Honoring the Animal Body

Modern civilization operates by denying human beings are an animal. We wear clothes to hide intimate areas, designate specific times and places for eating and using the bathroom, and structure the social artifice to dismiss our ancestral roots. Humanity pretends as though it never emerged by chance of Mother Nature, yet continues to exist inside a body with base, secular needs. This body is a product of the evolutionary process, the echoes of which have determined how it is to be used, how it is to be taken care of, and the natural reward systems in place for driving its functions. The more robust our appreciation for the animal body, the more likely we are to engage in lifestyle practices aligned with our evolutionary nature.

At the center of all cultural repression is a renunciation of our animal essence. Civilization must suppress basic instincts in order to keep social conventions going as they are. While humankind seeks to unite the global tribe, with equality and compassion for all its members, we have yet to defeat our primal drives. The formation of hierarchy and the drive for status, the monopolization of resources, political competition, infatuation with physical beauty- all examples rooted in impulses from our animal past that remain very much alive. Rather than attempting to control the carnal aspects of the human condition, we should acknowledge and embrace them.

It is only a thought, a perpetual delusion, that we are not animals, above the animal kingdom, or otherwise separate from the natural world. We exist in mammalian bodies subject to birth and death. We eat and excrete physical matter. We are dependent upon oxygen from the atmosphere. We reproduce through sexual intercourse. A misplaced superiority has allowed us to believe we are entirely outside biological paradigms. Lofty-minded perception cannot escape being a bipedal primate shrouded in skin that hides a beating heart and breathing lungs. The animal body is no requirement for condescension or indignation. We require this vehicle to participate in the phenomenal world and the needs it possesses are those of biological survival. It is a form of nature, unfolding and at play. Lest we corrupt it, the body is clean; only dirty when we make it so.

A snapshot on the eternal stage, the body we see is only the current manifestation of an endless genetic blueprint that holds the entirety of organic history. Within each cell contains information inherited from our most distance ancestors, while simultaneously wielding the seeds for all future species. Thus, the way we treat the body and what we do with it should acknowledge its evolutionary disposition. It needs to be physically exercised, well-fed, exposed to intimate contact, cleaned, and consciously maintained.

Exercise

The appearance of the body is a reflection of the physical stress that has been placed upon it, having evolved to meet the demands of the environment in which it is placed. To gather food, fend off intruders, or establisher shelter ancient man carried out different styles of labor that would have included traveling over extended distances, lifting heavy objects, and skirmishing for social dominance. Since we no longer spend much time in the wild, we must substitute ancestral pursuits with physical exercises emulating what our ancestors needed to do. Running, swimming, climbing, and lifting weights are effective for these purposes. We can channel our natural urges for competition into sports and martial artforms.

Not using the body, and providing no force or reason for making it stronger, inevitably leads to its premature breakdown. The body wants to be used, not treated as something feeble and fragile. In addition to other lifestyles, exercise changes how genes express themselves. Gene expression is the platform for health and beauty, and changing the way genes express themselves can be a preventative measure against developing various diseases that run in one’s family history.

Diet

We can deliver proper fuel to the body with a diet that mimics those of hunting and gathering humans. This would be a diet composed of plant and animal products fresh from the Earth, with no artificial or synthetic substances added. Ancestral man would have fasted intermittently as well, if not for days at a time. Modern culture has married eating with immense pleasure, even at the cost of our own health. We expect great satisfaction from food, so long as it is cheap, fast, and tasty. The highly pleasurable foods consumed today in daily America rely on the added use of excessive sodium, processed sugars, and various chemical additives resulting in widespread epidemics of obesity, type II diabetes, and hypertension, to name a few. These are disorders that have come about as a reaction to the present way of life and overeating questionable foods that are low in nutritional value. Even if an individual does not possess these particular disorders, they may still lack the benefits of a clean and wholesome diet.

