Zach and Priscilla have arrived to take on the community outreach, managing the Coffee for Kids fund and helping to coordinate this years the Intercultural Massage Training and the annual Eco-Village Design Gathering. This years gathering will focus on themes of social integration, mutual celebration and support.

Over the holiday’s, Zack, Priscilla, Mayela and many more organized a beach clean up and play day for grown ups and kids alike, a kids day at the pool and a Christmas clothing give away.

In our pursuit of empowering and supporting our Nicaraguan friends and neighbors, we recently expanded our micro-loan program. Our microloan program is intended to support locals who demonstrate the vision and the skill to use their unique gifts and ideas to create their own economic opportunities. Thus far the program has served to support a free-range egg venture, small sustenance farming ventures and home building. We have been fortunate enough to support some of our friends from the community in their business venture of starting a chicken farm.

Our friends and co-workers, Felipe, Gonzalo, and Lorenzo came with the idea to start a local chicken farm. They explained to Paul and Gaia that although there is only one small chicken hatchery in their village and the primary source of chicken comes from corporately farmed chicken on the mainland. In an effort to localize the supply of poultry as well as encourage more sustainable and humane farming practices, we decided that offering a start-up microloan to our good friends was in the best interest of the whole community. Having worked with these men before with home-building loans and sustenance farming loans, we knew that they exhibited the skills and ethics to fulfill their vision, both in terms of economic responsibility as well as service to the community. So, we decided to support their well thought out business plan with an interest free loan of $1200. We are excited and confident in their ability to be successful in this new endeavor.

Since this decision, Felipe, Gonzalo, Lorenzo and their families have built a chicken barn and begun growing chickens at the farm called “La Buena Ala” (The Good Wing). We wish them well and in this new venture. We’re grateful to continue supporting locally grown and locally produced, particularly in a remote area where the environmental impact of importation is so significant.

Thank you to the community of InanItah for having enough strength to tolerate me in the Third Dimension…

for calling bullshit…
for telling me to sit…
for taking bullets for me…

Thank you for staying the course through the storms of the Fourth Dimension…

for the commitment…
for the perseverance…
for the courageous encouragement…

This is it, as expected, more beautiful than any ONE of us could have imagined!

…and thank you to those from the dimensions beyond, for another chance.

Keith

to JungleYoga for

• …the magic and the mantras
  

• …the rtam and the harmony
  

• …the the fire and the fun

Jungle living is getting downright posh here at InanItah! As we come out of the rainy season, the community is stepping back to appreciate the progress that we’ve made this year in our natural building projects. With four completely new structures, along with renovations, improvements, and beautification to all the major existing structures, InanItah is growing harmoniously with new and exciting energy! There have been three new small single room cabins added to the grounds, with brick floors and the typical InanItah spectacular views. Cabins provide a cozy place to lay your head after our nightly phenomenal sunsets!

Our beloved temple has received a makeover with a new floor installed and a coat of colored natural plaster on the walls, which put the finishing touches on the beautiful cob artwork incorporated throughout the structure. There is also a new Chill Zone for just hanging out and relaxing, and the ultimate in luxury–the new indoor composting toilets are now complete!

The kitchen has not been left out of the fun. It received a major expansion including new cooking stations and sinks, improved traffic flow, large dish drying and storage racks, and a new floor is on the way. And last but not least, the fantastic Snake House, with artwork celebrating the power of the Kundalini.

Thanks to the community of loving hearts and hard working hands, Inanitah continues to evolve, expand, and grow in this ongoing adventure of love and spirit. If you are interested in volunteering in February or March, email us today!

Check out the photos below on our flickr or find them also on our facebook page. Enjoy!

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

We’ve already had a lot of volunteer requests for next year. If you would like to come as a volunteer, please let us know early. We filled up last year quite far ahead of time, and we are anticipating that this year will be similar. If you have come here as a volunteer in the past, we are often more inclined to make space for you. So, even if you only have a vague idea of when you’ll be back and for how long, it helps us, so please let us know soon! This year we will be asking people to make deposits to secure spots in the volunteer program.

We have expanded our volunteer program to include a couple of garden internship positions for inspired people interested in learning about organic farming, gardening, and permaculture in a tropical setting! And, we’ve restructured the partial trade volunteer program so that it is more economical if you make a longer upfront commitment. Check out the new volunteer program pages for information about the recent changes.

We are looking for committed co-creators to make a six-month commitment for next season- information on special co-creators we are searching for can be found here. We are inviting responsible and motivated people to ground themselves here and contribute to the InanItah community from their hearts.

We are making it more comfortable (and fun!) to stay by building new cabins, reworking the communal kitchen, finishing the composting toilets (finally), and adding additional classes and activities. After the Jungleyoga teacher training in November-December, we will be opening up teaching space for our newly trained teachers and offering yoga twice daily. And, we’ll be continuing with morning active meditations including OSHO meditations, Life Dance, 5 Ryhthms and more. When Donnie arrives in December/January, we’ll also be hosting Native American ceremonies and sweatlodges. With the recent additions of the hot tub and swimming pool, things are starting to get downright eco posh around here!

