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Christmas seems like a good time to write about the importance of social connection. 

In the interest of full disclosure, I am the least qualified person in the world to be talking about this! But, as a self-declared hermit, I am using this opportunity to remind myself of the importance of empathy and connection and to set myself some ‘social’ New Year resolutions. 

We are more connected than at any time in our human evolution, yet we are also unhappier than at any other point in time. The negative consequences of having thousands of shallow virtual connections delivered by distracting and additive platforms and fewer really meaningful and soul-nourishing face to face encounters is taking its toll. 

Our primal need for social contact is hard wired through millions of years of evolution. Sharing food and other resources, caring for infants and the elderly, coordinating hunting parties and sharing vital information about freshwater sources and shelter helped our ancestors meet the challenges of their hostile environment.

Over time, early humans began to gather at hearths and shelters to eat and socialise. As brains became larger and more complex, growing up took longer—requiring more parental care and the protective environment of a home. Eventually, expanding social networks led to the complex social lives of modern humans.1,2

This genetic legacy is essential; humans evolved to live in a tribe. Numerous studies highlight the benefits of social connection for mental health and well-being and offer tangible and measurable physiological advantages. 

Social connection is a pillar of lifestyle medicine. Humans are wired to connect, and this connection affects our health. From psychological theories to recent research, there is significant evidence that social support and feeling connected can help people maintain a healthy body mass index, control blood sugars, improve cancer survival, decrease cardiovascular mortality, decrease depressive symptoms, mitigate posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, and improve overall mental health. The opposite of connection, social isolation, has a negative effect on health and can increase depressive symptoms as well as mortality. 3

In his book Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, UCLA professor Matthew Lieberman talks about humans having a social superpower – the ability to get inside the other person’s head and feel their pain, consider what they are thinking, and have empathy. The fact that we can do this gives us an unparalleled ability to cooperate and collaborate with others – which has been a large part of our success as a species.

According to neuroscientists, our ability to think socially (imagining other peoples’ thoughts and feelings about a situation) is so crucial that evolution created a separate brain system for social thinking than that dedicated to analytical thinking and logical reasoning. Using one of these brain systems temporarily quiets the other; if we think analytically, we find it hard to imagine peoples’ thoughts and feelings. But evolution prioritised social thinking above even critical thinking, so when we are not actively using logical reasoning, our predisposition is to be thinking socially. 

There is a good case for getting socially connected to help us become smarter, happier and more productive in the real world of meaningful personal contact and healthy, supportive communities. But in a digital world, this predisposition could leave us vulnerable to exploitation, creating cascading and compounding negative impacts. 4

As highlighted by the mind-blowing documentary, ‘the social dilemma’ powerful influencers control how we consume information and ensure we are plugged in 24/7, returning to our devices repeatedly like a dependent drug addict. As a result, what we think are rational and objective choices about what to read and how we act around our devices are, in fact, utterly manipulated and controlled.

The apparent connectedness of online social media takes us away from the actual physical, social connection. One study found that users spent an average of 5 ½ hours a day on their smartphones. 5

Digital distraction is well known to erode and undermine real-life personal connections. Still, studies show it could be lowering your IQ as well as negatively affecting your social, emotional and spiritual intelligence! 5

Psychologist Daniel Levitin and others have also pointed out that multitasking—the essential smartphone activity—lowers your IQ and then spreads that weakened thinking across as many areas of life as possible. In The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information, Levitin reported that “being in a situation where you are trying to concentrate on a task, [while] an e-mail is sitting unread in your inbox, can reduce your effective IQ by 10 points.”

That used to be a mental decline we suffered only while we sat at our desks. Now we choose to make that 10-point IQ loss a 24/7 thing.

Today our daily news is filled with dramatic and apocalyptic messages that make us concerned for ourselves and our loved ones. But is it possible that this way of consuming media is shutting down our ability to think critically and make rational judgments? We are so distracted and dumbed down by our devices that we haven’t noticed what we are consuming is more in the interest of powerful influencers than ourselves and our families?

Unlike our ancient ancestors, who benefited from collaboration and information exchange to become the most intelligent and evolved species, we may have reached a point where our tendency for being social has turned against us!

In his superb TED talk, Johan Hari highlights research that shows humans are the loneliest we have ever been. He talks about the many mechanisms for depression and focuses on the often-overlooked phycological needs that lead to us becoming depressed and anxious. For example, not feeling like you belong, a lack of meaning and purpose, and feel like you are not seen or valued in your community are often the real root cause of depression and anxiety.

