40 Ways to Free Yourself from Biocapitalism

Join the Revolution

We are in a war on consciousness. A war for the soul of humanity. The fight to stay awake has never been harder. The unconscious System, in its insatiable quest to maximise profits above all other considerations, feeds off our unconsciousness: our lack of awareness and awakeness. If we were fully awake, we wouldn’t allow ourselves to be exploited by corporations we don’t agree with, or work jobs that degrade our lives and neglects our souls.

So here is a list of diverse ways of we can become more fully awake, aware and alive — to resist exploitation, overcome inner obstacles, and create a world of freedom and flourishing for all.

A Quick Word on Biocapitalism (so we know what we’re dealing with).

A primary weapon in the System’s arsenal of ways to keep us sedated, passive and silent (or worse, active supporters of it’s violence) is the countless offering of things to put in, on and around our bodies. These products are designed to sedate us, to be addictive, to null our sensitivity and emotionality, to weaken us, to kill our priceless — and limitless — capacities for kindness, creativity, and presence.

At every turn we are being drugged, assaulted by information, ripped away from everything (and everyone) we love and cherish, and forced to serve a dead and unconscious profit-maximisation-machine. We are being tranquilised in thousands of subtle, insidious ways. And in our forced slumber, we are set to work. To top it all off, we are persuaded that this tranquilisation is our free choice, and that our incapacity to usurp the system and is due to personal weakness, rather than aggressive informational, cultural and biological oppression.

We have to be kind to ourselves, and forgive our weaknesses. After all, we live inside a capitalist propaganda machine of global proportions. And even more perniciously, that propaganda machine is wriggling its way into our bodies — one meme, advert, and anxiety-inducing cappuccino at a time.

So: here is my list of 40 suggestions for resisting and overcoming the biocapitalist system, so that you are no longer a slave to corporations, but an awake and aware servant of universal love. Probably it will be triggering and challenging: take this as a good sign that the capitalist demon within is being provoked! Don’t worry — he’ll soon be purring in the arms of the Mother Goddess once again.

