What to Do to Stop Watching Porn? 4 Steps To Heal From Porn Addiction (Sathiya Sam)

We've been lied to. The reason that we watch pornography is rarely actually a sexual reason. It has nothing to do with sex. Porn addiction is an intimacy disorder.

It is us, but we believe it's something outside of us.

And I don't think people will realize just how devastating this is physically, spiritually and psychologically. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it's connection. Where we are the most wounded or the most deficient is often reflected in the nature of the content that we are drawn to. Why are so many viewers online looking for this content? Because of mother wounds. It's often the much more fundamental psychological roots of trauma, parent, child relationships, our sense of self and identity and all those things.

If I trace back my own pornography addiction to being very young, feeling not safe in my body, over a decade of my life just dedicated to why don't I feel comfortable in myself? And when I really got down to it, it was a few core beliefs. I am not loved. I am not worthy. I am not valued in society. I am not of tribe. I am not safe. You say that all behavior is predicated on belief.

So behavior is the plant growing in the garden. Belief is the root system underneath. I think what's missing in a lot of people's understanding is how to actually get to the root of porn addiction. We've broken it down into three primary buckets. So the first is what we call your main goal is just to get 1% better every day. Your life is worth it and it's worth living to the ultimate fullness. Pornography will stop you from doing that.

Hey, it's Josh. Before we get into this episode, I have a small yet powerful favor to ask of you. The community has been growing by thousands lately and the bigger the tribe, the bigger names of world class guests we can have on this podcast that I can bring to you from my heart, from my curiosity, so you can have more wellness and wisdom in your life. Would you please be so kind as to hit the subscribe button wherever you you're watching or listening to this podcast. It'll allow us to rise naturally in the algorithms based on your 2 second act of generosity by you just tapping that little subscribe button wherever you're viewing or hearing this episode. Thank you so much. It means the world to me and our entire team here at Wellness and Wisdom Now. Enjoy the podcast. Thank you for being here, Sathiya. Welcome to the podcast, man.

Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

It's a pleasure for me to talk to you because this subject Dude, I don't care if you're a man, woman, child, adolescent. It's impacting us on such a grand scale. I mean, the hair in my arms is standing up right now. Like, that's how I know we're about to get into something good. There are so many people impacted by the demonic arms of pornography. And by the way, this is not about making anyone or anything wrong. This conversation is about shining light where light is due. So, dude, yeah, just enlighten us for a moment. If you were to float really high, maybe 10, 20, 30,000ft above you and I right now as a soul in a body created by a creator here on planet Earth, lucky enough to be here.

Yeah.

Just describe to people what you see in a. In a sentence or two. I know we'll get into many layers of unpacking what a lot of people were attracted to this podcast for, and that is healing.

Yeah.

If you were to describe from your own vantage point, where are we right now as a society? When it relates to the unconscious and really demonic use of pornography, the greatest.

Form of deception looks like the real thing. And so pornography is wreaking havoc on our society, mostly because it's offering people something that's very close to the real thing. It feels similar, it looks similar, but. But it's actually vastly different. And we were talking about this before we hit record, but they say pornography is the three A's. It's affordable, accessible, and anonymous. And those three things, collectively, it's sort of like the. The sum of the whole is greater than the parts. And all those three things working together are pulling the wool over people's eyes. And I don't think people realize just how devastating this is physically, spiritually, and psychologically.

That is really well put. You know, when I was preparing for you and I meeting, which, by the way, shout out to Adam Lane Smith. He's been a guest on the podcast and just love his work so much. He was actually gracious enough to extend our connection, which I'm really grateful for. But, you know, Cynthia, I just feel like in my deepest heart, this is a journey that I've talked about so much. I probably mentioned my battle, my journey, my healing with pornography over a hundred times. So my audience is very aware of my journey, but I think it's always really great to bolster a story with something that my guest has struggled with on a very personal and also practical level. You're a father of one. You're in sacred relationship. You're connected to higher power. You're serving people across the planet. This is not an easy thing to do. There are times, I'm sure, when you have to pull upon the previous version of yourself for fuel. What exactly does that look like? I've seen you on interviews in national media, multiple podcasts, hear you on wellness and wisdom, reaching tens of thousands, thousands, Hundreds of thousands of people across the world. Like, how do you pull and connect to your previous self without becoming identified with him? When it comes to pornography, man, it's.

Such a good question. I. A lot of guys reach out to me. They're very inspired by, you know, the work we do online. Like, man, I want to be like you. How did you get into this? How did you become a coach? And all that kind of stuff. And a lot of those conversations, as I get a bit deeper, I realized these guys actually haven't completed their own recovery, and so they're kind of putting the cart before the horse.

And.

And I did this myself, too, because one. Admittedly, one of the motivating factors when I was in recovery was I want to figure this stuff out so I could help other guys get free as well. Because it was so debilitating for me. I knew I wasn't the only one. All that stuff. But when you jump ahead, you know, and you try to help people with something that you haven't fully figured out yet, the problem isn't the lack of skills. It's not that you don't know how to motivate people. And you can even argue there's an advantage there because you're not that much further ahead, so you can kind of relate to them and speak the same language and all that. The problem is that your identity hasn't shifted. And when your identity hasn't shifted, especially when we're talking about something that is so alluring, like pornography, when your identity hasn't shifted, you always run the risk of going back to your old self. And that's why you hear about people that, you know are clean for a year, a couple years, and this is now broader, like, not even pornography. But, you know, they. They fall off the wagon again after being years clean from alcohol, because something in the identity was still fragmented. So for me, I was extra cautious. I made the mistake a couple times, you know, trying to help people a little bit prematurely. So once I was really serious about this, it was like, I am not going to help another person in this until I know I have it figured out. And then I'm. I'm so in a new life and a new identity that I don't Even think about helping other people. It just happens as a natural byproduct. And that was, for me, was December 2018. That's when I kind of launched what I do now. And I was telling you this as well. Like, my identity had shifted so much that I had to, like, go find pictures and stuff from previous seasons to remember what it was like, just so that I would have, like, content, you know, things to talk about that people could identify with. And so it took a little while to kind of kickstart that. It feels pretty natural now, I guess, because I'm just talking about it all the time, and I've done my own work, so more memories come up and all that kind of stuff. But, yeah, you know, you have to be really careful that you don't get too premature and trying to help other people.