What if, as a society, rather than offer anti-depressants, we invested time and money into developing decentralised supportive community networks where we could come together and learn and grow, share and collaborate? We could potentially address loneliness, depression, and anxiety and a whole host of other issues such as health, childcare, resilient food sourcing, and education.   

So this Christmas. Put down your phones, unplug from the internet, turn off the news and take some time to reconnect with family and friends in a meaningful and fully present way. 

Next year perhaps one of your New Year resolutions could be to join or create a community group focused on promoting health from the soil up – a way of humans and our planet growing well together. 

I know what I will be committing to – developing our Primal Web network to help facilitate this process.  

Happy Christmas.

It’s interesting to me that currently, the idea that kindness is the ‘master’ virtue is at an all-time high. As protection is synonymous with kindness it’s not hard to see how we believe that protecting people from all harm should be the ultimate aim of modern society. 

But is this true? 

What about the forgotten virtues of resilience, courage, temperance, honesty, tenacity, creativity and self-responsibility? When did these get downgraded?

Protection and kindness come with a shadow side too, the consequences of which are far harder to spot. The subtle, pervasive and delayed consequences of over nurturing and loss of resilience are easy to ignore in the face of the immediate and obvious benefits of keeping people and animals safe and comfortable. 

But is being alive and safe enough? Or is the very nature of being human to value the quality as well as the quantity of life? Is animal welfare enough? Or is the static protection of animals detracting from the genetic blueprint that leads to true health and high welfare?

‘’Seek not to cover the world in leather – just wear shoes’’

Shantideva

There’s no quality of life without some risk and for my family, there’s simply no contest. I would absolutely rather take the risk of injury and death so I can live fully in nature walking, climbing, wild swimming, drinking wild water, eating foraged foods, being exposed to microbes and getting an occasional sunburn than simply exist in a protected and sterile environment. 

I was brought up in and around farming. In farming, we are face to face with birth, life, disease, injury and death on a daily basis. We bring our livestock into the world, we do our best to prevent them from getting sick and we end their life when either they are injured, old or if the time has come to harvest their meat. 

This is a far cry from what the majority of modern Western society are exposed to and how they view life and death. In many circumstances, children are exposed to more Disney films than functional ecosystems and we are mostly insulated from death because our elderly are more likely to be in a nursing home than being looked after in the family home. 

This makes it easy for modern society to be drip-fed a dangerous lie. That we can avoid death, and that protecting ourselves from potential harm should be, and is everyone’s highest aim.

In my regenerative agriculture work, the consequences of focusing on protection and specific production traits can be very obvious. Regenerative agriculture is a whole system approach where rather than treating the symptoms we consider why the modern farming system has created these issues in the first place – the root cause of the problem.  

If working with a beef farmer who has continental cattle reared in a shed on grain feeds it would be totally true that if we tried to get these farmers to switch to a grass-based outwintered system it would not go well! The cattle would lose condition and then stand at the gate poaching up the soil into a mud bath until the farmer gives in and lets them back in the shed. 

In the so-called ‘green revolution’ fueled by the availability of cheap artificial fertilisers, we could suddenly produce tons of grain feed at a ridiculously low financial cost. This led to the development of farming systems geared to the availability of cheap high energy and protein grains. It soon became apparent that the little hairy coos weren’t suiting this system too well and breeding of production cattle went down the continental route. 

These continental cattle such as Charolais, Limousin, Belgian Blue and Simmental are fabulous at turning grain into muscle and meat instead of having a deep chest and gut suitable for converting low-quality forage into nutrient-dense meat. 

The byproduct of the grain industry – staw – meant that indoor rearing was completely sensible and many of the diseases seen in the housed cattle could be treated by the pharmacopoeia of modern medicine that seemingly solved every problem. 

The cost of meat went down and we started to get used to spending a lot less on food generally. 

In 1960 apprximately 40% of our wage was spent on food whereas now we spend less than 8%.

The negative impacts of any of these decisions were hard to immediately spot. We didn’t really understand at the time that ruminants don’t do that well on grains, nor do cows belong indoors. Every decision made total sense in the context of the era.

Zoom forward to today and see fertiliser prices are rocketing to the sky; the price of grain is bound to follow. This high input high output model is making less and less sense for farmers. Perhaps this is why we have seen a recent surge of interest in regenerative agriculture where we aim to produce high-quality meat and milk from little more than the rainfall and sunshine that falls on our healthy soil and functional ecosystems – it is the ultimate resilient model of food production. 

