What is Regenerative Living?
You will hear me talk about my journey towards a regenerative life on this blog, but it’s a term that is not very widely used yet in mainstream society so maybe you haven’t heard of regenerative living yet or aren’t sure what it means. Here’s a little introduction…
I learned about regenerative living when I started growing my own vegetables on my little balcony in 2020 when the pandemic hit. I was trying to learn about organic growing methods and the term ‘regenerative agriculture’ is something you do come across a little bit more already especially when you dive into the world of growing your own food.
Permaculture, biodynamic farming, syntropic agriculture, … are all ways of regenerative farming. The idea is to farm in such a way that you regenerate the land you grow on, especially if you start with a piece of land that has previously been used for modern day farming or gardening (using chemical fertilisers and pest deterrents, growing mono-crops, ploughing the ground, … which ultimately takes all the good from the soil, reduces biodiversity and becomes completely unsustainable). Instead of using these unsustainable ‘modern’ techniques you create a diverse holistic system where every part supports each other, it becomes a closed loop system where natural waste will fertilise new growth. Biodiversity will increase and get balanced so pests will stay under control automatically. And there’s so much more to say about these regenerative farming/gardening practices but that’s for another time… What is great is that you can also implement these ideas in other areas of life!
More than Sustainability
In recent years climate and environmental issues seem to be gaining more and more attention and sustainability definitely has become a mainstream term, lots of brands and organisations are launching eco-friendly initiatives which is really great.
Sustainability is a big step forward from our modern day life – in the past 70 years or so – where we have become completely disconnected of how things are made or grown, of how many resources are needed to make everything we consume, how industry works and affects the environment. But sustainability seems to stop at just sustaining the current state of the earth, regenerative living on the other hand takes it even further and really creates a system to undo all the harm that’s been done to the earth, replenishing the health and resources of our planet. And honestly, looking at the current climate and environmental situation we really do need to take that step further!
I’m not at all an expert at regenerative living. I took a 4 week intensive online course about regenerative futures which I found incredibly inspiring after I first started to
What do you think?