Sadhana Forest, South India

Our first post is about the community in which we all met and which has brought us to the journey we are on now. We met in a community called Sadhana Forest in late 2009/early 2010 and between us we spent from 1 to 3 years there. Sadhana Forest is in the South East of India in the state of Tamil Nadu. The community is primarily a reforestation project but in reality functions as a fluctuating community of residents and volunteers mostly in their twenties and thirties. However a proportion of volunteers that come are older people, families with children and Indian citizens. This makes for a diverse community of interesting people. Volunteers come and find an alternative lifestyle in Sadhana Forest that they have often never encountered before. With a changing core of between 10 and 20 long-term residents who collectively take responsibility to manage the community and volunteers, and a fluctuating transient population of anywhere between 10 and 140,  the community atmosphere strongly depends on the people who are there at the time. Founded by one family, the community has evolved through word of mouth and only felt the need to create a website after 5 years. As part of the wider intentional community of Auroville they can rely on a steady stream of volunteers and visitors.

The community is founded on several principles; children are unschooled (please see this description from Homeschooling Australia) , competition is discouraged, the diet is vegan and no stimulants are allowed including alcohol, drugs, caffeine and sugar. There is no business within the community and the local habitat  is preserved.

The influence one has in decision-making lies in the length of your stay participation and commitment to Sadhana Forest. Weekly organisational meetings are held between long-term members to discuss practical matters and decisions are made on the basis of consensus. The founding family hold the final decision when needed, although this tends to happen only with larger decisions.

While staying in Sadhana Forest the lifestyle is simple and helps its volunteers consider a more sustainable, lower impact way of living. All the power is solar power and is only available for a few hours a day. In the South of India water is a precious resource and there are several months each year without any rainfall followed by months of monsoon rain. For a shower, everyone has to hand pump their own water and carry their bucket to the outdoor shower cubicles.  There are no taps and hand wash stations feed into banana sponges to make sure nothing is wasted. Toilets are also outdoors and are dry compost design. The main communal area; the main hut has no furniture and all meals are eaten together sitting on the floor, as they are traditionally in India. The meals are cooked communally by volunteers on a rota basis. All huts are made from local natural materials and volunteers sleep on traditional rope beds.

Each morning the majority of the volunteers work in the forest where the community is replanting the indigenous Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest. They mostly plant trees in the wet season, and during the dry build bunds and swales for water conservation. This helps to raise the water table in the area which has been very successful. A large portion of work is also made up by community work such as cooking, cleaning and emptying the compost toilets. Following morning work, volunteers lead and take part in a variety of workshops from yoga to jewellery making.

The community positively buzzes with energy! Workshops and music are never far away. Drumming, yoga, capoeira, reflexology, massage, chanting, circus skills, permaculture, medicinal plants, forest walks and Open Stage! The daily morning work circle encourages hugging and an exchange of warm, loving greetings with your peers. The community has an incredibly supportive atmosphere and sick volunteers are visited by other friendly volunteers bringing them hot herbal teas and hugs in the Healing Hut. The weekly sharing circle was a time to really get to know the rest of the community and created a sense of togetherness.

The three of us came to Sadhana Forest for different reasons and along the way had many of our basic assumptions about lifestyle challenged. We have all been schooled and found an unschooling community, in a society in which we have been taught to judge our efforts by the size of our salary we found that we gave our all in a place that provided us with only simple food and accommodation. We have gained a much stronger understanding and connection to what we consume whether it is the food we eat or the electronic products we buy. We met an incredible bunch of people on this project and our experience there has massively shaped the path on which we find ourselves now.