I see many different farming systems in my work and something has become very clear to me. What we commonly assume is high ‘animal welfare’ is not necessarily reflecting the full picture of what an animal may need to be healthy. 

All livestock are bred from wild animals; cattle from aurochs, and sheep probably from the mouflon, pigs from wild boar. 

So would a pig, cow or sheep prefer to be well protected by being enclosed in a shed – protected from predators, fed unlimited grain feeds with access to clean water and able to sleep on a lovely straw bed. Or would they prefer to graze a wildflower meadow with the sun on their back, ruminating under a tree with the full protection of the herd all around them?

I see so many cattle with glazed eyes and no sparkle mindlessly chewing through silage (preserved grass) and grains in cattle sheds. 

Selective breeding has promoted traits such as the ability to gain weight over having a natural birth, medical interventions have removed the natural selection of the most disease-resistant animals and a guaranteed and unlimited source of food and shelter offers comfort as an alternative to resilience and survival.

We talk about animal cruelty in the sense of ‘not being looked after’ but totally ignore that these animals basic genetic program is to be reared outside on diverse pastures all year round – insect bites and cold nights included.  

I was recently talking to some dog trainer friends who told me it’s not uncommon for vets to prescribe antidepressants for dogs! We are giving our pets every possible comfort but they too sense some deeply buried yet primal need is not being met and it’s making them depressed. 

We are genetically wired to be in nature, smell the soil, hunt wild beasts, harvest wild plants, lie in the sun, wash in cold streams, move our bodies and sit around a fire telling stories with our close family. 

Have we humans also lost our sparkle? Have we forgotten that we were once wild creatures? 

I think so.

I think we have become over domesticated livestock trapped in a factory farm system being offered hollowed out alternatives to meaningful living. We are placated by the con of convenience in the forms of unlimited cheap ‘stuff’ and basically everything we could possibly want or need on-demand; fast food, fast delivery, fast dating, unlimited TV and social contact available 24/7. 

But it’s just not hitting the spot.

“The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered “Man! Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

The promise of technology, convenience and comfort has not been delivered and I feel an upswell of others are awakening to this lie too. 

We are now being offered a future of technology where we will hardly need to think for ourselves let alone have to drive ourselves or worry about inconvenient concepts like staying fit and healthy or developing a resilient mindset – we will be monitored, medicated and protected – It’s for our own good you know! 

Should we keep backing away from the scary and dangerous world full of stressful situations, people voicing opinions that might hurt our feelings and having to eat well and stay strong so we don’t get sick? 

Well, I say; thanks but no thanks. I’ll take the hard road and painful life lessons that are the road to wholeness. 

From 2005-15, cases of depressive illness increased by nearly a fifth. People born after 1945 are 10 times more likely to have depression.

The Guardian

It’s in the strain, pain and discomfort; the hard work and extreme challenges; the grief and despair that humans actualise their potential. 

There’s a reason the best cup of tea with cake is after a hard day in the mountains. Why do we get a feeling of true satisfaction and genuine happiness after landing a deal that required months of skilled negotiations? Why seeing the bluebells in spring after a dark winter can lift your spirits so much. It’s the contrast – the yin and yang, the dark and light. 

Without hardship the pleasures are meaningless. 

So let’s learn from the hairy hardy cattle who live outdoors through the winter on regenerative farms. They are hardy and resilient and thrive on natural forage, their deep guts and thick coats keep them warm and dry. They know where to shelter in the woods and find the nutritious plants they need for optimal health. They feel a part of the herd and know their role. They are relaxed but alert. 

They are thriving, not just comfortable and surviving.  

‘Seaspiracy’ painted a bleak and desperate picture of our seas and commercial fishing. For as long as we turn a blind eye to the impact our purchases have on our planet, atrocities on our planet will continue to be played out before us.

Even if the facts in the film ‘Seaspiracy’ are only 50% accurate – stats being malleable to whoever’s story they are intended to support – there’s no doubt each and every topic raised in the film happens. It is not fiction.

But the side it doesn’t tell is the story from those whose livelihoods have depended on vibrant seas for generations. These people are not easy to come by, but they are there, carefully fishing with pride and sensitivity to the seas. 

In an answer to the film ‘Seaspiracy’ our fish supplier Caroline Bennett responded with the following;

'I didn’t learn anything new from the film, but knowing something and seeing it are quite different, I wasn’t alone finding it hard watching sea life being bludgeoned to death. Indeed, knowing these things was the very reason I founded my company.