It's interesting you said the word premature, I think, about spiritual maturity and maturation that you and I have gone through. How old are you now?

34 or. Well, 34. Yeah.

Okay, so 34 years old. There are people in their 60s, 70s, still struggling with this. Men.

Yeah.

Even men that may go to church on Sunday or may shine light on others as a yoga instructor. This pornography is so sinister, it is so backdoor, it is so demonic that it can masquerade as light. And this is what I really want to get into you and into your psyche about. And that is, you know, as a man who's connected to a higher power. Do you see this play out? Whether it's in a church or a yoga studio? Do you see this play out where when I am of service to others, it is a perfect place for me to hide because I can spend my whole life shining light on others, almost like holding a flashlight. Sathiya. But guess what part stays dark? The part between myself and my hand. That's the part that never gets illuminated because I'm so focused on running a cover by shining light on others. Have you seen this play out?

Oh, dude, such a good point. So I've been doing this work for about five and a half years, full time, helping guys quit pornography. Sorry, not all those years full time. The last few years, full time. Prior to that, I was a pastor. And I think pastors might be the most notorious for what you just described, because pastors, if not pastors, the second underneath it would be a therapist or a psychologist because they get so good at helping other people. All the skills, all the tools, they have it all figured out, but they haven't been practitioners in their own life. And that's why you hear these stories about pastors who do have moral failings or they even kind of lose their spirituality altogether. They think it's all fluffy, they walk away. And usually that burnout happens because there's an imbalance between giving and receiving, you know, pouring out versus being poured into. So the, the training that I went through, I was very fortunate. My leaders were adamant, like, hey, you need to make sure if you're going to be in this full time pastoring people, you need to make sure you have a practice every single day and a dedicated day of the week as well, where you're just receiving and whatever that looks like. You know, whether you're going to batting cages and just crushing baseball for a couple hours and that just helps you kind of ease your mind, whether you're going maybe somewhere else, like to another church where you're just a person in the congregation and you're getting preached to and you're receiving ministry like it didn't matter what it was, but you got to figure out how do you pour back into yourself? Because otherwise, I think in the name of selflessness and being humble and wanting to serve, people actually overextend themselves and then they end up doing exactly what they're doing, try not to do, which is burn themselves out and be a disservice to society instead of actually making a difference.

You just lit up my whole nervous system with that answer. I could not agree 111%. I agree. Like I see this so much, I would. People don't know my past if they're brand new to the audience. I was a personal trainer fitness professional for a decade and I worked in and out of many gyms, like 10,000 plus hours with clients. And you know what I found people really wanted? It wasn't like weight loss, it wasn't that they wanted to like have a six pack and be shredded. Those were all cover things, cover emotions, cover objects for the deeper healing, the deeper whole that wanted to be fulfilled and healed and that was loving themselves, trusting themselves and knowing that they are connected to something bigger, something outside themselves. Some people may call it God, some people may call it Buddha, some people may call it whatever they call it. I think we're all worshiping and praying and connecting to the same thing. And there's just many vernaculars and words in which we do so. And I wonder for you the relationship with God. I know that's very deep in your life. Your grandfather, your father, yourself. It's in your lineage, it's in your blood physically and epigenetically to express a connection to a higher power. How does that still fuel you now versus how it fueled you in the beginning of your healing?

Oh, man.

Wow.

It's a great question. I guess what I would say is, you know, they did a study, this is one of the top researchers for porn addiction and sexual addiction, all that. They surveyed 3,000 people, and they asked them about, you know, their views on sexuality, their sexual experiences, all that kind of stuff. And they were trying to identify, like, is there any correlate? Like, is there a particular quality that these people have that if it's prevalent and it's, you know, at a certain threshold, they're more likely to struggle with pornography? And there were a couple that, you know, presented, but there was one in particular, one that was way, way above the rest, and that was having meaning in life. So when people had meaning in life, they were less likely to view. And when people felt a sense of purposelessness, didn't know their meaning in life, it was the reverse. And so I always give God thanks that, you know, I grew up in a spiritual home, you know, like you said, a lineage of pastors. So my dad, my grandfather, and my great grandfather were all pastors. And before that, we don't know all the details, but we know that the lineage prior to that was actually a Hindu priest. And so we're talking about probably like tens of generations of faith lineage before me. And I think I always had that sense of, like, this life is bigger than me, you know, like, I'm not just here for myself. I'm here to make the world a better place. I'm here for a bigger purpose. And I would. I really believe. I mean, to use a science term, I believe in intelligent design, you know, that God has. Has, like, made us the way we are for a reason and that he has specific purposes for us. And so I think that's always been there. But when I was addicted to pornography, it was hard some days. There were some days where they felt like distant dreams. You know, it feels like, man, maybe one day, you know, but you're kind of just saying it out of rhetoric or routine. Whereas I think today, you know, I've been clean for eight years, and I get to help thousands of guys around the world every single week. The difference now is that I'm. I'm walking in it. It's not even just that I believe in it. I have the evidence, you know, and so I don't to. I don't have to think if I'm going to make it or am I going to find purpose or whatever. I. I feel like I wake up every day on mission and I'm excited to do the work that I do. And so it's, it's just that I've narrowed the gap from wanting it to actually having it. And that's a really cool place to be. And you've done the same thing in your work, man. You're a great example of that.

