Earth Responders

Resilience Activism at Work

Earth Responders empowers activists in finding pathways for social justice and ecologically restorative land stewardship, regenerative community, and resilient cultural renewal. With richly experiential earth centered learning, community service, support for innovative projects, this project is an emergent and emergency response to the immense challenges now present on the Earth.

With the continuation of pandemic mandates, Earth Responders in 2021 will engage in a primary focus on regenerative agriculture, food growing, food security, food sovereignty, and plant medicine in order to engage participants working on site in truly “essential” business.

The intersectionality of climate and ecological restoration is intricately interconnected with social restoration and justice. A collaborative approach among organizations is needed to bring these related concerns together and to demonstrate a model that is scalable.

Earth Responders is an initiative with deep regard and connection for the spiritual intelligence of Earth.

Phase 1 & 2 of the Earth Responders Service Residency took place on site at Metta Earth Institute in 2020, and we are preparing for the next phase on site in Spring, Summer, and Autumn 2021. Learning from the implementation of Phase 1 and 2, Phase 3 will start to scale the model at different sites with aligned place-based organizations.

EARTH RESPONDERS PRACTICES AT METTA EARTH

Regenerative Agriculture

With the crisis of a global pandemic, the focus of Earth Responders in the foreseeable future needs to align with state mandates requiring that only “essential” work and businesses are allowed. These include agriculture and food security endeavors, as well as health.

Carbon Farming
Essentials of Soil: Composting, Cover Cropping, & Fungi
Bee Keeping
Animal Care
Rotational Grazing & Holistic Management
Biodynamic & Organic Farming & Gardening
Companion Planting
Wild Edibles, Foraging, & Sustainable Wildcrafting
Farm to Plate: Food Harvesting, Preparation, & Preservation
Raw & Fermented Foods: Kombucha, Kimchi, Pickles
Dairy, Kefir, Yogurt, & Cheese

Plant Medicine

As essential in the global crisis as food security, plant medicine and herbal healing hold a core place in alleviating suffering. As economic and social systems destabilize, collapse, many traditions of plant medicine knowledge bring great healing potential and offer an abundant contribution to well-being.

Earth Responders is working with BIPOC collaborators on a project called FreePharm, which engages Earth Responders in growing, harvesting, and creating plant medicine to distribute to those in need.

Wild Herbs, Foraging, & Sustainable Wildcrafting
Cultivation of herbs in gardens
Mushrooms & fungi
Herbal Tea Harvest & Preparation
Herbal salve and oil preparations
Vinegars, infusions, decoctions

Holistic Permaculture

Permaculture is an emerging worldview and multidisciplinary design science that addresses global issues with a holistic, systems approach.

Earth Responder sites embody sanctuary for shifts in thinking and practical solutions.

Permaculture Ethics & Principles
The Permaculture Flower as a World View
Designing with Nature
Pattern Recognition
Site Analysis, Assessment, and Design
Polycultures & Guilds
The Use of Tools, Techniques, and Technologies in Balance with Life

Wilding

Deep connection with nature and re-skilling in regenerative processes brings greater sensitivity and healing into agricultural enterprises.

Forest Ecology
Edible Food Forests
Mushroom Cultivation
Natural First Aid and Wild Medicinals
Wild Food Foraging for Edibles
Tool Sharpening and Use
Natural Fiber Crafting: Cordage & Baskets
Knots, Tarps, & Wild Encampments
Bow Drill Fire-making
Backcountry Food Preservation
Wilderness Ethics
Ecopsychology Principles
Wild Questing Process
Chaos & Creativity
Wilderness Leadership
Plant & Animal Communication

NOTE:

* The bolded topics are essential and need to be taught by BIPOC facilitators.

Regenerative Community Living

Community resiliency is a response to the growing social and environmental crises facing our world. Sustainable community design and practice provides a rich immersion experience to explore whole and healthy communities. Activating systems of economics and governance, biomimicry and natural design, land stewardship, and social justice rejuvenates our communities with deeper sustainability.

