JULY 2016
Watching a liquid curtain sweep across MIG Cricket ground, I feel inspired to write a Newsletter. The monsoon, when seen from a higher vantage point that ignores the flooded roads and potholes the size of bathtubs, is a lyrical season. Is this my first Newsletter in a while because so much has been in flux, our experience difficult to pin down in the written word? My husband and I have certainly been going with the flow. We returned from the Himalayan foothills after only 11 months to resettle anew in Mumbai. Why would we leave these beautiful natural surroundings? To embark on a ground-breaking venture – Azulverde Living - for which we felt Mumbai would be a fertile territory.
Under one roof, Azulverde Living offers a comprehensive range of products and solutions for sustainable living. Both my husband and I are passionate about the environment and health, about restoring nature and discovering innovative ecological solutions. We are revolutionaries at heart! Since we couldn't find what we were looking for to satisfy our own needs, we went on a quest. It turns out that what we discovered is so much better than the old-fashioned way of building that anyone with some common sense will love it, not only those who share our interest in ecology and wellbeing.
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NEWS
Ready to take your relationship to new heights?
I now also offer Transformational Coaching for couples. This program can be conducted in person or over Skype/phone.
The novel, but tested TC program for Couples consists of 10 individual coaching sessions, 6 individual healing sessions and 10 hours of couple’s sessions.
Each partner sets a goal and describes the desired outcome they aim for. In individual sessions, we then remove the blocks - emotions, beliefs, values - that prevent them from living this reality. Most problems we encounter in (intimate) relationships stem from our own old triggers that often have nothing to do with our partner!
After this initial clearing work, we come together to practice "Giving Better Back" and communicating constructively. We find out each partner's love strategy to increase mutual understanding. We align conflicting (subconscious) values. We may address financial issues as well as ways to improve sexual intimacy. A Relationship Balancing process will help the partners connect at the soul level for a deeper, growth enhancing and more fulfilling relationship.
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FOR MORE INFORMATION,
CALL ME AT +91 845 200 6951,
or email me at: http://www.irmabattig.in/
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TESTIMONIAL
“Dear Irma,
Thank you for helping me see life once again, clear as never before and for helping me to understand myself, my feelings and relationships. You have been my guide, in one of the hardest times of my life. I have never imagined that something that started with one purpose would take me and my family on a path of healing and self-discoveries. Your Transformational Coaching Program changed my life, and it’s just at the beginning…
For those moments of overwhelming happiness and these first real laughs I will stay forever grateful.
WIth love,”
Maja B., Homemaker, Singapore
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NOTE MY NEW PHONE NUMBER, NEW EMAIL ADDRESS AND NEW WEBSITE:
+91 845 200 6951
irma@irmabattig.in
http://www.irmabattig.in
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EPIGENETICS: IT'S THE ENVIRONMENT, NOT THE GENES!
The state of our planet is intimately connected to our health, for obvious reasons. The more polluted the environment, the more contaminated our food, air and especially water. By now, we are at least partially aware of the disaster in the making (although, let's be honest, we aren't really doing that much to turn the situation around, are we?).
But: Did you know that the environment has a larger impact on how you feel and behave than your DNA or your will power? It begins at the level of the genes: The environment they find themselves in determines their expression. What that means is that we are not so much the product of our genes, as we mostly and mistakenly assume (or are made to believe by an industry that has a lot to gain from having us embrace their genetic tinkering), as we are the product of our environment. Depending on the cellular environment, some genes are activated while others are deactivated.
Reread the last sentence to properly grasp its importance! This relatively new branch of science called epigenetics and its research seems more relevant to me that genetics per se. Why? Because epigenetics gives us our power back! Where genetics seem to be a game of dice – we are born with a particular genome and there is nothing we can do about it – the study of epigenetics tells us that if we alter the cellular environment, we change the way the genes express themselves. Create an alkaline environment in your cells, for instance, and you switch off a lot of negative expressions and potential health hazards.
In my next newsletter, I will explore this concept in more depth and explain what you can do about creating a healthier cellular environment. The point I would like to make for now is that the environment a human being - a conglomerate of trillions of cells - lives in conditions them just as much. As above so below. While the composition of the fluids in the cell affects the DNA, the “energy soup” as well as the structures and creatures surrounding us affect us human beings and our expression.
