Primal
A part of me died, and was reborn in nature
By Case Bradford
My mind felt trapped in a body I didn’t feel was my own. I was 25, but instead of enjoying what should have been the prime of my life, I was dysfunctional, depressed, and suicidal.
“Suicidal thoughts are not about killing yourself; they are about killing a part of yourself.”
Walking alone near Venice Pier in Los Angeles, I heard this sentence through my headphones. At the time, I listened to dozens of podcasts. I can’t remember where these words came from, or who said them, nor was that particularly relevant to me at the time. I remember their impact. I stopped, turned off the sound, and stared out at the ocean waves rolling out of the Pacific twilight and bathed in the dim glow of the lamplit boardwalk.
At some point in our lives, we all face challenges like this one: realizing that change—even, or especially, difficult or painful change–is necessary to escape and transcend stagnation and decay.
Life flourishes when find the courage required to undertake the risk that comes from creation. To forge a superior version of self, we need to let go of our old one. As we sense this calling, our intuition is our best guide to show us the path ahead. We start working out which ideas to implement, often through experimentation. I leaned towards health and fitness but saw others forge different paths that valued their callings.
Hearing your voice has never been more difficult than in the 21st century. We're awash with contradictory commands, with many claiming to have cracked the formula for a happy and fulfilled life. That's why intuition is so important. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string.” When you find an idea or perspective that strikes that iron string, that resonates with you, have the courage to follow it.
One needs only to look at our fingers, their intricate patterns, to remind oneself that nobody else possesses that code. But there are also great commonalities in our human experience. Forces of nature flow through us all, and we can weave them into our daily lives.
I felt an urge to return to nature—a primal way of living. The natural world is a resource available to us all. By reengaging with the world at this raw, unconstructed level, the part of myself that was alienated from modern life was reanimated.
Immersing myself in nature, I realized how its value is obscured today. The sun is healing, especially during sunrise and sunset when the rays are milder. Getting sunlight in your eyes allows you to feel its energy. Being barefoot on our soil, whether that’s grass from a field, sand from the beach, or a stone from a mountain, sends healing signals due to our Earth's electromagnetic energy flow. It’s called grounding, and it is a transformational, freely accessible way to elevate vitality. Being near wild water provides us with a sense of oneness with the natural flow of life. Being in wild water, even just by immersing our feet, is how we tap into this feeling even more.
Nature extends to what we eat, too. Finding “real food” is now the exception, when it was once the rule. Motivated by unrestrained profit, the companies that stock our kitchen cabinets have turned food into artificial versions that only resemble the original. Artificial colorings, preservatives, anti-caking agents, emulsifiers, hydrolyzed protein, autolyzed yeast—the list of unappetizing sounding nuts and bolts that hold together readily available “food” is dizzying. Our age could be described as the Age of Toxins. Common sources include nonstick cooking pans, seed oils, polluted tap water, polyester clothing, plastic cutting boards and bottles, and many more. We’re not witnessing resistance against this artificiality, because it’s unnatural to us.
Our body is resilient, but we must take care of it. Our minds can’t properly function otherwise. As the Roman maxim suggests, mens sana in corpore sano (a healthy mind in a healthy body).
When it comes to my culinary preferences, I prefer to listen to what feels right rather than what people tell me is right. I buy real food that has been grown near me without pesticides. Local, seasonal organic food is the most authentic, pure food there is. I would encourage others to trust their intuition to guide their food choices; what feels natural often is natural. Our body signals us what we need better than any so-called “nutritionist.”
When it comes to staying fit, I avoid the term “working out” because exercise no longer feels like work. Words are powerful; they echo in our minds, impacting the perception of our actions. I use the term movement training. It’s a state of flow because the aim is enjoyment. A flow state lies in a delicate balance between effort and joy. I find this state is easier to access when connected to our primitive source in nature. Almost all my training is performed outside on the beach or in the grass, barefoot and shirtless.
I also use the term ‘flow’ because, aside from training sessions, I strive to keep my blood and lymphatic system flowing. For this reason, I rarely sit on a chair; I prefer standing at a desk while working. This helps keep my energy high and my mood balanced. Walking or cycling instead of driving is another way to access our inner flow state. Dancing is a great one, too.
Sleep is vital to our functionality. Philosophers as early as Aristotle and Plato stressed the importance of balanced sleep—getting enough rest to recalibrate the body but not too much as to fall into the trap of idleness in our mind. Deep sleep, or REM sleep, is downstream of a few simple strategies. Try going for a walk in the sun every morning after waking up; that way, your body associates sunlight with activity and nighttime with rest. When the sun sets, dim all the lights in your home, especially if you have LED lights. Turn your screens red (flux software is an example) or wear red lens glasses to protect your brain from blue light, which signals daytime and awakens your mind at a hormonal level, making sleep more elusive.
But what about the world as it extends outside of our body? After all, we’re can’t just live for ourselves, we need to be active participants in what surrounds us.
Loneliness is a widespread phenomenon, yet it’s said to be nearly as harmful to our health as smoking a packet of cigarettes every day. Sharing our joys, fears, and dreams gives meaning to them. It allows us to endure any obstacles ahead. But we must make sure that we choose the right people who share our vision and that we are present while we cultivate our relationships with them. We must not seek company for the sake of it, in that case solitude is preferable. We should seek to find our tribe. When we do, we should look into people’s eyes for deep, enriching conversations. Our phones should be kept elsewhere. We should also share activities with them to strengthen our sense of kindredship. One way I was able to cultivate tribal friendships was to host movement meetups at the beach in Los Angeles and bring like-minded locals together for barefoot soccer, football, sparring, training, and playing around.
It is perhaps banal to say that we are placed on this earth with a purpose, whether we are aware or are oblivious to it. But today, purpose is lacking. To fulfill our destiny, we need to create something bigger and outside of ourselves by using the gifts we are endowed with. We should create more than we consume, which, in today’s age, riddled with distractions from the virtual world, becomes an increasingly complex task to undertake.
Victor Frankl, an American neurologist, wrote about the power of purpose in Man’s Search for Meaning. Frankl found that those who endured the concentration camps best from World War II possessed a strong sense of purpose. The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” As soon as we can ascertain what road lies ahead of us, almost any kind of suffering becomes tolerable. Without a path in sight, existence itself becomes intolerable, or only tolerable by some form of entertainment, which today we find by scrolling and watching shows aimlessly. I understood that my purpose was to reconnect us to nature’s source, to return to an elementary life.
I rediscovered the value of a state of nature as a corrective to the alienation that modernity produces.
If you are in a similar position to where I once was, confronting the fear of killing a version of yourself that is holding you down—I encourage you to rise to the challenge so that the dormant hero within you can be born.
Case Bradford is a health and vitality advocate and host of the podcast Peak Earth.