Twelve Principles for Regenerative Living

How the twelve permaculture principles can be applied to create regenerative relationships with ourselves, our cultures, and the Earth.

Photo by the author

Permaculture is a design system based on emulating the relationship patterns of nature. With its roots in agriculture, permaculture is now widely applied to our inner and social worlds as well. Permaculture is a regenerative framework, meaning its implementation increases the health of the systems that implement it (this is in contrast to sustainability frameworks, which merely perpetuate themselves as they are).

This article will use a social permaculture perspective to explain the twelve permaculture principles. The twelve permaculture principles were created as a “cheat sheet” to learning and emulating the patterns of nature. They are permaculture’s version of biomimicry’s “life’s principles.” Our format introduces each permaculture principle with descriptions of how they manifest in nature, the psyche, and society.

For reference, here is a graphic of the twelve principles with the three permaculture ethics at the center:

Reproduced from Permaculture Principles.

Each of these principles gives a design strategy that can be easily “cut and pasted” into a design for a natural, personal, or social system. Before we dive in, I want to clarify what I call the “master principles” of permaculture, which, while not made explicit in permaculture, are the theoretical underpinnings of the principles.

The Master Principles

The master principles of permaculture are the meta-principles that govern life at the highest scales: the theory of natural selection and the laws of physics.

Photo by Paweł Czerwiński on Unsplash

Natural Selection

The theory of natural selection tells us that natural systems change over time in such a way that optimizes their survival. Thus, all of the permaculture principles which follow evolved on this basis. The permaculture principles exist in their current form because they are the patterns that are most effective at ensuring system success.

The permaculture principles exist in their current form because they are the patterns that are most effective at ensuring system success.

Natural selection tells us that natural systems are inherently selfish — that is, systems evolve behaviors that allow them to consistently replicate themselves. Permaculture addressees this selfishness through the introduction of the permaculture ethics, which will be only briefly mentioned in our conclusion.

Laws of Physics

The laws of physics also constrain the behavior of natural systems. Each pattern in nature can be described in terms of natural laws.

The natural laws which give the greatest insight into the behavior of living systems are the laws of thermodynamics. Thermodynamics describes how energy flows through systems, increasing their entropy. An understanding of thermodynamics may assist your learning of permaculture, however, it is not strictly necessary. If you are curious, I recommend you read my primer, The Two Things You Didn’t Realize Govern Everything.

With this housekeeping out of the way, let’s dive into the twelve permaculture principles and the applications they find in nature, psyche and society.

Principle One: Observe and Interact

The first principle implores us to observe and interact with our environment before introducing any new designs.

Photo by Donovan Simpkin on Unsplash

Nature

Wild animals are acutely aware of their environments. They depend on careful observation for safety and finding food and water. Vervet monkeys, for example, listen to the chirping of birds to get information about their environment. The calls of starlings help them determine which predators are nearby.

Psyche

The first permaculture principle is embodied by behaviors that allow us to gain better insight into the functioning of our own minds. Practices such as psychotherapy, meditation, and art are all based upon observing and interacting with ourselves. Self awareness is the birthplace of wisdom and insight.

Society

Social application of the first principle leads us to first observe and understand our culture before taking action to change it. By empathizing with the perspectives of others, learning the norms, and understanding the milieu, we can uncover its leverage points. As a practical application, imagine that you are managing a new team you are unfamiliar with. Your success is in large part contingent upon understanding the motivations, habits, and expectations of the team’s members. Without understanding their perspectives, you will be less effective as a manager.

By empathizing with the perspectives of others, learning the norms, and understanding the milieu, we can uncover its leverage points.

Principle Two: Catch and Store Energy

The second principle recognizes that change happens when energy flows from one place to another. In being intentional with where energy is stored in a system, we are designing the dynamo from which all the system’s effort will originate.

Эдуард Косарев / CC BY-SA (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)

In being intentional with where energy is stored in a system, we are designing the dynamo from which all the system’s effort will originate.

