Fertility, Meditation, Smokable Ayahuasca Ceremony

I had a lot of meditations thinking about him. Also visualizing my son, visualizing my testicles filled with sperm, Visualizing literally the.

You do this during your meditation?

Literally.

Like visualize fertility.

Oh, for sure. I visualize Kristen telling me I'm pregnant coming out of like a pregnancy test. I had a mindset that this is what's really going to happen. And I was sitting there meditating, and that would be an hour, a couple times a week. But I really attribute it to my gratitude, practice and the meditation, visualizing what was going to happen, feeling the emotion of it, of when my son would be born. And I don't know what that is, what that's like.

Yeah.

I've never experienced someone else's birth, but I can feel it in my core, in my cells. Wow. And then six months into that, I guess it was July of 2020, my wife said, go get checked. And when the doctor called me a few days ago, a few days before, after the test, he said, you have regular sperm.

We had a little bit of a discussion last time about your journey into becoming a father. It was very interesting. We were talking a little bit about your son before we started podcasting and how you and your wife thought for a very long time that you weren't going to be able to have kids at all. Tell me about what happened.

So, in college, I didn't really think too far ahead. I said, I don't really want kids. I was a bit of a savage, you know, and I just thought I really enjoyed bodybuilding at the time. And I was also still doing MMA and I was using a good amount of steroids, like different types, to try to just maximize my performance.

Yeah.

Because when you're young, biohacking, you don't really worry about the long term consequences as much as when you're in your 30s. So I knew it had some sort of detrimental effect, but I didn't really overthink it. I figured technology, 10, 20 years down the road, I'll be fine.

Yeah.

But then we. I got married, decided we wanted to have kids, and I was on a testosterone replacement. Because when you use steroids for an extended period of time, especially for bodybuilding in those type of doses, there is a whole. There's just a host of affects. Your endocrine system. Yeah.

The liver.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Your h, hypothalamus, pituitary, testicular axis is affected and you just don't produce as much sperm. And we tried for about a year or two without success. And I think I was 36 at the time. And I thought, like, let me go to a professional, let me go to one of the medical professionals. And we sought out a doctor who. You've mentioned him before. I'm not going to mention who he is. And I went to his office and he was renowned in Florida for improving fertility. So I get there and there were so many people in the waiting room.

Had you tested before that point? You're using one of these test kits like your sperm and fertility?

I did and they can change day to day a bit. They said I was on the very, very low end. So I started getting tested more frequently and with this doctor and it turned out I had zero sperm. Like they said zero?

Yeah.

Not like low.

Yeah.

You have no, no swimmers that are even immobile.

Yeah.

They're like. We haven't really seen that too frequently. We're seeing people with reduced sperm counts because of everything environmental these days. You know, lower testosterone levels, lower sperm counts. That's been going on for 20, 30 years now. But this one was very specific. I mean, I can relate to other people that are going through infertility issues just simply because environmental factors or choices or even their lack of spirituality, I think that plays a huge part. But that's a totally different thing. They told me zero. So they said, we have a protocol for you. We want you to stop using testosterone. We're going to give you this form of like nasal testosterone. It's very short acting so it won't affect your endocrine system. We're going to give you Clomid and hc. They gave me a host of drugs.

Yeah. Clomid and HCG are very, very common to restore fertility or ball size. And guys who have been using a.

Lot of testosterone and they gave me exceptionally high doses, like to the point.

Of Clomid and hcg.

Yeah. I would have to look back at the numbers, but it was so high to the point where I couldn't take that. I ended up doing less and I was so uncomfortable. You know, I practice jiu jitsu, like high at a high level. Not like a world champion. But we train very hard. I'm still lifting very hard. Everything I do in life has a physical component to it, aside from my own personal, like meditative practice. But I'm working out with my wife all the time. I'm very active.

Yeah.

And when we met, I was a trainer.

Yeah.

