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News and
Events
soma earth is
about guiding others to listen deeply, grow into, and become
co-creators with Nature. Through eco-architecture, wilderness
retreats, body mind therapy and building SOUL teachings,
interviews & writings, soma earth seeks to bring integration
between human beings, NATURE and their own true nature.
soma earth ARCHITECT is a pioneering architectural
firm emphasizing HEALTHY, EMF-FREE, NON-TOXIC, ENERGY EFFICIENT,
NATURAL building materials & systems for GREEN, SUSTAINABLE,
ECO-ARCHITECTURE - new buildings as well as renovation
projects. We are also passionate about designing spaces that are ALIVE
and full of SOUL!
design
from the inside out
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Ingrid Cryns
Eco-Architect
After a couple of months hiatus,
I'm again feeling the natural impulse to write and express myself
through my newsletter and blog. I have heard from various real
estate brokers that the spring market has materialized into a more
active one than they expected a couple of months ago.
It appears that first time buyers
are very excited about finally being able to
afford their first home. Move-up buyers are interested in being
able to move-up to a bigger home or even finally afford to also buy a
cottage in a less frenzied and more rational real estate market - AND
getting amazing mortgage interest rates too. This market is an
excellent time to start shopping for out-of-town properties and begin
planning to build a smarter, healthier, more natural & ethically
sustainable, home with strawbale walls for off-grid living.
We are continuing our work on the
design and working drawings of a wonderful 3
bedroom strawbale house near Orangeville/Hillsburg, Ontario, with Ben
Polley of Harvest Homes as the
contractor. We have created a building that is a lovely gentle curved, OVAL
shape. And we have been communicating with the land.
More detail on this can be found below.........our office continues to
grow many exciting project with wonderful clients who are equally
passionate about creating buildings that support the optimal health of
the earth through sustainable, green, design.
If you or anyone you know is
considering buying property, please feel free to
contact me or to forward this email ASAP as there are multiple
considerations to be aware of BEFORE you buy your land that you may not
know about. In our following newsletters we are starting a series
of articles to give you tips on what these beginning steps are and what
to look out for at each stage. 
Get up to $10,000
back in Energy Rebates for your Home. I recently
had to replace the furnace in my home. Read more at the bottom of
this email or go direct to my blog here....
I attended the Ontario Strawbale Building
Coalition AGM meeting, on Sunday, March
15, 2009. The day was a great event packed full with detailed
technical information about strawbale building. Waterloo and
Queens Universities have been doing phenomenal research studies with
their Masters students. I learned more about the differences
between cement-lime plaster and pure earth clay plaster. There
was a study on how when strawbales are placed flat on their side, the
straw is perpendicular to the plaster and thus the adhesion is
significantly stronger than if they are laid on edge, parallel to the
plaster - but if you use cement lime plaster, the cement creates a kind
of structural 'skin' that compensates. Using a cement-lime
plaster allows you to have a 'stronger' wall, but with a silica based
paint you can still get a 'gortex' kind of breatheable ability that
allows moisture to pass through and dry out. I am also now on the
Board of Directors of the coalition and look forward to getting
more involved to help continue to grow strawbale building in Ontario.
We have a booth at the upcoming GREEN LIVING SHOW, APRIL 24 -
26, 2009. Please mark your calandars for this great event in
about 5 weeks from now, where you can meet vendors in all areas of your
life that live passionately to make our world a better place through
innovative, sustainable products. We are designing our booth to
be built with all natural, sustainable, local woods and without any
nails! It should look stunning and we are very excited to
even build it ourselves! Here you can read about what we
designed for our booth last year.
And finally, a gentle REMINDER
about our monthly experiential workshop, Ecstatic Trance Postures,
HAPPENING NEXT WEEK THURSDAY MARCH 26, 2009,
at WONDERWORKS, 79A Harbord
Ave. (just west of Spadina, south of Bloor) 6:30 - 9:30 PM. We highly
recommend that you try one at least once. Wake up to your more
intuitive right brain and explore the shamanic worlds of alternative
realities. For more detail scroll to the bottome of this email. They
are EXTREMELY FUN and enjoyable.
