Yoga Permaculture school of simple life, work in progres
Have you ever heard such a name as Gandhi? Following a Swedish model we are creating on the biodynamic farm Masesselin a school where you learn to live simply and in harmony with nature: how you produce your food ( vegetables, patatoes, cereals, salads and fruits ), how to store it, how to cook it, how to make your clothes, how you build a house, how you take care of hygene, how you take care of your body, natural health basics, how to practise yoga, dancing, music and arts.
This school aims to give a basic crash curriculum into the new way of living, the way you will live, when you understand that its now the moment to change your life-style. One class lasts one full year in order to cover all natural seasons.
The school starts in August with harvesting what the class before planted. We will look how to store food for one year. Wintertime is a good time to get into interior work, we will practise a lot of of yoga and dancing, get in touch with Feldenkrais and natural health techniques. In spring we look into gardening techniques, sow seeds and plant. In summer we take care and water the fields. We also build houses.
The school is not for free because our system is not working on self exploitation. We pay the teachers a decent salary. Keeping the cost at its lowest possible it costs around 1000 Frs a student a month, people having not enough money can apply to a scolarship. A diploma will be issued at the end of the year. The year is not yet recognized in Universities, but more and more voices ask students to go into praxis before starting to study the theory.
The concept lying behind the school is simple. And wild. Kore Ohlson, the founder of the swedish school put's it that way: "The aim is to empower young people to go their way!" This means, that the school does not offer to the students an established curriculum. In the beginning of the study year the group decides what the participants would like to learn. The students are responsable themselves to reach that goal. Whom they want to invite, how often, whether they want to write a paper, have exams etc. The school offers only the basics: agriculture, how to produce food, how to store it and how to cook it. Each class decides by itself how to spend the rest of the time. In Sweden some classes have turned into dancing and acting, other classes went into health, other into science, each class decides what the students learn. The school intends to break up the classic top-down model and to implement button-up techniques. It is not the result which is important but the way to get there. You don't buy food, you make it by yourself. You don't buy knowledge, you go and get it yourself. Self-empowerment is the leading issue of the school.
The number of students is limited to ten, the students do not live on the farm but in the surrounding fields, forests, rocks, or on the nearby village or on other nearby farms. Every morning 8h works starts, 12h to 14h is the lunch break, from 14h to 18h is the second working slot of the day.