1. Quit refined sugar. Because sugar is toxic.
2. Quit alcohol. Maybe a little here or there. But basically: it’s poisonous. Our bodies scream this at us, one depressing and demoralising hangover after the other. If alcohol was invented today it would immediately be designated a highly destructive class-A drug. Reclaim your health and wellbeing from this monster of destruction and unconsciousness.
3. Activate the parasympathetic nervous system with slow, deep, rhythmic breathing. ‘Box Breathing’ is a great, simple but powerful method. I do this probably 20–30% of every day, in all kinds of tasks and activities. Because it works. It has helped me to realise that I can choose to relax in any situation. And that has been life-changing. Soothe thyself.
4. Quit caffeine. The caffeinated state of anxious and heartless productivity is the System’s dream-come-true. Just be honest with yourself: are you actually more relaxed, empowered and happy when you are in a daily-coffee drinking habit? Perhaps you are, I don’t know — we’re all different. But I don’t think it’s a coincidence that coffee is the most sold drug around the world. The System fucks us up, sets us to work and tells us that we love it. It fucks the environment up, too — as well as the exploited farmers, workers, and (now absent) forests involved in its production. Wean onto green tea or pure fucking prana if you still need an energiser.
5. Buy and eat organic wherever possible. Free yourself from plastic tomatoes and fertiliser-ridden, pesticide-laced “food”.
6. Avoid processed foods (basically anything in a packet). Not easy. Not easy at all! But we can try, right? Return to the original gifts of the soil, the fruits of the earth. Just notice how good you feel with this simple change in diet.
7. Sing, chant mantras, hum and yawn. Find your body’s natural ability to heal through expressing yourself — and enjoy! The voice is a powerful vehicle for embodied creativity. Singing and harmonising with others can be powerful, ecstatic and deeply meaningful — coming back to feelings of belonging, goodwill, celebration and collective joy.
8. Get therapy. And before you do, ask yourself: who really fucked you up — your parents, or the System? Whatever challenges you’ve faced, it’s time to talk about it: get support in reclaiming your agency and autonomy in a culture that has told you to conform, obey and deny your soul since day one.
9. Switch to a meat-free diet as an act of kindness and solidarity. No more repressing our innate heart-knowledge that decimating and degrading animals is evil and immoral. No more contributing to the industrial animal holocaust, the foul and stinking blood-engine at the core of the biocapitalist system.
10. Exercise. Healthy body, healthy mind. And healthy minds don’t need to buy useless shit. They can also smell the bullshit of biocapitalism and spot the demons (adverts) before they slip unconsciously into the psyche.
11. Quit Porn. It’s just not good for us. It’s unnaturally prodding and desensitising your dopamine system, and it distorts your perception of women (or whatever gender porn you watch). Reclaim your imagination! And forgive yourself if you relapse — it’s a tough nut to crack.
12. Engage in yoga, qigong, kung fu or some other embodied awakening practice. I think most people have barely any idea how much power, wisdom, energy and ecstatic vibrancy resides in their body and is just waiting to be activated by some committed practice. When your body is fully online and not slow, sludgy and desensitised, you can see and sense the incoming hooks of the biocapitalist system. But now you’re ready! You dodge these hooks like a kung fu master and slam the whole system to the ground in one blissful wave of embodied happiness/kindness/peacefulness. *bows*
13. Dance. With others. For hours. Like your life depends on it. In a System that wants you to die on the sofa in a pool of sugary drizzle and unfinished Netflix series, this is a radical act of profound creative potency. Again, you can find that power, energy and vibrancy that’s waiting within and channel it.
14. Listen to reggae, funk, soul, afrobeat and hiphop. Black music, baby. The serious attitude of the System simply cannot exist when these good vibes are coursing through your veins — and shakin’ your booty.
15. Quit addictive apps and games (Snapchat, Tiktok, meme sites, and so on). Again, it rinses your dopamine system and rapes your attention span / ability to focus. This isn’t a coincidence: there are thousands of teams of very clever people who are intent on making this media content as addictive, mind-numbing (and therefore money-making) as possible. It also eats your time. Time that you need to create the beautiful life you know you can live.
16. (Re-)connect with people of colour (if you’re white, that is). Listen and learn. Cos they are fucking awesome! It really feels to me like these communities have the medicine — the positive vibration and communal love — that the West has lost and desperately needs. Of course many coloured people are also caught up serving in the neocolonial capitalist system — but still they’re going to have a different perspective on the world, a perspective that privileged white folk can learn a lot form. Do the work and see how you participate in various forms of oppression. Uncover your unconscious bias. This work scared me until I realised it is a doorway to so much love and reconnection. We know that the System does everything it can to keep us segregated and in a state of interracial competition and aggression. This prevents us directing our energies of resistance towards overcoming the System itself — and from relaxing back into the flow of universal unconditional love that knows no boundaries between any race, culture, gender, or religion.
17. Reconnect with your lower body: the power, wisdom, peace and intelligence of the feet… the legs, the pelvis, the abdomen, the navel, the lower back. Let your awareness sink down there, and rest. Drop out of the anxious tension-vortex of the head, neck and furrowed brow. Re-ground. Ah.
18. Try yoga nidra. Enlightened sleep. Traditionally done lying down, this ancient awakening practice is living testament to the “emancipatory power of rest”. Check out Michelle Loew’s ‘clearlight nidra’ offerings online. There are also many available on Insight Timer and Yoga Nidra Network.
19. Work with cold. Especially cold water. This is basically a hack or shortcut to gaining conscious control over the (previously unconscious) autonomic nervous system. The System constantly prods and provokes the autonomic nervous system into survival mode, activation of the sympathetic (stress-response) nervous system.
20. Protest injustice, oppression and lack of creative progressive action. In the streets. In the parks. In the squares. Not with letters to the council that nobody reads or lengthy ramblings posted on the internet. Resist with your living, breathing body and its conscious placement in space and time in a context that challenges and confronts the System and its heavily sedated puppeteer-powerholders. Get in the way. Make a noise. You’ll make friends for life in the process.