Food is a vehicle for nutrients- specific chemical substances the body needs to sustain itself. The varieties of nutrients the human body needs come in the forms of fats, proteins, carbohydrates, minerals, vitamins, and water. Although these nutrients can come from multiple sources, the most nutritionally dense foods are meats, particularly birds and fish, vegetables, specifically leafy greens, eggs, nuts, and seeds. Fruits, seafood, and fermented foods are highly nutritious and also serve the body well. These are food items ancient man would have frequently had access to. It is important to notice that the foods we ingest look quite obviously that they came from the Earth and not created on the inside of a factory.

Medicine

To sustain a state of well-being, first we must stop claiming we know better than the body. Faster and faster our culture moves to meet demands of immediate gratification. When we have a headache or feel any ills we rush to over the counter medicines for a quick fix. Rather than address the concern at its source, we prefer to mask the symptoms. Instead of paying attention to real medicine, which comes from practicing health-giving lifestyles, and is both preventative and reactive, we feed our body harmful toxins. Real medicine for the body is the culmination of clean food, hydration, exercise, sunshine, laughter, and a sense of community.

Hygiene

Certain things the body must do daily: sweat, respire, urinate, defecate. Elimination of waste means it needs to be washed and groomed. Today we use a plethora of hygienic products to clean the body like soaps, shampoos, conditioners, exfoliators, deodorants. What is not commonly considered is that these products are often unnecessary. The body can take care of itself and has mechanisms in place for doing so. This does not mean there isn’t a place for soap products in our lives, but using soap can destroy a crucial part of the immune system. The body plays host to beneficial, symbiotic bacterial life. These bacteria help fight infection, aid in digestion and metabolism, and if the population of these bacterial colonies gets to be too low it can be life-threatening to us. We need these bacterial species that permeate our bodies, inside and out. In the current age the best routine defenses against pathogens are hot water, the intermittent washing of the hands, and soaps that do not destroy the positive bacterial flora surrounding the body.

Sleep

Sleep is a basic need that often gets dismissed or overlooked because there is nothing to “do”. Industrialized society sees action and progress as the point of being, while rest is something bad. Laziness and downtime are to be avoided in the western world. However, the regenerative state is perhaps more imperative than any other healthful practice and lack of sleep destroys the body quicker than anything else. We have evolved to get seven to nine hours of sleep per night, rise with the sun, and drop into a lower state of energy in the mid-afternoon. Our circadian rhythm is embedded within the cycles of nature, the Earth’s rotation, and the position of the sun.

Reproduction

The body also has needs for touch and intimacy, the pinnacle of which are its reproductive needs. Modernity has made the urge for sex taboo, something to feel shame and guilt about. However, the drive for physical connection does not simply vanish. The disconnection between people’s natural urges and the ways in which they are to gratify those urges creates a mass scale cognitive dissonance. Often they are forced to ignore or deny their basic desires, which creates further problems. These divisions create a neurotic attachment to what it means to be a sexual creature.

When such a malignant attitude towards the reproductive element of the body exists, all things associated with it are looked down upon: breast-feeding, nudity, masturbation, images of the genitals, promiscuity, the menstrual cycle. Ostracizing sex only brings a collective, yet unspoken, obsession with it. While the sexual characteristics of the body are designed to create a natural attraction between the two sexes, we continue to say they are to be disregarded; the sex drive is something to be risen above. Societies have always placed rules on sex, gender roles, and mate pairing, for these instinctual energies have the ability to destroy societal bonds. Contemporary societies place emphasis on the nuclear family, but only for their own needs. The family unit is the basic unit of a society- going on to form communities, cities, states, nations- and is most easily governed through this model. Ancestral humans did not evolve mating with a single partner and did not raise children with two parents. Rather, humans operated within the context of a tribe for pair-bonding, mating, and child-rearing. No matter what kind of sexual environment we choose to involve ourselves in, be it monogamous or non-monogamous, heterosexual or homosexual, we must follow where those signs are leading us.

Modern man suffers because he has lost touch with where he came from. Today’s innovations may have accelerated our survival as a species but not without skewing our viewpoint towards how to take care of ourselves. The body, its needs, and its appetites are not something grotesque and obscene. The body is not inappropriate, archaic, or wrong. We must make it our personal priority to see the body as an ally to pay respect to by remembering the ways in which we got into our current state. To regain a place of corporeal harmony, we must look back to our origins.

ToddDeVault.com