Thank you, man. God, there's so much emotion flowing through my system as you're speaking. It's freaking incredible. Where do I want to take that? This is the first time on the podcast, I'm like, there's five different ways I could take this. Which way do I want to take this? So one thing that really touched me when you shared is that you talked about the gap between embodiment of knowing. You have purpose and connection to that high purpose versus actually having it, wearing it, and being it. There's a space between knowing and doing, and I think many of us struggle in that space because there can be, and I wonder how you feel about this. There can be a shame that erupts when one knows exactly what they can do, should do to be who they are, to achieve their purpose, to have it, to wear it, to be it. But there's this delta, there's this gap, almost like a broken bridge in the middle of it, where there's knowing and then there's doing and being. In your world of helping men heal and I'm sure women as well, because I'm going to talk about Bailey Eilish today in the show. She just came out with a recent quote that we're going to go over. Most kids find pornography at 11 or even younger, which is a scary thought to even think about. But I wonder for you in your life when, when you're at that place between knowing and doing, how did you build the bridge? How did you connect the potential of who you are to today versus knowing your potential in the past? What closed the gap for you?

We've been lied to. You know, somebody along the way probably told you that knowledge is power. Knowledge is not power. Knowledge is potential. Knowledge is bullets and a gun. But action is what pulls the trigger. It's knowledge plus action. That's real power. And, you know, I was a university researcher before I became a pastor, and I had really become very confident in my knowledge. You know, I felt like I could out know any issue that I would face interpersonally, you know, or spiritually. And what I realized with time is my knowledge Wasn't doing anything. You know, it's the classic example we were talking about earlier. You have the, the pastor who talks about, you know, what a family looks like and what it means to be healthy, and then you find out behind closed doors that he's not walking any of it out. So there's something about taking action on what you know, and I think the key of it, and this is something I really had to overcome because I was high achieving academically, you know, skipped a grade and had my degree honors by the time I was 20 and all that stuff. And I think the, the thing that I had to realize is I have to be willing to take action and make a mistake. And that was, that was the clinching piece for me. It was like I knew I needed to take action, but I didn't because I was too afraid to look stupid or to not get it perfect because there's so many areas in my life that I did just do naturally well. And of course you gravitate to those. But I would say I've spent The last, probably 10, 15 years of my life just retraining myself to say it's okay to make a mistake. In fact, not only is it okay, it's better. It's better that you try something new, you fall in your face, you get back up again. Because there's skill development, that's obvious. But there's character, character growth, you know, there's spiritual growth, there's, there's foundational things that get built through you making mistakes through the trial and error that can't get built any other way. Somebody who, you know, gets just natural talent and grace to do something really well. I mean, we, we marvel at those people. We pay money to see those people. You know, there's something very special about it. But truthfully, the people that you're actually going to pay money to see do that, it's not just that they had the talent, it's that they put the work in as well. And it's, it's the conglomerate of those two things. Whatever you've been given naturally, plus the effort you put in, that's where real growth lies. And I think in the information age, we are just, we are living in this lie, thinking more knowledge is more power. I'm working really hard these days to reduce the knowledge I take in. You know, I listen to like maybe two podcasts, no social media on my phone. I don't read people's email newsletters. Like, I just, I like being with my family, I like being outside. And I Just want to take action on a few really powerful things that are going to make the biggest difference in my life. And I just think that's the way we're going to actually make some progress in today's day and age, where there's all this knowledge and convolution. We're just inundated with way too much info.

Listen, we're swimming in information. You and I are living in a time. All of us, y', all, everybody here with us. If you're watching on Spotify or YouTube right now, like, imagine a living library that spans the test of time. I'm expanding my hands. If you're in your car and imagine that that living library every day from every human being is being added to. Think of like a Dewey decimal system. Back in the day, I'm dating myself. That goes beyond time, beyond even knowing what beginning, middle and end actually is. We are a living byproduct, a living library of exactly what you're talking about. Because all the events that happened for your great, great, your great, your father, your grandfather, they live in you in some way. Otherwise you wouldn't be doing what you're doing. But it's the same thing when it comes to dark and light. And this is really big for me in my life. I trace back my own pornography addiction to being very young, feeling not safe in my body. Going to the well, by the way, Satya. Going to the well. Ayahuasca, Breathwork, Psilocybin. Deep, deep shamanic journeys. I mean, over a decade of my life just dedicated to. Why don't I feel comfortable in myself? Why don't I feel comfortable in my own skin? What is it, Josh? What is it? And when I really got down to it, it was a few core beliefs. And this is something you talk about in your work that when I read it this morning, my whole body was just like, Yep. You say that all behavior is predicated on belief and what I reflect on as truth and wisdom. By the way, this is true wisdom. This is not just information, y'.

All.

The wisdom of which you speak and that I have embodied through living is that when you get to the core belief of I am not loved, I am not worthy, I am not valued in society, I am not part of tribe, I am not safe. There is no possible way that a man or a woman, but especially a little boy that I've done a lot of deep work on, to reconnect with, to hold, to reparent, to connect back to God. There is absolutely no way that you can move Forward as an adult or even an older 60, 70, 80 year old. Unless there is a connection to this younger self that was traumatized, the younger self that believed, and we're going to talk about this in your work, the younger self that believed he was not lovable. He was not even worthy of love. God doesn't love you. You don't even love yourself. The shame spiral, the shame dragon that opens his mouth and sprays the hot liquid is us. It is us. But we believe it's something outside of us. Please speak to this, because I know in your work, especially deep clean, even that phrase, deep clean, it's like, ah, whenever our house is clean, we're like, oh man, it's clean. It's almost like a breath of fresh air. Right? The deep cleaning also enables us to look at the deep dirt. And the deep dirt is something that I think people create cognitive disassociation from so that they don't actually have to look at it. And that was my journey from for two decades plus before I finally did the work, which we'll talk about later, to unpeel these layers that were keeping me hostage. What do you feel about this?

Well, I think, you know, a lot of it's human tendency when you have behavioral issues, to solve them with a behavioral solution. So, you know, a great, I mean, obviously you were a personal trainer before, right? So a great example would be you have somebody who overeats. They just have a terrible relationship with food. They can't get it under control. And so they go and they get an operation to shrink their stomach. Now behaviorally, we know like, hey, that could actually maybe help a little bit. It doesn't change their relationship with food, not even a little bit. Right?

No doubt.

