The last two months of 2016 have been a period of big changes for me. Because of a heavily decreasing budget, GoodPlanet Belgium, the organisation for which I had been working for almost six years, had to let people go. I was one of them. It all came suddenly – a surprise for all of us – but I left as a #GoodFriend. We might meet again on the path of sustainable development somewhere at some point.
What now? Pretty quickly, my intuition told me to take time to think and even rest before taking action again. The past years had been busy, very busy. Besides working for GoodPlanet, I had done everything but sitting on my butt. I had organised various adventures and expeditions, and I created the coaching company, rewilding drum, together with my wife, inspiring people to reconnect with nature and with themselves in order to live a strong, healthy, happy, wild, and free lifestyle.
The New Year of 2017 is here. It’s time to get going again! More than ever, I am convinced that rewilding is what humans need most in their lives – strategies for disconnecting from electronics and reconnecting with their true selves. The loss of contact with Nature is one of the major reasons unhappiness exists in society today. We are an inseparable part of Nature, yet we find ourselves locked in offices and rooms, breathing heated or chilled air (depending on the season), and sitting many more hours than we would like. We eat more and more “plastic” foods that contaminate our body with fats and chemicals, as well as other “benefits” of so-called progress that end up harming us. To understand how we have become so disengaged from nature, it helps to understand how human biology works, the organism we have evolved from, and how human genetics have adapted to the environment.
At rewilding drum we use the hunter-gatherer/forager societies as a role model. Our species has been hunting and gathering for over 99% of our time on Earth! Our genes have adapted very slowly to changes in our diet due to the start of agriculture 10,000 years ago. Life was not always easy, and the dangers were many. However, the overall health of our ancestors was excellent, and many diseases that devastate today’s modern societies were practically nonexistent. We’re not suggesting that you leave the comfort of your homes to hunt, gather, or forage your dinner, or that you get rid of all your possessions. We simply propose that you study the history of man and the legacy of our ancestors to regain control of our lives so that we can return to our healthy, free, strong, and wilder self – our natural state.
On our websites and via the social media, we will keep sharing with you our family’s rewilding progress, our struggles and our successes, and show you that rewilding is truly a lifetime project and not another competition where failure is feared and glory is the motivator. Every (small) step forward is a good one! We hope our stories will inspire you to start exploring the path of rewilding. We do believe it will make you stronger, healthier, happier, wilder and freer. And at the same time, all together we will make this planet a better place again.
But don’t spend too much time reading our tips and tricks. Instead, go outside and explore!
Happy rewilding!
Bert