Siamo un gruppo di persone che amano l'arte, la natura e il benessere. Nella nostra fattoria, ci connettiamo con noi stessi, con gli altri e con la natura, avendo allo stesso tempo lo spazio per esplorare la creatività e la comunicazione.

Abbiamo Anita, la nostra artista ceramista e fondatrice di questo progetto. Scopri il lavoro di Anita qui.

Abbiamo le nostre instancabili fate del giardino, sempre impegnate nei loro compiti.

E abbiamo la nostra meravigliosa Ingrid, che ha introdotto i metodi di Fukuoka, insieme all'agricoltura sintropica e rigenerativa, nel nostro progetto.

We are a group of people who love art, nature, and well-being. At our farm, we connect with ourselves, with others, and with nature, while having the space to explore creativity and communication.

We have Anita, our ceramic artist and the founder of this project. Check out Anita’s work here.

We have our hardworking garden fairies, always busy with their tasks.

And we have our wonderful Ingrid, also a garden fairy who introduces Fukuoka’s methods, as well as syntropic and regenerative agriculture to our project.

we have Michelle and Emiliano who create beautiful art out of caly

Ok now to our team

BIOGRAPHIES

Meet our enchanting garden fairy—overflowing with wisdom about the vibrant life beneath our feet.

Hi

I’m Ingrid and I embraced this ÈLÍSHÍMUN project with a full hearted embrace in a

chance meeting with Anita at our local organic vegetable store when we discovered

our common interest in permaculture.

I still marvel at how I came to be captured by this interest, far from what I’d ever

aspired to up until a few years ago. I feel long country walks in the Essex countryside

with my mother play an important role.

My studies were in contemporary dance at LSCD, followed by Integrated Arts at

Crewe and Alsager college of higher education. A yearn to travel brought me to Italy

where I taught English and continued to dedicate myself to dance, teaching and

sporadically performing and choreographing.

I moved from Rome to the countryside near the small town of Bracciano and settled

down to become a family.

During Covid I happened to attend an online world climate summit of the COP 21 in Edinburg hosted by Kosha Joubert of the Pocket Project, introducing me to the work of countless ecologists reinforcing my bond to the earth as I began to understand the extent of the severe damage humans have done and are continuing to do to the Environment. My North star became the words and work of John D Lui whose documentary Green Gold restored hope within me by opening me up to the possibility of landscape transformation at a scale previously unheard of. This started me on a trajectory, thanks to increasing online accessibility, of going into greater depth as regards ecosystem restoration, being introduced to its intricate workings and mechanisms and how to go about implementing it. 3 MOOCs ( massive open source online courses) on ecosystem restoration and together with Matt Power’s (author of Regenerative Soil) Advanced permaculture Student Course opened up a whole range of possibilities as to how to begin creating abundance through working in relation to nature and the earth, further made possible by my integration into the Elishimun project.

Dance continues to be central to my life in study and practice leading to alignment of scientific knowledge of the body as an organism with inner knowing, sensing and perception. My studies in ecology have revealed to me that in the same way that all the functions in the body are fully interrelated and interconnected within a greater whole, they are also intimately connected to the earth and universe. The evolutionary process of life on earth seems to have taken place from microcosm to macrocosm, the whole reflected in the parts and the parts within the whole. I feel that in working with land we are connecting to the whole, that the interplay of elements in nature are so beautifully balanced and orchestrated and that our role could be that of players within this great symphony, guiding ourselves and the system towards greater health and abundance. I am hoping a community will gradually form centred around regeneratively cultivating the site, exchange of ideas, experimentation and creativity. We/I welcome you to follow our project through our blogs

THE GARDEN PROJECT

Within the permaculture project we are working on a regenerative design for the area shown on the map, initiating from what will be the chicken run and sloping gradually down to an area planted with conifer trees. It now consists of grasses and wild plant species such as chicory and wild calendula and has a mainly clay and silt soil which is a red/orange colour and contains little organic matter. There are odd areas nearer to the chicken run which have become encrusted with moss and slightly impermeable. There are several fruit trees but it is not densely planted. The grasses grow very tall in spring but, being in the Mediterranean the lack of rain in the summer means the area quickly dries out and there are signs of stress in the fruit trees. The first objective is to improve the water retention in the landscape in order for the trees to recover and for there to be abundant growth that will have more resilience throughout the summer without needing excessive irrigation or outside input. I have thought of doing this through rainwater harvesting as well as creating different types of swale on contour. Different niches geared towards increasing biodiversity and soil fertility will in turn increase water retention capacity and thus support the abundance. My general vision is of a transformation whereby the soil will eventually become rich, brown and crumbly and the whole area will gradually be transformed into a sort of edible garden where you can wonder down a path and discover different areas and atmospheres to be savoured and meditated within, where vegetables, fruits, berries, flowers, wild flowers, trees, water bodies will all become a part. The motivations driving this vision are to provide a living example of various water retention systems and techniques able to resist the increasing drought the Mediterranean is predicted to be subject to. By coming to our presentations and courses people will be motivated to implement these principles on their own gardens or landscapes, thus hopefully creating trends and becoming actively and consciously involved in positively influencing the ecosystem functions in our area. For now this is but a vision but it will be an inspiration for the path towards its realisation

Thich Nhat Hanh : “there is no way to happiness, happiness is the way”

