 Ecological
Living Designs from the Book of Nature with Patricia Michael
These trainings with Patricia Michael will be an intimate experience
using our senses to begin to read the Patterns of the Sacred
Book of Nature.
Design with a Deeper Agenda
This is a design system for creating sustainable human environments.
Base your designs on the observation of how healthy, natural systems
work. Learn how to truly harmonize with nature! Emphasize integrated
pest management and disaster-proof designs. Improve the quality of
water, air, soil, sound and tranquility on the site. Create useful
connections between elements through thoughtful use of placement, scale,
and edge dynamics and 'Patterns of Nature'.
The Book of Nature extends the effort to create a sustainable environment
with resources that are healthful and nurturing for humans and other
species that inhabit the site. This course describes the discipline
of landscape design with particular emphasis on healing and regeneration
of the land. It is a design system for creating sustainable human environments.
The kind of Design we explore is based on principles of nature, revealed
on environmental, economic, social and psychological levels. This is
landscape design involving an ethical and deep understanding of the
'Book of Nature'.
We will learn how to use the five senses, as well
as, intuition, heart and mind and personal experience to bring ourselves
to an awareness of the unique aspects of any site, be it building
or land. Thus,
we will engage in an embodied exploration of space.
 Learn
how to employ these principles to broaden the way we think about our
bodies and our environment. In this module Patricia includes exercises,
lectures, discussions and design examples from over twenty years of
Permaculture design experience, presenting a veritable feast of techniques
for growing our senses to analyze a site and design for safety, health,
comfort, beauty and success.
Using the analogy of our bodies as our first architecture, we will
introduce the development of architecture from Sufi stories that narrate
how spaces in the Middle East, North Africa and India have been designed
to support the development of the human spirit.
We will explore the use digital photography, colors, symbols and forms
as well as words as tools to record our impressions about a site.
Permaculture is a philosophy that works with natural rhythms and patterns
of Nature to consciously create designs that care for both people and
the Earth itself. Permaculture mimics the patterns and relationships
found in Nature to provide an abundance of food and energy. It harmoniously
integrates landscape, shelter and people so that their needs are provided
in a way that is sustainable.
It is a practical concept that can be applied to either a balcony
in the City, a suburban block, or a farm deep in the countryside.
- Permaculture – what does it mean?
- Permaculture Design – how does it work?
- Design methods – how can I achieve that?
- Construction Materials – what do I use?
- Climactic factors – can I do this anywhere?
- Garden maintenance – how do I keep it
going?
- Water management – what if it doesn’t
rain?
- Working with the Elements
- Energy-efficient housing
- How to keep waste to a minimum
- How to Green our cities
- Urban renewal strategies
- How to apply Permaculture techniques to your private spaces
 Natural
Remodeling
We will cover a section on Natural Remodeling and
Naturalizing a Home, including Pigments, Paints, and Plasters, and
Natural Furniture. We will explore green furnishing options from
the standpoint of ergonomics and chemical components, as well as
practices of material sourcing. Wall
surfaces cover a large area, and paint is a common source of indoor
air pollution. Safe, ecologically sound, fun alternatives to conventional
paints and wall finish: casein (milk) paints, clay paints, and earth
plasters are explored.
Considering that most of us spend 80% of our time in buildings, natural
material alternatives are crucial to a healthy living environment.
The Soul of the Dwelling with Patricia Michael
Delve deeper into the unseen world of the site,
the soul of the dwelling and of the landscape, and the designer’s
soul (ourselves). The class will introduce Sufi teachings from Hazrat
Inayat Khan to teach us personal practices to help achieve the attunement
necessary to work with the unseen elements of the dwelling, the landscape
and ourselves.
We will strengthen and sharpen our attunement with the whole, learning
to perform specific blessings and work with elements, breath and movement.
Business and Presentation Skills
 Patricia
Michael will teach many graphic and presentation techniques to help
the practitioner design materials for promotion of services and delivery
of designs and other materials to the client.
Patricia has an MFA in Art. She has taught graphic design, architecture,
and art in several Universities and has over twenty years of experience
delivering value to her design clients.
Learn how to attract, consult, and follow up and sustain client relationships
from someone who has proven to be one of Americas most successful Eco-
Designers.
Design Ethics:
 Care
for the earth: All living and nonliving things have an intrinsic
worth.
- Care for people: Promote respect, health, self-reliance, and community
responsibility.
- Emphasize positivism and cooperation: Emphasize harmony, and beauty.
Competition is the opposite of cooperation, as chaos and disorder
are the opposite of harmony (aesthetics). In competition, as in chaos
and disorder, much useful energy is lost. Gardens, society, whole
systems and human lives are wasted in disorder, opposition and competition.
- End destruction and waste: We don’t have the right to ruin.
- Share the surpluses: Pass on everything (labor, money, information)
beyond what we need.
- Work toward the good not the right: know the difference.
Guiding principles of the Designer
The Web of Life is a net of functional relationships: How Nature Works.
- Everything is connected to everything else.
- Every function is supported by many elements.
- Every element should serve many functions.
- The edge is the most productive area in a natural system. Therefore,
you increase the edge you increase productivity.
