By Peter Loughrey – NI Hypnosis Derry/L’derry
About 5 to 7 million years ago, humans branched off from our last common ancestor with chimpanzees and began to walk upright. As climate change turned lush forests into sparser woodlands, finding bananas to eat became a lot tougher.
You see , walking round hunched over on four legs is hard. It’s good for climbing trees , but not so good for travelling. It takes a lot of energy to cover any considerable distance this way. This is why chimps only run 100 meters a day. They hate it.
Those who could walk on two legs had an advantage. They could still climb decently, but now they could travel miles in search of greener pastures.
Fast forward a few million years, to about 2.5 million years ago. Climate change has turned many of those woodlands into plains. Meanwhile, we’ve evolved to the genus homo, and our big brains now require that we get more calories than we used to.
Some bright spark realises that if we can kill big animals, we can get thousands of calories by eating their flesh, brains and bone marrow. So about 1.8 million years ago we started hunting.
At this point, we haven’t figured out that we can sharpen something and throw it to become deadly hunters.
And so persistence hunting was born.
Here’s how it works. One person sets off at a steady pace and spooks the prey, the prey sprints off but the first hunter stays close enough to point the rest of the group to where the prey is recovering from it’s sprint. We are the only animals designed to cool as we run. We sweat as we run to cool our body temperature, whereas other animals have to stop to pant or sweat to cool down and this is our strength. We can continue at a steady pace while our prey begins to overheat before eventually collapsing with hyperthermia, then someone kills it with a rock.
Fast forward to the present day, and deep in the Copper Canyons of northwestern Mexicolives a tribe called the Tarahumara Indians, a tribe of super athletes. They defy every known rule of physical conditioning and still speed along for hundreds of miles. They chain smoke a fierce black tobacco, eat a ton of carbs, and barely any meat, and get through so much cactus moonshine that it is estimated that they are hungover a third of the year.
Yet despite this they regularly run distances of between 100- 400 for fun. They have raced against the worlds elite most scientifically trained ultrarunners and won consistently.
If you have ever trained for a marathon or are preparing for your first marathon, there’s no doubt you’re aware of “the wall”- the intimidating barrier that blocks you from running as hard in the later stages of the race.
Not everyone who runs a marathon will hit “the wall.” There are many factors that contribute to this phenomenon.
My point is I wonder how many people would hit “the wall” if they were not told about it? Why can the taramahura Indians run up to 400 miles for fun? This is not just one or two in the tribe but the whole tribe are excellent endurance athletes. How could our ancestors on a daily basis run down wild animals to the point where they collapsed with exhaustion? I would suggest because nobody told them they couldn’t. They could see on a daily basis other members of the tribe doing it so they had the belief it could be done, if other people can do it then why couldn’t they, it became normal.
This is what hypnosis can do for you, it can make what you perceive impossible, possible. We are only limited by our imaginations, everything at one time was perceived as impossible until someone had the belief that it was possible, landing on the moon, four minute mile, swim the channel, internet, electricity, mobile phones. Don’t live your life with the beliefs other people have put on you. It’s your life, live it with unlimited beliefs, what would you do if you were guaranteed you could not fail? Then go do it.