Nature

Beavers build dams to store water, slowing its loss of energy down a river. In so doing, they create hugely productive wetland ecosystems providing habitat for a diversity of plant and animal life, including the wetland trees on which they depend.

Psyche

Catching and storing mental energy allows us to replenish our reservoirs when we feel drained. The language we use to describe mental states gives us clues to how we store and release energy: we speak of “recharging” after a long day of work, of the “weight” carried by an idea, or the “coldness” with which someone interacts with us.

To “refuel” our minds, it is important to rest, eat clean and nutritious foods, exercise, and explore. Our mental energy can also be stored outside of ourselves, in a journal, a painting, or a song. In this way, it can be tapped later as needed.

On the flip side, it is also important to ensure our energy does not get too condensed in one place, leading to a blockage. The release of blocked energy in our bodies is the basis of energy healing modalities such as reiki and acupuncture. Finally, insights and moments of clarity may arrive when mental energy is allowed to flow freely without maintaining attention in any particular place. We can remember that Einstein was quoted as saying “I thought of it while riding my bike.”

Society

Social energy is the collection of the energy of its individuals. Structures such as businesses, governments and religions serve as energy harvesters, focusing the efforts of the individuals involved. We also gather our collective efforts through events and communications. By consciously designing these systems to maximize social energy transformation, we can keep our efforts focused and synchronized.

The Permaculture Action Network is an organization based on the principle of catching and storing social energy. Their model is to partner with musicians and cultural events around the world in promoting and organizing permaculture action days following events. In this way, they capitalize on the social energy of music performances and festivals, capturing their energy by building social bonds between participants and making tangible improvements in communities.

Principle Three: Obtain a Yield

The third permaculture principle asks us to keep our eyes on the prize: positive results. Obtaining a yield means orienting our designs to produce value that didn’t exist before. Critically, we must identify the needs of our systems in order to determine how to create yields that meet those needs.

Photo by Elaine Casap on Unsplash

Nature

Every organism works to produce a particular yield — reproduction. However, most often, a single system produces many yields for itself and for the other systems around it.

Mychorrizal fungi are fungi that live in the soil and associate with the roots of plants. They form relationships with plants based on reciprocity; plants allow them to infiltrate their roots because the fungi are able to procure minerals which the plants cannot. The fungi, in return, receive carbon from the plants. The relationship functions because each partner is obtaining a yield in their relationship with the other which they would not be able to obtain by acting alone.

Psyche

Obtaining a psychological yield means directing our mental energies toward ends that meet a purpose. A psychological yield could be anything from happiness to knowledge to focus. A key first step in designing your life to obtain psychological yields is identifying your psychological needs.

What gives your life meaning? How do you feel most fulfilled? Remembering to use the first two principles as aides, observing and storing our mental energies, we can determine what activities provide us the most personal value. These are activities that become self-replenishing, ensuring our continued flourishing as individuals and creating ripple effects into our societies.

Remembering to use the first two principles as aides, we can determine what activities provide us the most personal value. These are activities that become self-replenishing, ensuring our continued flourishing as individuals and creating ripple effects into our societies.

Society

Ultimately, our social institutions exist to serve psychological and physiological needs. Organizations can meet these yields on at least two levels — the level of their participants and the level of the greater social ecosystem in which they exist. It is unfortunate that many organizations sacrifice one of these yields for the other.

Many organizations create individual yields for a small few while inhibiting the ability of many to achieve the yields they need. This is capitalism at its worst. On the flip side, many activist groups in the world focus exclusively on meeting social yields — policy changes, for example — while neglecting the yields of their own members. This is the cause of activist burnout. The end result is that these groups fail to meet their social goals because the members have been forced to look elsewhere to meet their individual needs.

One of the central aims of social permaculture is to design systems that equalize this discrepancy by creating sufficient yields for all. Only by giving appropriate weight to both individual yields and social yields can systems survive in the long term. This is one of the ways in which natural systems offset their inherent selfishness. The health of the one depends on the health of the many, and that of the many on that of the one.

