Field Notes from my journey creating Living Ground, Ecuador.
“If I want people to care about the Earth itself, about the land and soil that feed us, about the way our food, medical, political, and religious systems are shaping us, and about how divided and dysfunctional we have become, then I need to plant those concerns inside stories that are wide enough and deeply connective enough that others can recognize themselves within them.” Leisha of the Living Ground Project.
Living Ground Recent Posts
People who can feed themselves cannot be ruled
I often wonder where my fascination with gardens, herbs, and growing food really began. Looking back, I think it started in my mother’s rose garden. I didn’t realize it then, but perhaps that was also the beginning of learning about self-reliance. As a little girl in England, I decided I was going to make rose water. I…
Why Would the Body Attack Its Own Thyroid?
This is a long article and was inspired because I was working with some workshop participants and friends and I wanted to go deeper into understanding the thyroid and most especially, Hashimotos. Over the years I have worked with many people diagnosed with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and I did not have a complete understanding myself. Most have been…
Private Terrain Immersion at Living Ground
There are times when we simply need to step away from everyday life. Away from the constant demands, the stress, and the routines that often keep us disconnected from our own health. A Private Terrain Immersion at Living Ground gives you the opportunity to do just that while spending several days learning about your body, nourishing it…
Live Blood Analysis & Terrain Theory July 2026
I just finished the participants final reports, detailing each person’s live blood journey from the week-long experience and personalizing their experience. My goal was to get to a point where I was no longer explaining and each person was witnessing and understanding. I gave this everything I had. I shared what I am learning, what I am…
Castor Oil and the Terrain
The body is always in motion. Blood moves through the arteries and veins, nutrients travel into the cells, waste products move out of the tissues, and the lymphatic system quietly gathers what needs to be cleared, recycled, or carried away. Beneath the skin there is a whole living landscape of fluid, fascia, immune cells, collagen fibers, nerve…
What the Blood Reveals About the Gallbladder (Protusion and Fermentation markers)
This past week, during the Live Blood workshop, we saw something again and again in the blood: the markers of a sluggish, congested, stagnated gallbladder. The marker is called a protrusion, and it is a type of poikilocyte. It can look like a small thumb-like projection coming out from the red blood cell. As the week went…
The Tipping Point Has Tipped
We did it! Seven days of intensity, observation, learning, questioning, and remembering. The intention of this workshop was never simply to teach people how to look at blood. It was to invite each participant to see health through a different lens. To step outside of the germ theory paradigm and into one that recognizes the incredible intelligence…
The Day Before We Begin
Today is the day before we begin the Live Blood Analysis workshop, and I can feel the fullness of everything that has brought us here. I think we have completed the schedules, the food purchase, the teachings, the manuals, the rooms and all the details checked. It is all of it together. It is the years of…
When the Vision Finally Leaves My Head
I am exhausted. The preparation over the last few weeks has been intense, brutal, satisfying, concerning, and fortifying. I feel confident. I know what I am doing, I know the material, and I know the purpose. But I also feel as though I have been doing the job of an entire office. Every day has carried its…
Finding My Way Home
This is a little synopsis of the story behind Living Ground and a somewhat vulnerable sharing of my own journey. It is not the whole story, nor could it ever be. Like everyone, I carry chapters that are still unfolding, questions that remain unanswered, and experiences that are difficult to put into words. I share this simply…
What is Living Ground
,The Living Ground Project is a living classroom in southern Ecuador, built from soil, food, plants, microbes, and community.
Here, we grow much of what we serve and teach. The gardens feed the café, the apothecary, the workshops, the books, and the people who come here to learn a different way of living. Everything begins with the soil, because healthy soil grows stronger plants, stronger food, and stronger people.
Living Ground is a place for practical self-reliance. We teach gardening, soil regeneration, fermentation, herbal medicine, food preservation, natural health, and the connection between the human microbiome and the soil food web. Our work is not theory. It is lived every day through the gardens, the kitchen, the store, the café, the animals, the workshops, and the land itself.
The vision is simple. Restore the soil, grow real food, preserve knowledge, create local work, and help people remember that health does not begin in a bottle. It begins in relationship with the land, the microbes, the plants, the food, and each other.
Living Ground’s Online Courses in Self Reliance
