Sustainability

“We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.” - Albert Einstein

What Albert Einstein said can obviously be applied to many situations in life and can serve as a general term of advice. On this page though we want to focus your attention on a very specific problem that concerns all of us living on this planet. We are talking about sustainability - without any doubt the biggest challenge of our lifetime and beyond.

Failing to live a sustainable life goes hand in hand with the acceleration of climate change.

We need to stop the heating of the earth as soon as possible or at least slow it down on a large scale. Preserving the beauty of our nature must be the mission of every human individual.

At Alba Yoga we believe deeply that every person can have a positive impact on this matter, no matter how small it may be. If we all held ourselves to higher account, the world would be a better place.

As most of you know of course, reduction of CO2 emissions has proven to be the most important key figure in the fight against climate change. Tackling the problem of reduction of CO2 by shifting towards a sustainable society cannot change over night and needs creativity. As the quote from Einstein previously mentioned, we need to change the way we think in order to solve the problems created by our very own indefinite desire for economic growth.

But how do we change the way we think? A great way is a change of perspective.

"Pale Blue Dot" by NASA's Voyager 1

Probably if you see this picture for the first time, the only thing you notice is the brighter beam in the middle. Have a closer look into the middle-top part of the beam. There you will find what is called the “Pale Blue Dot”. That is us. A picture from our planet taken from around 6 billion (that’s 9 zeros) kilometers away from the Voyager 1 space probe in 1990.

Carl Sagan described this picture with these beautiful words giving us goosebumps every time we read it.

“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. …”

As far as we know our planet is still the only one out there in the universe with the conditions to provide a home to all of our species. Being mindful about this fact fuels our motivation at Alba Yoga every day to make a change for the better.

"Sunrise" by Arek Socha