Cultural Cosmologies: A Study of Past & Present Cultures in Deep Connection with Nature
BIPOC Perspectives *
Land Access Issues for Regenerative Community (Reparation, Rematriation, & Pathways for Healing Land Oppressions) *
Designing with Nature
Core Processes Of Community Building
Visions, Missions, & Covenants: Refreshing Social Structures
Intentional Community Models: Ecovillage, Community Land Trusts, & Cohousing
Transition Towns
Regenerative Economics: Coops, Barter, Guilds, & Gift Economies
Creating Authentic Ceremony & Ritual
Creating Sanctuary, Group Safety & Ethics
Communication Processes: Co-Listening, Non-Violent Communication, & Way of Council
Leadership Models
Forms of Activism
Power, Privilege, Oppression, & Rank
Cultural Safety *

Yoga Meditation

Yoga is rooted in the understanding that everything is interconnected – earth, water, fire, air, space, soil, animals, plants, cosmos, and all beings. Activists stretch body and mind to soften and expand edges, building resilience and flexibility. Practices of yoga and meditation at the river, in the forests, the gardens, and with the animals bring integration of person with Earth. These practices enrich the experience of life. When we are quiet inside, our eyes are open to the vibrancy that surrounds us. This is an opportunity to embody these practices and the contemplative ways of nature, wildness, and farm life.

Morning Yoga & Meditation Practice
Embodiment Principles & Processes
Breathing Practices: Hive Mind, Breath of Joy, & Sounding Breath
Sitting, Walking, and Work Meditations
Drishti Eye Gaze, Earth Savasana, & other Metta Earth Yoga Practices
Deep Ecology & Yoga Philosophy
Green Yoga as Environmental Activism
Circle Yoga & Partner Yoga
Posture Practices with Nature: River, Trees, & Rocks

LEADERSHIP FACILITATORS

Russell and Gillian will be the primary guides for this year’s Earth Responders session, largely due to the pandemic and needing to keep our leadership circle simple. We are considering inviting one farm couple to join us as support staff. We will invite guest presenters in through online sessions, as well as offer selected webinars, talks, and films.

Gillian Kapteyn Comstock

Co-Director of Metta Earth Institute

gillian@mettaearth.org

Gillian Kapteyn Comstock, MA, is the founding co-director of Metta Earth Institute and the Metta Earth project, which integrates regenerative farming, contemplative practices, community living, and sustainability education. Gillian offers mentoring, program facilitation, and leadership trainings.

As a holistic psychotherapist, certified permaculture designer, and advanced yoga guide, she synthesizes disciplines to support cultural renewal. She is dedicated to creating sanctuaries for others to experience vibrant presence.

With a passion for discovering the wild in mind, body, and earth, she has led yoga retreats, wilderness quests, and trainings in nature sanctuaries around the world.

For the last dozen years Gillian has intertwined this work with grounding in regenerative agriculture and focalizes this in the care of gardens and greenhouses, carbon farming and grazing processes with Icelandic sheep, Milking Shorthorn cows, and heritage breed chickens, as well as the growing and wildcrafting of herbal teas and medicines.

For more than two decades she has been a participant in the Assisi Institute community, which engages in a highly dynamic interdisciplinary investigation of Jungian psychology, creative process, mythology, and the new sciences.

A mother of three adult children and grandmother of five, Gillian has lived a life immersed in cooperative community, the gift economy, and innovative social processes resonate with natural systems and wild nature.

Russell Comstock

Co-Director of Metta Earth Institute

russell@mettaearth.org

Russell has given his life to living, learning, and loving. As stepfather for thirty years, Russell is dedicated to fathering, family, and community life. Always moved by the soul of earth, he holds an MA in Contemplative and Ecological Leadership and a BA in Human Ecology.

A practitioner of yoga for more than twenty years, he is certified in both Interdisciplinary and Jivamukti Yoga, and brings to all his teaching a spirit of embodied devotion. Russell is a founding member of the Green Yoga Association and serves on the Green Yoga Council. With extensive experience directing programs in wilderness, adventure, and experiential education, Russell integrates a steady intention to help humans connect more compassionately with earth and with each other.

He has trained as a quest and wilderness guide with Earth Rise Foundation, School of Lost Borders, and Outdoor Leadership Training Seminars. He has been a nationally certified Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician (WEMT) for many years, and now maintains a Wilderness First Responder certification. He has recently completed a handbook called: Metta Earth Yoga – Contemplative Ecological Practices for a Sustainable Future.

Our intention is to contribute to a growing movement of resilience activism through land stewardship, regenerative community, and cultural renewal. We hope to expand the number of sites for Earth Responder activism. Possible sites to collaborate with would be any places that have quarantine capacity, especially since the current pandemic is creating many levels of uncertainty. This may include places such as camps, boarding schools, and colleges that have commercial kitchens, sleeping accommodations, and meeting spaces. In the future we plan to have much greater outreach for BIPOC communities to have land access on various sites.

