We all inhabit damaged ecosystems. It is just a question of where to draw the boundaries. "My" ecosystems are a dance of air, water, soil and species that can be variously named as Planet Earth, Turtle Island (the North American continent), Sweetwater Seas (Great Lakes basin), land of the Wild Onion (the tall grass prairies and oak savannas of greater metropolitan Chicago), or Beatrice Briggs and friends (the world encased by my skin and encompassed by my heart). All of these have emerged mysteriously, miraculously from the stardust of creation. And each of them is suffering from what Bill McKibben has described as "The Death of Nature".

No matter how broadly or narrowly I define the ecosystems of which I am a part, I encounter depleted vitality. Topsoil and working mothers are equally exhausted. Corporate executives are as strip mined as Appalachian hillsides. Ancient forests receive no more respect than human elders. My body is as much a toxic waste dump as Lake Calumet, as vulnerable to oil spills as the eagles of Prince Edward Sound. Sea turtles off the coast of Florida swallow plastic bags, thinking they are jelly fish, while Guatemalan farm workers give their children DDT-laced milk. Neither perceives the danger until it is too late. The exhaustion is endemic and systemic. Every day it becomes a little more difficult to carry on. Where to find the psychic and physical strength to fight the infection, antidote the poisons, recycle the garbage, educate the electorate, campaign for economic justice and celebrate the beauty that remains?

 

Urban Ecology - an oxymoron?
One source of inspiration to me has been the work of those involved in ecological restoration in and around Chicago. First of all, I was amazed to find such work occurring in an urban area. Although 75 percent of the U.S. population lives in cities and towns of 25,000 or more, most of us have difficulty seeing our urban centers as "natural areas", potentially responsive to intelligent, sensitive land stewardship. The urban ecologist recognizes that we and our cities are inseparable from the natural systems that we so recklessly pave over and pollute. Urban ecology studies the capacity for renewal of these systems, no matter how degraded. What would it take in terms of money, technical sophistication and public education, to let the creeks under the sidewalks run freely above ground? To turn vacant lots into orchards and community gardens? To entice wildlife (other than roaches, rodents and pigeons) into downtown? To reduce our crippling dependence on the automobile? To turn barren plazas and boring (or dangerous) playlots into places where people freely gather? In short, urban ecologists seek ways to create sustainable urban environments, in which human structures, both physical and social, exist in balance with nature.

 

Restoring the Oceans of Grass
One sub-set of urban ecologists in the Chicago area are the prairie restorationists. Theirs is the task of restoring and maintaining remnants of the oceans of grass and oak-hickory groves which once covered the Midwest. Most of this 10,000 year-old ecosystem succumbed long ago to the European settler's plow. In Illinois only .01 percent of the original prairies remain. Much of that precious fragment is within a short drive of downtown Chicago, and thus, is decidedly urban in setting.

In the past ten years, thousands of volunteers have participated in the brave, patient, careful, prayerful, persistent, quietly revolutionary task of restoring the prairies. As an only occasional participant in these restoration activities, I envied the prairie workers' involvement with the land. I wished I had more time to join them. Then one day it occurred to me that perhaps as a student and teacher of yoga, I too practice the ecological art of restoration. After all, we humans are indeed a dimension of the Earth. We are Earthlings. Our bodies, minds, and breath are not other than the planet expressing herself in a particular way. Our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual capacities are all an evolutionary gift of the Earth. We are an integral part of the dynamic life systems of the planet. Given all this, how could any physically-grounded, creation-centered activity, that restores vitality to an area damaged by "Progress" be other than ecological restoration?

Let us examine some of the working assumptions of prairie restorationists to see how they have illuminated my understanding of what it means to practice yoga. These thoughts can, of course, be applied to other biomes and other spiritual disciplines. The key criteria are that the work involve actual hands-on, experiential interaction with the world of natural forms and that it lead to a renewed love for the Earth and commitment to celebrating the beauty found here.

It takes five years to plant a seed. Getting people to understand the process of ecological restoration, whether of a piece of land or a human body, takes time. Sowing prairie grasses involves more than tossing seeds on the ground. "Doing yoga" is more than assuming certain postures, although in both cases the raw physical act is essential. Prairie volunteers and yoga practitioners are novices for at least the first five years. Then the real work of "thinking like an ecosystem" can begin.

