Core Elements of the 4 weeks programme
Morning Practice:
We start each day with what we call ‘morning practice’ for 30-60 minutes. Examples of morning practice would be meditation, yoga, singing/movement, dancing or perhaps simply a silent walk in nature. Whatever we chose, the purpose is to start the day by caring as best as we can for our body and spirit. We seek to connect ourselves to our resources of power, peace and purpose, and thus establish a state of being which prepares us well for the day.
The first 30 min. each morning we suggest as time for optional morning practice. Whether you already have an established practice like this, whether you would like to learn a new practice, or perhaps offer to guide and teach others, we will find a way to organize ourselves as a group to cater for the needs and draw on the resources available. The following 30 min. we suggest to set aside for a regular joint meditation practice that all participants take part in. Instruction and guidance will be provided for this joint meditation practice.
Living and Eating Sustainably:
Throughout the program we will strive to live in ways that are ecologically sustainable.
We will estimate the ecological ‘footprint’ in all we do and attempt to bring it towards a range where it could be sustained by the earth’s ‘carrying capacity’. Measuring our garbage production, ecological footprint when travelling etc. is part of this effort. 
As an important contribution towards this, we will attempt for the four weeks, to have 80% of what we eat come from communal, local, and organically grown foods. We will harvest vegetables from our communal garden, and cook healthy and varied meals that are based on the products of the season. A competent chef will help us create tasty and innovative meals from this. The last 20 % will still be organic, but bought in nearby stores.
Sessions on building community competence – by doing it together
As faculty, we will take upon us to introduce and facilitate a number of different social practices that are useful for building and developing the kind of community we aim to establish in the course of the four weeks. These social practices include e.g. vision building, compassionate communication, consensus democracy, conflict resolution, using creative arts and rituals, facilitation and co-constructive leadership etc.
You will experience and train these social practices by living them together with us.
As faculty we will take care to set the frame of what we are doing, why we do it, and our experience and understanding of how these practices work for us. Initially as faculty we will take a big share of responsibility for the leadership and facilitation of the community building, but our aim is to generate a shared sense of responsibility for this.
Thus, from the beginning we will seek your contribution as co-creator of how we will be and behave together in our community. We will invite you to select a particular aspect of our community practice that you would like to care for and focus especially on. This could be e.g. how we make decisions, how we deal with conflict etc. Then we will rely on you to observe and note down your own experiences of this particular aspect of our community practice, and we will have weekly sessions dedicated to to talk about your observations and questions in order to make sense of what is going on, develop our joint community practice, and improve our general understanding of social dynamics in communities.
Living in Hallingelille ecovillage
Beyond forming our own EDE participant community, for these four weeks you will live in the larger community of Hallingelille. Several times a week we will cook and eat together with others who live in Hallingelille. They will also participate in some joint arrangements during the four weeks.
During the four weeks, you will get the sense of what it is like to live in an ecovillage like Hallingelille. You will get to know people who live here, and have opportunities to hear their stories of what it is like.
House Building – Exploring meaningful work experiences
In the course of the four weeks, you will take part in constructing an ecological building.
The building will be used in the future as a venue for learning activities that explore and promote sustainable living (such as this EDE). It can also be used also for housing guests in the summer period. It is also proposed by the architect as a simple model of a small community house that can be built rather inexpensively and with the support of a large group of people in a short time.
This house building activity serves several educative purposes. First of all, it is a very hands-on learning experience of what the possibilities of ecological building may be and what it takes for non-professionals to build in practice. Along the way, we will talk with the architect about the construction principles and choices that are involved in ecological building. You may also pick up a building skill or two that may serve you later.
Secondly, the house building provides us with a manual and meaningful work task to do together. It may at times offer spontaneous joyful experiences of being in ‘flow’. At other times, housebuilding, as it goes for many other kinds of work, can be a more frustrating or tedious experience: we may get annoyed that the result we are getting is not like we would want it.
We may be irritated by how the cooperation with others is going etc. In these situations, we can try to observe ourselves and notice how we react and relate to different aspects of work.
We can then later, if not in the moment, reflect on what this tells us about our needs, preferences and habitual patterns of relating to work. With this understanding we may adjust and change some of the ways we relate to work, and be more attentive to creating work circumstances that offer us better chances for engaging in work as a meaningful experience of sustainable living.
