Yogic Decision-Making at the Ashram

gardenIn our ongoing effort to move towards greater transparency and awareness, the Ashram has embraced a group of indicators to guide our planning and decision-making process. We’re calling these the 5 P’s: People (social), Purpose (why), Process (how), Planet
(environmental) and Profit (economic).

One of the key principles in yoga is balance. By considering each of these five perspectives, balance and accountability become evident.

At the moment, in the garden we are focused particularly on planet and profit, trying to further understand how the produce we grow can lower carbon output by reducing travel distances, and increase economic input by growing higher value crops – a formula we are continuously refining. Intern Bryn Bamber calculated the overall value of the garden and summer kitchen’s contribution to the Ashram food flow to be about $75,000 – valuable information that will impact our 2014 seed order. When the garden team sits down with the seed catalogues, we’ll consider the top producers of the garden (salad and cooking greens), review the current state of the world (drought in California) and determine how we can increase our local resilience by supporting the greater sustainability of our community. Next we will turn our focus to people, purpose and process as we launch the 2014 Internship Program.

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