Win this gorgeous necklace from ethical jewelry brand 31 Bits. 

Jewelry that helps empower women, contributes to sustainable development and is 100% recycled? 31 Bits is an ethical accessory company that walks the walk. Their are more than colorful jewelry, they are an example of a business model that contributes to sustainable development and empowering women.

In 2007, Kallie Dovel traveled to Northern Uganda, while there she met women who made paper beads, but had no market to sell them. Dovel brought a box of jewelry back to the United States, and after brainstorming with friends soon came up with the concept for a new type of development organization. 31 bits was born, working directly with 6 Ugandan women, buying their jewelry and selling them in the U.S. market.

Indentity from 31 Bits on Vimeo.

The company now works with over 100 women in Uganda, giving them the necessary tools for economics and sustainable growth, while at the same time fueling their creative skills and giving them access to the international market. The women’s wage is comparable to that of a schoolteacher in Northern Uganda, and profits generated from jewelry sales are invested back into 31 bits for operations, purchasing more jewelry and developing programs for the designers such as English lessons, finance training and vocational training.

In the line, you’ll find beautiful necklaces, all with beads made from recycled paper. Fashion that gives back.

We’re happy to partner with 31 bits to offer an exclusive EcoSalon giveaway. To enter to win a 31 Bits Acorn Layers necklace, all you have to do is be subscribed to our weekly newsletter. It’s a weekly roundup of all the top stories at EcoSalon, plus a few that you may have missed, we promise you’ll like it. Not a subscriber yet? Subscribe below!

We will select a winner at random on September 12, 2012. Please note that we can only ship to U.S. addresses.

Editor’s Note: This giveaway has ended.

The post Empowering Women in Uganda: Win a Necklace from 31 Bits appeared first on EcoSalon.

Because your feelings need to be limber.

Feelings are magnetic. So it goes that if you generate certain feelings – and you have the power to create any feeling you desire – then you increase the power of your emotional magnetism. But we need to limber up, loosen the images and adjectives encrusted on our goals and most-desired states. It helps to get poetic, lyrical, and abstract. Go there with me.

I want my day to feel like jazz.

I want kissing to feel like eating an orange off the tree from Tuscany.

I want my next success to feel like Adele must feel with her latest album.

I want my body to feel like a Jaguar in a new open field.

I want smiling to feel like mangoes.

I want my friendships to feel like sandalwood oil, and bowls of popcorn, and hand-knit, with Vodka mixers, served up in a red tent.

I want my nervous system to feel like The Buddha must have felt when he discovered The Middle Way.

I want my gigs to feel like Jimmy Page playing Kashmir, and Gaga doing a Born This Way finale, with some Leonard Cohen tenderness.

I want my neighborhood to feel like a new Jason Mraz song.

I want my integrity to feel like the Hope Diamond.

I want my money-making to feel like walking though a vineyard, surveying ripeness, a production of sun and earth for craft and pleasure.

I want my word to feel like gold bullion.

I want my laughter to feel like electric pineapple children.

I want the end of the day to feel like a happy quiet baby.

I want being of service to feel like a Squaw mixing herbs into healing paste for warriors.

I want my philanthropy to feel like a cosmic Queen on her best day.

I want my challenges to feel how Siddhartha felt when the left the kingdom.

I want my love to feel like a gorgeous secret that only he and I know. For eternity.

I want my writing to feel like Citrine, and Jack Kerouac with a fresh buzz on.

I want my ideas to feel like sunrise.

Editor’s Note: Danielle LaPorte is the creator of WhiteHotTruth.com, which has been called “the best place on-line for kick-ass spirituality.” She is the author of The Fire Starter Sessions: A Digital Experience for Entrepreneurs, an inspirational speaker, former think tank exec, and news show commentator. You can read all of Danielle’s EcoSalon guest articles here, and find her on Twitter @daniellelaporte.

Image: A6U571N.

The post How Do You Want It All To Feel? Sensuous Goal Refinement + Emotional Magnetizing appeared first on EcoSalon.

This is not the bedrock kind of faith that grounds your psychology or devotion. It’s not the spiritual-insurance kind of faith where we hope (trust) that life will come through for us, in the end.