So I got off all that stuff. I started taking the meds they were telling me to get on and I was just shrinking. My body was like very catabolic itself. And not like, oh, I'm not working out as much. It just didn't feel healthy.

Yeah.

I started feeling really sickly and emotional. I would be happy. And if I was happy, I was happy that I was happy.

Yeah.

Which is a strange thing. You're joyous that you have a good feeling.

Yeah.

So it gave me a taste of like, depression, anger. And it would change on an hourly basis, not even a daily basis. I said, okay, I'll suck it up. This is. We know the end goal. We know what we're looking to achieve. And I did it for four to six months and it was just so uncomfortable. It affects your sleep. It affected everything. So I had to sit down with my wife and we talked about it. Her name's Kristen. You met her. We all went out to dinner and she said, look like your well being is more important and do we really want to have a child when you're feeling like this?

Yeah.

We believe that you should be happy and feel a greater connection to God. And that's when you're going to conceive that medical intervention isn't always the way. And we spoke so many times. I believe in, like, the power of our mind, of our spirit, what we can do on our own. We don't have to rely on the medical establishment. But I just thought, let me give them a shot. And I think it really failed. And I would go to their office every few months and I felt like cattle, like factory farming. Yeah. In and out. They would come in, they would literally like, grab your balls, do a blood test, you're out. It felt so impersonal. So I said, all right, I'm done with this. I got back on my low dose of testosterone optimization.

Right.

And just went about our life. And then the pandemic hit. So everyone was kind of stuck at home. Thank God. In Florida, we didn't really have it as bad as everyone else. But I decided, you know what? My father had passed in 2019. And I was a big meditator. I taught meditation. But when he had passed, I said, I want to meditate every day, every morning. I'm going to make this just a habit that happens every day no matter what, along with my other morning gratitude practice.

Yeah.

So I started doing that. And when I realized, like, what did.

That look like for you, the meditation?

It's funny, when you have experience with meditation and you teach it, you can kind of let it vary. I can say I'm going to include a little bit of breath work right now. Maybe I'll follow a Guided meditation. Maybe I'll guide myself. Maybe I'll include it as part of a ceremony with natural herbs and plants. Luckily for me, I've had a lot of experience, so. So I made. I made it like a creative, fun experience every day. Yeah, there's something about. I get up very early every day. My wife used to sleep very late before we had a child, so it gave me a good at least hour.

Spoiler alert. You had a child. Spoiler. Oh, yeah. We'll get to that.

So the meditations I really focus on. I thought about my father a lot. Just a remarkable person. Like, you felt the love when you got near him. He was a person that, like, they have that phrase, he'll give you a shirt off his back. I've seen him do this. And when he had passed, people came out of the woodwork. The guys that he, like, had hired to clean a pool or he did landscaping with. And they were. I saw them in person, and they're crying. These are people that most people just shrug off and go, I'm hiring someone. He developed an interpersonal relationship with everyone he met. People loved him. And his funeral was, like, so many people. Yeah, he was just such a remarkable person. He had come. He'd escaped communist Cuba. He was young. He was six years old, and he had worked while being in school in the University of Miami. Just an incredible, incredible person. He probably took on too much stress of other people, family, and friends. I think that's why he probably died a bit too early. But I had a feeling that he would have a part in my fertility journey. I always pictured, like, having a son and him having a great part in my new family, him being part of the family, and just the joy he would feel. So I had a lot of meditations thinking about him also visualizing my son, visualizing my testicles filled with sperm. Visualizing literally the moment you would do.

This during your meditation. Literally. Like, visualize fertility.

Oh, for sure. I visualize Kristen telling me I'm pregnant coming out of, like, a pregnancy test. I'm a firm believer we create whatever we want in this world.

And I'm sure the fertility clinic would have laughed their ass off.

Oh, gosh. For this technique, they make you laugh. Anyways, the first time I went in there to get my sperm check, they sent me to, like, a quest, and she goes, oh, what are you doing? I said, oh, I'm doing a fertility check. She goes, oh, we're choking chickens today, huh?