So behavior is the, is the plant, it's the plant growing in the garden. Belief is the root system underneath. And so a lot of people would rather take a diet pill, they'd rather get an operation or do something to try to get rid of the weeds in their garden, so to speak, the faulty behaviors, which is the same as running over a weed in your actual garden with a lawnmower. Sure, everything looks clean for a little bit, but that weed's going to come back thicker, pricklier than ever as long as the root system is still there. And so getting into the, the belief system of an individual is a lot of work. You know, I, I, I really identified with what you were saying earlier. My big core belief that I'm still working on, you know, today is not feeling good enough. You know, was, was Raised in a very performance driven home. Like I said, it was high achieving academically. Really learned that what makes me valuable is my performance and learning to separate those two things, to be like, oh, I am still enough. Even in spite of the mistakes, like we were saying earlier, in spite of, you know, falling short, that's been everything for me. That, that's where I really found myself. And it was a huge part of recovery. But I think that that's a good, a good example of what it means to get underneath the surface, to dig into the belief system. And at the same time, I get why people are afraid of it. Because it is scary, you know, and it is messy and it's not as quick and the outcome's not guaranteed the same way. And you know, I get it. But at the same time, if you and I are going to become the people God's made us to be, if we're going to make this world a better place, if we're going to step into purpose and meaning and some of these things we're talking about, this is the only way. There's just no way around it.

Wait a minute. Are you telling me I can't just wear a good vibes only sweatshirt and do breath work and be healed? Is that what you're trying to say?

I'm, I'm really sorry to burst your bubble, man. That is actually what I'm trying to say.

We just lost some people, man, but we just gained some people too. No, I, I laugh at that because it's such a freaking platitude. Good vibes only. Everything you have is within you. The people that spout that off and the people that most likely share those platitudes are the ones that have the darkest closet. It is not all love and light. It is not all joy. The reason that we were created was to experience the energy, the nature of our Creator inside of ourselves. And if you look at Isaiah 45:7, there's a beautiful, beautiful piece. And by the way, just in full transparency, like, I completely respect everyone's walk of faith. I do. As long as it does not harm another. Right? Do no harm. Right. The medical covenant and the covenant that we all should hold dear. But, but when I look at Isaiah 45:7, what. What absolutely inspires me the most, and honestly, what many at times Christians, and I wonder how you feel about this, is that he talks about the, the. The dark and the light. And the dark. And the light is something that is so powerful to even recognize. So Isaiah 45:7, King James Version, I form the light and create darkness. I make peace and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things. And a lot of times, even maybe more of the new age Christian mindset doesn't want to hear that passage. But that passage was true and still is true now. In other words, God experiences God's self through us in unlimited ways. Yeah, you're a beautiful. I'm a beautiful, unique point of consciousness created from no thing and everything which is God. And God has no bearing on time because time doesn't exist for the Creator. Time exists for us because we live in this 3D reality on a rock in the middle of outer space. But to the Creator, none of this exists. And I wonder how you feel about this, the grand scheme of why you suffered. Why I suffered. I suffered for almost 30 years. And it wasn't until I was able to meet my own death and have a real connection to God on a very deep, visceral level. I mean, it almost makes me want to cry just talking about it right now. I'm at a place now where I can share because I'm through it. You know, the only way out is through, and I'm through the other side. So I can look back on my previous version, Cynthia, with, With compassion, with understanding, because he was struggling. He didn't have anywhere to go. He didn't know what to do. He was trying to survive. Yeah. He was eating foods that were hurting him. He was taking drugs that were hurting him. He was sleeping with women and hurting them. He was objectifying himself and he was disassociating from his own sexuality. I mean, I was a very, very, very broken man. And I wonder, and I. I wonder how you feel. This is just a philosophical question. If God creates dark and light and God is all things.

Yeah.

Why do you believe God wants us to experience dark and light so, so deeply in our lives? Whether it's through death or loss or pain, or specifically trauma around sexuality and pornography. Why does that exist, this dark and light within us? Why did God allow us to experience so much depth of dark and light?

Yeah, man, it's. It's a million dollar question, isn't it? You know, like, like it's a billion dollar question. Yeah.

Seriously, if you can answer this, man, you might as well just sit on top of a mountain.

Okay, well, you know, a lot of people ask, like, another way I've heard is, you know, why would a good. Why does a good God allow bad things to happen? You know, like, we're trying to reconcile good and evil, bad and good, all the time. I, I don't know that I have the perfect answer for it. You know, I, I, I. We have to acknowledge that none of us are perfect. We're all works in progress. We're going to do some things rightly and wrongly. What I can say for sure is without evil, there's no good, and without dark, there's no light. And for me personally, the greatest strengths in my life, the areas where I have the most depth, maturity and wisdom came from dark places, you know, and what, whether or not that was God's original design, I mean, who's to say? I don't know. But what I know for sure, you know, there's this great scripture in Romans. It's Romans 5, 3. And it says that trials produce perseverance, perseverance produces character, and character produces hope. And there's a lot of people in today's society that lack hope. You know, they feel hopeless about finding a partner. They feel hopeless about being healthy. They feel hopeless about quitting pornography or whatever it might be. And what we tend to do when we feel hopeless is we try to fill our, we try to stuff ourselves with stuff that makes us feel hopeful. You know, give me some good news. Give me something positive. Yeah, but what that scripture is kind of insinuating, if character produces hope, that means that if we lack hope, it's actually evidence that we also lack character. And so what I've learned is anytime I feel hopeless in an area of my life, it's because there's actually, there's, there's a trial, there's, there's some, something that God put in my path that I tried to hurdle, I tried to move around. I, I skipped out the darkness because I didn't want to face it. Maybe I wasn't ready to confront it or whatever. And because of that, I'm not gaining the character that he wants me to gain. And I'm feeling hopeless as a result. And so I think it's become very countercultural because we're so dopamine driven, we're so pleasure focused, very hedonistic. But I really and truly believe I'm, I, I give God thanks. You know, even, like right now, there's some challenges in my life, and I'm just, I'm just centering myself day in, day out, just saying, God, thank you so much for this. Because I know that on the other side of this, it's going to be something great. Maybe it's a story I share with the masses. Maybe it's just something that I, I keep privately but, you know, it's just learning to have joy in all those things because I've survived every trial I faced. And not only have I survived it, but like I said, some of the biggest trials I face have actually led to some of my biggest growth, my biggest breakthrough, and the things I'm able to impart to the rest of the world now. So, you know, I think it's just having that paradigm shift when you change.