It’s the Holy wow, I’m standing at the beginning of something that is so insanely ripe with potential that I wanna get naked and roll around in it right now, while singing rock opera kind of faith. It makes you grin and do uncharacteristically obsessive and impulsive things. Bright faith chugs downs exhilaration at every pit stop.

“This is a state of love-filled delight in possibilities and eager joy at the prospect of actualizing them. Bright faith goes beyond merely claiming that possibility for oneself to immersing oneself in it. With bright faith, we are lifted out of our normal sense of insignificance, thrilled as we no longer feel lost and alone. The enthusiasm, energy, and courage we need in order to leave the safe path, to stop aligning ourselves with the familiar and convenient, arise with bright faith.” – Sharon Salzberg, Faith: Trusting Your Own Deepest Experience

Bright faith is essential to falling in love – with people, with causes, with your own unfolding self. Bright faith is primal to creativity.

Bright faith can be unnerving, slightly embarrassing, and awkward. We are trained to resist it, and we do so at the cost of innovation and the passion we crave.

BRIGHT FAITH BURNS THE PATH TO CLARITY

Here’s a headline for a life resume: “Selectively, but wildly excitable.” I adore exclusively stoked people. They’re discerning — not everything is a great opportunity, in fact, golden ops are rare. But when they see something that glimmers with uniqueness, or resonates with their reason for being, they just they freak the fuck out.

This is how brainstorming goes with brightly faithful people: “Hmmm. Uh huh. Nope. Nah. No. Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Ooh. Ahh. Wait a second. Holy sh*t, yes yes, yes, oh my God, we could…and then we could…and it would be so…and Holy yes and…I’ll sell it all if I have to…and what am I going to wear when I accept the award?! Who will we invite to the wedding?! How big do you think we can build it? Excuse me while I make a phone call.” They go off.

It’s illogical, and grandiose, crazy, and most certainly romantic. It’s faith. But these are the essential ingredients for breaking through mediocrity and cynicism. Bright faith is a divine kind of madness. And what the Spocks of the world don’t quite get is that the chaotic sparks of bright faith actually burn a path to clarity of mind.

To create things of beauty — in form or between two people — it’s a passion first, discrimination second formula. And yep, it’s dangerous.

BEING ‘UNCOOL’ IS THE ULTIMATE STRATEGY

If I have to choose between two service providers with similar skill and equal pricing, I’ll always go with the one who expresses their excitement. I did a gig recently with someone who said, “Oh my God, I’m so excited to work with you! I’m going to hang up the phone and do the happy dance.” She was so uncool about it all. No pretense, just joy and bright faith in how much fun we could have. So then I said, “Me too! Now I’m really stoked. I’ll do the happy dance when I hang up too. Let’s do this!”

My best strategic meetings have been the most uncool. Un-self-conscious. Everyone comes to the table with bright faith. They’re happy to be there and they say so.

Bright faith shows up at the beginning — that extremely precious and fractional space when you need as much light as you can to see which way you want to go. The more possibilities you let shine — the more you shine with possibility — the more lucid and discerning you can be.

Facts, faced: you are extremely fortunate.

By many accounts, you and I have every advantage to be happy, healthy, and deeply fulfilled.

Your heart may be broken, you may not have enough money to get to the end of the week, you may be fighting for your life.
 But when placed into perspective — you are extremely fortunate.

In fact, if you’re reading this, the highest probability is that you are living in the western world, above the poverty line, in a democratic environment.

Somewhere else…

: If you were unfaithful to your spouse, you would be stoned, likely by your neighbors.

: Are you gay? If you’re found out, you will get jail time.

: Thirsty? Clean water is five miles away. Walk to get it. You have one bucket.

: Have you complained about the government in an email? You’re going to court.

: Want to convert to a religion other than the one you were born in to? That would warrant execution.

: You may want to play soccer with the other boys your age, but you have weapons training.

Women…

: You can’t get a job because by law, women are considered “half the value of men”. Hell, you can’t even vote. You can’t even look a man directly in the eyes.

: If you’re menstruating, you will miss school rather than face the ridicule.

: Raped? Refuse a marriage proposal? If you’re lucky, they won’t kill you, they’ll just throw acid in your face.

