Why attending a PDC in Thailand?
A review of the 17-day Permaculture Design Course in Thailand at Gaia Ashram in April 2019

In this post, I will give a short review of the 2019 Permaculture Design Course organized by flowful at Gaia Ashram in the Northeast of Thailand. You will learn something about the people who attended, group dynamics, thematic focus and the successes we achieved during the course. Finally, I will try to explain the permaculture mind shift that everyone who is attending a PDC is going through.

Just to be transparent, Karla and I were part of the facilitator team, however, this review is backed on the sharing and feedback of the participants as well as the PDC facilitator team. 

If you want to experience and learn more about gardening and permaculture, you might want to join our next 17-day PDC starting in November 2020. Get all the information right here! For the time in between, we highly recommend our Free Online Permaculture & Resilience Course. Start today, no registration needed.

Get yourself registered and be part of the new Permaculture Design Certificate Course in 2020 in Thailand!

Author: Lars Blume

What is a PDC and what the heck is permaculture?

Just in short and to get everyone on the same page: A Permaculture Design Course (PDC) is an internationally known and accepted 72-hour theory course resulting in a Permaculture Design Certificate. It provides an introduction to permaculture design according to the movement’s founder Bill Mollison. We covered every major topic in Bill Mollison’s Permaculture: a Designers Manual. The PDC in general serves as a foundation for further permaculture work and studies.

And if you want to have a brief introduction about permaculture we recently published an article on “What is Permaculture?” so check it out.

Who was part of the Permaculture Design Course in Thailand?

We have been a group of people that never met before. Like-minded people tho, but still new to each other and the place. Even though we all knew that everything will be alright everyone was kind of nervous and checking out the people around and of course the place. We had the opportunity to spend the next 17 days with each other, open up, connect, and eventually become change ambassadors, bringing permaculture in other people’s reality! 

We have been more than 12 people from Australia, Asia, Europe, and America and from around 9 different countries; whereas the majority were female accomplished by 5 male participants. The age ranged between 18 and 40 years old.

I would say a pretty diverse group based on the demographic factors; and at the same time we had so many different professional and personal backgrounds: We had school teachers, designers, freelancers, permaculture practitioners, tattoo artist,  office people, people about to start their own farm and city people thriving for fresh self-grown food and on top we had many different climate zones present as well. Thus, we were able to understand the different opportunities and hardships of all relevant climate zones through real-life experience. 

How the group process formed the PDC tribe?

Throughout the course, these unknown people grew together, formed a group, learned to understand each other’s needs while living in a community and finally becoming friends, soulmates and supporters to increase the thinking of permaculture in their daily lives. We’ve spent the free days out at night markets, in the city and some of us even celebrated Thai New Year together. Overall, seeing the group becoming one was the biggest reward for me as a Co-facilitator. 

While having one person doing minimalistic tattoo arts, we had tattoo sessions opened for the last days of the course and quite a few of the participants decided to leave the place with a beautiful little memory. We had great meals and conversations together and we all definitely enjoyed the dive into the pond after a long day to get some refreshment. Yea, it was pretty hot during the time of the course but it again helped us to understand that it is more about taking care of each other and achieving slowly rather than rushing and being wasted.

And yes, we still share experiences, ask questions, and just catch up with each other from time to time; which always brings back great memories. Becoming friends and creating a peer group for me is one of the most important outcomes of each and every Permaculture Design Course. Knowing that people are visiting each other and changing their life directions also comes with goosebumps as it shows that the magic of permaculture does not stop in the plant and soil world but can be implemented into society as social permaculture. 

The people, the knowledge, the different perspectives and stages in the life of the participants are key for a successful permaculture course. And we have been lucky again to have a great and motivated group that was willing to share, cooperate and thrive for more and detailed knowledge.

The PDC facilitators and why embracing diversity is key in permaculture?

As the PDC facilitator team, we also created a diverse group of trainers from different countries, gender, and ages to embrace diversity in permaculture. The 3 hosting facilitators gained experience in urban, rural, land-based and social permaculture in different parts of the world and started their permaculture journey for different reasons. During that time all lived as residents at Gaia Ashram. They have been implementing different permaculture projects at Gaia Ashram what was actually a great way of showcasing the power of permaculture everywhere on the land. One of the main feedback we got from the participants was how the different personalities, teaching methods, and approaches helped to understand better. With our back full of experience we have been able to link the theory to real-life examples to make things clear. Furthermore, we were able to motivate 2 guest teachers to accomplish the group for specific topics such as natural building, native Thai plants, and a sound cultural background of Thailand as the hosting country of this Permaculture Design Course. 

Why attending a Permaculture Design Courses?

Because it is so much fun, it is challenging and it is mainly creating a lot of positive energy you can count on afterward.

We have seen many different generations of permaculture that are all following the same underlining principles and ethics. At the moment Permaculture is changing from a mainly male-dominated “doing” mentality with egocentric characters towards a way more diverse ecosystem. Again it is all about the mix, we do need all different styles and different strengths to develop.

Social permaculture and non-land-based designs are becoming more and more visible and even businesses are applying permaculture principles to transform into more ethical and environmentally friendly market participants. Vegan permaculture is transforming holistic systems, including or excluding animals as main elements, into closed-loop systems that can function without exploiting animals.

I believe that every PDC is important and will increase the diversity of people that are practicing permaculture and with these people, we all can gain more insights and learning new approaches to new and old problems.

Why do I love facilitating Permaculture Design Courses?

Because there is always room for improvement! So was it a perfect PDC? Definitely not. Is there something we will do differently next time? Yes, for sure. Was it always easy and fun? No, not at all!

And all this is good; it is important to go together through the hardships, it is important to be challenged by deep diving questions while keeping the overall framework in mind. It is normal that everyone during the course feels a little frustrated at least at one point, this is part of the process of understanding permaculture. It is the challenge everyone needs to go through to be able to connect the dots and see the permaculture picture as a whole! It is a little challenging process and we as facilitators are providing the input and supporting each and every person to jump over this barrier to fully get what permaculture actually means. 

Once arrived in this phase everything before and after makes sense and adds up to your personal permaculture knowledge and experience. You will still learn forever, we opened the buffet, you tried and now it is on you to use the toolbox, the design framework and all the other techniques (we talked about or left aside) in your personal way- You will no longer limit yourself to what you learned and experienced but to what you actually want to achieve with the land, the farm, the ecosystem, and the people. Things are ready to unfold after a PDC you have all it needs to get it started and to develop yourself further!

Want to learn more?

Join our upcoming Permaculture Design Certificate (PDC) Course in Thailand at Gaia Ashram. It will start on March 25 and continues till April 10. You can find more information here or just drop us a message; we’re happy to hear from you.

If you want to experience a design process join one of our workshops or invite us to your property and become the host for the next workshop. Just drop us a mail for further information. Or just subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

Furthermore, you can join Gaia Ashram a community-based education center as a volunteer and learn more about gardening, spirituality and nature connection, For further information check www.gaiaschoolasia.com.