Mixed Media Reviews

By Debi Weiss

Natural Building and a New Sense of the Earth explores the world of natural building and shares inspiring stories of people in the Pacific Northwest who are working to create an alternative to our consumer society—people who are creating beautiful, inexpensive, ecologically-designed houses made of earth and straw.

Some of the people profiled include Linda Smiley and Ianto Evans of Coquille, Oregon (541-942-2005, www.cobcottage.com), authors of The Hand-Sculpted House, who pioneered Natural Building with earth, straw and sand in the US in 1993. They teach practical skills with a wide variety of trainings including Cob building (from an old English root meaning “a lump or rounded mass”) which uses hands and feet to form lumps of earth mixed with sand and straw, similar to sculpting with clay. Easy to learn to build with, and very inexpensive, Cob uses no forms, ramming, cement or blocks, and lends itself to organic shapes with curved walls, arches and niches. Cool in summer, warm in winter, Cob homes are resistant to rain and cold and are suited to climates like the Pacific Northwest (thousands of comfortable cob homes in England have been continuously occupied for many centuries). Recyclable, abundant, cheap and healthy, Cob is an excellent building material.

Also profiled are Coenraad and Courtney Rogmans of Jacksonville, Oregon. The Rogmans, who build straw bale and cob buildings complete with solar electricity and water catchment systems, work to promote natural building as a real alternative to conventional construction methods and teach workshops in natural building, natural design and appropriate technology (www.housealive.org, 541-899-3751). Their concern for community, people’s health, environment, social justice and a peaceful world is also reflected in projects they have done in Mexico, Guatamala, Panama and Spain and on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.

White Oak Farm, a small, non-profit education center also located in Southern Oregon (PO Box 450, Williams, OR 97544, www.whiteoakfarmcsa.org) is shown putting the final touches on a large timber-framed straw bale and cob community center that they have been building. Dedicated to cultivating connections between people and their local ecosystems they teach hands-on workshops on their organic farm in the arts of sustainable living.

Some other featured natural builders include Brendan Flanagan, who with his family and friends turned a remote wooded hillside into a snug community of homes and gardens; Rob Bolman, an advocate of incorporating natural building techniques into mainstream building practices, who created an ecovillage in the middle of Eugene, Oregon, and who speaks passionately about the link between natural building and social justice; Meka Bunch who after only a week-long workshop, built his own elegant cob cottage and who works sharing natural building with people abroad; and Kiko Denzer, a sculptor and cob builder, and his wife Hannah, an organic gardener and baker, who transformed a dilapidated outbuilding in the country into a cozy cob home surrounded by beautiful gardens.

Perhaps you too have dreamed of another kind of life closer to the earth, a little place in the country that you build yourself, a garden and some solar panels for electricity, time to be with those you love and to do the things you most want to do. It may not be as impossible a dream as you have thought it to be. Natural Building and a New Sense of the Earth presents a way of building that can transform how you see the earth and yourself, with houses that you can build yourself!

Diary of a Connecticut Yogi
How Kundalini Tore Me
Apart and Put Me Back Together
JJ Semple, 164 pg, $16.95
Get Life Right Foundation, 2006
www.getliferight.com

Diary of a Connecticut Yogi is a personal account of the author’s experience of a Kundalini awakening. His story begins with a childhood accident that robs him of two of his most precious talents—singing and mathematics—both of which he was particularly gifted in. After years of difficulty and frustration at not being able to achieve at his previous levels he finds an obscure Taoist text, The Secret of the Golden Flower, which eventually leads him to discover the nature of his deficits and the path back to health.

Under certain circumstances, Kundalini awakens and releases stored and blocked energies—which can be quite intense, occasionally painful, and often leads to mental states that can be extremely disorienting. Although a dormant energy within most people, there are many who experience Kundalini awakenings unexpectedly, while others pursue them with yogic breathing techniques and practices. Described by Anodea Judith, Ph.D. as “the agent of self-transformation on the physical, mental, emotional, psychic and spiritual levels,” Kundalini can be as physically transformative as it is spiritual.

JJ Semple’s account of the changes he experienced during the meditation practice which led to his dramatic awakening helps the reader understand just how healing an arising Kundalini can be. JJ explains:

“The problem is that classifying Kundalini as a means to ‘spiritual’ enlightenment limits its benefits to a realm many people have neither the time nor the inclination to explore. What’s more, many people are put off by terms like ‘higher consciousness’ and ‘enlightenment.’ On the other hand, if they knew that Kundalini had therapeutic health benefits, they’d be eager to learn about it.”

With its empirical discussion of the physiological nature of Kundalini, Diary of a Connecticut Yogi offers a fascinating look into this multi-dimensional phenomenon.