The Yellow Thread

              Regenerative Living

This is about what we buy, what we eat and drink, how we travel and entertain ourselves and how much we connect with nature. Science shows us that the health of our gut microbiome depends on us doing regen living well. Sometimes it costs more money and sometimes it saves you money. It can work out equally if you are careful.

 

See the ideas below to pick a thread that resonates for you. Remember it’s about reduce and increase, and that there are different ways to reduce.

 

Food and Drink

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• ​reduce food grown with chemicals

• reduce processed food

• increase regenerative products

• increase organic products

• let water stand to release chlorine (standing in sun in glass bottle gives structured water!)

• look at filters to remove fluoride from water

• increase local produce

• reduce produce grown far away

• reduce food grown in slave conditions (eg prawns, tomatoes)

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Groups helping with food and drink options

 

• Environmental Working Group

• Soil association

 

Regenerative/organic Market Gardens

 

• Riverview cottage farm, Cumwhinton, Carlisle

 

Finances

 

• Check you bank and savings company for how ethical their investing is.​ 

 

Shopping

 

• Also check how ethically produced the goods are that you buy.​

• Go second-hand big time. That thing you want is out there -it is possibly even unused! -to get cotton, linen and silk clothes you need to go second hand (chemicals on plastic clothes invade your body)

• Just buy less. When you pick something up in a shop analyse why it is desirable. It may be that you need it -but question even that, could another object you own already do the job?

• Try the ‘delayed want-gone’ tactic. Put the object back down, walk around for an hour (during which you should purposefully pick up many other objects) and decide then if you still need it. If you live close by, go home and back another day. It may be that you actually never think about it again. It may be that when you are in your home surroundings, you cant see how it would improve your life.

• rethink how you spend money for celebration times, such as the 4 gifts system for children. 'something you want, something you need, something to wear and something to read'

• swtich from amazon to things like ebay and vinted ..other suggestions?

 

Crafts and skills

 

• Learn new skills all the time -then share them e.g. mend your own clothes and offer this service to others

• Visit/start a tools loan group

• Start/visit a repair cafe

• Start a business making things that we currently buy from abroad, that use local resources and that will help others change their journey, e.g. beeswax wraps

• Preserve food so that seasonal food can be eaten at other times of the year

 

Travel

 

• Reduce number of journeys -especially flights and car journeys where you could bike or take the bus. If you can't reduce travel due to family or work circumstances then reduce the impact by sharing journeys with others. After all, you’ve seen it- there are plenty of cars going your way!

• Setting a weekly number of miles helps reduce car travel.

• Get together for community action to ask the council to reduce bus costs/ install more bus services, share cars.

• The thing about electric cars are the elements needed to go into them and how they are sourced -however, these elements are available in other countries (lithium in Cornwall and Canada for eg) -we need to action for that instead of accepting the sourcing of them involving slave and child labour.

• The very good point has also been made that there are alternatives to many of these minerals -and we do change technology to use other things when we say no to resources harvested in damaging conditions.

 

Communities

 

• Offer your skills -if you are in a position to be able to contribute (e.g. retired/not working) then see your contribution as part of what your life should be about, for your own benefit and that of others. 

• Think about representing your community on decision making boards eg councils​

• Set up community ventures (see other sections eg crafts/food/garden) For working families a helping hand to eat better would be a useful system, offer to shop for them at local markets/farms.

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Home​

• Reduce chemicals you clean the house with

• Reduce chemicals you clean yourself with

• Stop using fluoride toothpaste

• Reduce other chemical based creams and things you put on your body  

• Buy second hand or repaired items

• Buy cotton/linen/silk instead of plastic clothes -buy second hand wherever possible or organically/sustainably grown cotton.

• Have clothes swap parties!

• Reduce plastics and plastic coatings on everything from carpets to pans to packaging -swap plastic containers to jam jars/don’t cook in plastic

• Reduce microfibres getting into the environment by using filters on your washing machine (and reducing man made fibre clothing.)

• Increase the number of times you wear one garment before washing (ok, not all undergarments!)

• Watch out for greenwashing -remember that the aim of every business (nearly) is to make money.

• Reduce paper products and increase alternatives  (try pee pads, kitchen cotton sheets and recycled paper)

• Watch the film 'Dark Waters' to help keep you all motivated

• Change to more ethical tech platforms such as protonmail instead of gmail. 

 

Leisure

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• reduce screen time

• increase family activities

• increases community activities

• reduce activities with high carbon footprint

• make things to save money and live better (see crafts)

• increase time spent connecting with soil, plants, beneficial microbes and animals.