: Long for erotic pleasure? It’s difficult since your grandmother cut out your clitoris with a razor blade when you were twelve.

: Long to be thin, to run in the sun? Forget it, men in your village like large women and you are force fed.

We could go on with the atrocities and restrictions — from the extremes of human trafficking (the average American girl is thirteen when she is forced into sex slavery) and torture, to what we consider basic health-care, like clean needles and dentistry. The hell that is Haiti, and parts of Uganda, Sierra Leone, West Bengal…and our own cities…

Facts, faced: even in our struggles, most of us are privileged. We have so many rights, must we exercise the right to complain?

Sometimes, the most direct route to appreciation is through the darkness — even if it’s merely imagined.

I’m writing this from an airport because I missed my flight — which derails my luxurious escape plans for a day. I’m lucky to have plans, to be sitting by a $2 million dollar sculpture, in a gun-free airport, drinking my peppermint tea, in a new warm coat, using free wifi. I’ll choose to be appreciative.

Your mother had the right idea: eat your dinner, there are children starving in the world.

That fresh salad you get with your entrée. The insurance on your car. The clothes you wear, where you want. The hands you hold in public.
 The light you’re reading by. That vaccination scar on your arm. 
Your innocence.
 
Really, what’s the worst of your problems?

Perspective isn’t everything in terms of have’s and have nots. But you can work it to your very great advantage.

Editor’s Note: Danielle LaPorte is the creator of WhiteHotTruth.com, which has been called “the best place on-line for kick-ass spirituality.” She is the author of The Fire Starter Sessions: A Digital Experience for Entrepreneurs, an inspirational speaker, former think tank exec, and news show commentator. You can read all of Danielle’s EcoSalon guest articles here, and find her on Twitter @daniellelaporte.

The post Rolling Around In Insane Potential: It’s Bright Faith, Baby appeared first on EcoSalon.

Experienced that overwhelming feeling of holiday stress yet? You know, the one that hits you the second you see Christmas displays at your local grocery store not even a few seconds after the Halloween candy has been moved to the discount shelf?

The holiday season is full of an array of wonderful things: good food, family, friends, candles, kitchens filled with the smell of baking, the potential for snow, vacation – the list goes on. But there’s also the consumer-induced stress that’s indicative of the season, and even if you yourself have given up the tradition of conventional presents and gifting, getting away from the onslaught of “buy buy buy” can be difficult. Sometimes downright impossible.

That’s why it’s refreshing to see all those holiday initiatives that are focused on something bigger. Taking the spirit of the season and getting people really excited about doing something good instead of stressing over when and where they’re going to pick up last minute presents. Passports With Purpose (PWP) is making that happen with social media.

Started as a way to rally the power of travel bloggers – who all believe in the “power of travel to change the world” – PWP has evolved into a major social media giving campaign, involving not only bloggers, but online travel companies and corporate sponsors. The money all goes to a selected non-profit, this year, LAFTI, an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the lives of the Dalit (untouchable) population in India.

“As bloggers, travel or otherwise, we seem to live in a bubble – sitting behind our computers as we talk AT the world. Passports with Purpose allows for engagement between the other participants, the companies that have donated items for prizes and our readers, who are thrilled to be part of such an effort. And we can feel oh-so-good in the process,” says co-founder Beth Whitman.

The initiative, in its third year, is simple: bloggers host a prize on their site, and a $10 donation gets you a raffle ticket to enter to win the prize of your choice. That makes giving not only simple, but doable.

“Personally, I like the idea that instead of spending ten bucks on a stocking stuffers, you can make a ten dollar donation. Maybe it’s a ten dollar donation, that’s all it is, and it goes towards our beneficiary this year. But it could also be a ten dollar donation AND a luxe hotel stay or some cool gear or any number of great things. Maybe we mitigate some of that mad frenzy of holiday shopping stress by tying the funds to a significant cause,” says co-founder Pam Mandel.

As of the end of November, PWP has already raised $41,000, putting them even closer to their ultimate goal of $50,000.

To find out more and make a donation, visit the PWP website.

Image: mckaysavage

The post Holiday Good: Passports With Purpose Uses Social Media to Help Build a Village in India appeared first on EcoSalon.