One of the central aims of social permaculture is to design systems that equalize this discrepancy by creating sufficient yields for all. Only by giving appropriate weight to both individual yields and social yields can systems survive in the long term.

Principle Four: Self-Regulate & Accept Feedback

Natural systems have structures established which ensure they use new information to improve their operations.

Photo by Tyler Manning. Used with permission.

Nature

The complexity and adaptability of an ant colony is based upon simple rules of feedback and self-regulation. These rules are enforced through pheromones. Different stimuli result in different pheromones being produced. For example, when an ant colony is under attack, pheromones cause larval ants to develop differently, turning them into soldiers to defend the colony. When the invader is gone, the pheromone will diminish and the life cycle of the ants will return to baseline.

Psyche

Self-regulation and accepting feedback within the mind requires we embrace the fact that we are all works in progress. What may have been true for us in years past may not be true now. What makes us happy now may in time lose its luster. By loosening our grips on identity, expectation, and habit we may find fresh avenues toward peace and progress.

What makes us happy now may in time lose its luster. By loosening our grips on identity, expectation, and habit we may find fresh avenues toward peace and progress.

Society

For any system to integrate self-regulation and feedback, accurate information must be available. Free and unbiased press, research, and arts are essential to the functioning of a regenerative society due to the role they play in allowing the society to self-regulate.

For an organization, sharing information with employees such as earnings reports, salaries, benefits, hiring processes, and reviews is helpful. Once information is available, democratic processes can be introduced into our organizations. For a company, this can mean introducing employee ownership structures, evaluation processes, and agency over one’s work.

Principle Five: Use and Value Renewables

Renewable resources are resources that passively replenish themselves. Utilizing renewables reduces the amount of energy that must be input to maintain systems.

Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash

Nature

The primary renewable resource which powers the planet is, of course, the sun. From the sun comes the cycles of the seasons, the tides, and weather patterns, each of which can be considered a renewable resource in its own right.

Grizzly bears hunting salmon during the fall salmon run is a prime example of animals using renewable resources. One of the primary benefits of renewable resources is their predictability — bears have learned to visit specific rivers at specific times of year to take advantage of a resource that recurs. In this way, they can reduce the amount of time they find exploring new hunting grounds in search of less predictable and nonrenewable food sources.

Of course, just because a resource is renewable doesn’t mean that it can be endlessly consumed. Natural systems produce renewable resources in finite quantities. When humans join in on the salmon run and overfish, there may not be enough to go around.

Psyche

The human psyche is our greatest renewable resource. At a fundamental level, our consciousness is self-replenishing. Just like the beat of the heart or the cycles of the breath, awareness is ever-present and effortless. By learning the ebbs and flows of our mental processes, we can take advantage of the abundance springing within each of us. Fulfillment, motivation, and creative potential have their deepest wells within. To flourish, we can shift our focus away from transient external standards and toward the timeless essence of our humanity. Find your highest excitement and follow it.

Our consciousness is self-replenishing. By learning the ebbs and flows of our mental processes, we can take advantage of the abundance springing within each of us. Fulfillment, motivation, and creative potential have their deepest wells within.

Society

The energetic currency of society is human connection. Our instinct to connect is self-replenishing. Connection powers our drive to form groups, to express ourselves, and leave the world better than we found it.

Unfortunately, the other side of our drive to connect is our drive to separate. We build distinctions between those groups we are part of and those we are not. Fear and greed are also renewable resources. I do not believe it is possible to wash these vices from our society. Therefore we must ask, how can we leverage them to be beneficial for us? Can our drive to outcompete neighboring groups bring us together?

The modern history of the Olympics provides an answer. The Olympics are a competition explicitly pitting the nations of the world against one another while simultaneously creating a forum of peace and celebration of all. The challenge for our corporations, classes, governments, militaries, and religions is to do the same and convert our innate drive to outcompete into an opportunity to unite.