21. Try out herbal medicines, healing potions, aromatherapy. Go to your local park, woods or nature reserve. Learn to identify and pick nettles, sage, rosemary, mugwort. Herbs, leaves, barks. Make teas. Tinctures. Extracts. Find your local botanist, apothecary or witch. With reverence, humility and curiosity, reconnect with the plant-wisdom of our ancestors.
22. Forage. Collect the fruits of the earth yourself. They’re everywhere. They’re delicious. And they’re free. Apples, seaweeds, blackberries, mushrooms, hogweed. Cue jams, soups, pies, and all manner of culinary experiments.
23. Work with psychoactive medicines — if and only if, after careful research, reflection and preparation, this feels like it would be a worthwhile and heart-opening experiment — or longer path — for you. Seek guidance and advice from (indigenous) elders, professionals, writers, and the scientific/therapeutic literature. Ongoing work with psychoactive medicines is one of the most potent tools we have heal our psychological wounds and bring our minds, bodies and hearts back to a state of health and wellbeing, such that it naturally resists exploitation by the System. Not least because psychedelics will reliably reveal and heal the mental addictions, concepts and behaviours that keep us locked in — subjugated — by the biocapitalist complex.
24. Order a local fruit/veg box from a nearby farm. This is easier than ever. And you’re going get a whole load more nutrition (and flavour) than from mono-cropped supermarket veg.
25. Sleep, rest, relax. In a system that keeps us constantly stimulated, overwhelmed and overworked, this is simple healing. You’ll also reconnect with the dreamworld and the steady flow of creative ideation and imagination that comes with the hypnagogic state. This inspiration and wellbeing will help to bring you the power and vision to break free of your biocapitalist shackles.
26. Cancel your Netflix subscription. Consume only a small selection of content that really nourishes, inspires, energises or informs you about something you care about. Life’s too short and too beautiful to sit like a zombie binge-watching series. IMO.
27. Headstands (or shoulder stands to start). A total life-hack for good health, circulation, immune system and positive mood/energy throughout the day. I do 5 minutes, every morning. Influential yoga teacher B.S Iyengar called this the “greatest boon to humanity given to us by the ancient sages”. Free of charge. Thanks, universe.
28. Improve your ‘digital hygiene’. Make your tech work for you, and not the other way around. Turn off notifications — check apps when you want. Keep phone and laptop out of the bedroom when resting and sleeping. Airplane mode. You can even turn iPhone to grayscale so the colours (like those little alarming red notification numbers) are less arresting and stress-inducing.
29. Wear natural fabrics over synthetics. It’s the aura, bro.
30. Walk, explore and spend time in nature. Reconnect. Talk. Commune. See how your body, heart and imagination respond to this. Get lost. Get wild. Get dreaming.
31. Watch clouds, daydream, sit around doodling. Just because.
32. Seek authentic and deep human connection and community — free from any form of transaction. Heal the System’s aggressive fracturing of society and family. Strong, loving and loyal friendship bring us so much wellbeing and happiness. They put us in healthy and beautiful positions of power-with (i.e. stronger together), allowing us to better resist the System’s attempts to overpower us — and to co-create beauty, hope and meaning.
33. Volunteer. Embody your commitment to a free and flourishing world. Give. Serve. You’ll work harder than you do when you’re getting paid and you won’t even notice, cos you’ll feel so good about helping others!
34. Quit your job if it doesn’t work for you, and of course if you’re lucky enough to actually consider this option (financially, emotionally, familially etc.). Bullshit jobs are one of the most basic forms of exploitation. Get help, support and advice from friends if you need it. Follow your dreams!
35. Fasting. This resets your hunger-mechanism and reclaims your ability to go comfortably without food, get less stressed or anxious about eating and buying food, and so on. It could be for a short time — just a day. Or it could be something you work into your daily schedule, like skipping breakfast or intermittent fasting (e.g. don’t eat until 2pm, 3pm, 4pm). Fasting with friends is a really great way to crack the challenge of this, especially if you are going for a longer stint.
36. Meditate and pray. Remember and reconnect with the infinite divine love that permeates every cell of your body and every atom of creation. Channel that love for the benefit of all people everywhere. Take that, capitalism. Loving-kindness is a particularly good practice for re-activating the heart-centre. Opening your heart, you’re going to feel the full heart-breaking force of the tragedy of the global bio-capitalist complex… but you’re also going to find unspeakable kindness, compassion and creativity waiting to burst forth, through your imagination and into the world. What a gift…
37. Grow your own vegetables, herbs, fruits. In an allotment, on your windowsill, in a nearby community farm. Not only are you going to get a humble but delicious supply of food; the beneficial psychological effects of tending and caring for plants, and getting outside in the garden/allotment/farm can be quite significant.
38. Learn to feel. Lower your numbness bar. Unmix emotions and harness the power and energy of conscious feelings. Pure anger, sadness, fear and joy bring a limitless wealth of information and intelligence that we can draw on to resist, grieve, create, connect and celebrate. To feel life again, in a world that repressed our emotionality since childhood, turning us into obedient and emotionless wage-slaves. I think the real pioneers of this movement are the facilitators and practitioners of Possibility Management.
39. Plant trees, seeds and flowers. Because regenerating the Earth is regenerating yourself — and vice versa.
40. Fill your house/office/world with plants, plants, plants. You know that instant good vibe when you walk into someone’s lounge and it’s packed with plants. You could live like that! Make your house a garden. Sit back, relax and soak up the oxygen.

And there it is.

Hopefully enough to give you some practical next steps!

Of course, this list is by no means exhaustive. There are infinite ways to resist biocapitalism, because there are infinite ways that you can feel amazing without buying or consuming anything.

When you find infinite joy within, you don’t need these shitty products any more. Nor do you even want them. Dance, dance, dance and keep dancing until you’re sweating and you remember what effortless fun and ecstatic embodied flow feel like. Then you are well on your way to reclaiming your bio-sovereignty. Basically: any time you are being seduced to consume something you don’t need, create something. The opposite of consumerism is producerism: a global community of artists, musicians, poets, gardeners and architects, all working together to create a beautiful, blissful and sublime world.

Onwards, comrads!