• increase time spent 'up and moving'

• switch from audible to something like libro.fm (local bookstores benefit)

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Energy

 

• This is a tricky one because there are problems with so many of the alternative options to oil. Keep informed on this and choose an alternative to oil and gas that suits your area and has offers of help from the government. As with anything, if we rule out one thing as an option then we get busy finding the alternative. And we are good at this!

• Plastic alternatives is a good example of this -we have found that we can make plastic from algae, from bamboo, from fungi and bacteria and even from cucumbers!

• Much of our energy is used for heat -reducing the heat in buildings could make a significant change to this -increase the layers you wear (send us pics please!) It is another great time for the reduce and increase approach. 

• Turn lights off and equipment off -it sounds small but it adds up over the year.​

• "Don't heat the sky" is a great mantra from Rupert Read of the Climate Majority Project​

• Heat your body not yourself -what does that look like for you? send us pics!

• Switch to a green energy source.

• Insulate as much as possible -you and your house

• Dont use A! -your brain deserves your teamwork!

 

Garden

 

• Reduce chemicals -or stop!

• Increase Microbes, Minerals and Metabolites!

• Recycle your garden waste rather than send it to the local council

• Prune/graze/mosaic cut to boost photosynthesis and diversity

• Plant a mix of species for the same reason as above

• Grow veg -to get the good chemicals and avoid the bad ones

• Build Biomass above and below ground

• Increase diversity of habitats

• Get together with others to form ‘corridors’ eg blue, seasonal pollinators

• Buy plants from nurseries who have used healthy soil techniques, who don't use peat and who have limited chemical use. 

 

Health and well being

 

• Change your diet -see our 6P’s section.

• Increase the time you are  ‘up and doing’ rather than sitting. Intense exercise is not needed but vigorous movement sure does pump out the endorphins!​

• Read up on brain health (or come on our course) and ensure you have the energy all day long to do all that you want to do

• Increase real food and a real life

• Embrace the '4 threads'

 

Waste

 

• Find/Set up a repair cafe

• Ask for different recycling system for UK (currently we swap much of our waste for nuclear waste from China)

• Create less waste through packaging choices

• Compost your paper as well as your food scraps.

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And Lastly -Your Ethos and Thinking

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Narrative and Knowledge

• Up knowledge all the time being careful to check sources

• Share this knowledge!!

• Think about another way of seeing things, another way of talking about things -change the narrative.

 

Mindset change ethos

 

Continual mindset changes are an important part of our journey -whether it is the fact that microbes underpin the health of everything, or that we have not been taught the full history of the damage our country has done elsewhere -and continues to do with the slave/killer goods coming into our country every day.

 

Mindset changes are hard because they need us to change information that is cemented into our subconscious. This information become our integral beliefs, developed over our whole lifetime with the most effective ones being those we were shown as children. Because these beliefs cannot be isolated from all of our other beliefs and integral information -in other words our very identity - it is really hard to change this. 

 

It doesn’t matter that it has all been proven by science. Paradigm shifts require the painful dismantling of many neuronal networks that are complex and intertwined. When you look at the science of the brain it actually looks impossible to do this. But we know it is not. What you need to do is challenge your own thinking to decide if you have really really valid reasons not to allow a mindset change in. 

 

A further problem is that these deep seated perceptions of the world are part, not just of our own id, but that of our community or ‘tribe.’ So you have to disrupt  those connections in your neuronal networks too -and that is very scary. Yet, this is also a way you can make a difference -if you tell it to your community they are more likely to listen.

 

Mindset changes that are particularly useful 

 

• Every one of our daily actions needs rethinking -including the things you dont do

• Microbes underpin the health of every ecosystem

• When we say a definite ‘no’ to something we find alternatives

• We have responsibility for the whole world

• The best mindset change? By making changes -diet or lifestyle- you will stop liking the things you currently find it difficult to resist!! Honestly! I now hate normal bread and cakes and pasta and chocolate that is less than 85%.

• Greater gratitude and give back ethos

• Many attitudes and abilities, such as gratitude and giving back, consuming less and having a voice, could be more effectively taught and in doing so improving the mental well being of each generation. “The best way to feel better is to do something for someone else.” Louisa May Alcott

• Furthermore -the better we feel about ourselves, the less small decisions affect us -such as what to wear, this allows us to focus on what does matter.

• One ‘take’ on how we approach life  -from a branch of neuropsychology- is that we are always growing, or we are dying. The growing part can be our desire to acquire more and more material goods -or to grow in knowledge -or in skills, or in health, or in mental acuity, or in compassion, or of course a combination. Be aware of what you, deep down, want to grow in, as that helps you direct your life that way. It becomes an excellent guide when faced with choices.

• An all encompassing ethos is to be helpful and kind to others, to work hard with time for rest, to be cheerful and appreciate the simple things in life, and to have courage in the face of adversity.