Desperate times in Asia call for desperate green measures to achieve clean air (pollution is proving a major killer), pure water (so long, mountain glaciers) and enough food to meet the crushing demand.

Witness frantic and frenetic China where a massive industrial build up has come at the expense of the environment and human health. They knew they were forgetting something during that crazed development of resources. But now, with predictions of energy consumption doubling by 2030, something has to give.

Spurring immediate change was the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Literally offering a breath of fresh air, the government played catch-up, erecting buildings using strict green guidelines, shutting down polluting factories and restricting traffic. This pop-up example of  sustainable community development triggered action by eco activists to maintain the blue skies and cleaner air. Money is the strongest talking point.

Games or no games, Asia can now see a dramatic cost cutting incentive to lowering the impact of development, and change is coming at a faster pace. For this reason, progress is a mixed bag as environmentalists there work to pressure those most responsible for poisoning the air for personal gain.

Playing Catch Up on Improved Shipping Methods

A whopping 80 percent of global trade is done on the sea. Improved methods are crucial to improving air quality since seaborne trade is expected to double by 2025. Carbon emissions from shipping amounts to four percent of all emissions, globally, and the U.S and Europe have and pushed for more responsible methods, introducing green initiatives such as more efficient operating systems and reworking ship design for more effective trafficking.

News Asia reports that adoption for green initiatives by shipping companies has been slow in Singapore and Southeast Asia despite the fact implementing measures can save some 30 percent on fuel and energy costs. Plus, those who have invested in measures such as scrubber systems to remove pollutant particles have reported a one to three year return on that investment. While all of this is convincing, what might allow Asia to catch up is the threat its ships won’t be able to enter international waters without adhering to tighter regulations.

China Advancing Cleaner Energy out of Necessity

China is now reportedly ready to let wind energy soar as it makes a commitment to a renewable energy revolution. According to the Telegraph, that commitment is most apparent in Beijing, where edicts are being issued weekly including a pledge to generate 100 gigawatts of power from wind by 2020, tripling the original target of the national energy strategy.

In describing the new wind farms in western China, the Telegraph found they have even emerged as a tourist attraction where fascinated couples pose in front of the giant white propellers for photos. “Today, the same winds that struck fear into traders of the Silk Road, swallowing whole caravans in blinding storms of dust, are being used to power plans for a new, green revolution for China’s energy-hungry economy,” wrote the Telegraph.

Meanwhile in the city, the government has installed solar panels to power street lights in Beijing as well as solar water heaters in some of the remaining houses. In fact, the Telegraph tells us China will now spend more than six times America’s green stimulus spending to reduce emissions and create alternative energy by revamping nuclear, solar and hydroelectricity.

In terms of working together, a consortium of U.S and Chinese companies are investing $1.5 billion in a 600-megawatt wind farm in West Texas using turbines made in China. The power should meet the electricity demands of between 135,000 and 180,000 U.S. homes for a year. Chinese banks have largely paid for the farm with loan guarantees and cash grants from the U.S. government.

Japan Joins Call for Reduced Emissions

As the Japanese people also grow more environmentally aware (they were even in the dark about the dolphin slaughter) the government has pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent compared to 1990 levels, while upping environmental-related employment. Subsidies also are being flaunted for home solar electric generators and friendly appliances and hybrid vehicles.

In 2010, a new incentive initiative was created for the purchase of eco-friendly houses, and in 2011, the government will expand the Feed-in-Tariff range and set an emissions rights market. Other incentives encourage research and development. Investment Week suggests Japan’s primary focus is energy-saving technology. It is considered the most energy-efficient country in Asia. China’s share of greenhouse emissions is 19 percent – five times larger than Japan’s – and the country is expected to widen its ecology and tech markets for solar and hybrid cars, nuclear energy, water conservation and purification and waste disposal. Other growth areas include LED lighting, fuel batteries, smart grids, carbon dioxide capture and storage.

Forging  Green Dwellings for Emerging Middle Class

Asia is also advancing in the uphill battle of energy-efficient housing, taking its lead from the West. Japan might be slightly ahead of the yuppie housing game but all that newly acquired income from making all of our stuff has seen a rapidly emerging middle-class in China. That populace now seeks the same green standards for cleaner materials, energy and water efficiency in residential dwellings as the educated and informed in Europe and the U.S.

