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Potluck and Sauna Night…..Yumminess on many levels

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After the completion of the community sauna we established what is fast becoming one of the highlights of the week here at Full Bloom: Potluck and Sauna night.   Its a night where we put out an invitation to our broader community to come and join us for a meal, catch up on the valley happenings, and then go for a nice sweat.  This past Friday we were blessed with some seriously talented and fun musicians who busted into a music jam and sing along. Singing, playing instruments, and dancing is such a natural thing to do at a gathering and yet there’s part of me that’s still getting used to it.  I just didn’t grow up with it.   When it happens here I’m so grateful and reminded that I want to build it into our lives here more often.  I believe it to be foundational to the long-term viability of an intentional community to have plenty of singing, dancing, and music creation happening.  Its the ultimate soul food and part of us begins to starve without it..  We are wired to spend time together in “musical communion”, its one of the most powerful ways of breaking the trance of separation, of our neurosis.

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Last Friday night’s sauna was the first time we took a sauna with the tile work and entryway mosaic completed.  As you can imagine its a wonderful image to just be absorbed by while in a sauna.

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“I think music in itself is healing. It’s an explosive expression of humanity. It’s something we are all touched by. No matter what culture we’re from, everyone loves music.“

An Evening with Coenraad Rogmans: How to Create a Sense of Belonging through Natural Building

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A big piece of what we are about here at Full Bloom is creating a sense of belonging through how we design our buildings, our gardens, our lives in general.  Last month we were fortunate enough to host a talk given by our local natural building “guru” Coenraad Rogmans.  His talk a was entitled: “The Ten Principles of Natural Building”.  Ocean, our 8 year old resident artist was kind enough to put the title of the talk on our white board:

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It was an enlightening evening as Coenraad emphasized that natural building is much more than what material you use (cob, straw bale etc.) and more about how you design in such a way as to create a sense of beauty, connection, purpose, health, and belonging in the space you create.  Pointing out that real sustainability comes from people feeling at home, at ease, connnected with each other and the land they are living on or visiting.

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We all appreciated Coenraad’s humility and depth of perspective as the evening progressed.  I was left astounded by how important it is to consider all of these principles when designing a space and how they are often overlooked in contemporary architecture and design.  His site is www.housealive.org.  if you would like to learn more about him and his offerings.

“Everyone is aware that most of the built environment today lacks a natural order, an order which presents itself very strongly in places that were built centuries ago.”
Christopher Alexander