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What is your earliest remembered dream?

What is your earliest remembered dream?

Written by Lian Brook-Tyler

Some psychologists see the earliest remembered dream as an important message from your soul, see the extract below from Soulcraft by Bill Plotkin for example.

Jung said in his memoir, written at 81 years old, that his earliest remembered dream “…laid the foundation for everything that was to fill the second half of my life with the stormiest passion…”

My earliest remembered dream was from around the age of four and it was a recurring one…

THE WILD CAVE

“I live in a large cave in the middle of wilderness with a group of other children and a multitude of animals who come and go as they please.

I can fly and can also use magic to allow the other children to fly alongside me when we go out on missions and adventures together. We fly in bright sunshine, through clouds and over forests teeming with life.

I don’t know why exactly we live together in the cave but there is feeling of deep love… of being accepted in our wild, free selves.”

I’m seeing that dream being birthed in my life and work… both in creating strong, supportive circles and communities, and in daring to burrow into the darkness and to fly out in the open, to be seen embodying all of the aspects of my wild power, whilst helping others to do the same in their own unique way.

What’s your earliest remembered dream?

Can you see the message from your soul in it?

How are you living into that message?

Coming up in 2021 there will be more ways that you can walk the path of Waking The Wild. It’s going to be an epic year of Soul, Myth & Magic if we have anything to do with it! To find out more go to: Go deeper – Primal Happiness –

Photo by Sasha Freemind, Unsplash

The power of ‘something’…

Written by Lian Brook-Tyler

I’m reading a book ‘The way of the human being’ about commonalities in Native Americans’ way of seeing the world.

It talks about how they share a perspective of seeing things as ‘plenipotential’ – defined as ‘full of potential for being a number of things at once’.

They are often careful to refer to things as ‘something’ instead of naming it as a specific thing which could solidify it into a permanent fixed state.

This is likened to some of the findings of quantum physics in which a thing isn’t a specific thing until it’s observed and defined (that’s very much my lay person’s summary, don’t take that bit too literally!)

This way of seeing the world feels strangely familiar to me – I think I’ve spent much of my life in a bit of a mist of vagueness around certain things!

Anyway, earlier I applied this perspective to a stuck lid on a jar of sauerkraut.

It was stuck tighter than a tight thing.

I had tried to open it, my mother-in-law had tried and finally, my husband had tried… it didn’t budge.

I tried it again today, it was still stuck tight, I was just thinking that we’d simply have to give up on it… and then it occurred to me that maybe it was only stuck in a world where it was being observed and measured as stuck.

In a plenipotential world it could be anything from stuck to not stuck (and possibly some other things too!)

I saw it as simply ‘something’.

And just like magic… it opened!

Maybe it was just a coincidence. Maybe this is just a silly story. But for Native Americans some stories have power.

Maybe this story has some power, despite the rather mundane inclusion of sauerkraut.

Where in your life could you soften your gaze and see the power of ‘something’?

#SpiritPrimalFundamental

Into the woods I go to lose my mind and find my soul

Written by Jonathan Wilkinson

I say those words (often repeatedly) each time I go through this entrance into my local woods.

This seemingly inconspicuous entrance is actually a gateway to a world of wonder and nourishment. Before entering I switch my phone to airplane mode and prepare myself for what awaits. Once through the entrance there is a steep descent of about 400 metres that leads me into the bowels of the woods. As I make the descent I feel my body opening and with each step down I loosen my grip on my mind falling ever deeper and deeper into my soul.

Sometimes its a fairly swift and smooth transition and other times if I’ve been really caught up in my thinking it can take a while. But mother nature always has her way with me eventually.

No matter how closed I’m feeling the moment I catch a glimpse of a bird of prey, a fox or one of the many magical creatures that inhabit the woods I am totally lost in the moment and any thoughts that were occupying my mind cease to exist as I am captivated by the wonder I am witnessing.

I know of no greater nourishing force for the mind, body and soul than mother nature, yet in todays world we have never been more disconnected from her. We’ve actually been conditioned to believe that we are somehow separate from nature which is probably the biggest illusion this modern world has ever pulled off.

The fact is we are nature, we are wildness and when we are separated from that that we are we suffer. Yet as we begin to shake off the layers of domestication and honour our wildness our full sensory capacity comes back online and with it our innate resilience. We once again become open, whole and complete.

At first it might be challenging to consistently connect with nature, your mind will come up with many reasons to put it off for another day. Yet once you have reclaimed your wildness you will find it almost impossible to separate yourself from mother nature for long. She always calls out to me whenever it’s been a while and my whole body aches from her absence. There isn’t enough money in the world that you could pay me to stay away.

How can you start to reclaim your wildness even if its just five minutes a day? I know not everyone has access to local woods or pure wilderness but there’s always options. It could be going to the park on your lunch break or having your morning coffee in the garden or maybe even getting a dog that will need plenty of walks.

