I went out for a trail run alone through the woods yesterday evening. It was wet, foggy, and it was getting dark. No one else was around and the only thing I could hear was my breathing and my feet striking the ground. The air was cold but I wanted to feel it so I decided to leave my shirt behind. The cold helped me feel alive and really quickly I had warmed up and I didn’t feel cold. Halfway through the run I abandoned the trail completely, found a nice hill and sprinted up it a number of times jumping over fallen trees. By the end of the run there was barely enough light to see the ground but the sky glowed silver. I felt feral and invigorated. Apparently I also smelled feral...
The workout left me thinking about wildness and domestication. In many ways we are practically domesticated animals today. However, unlike other domesticated animals our wildness has not been genetically bred out of us. All of our domestication is in our heads. We all naturally react a bit differently to it and I’ve never been particularly content with it. Before starting Indigenous Strength, I felt trapped on one of the most seemingly stable and “risk averse” paths there is as a lawyer, literally being paid for my fearful thoughts about everything that could go wrong for my business clients. I always dreamed of doing wilder things with my life but to get there I would need to cultivate a deeper wildness within myself.
I’ve discovered over the years that wildness is trainable. Wildness just needs some light and nutrients in order to grow. It’s healthy to express some of our wildness; certainly in my case I feel like it’s helped me manage and heal anxieties and steer out of dark times in my life. Ironically, we can cultivate more wildness in ourselves by following a disciplined practice. I’ve generally evolved my own practices through a combination of outdoor sports and consistent strength training. This combination has been my key for increasingly setting myself free and I think I’m getting better at it every day.
Here are some high level lessons that I have learned so far about this discipline:
The more I get into nature to pursue athletic activities, the healthier my mind feels. Reflecting back on my own life, a very strong correlation is indisputable.
In our busy urban lives it is of course not feasible for most of us to be in nature every day. Maybe all we can afford is to be “weekend warriors.” Maybe all we can manage is occasional big adventures in our vacations. I’ve been in this position and it’s still possible to make this practice a powerful part of our lives. We can pursue time-efficient training practices during our regular lives that support our outdoor pursuits. Two ways that this helps us are: (1) we maintain a steady daily practice and (2) when we do make it out into nature we can go further and deeper.
Our practice can be strengthened when our training and our outdoor pursuits are linked and related. This has been something that I’ve gradually become better at over decades. Most “fitness” routines aren’t geared towards getting us into nature. I’m currently honing my training to more efficiently meet the needs of a functional, durable, highly mobile desert/mountain/ocean athlete with both good power and good stamina.
We can specialize in sports if we want but there are downsides to specializing and our interests may shift over time. Over the course of my life I’ve tried dozens of outdoor sports and I actually no longer have a favorite. Hence, I personally prefer training for versatility now. If we do specialize we can shift our training dials to meet certain performance needs. However, from a long term health perspective it also makes sense to pay more attention to factors that we are neglecting in our sport (like certain mobility patterns, muscle imbalances, etc.)
Developing deeper wildness is scary. It needs to be. If we are not feeling some fear, it’s probably time to adjust the training.
We get as much out as we put in. The further and deeper we go, the more we change inside.
I have not yet deeply explored more “primal” or natural forms of athletic expression. Personally, I’ve always relied heavily on kitesurfing gear, mountain bikes, skis, and a variety of other modern athletic equipment. Modern recreational sports work for the purposes of cultivating wildness so it is not necessary to become primitive survivalists to start benefiting. However, I am increasingly drawn to more “ancestral” things like trail running and bowhunting. I’ll pass on what I learn.
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