What Past Participants Say

Here is some of what students say about their experiences in our recent courses:

Thank you (the entire community) for welcoming us and sharing your home with us for this month. It’s been the most incredible experience of my life and I’m going to miss this place and these people more than words can describe.

The instructors were fantastic. I felt nurtured, challenged, stimulated, inspired, and pushed forward.

I learned how to observe nature, value it, and live reverently within it.

Learning about living in community was valuable. I learned what I want and what I don’t in a community.

The fundamental principles of permaculture have already changed my perspective and how I live. I find it overlapping with other aspects of my life and am energized to pursue it in my lifestyle.

I've learned a lot about how to sustain myself and help create a more sustainable culture. I also learned a lot about myself and have grown as a result.

I’ve gotten to know myself better—great job of helping students self-reflect through workshops and free time.

I’ve changed profoundly. I’m open to a new way of living and see it as the only sane way to continue.

I feel more positive and excited about change and community.

The things I was exposed to here will forever change my life. I’m a little bit wiser, more connected with nature.

It was an awesome way to spend my summer and I would do it all over again.

The Heart of Now experience was really unexpected, and it helped me grow and discover more about myself.

The program gave me so many tools and life skills that I notice are useful in my everyday experience even almost a year later. I learned how to take concepts that I had only read about in books and to really make them possible, hands-on projects. I also learned so many new, innovative permaculture techniques of which I had never heard before. I entered the program as someone with experience living in ecovillages and working on organic farms, but with almost no experience in permaculture or ecovillage design, and I left the program feeling capable of being an initiator rather than a follower in the field of sustainability. I also left the program with an extended "family" of exceptional individuals who are now making a difference all over the world!  

The overall social experience was amazing, including how it was facilitated.

I will use a lot of this information in my life. I have more tools to help change the world in whatever way I can.

I think meeting the people here was what changed me most.

I have a better idea of what is possible as far as sustainable living, community, and how amazing people can be. I feel more positive and desirous of learning from and about people, seek out new experiences, and read a lot of books on what we covered.

I am more empowered to seek the things I want. I am able to be more present and honest with myself.

Lost Valley supported me in opening my mind to a unique and very special form of education. For me, the emphasis was on how well I learned to interact with people in a way that normally had not been so easy for me. I enjoyed the atmosphere and the communal effort from almost all people who were involved with my experiences at Lost Valley. The program in itself opened up channels of countless opportunity of interest in myself. I enjoyed the learning atmosphere; it was relaxed and up to each individual, the extent to which they wanted to learn and be involved.

I want to incorporate all of this into my life. I’m going to paint streets, start guerrilla gardening and turn San Francisco into an ecotopia!

My mind has been opened to so many new possibilities. I am just excited to go out into the world, without guilt and to spread these incredible ways of living. It can be so simple and can empower so many individuals.

Whoa. Man. I feel more confident in my skills to create change, in the power of my instincts, and my place in community. I have a whole box of new pairs of glasses to put on. I want to come to know places, to really observe. I want to celebrate the capacities of nature in everything I do.

More aware of how permaculture can be used to help others/ourselves. Motivated to create change in my own community. (Mark Lakeman!) Will incorporate: water catchment, greywater, composting: closing the loop and stacking functions.

The program was one of the best experiences I've had in a long time . . . The existing Lost Valley community, and more specifically, the amazing people in the course, made it an incredibly enriching and transformative experience. I think everyone in the program experienced a great deal of personal growth, no matter what their age (I’m 38). Living in community can do that. The course material was fascinating… The food is amazing, by the way. And the natural beauty of the land is intense and will stay with you long after you leave. If there were a second level of the program, I would do it this summer in a heartbeat. I really can't say enough good things about the program and the experience as a whole.