We are anticipating many returning members of the InanItah family this year. We are looking forward to seeing lots of familiar faces and welcoming many new ones!

A letter from Gaia…

I’m so happy that the Jungleyoga Teacher Training is finally coming to InanItah. For over three years now, I’ve been visioning that Randall, the founder of Jungleyoga, would come here to lead a yoga teacher training. And now, it’s finally happening, November 18th – December 14th, 2012.

Randall is by far my favorite yoga teacher. He is the real deal. His depth of knowledge around all things yogic, from Vedic astrology, Sanskrit, yogic philosophy and mythology to sacred sewing and all things India is downright inspiring. Like any true Sadhu, Randall is both intense and humorous. At times, he breaks the tradition and kicks down some Reggae Yoga….!!!

Randall’s philosophy about yoga is in complete integrity with InanItah. Randall really gets and imparts that yoga includes and goes beyond postures, breath and mantra and expands into a truly evolutionary lifestyle of growth with with one’s environment. No doubt Randall will create a space for us all to grow as individuals and give us some powerful tools for teaching yoga.

It feels really fitting for Jungleyoga to create a second home for itself in InanItah’s little piece of the forest.

Ushma, Randall’s assistant, is yet a divine synchronicity. She is originally form Mexico and therefore speaks fluent Spanish, and shares my deep love and respect for OSHO. I’m hoping she can help us InanItah folks to improve our yoga Spanish so that we can start offering yoga in Spanish every now and then.

One attractive part about this course is that is that you can, if you like, stick around as a visitor or a volunteer and we’ll provide you with the space to begin practicing your teaching skills.

Another appealing aspect of this particular yoga teacher training is the price. Many yoga teacher trainings these days cost between $3,500 and $5,000 once you include meals and accommodation.  At InanItah, we live simply and do our best to be in harmony with our environment, which also means that we can offer affordable prices. If you register and leave a deposit by August 31st, the price including accommodation and three healthy meals a day is $2,425, and if you wait until the last minute the total is still only $2,650.

If you’ve ever considered doing a yoga teacher training, we invite you to join the InanItah community for an intense, juicy, fun month of learning and growing!

Much love,
Gaia

For the 3rd year in a row we held the InanItah Ecovillage Design Gathering; this year being the first time receiving official certification for the course. Inspired by the Gaia Education curriculum, an intensive month was spent exploring all aspects of holistic sustainable community living. As part of their embodied learning experience, EDE Participants co-created our Annual Gratitude Festival, where we invited our local Nicaraguan neighbors to celebrate our 3rd birthday with food, music, dance, ritual and games.

Gaia, once again, held space for the edgy Tantric Way series, using her loving and direct approach to facilitate meaningful transformational experiences. Paul stepped up to assist during Part 2: Lover & Beloved. We are looking forward to more Tantra workshop juiciness next season!

Valerie offered a month long massage training in March covering Swedish massage and combining some Thai, deep tissue, craniosacral, myofacial release and trigger point therapy techniques. The participants left the course with the foundations to begin their own massage practice along with a deep sense of personal embodiment.

With the return of Native American Church roadman and tradition holder, Donnie, in February, the community had the opportunity to sink into ritual, song and prayer. Donnie held traditional Little Boy Water Drum sweatlodges as well as Half Moon Ceremonies in the teepee. We are excited that he’ll be joining us again next dry season, this time staying for much longer. He’ll be offering workshops on basic survival skills and Native American spirituality.

As we love to push our own edges around here, we decided to host a Freedom and Fertility Equinox Festival in March. We christened the newest edition to the temple space: a 7-meter stripper pole, and enjoyed luscious genitalia shaped chocolates, ecstatic and erotic dancing, sensual poetry and cob fertility art. We also pushed our population to the edge, InanItah spread it’s wings to hold 52 people over the weekend of madness.

And, our wings spread wide enough to give our neighbors a hand by providing scholarships and school supplies for local students, medical prescription and transportation costs, a micro-loan for a free range egg business start-up, and continuing work on the local water system.

Alongside holding workshops, ceremonies and festivals, we’ve had some time to take on a few building projects. We’ve just completed work on a hot tub, which was made more beautiful through the creative hands of friends Roxanne and Maurice, and will be heated using a solar heating system put together by Jan. A team of locals are currently building a large ferrocement swimming pool, which will double as an irrigation tank to water trees and fields in the dry season. As usual, Rachel has been making beautiful food grow in the garden and Paul has been busy managing work projects, while Darshana has plugged away at keeping emails answered and things mas o menos organized around here!

We’ll be winding down the season this year with another Silent Retreat, and taking some well deserved down time. Soon it will be to plan and build dry season at InanItah.. We are grateful to everyone who contributed to the happenings these last months at InanItah and looking forward to next workshop season!

We are looking for a community outreach person and an administrative person with non-profit experience to support the Giving Program. We’re also looking for a kitchen person with raw food inspiration to join us. If you’d like to commit for next season for these roles, please contact us.

