Case Study - Navadarshanam, Tamil Nadu

Navadarshanam was the second place that we visited for our case study. Navadarshanam is a community that is dedicated to seeking alternate methods of living to the modern way of life. Their main philosophy is to live sustainably with minimum exploitation of nature and humans. Furthermore, the people believe in a life force that exists in all living things. Thus, if we let things be, this life force has the potential to rejuvenate itself. This philosophy was reflected in the community's attempt to regenerate the forest in Navadarshanam through a policy of minimum intervention as well as their attitude towards health. For example, even though community members may be sick, they try to let their own bodies heal themselves and only seek the help of healthcare systems if there is no improvement. When we were at Navadarshanam, one of the people had a sore throat and was meditating in silence for three days to give his body a chance to rest and heal itself. This has really made me think about how reliant many people are in the world on healthcare. In particular, in the US, the overprescription of drugs has been a serious problem. Just a thought, but perhaps a fostering of this alternate mentality could be a solution to this problem.

Interesing things about Navadarshanam:

• To get fuel for cooking, methane gas is used. Methane gas is "made" by mixing cow dung with water. The methane gas is pumped to the kitchen and the remaining slurry is pumped out to the fields as fertilization. Alternate layers of slurry and biomass put onto fields for optimal fertilizer that can regenerate itself.
• Polyculture instead of monoculture is used, meaning that multiple plants are planted together instead of only having one crop, as is often the case in the growing of cash crops. By having polyculture, plants can complement each other in terms of the nutrients that they take out and put back into the soil and help each other to grow healthily.
• Navadarshanam has a very interesting aura or energy about it. Once we arrived, I immediately felt fresh and rejuvenated. Everything was so green, so healthy and so full of life. I'm starting to really believe in some of the healing powers of nature that I've heard about in the past and used to be skeptical about.
• The food at Navadarshanam is incredibly tasty and healthy. It's amazing how you can truly "taste" the freshness and nutritional value in the food that we had. All the stomach problems that I had had for the past couple of days were gone while at Navadarshanam. Perhaps this is an indicator of how great the connection between health and food is, and how much control we have over health simply through our diet.