China Daily tells us a number of real estate developers are answering that call by adopting green industry systems for residential buildings. Shenzhen Fountain Corporation, for example, is slated to develop LEED-registered residential buildings in Zhuhai in Guangdong province and Changsha in Hunan province. Apparently, this will bring world-class environmental standards to China.

Officials see they can save 20 to 60 percent on energy consumption, and better yet, LEED-certified buildings, though more costly to build, see good returns on investments in the long run. Developers see it can give them a competitive edge while meeting increasing demand.

Hybrid Rice to Replace Disappearing Fields

Hybrid seed growers want the government in the Philippines to act now and urge local farmers to adopt the use of hybrid rice technology which has proven effective in doubling or tripling their farm yield as high as 17 tons per hectares. This is comparison to the output of four to five tons per hectare for certified inbred seeds.

Expanding land and using old technology is no longer a viable option. Still, the Aquino administration has said it would continue using inbred seeds. Advocates of a hybrid rice program argue without it, China would not have busted out to become the second-largest world economy able to feed more than 1.3 billion people.

China embraced the technology in the 1960s when a famine threatened starvation, and has since led the world in the research of hybrid rice and development. In describing the technology, Commodity explains that in conventional rice plants, inbreeding take place since each flower has both male and female organs, allowing the plant to self-pollinate  to produce. But Hybrid rice seeds come from two genetically distinct parents requiring three breeding lines (male-sterile line, the maintainer line, and the restorer line).

Complicated, no? China’s ability to master it has given the country an edge in not only feeding its own population, but providing ways to cultivate sticky rice in other parts of Asia where it is popular. Farmers must buy new hybrid seeds every season and China is now developing super hybrids from parent lines that are genetically more distinct than typical hybrids and contain a greater degree of heterosis, and therefore, higher yields.

Images: Ivan Walsh; Kiwi Mikex; Dmytrok; FHKE; Muji; Bionicfarmer

The post Asia: Desperately Seeking Sustainability appeared first on EcoSalon.

There was a moment in time when digital watches came on the scene in a big way. Ubiquitous Casios faced down analog timepieces in the marketplace to the extent that conventional wisdom (read: what my parents were saying) had analog going the way of the sundial. There was chatter among adults, I recall, that “it won’t be long before kids can’t even read a clock anymore.”

Today, I sometimes wonder whether handwriting will soon be written off. I don’t recall seeing my guys actually handwrite all that much while they were growing up. I did spy their notebooks and scrawl here and there, and I think I got one or two letters from camp, but it wasn’t like when we were young and wrote on everything we could get our hands on. I do see them typing. At least I think I do; their fingers move way too fast for me to know what’s really going on between user and keyboard. They text, too. I get their texts. I do not get “notes.” In any event, I just read this story about why I’m so much smarter than my kids!

Turns out, writing by hand makes kids – and adults, for that matter – smarter. This, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article by Gwendolyn Bounds, who cites a numbers of studies, including one based on magnetic resonance imaging. The upshot of the research, she says, is that handwriting “helps with learning letters and shapes, can improve idea composition and expression, and may aid fine motor-skill development.” This is the good stuff that we need to nail down early on if we’re going to know our ass from our elbows as we get on in years.

Speaking of getting on in years, we adults also reap benefits from putting pen to paper. Bounds points out that “some physicians say handwriting could be a good cognitive exercise for baby boomers working to keep their minds sharp as they age.” The Week adds to the mix a number of specific benefits, including studies that show that writing by hand “can get ideas out faster” and increases neural activity, which is always fun.

And in the perception versus reality department, good handwriting makes you seem smarter, as well: “Several studies have shown that the same mediocre essay will score much higher if written with good penmanship and much lower if written out in poor handwriting,” says Vanderbilt University education professor Steve Graham. “There is a reader effect that is insidious”¦ People judge the quality of your ideas based on your handwriting.”

While this all could lead to an unfortunate bout of tech bashing, consider, says Bounds, that “new software for touch-screen devices, such as the iPad, is starting to reinvigorate the practice.” I know that I got myself this little iPhone “paint” application that I read David Hockney uses, and I now find myself “coloring” again from time to time. Smarter me? Maybe. It makes me smile for sure.

