Yoga Teacher Volunteer at Jiwa Damai

Our lovely yoga teacher volunteer, Bee at Jiwa Damai is sharing some of her thoughts with you regarding her experience here. She has been our “busy bee” for the last couple of months helping us start the day with yoga in the morning and teaching our local team English. Originally from Austria, Bee has been traveling in order to find her path as a yoga instructor. We are very grateful for all the positive energy she has brought to this place.

You can find out more about our volunteer program here or just follow the stories from our volunteers on the Jiwa Damai blog. In the meantime, we invite you to discover the way Bee has experienced her stay at Jiwa Damai.

What made you chose Jiwa Damai? I was searching for a place to practice yoga and to teach, for a healthy environment. I believe that yoga is a lifestyle and in order to follow it, you have to select carefully your surroundings. At the same time, it is hard to find a place where you can start with teaching when you don’t have prior experience. I was reading that Jiwa Damai is looking for volunteers and that they offer yoga in the morning so I thought that I could start to teach and also learn more about yoga here. The beautiful part is that they offered me this chance! I’ve been at Jiwa Damai for almost two months now. And I am happy to say that I had my first yoga students here.

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What are the things that you appreciated most in your experience at Jiwa Damai? At Jiwa Damai I liked the fact that I could get new experiences. Not only as a yoga instructor. Margret asked me if I can teach also English. When you are not very confident with speaking a language, you would not expect such an invitation. My English is not perfect but by preparing the lessons, I had the chance to improve it and share my knowledge with others. I could develop new skills in an area where I could not imagine that I would be able to do so.

I also appreciated the fact that I could eat food from the garden. At the same time, I worked in the garden and saw how the things are growing. I’ve cleaned the elephants and the stones. One does many things. But this is how one gets a feeling for plants, for the environment, for the nature. I think there is a lot to learn at Jiwa Damai and two months is not enough.

It is nice to see how the plants grow, how people grow, not only the volunteers but also the local team. Even after the first three weeks, you can see a difference.

What should a yoga teacher volunteer expect coming here? I think a yoga teacher volunteer should just be opened. If you want to learn something, there are so many things you can learn. It can be gardening, teaching, interacting with people with different cultural backgrounds. I believe everyone experiences Jiwa Damai in their own way.

On the one hand, you live here, you find new friends, you feel at home (when you are traveling you really need this), and on the other hand you are traveling in your days off and you can discover Bali and its rich culture.

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What do you think it is unique about the volunteer program at Jiwa Damai?

What I really like actually is that people get here their own projects and Margret lets them discover it by their own. People get here projects according to their interests and skills.  Cat did a wonderful research on the coconut beetles, Cedric is researching on cacao. I was developing teaching skills. So if you are curious, Margret gives you the space and the support to explore and create something nice on your own.

Bee (yoga teacher volunteer)

Our volunteers and staff opening coconuts

After working hard Kadek, Tyrone from Germany, and Maxwell our American volunteer with Made, the coco nut oil fairy. Today they have been opening lots of coconuts, which we will use to produce our own

organic certified coconut oil.

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Both Tyron and Maxwell enjoy a healthy lunch.

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Our volunteer with Orchid, the cat

Sabine, our Austrian volunteer Yoga teacher is visiting our cat Orchid in her home the Garden Lumbung. Orchid has made this her home and is receiving every volunteer staying there with joyful greetings and meowing. She talks a lot and takes immediately to the warmest place where the person sleeps.

She is a great companion and extremely gentle.

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Preparing the soil for seeding

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Preparing the soil for seeding long beans are our Balinese gardener Kadet with our Canadian volunteer Catherine.

Here is Catherine also setting up the bamboo stick to give the beans guidelines how to grow.

Jackfruits at Jiwa Damai

This is the time to bag our

Jackfruit.

When they are small we will hide them in big bags, and they will actually grow to the size of the bags. This is done in order to avoid insects from hosting inside. The next photo shows the grown jackfruit. When green we use it as a vegetable, when ripe, it is juicy insides and can be dried and also eaten as a fruit.

jiwa damai fruits

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At Jiwa Damai we offer different products. You can see more

here.

Fire ceremony at Jiwa Damai

Final fire ceremony of our participants of the 24th days sadhana yoga teacher training in the gardens at the fireplace at JiwaDamai. On this occasion the Certificats were adhered out as well as celebrating, chanting and dancing took place.

Yoga training at Jiwa Damai

We loved to have you here. For more information on further courses go on the website of Jiwa Damai, here.

Gifts for the Jiwa Damai team

The 24 day yoga teacher training has come to its final day. The lovely participants expressed their gratitude by making a gift basket for the Jiwa Damai Team which took care of them and tried to make Jiwa Damai the home away from home during the 24 days.

Our team will share the gifts equally, for kitchen and garden since each was involved hosting and providing for the really great group and their teachers.

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Find out more about our workshops at Jiwa Damai here.

Blacky and our yoga teaching training group

The last two days of the

Sadhana Yoga

teaching training. Quite a few tears flowed, leaving this intense time behind and moving into their respective worlds again. Blacky, our

Jiwa

Damai

balinese dog has to be in the picture as well.

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Fendi, the Jiwa Damai Garden Planner

This month you will get to know our gardener planer who is taking care of the coconut trees and of the garden at Jiwa Damai.

Fendi our garden planer is feeding the roots of our coco palms to strengthen them against the Rhinoceros beetle. He inserts bamboo pipes into the earth about 1 1/2 m away from the trunk and fills it with compost tea to directly nourish the trees.