Feeling isolated and powerless in my concern for the seas back in the late ‘90s, I was fortunate enough to be present at Slow Food’s first Terra Madre, that brought together 5000 people from around the world, working diligently and quietly on their ancient practises from across the globe.

This translated into creating my company, a practical alternative for people wishing to enjoy the goodness and deliciousness from the sea and support the small-scale fishers who are proud to put their names to each and every pack of fish.  

Faceless animal protein, be it fish or land-based animals, can only result in destruction of planet, and misery for those working in such practises. Connecting your food to place, your fish to its fisherman, has been the mantra we’ve followed from the start.

We are at the perfect size, employing 10 people on land to process and dispatch our fish, we have no desire to grow further, instead, concentrating efforts on improving our own backyard. Our desire is to have a collective of fishers picking litter up from the sea, using bigger mesh size than any legislator would dare ask for, showcasing the abundance of delicious species from our local waters, not feeling pressured to catch that last fish for fear another fisher won’t share their desire to leave it for future generations. I invite you to join our journey.'

Our promises for ethical and sustainable fish:

• Caught with as little damage to the marine environment as possible
• Fishers operate a ‘no discards’ policy, this means we refuse to replicate the wide spread practise of high grading – Every fish has its value
• All the landings from the fishers are accepted to avoid incentivising discarding
• Fishers receive fair prices for their commitment to ‘low impact’ fishing methods
• Your fish can be traced back to the boat
• All boats are under 10 meters long – the gear they carry does not impact or plough the seabed

Our ‘Catch of the Day’ Sustainable Fish Box is perfect for those who are passionate about sustainable, high-quality and nutritious fish. This box offers a variety of delicious fish which have been been caught with minimal damage to the marine environment. We’re supporting small-scale fishers and their local communities.

Our ‘Catch of the Day’ Sustainable Fish Box is available as a one-off box or as a subscription:

Air is something we take for granted. It’s all around us and available in unlimited quantities but how many of us consciously think about our breath in terms of our health?

How about if I told you that breathing could be one of your most important tools for detoxification managing stress and achieving calm focused energy. And did you know that by helping our soils breathe we could help to reverse climate change?

Now let’s learn how to breathe, shall we? 

It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? But most of us spend all day shallow breathing, taking short rapid breaths using only our upper chest; this leads to many negative physiological consequences. 

To breathe optimally we need to take three steps.

1. Take a slow deep breath in through your nose. 
2. Breathe down into your belly.
3. Breathe out slowly, taking longer than you take to inhale.

We can live for weeks without food, days without water, and just minutes without oxygen – proper airflow matters. 

Oxygen is really important to survival and health – it’s our number one source of energy. We spend a great deal of time and money optimising our diet with organic vegetables and 100% grass-fed meats and often overlook that getting oxygen out of our haemoglobin into our tissues and organs is the most fundamental of health factors. 

Having optimal oxygen levels promotes the creation of white blood cells and helps the body to absorb nutrients efficiently. With every deep functional breath, your lungs fill with oxygen that is transported in your blood to other detoxing organs including the lymphatic system, kidneys, colon, and the uterus in women.

As we exhale we eliminate part of the body’s waste in the form of carbon dioxide. By breathing deeply we take in more oxygen that cleanses the body, and by exhaling deeply we eliminate more waste.  Both actions have an overall detoxifying effect on the body.

We often take breathing for granted and underestimate the importance of drawing awareness to our breath. However, this can result in shallow breathing with side effects that include fatigue and decreased tissue function. Additionally, the brain uses 20% of the oxygen you breathe in, it simply cannot function to its fullest potential if it is not receiving enough oxygen.

In fact, 70% of our detoxification occurs through the breath and only 30% of detoxification occurs from sweating! If the 25,000 or so daily breaths are not optimal then we will simply not be capable of being truly healthy.  

So okay it is clear that we want to improve the quality of oxygen we are taking into our bodies, fresh clean air is going to win every time. But in the case of optimal breathing, it isn’t simply a case of taking in as much oxygen as possible. In fact, most of us are over-breathing!

Patrick McKeown, Author of the Oxygen Advantage says it this way; ‘’the presence of carbon dioxide loosens the bond between oxygen and haemoglobin within red blood cells’’ in a nutshell, we need a build-up of CO2 in the blood to facilitate the transfer of oxygen from the blood to the organs and tissues.  

Humans are designed to breathe through their noses. Our ancient ancestors only ever relied upon mouth breathing for periods of extreme exertion and then quickly reverted to breathing through their nose again. Why? Because breathing this way maintains the perfect balance of oxygen and carbon dioxide for effective transfer of oxygen and removal of carbon dioxide in our tissues and organs. 

