The !Kung hunter gatherers of the Kalahari say that when they dance they are "hunting /nom", where /nom is "inspired vitality". Eland antelope contain a lot of /nom in their fat, they say, but in the dance you cut out the middle man. You go straight to the eland /nom that resides in your own … Continue reading Hunting Inspired Vitality and ending “Refeeding Syndrome” through Paleo 5:2 : cognitive upregulation during fasting and keeping the mood up after breaking the fast
There are some recent enthusiasms which could be viewed as fashions or fads, but which deserve to be much more than that. Hyyge, Rewilding, Fasting – these are some that spring straight to mind. Sometimes fasting approaches such as regular reduced calorie days (e.g. 5:2) get labelled as fad diets. I don’t agree with this … Continue reading Does the need to Just Stop Oil make it OK to throw tomato soup over a Van Gough? Here’s why it’s actually self-defeating. (And why fasting and rewilding are not fads)
On this blog I written much about the benefits of restoring the old fast/feast cycle of our hunter gather ancestors, with most of the focus being on how when we’re fasting we can enter into that mode where we go more easily into high-motivation, high-performance flow states where we are robust in the face of … Continue reading YAM PHASE: oxytocin and hyyge
The music says “Jump!” And your fasting-upregulated stress response says “How high?” And if it’s Uplifting Trance the music comes back with ‘Very high indeed.’ And your up-regulated stress response and reward system say “No problem!” If you were to ask me what the most significant gaps are between the Hunter Gatherer Within and the … Continue reading A Weekly Cycle to Mend the Biggest Mismatch between the Hunter Gather Within and the Modern Self Without
Our ancestors started evolving towards becoming bipedal a long time ago – a date of around five million years ago is often given - and by around two million years ago (based on what I just Googled) they were fully bipedal. We had long since come down from the trees and were evolving for a … Continue reading Mending the mismatch between hardwiring and lifestyle: Acknowledging the Hunter Gatherer Within
There is a clear connection between 'frisson' and grateful, celebratory anticipation of the gifts of life, of providence. So much so, that you can use anticipation for and celebratory gratitude for, say, delicious chocolate to help take your trance-joy into the stratosphere, when combining it with Uplifting Trance music and doing it at the end … Continue reading Celebration, Trance, Healing and a Chocolate Prayer
“The pandemic led to the realisation that if everyone went into work as normal, commuting into the office, there would be a lot of unnecessary and untimely death. The point I want to make here is that, well, that was already the case, before the pandemic.” There’s a feeling that comes over us in Summer … Continue reading How Do You Solve a Problem Like Winter?
I sat down yesterday and filmed myself talking off the cuff about HDR. Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8VL7ygQEJU The video talks about using different types of music at different stages of the fast, both for music assisted fasting and fasting assisted music appreciation. You'll no doubt want to have your own playlist in place, but if … Continue reading Hungry Dawn Raving Brain-dump Summary video
When we exercise, there is a release of the chemicals that encourage us to form a mental map of valued places, such as BDNF and dopamine. This makes total sense if you think about the evolutionary hunter-gatherer context, where extended exercise meant being out and about in the landscape, probably looking for food or finding … Continue reading Satisfying Wanderlust even in Lockdown: “Trance Mapping” as fulfilling exercise routine for optimised mood
I haven't posted on this Confessions of a Hungry Dawn Raver blog for a while. I've been posting to another, new blog site, on a subject that augments and complements Hungry Dawn Raving in a great way - Gratitude Journaling. Or rather a glorified version of this where you don't merely keep a list of things … Continue reading Glorified Gratitude Journal as Perfect Compliment to Hungry Dawn Raving
The confessions of a hungry dawn raver 