Peloponnese Living Deserves Relaxed, Open Minds. Full of World Wonder
Arcadia, Peloponnese is a special place to be. Sea & Mountain.
💙 Wonder Wednesdays 💙
This is the first newsletter in a series of weekly Abundance! Peloponnese Living newsletters, notes, and other communications about our active creation of Blue Zones. The places where 1:3 people are reaching the age of 80+ without any chronic diseases.
Mike & I are the founders of the international Senses & Sciences think-tank Abundanism.com. Abundance! 💙 2033. A self-fulfilling prophecy that all Global Goals have been met. In practice, we redesign healthy areas. And educate.
We are a magnet for sciences professors but we are very practical souls ourselves. We started working at the ages of respectively 17 and 21, and we had careers in communication, sustainability, logistics, high-tech, consultancy, ecology, community villages, healthy buildings, financing sustainability, and more.
We are connecting-the-dots-experts. Communication. Journalism. Writing. Entrepreneurship.
We do Culture Bridging for health and we work internationally.
Our careers took place in multi-diverse professional teams. Many different technical and non-technical jobs. Full-time entrepreneurs since 2014. Since 1998, I’m also a journalist and writer in two languages, understanding several more.
Dutch & English. I write about Futures, Humans, Biology & Healthy Systems.
Mike and I love to travel and collect life experiences. We landed in Greece in 2016. We learn languages. We observe cultures. We feel nature and our planet. We translate concepts and words. We are part of human transformations.
We create what we create - always with locals without much ado.
I’ve always been a writer. And an educator about human-nature-planet-thingies. Biology. Also technology. Innovation for human-healthy environments.
In every week’s newsletter, you will find small peeks into my Thyrea Writer’s Life as a digital nomad. And some education about nature-design subjects. You have to know that I’ve become hugely mesmerized by Biomimicry and Blue Economy since 2012. Ecology-Economy. Bottom-Up Designs. Healthy Systems.
Mike and I are magnets for science professors but we are very practical souls ourselves
Coastal economies. Environments. Blue Zones. Planetary Timing.
Biodiversity. Human diversity. Succession. Evolution.
Our practical Abundanism.com projects always evolve around healthy humans and can be divided into 4 strands with professional partners.
Soil, Water, and healthy landscape restoration in line with local climate zones - rewilding, permaculture, biorock deposition out of seawater. Biodiversity. Pest management through immune-system strengthening.
Human Transformation Retreats with biology & psychology - getting out of our victimhood and becoming active for our body-mind-soul health. Trauma into Superpowers.
Off-Season Liveliness to strengthen the Greek economy (accommodations, activities, retreats, properties) - the Peloponnese Living Facebook Community with 63,000 members and several Greek partners
Philosophy, Writing & Serendipity
What Mike and I do, has become a big trend around the world. It’s called Nature-Based Solutions. Biodiversity-restoration. Restore ecosystems on a big-scale and build a growing local economy with it. Abundance! through diversity.
I’ve written 700+ stories on Medium about ecology-economy progress so far. Not only in rural areas. Also about nature-based-solutions in cities.
Peloponnese Living
In the summer of 2023, Mike and I started a Facebook Group Peloponnese Living with my friend Vivian Manolesou and her partner Theodore Karagiannis. The community turned into a small virtual city. 63,000 followers.
Giving us leverage for important pollution discussions with governors and such. Vivian is the president of the hoteliers union in Arcadia.
Her Greek friends became our friends.
Our aim with Peloponnese Living is a peaceful Greek-International understanding. Culture bridging. Helping internationals surf the Greek bureaucracy. Helping grove owners keep their groves healthy. Filling the off-season with joy and laughter.
Better economy. Healthy ecology.
Off-season retreats and education projects.
In The Netherlands, Mike and I worked for years on healthy area redesigns. Redesign of river harbors. Redesigns of human health systems. Ecology-Economy.
Preventing wildfire and reconnecting people to their environments.
I write and educate about Senses & Sciences. Holistic Sciences. Complexity Sciences without reductionism. Reconnection to our planet. Biology of body, mind, and soul.
We initiate projects with various partners.
In Peloponnese, Greece I can finally hear myself think again. I become the mountain. I become the sea. I experience huge serendipity as a compass for my life. And I laugh with myself because I know it’s all bias, light, and illusion.
