will learn and use the GOBRADIME design process. This pattern can be applied to projects of any size and scope, including your inner landscape. Here’s an overview about what GOBRADIME is and does, and how you can use this magical process to develop a practice that supports your mental and emotional well-being.
Go for a walk and meditate on how you might use GOBRADIME, which works wonders for designing a home and landscape, to make more sustainable the emotional layers of your life.
Permaculture is a daily practice.
As you work through the design process, be careful not to get too lost in the rhetoric. All this permaculture business, about about ethics, principles, patterns and details. It’s quite heady, and sometimes you might ask yourself, “is any of this esoteric stuff applicable to my daily life?”
Yes.
And here’s the thing:
Permaculture is a daily practice. It’s kind of like yoga–at first you might not feel like you’re very flexible, but if you do it daily, things really start to click. Same goes for writing, self-care, and really any creative pursuit, right?
A daily pattern of carefully chosen actions that you can and will take to move your whole system design forward. A daily practice, designed with ecological integrity in mind, will create habits in your mind, your body, and your life that turn rhetoric into reality.
Your daily practice is one of your most valuable assets and we don’t have time in this mini-course to get into what it takes to design a daily practice that aligns with your ethics and ideals.
And, since I am completely obsessed with the notion that changing your habits changes your life and, by extension, the world, then I have crafted a course focused on your daily patterns, to walk you through a gentle yet rigorous exploration so that you can discover just exactly it is that you want to do, every day. We use GOBRADIME!
And if you’re an artist–WOW think about what GOBRADIME can do to help you with your craft.
Ecological design is all about relationships, and boundaries are relationships.
If the elements of your design, whether it’s a landscape, your online business, or your daily practice, are not in good relationship to and with each other, then your design will fall apart.
In ecological landscape design, we use zone and sector analysis to help us determine, establish, and maintain boundaries that are good for the land and good for the creatures (like us!) who inhabit that land.
Ecology IS relationships. And healthy relationships are all about boundaries.
The boundaries that you set, either intentionally or unintentionally, define the shape and trajectory of your relationships with the people and elements who cross or come into contact with those boundaries.
This is equally true for physical/land-based boundaries (think fences and waterways) as it is for emotional ones. If you were to envision your boundaries and present them in a way that others could observe and understand, what would that look like? Check out this example from one of our students:
Everybody needs support.
You don’t have to do this all by yourself! The inner landscape has “stakeholders” just like the physical landscape does, and neither is ever completely “finished” as a design project. All of this work is ongoing, and you’ll do well to cultivate a solid support network wherever possible.
Sometimes, just talking it out with a loving, neutral party can make a huge difference in how effectively we manage our emotional landscape. But not everybody can afford a therapist!
If you sometimes feel isolated without good support, here’s a silly yet surprisingly powerful option:
And finally, here’s a pdf with some tips on how to avoid burnout:
Homework
Remember! these “Homework” sections at the end of our topical modules may be considered optional, and the ONLY the assignments in the 11 classes of the Design Studio are “mandatory” for your certificate. Still…at least read through and of course, the more you try, the more you learn.
Questions for Review
- How would you describe your inner landscape? What are your most obvious problems with it?
- Are there some ways you can see that design could solve those problems?
- What are your personal zones and sectors?What are the invisible zones and sectors of your project?
Recommended Hands-On
Go back to the list of permaculture principles above. Do some journaling about these, thinking and writing about how you can use that principle as a tool to strengthen your inner landscape.
Envision an “emotional base map” of your inner landscape. What would that look like? Sketch it out. (Note: you could include this in your final design project, or just do it as an exercise for yourself.)
Try this exercise, it might help:
- Take 10 fast breaths, in and out.
- Then take 10 long, slow breaths.
- Close your eyes and imagine that you are the land, that your thoughts are a plane on which reside infinite ideas and possibilities.
- Envision what you want for that landscape, how you want to feel, what you want to accomplish. Resist the urge to dwell on anything you don’t want. We’ll talk about boundaries later. For now, just observe and imagine, and try to see something like a base map–a foundation for your design work.
- Next, in your journal or on a big piece of drawing paper, brainstorm through the steps of the GOBRADIME process, and see if you can work out a tangible list of actions you’d like to take as part of your regular practice, to support the inner landscape you want to cultivate.
Come and share your experiences in our forum! We have a group dedicated to people care.
