There’s a green elephant in the room. With sustainability and eco-friendly-type messaging on the back of every bus and front and centre of all government and corporate campaigns, some sort of fatigue has definitely kicked in. Are you slightly sick of hearing about it all? Don’t feel bad if the answer is a resounding yes. This article is here to help you re-centre and find the delight, magic, and wonder that comes with being human and living connected and close to nature - true sustainability in my eyes.

Just a note that I’ve let loose on this article; it might get a little weird! Here we go…

What’s Going On 

Does anyone else feel like they’re being blasted with ‘sustainable’ messaging? From heat pumps that will save the world to that latest piece of technology that is the apparent answer to everything. Don't get me wrong, true, genuine efforts should be celebrated, but there’s the leftover reality that the everyday person feels like sustainability is just a marketing message. After 8 years in the ‘business,’ we have journeyed all the way from the times when most of us had little awareness of how everyday items affect our world; we then grew with the early adopters and have ridden the waves of trends, but the baseline that remains the same;

true sustainability is within, it is our mana and our legacy, it is how we choose to live day to day, it is what we choose to pass down to others that follow, it is our individual and collective relationship with self and with the Mother/Papatūānuku.  

Re-centering For 2024

So how do we navigate what is such an important fundamental to life if we are feeling ‘over it’? Here are my tips for re-centering and re-aligning yourself (something I have also had to do!). Get comfy and try to forget what you are told to think, feel, or buy. What are the things you value most in life? What would the world look like if you could live your perfect day? What has changed? Writing these down and then saying them aloud to yourself and others brings them to life. 

Now it’s time to “live in the feeling of the wish fulfilled” as personal development Neville Goddard is famous for in his book and philosophy, Law of Assumption. Sure, your tiny farm might not happen overnight, but when you repeatedly live in the feeling that it has happened, your subconscious brain (the brain that dominates most of the time) doesn’t know the difference. The resulting action you take and your raised energy field will start to move you in the right direction. 

Strategy

So, how do we get there? Here are the things I’m focusing on to give you a feel for how to rekindle your sustainability love. We like to focus on the ‘how’ at CaliWoods! These things are my expression of the important parts of being human and make me feel good - pick and choose what resonates, or come up with your own.

Hard skills & limiting tech - this is a continued goal, and for the third year, I’ll be slowly adding to my hard skills bucket. From growing and preserving food to climbing rocks, I want to know how to do physical things. This makes me feel more connected to the world and, in a sense, more useful. I leave my phone at home a lot when I go out. I also don’t have much social media anymore, which might seem like the weirdest and most extreme thing ever to some people. There’s just so much more time in my day, I can be fully present, and, over the last 2 years, it has re-wired the way my brain works.

Instead of thinking about a moment that would be great for posting online, I just enjoy the moment! That detox took at least a year for my brain to switch back to what I call ‘non-instagram brain’, where the gratification is built into the moment – rather than social dopamine. I just take the best parts of the internet (knowledge sharing and interconnectedness), leave the rest, and then try to give more attention to the physical, organic world. 

Pro-tip: if no socials appeals but seems impossible given your current patterns, set strong boundaries around when and how much you use those apps. Who needs to know what your high school classmate ate for breakfast on Tuesday? All phones have notification settings or Quiet Mode. Start there and then work your way up.

Image: My little guy in our food garden at home 

Connection to nature - we protect what we love, and when we hike, bike, surf, and swim out in the wild, it becomes an essential part of our being. We are of Earth, not separate from it. This can be understood by looking at the baseline of frequency. We need the heartbeat of the Earth, or the Schumann Resonances, to survive. This was quickly realised in the 1960s when space travel took off. Such frequencies need to be recreated for astronauts heading into space if they are to avoid fatigue, depression, and bone loss, amongst many other ailments1. 

Along the same lines, when a part of your body is touching the Earth (sometimes referred to as Grounding, eg. swimming, walking barefoot, or sitting on the ground with skin exposed), there is a small charge flow between you and the ground2. Compared to sitting inside and wearing shoes, it’s out with the static electricity and in with the free electrons. Energetically, this helps you align with the Earth's electromagnetic frequency (those important ones we just talked about).

The ultimate barefoot hippie slam dunk – the irony isn’t lost here! There are, however, many varied and peer-reviewed studies on the positive effects of Grounding on health, from regulating cortisol, improving sleep, pain, and stress3, to reduced brain bioactivity, and reduced blood viscosity for cardiovascular health4. Got a wild toddler? Take them outside and run around with no shoes, a proven technique in my house! The point here is that we can’t survive without the Mother, without our home; she is us, and we are her. Returning to this base-level fact is a very poignant connection between our daily choices and collective direction. 