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Find out more about our work in the garden here! 

Healthy growth of the coconut tree in 10 steps

There are probably no other insects against which the United States military had to intervene except for the Rhinoceros coconut beetle. It happened just recently, in the Autumn of last year when the U.S. Navy had to respond to the “invasion” of these insects at the military base in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The invasion left 175 trees infested and the military had to remove them.

The news made the headlines and got some good coverage but the infestation provoked by the Rhinoceros beetle was already creating important disturbance in many ecosystem in most of the subtropical and tropical of the planet.

The Asiatic rhinoceros beetle, known better as the Coconut rhinoceros beetle and scientifically as Oryctes rhinoceros, is a species of rhinoceros beetle belonging to the Scarabaeidae family according to Wikipedia.org. The rhinoceros beetle attacks the developing fronds of coconut, oil, and other palms in tropical Asia and a number of Pacific islands.

The damaged fronds show typical triangular cuts and the beetle kills the palms (particularly newly planted ones) when the growing point is destroyed during feeding. The larvae of the rhinoceros beetle, however, do not damage crops, but instead grow in dead, decaying trunks and other organic matter.

This beetle’s favorite habitats for breeding sites are dead, standing coconut trees and fallen coconut logs, but they can survive on many different types of decaying vegetation.

The eggs are laid in manure pits or other organic matter and hatch in 8-12 days according to recent studies. Larvae take another 82-207 days before entering an 8-13 day non feeding pre-pupal stage. The pupal stage goes between 17-28 days. The larvae is usually yellowish-white and can grow quite long, reaching almost 4 inches or more.  Adults remain in the pupal cell for 17-22 days before emerging and flying to palm crowns to feed. The beetles are active at night and hide in feeding or breeding sites during the day. Mostly mating takes place at the breeding sites. Adults may live for 4-9 months and each female lays 50-100 eggs during her lifetime.

Coconut rhinoceros beetles favor downed trees as breeding sites, so the mortality of young trees may be the first stage of a developing positive feedback cycle that would be essentially impossible to contain once initiated. To prevent this from happening young trees must be protected and dead ones must be cleared in areas of infestation.

Here at Jiwa Damai, being located in the island of Bali in Indonesia, we are also struggling to support the healthy growth of our coconut trees that have been in some cases infested by the rhinoceros beetle.

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In tackling this difficult issue for which there is no known cure at the moment we have developed by our own means and experience and collaborating with specialist from local and abroad a system in ten easy steps to help to coconut trees in our garden survive the invasion of the rhinoceros beetle.

The first step was identifying the problem and symptoms and ascertaining the presence of the rhinoceros beetle. We had found holes in the coconut tree trunk and the leaves of the coconut tree started to look brown and dead. That led us to believe that the Rhinoceros beetle had infected the coconut trees.

The second step was verifying the existence of the rhinoceros beetle in the coconut trees here at Jiwa Damai. There for we sent coconut climbers in the trees to check if the rhinoceros beetles have gone inside the coconut tree leaves. We also had to cut down some trees to see if the larva had infected the bottom part of their trunks. We found the Rhinoceros beetles and larvae from the trees thus ascertaining the infestation of our coconut trees with this insect.

In step three of the plan we went on by cleaning the infected leaves.  The coconut climbers cleaned the part of the leaves that were infected. They were very thorough in eliminating only the infested leaves and not make any other additional damage to the trees. They also added salt and Effective Micro organisms (EM) a the top of the trees to help them fight the infestation with the rhinoceros beetle.

In the fourth phase of our program we proceeded in insuring that compost we use for the trees and garden is clean. The larvae of the Rhinoceros beetle are usually hatching in the compost because it has a lot of nutrients. We moved on to filtering our entire compost and found several Rhinoceros beetles and larvae from the compost soil.

Step five meant continuing in eliminating the infected tree parts and compost. We therefore burned the trunks and leaves of the trees that were cut down together with the Rhinoceros beetles and larvae found in the compost, to make sure that these beetles can’t spread to other trees.

In the sixth step of the program we went on analyzing the soil.  This was necessary in order to know what kind of nutrition we should feed to the coconut trees.

We then next went ahead and provided the coconut trees with good nutrition in step seven. We digged and changed the soil around the coconut trees into compost soil and added effective micro organisms into the compost soil. This process was done without damaging the roots of the trees and only through digging a surface of around 1,5 meters around them and changing the soil with fresh compost.

After taking care of the material part of the trees we wanted to help also the coconut trees living energy in the eighth phase of our plan. We decided on sending some positive energy from ourselves to help cure them. We started a program where the volunteers and employees of Jiwa Damai hugged each coconut tree personally while sending positive thoughts and vibrations for the trees.

Step nine consisted in playing classical music for the trees. We started playing Mozart’s compositions for the trees to continue giving them even more positive life energy.

Finally, the tenth step was to set in motion a multi-year plan for the support of the healthy growth of the coconut trees and contrast the infestation with the rhinoceros beetle. We involved in the elaboration of this plan specialists in the matter from other places in the world with which we collaborate and exchange information about the progress, results and new perspectives in supporting the coconut trees to resist the rhinoceros beetle infestation. Here we are applying each tree with fungus which has proven to be noninvasive for bees and other insects.

At Jiwa Damai we take great care of our coconut trees because we realize and respect their importance and contribution to the ecosystem and the lives of other plants, animals and us the humans. Not only they provide us with fresh air and shadow but also stabilize the ground, feed the soil and us with their delicious coconuts. We use also use the coconuts from our tree to make oil, soap and other products that can be purchased by our clients and guests.