Hold on to what is good,
Even if it's a handful of earth.
Hold on to what you believe,
Even if it's a tree that stands by itself.
Hold on to what you must do,
Even if it's a long way from here.
Hold on to your life,
Even if it's easier to let go.
Hold on to my hand,
Even if someday I'll be gone away from you.

-A Pueblo Indian Prayer

I was surprised to see recent reports that a previously uncontacted tribe was discovered in the Amazon.* Upon initially reading the report, I thought it was a joke. The photo showed a group of indigenous men and women in a thick forest pointing their arrows at the helicopter shooting photos from above. Assuming it must be a grassroots marketing campaign for the Westin Amazon, I could only imagine two Americans having a conversation while getting manicures in the thatch huts seen in the above photo:

“Don’t you just love the evening turn down?”

“Oh my Gawd it’s wahndaful. I love waking up to the little birdies in the jungle.”

“Except I miss Starbucks…”

“You didn’t see it? They even have a Stahbucks three trees down to the right.”

But no… this is a true story. In fact, the plethora of articles reporting this new tribe also mentioned that there are as many as 100 isolated, undiscovered, indigenous tribes never contacted by the outside world. Wow! I was amazed and couldn’t help but think of the pure life both endured and enjoyed by these tribes.

Imagine life with no Internet, no cell phones. It’d be like 1980 all over again. Wait, no. Imagine life with no fax machines, no computers. It’d be like 1970 all over again. Wait, no. Imagine life with no beer, no sushi. It'd be like the 1920's all over again. Wait, no. There'd be nothing these primitive folks had but their body and breath and stone age tools. While there's so much they lack, what these primitive people must have in great abundance is a rich connection to spirit and an impossibly clear sense of intuition, imagination, and love.

It’s not realistic for most of us to move to the jungle and live amongst these natives. But we could all benefit from adding some primitive qualities to our lives. It might be creating time in the day to kneel down and honor an intelligence greater than your computer’s hard drive; or it might be converting nature’s soundscape of crickets, birds, waves, and wind to your morning soundtrack; or it might be carving out a period of time in your week to refrain from using technology and honing your intuition. All are examples of taking a step back from that which binds us to the modern world. In other words, all are examples of “getting primitive.”

Primitive ways are ironically “advanced” compared to our modern technology. Here are some incentives to “get primitive!”

1. Getting primitive unleashes the hidden power of the brain

In many indigenous and primitive cultures, there are shamans who utilize completely different approaches to healing. While shamans may use herbs or naturally occurring ointments to work with the body, they also use hallucinogenic vines and flowers like ayahuasca and peyote to reprogram the subconscious mind. Such hallucinogens often cause excessive nausea and vomiting and are also considered illegal in many countries. But there are drug-free ways to work with the subconscious mind as a powerful healing technique.

The human brain absorbs over 11 million bits of information per second. However the conscious, thinking brain can only handle 40 bits per second. The vast majority of the information soaks into the subconscious mind. The subconscious is a mystery whose power is hard to fathom. Your body’s myriad of systems and processes are all governed by the subconscious mind. Imagine if your conscious, thinking mind had to actually pay attention to all the little things that must happen in order to sustain your cell production, heartbeat, brain function, etc. All of that in addition to your daily tasks, emails, and phone calls and you'd surely go insane!!

I once read a great analogy** about the relationship with the conscious and subconscious mind. Imagine you’re a passenger in a plane. You enter the cockpit and see all the dials, buttons, switches and knobs. Unless you were a pilot, you could never possibly fly the plane. But you could absolutely interfere with the pilot and cause a whole lot of trouble. What does this mean?

Your subconscious mind is your Pilot. The subconscious mind knows how to deal with the dials, buttons, switches and knobs as it sustains and regulates your internal systems. The subconscious mind will navigate your obstacles as it has been recording 11 million pieces of information per second for your whole life. Your conscious mind is the Passenger. When we quiet the conscious mind and actually stop thinking, we give the subconscious mind a chance to guide us to Solutions, Answers and Opportunities. You can tap the power, but you must let the Pilot fly the plane.

By creating time in the day to get really relaxed, you eject the unruly passenger (the conscious mind) from the cockpit. In this state, you can transmit your prayers and visions for health, career and love, and give the newly invigorated pilot (subconscious mind) a chance to get you there without interruption.

2. Getting primitive evokes the life-saving power of intuition

There is true story of a tribe of people called the Moken who live on the islands off the coast of Thailand and Myanmar (formerly known as Burma). These people are as primitive as they come in the modern day. Their language does not contain a word for “when” nor a word for “want.” Therefore this tribe comes and goes like the wind with little or no worries, just living day by day. What’s so interesting about the Moken is that they live in an area that was hit especially hard by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. That tsunami claimed the lives of over 200,000 people yet only one Moken died. How is that possible?

Their primitive nature nourishes a deep connection to tradition. While the modern person tends to view a folk story as an old page in an outdated book, the Moken take their folklore seriously and literally. One such story passed through the generations of Moken told of a man-eating wave called the Laboon. When the people saw the sea receding frantically on that fateful day, their tradition and intuition informed them of what they were facing and the Moken ran for the hills. Meanwhile, non-Mokens stood idle and dumbfounded, only to perish in the tsunami.

While it may not be the best idea to take stories and folklore literally, there is more to be gained from listening to our elders and heeding their warnings, thoughts, tradition, and wisdom. All too often we ignore those older than us and second guess their knowledge. All too often we consider anything pre-Internet to also be prehistoric. While people without modern skill sets might be unable to use a BlackBerry, be aware that the morning the tsunami hit, it was the Moken with zero technology who ran for the hills. Those westerners with cell phones did not.

3. Getting primitive honors the power of dreaming over action

Oscar Wilde said, “Action is the last resource of those who know not how to dream.” To live a life based purely on action provokes the anxiety so prevalent in today’s world. I, for one, struggle with  a lot of anxiety. But I fare best when I take time in the morning to relax and foster some vision of how I want my day and my life to unfold. I imagine I speak for many in saying that many days I feel like a pinball bouncing from email to phone call to traffic to meetings.

Charting a vision of your life is easy. It requires a journal, a pen and some time in the day to rise beyond the atmosphere of thought into the space of dreams. It might seem a bit primitive to wake up and reach for the pen and paper rather than getting a head start on the tasks of the day. But as the yogi Satprem said, “One can act and do much for the world in the silence and stillness of one’s own body. A clinging illusion makes us confuse agitation with action.”

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*http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/7426869.stm