I watched this phenomenon played out in the French movie “The Intouchable” the other day. Based on a true story, it depicts how a young black man raised in a poor, dysfunctional family in the projects transforms into an uplifting, not to mention hilarious caregiver and friend when fate takes him out of the ghetto and places him in a palace. He even starts to enjoy classical music, which he had no taste for whatsoever before moving into the mansion of a paraplegic man from the Parisian upper crust to become his nurse. It’s one of the most entertaining movies I have seen in a while (aren’t you tired too of people blowing each other to pieces and being half man, half machine, which has become the conventional Hollywood fare?). I laughed tears, while also being moved by the existential questions ranging from social critique, issues of race, as well as disability, life and death that the film explores, without much reverence, but plenty of black (no pun intended) humor.
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WE AREN'T JUST WHAT WE EAT, BUT ALSO WHAT WE LIVE IN
Where am I going with this? If you live in an overpopulated metropolis like Mumbai with crowded streets, no city planning to speak of, where buildings are barely maintained and mostly ugly, parks are missing, homes are cramped, often moldy and sweltering hot, we are bound to be affected. Road rage is one of the effects demonstrating that people are on the brink, ready to explode any minute. Others drop dead of a heart attack at 40. We mistakenly call it a fast-paced city when it’s actually just hectic. Not because of speed, but because it’s cramped and an assault on our senses. I hardly ever get to work with clients who live in Mumbai and have a healthy, fluid yet relaxed system. It’s almost impossible to be truly healthy and balanced in such a chaotic environment.
Because I realize how important the role of the environment is on people’s health, as a healer I cannot ignore it. I aim to make my clients feel better after a session with me, but I also know that once they leave my office, they will be back in unnerving traffic before stepping into an unhealthy building. Hence the effect of my work will be compromised. For this reason, and because I want my husband and I to lead a healthier life than what is the norm here – and that goes way beyond nutrition and exercise! – I have been looking for solutions for years. Finally we have found them! We are offering our findings under one roof: Azulverde Living. http://www.azulverdeliving.com
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SUSTAINABLE, HEALTHY HOMES IN INDIA
We have made it our mission to revolutionize the Indian construction industry with sustainable, healthy and sound building methods and materials. This challenge is no small endeavor! It means stepping out of my comfort zone that encompasses helping people one-on-one and in group seminars as a healing practitioner, coach, facilitator and teacher. By coming up with this new, exciting product – sustainable homes – I am pushing myself to step out and up!
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WALKING THE TALK
This is precisely what I help many of my clients with. By walking the talk, I can empathize with my clients’ experience when their paradigm shifts, when they question the old way of thinking and doing things to embrace the unknown that is emerging. It means taking a leap of faith (although I am quite familiar with that principle!), facing the unknown. It is often accompanied by a period of chaos where we lose our compass and have to figure out a new true north. All by ourselves, it can seem too daunting to tackle. With the help of a guiding hand, the process is easier to manage.
I do endeavor to be a guide for my clients who come for Transformational Coaching and Healing. Transformation is a process that requires us to let go of the known (the caterpillar), go through a phase where everything seems to be murky and structures and certainties fall away (the chrysalis), before emerging as something original and usually beautiful (the butterfly)! I am currently undergoing yet another transformation from “From Caterpillar to Butterfly”, up close and personal!
Not that architecture and construction is a new field of interest to me. I drew my first floor plans of Roman villas when I started reading Asterix and Obelix, around age nine. It has been a hobby of mine ever since and I have created many different home as well as restaurant interiors. I have been interested in ecological building for decades, maybe by my dad who designed a green hangar for his machines over forty years ago. He wanted it to blend into the surroundings. When I was still living in Switzerland, I managed a national project for the equality of opportunity in the construction design industry. I was interacting with a lot of architects, structural engineers etc.
As to my husband, he is returning to the source, that he never actually left. His grandfather was a renowned architect and his family has been in this arena for three generations. Deepak has had his own renovation and interior decoration businesses both in India and the US and has decades of experience in various positions in this industry under his belt. He too is excited by new challenges and the opportunity to help the planet and its inhabitants return to a healthier state.