Apply for Spring, Summer, and Fall 2021 Sessions below: application link goes to google forms

APPLY NOW

EARTH RESPONDERS PROJECT DETAILS

WORK EXCHANGE / GIFT ECONOMY

Fee for each session is $2500- $5000 (sliding scale) for 10 weeks
2 BIPOC full scholarships
Additional scholarships (beyond sliding scale) are need based

Be Part of a Gift Economy Project

Metta Earth is interested in economic processes that create paradigm CHANGE. We would like Earth Responders to explore forms of reciprocity and collaboration versus modern capitalism. Tapping into the wisdom of earth connected cultures, we see this as a form of radical activism, a change of narrative from the current systems that are creating enormous social injustices. Inspired by a holistic focus on community, we want to actualize regenerative processes together.

Daily Schedule

DAILY SCHEDULE

6-7:15 Morning Practice (yoga asana, pranayama, sitting meditation, and/or other

contemplative practices)

7:15-8 Transition & Breakfast

8-9 Attunement, Check-in & Morning Hands Work

9-11 Experiential Learning Work Period

11-12 Experiential Learning Work Period (includes midday farm chores) (Dinner Team)

11-12:30 Farm to Plate Meal Making (Lunch Team)

12:30-1:30 Lunch & Seminar Topic

1:30-2 Lunch Clean-up & Community Care (Lunch Team)

2-4 Open Time

4-5:30 Experiential Seminar

5:30-6:30 Experiential Learning Work Period (includes evening farm chores) (Lunch

Team)

5:30-7 Farm to Plate Meal Making (Dinner Team)

7:00-8:00 Dinner ~ breakout in open meal gatherings

8:00-8:30 Clean-up & Community Care (Dinner Team)

8:30-9:30 Experiential seminar, open events, discussions, films, personal reflections, or

personal space options

COVID-19 Protocols

COVID-19 PROTOCOLS

2 weeks hermitage retreat with packaged meals. Social distancing & masks during community times
8 weeks in the Metta Earth “pod” without these protocols
Staying on site and in surrounding outside landscapes
All sessions have small groups to allow for adequate quarantine protocols, especially in the coldness of spring

2021 Sessions

2021 SESSIONS

Three 10 week sessions, each with a theme in concert with the prime focus of regenerative agriculture.SPRING: April 4-June 12, 2021 Holistic Permaculture Design Limited to 4 participants, each in one of our 4 yurts SUMMER: June 20-August 28, 2021 Regenerative Community Design Limited to 8 participants, each in one of our 4 yurts, 4 wall tents AUTUMN: September 5-November 13, 2021 Rewilding Design Limited to 8 participants, each in one of our 4 yurts, 4 wall tents (shared yurts in coldness of autumn)

PROJECT DETAILS

Three 10 week sessions, each with a theme in concert with the prime focus of regenerative agriculture
- Spring: April 4-June 12 Holistic Permaculture Design
- Summer: June 20-August 28 Regenerative Community Design
- Autumn: September 5-November 13 Rewilding Design
Note: for the week in between each session, it is possible to stay on site for a work immersion with no fee.
Includes: (see schedule for details)
- 4 hours/day of experiential learning work
- 2 hours/day of cooperative farm to plate meal making
- 2-4 hours/day experiential seminars
- 6 days/week
- Sunday Open Flow Day

“I have found a grounded sense of purpose in the Earth Responders community at Metta Earth. It has been revitalizing to respond to the needs of our environment and society collectively. This work is urgent and necessary.” -Leo Ashkar Heikkila

“I experience the Earth Responders project at Metta Earth as a community that catalyzes inner transformation and connection to the land.” -Juliana

“The Earth Responders project has radically altered the way in which I live my life and connect with the world around me. Being here has allowed me to find my place in this world, to dig in, and to take responsibility from there.” -Christopher Potter

Collaborators:

CHANGE THE WORLD KIDS

The Change the World Kids are dedicated to making the world a better place by working without charge to help individuals in our community and organizations and environments all over the world.

Our goal is to assist individuals in need, work to improve our communities, and steward the natural world in which we live. We initiate humanitarian projects to create a more just, safe, and sustainable world, and environmental projects to strengthen resilience and biodiversity, locally and globally. While doing so, we learn life-skills and offer challenges that have changed our lives, our families, and our communities. Annually we provide over 8,000 hours of local help and 3,900 hours of environmental and humanitarian work in our global community.