The way you look at things. The things you look at change. That's what I was feeling the whole time you were talking Wayne Dyer. Yeah, you literally. And also Dr. John Demartini, which is coming out, I believe, in a week or two before you. The power of your questions dictates the power of your soul's expression in life. The way that we ask questions, the way that your heart and your mind has driven you to be able to serve so many, paradoxically, came from your own pain. Let's just be honest about this, right? Like I said, nobody earns anything in this lifetime without experiencing pain. It's just not possible. Now, there could be people that are from the Good Vibes Only camp that might say, well, Sophia, what do you mean? Like, I don't. I don't want to struggle. I don't want to have pain. I'm not saying that we need to, like, be like a Marine and run to the gunfire. That's not what I'm saying. But. But I am saying that, and, And I believe I heard it from you correctly as well. It's like, if we want to have a big purpose, a big life, a big dream, be a mother, father, family man, community pillar, have a podcast, have a mission, wake up. Like you said, being on mission, you are going to have to be aware that Aristotle is right. Nature abhor is a vacuum. Anytime we are being sucked into pain, it just means that we're going to multiply to pleasure on the other side. But it sure does suck in the middle, right when we're being sucked down into the pain, when the bow is being pulled back, it's a shitty feeling. I don't like it personally.

It's the worst.

And that's when I noticed. And this I promise, I'm coming to my question. You've been patient here. That's when I notice when I finally pull and let go by, by universe, by God, by just life itself. And I trust life. I shoot so far. Like the further back I'm pulled by that arrow. It's the only reason I'm here with you today is because I'VE been able to be stretched and pulled so hard and just literally drop to my knees and just say, God, I can't do this. I can't do this alone. I can't do this anymore. Please show me the way.

Yeah.

And I wonder, what is your favorite way to connect with God? For myself. And then I'll pass it to you, because I think this really relates to cleaning oneself deep, which is your deep clean your program. It's on the screen right now, by the way. Josh trent.com forward/porn free joshtrend.com forward/porn free. It's an incredible training, Cya. Thank you for giving us this training for free. So, you guys, there's no excuses. You can't be like, I don't have time. I don't have money. Like, it's there. It's there for you right now. One, one prayer that I love so much, man. And I may connect with God in a different way than you do, but we're both connecting with that creator. I closed my eyes and I just did it for the eclipse. And I said, God, what is it that I most need to learn? And how can I be most humble to learn it? And I just say that as many times as I can before I get something. I get something. And it makes me want to cry right now because what came for me just on the eclipse just a couple weeks ago was, it's okay to not know. It's okay to not know. Like, that was the divine wisdom that came in from God where I just realized, like, oh, yeah, I'm actually not supposed to know. I'm not supposed to know why bad things happen. I'm not supposed to know exactly what, who, where, when, how God is. I'm not supposed to know exactly how my life is going to play out. Because that's not living. That's not trusting. That's my intellectual mind trying to be in control. What is your favorite way to connect with your creator? And specifically for men that have lost that. That connection to their creator, can you speak to that a bit? And. And rebound off of what I've shared?

Man, I actually love what you just said. I'm gonna answer the question too, but that's a really profound statement there. There has to be a degree of unknown or uncertainty. That's what actually gives so much dimensionality to life as we know it. Like, maybe I'll say it this way, without mystery. We serve a God our size, you know, like that. That's the real value. That's the real value, right?

So Good guys, rewind that again.

So I like.

Can you say that one more time, please?

Yeah. Without mystery, we serve a God our size.

That's why we podcast. Right there.

There it is. So there, there has to be that room, that room for us to discover, to explore and to question for me. And I'll actually, I'll actually tie in a bit of my story here. So I, I'm a university researcher. I'm in a very anti God environment. It's hard facts, it's show me the data. It's God is mocked in those environments. At least he was back when I was a university researcher. I don't know what it's like now.

What university was this?

This was a local university. It's called Brock University, where I live. And I was in, I was studying biological sciences. So this is like a hard science faculty.

Oh yeah. They're not interested in, in a higher power God, universe, spirit, creator in that place. They want the data.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I've grown up Christian my whole life. I'm kind of, you know, I'm, I'm sort of in this season where I'm trying to figure it out, you know, what true and how do I know what's true? And I started to ask questions and what I thought would happen is if I start to ask more questions about, you know, how do I know God's real and all that kind of stuff, what I, what I figured would happen is at the end of this journey, I would have a nicely documented kind of, here's how I know God's real or here's how I know God isn't real. You know, I was testing both theories, if you will, but I figured I would have something clear and concise that could be easily articulated. And my ultimate conclusion of, you know, my searching through different texts and talking with people and having conversations and all that kind of stuff made me realize I don't know why God is real. I just know like, it was just, it was like I don't have an articulation for it and I don't have a perfect three point thesis. I just know in my heart that he's real. And something about that was actually so settling just to be like, yeah, of course there's a bunch of mystery around it and of course I don't have all the answers to the, to the questions. That's the whole point. That's what, that's it. That's, that's the whole game. Worth it. That's it. Yeah. Yeah. So that was that, you know, that's when my life really changed, truthfully. That's when I really started to take my spiritual life seriously. And now to kind of dovetail into your question, it has changed for me many different facets over the years as to, you know, how I connect the most with God. There's been seasons where I love reading the Bible. I was a recording artist at one point. I love music. So there was definitely a season where music was a huge part of it. There's been some times where it's prayer. And prayer for me is not necessarily that I'm. I'm sitting down with my hands folded and my eyes closed. It's just communication with God, you know, so all of those things, they've ebb and flowed. But there's something that I teach my guys who are in recovery, and it's something that I do quite regularly that has been more valuable than just about anything else, and that is journaling. And we teach a specific methodology for journaling. It's my own sort of format. But basically, journaling is two parts. It's expression and it's reflection. And very similar to your eclipse moment that you're describing, the expression part is where we're. We're sort of processing what's going within. And we sort of use this as a tactic to help guys get in touch with their inner lives, because most of the guys that come to us are numb and they don't have access points. And so this gives them a really good chance to just start labeling feelings, defining thoughts, articulating maybe some of the beliefs even that are at play, but just having a free place to write those things down. And then the second part is reflection. And we literally say, put the pen down and just be still. Just be still and just wait. And, you know, you might start to get some clarity. Maybe you connect a couple dots. Maybe there's something that's been really troubling you, and you start to get something that, you know, clarifies it, whatever it is, and you can start to write those things down. And it's. It's like you're kind of, like, getting to this flow state, you know, where God starts speaking, and you start getting clarity. And that. That method of journaling, for me, I've been doing that for. I don't even know how long has it been. Nine, ten years. And that is like, if I'm ever having a hard time engaging spiritually and connecting with God, journaling just gets me there. It just. It opens me up. And once I'm opened up, then I Feel like I can. Can hear him, I can experience his presence, and I'm there, you know? So journaling for me is like the staple. Staple of it all.