But then… There’s too much truth from the future in it to ignore…
Time is just not linear. And timing is super important. Newton fixed time in his formula of motion. And perhaps from then on, we’ve gone wrong in some way. Or we’ve gone right and we are correcting the heavily polluting excesses now.
Greek has two words for time.
Chronos = measured time
Kairos = experienced, felt time
In Peloponnese, we discuss life over a glass of local wine or beer with Greeks and internationals. It’s easy here to dive a bit deeper. It’s philosophy-country. We go to Moustos Healing Well, the mineral-rich mountain spring, for sunrise.
Sunrise? We all know it’s Mother Earth orbiting, not the sun rising, don’t we?
So, I write again.
I hope my neuropathy (a chemo by-effect) becomes better and I’ll walk more easily. I train my legs by swimming and snorkeling with turtles and fish. Tangled in seaweed.
Our aim with Peloponnese Living is a peaceful Greek-International understanding. Culture bridging. Helping internationals surf the Greek bureaucracy. Helping grove owners keep their groves healthy. Filling the off-season with joy and laughter.
I eat cactus fruits in the morning, offered by a friendly Greek villager who comes out of the sea after having been spearfishing. And I wonder about many things without too much judgment.
I imagine Plato and his cave allegory. Light and shadow.
Plato and his cave are at the basis of nearly all of our Western science fiction novels. The Matrix and more. I’m writing science fiction now too. 2033. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Abundance! 2033 and ALL Global Goals have been achieved.
I now write a book about HOW in a dynamic balance…
It’s my age. I’m nearing 60. And I have Asian ancestors. TAO. The journey.
Mike has Dutch-African ancestors. We both love being on Gerania Farm in Corinth. With Giorgos Fou and Athina Gkoumaki.
Giorgos is a Taichi master. Gerania is a biodynamic farm. Mike will give courses there with Giorgos and James Godfrey-Fausset. James is a permaculture colleague and head forester for large-scale restorations. With Giorgos, we talk about olive oil and Swimming Dragon.
Here is a video of the Swimming Dragon Qigong routine.
James teaches Systemic Biology for Tree Health in homeopathic doses and the biochemistry sciences of it. VOCs. Volatile Organic Components. In some weird way, many different changemakers land here in Thyrea.
Our children and grandchildren also arrive with their friends and family. Our colleagues arrive with their families from all over the world.
We walk pilgrim’s walks to dried-up rivers and rock monasteries.
We talk restoration. We play Skibbo in the cafe till late at night. Life is beautiful in Peloponnese, Greece! I can feel my soul thrive again here!
What can you read in our newsletter?
Week & Week again and again…
My Thyrea Writer’s Life as a digital nomad = Thyrea means “gateway, portal”
Anthropocene & Syntropocene. Syn = plus. Tropos = way, manner
Permaculture for olive, fruit, and herb grove/garden owners
Buying or Renting Property = surfing the Greek bureaucracy
Biomimicry, Complexity & Simplicity Sciences = Timing & Light
Nature’s Geometry-Math = Spatial Relations & GIELIS Superformula
Conversations with my senses-training tribes and biomimicry students
Pieces of poetry, Greek philosophy, and planet wonder
Happy reading, philosophizing, and learning from each other, my friends.
Every week, you will find new snippets for wonderful Abundance! Peloponnese Living. And if you want to join us here for a month or more off-season, my friend Vivian is offering long-stay tariffs with a 50-70% discount.
Let me know in the comments and I’ll send you more info. This newsletter is for open-minded conversations. No truths are set in stone. Many questions have open endings. There’s always more to see and more to know…
We’ll give you recipes to try out. You can add your experiences in the comments.
James, Giorgos, and Mike teach Systemic Biology for Tree Health in homeopathic doses and the sciences of it. In some weird way, many different changemakers land here in Thyrea.
This week, in the Abundance! Peloponnese Living paid newsletter (€ 2.75 /month):
Mother Earth’s Philosophy
Greek & Javanese Languages about Timing & We
Rewilding Peloponnese Grove Owner Tips & Tricks
Cultural Experiences from the Property Buying Field
Enjoy life, my friends, wherever you are! Find your inspiration somewhere and bring it to the place where you want to create healthy systems. That’s what Mike and I do.
Warm regards, Desiree.