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soma earth ARCHITECT 2009
OVAL STRAWBALE HOUSE
Erin, Ontario
The above plan is the ground floor of a 2 storey, 2000
SF, OVAL STRAWBALE HOUSE that is starting construction next
month! We are almost finished working drawings and it will be
going for permit soon. We have been so inspired by the gentleness
and awareness of our client who is studying Reiki & Permaculture. The
curved shape grew out of our many design conversations together and
also creates an extremely high vibrational energy with this simple plan
shape. Using my special Biogeometry BG3 pendulum, I am able to
test many levels of more detailed design to continuously enhance &
balance the quality of energy in each room. This building will be
entirely non-toxic with 95% all natural, building materials. A
combination timber post interior with balloon wood frame strawbale wall
is our main construction system.
Strawbale walls have a unique vapour permeability that
allows minute water vapours to pass through the unique porous
crystalline structure of the plaster skin and can have anywhere from
.10 to .50 ACH (air exchanges per hour)
(with no mechanical assistance/technology). Strawbale walls don't
actually 'breathe' which is a common myth, rather they
"respire" which favourably impacts on the indoor humidity and
which in turn provides comfort by adding/removing moisture in the
winter/summer as needed.
This creates an extremely healthy living space and air environment that
surpasses, in my opinion, any standard, stick frame home. Also, a
typical brick/wood stud 2x4 wall usually has less than an R20
insulation whereas strawbale walls have a continuous monolithic
insulation of a R30 to R40 value. And, the thick plaster on the
inside of straw bale walls acts as a thermal mass and has been shown to
play a significant role in stabilizing indoor
temperatures. A strawbale house is simply a smarter house!
All finishes will be natural with '0' VOC's (volatile organic
compounds). We are looking at reclaimed timber flooring,
papercrete countertops, milk paint stains as well as milling wood from
directly from the site.
As the site has a great supply of wood and our client would like to use
some of the maple, cherry, ash and ceder wood in his house. We
visited the site together a few weeks ago and talked with the trees to let
them know they will be needed in the house. This was a tremendous
experience for both of us that I wrote a lot about in my blog.
The house will also have radiant heating in the floors, a tankless
water heater, is self-sufficient with off-grid wind and solar power.
Also, our contractor Ben Polley of Harvest Homes is a leader in
the field of natural strawbale construction. His depth and
breadth of experience is absolutely wonderful to work with. We
highly recommend him for any projects. He works in the
Guelph/Kitchener-Waterloo, Grey-Bruce, and Orillia-Muskoka area.
From these three locations, they service projects north to Lions Head
and Huntsville, east to Highway 400 and most areas south-west within
a one to two hour distance from Guelph. In my opinion, there are very
few Contractors as highly qualified as Ben is. Contact me if you
want names of green, strawbale contractors in other areas of Ontario as
well.
This is what Ben has to say about working together on this project;
"I really appreciate your manner of expressing the
values important to you and expressing also the defense of things you
imparted into the plan on [your client,] Martin's, behalf all the
while leaving it open to Martin to consider, weigh and decide or defer
as necessary. I am very much looking forward to this and
future projects working alongside you!"
Did you know that if you want a strawbale house, you
pretty much have to line up your contractor at least a year in advance
as they are in great demand? Especially the
better ones. This means that if you want to work with me to help you
through the maze of the multiple aspects to design your project, I will
need at least a few months to work with you before you submit for
permits & start digging the hole. Sometimes there are Conservation
Authority issues if you have any water or floodplain zones over
your property that could take awhile to approve. Or there might be an
unstable soil issue that needs more work with an engineer. Or
maybe there are health issues that you would
like to understand as to how you can create the most optimally
healthy home for yourself. This would take us to the middle of
the summer from now, when all contractors are already filled up and
trying to finish and close in the houses they started before the
October cold sets in and it starts to get harder to plaster the outside
walls.
If you start within the next few months we can help find you the best
contractor, have enough time to help you find the best property, design
your building, get the required permits and start your project for sure
by next Spring 2010, as soon as the ground is frost-free. Working with
an Eco-Architect ensures that you get the most professional advice with
the most current design & technical considerations of natural,
sustainable building design that is well integrated. With my
background & experience in healthy, sustainable design, permits are
much easier to obtain with my stamp & ability to communicate these
newer (and historically smarter) systems.
Stay tuned for the next series of newsletters where we will be writing
about the various stages of what the steps are and what to look out for
when creating your dream, off-grid, natural & sustainable home.
