A churning in my soul and a restlessness in my heart signaled to me that I needed a change. I felt the strong call to move to a self-sustaining embodied community from my smaller spiritual community in California.

The three years I spent in Cali were a time of silent retreat and spiritual initiation. Now, I was craving to be warmly engaged with the world through relationships and contributing to a larger vision and mission in a conscious and deliberate way. My chapter was closing in California. I trusted in the void that was my next steps —  the free fall of endless possibility.

Then I found Earthaven and felt pulled to register for the Earthaven Ecovillage Experience Weekend.

When I first arrived in Asheville and we were driving up to Earthaven, I could feel the crystalline energy of the Appalachian mountains, and so much joy and expansion filled my heart and body. Everything was screaming yes! I was pleasantly surprised by how Earthaven was literally in the middle of a forest! The land felt well loved, alive, and thriving compared to the crisp grassy land of California.

There were around 30 people at the Experience Weekend, including a large group who were thinking about starting an intentional community in Ohio. Little did I know that we were going to be creating our own ecosystem during the weekend and that I would connect on many different levels with the people there. I met some incredible people, and we shared stories, songs, visions, and our hearts. I felt an instant connection to the facilitators — NikiAnne, Farmer, and Becky — and their embodied essence and passion for Earthaven. It felt expansive to know that I could grow in this environment where body-based practices, grief and ritual, and connection to nature are celebrated and embraced.

I felt grounded and connected to the land through our hikes together from each neighborhood and I loved exploring the possibilities of how people choose to build their homes and live on the land. The food was delicious and prepared with such love and intention. I loved that the meals were inclusive of everyone’s dietary needs, and created from quality and sustainable whole foods, with some grown on the land. We went on a wild foraging walk with Dimitri; I learned all about the abundant native friends growing on the land and tasted their sweet and intricate notes. I gained knowledge about the building of eco-friendly homes, the governing system, how Earthaven has made consensus decisions for 27 years, and the history and stories of the people.

I knew I had found home when I felt a sense of belonging to this group of people who carried the ultimate vision of a regenerative culture that is receptive to the changing needs of its people and the land that is so cherished and honored. I felt my own growth edge would be challenged here and sensed the expansion that would come with being immersed in this level of connection.

All the stars aligned, you could say, and now I am working for Earthaven’s educational nonprofit two months in, steeping in the unfolding of rich relationships, and joyfully sharing my heart and gifts with the community. I feel so incredibly blessed that Earthaven has welcomed me with such open arms and willing hearts.

The Earthaven Ecovillage Experience Weekend is a great way to become immersed into an intentional community. It gives you a snapshot into what life is like at Earthaven if you decide to make the move. I highly recommend the Experience Weekend or Experience Week if you are interested in gaining a realistic understanding of the challenges of living in a community, as well as basking in the immense abundance and richness that come from building relationships and being together through all the facets of an ecovillage.

Upcoming Offerings:

Earthaven’s School of Integrated Living (SOIL) offers the Earthaven Ecovillage Experience Weekend twice this year: May 27-30 and October 7-10. There’s also a new Earthaven Action Week following experience weekend so you can extend your visit and interact more with the Earthaven community.

I look forward to meeting you there, and giving you a little taste of the embodied essence of Earthaven!

Much love,
Jillian

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Transcript:

Hi there.

It’s Courtney Brook here coming to you from my office and sanctuary the forest.

Happy to be in here, as always.

And I wanted to share a little bit with y’all about an upcoming offering that I’ll be sharing at Earthaven EcoVillage in the fall.

So it’s called Deep Ecology and Yoga Retreat, and the body of work of Deep Ecology was founded and initially shared by Joanna Macy and some of her colleagues.

And it was developed in response to her noticing in herself and her own energy in her own body that she is tiring of of trying to make things better on planet Earth, tiring of activism and wanting to be able to keep on going with her efforts and seeing a lot of folks around her doing various, you know, all the different kinds of activism that we do, whether it’s being a school teacher or being a parent or being on the front lines in the forest or, you know, all the other 10,000 things that that we do to try to make life beautiful and good.

And she was noticing that she was needing to find ways to reconnect to herself and reconnect to the source of life and to her calling.

And so she developed this body of work called the Work That Reconnects or Deep Ecology.

And I remember the first time that I participated in Work That Reconnect Deep Ecology offering.

I left there feeling so much more connected to my sense of purpose and to my life and to the Earth that I’m working for.