Like, oh, man, this is a medical establishment, you know? She sends me into this room. And it was a bathroom. Like, what is going on? She goes, all right, here's your cup.

Yeah.

Full size mirror. Like, it was a little awkward, but, yeah, you gotta laugh about all these things.

Yeah. I've done the sperm test. They have kits now that they'll send to you. I forget the names of some of these. You can find them online. But it's very, very similar. They send you a box, and you got to figure out how to get your sperm in there or your semen in there and. And then send it off, freeze it and set it off.

Oh, freeze it. Yeah. You have to give it within, like.

An ice pack, something like that.

Oh, okay. So where were. Oh. So I was meditating. I was also, at the time, I was developing forms of planned medicine that I thought would be more short acting because I enjoyed. I wouldn't say I enjoyed plant medicine ceremonies, but I like the outcome from them. I personally experienced tremendous suffering and challenges when I was doing these ceremonies. I hear about people go off and play the drums and have fun on an island somewhere. It was never liked. After me, we took part in, like, in ceremonies where it was really facing your soul, digging deep into what traumas I may have caused other people or put on myself. At least that's how I experienced it. It was a good way to look in the mirror in a more profound way in a shorter period of time. So I was doing. We talked about the smokable version of ayahuasca. Yeah. And I decided I'm going to do this three or four times a week to connect potentially with the spirit of my son.

This is almost like a microdose of ayahuasca.

More potent, though.

Okay.

So it's not as long in duration, but it's more intense. And I don't recommend people take it unless it's in a ceremonial setting. I have a lot of practice in this, so that's why I was able to do it myself. And I've guided a lot of people, and I've worked under shamans that.

Are just phenomenal people in general, and they do really good work. And it's funny because it coincides so much with a lot of what you've said on podcasts about if these tools are to be used, they need to be used properly.

Yeah.

And everyone's different. You may have. They might not be a part of your life anymore, but no matter what, if it is, it needs to be held with a reverence and an honor for what we're doing. And I don't think it's to see other gods and beings. People, I think they misunderstand and they go for the fun and they misinterpret what's going on. I think it's a very interpersonal way that we can connect with the collective consciousness and see what's not there for our typical five senses.

Okay.

But anyhow, I was able to connect with my father a lot, and I think with my son a good amount. And I just knew your son before.

Your son was born. Before he was born. Yeah.

This is before he was. That I was even told I had active sperm.

Right.

And I just knew. I had a mindset that this is what's really going to happen. And I was sitting there meditating, and that would be an hour, a couple times a week. But I really attribute it to my gratitude, practice and the meditation, visualizing what was going to happen, feeling the emotion of it, of when my son would be born. And I don't know what that is, what that's like.

Yeah.

I've never experienced someone else's birth, but I could feel it in my core, in my cells. Wow. And then six months into that, I guess it was July of 2020, my wife said, go get checked. And when the doctor called me a few days ago, there, a few days before, after the test, he said, you have regular sperm like a normal guy's sperm. And I was still on testosterone and.

At that point had. Had you kind of tapered off the Clomid and the HCG and everything.

Oh, I. I stopped taking all that.

Wow.

I was able to get HCG and FSH again. I looked at the doses and I took an eighth of the dose. I said, like, let me give this a little bit of a shot. I don't believe that you need to take these absurdly high doses. I used a lot of you turned me on to more like nose to tail eating. And talked to Jay Campbell, who you connected me with.

Yeah.

Great guy. And he was. He really explained to me how there's an epidemic of men with low testosterone. He's seeing men that just cannot have kids.

Yeah.

And I thought, if I conquer this beast, this is something I'm going to be able to help more men with.

Yeah.

Men don't want to talk about this.

Yeah.

It's all about being masculine, and I totally understand that. But a guy that doesn't produce sperm, he keeps it quiet.

Yeah.

A lot of times it affects his relationship. People get divorced because of this.