We need to get comfortable with breathing less – increasing our tolerance for higher levels of carbon dioxide in our tissues – not more, ideally taking between 3.5 and 5 breaths per minute taken gently through your nose. 

In addition to breathing through your nose rather than our mouth, we need to ensure that when inhaling we are expanding our underappreciated diaphragm by pulling the air down towards our belly rather than inflating only the top of our lungs and expanding the rib cage.  

The last step of breathing optimally is to ensure you breathe out slowly, taking longer to exhale than inhale. This ‘flips the switch’ on your stress levels shifting you from ‘fight or flight’ instead triggering a relaxation response.  

A great way to train yourself to breathe correctly is to take regular ‘breathing’ breaks where you can take several optimal breaths to help train your diaphragm muscles and take the opportunity to be mindful as you calm your physiology through the long calming exhale. 

And it’s not just zen masters and yogi’s who have mastered the art of breathing correctly to take control of their minds, navy seals fully understand the importance of breathing to control their parasympathetic nervous system in order to make clear-headed calm decisions under extreme pressure.  

See Ex-Navy Seal Mark Divine use the ‘box breathing’ technique to help calm and control a racing mind to clear the way for good decision making. 

Researchers have also shown that using the above breathing technique can help us step in between stimulus and response, effectively boosting our willpower. 

There are many types of breathwork and ‘how to breathe’ can be as controversial as ‘what to eat.’ The point is to take notice of how you are breathing and do some research.

There are several breathwork approaches. You may want to try out a few different techniques over time to see which type most resonates with you and brings about the best results.

Types of breathwork include:

• Shamanic Breathwork
• Vivation
• Transformational Breath
• Holotropic Breathwork
• Clarity Breathwork
• Rebirthing

The importance of breath is important for human health but in regenerative agriculture, we also focus on ensuring our soils can breathe optimally too. Why? Because if our soils can’t breathe, plants cannot properly access nutrients and water so productivity is significantly reduced. 

In functional soil, plants achieve nutrients through a symbiosis with the soil food web of microscopic organisms. These tiny bacteria, fungi, and microscopic predators exchange minerals that are normally unavailable with sugary exudates produced by the plant during photosynthesis. If these soil organisms cannot access adequate air and get rid of the waste gasses then they are unable to perform these nutrient exchange services to the plants.

Plants need nitrogen and other nutrients to grow. Nitrogen is one of the most significant limiting factors in production. 

The mismanagement of nitrogen, however, is the single largest agriculturally destructive practice. It burns out humus, leaches calcium, acidifies the soil, contaminates ground and surface water and produces nitrous oxide, the most potent greenhouses. Nitrous oxide then returns as nitric acid and destroys forests and symbiotic fungi in the soil through acidifying rainfall! 

In compacted soils with poor structure, the airflow is restricted so the microbes responsible for cycling nutrients and fixing nitrogen cannot do their job. 78% of air is made up of nitrogen and there are millions of free-living nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil and root nodules of legumes that can turn this nitrogen in the air into important food for plants. If these pathways are not available then farmers become more and more reliant on artificial forms of nitrogen and other artificial nutrients.

Upwards of 40% of all nitrogen applied to farmland is either lost through groundwater into the rivers and sea or volatilises into the atmosphere – either way it’s an environmental disaster. 

Globally we have increased grain production 4 fold by increasing nitrogen input 23 fold. This is not a sustainable way to produce food.

Improving soil health, soil structure and therefore the ability of microbes to breathe in the nitrogen-rich air we could take great steps to reduce or eliminate the use of artificial nitrogen in our food production systems – often with minimal or no loss of yield. 

Healthy functional soils can continue to feed plants indefinitely – as long as there is sunshine, rainfall, bedrock and air then this miraculous symbiosis between plant and soil life can offer a truly sustainable way of growing nutrient-dense food. 

Ancient cultures referred to and revered the classical elements of water, earth, fire, air, and (later) aether, which were proposed to explain the nature and complexity of all matter in terms of simpler substances. Ancient cultures in Greece, Tiber, and India had similar lists, sometimes referring in local languages to “air” as “wind” and the fifth element as “void”. 

So it seems that throughout history the importance of air as a fundamental force of nature has been recognised. 

Optimising our inner airflow and that of the soils and landscapes we rely upon to produce our food could indeed be a big piece of the puzzle for attaining truly sustainable whole system health.