Well, I suppose that I ought to start by explaining the origin of The Snail of Happiness…

One the things that keeps me busy is teaching permaculture and I’m always looking for innovative ways of getting my point across. On a recent ‘training of teachers’ course, we were asked to present a short session so that we could get feedback on our teaching technique. I’ve been teaching for fifteen years or more, so wanted to do something new and (perhaps) challenging. I decided to teach a session on ‘spirals of destruction’ i.e. how we get ourselves into a vicious circle of negativity by taking small steps in a negative direction. So as not to leave everybody too gloomy I also wanted to talk about ‘spirals of abundance’… getting into a ‘virtuous circle’.

I like to give anyone I’m teaching the opportunity to contribute, so what better way than a group story-telling session? And how nice to have some form of ‘talking stick’ to pass round when it was each person’s turn to speak. And thus the idea of the two snails came to me… the snail of happiness for our positive spiral and the snail of doom for our negative spiral. I couldn’t possibly blog as the latter, so here I am representing the former!

and that’s them at the top of the page… knitted by me!