So regarding my kids, I lied. My kids are way smarter than me. They certainly are when you put my 17- and 20-year-old self against where they’re at today. Beside their genetically endowed brilliance (had to), their access to and facility with information as they developed far surpassed mine in every way. The big question now is: Is information wasted on the young? Better jot that one down.

Oh, and neither of them even wears a watch.

Image: Caitlinator

The post Write On, Baby: Why I’m Smarter than My Kids appeared first on EcoSalon.

My parents moved from Nebraska to Hollywood in the fifties, having heard the land game was booming in the San Fernando Valley. My developer father built us a home on a cul-de-sac in the suburb of Woodland Hills. The valley was still rife with small farms, ranches, undisturbed orange groves and only a handful of strip malls. We even played in a bog – a gated open forest located right across the street from my low-slung Mediterranean manse.

Paradise was not yet lost. It was still lush and green and hopeful. It had a culture, distinguished by great pockets of open space in the rapidly built-up jungle. Somehow, Ahmanson Ranch was spared from a sub-division fate when Washington Mutual gave up the fight to develop the refuge in 2003 and it was sold to the state of California, preserving its undeveloped status as a natural park. It’s located near my brother’s home in the Hidden Hills, and he often explores it on horseback, encountering a rattler or coyote now and then.

But that kind of wilderness isn’t the norm. Uncorked commercial development and urban sprawl greatly changed the rural childhood picture as I knew it with grid-locked, smog-producing freeways linking inhabitants to three car garage homes with massive gas barbecues and pools, and mostly, endless monstrous retail centers in Tarzana, Reseda, Encino, Sherman Oaks, Van Nuys, Canoga Park and North Hollywood. Sure, there are canyons and mountains and open terrain, but usually it is visual experience with very little access.

Meantime, most cultural centers (museums, theater, concert halls) are located downtown in “the city” and you have to subject yourself to the stress of traveling there to show your children there is more to Los Angeles than markets, fast food joints, gas stations, nail salons, car washes and dry cleaners. The strip malls and shopping center are now the culture of the valley. And they beckon us to buy and use more than we need.

I think of this because my youngest daughter is housed up in the valley for a week, initiating her summer vacation and celebrating a well-deserved break from the strains of 5th grade. She is spending “quality time” with my family members who all still reside in the valley.

My mother, sister and brother are hard pressed to keep Lauren entertained. I guess their ages and the fact they are childless must be factored in. But I also believe it is the culture of the outdoors being dramatically outstaged by retail blight.

The other day, my mother dragged the kid with her on her errands to the market, the cleaners, the car wash, the gas station. I was dragged on errands too, but also driven to the beach on summer days when it took a mere 20 minutes to traverse the canyon in her station wagon to Zuma. It also took 20 minutes to get to Westwood or Century City or Beverly Hills, but cars have ruined it and now the hour commute is too much for my mom to handle most days. Mom also spent a few hours with Lauren at the local 20,000 sq-foot strip mall, The Commons, where they saw The Karate Kid and had a bite.

The Commons has become a common destination for my daughters when visiting grandma. Hey, you can keep up with the Kardashians who have a shop called Dash across the street. Ain’t that culture?

My brother took my daughter with him to look at properties and to the office. She likes to color, so being indoors for a few hours isn’t all that boring. After, he took her to lunch and to Nordstrom, where they bumped into my mother at the jewelry counter. It was a funny coincidence that I’m sure added some interest to the week. My sister, who is the most innovative in the group, did arrange a swim day for Lauren with a friend and her child at a pool with some kind of crazy water features.

Swimming has always filled the summer days of valley kids, but it was never enough for me and my cronies. We also spent countless hours exploring those open orange groves and various fields which were interspersed between the developments. We hopped on our bikes or cruised around on foot, never fearing some lunatic would snatch us up if we dared venture into the green without grown ups. At times, the destination was the only strip mall (Corbin Village) but along the way we picked oranges and pomegranates and stopped to climb trees.

Boredom is an okay thing for kids during the summer break. It stirs the imagination and makes them resourceful. Build a playhouse out of an old cardboard box. Play beauty shop in the pool. Build castles in the sand. Sew clothes for those Barbies out of rags.

