Be Here Now

  There are many approaches to survival and wilderness psychology. It is important to have the skills and dirt time to deal with emergencies in remote settings.

   The ability to accept and internalize the realities that you are lost or in danger is the first step to survival. Acknowledging the fact that you are lost, unable to return to safety, or simply in a rough situation is rarely done quickly. People tend to refuse the realities of a harsh situation.

   Be Here Now. It is a mantra that will save your life. It is an acceptance of your situation, predicament, and lot in life. It should be the first thing that you say to yourself when you are feeling stressed, late for an appointment, or yearning to be elsewhere quickly. People get themselves into danger or trouble once they do not accept this principle.

   It is the antitheses of speed, panic or terror. Decisions made without this principle can be dangerous and life threatening whether you are in the deep woods of Alaska or walking down Grafton street in Dublin.

   Be Here Now means that you are completely in the moment in the place where you stand. It is paramount in wilderness survival and remote medicine to Be completely Here Now. It means that your reality extends to what you can see. It means that what you have at hand is the only thing available and you need to quickly adapt and begin to act on your particular situation.

   Someone who is lost in the woods has three choices available; panic, denial or acceptance. The one who quickly panics will find themselves running blindly and will quickly get hurt or worse. The one who denies their reality will sit down, give up and die on the spot. The one who accepts that they are in a difficult situation, adapt their thinking and act to their best ability will have the highest chance of survival.

   Practise a Be Here Now philosophy. The next time that you begin to feel anxious while waiting in a line at the supermarket take a big breath and accept that you are in a situation that you cannot control. Be Here Now. That means that your reality is the tiny isle that you are standing in. You look around and your world is what you see.

  

   Using this in a survival situation: You are enjoying your hike in the mountains. You have allocated plenty of time to get up to the peak and back down to the car park before dark. On the decent it gets really misty and difficult to find the trail. In your haste to get down the mountian you twist you ankle. You are in pain. You cannot walk. It is getting dark. Your mobile phone doesn’t work.

   You have three options: panic, give up, or Be Here Now.

   You look around and take inventory. There is only a stony field full of heather. You start collecting a huge pile of the damp heather and stuff it into a hole between two stones. You crawl into your nest and spend a difficult night shivering. Dawn breaks and you start hobbling down the mountain. An early hill walker spots you and helps you down the mountain.

Be Here Now means being completely in the moment. Practise this technique before you have to use it in a survival situation.