I love that you said it's reflection and expression, because if we're not careful, it's so easy. For the reason why Andrew Huberman and these, like, intellectual scientific podcasts are so popular is because none of them. Actually, that's not true. Huberman just talked about the fact on a different podcast that he's developing a relationship with God now. I don't know if you saw that.

No. That's really cool.

So you have one of the most, if not the most revered scientific podcast saying, yeah, hey, y' all need to check out God.

Which I think.

Which I think is pretty amazing. I mean, it's a sign of our times, right? It's the grand awakening. It's the grand awakening that you are a part of, I am a part of. We are a part of. You could put whatever words or nomenclature on it that you want. I think what we're experiencing right now is mana. I am wearing a hat right now that says mana. So for y' all subscribing on YouTube and Spotify, Mana is actually a biblical term. People think of mana as the shilajit and ormus that I take every single day. I literally have it right here because it's, like, the best thing. By the way, I'm going to send you some as a gift. It's so incredible. It's so life changing. So think about. Are you familiar with. With mana in the Bible? I believe it was like Exodus. I don't know the exact.

Yes, yeah, yeah. Like daily bread.

Daily bread. So. So the Israelites were starving and they received mana from the Creator. Mana came down, it rained down. And it's a metaphor. It's a metaphor for what you are doing. What I am doing. What we are doing now. Am I comparing myself to God? No, I'm not. Am I saying that you and I are shining light in spaces of darkness that is being called forth right now on planet Earth? 100%, no doubt. That is what's happening. The mana that I ingest through this right here, that's in gold that you are pouring down from the Internet heavens onto men across the entire planet is needed right now. Because I believe. And I wonder how you feel. I think we're at a tipping point. I get this sense. And I wonder how you feel, Cynthia. Like, ever since I was a little kid and. And probably most likely what drove my pornography addiction was this feeling of something is wrong. Something is wrong. Something's wrong in me. Something's wrong outside of me. Something's just wrong. What is it? What is so wrong? And I think it's literally because you and I incarnated in human form right now. I was born in 1980. You're probably born 1990. 90. So. So we're born in this decade of a way of awakening, and we're at the age now where it's our divine responsibility to wake up on mission. It's our divine calling, our purpose. I would not be able to live with myself if I wasn't being of service now. Not from my ego. I'm not saying, like, look how cool Josh is. He has a podcast. I don't give a. About being famous. I really don't. Do I want to be well known? Yes. Because that way I can shine my light further, for sure.

Yeah.

But I wonder how you feel about this. As you've gone on these larger TV interviews, as you've gone on the bigger podcasts, as your voice is starting to echo in a louder chamber, how do you keep yourself humble? How do you stay connected to your heart as a father, as a man, as a brother in arms? How do you. How exactly do you do that?

You know, this goes back to what we were talking about earlier. I think if there's a lot of people who are rising to fame, who are, you know, building their digital empire, so to speak, but they truly don't know who they are. And those people will come and go. You'll have flashes in the pan and whatever, but my identity was built a long time before I ever had a platform. And I can tell just from speaking with you, Josh, the same is true for you. Like, you've done your work, man, and there's. There's a. There's a life. And the.

The.

The digital public facing life is just the cherry on top. And for me, it's the same, you know, like, I was having a conversation with. I forget who this was with recently, but somebody that was saying, hey, why don't you travel more? You know, why don't you travel? You know, you have all these opportunities, and you could be speaking, and you're such a good speaker, you could be on the circuit and all that stuff.

Stuff, yeah.

I've purposely built my life as such that, number one, I can be at home and still earn an income and, you know, do everything that I need to do. But secondly, you know, I actually want to be home for my family. You know, the. The guys that we work with. If you look into the psychology research, it's pretty clear that, like, being around, having just having a father around who's just around, he doesn't have to be a good one. He just needs to be around him. Being around those first seven years of life is, like, monumental. So I just refuse to be the guy who's on the road. I will definitely do those things one day, I'm sure. But I think what happens, you know, and I even see this in some of my colleagues. You know, some of them I have conversations with. If there's relationship, there is. I think we just get so drawn to, you know, opportunity. Like, that's kind of like the God that a lot of people serve, and they end up sacrificing the things that mean more to them. So for me, you know, I don't. I don't have a conscious effort to stay humble. I think it's more just about knowing the season you're in and making sure the priorities in your life actually reflect the season you're in. And this is why social media is so dangerous, because it creates comparison. And what happens when you compare is it's not just that, you know, you feel inferior and you look at someone and they got something you don't and you feel bad. The actual issue is that social media or comparison makes us question our own priorities in our season of life because of someone else who's in a completely different season. And when someone's in a different season, you're not supposed to have their priorities. And if you did, your life would be a mess. So I. This is like a life message. This is one thing I always get feedback on in my book. People are like, man, I've never heard anyone articulate this before. I think we need to know the season of life we're in and make sure the priorities that we have set reflect that season. And anytime there's dissonance there, I think we end up becoming really miserable people. So, you know, I'm not trying to be humble. I'm not trying to, I don't know, not grow the platform. And at the same time, I'm like you. You know, I have no interest in being famous, but for me, you know, I just know the season I'm in, and I'm just trying to make sure I honor the priorities as best as I can right now.