Sometimes the down time from camps, vacations, Disneyland, parties and parades can be the most memorable time of your childhood. Only, when you are completely surrounded by commercialism during that down time – block after block after block of  stores and businesses, it can be hugely oppressive. It helps to have a little green. And I wish more remained.

I suppose the only upside, which is also a downside, is the recession’s effect on the strip mall – forcing many tenants to abandon their leases and close their businesses. As a builder’s daughter, I empathize with the loss of income from the vacancies. Everyone is hurting. But it makes me wonder if the behemoths could be replaced with absolutely nothing.

Raze the properties. Return the land. Leave it alone. This could restore the valley to a hopeful green place, again. Mom and dad believed development of the valley was the future. Lauren’s mom and dad believe it is now about creating more undeveloped space – the kind a kid on a bike can explore on a boring, summer day.

Images: front door, Calabasas Real Estate, ebay

The post How Green Was My Valley appeared first on EcoSalon.

It happens to the best of us. Our mission is to clean out the storage unit in the garage. We plow through a few bags and boxes, tossing stuff in the large blue recycle bin or putting other stuff in a pile for goodwill. Then it happens – we stumble upon the box. The one stuffed to the point of overflow with old diaries and journals from years past.

“One quick look,” you think. Next thing you know you’re sitting on the dirty concrete with tear-filled eyes – and three hours have passed.

Been there? If you’ve ever kept a journal – written your deepest darkest secrets, recorded the details of your day, purged your insides out onto the page – I’m certain you know what I mean when I say journaling isn’t for sissies.

And choosing the journal to jot our thoughts is serious business. Instead of cutting down new trees, why not recycle and reuse what we already have? Ecojot makes 100% recycled journals, notebooks and sketchbooks that caught my eye – they’re playful, colorful and fun! And the company is green from the ground up. Ecojot uses recycled packaging and their Canadian paper mill runs on biogas, uses recycled water, recycles all its waste and donates usable scraps to local schools. As if that isn’t enough, a portion of all Ecojot sales is donated to an environmental cause.

Check out their website to learn more about ecojot and read their list of green-going suggestions including “buy local” and “only run your dishwasher when it’s full”.

Note: Journals come in various sizes, styles and themes with heavy duty covers and paper made from 100% post-consumer waste that is chlorine- and acid-free. Only non-toxic vegetable based inks and glues are used. Prices range from $6 to $30.

The post Save a Tree. Keep a Journal appeared first on EcoSalon.

If you have noticed new ways to be happy or are one of the cheeky tricksters out there contributing to nurturing talent and improving normal life, you might be unwittingly participating in the growing field of something called Positive Psychology.

In 1998, Martin Seligman chose this theme for his tenure as the president of the American Psychological Association. Whose inspiration gave us the term? Maslow coined the term in 1954 in his book, Motivation and Personality.

Positive psychology might have gone against the grain, since prior to Seligman, “the previous 50 years had been primarily dedicated to addressing mental illness rather than mental ‘wellness’.”

I have always felt a draw to nurture talent and to improve normal life. I found, while growing up, there wasn’t as much support for that as I would have liked. My own studies in the field took me down the path of looking for the problems, because those were the resources available to me educationally at the time. Can anyone say, OUCH! Perhaps, you, like me, find this newer direction in psychology a big plus.

Three overlapping areas highlighted in the field of Positive Psychology that are being explored are:

1. The Pleasant Life or the “Life of Enjoyment”
2. The study of the Good Life or the “Life of Engagement”
3. Inquiry into the Meaningful Life or “Life of Affiliation”

Like “Mental Wellness”, “Green Wellness” – personal ecology – has a nice ring to it, if you ask me!

To find out more, check out this link and peek around on the web, too. Answer the call to wellness on every level and enjoy an outstanding life.

Image: Victor Bezrukov

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Note: this is a post by Kate Carter, one of our pals at the fabulous Divine Caroline.

For years, I’ve felt obligated to say I like yoga. Who doesn’t like it? It’s the cool thing to do. Soul-enriching exercise. Stretchy pants. Hollywood endorsements. Hip and calm. But after enrolling in three different classes and enduring hours that felt like years, I am stopping my lies: I hate yoga.