For more information please contact Ingrid at: info@somaearth.com
416-656-4444
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Home Energy Efficiency
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Get get 15% of
up to $10,000 of tax rebates on almost any renovation to your home
AND get up to $10,000 back in Energy Rebates for your Home
I recently had to replace the furnace in my home. I have written
a long, detailed record of what all of that created for me in my blog here....
Briefly, the main thing for you to to be aware of is;
1) The Home Renovation Tax Credit
(HRTC) will let homeowners deduct 15% of their home renovations up to
$1350 in the form of a tax credit for their Canadian income tax returns
until February 10, 2010.
AND
2) The Federal and Provincial governments have a program called the ecoENERGY Retrofit for Homes
which provides home and property owners with grants of up to $10,000 to
offset the cost of making energy efficient improvements - if you decide
to get all of them done. The only catch is this:
- You
have to get an energy audit done FIRST before you go ahead and
order or install anything.
- You
have to get all of the items on this list done within a 1 ˝ year
period of when your initial energy audit was done.
- AND -
you have to claim ALL of them at the same time, only once to get
your rebate back.
- Then
you have the energy auditors come back to verify the changes, you
fill out the application form (don't forget to save all your
receipts!)
- And
then you wait about 8 - 10 weeks for it to arrive.
The items identified for rebate are;
·Heating, Ventilation & Cooling Systems (Furnace,
A/C's)
·Domestic Water systems (Hot water heating)
·Insulation - Attic, Walls, Basement, Exposed floors, Crawl spaces
·Air sealing - caulking cracks
·Doors/Windows/Skylights
·Water saving - low flush toilets
The furnace is usually the major, big ticket item on this list and most
people only do that much to get the max. $1000 back on your furnace
purchase.........
..........to read
more, click here
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Ecstatic Trance Postures
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March/2009
Thursday,
March 26, 2009
Next workshop dates are:
Thurs. April 16, 2009
Wed.
May 13, 2009
Wed.
June 17, 2009
LOCATION:
WONDERWORKS, 79A Harbord
Ave. (just west of Spadina, south of Bloor)
Free or by Donation +/- $25
"I
recall going to your class a long, long time ago, and to this day, I
love trees (I was a tree and a frog in your class), as I have so much
appreciation for trees and frogs now. It's amazing how your class
has changed my life, literally. Your teaching of the class feels
so very safe, and sacred, and the altered state (as strange as it is,
and somewhat a bit scary, as I love control), this class does wonders
for me."
- S.Hurst, Toronto
Ecstatic Trance Postures
There are over 75 possible postures & always a new posture in each
workshop. An exploration of specific body postures that act as a
biological door, or gateway to the Alternate Reality while in a trance
state. Experience the science of ecstatic body feeling.
Learn from direct experience & raise your immune system.
Possible types of experience:
- A
profound sense of joy and deep love
- An
increase of energy & immune system boost
- An
absorbing or clearing of emotional and/or physical toxins
- Receiving
a flow of healing energy
- A
direct experience of being a plant or animal, or
- A
journey to lower world, middle world or upper world realities,
or
- Divination
- Hearing advice or given images to interpret as advice
Experience the
science of Shamanism & ecstatic body feeling. While sitting or
standing in a very specific posture, listening to a rattle shake in a
steady manner for only 15 minutes, participants enter into a trance
state. The rattle allows an "acoustic driving" affect that
blocks the verbal left hemisphere of the brain and opens access to the
intuitive right hemisphere. The postures act as a biological door,
like a gateway in our body to allow us to open up into the 'Alternate
Reality'. It is about learning from direct experience.
There are over 50 known postures labeled in groupings
such as: Healing, Divination, Metamorphosis, Spirit Journeys,
Initiation: Death and Rebirth, Living Myths, and Celebration.
It
is about learning from direct experience.
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Contact Information
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Ingrid Cryns
416.656.4444
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Building SOUL BLOG
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A forum for innovative discussions connecting
individuals globally about what are healthier, green, sustainable,
soul-full ways of living, savouring the flavours of the soul as
expressed in art, music, poetry and architecture.
Through the format of a BLOG-zine, documenting our journey in
co-creating soul-filled living spaces, we intend to inspire as well as
create a focus for learning new ways to live on the earth in greater
harmony with all.
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