So in the fall, I’m excited to be offering Deep Ecology and Yoga Retreat with my dear friend and amazing yoga teacher Garrell Bevirt, who is going to be facilitating the yoga portion of the retreat.

So we’ll be nourishing our bodies and nourishing our connection to ourselves and to each other and to all of life, to our ecological identities and to the reason why we do the things that we do.

So whether or not you are considering yourself an activist or wanting to consider yourself an activist or just really needing to deeply connect with your sense of purpose and your path, I really hope to see you there.

And, Yeah, may we find the things in our lives that really re energize us and refuel us and look to each other into the source of life itself when we tire.

So thank you very much, Joanna Macy for this inspiring body of work and hope to see you there.

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We hope to see you in the forest at Earthaven EcoVillage in the fall for Deep ecology and Yoga retreat to reconnect to ourselves, reconnect to each other, and reconnect to the source of our lives.

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Steve Torma speaking about Compassion Camp

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Transcript from Video:

Steve: Hi folks! This is Steve Torma from Asheville, North Carolina and Earthaven Ecovillage.

Terrie: I’m Terrie LeWine and I’m from Philadelphia and I’m at Earthaven Ecovillage.

Steve: So, here we are today, spring equinox. We’re sitting here with our lovely flowers here at Earthaven. We are dreaming about Compassion Camp this summer, hoping that you all might want to come and join us. This is our third year, and we’re planning to have a wonderful time together.

Terrie: I love Compassion Camp because it brings people together from western North Carolina and beyond. It’s really a dream of people gathering in a way that they can share intimately, get to know each other, and learn a few skills along the way.
What are some of the things that are highlights for you, Steve?

Steve: Well, non-violent communication, which you and I both care so deeply about, it’s a core part of what we do at Compassion Camp. But, there’s many other things. Many other issues, related to how to create more peace, and justice in the world, and loving relationships, and inner peace. We also have a lot of fun.  We try to create a safe container where people’s needs to be taken care of are really respected.  And we do singing, and we do creative movement things.
What about walking around here? What do you think?

Terrie: What people have said (we often do tours of Earthaven, people sleep here in tents and inside indoors) you really get a sense of the life that is happening here at Earthaven. A sense of being connected to the earth and why that’s important too. So Compassion Camp, while it really is steeped in non-violent communication, it’s really morphed into all things compassion. What are ways we can care for each other? And care about each other?  And develop sustainable relationships, that feel really good? So one of the ways that has happened is through connecting with the people of the land here.

Steve: I really think of compassion as the medicine for our time. Learning how to just push out further, and further who we can care for, and care about not only the humans, but the beyond the human worlds. At Earthaven, if you’ve never been here before, there’s some really beautiful parts of nature that you can have access to, streams, trails, trees. So if this sounds interesting to you, we’d love to have you join us.

Terrie: One of the things that we’ve done, and we’ve grown into over all the years, is how we do leadership. It started out that we would have a few of these classes, NVC classes and things that are prepared by people who already teach.

It’s also an opportunity if you have something or some skill either that you want to ask for to kind of be immersed in a group, or that you really want to practice your own leadership skills or co-leading skills. So, we have open source (what we call our version of open source) technology, where in the beginning is when we decide what’s going to happen here. It’s designed and it’s decided by everybody who is here together. So it isn’t decided by us. That’s something that’s really important to me and it makes for a really interesting well-rounded group of topics that we can explore together.

Steve: To create a teaching – learning community. People who come together to share their talents with each other. So that we collectively become more connected, more intelligent, more skilled, more compassionate.  So, look forward to having you join us. Thank you, folks.

Terrie: Oh, a couple other things that you might want to know: One is that your kids are welcome here. We have a robust program for young people. And one of the things that people report is the food here is so good.  A lot of the food is off the land, it’s grown off the land. Most of it is cooked by people here on the land. So it’s a nice place to come to get a good meal as well.

Steve: Thank you folks, thanks for watching this. see you soon!

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Transcript from video:

Laura:
Hi, I’m Laura. I just want to speak about my experience at compassion camp 2019 because I’m definitely going back to 2020!

It far exceeded all my expectations. It was amazing; learning, food, we did dancing, and singing, we had a fire at night.
Singing around the fire, I made so many great friends.

It was at Earthaven ecovillage, which was amazing. That’s just like this little hidden gem in the mountains, you would never know was there.

It was just an amazing experience and I’m still savoring it to this day.

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