Personal development and practical learning
The program includes several sessions and activities which will provide you with direct opportunities for personal development. You will be offered an individual coaching session with a member of faculty to explore personal issues that you are curious about or may struggle with. You will be guided into creative processes exploring personal aspects in often non-verbal ways. Some of the community building work will be a direct opportunity for you to learn more about your own social needs and preferences and how you interact and relate with others in more fulfilling ways. We will offer you a number of conceptual models to help you identify and reflect on this.
Beyond this, many opportunities for personal development and practical learning are weaved into the four weeks experience. Whether we cook, eat, build a house, study a particular topic, engage in community building and learning, or practice yoga and meditation: In almost all that we do, we will encourage and support you to keep a certain degree of awareness on how you feel about what is going on, and the kind of reactions and inner dialogue that is going on in your mind while you are doing it.
At regular intervals, we will set time aside for you, on your own or with others, to explore the things you have noticed about yourself, and make sense of them in terms of what they tell you about your beliefs, preferences, needs, longings, deep assumptions and life strategies that you employ knowingly or unknowingly. On this basis, you may make experiments with how you may think, act, and relate differently to yourself, others, and the world at large, and how this may offer you more rewarding ways of living life.
Sessions of studying particular topics of the Gaia EDE curriculum
During the four weeks, we will cover the necessary parts of the Gaia EDE curriculum for you to receive an EDE certificate.
Many parts of the curriculum will be covered by ‘living it’ and ‘reflecting on it’ in the way described previously under: ‘building community competence’, ‘ecological house building’, ‘morning practice’, and ‘living and eating sustainably’, ‘personal development and practical learning’.
Other topics will be studied in dedicated sessions using a mixture of brief lectures, small exercises, and group discussions. Topics dealt with in this way include e.g. understanding of the world economic system, understanding money, concepts and theories on world-views, principles of permaculture, knowledge of available green technologies etc. All together we expect about ¼ of the programme to take this form.
Designing Group Projects
During the four weeks, time will dedicated for group work on selected projects that participants will pursue upon their return from the programme. Examples of this could be ideas to start a new eco-village, form a social enterprise, design a sustainability education, or making an effort to turn the way of life and work in existing associations, organisations or work-places more sustainable.
All participants are invited to bring with them a project proposal they would like to develop in group work with others. At the beginning of the program we will select a handful of projects and form groups that will work on them throughout the programme.
Practising ‘karma yoga’
The notion of ‘karma yoga’ comes from Hinduism and we understand it as a practice of altruistic service, i.e. doing something for others without expecting anything in return. We do not see this practice as belonging exclusively to any particular religion or spiritual tradition, and it can be understood equally as a humanistic idea and attitude.
During the program we will seek scheduled as well as spontaneous opportunities to practice ‘karma yoga’ in various ways. During the four weeks, we will regularly set aside time and invite you to find ways you can contribute with something valuable for others in an altruistic spirit. We will then ask you to notice how you relate to this idea and how you are affected by its practice, and we will explore and seek to learn from these experiences together.
Excursions – using the surrounding environment
Hallingelille ecovillage is located almost exactly in the centre of Zealand. Travelling to Copenhagen takes about 1 hour by ca
r or by bus and train, but several other possibilities for excursions are within easy reach.
During the four weeks, we plan to visit at least one other ecovillage (e.g. Dyssekilde, or Munksøgård, or Selvforsynende Landsby), and Svanholm (organicl farm and housing collective). We also plan a visit to an ecological construction company, and one or two organic farms. The energy research institute of Risø is also in the vicinity as is the University of Roskilde, which have expertise in a lot of areas of sustainability.
Time on your own
With all the elements mentioned above, it may seem that a pretty full program awaits you – and indeed it does. Yet, we also recognize that most of us require some leisurely time on our own to digest all the learning, relax, or enjoy informal time together with others.
Most days (when you are not cooking dinner or house building), you will have a couple of hours for yourself in the afternoon before dinner. Likewise, most days we won’t have programmed activities after dinner, and you are free to spend the evening as you see fit.
During the four weeks, there will be 3 full days without program, where you can make excursions or use the day for other purposes.
