The purpose of Switched ON Living is to free ourselves from the traditional retirement mindset.

In the traditional retirement world, we start to slow down and switch off once we stop working. Invariably, we become less active and less engaged, inexorably condemning ourselves into the ranks of senior citizens years, or even decades, earlier than if we had a more adventurous mindset.

The Switched ON Living way to liberate ourselves from the vast tedium of traditional retirement is to focus on the three dimensions of lives – our emotions, our bodies and our minds.

For our Switched ON minds, that means engaging with the great issues and ideas of our times, and just right now, the only challenge that’s greater than COVID is climate change.

It will shock absolutely no one that the Switched ON Living team are ferocious supporters for anything and anyone who helps to fight against the worst of climate change.

We think it impossible to reward ourselves with the mantle of being “Switched ON” if we practice climate indifference, or worse, global warming ‘denialism.’

So in the spirit of sustainability, we’d like to talk this week about an environmental movement we believe is worth supporting.

Akira Miyawaki is an octogenarian Japanese botanist and he’s developed a method of growing forests on tiny plots of land that collectively can have an outsized contribution to keeping the climate of our planet civilised.

The Miyawaki method involves the close planting of native trees and shrubs in a small area. The result is a self-managing ecosystem that reaches maturity many times faster than conventional forestry.

As we can see from this video from the BBC, one of the great advantages of the Miyawaki method is that it allows micro forests to grow and thrive in any of the countless unloved and under-utilised corners of public space that exist in our cramped cities, no matter how awkward.

From personal experience, I can attest just how great it feels to know that you are part of the nature repair solution. It feels so Switched ON.