As with all the of the Primal Fundamentals its about consistency over intensity.

Whatever resonates with you just pick one, have fun and do let us know how you get on.

Big love!

Jonathan

P.S. Coming up in 2021 there will be more ways that you can walk the path of Waking The Wild. It’s going to be a epic year of Soul, Myth & Magic if we have anything to do with it! To find out more got to: Go deeper – Primal Happiness –

10 things I know for sure about my children

Written by Lian Brook-Tyler

This crazy modern world is constantly conspiring to make me forget these 10 things about my children, so this list is a reminder for me as much as anything…

1. When I feel annoyed with them it says nothing about them and everything about my thoughts about them in that moment. No-one can make me feel anything (although it’s a very powerful illusion that they can… especially when they leave damp towels on my bed). Only my own thoughts can create my feelings.

2. Supporting them to come up with solutions works a whole lot better than when I tell them what to do. The more I stick to just asking questions (“Oh, what could you do now?” “What do you know about this?” “What’s worked well before?” “What could you try?” “How could you find that out?”) the more I see they’re perfectly brilliant at figuring out answers for themselves. In fact, I’m noticing that even my questions are becoming redundant.

3. Expecting them to sit still, to sit up straight, to focus, and to stop fidgeting means I’ve forgotten how unnatural that is. A couple of moments spent watching any young animal in nature is a great reminder of how children are designed to move, to play and to explore too.

3. Telling my children what to do makes a lot less sense than modelling it. This means it’s crazy to shout at my children for shouting. It’s illogical to get angry at my son for losing his temper. Here more than ever it’s a case of Ghandi’s multi-purpose advice to ‘Be the change you want to see in the world.’ If I want a happy, kind and creative household then it makes sense for me to enjoy life, to help others, to tread lightly on this earth, to make things (and yes, baking cakes totally counts!) and to find things to laugh my cheeks off over.

5. They’re not here for me to coerce into the behaviour that I want. Looking for ways I can punish and bribe them to do what I want means I’ve lost sight of the fact that that is no way to relate to any human being. If I don’t want to be manipulated, monitored and managed via time outs, stickers, star charts and the withdrawal of things that I love then it’s a pretty safe bet that my children won’t appreciate that either. Interestingly, the kind of praise/punishment parenting we often consider to be ‘normal’ isn’t actually natural at all, it’s something we short-sightedly adopted from the field of behaviourism (basically: give a rat this and he’ll do that) and it doesn’t tend to work with humans in the long term.

6. They want human connection because they’re… well, human. Expecting them to want to sleep alone, to sit alone, to eat alone, and to be alone is expecting them not to be human. Snuggling together, cooking and enjoying food together, kisses, warm greetings (“Good morning, angel! How did you sleep?”) and expressions of love are the fuel to the human fire.

7. If I get hung up on their behaviour then I’m completely missing what’s creating the behaviour. When I’m judging their behaviour, I’ve forgotten that what they’re doing makes complete sense to them according to their thoughts in the moment. I get a chance to see my children’s needs when I put myself in their shoes and ask “How does the world look to my child right now? How does he feel? Does she need some space, to be heard, a cuddle or something else?”

8. They need space to wander and to wonder. In today’s modern world, the pressure’s on to fill my children’s diaries with clubs, classes and social events. To make sure my children’s schedules are as jam-packed as their peers’ (or the average blue chip CEO’s). But with a diary like that when will they have time to play, run free, find bugs, make dens, climb trees, look for fairies, and to imagine whole new worlds? If their every waking hour is filled with ‘stuff’ when will they learn the art of moving from boredom to creation? Freedom is the medium through which they’ll become resourceful and self-sufficient… there’s no class in the world that can teach them that.

9. I don’t need to try to control them for fear that they’ll ‘go bad’. For any of us living in a community, there are some things that are important to understand: what’s safe and unsafe, what will p*ss other people off and what won’t. (Although there’s actually surprisingly few things that fall into the ‘Important’ category when I stop to really think about the ‘why’ behind something that seems SO important!) The few truly important things such as ‘It’s not OK to hurt ourselves or others’ will form the values that my children will grow to understand and to choose to live by… long after they’ve left home and any control that I could attempt to exert.

10. My children are gifts (but not my personal property). Time passes fast and each moment is precious drop of life flowing on by… I can’t contain, stop or control any of it. Sometimes life gets busy and tough but when I pause to remember that this whole thing is an incredibly unlikely, jaw-droppingly beautiful miracle, it suddenly gets a whole tonne easier to feel grateful for these fleeting, glorious gifts with their rooms strewn with Lego and socks, sticky hands and heart-stopping smiles.

The #1 reason your paleo diet won’t get you results

(…and what you can do about it).

So you’re rocking the paleo lifestyle… you’ve given up grains and you can barely remember life before coconut oil.

Paleo is a return to a simpler, more natural way of living. It’s about reclaiming that connection to your primal self and being in sync with what feels good for your body.