And then there are those animals that were here before all the humans. Not the same ones obviously. That’d be ridiculous. We have a tarantula in the kitchen. It doesn’t have a name other than OMFGitsquick. ‘Faster than a speeding bullet’.  An understatement for something for this spider that can move at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light. And I’ve never seen it eat but I suspect there are missing cows somewhere nearby; that’s how big this thing is.

If you’re basing your decision on whether to visit Inanitah on this blogpost, and in all honesty you should, it’s never bitten anybody. It runs away if you go near it. Just like the rest of us.

We also have…well had… a chicken. Just the one chicken. It was black and lived at the toilet. Some christened her ‘the Oracle’ as in ‘going to visit…’. She was a free spirit and wasn’t technically owned by anybody, living in this strange non-ownership hinterland. Perhaps we could have done more for her. We could have given her some grain now and again. Talked more maybe. You see, a few days ago she disappeared. I miss her. Maybe she’d had heard enough inane questions. Or maybe she went to the great chicken nugget in the sky. I’d suggest a search party but I fear all we have to do is smell one of the dog’s breath. Lanka is a good bet. Especially as last week she caught and quickly consumed a rabbit.

There’re also countless geckos, howler monkeys, gorgeous blue Uracca birds, the odd scorpion and our favourite worst nightmare the mosquitos. We’re working on a bat-box to attract more flying mammals and to call back the boa constrictors…It’s a long story…

I wrote this, sitting on a homemade bean bag, in glorious sunshine, looking at a volcano for inspiration. This morning I ate chocolate and drank tea. Life could, in theory get better but there’s not enough coconut oil in the world.

Namaste,
Jay

The 3^rd Annual Eco-village Design Gathering is now being offered as a certified Gaia Education EDE Training, based on the Gaia Education Ecovillage Design curriculum,  an official contribution to the United Nations Decade for Sustainable Development 2005-2014.

The InanItah EDE Course is a vibrant expression of the EDE curriculum. Participants will learn tools to evolve towards a sustainable reality through a hands-on and experiential process.

We are happy to introduce an inspiring and diverse team of facilitators, wisdom holders, and educators who will be guiding the InanItah Eco-village Design Gathering.

Primary Facilitators:

Gaia Ma is co-founder and co-director of InanItah.  Gaia is best know for her role as an international Tantra and self-development workshop facilitator.  Like many ecovillage founders, Gaia is a generalist; having worked in diverse disciplines including business and office management, professional dancing, conventional construction and construction management, NGO capacity building and grant reviewing, community building and social services.

Valerie Cherrin’s personal and professional work show a deep commitment to healing and transforming consciousness at individual and community levels. She is a practicing massage therapist with 14 years of experience, a massage instructor, a certified yoga teacher, and conscious dance facilitator. Valerie is also trained in non-violent communication (NVC) process and facilitation, and conflict resolution, and she has been an active member in intentional communities throughout her life.

Paul Mai is co-founder and co-director of InanItah. Paul grew up in community and has experienced community living in diverse settings, including Thailand, Costa Rica, and California. He is a skilled and enthusiastic natural builder and has many years of experience working with renewable energy and gravity based water systems. Paul is also a healer and a man of spirit, regularly leading meditation and yoga sessions at InanItah.

Dominik Werner is a freelancing educator and group facilitator focused on transformative learning through holistic engagement in creative processes. He is practiced in facilitating dialogue methodologies and various theatre forms such as, Improvisation, Forum, Rainbow, Legislative, Open Space, World Café, Council, Dynamic Facilitation, Appreciative Inquiry, and Work that Reconnects.

We are grateful to an inspirational group of guest facilitators who will be enriching the Gathering with their wisdom.

Guest Facilitators & Speakers:

Donnie Blaikie is a source of profound knowledge and understanding of Native American wisdom traditions. Since 1983 he has been regularly facilitating both ecumenical and traditional Native American ceremonies including both the modern cowboy sweatlodge, the traditional Tewa sweatlodge and half-moon peyote fireplace, and the Anishabe water drum sweatlodge.

Margot Anand is an internationally acclaimed authority on Tantra, best-selling author, and much-beloved teacher and founder of Sky Dancing Tantra®. Margot’s books, videos, CDs and DVDs are widely regarded as the seminal teachings for integrating spirituality and sexuality and for cultivating the art of ecstatic living.

Dr. Tabatha Parker, ND received her doctorate in naturopathic medicine from the National College of Naturopathic Medicine in Portland, Oregon and co-founded Natural Doctors International (NDI), the first international organization of its kind working to advance naturopathic medicine in global health. An international speaker and teacher, Dr. Parker has dedicated her life to finding solutions to global health problems through natural medicine and community development.

David Casey is co-founder of Project Nuevo Mundo, a network of individuals dedicated to the development of our planet and the life it sustains through the creation of consciousness transformation centers around the globe. David is also the co-founder of Green New World, a sustainability center where he demonstrates self-sufficient systems, hosts volunteers, and coordinates events such as seed exchanges, trash cleanups, tree plantings, and Mayan ceremonies.