I hate the way the teachers speak in breathy whispers. I want them to speak up, because when I’m in the downward dog position, I’m distracted by others’ unseemly body parts encroaching on my personal space.

I know I’m supposed to lose myself in yoga class, taking on a blank, yet peaceful state of mind. I try to forget about work-related stress, the grocery list, and that mole on my leg that might look funny enough to schedule a trip to the dermatologist. But then I start obsessing about how and when I’m going to get everything done, and worries about my mole turn into nightmarish daydreams about chemotherapy and dying from skin cancer. Now how is yoga going to help me with that?

Not only do my worries surface in yoga class, they become amplified by the fact that I’m cheating on some stretch that feels terrible and doesn’t seem to burn any calories anyway. My watch becomes my enemy, and the minutes pass as slowly as the teacher whispers.

“Hurry up!” I want to scream. But the teacher, oblivious to my panicked anxiety, closes her eyes and groans, “ooohhhhmmmm.” And that is when I know-for sure-that I am in the wrong place.

I’ve taken yoga classes at independent, artsy centers and at large gyms. I’ve taken prenatal yoga, beginner’s yoga, and intermediate yoga. I’ve bought a mat, comfortable pants, and contemplated purchasing a tape. But despite the scenery changes and the yoga-infused consumerism, I always find myself back at the starting line.

During the first yoga class I ever took, I passed gas during a breathing exercise. The teacher at the “Healing Arts Center” immediately commended my body’s natural reaction, but instead of soaking in the praise, I got a case of the giggles that did not stop for the rest of the hour-long class. The teacher’s praise turned into reproachful glances and then angry stares as it became clear that I was not mature enough to handle yoga or a fart.

I missed the next class because of a genuine scheduling conflict, but when I returned the following week, I felt my classmates’ assuming looks: they thought I’d been too embarrassed to come back. To add to my discomfort, we started on the breathing exercises again-popping our stomachs out and back in with great vigor-and I got the giggles once more, because all I could think about was how funny farts are. The teacher asked if I needed to take some time to gather myself, and my answer was “no.” I knew no amount of gathering could make the situation less humorous.

The biggest mistake I’ve ever made, as far as yoga is concerned, is enrolling in a prenatal yoga class while I was working a demanding job and moving houses. I was pregnant with my first-and only-child, and if I had to do it over again, I would choose instead to go see movies, read novels, and do all those other things you don’t get to do once you have a baby. I want those wasted hours back, darn it!

My classmates loved the end of each session, when the teacher would brew some kind of spicy tea and read “birth stories” that previous students wrote after having their babies. The ethos of the class was such that epidurals (and in some cases, doctors and hospitals) were evils to be avoided at all costs. I sipped the tea and listened to tales about the “ring of fire” and looked at my watch and thought I might never escape. I began to think of that teacher as Ms. Torture, because she seemed to want me to endure the worst pain on the face of the earth with no medicinal help.

Just hours after I decided to come clean about yoga, I received an email from my brother, who lives in Siberia and manages two silver mines. He announced to my family that he was enrolled in a yoga class in the city of Khabarovsk, and his email read: “I’m learning to speak in a soft, peaceful singsong. Next I’m going to start sewing my own clothes and drinking tea from tree bark.”

So my skeptical, sarcastic brother is making fun of his yoga classes, too. But-and this is shocking-he is taking them. In Siberia.

As yoga goes mainstream and spreads to all corners of the world, I’m going to stick to my guns. No more yoga for me. Maybe one day, when I’m old and frail and can’t touch my toes, I’ll wish I had gotten into it. But for now, I’ll stick with running-an activity that really is good for my heart-and soul.

Friendly shout-out time! Divine Caroline: There’s a new place where real voices rule. Where people can write and publish stories about anything that matters to them. It’s called Divine Caroline and it’s full of words and wisdom just the way you like them – dripping with honesty. What do we talk about? Style, home, food, relationships, travel, changemakers and much more. You can submit a story if you want or just see what everyone else has to say. Yes, it’s free! Hope to see you soon at Divine Caroline.

Top Image: Shayan (USA)

The post Confessions of a Yoga Hater appeared first on EcoSalon.