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So what is all this talk about challenges, transformation and healthy building? We are not trying to optimize or alter what we consider an archaic building method using unsustainable and outright unhealthy materials like Portland cement and concrete. Instead, we employ an ancient, organic material that was used to construct the Great Wall of China as well as many hundreds of years old stupas that are still standing: MgO, short for Magnesium Oxide. We combine it in novel ways with innovative technologies and building methods extensively used abroad.
COMMONLY USED CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS ARE UNHEALTHY FOR LIVING ORGANISMS
Ten percent of the earth’s surface is composed of MgO. It is a natural and certified green building material with properties that surpass Portland cement by far. The latter is commonly used because it is cheaper. This means sacrificing quality and health for a few rupees savings. In fact, it is proven that Portland cement dehydrates living organisms as well as pulling energy from them, thus leading to disease. Its molecules being unstable, they attract electrons from their – living – surroundings to stabilize. So whether it’s a potted plant, a pet or your child that is exposed to conventional cement, it is detrimental to all of them, and you!
At Azulverde Living, on the other hand, we combine healthy, organic MgO panels with various non-toxic fillers in sandwich boards and use them for steel frame construction or even SIPs construction which is self-supporting and requires no frame whatsoever. With a variety of available options, we adapt the structure to our customer's situation and needs. Moreover, we can build anything from a public toilet to an extra room on your terrace to luxury homes as well as high rises.
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Surviving the test of time: Many ancient structures that are still standing, like the Great Wall of China as well as Indian stupas, are made with MgO, Magnesium Oxide, a natural mineral that covers ten percent of the earth's surface. Because of its superior quality, we guarantee our Azulverde Living buildings for life!
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TREMENDOUS BENEFITS
The advantages of MgO sandwich panel construction, whether with a metal frame or using the self-supporting SIPs method, are enormous:
- As mentioned previously, MgO is actually healthy for its occupants (I have done the testing myself and am not solely relying on other sources of information on this), as opposed to cement and concrete (including concrete blocks), and even bricks.
- The time required from approved design to a finished product is barely three months.
- The panels are factory made and assembled on site. Your supervision is not required and you can save yourself the innumerable trips to the site while the year-long, nerve-wrecking construction process is ongoing... Enjoy your weekends instead!
- You won't be pulling your hair because the process is delayed (it always is) and the costs run over budget (they always do). You have certainty as you know from the get go how much your dream home will cost and by which deadline it will be completed. What a concept! Certainly unheard of in the conventional building industry. (For instance, the building we live in took five years for possession instead of two; an additional year later, parts of it are still not completed!)
- You can have us make the structure only and complete the interiors yourself, or you can take occupancy of a turn-key product that includes floors, cladding, kitchen, bathrooms, even furniture, a pool and edible landscaping if you desire. Our products and services cover you from A to Z.
- There is strict quality control and uniformity in the products. The building is guaranteed for life! (Compare that to the walls and even tiles of our building that have been cracking ever since we moved in.)
- We waste no water for mixing cement. No noisy, dirty trucks are carrying sand and stones, or bricks back and forth, annoying neighbors and congesting the roads. No rivers and beaches are illegally exploited for their sand and rocks because none are needed for MgO panels.
- The thermal properties of MgO are amazing, insulating ten times better than brick! That’s not even mentioning concrete blocks which store heat during the day and emit it at night, making it impossible to sleep without AC. (Were the newly constructed high rise in Bandra where we currently live made of MgO, we could have avoided AC on most of the sweltering summer days!)
For cooler climates it works in the opposite direction too. During our year in the Himalayan foothills, it would have meant living comfortably instead of bundled up in winter clothes inside the house three months of the year because of its poor to non-existent insulation, common even in the north where temperatures drop below freezing.
It just makes no sense to build like this. But people are so used to the known that most don’t even question why they would freeze inside their homes in winter and sweat their way to glory in summer. Why not live more comfortably instead, especially when it’s sustainable, much healthier and affordable? We have the solution!
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DO YOU ENCOUNTER ANY OF THESE ISSUES IN YOUR OWN HOME?