Fire is a regenerative tool. Prairies only remain prairies if they burn periodically. Burning encourages the healthy growth of fire-resistant, native plants, destroys Eurasian "invaders" and indirectly stimulates microbial activity in the soil. Similarly, appropriate use of heat-producing yoga postures can burn out the invading weeds and toxins that impair the vitality of the human body. Tapas, or fiery effort, is built into the ecosystem management practices prescribed by the ancient yogins.

Sustainable environments are entirely place specific. The grasses that flourish in the middle of a sun-drenched prairie do not grow in the adjacent oak savanna. A pose that helps one person with a "bad back" may be completely inappropriate for someone else with a similar condition, but different constitution. Both the prairie restorationist and the yoga practitioner need to know what kind of soil they are dealing with. Wet? Sandy? Acid? Alkaline? Trained athlete? Pregnant woman? HIV positive? Deskbound commuter? Rape victim? We must approach each situation with curiosity, optimism and humility. We have to be willing to use what we know and to be ignorant. We must learn to listen to the land.

Transform the mundane into the special, the sacred. Prairie restora-tionists take the messy little plot of land between the highway and the fast food franchise and turn it into a place of pilgrimage. They put out a welcome sign for bugs, bees, snakes, birds, four-footed critters and the robust perennials of the prairie. They invite other humans to come and praise the abundance of it all. (A mature prairie contains an average of twenty-five different species per square meter.) Yoga practitioners take their stiff, fearful, overstimulated, undernourished bodies (also located between the highway and the fast food franchise) and invite the return of biodiversity. They create conditions in which it is safe to breathe, possible to stand, delightful to twist, okay to bend, intriguing to be upside down. What was previously ignored or abused becomes precious, tenderly cared for, vigorously revived. Removing European buckthorn from a stand of old oaks or stretching one's own limbs in the "tree pose" can equally be acts of devotion.

Use hand tools, not chain saws. Gasoline-powered mowers and saws are fast, labor-saving devices, but scythes and pruning shears get the job done more safely, quietly and inexpensively. Simple hand tools require little training to use and permit more meditative communion with the environment. Volunteers can talk to each other or listen to birds singing and insects buzzing as they work. Yoga postures are the tools of choice for many who want to make a long term, low tech commitment to sustainable health. No elaborate workout apparatus, no "quick fix" allopathic drugs, no state of the art surgery, just body, mind and breath, trying to come to terms with each other.

The land remembers. Given half a chance, the wildflowers bloom, the birds come back, the native grasses put down their roots. Given a regular yoga practice, limbs move with greater confidence, ease and precision. One laughs more often, judges less harshly, acts more courageously. The Earth, whether prairie soil or human flesh, remembers its ancient freedoms and yearns to reclaim them. But at this critical point in the planet's 4.6 billion-year history, we are destroying the soil and species that are the prairie's genetic memory bank. If the Earth forgets how to tell the story of the prairie or to sing the song of the savanna, it will be because humans forgot how to listen. Yoga helps quiet the outer din and the inner chatter so that we can hear once again.

Restoration helps us claim our place and our purpose in the natural world. To re-establish human intimacy with the natural world, to re-connect with our biological depths, to ground ourselves in a particular place, to cultivate the wild, to nourish and be nourished by the land, to dissolve boundaries by learning to respect them, to say thank you for the gift of life and pass it on, intact, to future generations are the crucial tasks of our time. To do one of these is to do all of them. In this context, the practice of yoga is the practice of ecological restoration. As I become alive to the prairie, the prairie becomes alive in me. As the prairie becomes more mature, creative and resilient, so do I. I have a shared responsibility for the health of the ecosystems I inhabit. It all depends on where I draw the boundary.

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Beatrice Briggs is a teacher at Wild Onion Yoga in Chicago, the convener of the Wild Onion Alliance, a bioregional organization, and a Contributing Editor of Conscious Choice magazine.

Return to the Index of Synapse 40, Summer 1997