First, you start eating more primally and then the next thing you know, you’re getting into natural movement and spending more time in the great outdoors.

Ultimately, the real power of the paleo lifestyle is that it gets you asking the question of “What’s natural for the human animal?” (which is the last thing the rest of society is thinking about!) It’s a brilliant question!

And that question means that any primal devotee worth their Himalayan salt can tell you that we weren’t designed to slump in chairs for hours on end, chowing down on Oreos and KFC.

But for all the ‘standing desks’ in the world… we’re just not living in an environment that’s natural for us humans…

The modern world in which we find ourselves is crazy!

Today’s world is a place that’s filled with a constant stream of stress triggers… moving house, divorce, money (or the lack of it), ridiculously long work days, wars and that stupid bleeping way that other people drive.

And just as we aren’t meant to fill our bodies with junk food, we also weren’t designed to have our minds filled with noise of this non-stop stress.

Think about it…

Way back when we lived in a more natural environment, we’d be in the stress response a tiny amount of the time. Only real threats from real things like bear-size hyenas and sabre-toothed cats would trigger our stress response and get us primed to sting like Ali or bolt like Bolt.

STRESS RESPONSE 101

Your brain interprets a situation as threatening your safety.
Your brain activates the fight or flight response, flooding your body with the stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline.
Your heart pumps faster, your blood pressure rises, blood is diverted from your organs to your major muscles, your brain gets more oxygen, and your liver produces extra sugar.
Non-essential bodily functions (e.g. your digestion, saliva production and parts of your immune system) are shut down to some degree.
You are now primed to fight or flee.

And then when we’d fought the predator off (or more likely… run off screaming), we’d drop back into our natural state – at ease, in flow and resourceful.

However in today’s crazy modern world, our feelings of stress aren’t triggered by being chased by a scary, hairy animal. Nowadays, there’s rarely anything ‘out there’ that’s putting us in any real danger… instead we’re conditioned to be triggered by things such as overflowing inboxes, running late and social expectations.

Our brains are interpreting non-life-threatening situations as being life-threatening. This means our heads are constantly filled with stressful thoughts of “I need to do this now!”, “I can’t do that.”, “I’m not good enough for that.”, “I should do this.”

So our stress is simply created by our thinking. I’ll say that again because it’s so easy to miss the implications of this… Our stress is created by our stressful thoughts in the moment.

And this means that in today’s crazy modern world, most people are in the stress response a huge proportion of the time.

We get stressed and then we stay stressed

So what happens to the human body when we’re stuck in the stress response? It can…

Cause weight gain or loss.
Create digestive issues like diarrhea or constipation, reducing the absorption of nutrients.
Increase your risk of diabetes.
Compromise your immune system, making you more susceptible to viruses, diseases and infections.
Cause chronic headaches and back pain.
Increase your risk of having a stroke or heart attack.
Cause insomnia, irritability, anxiety, and depression.
Diminish your sex drive and affect the reproductive system, including issues with the menstrual cycle, fertility, erectile dysfunction or impotence.

All of the paleo pancakes in the world ain’t gonna fix that!

So now you know the reason you’re not getting the results you want from your paleo lifestyle, let’s get into what you can do about it (and don’t worry, this isn’t any of the usual stress management techniques like ‘Sit down and meditate for hours’).

You can reclaim your primal state of ease, flow, and resourcefulness, here in this modern world, without disabling your facebook account and throwing away your iPhone to go live in a shack in the middle of nowhere. Here’s one of the antidotes to the modern world that our tribe loves…

3 steps to reclaiming your primal state…

1. Notice when you’re feeling stressed
Simply notice that stress in your body. Notice where you’re feeling stress and notice how it feels.

2. Notice your thoughts
Simply recognise what you’re thinking about. That isn’t judging or critiquing your thoughts, it’s simply noticing what you’re thinking about in this moment.

3. Notice that your stress is being created by your thinking
See that your stress is a DIRECT RESULT of what you’re thinking, not the circumstances. Notice that a different thought would cause an entirely different feeling.

When you see the truth of this for yourself, you’ll be recognising that situations and other people – ridiculous politicians, running out of coconut oil, your boss’s sh*tty emails – aren’t creating your stress at all, your own thoughts are!

That recognition by itself, is a huge step towards dropping into the awareness behind our thoughts. And then our thoughts cease to appear like a stress-triggering threat, because we see them for what they are, as ‘just thought’.

Threat over… we drop back into our primal state.

And just to be clear – this isn’t a technique, positive psychology or positive thinking. This is simply how the human animal works. It’s the way we’re designed to experience life.

How cool is that?!

Can it really be that simple?

It certainly is. We’ve seen this work for many thousands of people in all kinds of situations, including high-powered jobs, areas affected by natural disasters and in some of the most violent places in the U.S.

But there’s zero need to take my word for it! Try these steps the next time you feel stressed and see what happens for yourself…