If you guessed that our venture was born from our own needs, you are correct! I just couldn’t stand the thought of freezing inside my home for another winter in Dehradun (which I otherwise loved, especially during the cooler months of the year). For the other half of the year, we were unable to use the first floor of our house because it just got too hot upstairs, and air conditioning was impossible in the large rooms with no insulation. We were thus confined to one bedroom, which meant no room for guests.
Because the house was badly planned, we were unable to enjoy the view of Mussoorie from inside, even though were were at the foot of the imposing mountain range! The windows were facing south instead, meaning that it would get even hotter inside and my treatment room would heat up so much that most of the time, I couldn't use it. However, working at my desk, I would stare at a staircase instead of the expansive lawn with the rose bushes that lay behind it...
Since we were unable to find a rental house that fulfilled our criteria – decent insulation and the possibility to control the inside temperature, absence of mold, and a sizable outside area as well as a view of it from the house – we realized we had to build it ourselves according to our standards.
But with what? I certainly didn’t want another brick house, since we were living in a new one in which the plaster was cracking and peeling and mold was growing behind our paintings even on walls that weren’t exposed to the rain! In winter, it was cooler indoors than outdoors, which meant gathering all my courage every morning to dare to leave my bed, and then search for a sunny spot on the veranda so that I could thaw and eat my breakfast without wearing gloves..! In Goa, where we lived for a year, it would literally rain inside our brick home covered with Mangalore tiles. Most other buildings were rapped in blue or yellow plastic during the monsoon. In summer, another apartment we lived in got so hot I believed myself to be in hell! Huge rooms with no cross-ventilation, an AC that didn't make a dent into the infernal conditions underneath a concrete roof that sucked up the heat during the day and released it at night for further torture.
In Dehradun, we felt our home tremble twice during the Nepal earthquakes, a scary feeling in a brick structure built without the involvement of an architect or a structural engineer... During the heavy rainstorms we witnessed, the windows would be blown open by strong gusts of wind and we had to keep running from one to the other to close them in the middle of the night. Not to mention the roof that seemed to hold on precariously during a storm that uprooted trees in the neighborhood and literally toppled over the brick compound wall next door!
Thanks to constructions ill-suited for the Goan climate, and the harsher climatic conditions of northern India as experienced from a stately, but badly built house, we discovered answers that can solve construction woes not only in India, but the world over!
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Hawan kund made of naturally fire resistant MgO.
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- MgO has the maximum fire resistant rating: It can withstand flames for four to six hours, the highest rating possible!
- It is also water resistant and when submersed, absorbs hardly any moisture.
- It is fully termite resistant, because termites don’t eat MgO.
- It is mold and fungus resistant. (Many don’t realize how toxic black mold, so common on Indian walls, is: We breathe it in and once in the body, it multiplies until it wears down the immune system, making us prone to all kinds of diseases.)
- Our structures require no plastering, ever! Hence, they require practically no maintenance.
- When combined in our MgO aluminum honeycomb sandwich boards, it becomes hurricane proof and earthquake proof as well! Can you imagine the peace of mind and the lives saved?
- MgO protects from radiation! After the nuclear catastrophe in Chernobyl, people who lived in the proximity of the nuclear plant, but in homes made of MgO, were unharmed!
- Because our homes don’t require a foundation and are thus considered non-permanent, thanks to the backward Indian construction code they don’t need a building permission either. So that hassle is out of the way too! Note that although the building code deems them as temporary, we guarantee our buildings for life, which is certainly not the case with conventional construction!
- Our structures are much lighter than bricks and concrete, yet many times sturdier.
- Their impact on the environment is minimal, compared to the “old” way of doing things.
- In terms of architecture, there is no limit to what we can do, for a price tag comparable to brick construction.
- We build nationwide and export our materials worldwide.
No-brainer? I think so too!
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Our Azulverde Living Pool requires no chemicals like chlorine or even salt. The pool water is cleaned in the regeneration areas that contain soil, rocks and plants which maintain a healthy pH for safe swimming and chilling out - come rain come shine!
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If this tickles your curiosity, check out our website: http://www.azulverdeliving.com . You will also discover our Living Pools that require no chemicals, edible gardens, green walls, far infrared heaters (an inexpensive and actually healing source of warmth!), solar power and other ecological solutions for healthy, comfortable and aware living!
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