I love that you said opportunity is a God that people can worship.

Oh, big time.

Which is not the best God to worship, because opportunity comes and goes, but a real connection to God is always There. It always has been there. You know, I haven't said this on. It's been like, a few years since I've said what I'm about to say, and you brought it forth. So thank you for just even allowing me to. To share this on the podcast here. You know, it's wellness and wisdom, because I think that wisdom is something that we earn through life experience and time, and then we blend information with compassion and life experience. And I think on the other side of that is real wisdom. So it's not to discredit or discount people that are 18, 19, 20, their life coaches. They're doing the best they can, but like you've alluded to earlier, they just. They're not embodying it yet. They're bypassing the lesson. They're so focused, as you were in the middle of your healing, where you said, I want to get through this so I can share with other people how they can heal. It's like, hey, dude, you weren't healed yet.

You know, Exactly.

You hadn't gotten it yet. But I wonder for you, like, how this resonates. My grandfather, Joseph Morrow Padolino, he stopped me in the hallway once when I was, like, 11 years old in La Mesa, Mount Helix. Just. It's a moment that, you know, you have those moments in your life that you remember forever, and this is one of those moments. He stopped me in the hallway one day and he said, are you going to church? And I said, no, Grandpa, I don't like it. They put their hands in the air, and it was a very kind of hardcore Pentecostal church that my mom was going to at that time, which, you know, no shame or judgment on them. It just wasn't for me. And I think it turns a lot of people off. And I said, no, Grandpa, they're weird. They put their hands up and plus, they speak about this, like, time thing and just. I don't even know God. I was 11. And he graciously puts his hand on me in the hallway and he says, you know, Josh, the man of mine cannot conceptualize that there is no such thing as God in time. There's just God. Because for God, there is no beginning, there is no middle, there is no end. And it. It was like this wisdom that he just dropped on me. And here I am at 44 years old sharing it with you 30 plus years later. Wow. The mana that he gave me, the wisdom that he gave me through his own connection to a creator, still sticks with me and makes. And makes me feel emotion, deeply. In this moment, three decades later, it's so profound, the lives that we're touching. I think it's really easy because of what you mentioned in social media, where, you know, we can put out content and do the best we can with our marketing and. And if we're being in integrity with what we're sharing, then eventually reciprocity will happen. But it's so easy to just discredit oneself as a creator, especially as a conscious creator like you and I, where maybe, you know, we should be doing more, we should be trying harder, we should be serving more. But if we can just connect with what my grandfather said, I think that we'll be okay.

Yeah.

I think if we know that it's a grand mystery and a grand game and the time doesn't always apply to us, then we can let go of having it be figured out by the time that we're a certain age. Because real wisdom doesn't apply to time.

Yeah.

Real wisdom is just something that we embody and that we share.

Yeah.

And I wonder what that brings up for you. This. This story that I shared with you from my grandfather, because I haven't talked about it. I don't know if I've ever actually talked about it on a podcast before, but it's real, it's visceral. I feel it in my being as I sit with you. What comes up for you with that?

You know, it's funny, I was going to say this earlier, and I had forgotten, but you're talking about. I pronounce it mana. Mana. Mana. So one of the cool things about manna in the Bible is when. When God started to give the Israelites manna, he gave them specific instructions. And because manna means daily bread, he specifically told them you are not to collect it. Like, as in, he's basically providing bread on the ground. It's just like, they have no food, right? So he's giving them bread and he's saying, don't collect it, which for them would be a huge challenge because they were in slavery. So when you're in slavery, you know, and you don't have anything, anytime you get any kind of possession of limited value, let alone great value, you keep it, Right? You keep it. You hold on to it. You know, it creates this scarcity, hoarder kind of mindset. So his instruction to them is, don't keep it. And of course, there's always people who, you know, don't follow the instructions. And so they keep it, and it. It goes moldy. And so they wake up the next morning, it's gone bad. It's. It's no good for them. And when you're talking about that story with your. Your grandfather, one of the things that it's reminding me of is, you know, that whole concept of daily bread. It's just the idea that, you know, none of us are too set in our ways. None of us are too fixed. We never feel like we know everything when we come in with that kind of humility and that openness. We get fed every single day, you know, and sometimes it means that you get fed by something your grandpa said to you 34 years ago. Sometimes it means that, you know, you. You see something online. You know, someone listens to this podcast, and this is their mana today. This is the thing that changes for them. I think it's just having that openness, you know, and being willing to grow every single day. One of the. One of the hardest things we run into with our clients when they come to us, because we're. We're quite successful, you know, and we found a way to be successful quickly in relative terms, and I use that language loosely, hopefully you understand what I mean. But one of the things that people come into is. And they say to us, like, okay, you know, when can I expect to be free? When, you know, they. They have. They want the timeline in mind. And what we always try to tell people is your main goal is just to get 1% better every day, just 1%. So we're not like, please stop counting streaks. We don't care what your streaks are. We're not interested in that. And no, we're not going to get you to slap on Internet filters and all that. We're much more interested in the transformation of your heart and you going through this kind of metamorphosis that we were talking about earlier, the identity shift. What we are interested in is you just gain 1% better every day. Super boring, super unsexy. But when you are getting better, especially with the right things in the right areas, your life can actually change pretty quickly. And so, you know, I think it's. It's just, to me, that's. That's what this is all about. You know, it's all about just getting a little bit better every day. And I think that daily mana, that's. That's it. You know, one day you're focused on. On, you know, journaling better, and the next day you're working through some trauma, you know, that's in our case. And another day you're, you know, reprocessing A memory of the first time you got exposed to pornography. Like it's, it's different for everyone. It's different every day. You just get 1% better.