- Diversity is related to stability. It
is not, however, the number of diverse elements you can pack into
a system, but rather the useful connections you can make between
these elements that achieves stability.
- Nature abhors a vacuum any bare soil will be filled by something.
- Characteristics are a message about the condition and function
of the system. The same condition may give rise to characteristics
of different kinds, and conversely different conditions may give
rise to the same characteristic.
The Patricia Michael Workbook is included in this workshop.
The Mystic as a Designer
 It
is said in the Bible, 'Knock, and it shall be opened unto you'. Knocking
at the door is asking within one's own self, 'What will become of this
particular business, or aim, or object that I am thinking of?' As soon
as one knocks at the gate of God, which is one's heart, from there
the answer comes, and it is a truer answer than any other person can
give. There is no one who can know as much about our life, affairs,
objects, motives as we do ourselves. And therefore nobody can advise
us better than ourselves.
The Sufis in all ages have tried their best to train their consciousness.
How did they train it? The first training is analysis. The analytical
striving is to analyze and examine one's own consciousness, in other
words one's own conscience; to ask one's conscience, addressing it,
'My friend, all my happiness depends on you, and my unhappiness also.
If you are pleased, I am happy. Now tell me truly if what I like and
what I do not is in accordance with your approval.' One should speak
to one's conscience as a man going to the priest to make his confession,
'Look what I have done. Maybe it is wrong, maybe it is right; but you
know it, you have your share of it; its influence on you and your condition
is my condition, your realization is my realization. If you are happy,
only then can I be happy. Now I want to make you happy; how can I do
it?' At once a voice of guidance will come from the conscience, You
should do this, and not that; say this and not that. In this way you
should act, and not in that way.' And conscience can give you better
guidance that any teacher or book. It is a living teacher awakened
in oneself, one's own conscience. The teachers, the Gurus, the Murshids,
their way is to awaken the conscience in the pupil; to make clear what
has become unclear, confined.
How does the mystic proceed to experience self-knowledge? By the mystical
process of turning the eyes within, by shutting out the outside world
for a moment and going into meditation, and by realizing, 'I do not
exist only as a physical body, which I always see myself to be, but
I also exist as a life, as a magnetism, as an energy.' Meditation which
lifts him, in other words the consciousness, from the physical body,
helps to make it clear to the mystic that he is not only a physical
body, but that he is a being of energy, of magnetism, of breath, by
the touch of which the physical body lives, being attached to it. As
he goes further in the meditative life, he then begins to see that
the faculty of thinking, of imagining, of feeling, is independent of
the first two aspects; that he himself is a thought, that he himself
is a feeling, and that he himself is the creator of thought, even a
creator of feeling. And as he goes still higher, he sees that he is
happiness himself as well as the creator of happiness.
 Inspiration
comes from the light thrown upon a certain idea. This comes from the radiance
of the breath falling upon the mind. There are two shadows, one that is projected
upon the sky, and another, which falls upon the ground; the former known to the
mystic and the latter to everyone. When the breath which is developed is
thrown outward its radiance produces light, and it is the different shades and
grades of this light which manifest in various colors, suggesting to the mystic
the different elements which the particular colors denote. The same breath
has a different action when it is thrown within. It falls upon the mind like
a searchlight and shows to the intelligence the object of its search as things
seen in daylight. Thus man knows without any effort on the part of the brain
all he wishes to know and expresses in the way each individual is qualified to
express.
Inspiration, is one thing, qualification another
thing. The
inspiration is perfect when expressed by the qualified soul. Nevertheless
inspiration is independent of qualification. The light that the
breath throws upon the mind is in every case different in its radiance. When
far-reaching it illuminates the deepest corners of the heart, where
the light has never reached, and if breath reaches further the light
is thrown upon the mind of God, the store of all the knowledge there
is.
All those who begin to receive inspiration receive it first from outer
life. Man is created in such a way that he first looks outward; and
then, when he is disappointed, when he cannot find all he wants in
the outer life, he turns within. He wants to see if he can find it
in the inner life, and thus he becomes connected with the source of
inspiration, which is the Spirit of Guidance. And he who has once found
the Spirit of Guidance will always be able to find it again if he keeps
close to it; but when he goes astray, when the way of his life takes
another direction, then he wanders away from the Spirit of Guidance.
There are some who are more intuitive, and there are others who are
less so; and if we study the nature of their character, we shall know
the nature of their intuition. Those who are confused, who are constantly
hurried, who are changeable in their nature, who are afraid of death,
of disease, of their own actions, of their enemies, of their surroundings;
those who have constant doubt, wondering whether they can trust this
person or that, whether a friend may or may not prove worthy, and so
on---it is all these who have less possibility of intuition. Those
who can trust without troubling themselves, those who have few doubts,
are usually clearer in their perception. Those who trust in the inner
guidance, who understand the secret of .the instinct that works through
animals and all creatures, those who are pious, those who wish to walk
in the light, who always prefer the right way of thinking and speaking
and acting, it is these who often experience intuition.
Intuition is the first step, inspiration is the second, and revelation
is the third. When revelation begins, it has arisen from intuition
for intuition is the first stage. |
