All of those things you described in your question were around long before the Paleo diet became popular. We used to call it "getting back to nature," or call folks "naturalists," in the 60's and 70's.

We simplified our lives a while back. We haven't used synthetic products in our home or artificial flavors/preservatives in our food, for a very long time. We live simply and we eat nourishing whole foods as unadulterated as possible. We never really put a label on it. There are many people who have lived this same way for a long time. They sometimes call it "traditional living."

Seems like there are many labels one can give this simple lifestyle.

I find the areas of sunlight/sleep and avoidance/reduction of technology (especialy screens after dark), the reflection and creation of community and its relation to polyculture and male/female bonding-friendships all fascinating.

On 'spirituality', I remember a book I read about 10 years ago by Morris Berman, 'Wandering God' which attempted to reconstruct a kinda Daoist pre-civilization philosophy of living, while rejecting as a dead end any search for the transcendent/mysticism which he argued developed with sendentarism and agriculture. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wandering-God-Study-Nomadic-Spirituality/dp/0791444422/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268167431&sr=8-9

In terms of reconnecting with nature and creating a paleo society, I'm intrigued by the work of animist/primitivsts(?) like Derrick Jensen though I'm unsure as to how accurate/useful the environmental critique is.

I've more affinity with the eco-tech supporting social anarchism outlined by the late Murray Bookchin - a good review of his work is 'Bookchin: A Critical Appraisal' (Pluto Press)

I'm buying raw dairy, veg and some meat from local organic farms and I'm interested in one day being able to purchase land to experiment with.

Did Crossfit for a couple of years, now I mix it all up with some parkour and some larking around in trees and playgrounds.

Plan to build up to running and sprinting barefoot in the spring.

Finding the whole paleo online network inspiring and exciting.

Let's see if I can make my opinion on this perfectly clear...

• Being born in a wealthy, developed nation in the 20th century is the human history equivalent to winning the lottery. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else.
• Stuff like the SAD acronym and those stock news videos of obese butts are amusing but science and industry deserve credit for providing us with a cheap and vast supply of the most precious nutrient of them all -- calories. It's a luxury to be in a position to worry about stuff like omega-3 versus omega-6.
• I love to eat and to cook but I'd be happy to trade that for a cheap, convenient, optimal meal in a can that I could order from Amazon. Even better if it's Coca-Cola flavored!
• I do all of my hunting and gathering at Whole Foods with the exception of the occasional farmers market, berry picking, etc..
• I like to go hiking and used to be big into rock climbing but I think we're fooling ourselves if we think it's getting back to nature to go out with our nylon tents, rubber-soled shoes, gas burners, GPS devices, etc.. If we really found ourselves out in the wild naked with a sharp stick, 99% of us would die from starvation in a short matter of time (if the bears or poison berries didn't kill us first).
• I don't worship Gaia and I think the recent Gaia worshipping trend is bizarre and disturbing.

I'm into Paleo because I think it's the optimal approach to diet and fitness. It's a solution to a problem. Nothing less, nothing more.

I do find it interesting to learn about how humans might've lived in the past but I think I'm just a bit of a history geek so that interest would be there regardless of diet.

I'm learning how to shoot a rifle and butcher deer this week! Yay?

In the future I would love to have my own land with a permaculture forest. I would grow tree crops and graze some livestock. I've lived on an eco community before and loved it...might try it again in the future. It totally wasn't like the stereotype, it was clean, beautiful, and the people were rational. I had trouble with the food though...grainy and beany even though some were WAPFers. My stomach hurt so much that I didn't stay as long as I planned to. Communal meals can be disastrous for paleos.

The practices definitely resonate spiritually for me, but I've been interested in arctic shamanism way before I was interested in paleo. They go together very well though. The sweat lodge certainly has great health benefits, though I definitely wouldn't do one unless it was led or supervised by an elder from a tribe that has been practicing sweat lodge for thousands of years.

I think it would be tougher being a paleo Buddhist or Hindu certainly...which is also one of the reasons I don't do yoga. The religious philosophy behind it pretty much completely contradicts paleo and there is good evidence that contorting your body all unnaturally can lead to problems.

Whole Health Source has a post about the paleo mind and meditation, but I kind of don't agree with it. For every nice Hazda tribe there are plenty of warlike tribes (though I'm personally not of the mindset that warlike = bad either). I also don't think the Hazda are representative of our ancestors. They are a marginalized people struggling on bad land.

I've always tilted toward organic gardening and healthier foods and I like to keep things simple. I'm quite happy to just eat paleo foods and try to do short bursts of exercise and not go out and kill my own meat, or live by candlelight.

Let's see. Before stumbling onto the Paleo diet, I'd done an Anthropology BA with a fair bit of human evolution/archaeology content, done a lot of camping and hiking, taken up fishing, archery (including bowfishing) and hunting. I was also throwing tomahawks, messing around with an atlatl and foraging for wild plant foods.

Then I started eating Paleo; since then I've started messing around with flintknapping, ordered some mushrooming books, and picked up a pair of FiveFingers.

The diet rounded out an assemblage of interests, really. I wouldn't call myself a reconstructionist, but I am fascinated by Paleo skills and technology, and wow, is the diet ever doing a number on my weight, diabetes, and blood pressure.

I am a follower of Jesus. I believe that we were created with magnificently adaptive bodies, but we are pushing their limits with the SAD and lifestyle. I agree with Paleo Dave that it is quiet a luxury to be able to worry about omega 3s and 6s, to eat fresh vegetables everyday and any type of meat at all. So why not enjoy the best of what we've been given, instead of all the crap pumped into our supermarkets?

Also used to be a chronic cardioer, but now i'm enjoying lots of walks, running around with the dog at the park, and lifting heavy weights or sprinting sometimes (and an occasional run too with a friend and our dogs).

Just ordered some five finger shoes too, but i live in asia so mail takes a while.

I'm with Kurt Harris: metabolism first! I like to eat paleo and love the idea of paleo fitness (no more chronic cardio ... big yay!). But I am also intrigued by the idea of barefooting, either with some Vibram Five Fingers or Vivo Barefoot.

I got my ass handed to me for asking about where the line on being a cult is. I for one fit in with these folks, less is more and the further you let paleo/primal in the more Human you become in my opinion.

paleo means to me living as i was designed to live. but maybe it should be how i grew up as well. i grew up surrounded by woods and nature and i want to work to preserve it. that means cooperating with like minded individuals to organize to preserve open space. a lot already has been preserved around where i live, but if i and others don't stay politically active, there's always the possibility that it could all be bull-dozed.

The bedroom is pitch black at night and we try to go to bed earlier. For activity, I stay consistent with how I believe our ancestors lived--walking, occasionally running across the street, and the rest of the time either in recreational activity or just sitting around. Works great for losing weight, too.