Daisaku Ikeda: “Growth is synonymous with ceaseless inquiry and continuous exploration”

And this is Michelle, always with a big smile. She is truely a dedicated creativity researcher

Essere creativa è sempre stato importante per me, fin da quando ero una bambina. Crescendo, oltre a essere un modo per conoscere meglio il mondo e me stessa, è diventato anche uno strumento per trovare una maggiore dimensione di serenità e per superare i momenti difficili. A 15 anni ho deciso, contro le aspettative della mia famiglia, di frequentare una scuola di arti applicate e successivamente ho studiato all’Accademia di Belle Arti di Vienna con successivo diploma di laurea in Crafts, Design and Architecture Education. Ho viaggiato il più spesso possibile, sempre alla scoperta di musei, design, architettura e meraviglie della natura. Ricordo che portavo sempre con me colori e carta in ogni viaggio. L' obbiettivo di seguire un lavoro socialmente riconosciuto, un lavoro per cui venivo retribuito, ha gradualmente messo in secondo piano i miei bisogni creativi e artistici. Con la maternità e la gestione della vita familiare, il mio tempo e la mia energia sono stati richiesti ancora di più. A un certo punto, la mia vita ha iniziato a sembrarmi vuota: ero spesso infelice, insoddisfatta ed arrabbiata. È stato allora che ho capito che qualcosa doveva cambiare. Ho iniziato a dipingere, poi ho frequentato corsi di ceramica e ho scoperto qualcosa di inaspettato: lavorare con le mani è diventato il mio punto di ancoraggio. Non era solo un hobby, ma una via per tornare a me stessa. Nel corso degli anni ho esplorato molti percorsi creativi, lavorando con artisti, investendo in corsi e workshop e costruendo uno spazio di co-working creativo insieme ad altre artiste. In questo processo mi sono resa conto di quanto molte persone si siano allontanate dalla propria creatività—focalizzate sulla velocità, sui risultati e sulle aspettative esterne invece che su un’espressione autentica. Quando ho fatto un passo indietro e sono tornata a lavorare l’argilla in modo puramente intuitivo, tutto è cambiato. Nessuna pressione, nessun obiettivo - solo esperienza diretta. Oggi lavoro come artista ceramista e educatrice artistica e accompagno le persone a ritrovare la propria identità creativa. Il mio approccio non riguarda idee o risultati perfetti, ma il fare - lavorare con le mani, entrare in relazione con il materiale e riscoprire cosa significa davvero creare. Amo lavorare in modo intuitivo e sperimentale. Per me la creatività è un processo formativo: entrare nell’azione, lasciare andare il sovraccarico mentale e permettere a qualcosa di autentico di emergere. Attraverso workshop, mostre e sessioni di co-creazionr, supporto le persone che desiderano riconnettersi con la propria creatività, trovando nuove forme di espressione e costruendo una connessione più profonda con sé stesse. Il mio lavoro artistico con l’argilla è ispirato a un ritorno alla terra e al fare —per me un percorso semplice e diretto per ritrovare la propria forza creativa.

My name is Fiona Pollard. I am a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and Yoga Wave Teacher (500h). I work with yoga, meditation, mindfulness and Somatic Experiencing tools to help clients attune to their bodies and needs with compassion and kindness. I teach Yoga Wave on Wednesdays (Sunset) and Sundays (morning) on the lakeside beach near Trevignano Romano and at Elishimun Farm events. Individual therapy sessions are available in person (Trevignano Romano or Elishimun Farm, Manziana) or online. Visit my YouTube channel @CalmBendyStrong for free yoga & breathing exercises.

Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing is a gentle therapy aimed at creating space for the body and mind to communicate better. This helps to release trauma and stress trapped in our nervous system. In our busy world, we often use logic to rationalise and minimise our bodily experience, ignoring the signs and signals it is sending us.  We can ‘check out’ from daily stress with screens, food, substances, exercise and more, to avoid what feels uncomfortable and sometimes intolerable. Somatic Experiencing favours a greater connection with our own body, in order to be able to act with greater awareness and coherence. This results in greater respect for oneself in various aspects such as “What are my needs? How do I set healthy limits? How do I take care of myself? Or how do I develop a greater containment capacity?”

By unlocking patterns of behaviour and thoughts, this approach helps to discover the functioning of the nervous system and teaches self-regulation. For example, how to calm down if you are nervous, how to understand body language and pay attention to it, or how to discover patterns of behaviour and thought that have been blocked, to get out of them in a conscious way.

Yoga Wave

We are Nature and the practice of yoga (meaning union of body, mind and soul) aims to connect together our internal world with our external world - a union between the microcosm and the macrocosm in which we exist: non-duality.  Yoga Wave principles, based on this union, are built around 3 natural elements: Rock, Bamboo and Water. The Rock expresses the concept of Centering, Grounding and Physical and Mental Stability. Bamboo expresses the ability to be Strong, Soft and Flexible by transiting between Yin and Yang. Water, being in the flow, expresses the adaptable attitude in the awareness of the intuitive wisdom of body and mind (“Wave flow”) and the flow of energies and emotions (Prana flow). Through the practice, we are “stable like rock, flexible like bamboo, adaptable like water”, helping us feel closely united with Nature. This flowy practice is perfect for all levels of experience. 

Please contact me on +393273329898 or email me at fionapollard88@gmail.com for more details.