Principle Six: Produce No Waste

The living systems of our planet are constantly cycling energy, materials and information. The output of one system becomes the input for another. In this way, toxins are reprocessed and requirements for external inputs are reduced.

Photo by LUM3N on Unsplash

Nature

When fall comes, trees lose their leaves. These leaves, too costly to maintain, lose their life support, turn brown, and fall to the ground. Once there, they become the foundation of a host of different organisms. Birds collect them for their nests, worms enjoy the moisture they capture, and fungi and bacteria eat them. Eventually, the components of the leaves work their way back into the soil where they become the building blocks for new leaves.

Psyche

Every experience we have helps build our mental ecosystem. In our minds, no thought or emotion is wasted. Each adds a new piece to our conception of self.

Unfortunately, many of us are too familiar with the notion that parts of us are useless — perhaps we would rather do without our doubts, our vices, or our traumas. Yet our negative experiences are often the source of our compassion and creative inspiration. Shunning these experiences creates more trouble for us down the line. If unprocessed, our negative feelings will keep returning, crystallizing and preventing new ones from emerging.

On the other hand, opening ourselves fully to our experiences allows us to put them to good use. We can compost our memories, our feelings, our thoughts and turn them into a new form more useful to us.

As Murakami writes in Kafka on the Shore (pg. 9),

Become like a sheet of blotting paper and soak it all in. Later on you can figure out what to keep and what to unload.

Society

Much like those thoughts within us which we are tempted to ignore or cast aside, society is too filled with individuals who have been treated the same by others. Consider the interaction you can have from your car with someone holding a cardboard sign looking for help. How can you behave to ensure this interaction doesn’t go to waste? In other words, how can this interaction create value for society? A smile or a simple hello can create lasting value for all involved.

Principle Seven: Design from Patterns to Details

Designing from patterns to details means creating changes in your system based upon the overall behavior you want the system to have, rather than the configuration of any individual element within it.

Photo by Kevin Bergen on Unsplash

Nature

If you look at a hillside in the northern hemisphere, the south face will have a different character than the north face. The trees will be taller, the slope will be greener, and different plants will be found there. This is because the southern face has greater exposure to the sun. Recognizing the simple pattern of greater sunlight allows us to make predictions about the details of what is found there.

We can predict all kinds of details about natural systems based upon the patterns of their environments. Latitude helps us predict which species will flourish in an area. The oxygen level in the atmosphere helps us predict the size of the largest insects. The genetic history of an organism helps us predict its behavior.

From the perspective of ecosystem designers, starting with a focus on the patterns of your region will help you select elements that fit it best. The ecological designer working on a landscaping project does not start with a list of plants they really like to eat, but with the climate and other conditions of the landscape itself.

Psyche

Our psychological patterns are the aspects of ourselves that are present no matter how old we are, what we are doing, or how we are feeling. The sum of these patterns could be called our character or inner nature.

Our psychological patterns are the aspects of ourselves that are present no matter how old we are, what we are doing, or how we are feeling. The sum of these patterns could be called our character or inner nature.

To improve our psychological lives working from patterns to details, we first must catalog our mental patterns. Here is a list of questions that you can ask to identify your mental patterns:

-What motivates you?

-What are the core beliefs you have about yourself?

-What makes you feel valuable?

-How does your psychological state change based upon external c-circumstances, such as your environment, the time of day, or the season?

By using this line of questioning to identify my psychological patterns, I have been able to improve my mental health and productivity. For example, I have a rough picture of activities I engage with based on the time of day. These activities are the details that I have filled in based upon patterns that depend on the time of day.

Structuring my days based from the patterns that dominate at specific times of day improves mental health and productivity because I plan certain activities when I am most likely to be excited about doing them. I can also cut myself some slack when I engage in unproductive activities at the time of day when I generally have the most severe symptoms from my health conditions. I avoid activities that might be in opposition to my common patterns at a particular time of day. By doing this, I create more harmony in my life.

Below is a schedule of a typical day for me, listing the pattern experienced first and then possible detailed activities: