I once saw this survival show where the participants, all survival experts, where left to fend for themselves, on a remote Canadian, bear infested island. Balancing mind, body, spirit was a true challenge for them.

These brave, and a bit crazy, men and woman, were amazing survivalist: one guy built a canoe from scratch, another built a pontoon boat out of garbage he found on the beach to go fishing. Another guy weaved his own fishing nets. One guy even built a sauna. They all had comfortable shelters, cooking areas, and they even made games by carving dice to play rock football.

In the end, a few of them where so comfortably set up in the middle of nowhere, that they could have lived there for years. Granted some did not have a lot of luck in catching fish for food, but that had more to do with location, than skill. In the end, the body, and to a lesser degree, the spirit part of the equation was taken care of. The raw and obvious beauty and meditative experience of peaceful wilderness survival was good for the spirit…

The problem was the imbalanced mind.

Although a couple of them had everything, and more than they needed to survive, still they tagged out.

Why?

Because they were alone! This show proved that without our mental and emotional food, our interaction and intimacy with other people, survival was pointless. No other TV series has ever shown how important we are to each other.

Like protein, fiber, and greens that make up a healthy diet, so too should Mind, Body, Spirit be feed, and balanced, to keep us strong. The mind needs more than just information, it also needs emotional food, the food of love, of touch, of laughter, of story telling…

In fact, storytelling is a key ingredient for a well balanced mind body spirit connection.

Humans rely on story for everything we believe in, build, or dream of. I honestly think that subconsciously it wasn’t even direct human contact that was missing. These experienced survivalist came to stay at least a year, but some tagged out after a month of being alone. What was really missing was the connection to story. It wasn’t enough for them to write the story of their experience surviving, when there was no one to directly share it with.  It was the story they were no-longer writing, in real time, with the ones they loved, which they desired most to experience.

This article was donated by our guest author Michael Hills