Regenerative Living

As a community largely comprised of Green School families, we share a central question: How do we live well in this place, as a community?

Over the years, we have observed that the conversation has evolved from "sustainability"—maintaining the status quo, doing less harm—toward "regeneration." It's a functional criterion: does our presence increase the capacity of the ecosystem, community, and individual well-being to adapt, evolve, and thrive?

From Footprint to Vitality

The footprint mindset focuses on subtraction: reducing carbon, reducing waste, reducing impact. Regeneration focuses on addition. It asks: how can we add to the complexity, fertility, and resilience of this land?

A thriving ecosystem requires cultivation. A regenerative village is defined by what it harbors: living water pools and reed beds, wetlands, homes built with sustainable materials, waste that cycles back into fertility, cultural respect woven into daily practice, more pollinators, richer soil microbiology, cleaner water cycles, higher ecological literacy.

Thinking As Nature

Our village and the wider community share a practice: learning to think as nature, rather than about nature (learn what Eco in Eco Village stands for).

We align our daily rhythms—our architecture, waste systems, living water ecosystems, social structures—with the intelligence already present in living systems.

Home

Our technology has evolved exponentially, but our biology hasn't. Our nervous systems, circadian rhythms, and need for connection remain unchanged from ten thousand years ago. Modern life creates a longing we often can't name—a pull toward something we've moved away from but our bodies still remember.

Regenerative living bridges that gap. When we design homes that breathe with the canopy (built sustainably), swim in fresh water pools, and eat from local soil tended by our neighbors, we create an environment where the human organism can settle back into its natural cadence.

Core Principles

Systems Thinking
Water, soil, community, and structures form interconnected systems. Permaculture's first principle guides us: observe and interact with the whole. A garden's placement influences microclimate. Waste becomes the input for fertility. Each element serves multiple functions, and each function is supported by multiple elements.

Active Restoration
We aim to leave the land biologically richer than we found it. The deeper restoration is in ourselves and our children—recovering a lived connection to nature that generations can carry forward. This alignment becomes inheritance.

Social Ecology
Just as a forest relies on fungal networks to transport nutrients between trees, a village relies on the circulation of care and expertise between families (see how to participate).

Eco-Participatory Living

Nature expresses abundance.

A regenerative village is eco-participatory. It invites us to participate in the cycles of life around us.

Technology itself is evolving toward biomimicry. We embrace this evolution. The path forward flows naturally when we align technological innovation with ecological intelligence—choosing neither one over the other, but letting both inform and strengthen each other.