Human wellness is a product of food, community, and activity. Aina-Based Wellness brings recovery by allowing participants to connect with community and traditions while cultivating the land.
At Dragon Heart Farm, wellness starts by connecting food with life-sustaining soil and creating symbiotic food systems. Achieving this balanced wellness can mitigate instances of disease brought on by stress and malnutrition.
Specifically, Dragon Heart Farm’s soil amendments, such as FAABBChar, deliver billions of microorganisms to the soil through their applications. These microorganisms create fertile and living soil to support healthy and abundant plant growth and production cycles. Similarly, Dragon Heart Farm’s fish ferments are an ideal source of nutrients and microorganisms essential to building healthy soil systems.
Aina Based Wellness is directly practiced through Dragon Heart Farm’s collaboration with Men of Pa’a, Kanaka o Puna organization. The organization rehabilitates community members who have been through the justice system, and might be recovering from substance addiction. Simply connecting these individuals to land and food stewardship work is an essential component of this rehabilitation.
Iopa Maunakea, Kanaka o Puna’s founder, says, “I saw a need to help our men recover from alcohol and drug addiction. We started a ‘service arm’ where we go out in the community to do service. This is how we connected to Dragon Heart Farm, by working on the aina. Aina based recovery is a reconnection to culture, so that we can have cultural and ancestral responsibilities back, grow our food, and then share our food in the community, in order to be the example of what our recovery is all about.”