Pro-tip: find what you love to do in nature and prioritise those activities three times per week. Lying on a beach definitely counts!

Connection to food - how long does it take to grow an onion? Is $5 really too much for an organic broccoli? I couldn’t definitively answer both questions until I started growing food. It was always a dream, but as a transient traveling surfer, that dream has only recently become a reality. With my amateur green-thumb status, I’m not one to give direct gardening advice but rather inspire by saying that in 3 years and with a 35 square meter garden, we eat at least 80% of our fresh food from the backyard. We started small with two tomato plants in a pot and a ½ square meter GrowPod. A very cool part of this is that our nearly 3-year-old can identify more plants and weeds than most adults. He acts like a gorilla in his food forest, eating greens, peas, and flower petals straight from the plant! 

In my family, the knowledge of food growing was lost somewhere between my grandparents and the supermarkets opening in every neighbourhood of New Zealand. Food was so cheap when they first opened; why would you even bother having chickens or growing veggies? Oh, how times have changed, but other than saving money, I have found this learning curve to be one of the most wholesome undertakings of my adult life. Our food is fresher and more nutrient-dense. I also know the seed's origin, there’s no plastic packaging, and it hasn’t been transported from halfway around the world. Home gardens for the win!  

Pro-tip: if you are interested in growing food, start small and grow what you eat regularly. Expand your garden as you add knowledge. 

Meditation & Mindset – finding our place and purpose in the world is no small task, and it’s overwhelming in its very essence to think about how we can all live sustainably and in harmony with nature. It always comes back to your mindset – and it takes practice to be conscious enough to recognise that you are in a funk. Meditation and practices like sauna help me widen my scope of vision from the day-to-day tasks (the ones we all have to deal with) to being more open to possibility, hope, love, and compassion. Our outer world is a reflection of the inner world, and I firmly believe that we don’t need to know exactly how we will get there, but we must believe it’s possible. The world isn’t happening around us; it is actually our co-creation. How amazing is that?

Pro-tip: if you are new to meditation, find a guided meditation that resonates in a voice you like. It’s an easy way to find your feet. And if you don’t enjoy sitting still for too long, you can find guided walking meditations, art meditations, or ones to enjoy just before bed while lying down.

The Takeaways 

I did say it was going to get a little weird! We have covered the overwhelming noise of sustainability and how to look beyond the back of the bus advertising; we must remind ourselves to return to what it means to be an organic human, a soul, living here on Earth. Moving beyond the tech, hyper-information, and instant gratification and plugging straight back into yourself and our world in whatever way works best for you.

True sustainability lies within you and us all, and it’s mirrored in how we choose to live our lives daily. Loving nature, eating nutritious organic food, and using low-tox sustainable products (where necessary!) are all components that make up the whole. So, let’s make each day count. 

Shay Lawrence is the founder of CaliWoods. She develops most of the sustainable products you will find here on the online store. Outside of CaliWoods, she loves being a Mama, surfing, gardening, lounging in the sun, being in nature, and helping inspire positive change. 

Sources 

1 : Ground-based Investigations to Support Human and Mammalian Studies Beyond Low Earth Orbit A White Paper Submitted to the NASA Biological and Physical Sciences Decadal Survey Authors: Viktor Stolc, Ph.D., NASA Ames Research Center Maurice Ohayon, M.D., D.Sc., Ph.D., Stanford University Medical School Friedemann Freund, Ph.D., SETI Institute David J. Loftus, M.D., Ph.D., NASA Ames Research Center Date: October 31, 2021

2: Analysis of the Charge Exchange Between the Human Body and Ground: Evaluation of “Earthing” From an Electrical Perspective. Kent Chamberlin, PhD,a,⁎ Wayne Smith, PhD,b Christopher Chirgwin, BSEE,c Seshank Appasani, BSEE,c and Paul Rioux, BSEEc. 2014

3: The biologic effects of grounding the human body during sleep as measured by cortisol levels and subjective reporting of sleep, pain, and stress. Maurice Ghaly, Dale Teplitz. 2004

4: Earthing (Grounding) the Human Body Reduces Blood Viscosity—a Major Factor in Cardiovascular Disease. Gaétan Chevalier, PhD,1 Stephen T. Sinatra, MD, FACC, FACN,2 James L. Oschman, PhD,3 and Richard M. Delany, MD, FACC4