Julia & Charles Yelton

Julia and Charles Yelton have been traveling, teaching and living Permaculture for the last 19 years. Julia is a master gardener and skilled landscape designer with a background in architectural ceramics. Charles teaches design engineering and management skills. 

Both studied and practiced permaculture at Crystal Waters Permaculture Village in Queensland, Australia for 3 1/2 years and served on the faculty of the Institute for Sustainable Agriculture of Nepal before starting to teach around the world. Together, they have taught, designed, and implemented numerous regenerative whole living systems in India, Bali, Ireland, Guatemala, France, Spain, Morocco, Greece, Egypt, UK, Scotland, Wales, and Canada.

In 2007, they established a community food forest at a drug-rehabilitation center in Cyprus, drawing participation from both Greek and Turkish residents. Since 2009, they have been developing a demonstration center and advanced permaculture design programs at the International Sustainable Living Institute in Caccamo, Sicily.

In the US, after spending a year designing an eco-village in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, the Yeltons established an affordable, sustainable, energy-efficient demonstration home and four-season gardens at the Sustainable Living Center at Humustacia Gardens in Whitefield, ME. Their education programs soon earned college-accreditation through the the University of Maine (U-Me) and University of New Hampshire. In 2007, they spearheaded the U-Me initiative to green the campus and were named Still Water Research Fellows in 2007 and 2008. From 2008 to 2009, they were the first Co-Directors of Permaculture Education at the Newforest Institute in Brooks, ME, where they established overall site designs and numerous workshops and courses, including timber-earth "Hobbit House" construction.

Julia and Charles strive to 'teach by doing' and are committed to establishing demonstration sites so that people can experience first-hand the benefits of wholistic ecological design. They emphasize hands-on experience in their teaching and also incorporate spirituality and cosmology as an integral part of their courses.

"When we first began teaching Permaculture years ago, we realized that we needed to address the nurturing of the individual who lived in a particular system and for this we added zone zero-zero to the design system. Our work during the last five years has taken on a deepening, with the understanding of teh true meaning of ecology, that is teh relationship of everything to everything. This puts a new light on the way we present the edge effect, where the abundance of all life is greatly magnified. 

We acknowledge ourselves to be composed of mind, body and spirit and when we begin to study our ecology of being, our connectedness to all of nature, allowing us to enter a profoundly spiritual zone, a zone beyond the boundaries. This zone actually is the connection that brings all aspects of the design system full circle. It also holds the unseen spaces between the crossover edges where all of nature's mysteries can be uncovered. It is an endless edge of selfdiscovery and our relationship to our world, a true cosmology. Embracing this zone in our teaching fulfills our need for a completeness, a oneness that may of us are searching for." - Julia and Charles Yelton

www.permaculturedesign.org

Srinivasan

Director and senior teacher (acharya) of the Sivananda Ashram Yoga Ranch, Srinivasan has dedicated his life to the propagation the classical teachings of Yoga. Srinivasan served and studied with his guru and yoga master, Swami Vishnudevananda, for sixteen years and now continues to carry the teachings as a direct disciple.

As acharya, Srinivasan leads our team of teacher trainers, conducts the morning satsangs at the ashram, and leads workshops on various aspects of yoga philosophy and practice. He also leads the ashram's move toward Earth Care and sustainability, finding an effortless union between Permaculture and Yoga. He is a knowledgable and compassionate teacher whose life mission is empowering all with the peace and wisdom of Yoga.