Wow, okay, here I am again, second time, which never happens. So that's how I know we're onto something good. I'm like, there's five ways I could take this, right? So where are we gonna go? What's very clear that we get to talk about? And I asked you this as the very first question, right? Where do you see us, especially you, being a leader in this field of healing in this specific segment of pornography and pornography addiction? I think it's really important to talk about people that are idolized. False prophets, false idols. Billie Eilish, and this is on the screen right now for everyone watching on YouTube and Spotify. Billie Eilish actually shared a clip that we're going to link to. And she had said she got exposed to pornography when she was 11 years old. And she said that it really hurt her on such a deep level because when she was exposed to it, she knew that it hurt her brain. And here she is a very, you know, popularized singer. I think many people have heard of Billie Eilish, but the fact that she has the courage to share publicly about how pornography had wounded her and how she's taken so much of her life to actually heal herself from pornography is so very special. And it's what exactly the world needs right now. I want to flip that to you, going back to current events and if you could take us through a play by play, just, you know, paint a story for us here. How did you desexualize your brain from pornography and what transformation has happened because of that?

Man, we're getting to some neuroscience. This is my favorite subject when it comes to recovery. So pornography has four primary effects on the brain. The first is desensitization. So desensitization is what you watch or what you're used to watching doesn't give you the hit. So you need to watch more of it, you need to watch it more intensely or you need to watch something new. The second effect is sensitization, which is the exact opposite. And this is where your brain starts to. You see something that would be seemingly innocent, but for you it becomes a trigger because your brain is, is craving it. And so it's looking for things that maybe remind you of scenes you've watched or whatever. The third is a poor stress response. So this is very prevalent. We see this a lot in our clients. They have low capacity for emotional stress. Physical stress, whatever it is, they just don't have the wherewithal. And the fourth is a thing called hypofrontality, where, you know, the prefrontal cortex makes all your executive decisions, allows you to look long term. And when you have hypofrontality, this part of your brain, literally, just like it, becomes less active, and it can start to rewire and reshuffle the priorities within your brain. So when you have someone like Billy Eilish, who's talking about early exposure, the first thing we need to understand is that when. When a minor gets exposed to pornography and their brain is not fully developed, that dependency becomes very high because their sexual development basically goes in synchrony with pornography. And as we stated earlier, what porn provides to the brain is what they call a super normal stimulus. In other words, the level of stimulation it provides is unnaturally high. There's. There's nothing else you could experience that would even match up to it. Which is why today, I don't know if you've ever heard this stat before, Josh. About 30% of men under the age of 40 are dealing with erectile dysfunction. And the reason for that, you know, well, there's a couple reasons, but in my biased opinion, the reason for that is because of pornography. Because. Because we're getting exposed at a young age. Porn is rewiring the threshold for what we need to feel arousal. And unfortunately, real life experiences just aren't cutting it. So if you follow that quote a little bit with Billie Eilish, I believe you're talking about the interview with Howard Stern. And. And if not, then there. I think there was another clip as well. But in her interview with Howard Stern, there's a few. Yeah, there's a few. Yeah. In her interview with Howard Stern, she actually talked about how when she started to be sexually active, she started to do things that she thought were normal because that's what she saw in the pornography she watched. And then she started to realize, like, I don't feel good about myself. That kind of felt weird, you know, like, like not. Not everything is totally connecting when she's having these experiences. And then. And then after more conversation and more exploring, she's realizing, oh, those are like. That's like bdsm. That's like really intense stuff. She just thought it was normal. She didn't. She didn't think it was any different. And she thought, if I don't provide this, then it's not a real or a quality sexual experience. So porn wreaks havoc on the brain for all these reasons, especially when there's early exposure. My word. I mean, we could get into study upon study of how early exposure can lead to infertility, greater chances of affairs, more likely to pay for sex, buy sex. Like the list goes on and on. But the, the whole brain part of it is where is really kind of the centerpiece as far as I'm concerned. This is where, this is where we have to be really careful if we really want to heal and, and make sure that porn isn't having that effect on us.

Wow. Okay. On the screen right now, there's some really beautiful visuals. So y' all get to subscribe either on Spotify or on YouTube. And by the way, I don't care if you personally are dealing with this or if somebody you know and care about is dealing with this. The link is on the screen again. I'm going to put this link up there because I believe in this program. I believe in what Sathya is doing because I have been down this journey myself. Like, I can't press this enough, you guys. Joshtrend.com forward/porn free. This is so important. It's so important for you guys and gals to be able to take an inventory of self, to get to the bottom of why you feel the way you feel that makes you go to the porn. Because I'm sure you can relate to this. It's not about the orgasm, it's not about the release. It actually has nothing to do with it. I just did a podcast that we're going to link in the show notes as well. And it was a, it was a podcast with Dr. John Laurence, who's been on the show, a very, very powerful, very wonderful healer I get to connect you to. And also Luke's Story, another podcast which I think you'd be incredible on. And we talked about this olfactory sense where real sexual expression, real sexual connection in a loving sacred container, whether it be marriage, long term relationship, someone that you really love and care about, that you're willing to explore this with, which has been so bastardized and so homogenized by the hooks of media that over sexualizes everything that we're experiencing, whether it's Instagram, Facebook, meta, online, Google. I mean, you can't even go out of your house without seeing some sexual objectification of women and men on billboards, on screens. It's just, it's so wild that we accept this is okay now. Yeah, if this was, if this was around the type of media that's around 50 years ago, there'd be Rioting in the streets. But now we've been slowly conditioned. We have been slowly conditioned, just like when you boil a frog and it kills itself by staying in the water because it doesn't know it's being boiled. Our soul, our connection to spirit is through. Is going through a boiling process right now. I. I do believe that our soul and our connection to spirit is going through a heating up, a boiling process right now. You and I have. Have left the boiling water a long time ago, but we have so many brothers and sisters. We have so many people that are in the water thinking it's normal. Yeah. Without knowing that they're being cooked alive. And. And you know what the prize is, Sethia? The prize is the soul. The prize is the human soul. And there could not be a more important prize on planet Earth. I wonder how you feel about turning the tide. Yes. We're going to finally talk about deep clean, which I love because people can find God in many ways. But deep clean is something that I made an analogy earlier about. When we get home and our house has had a deep clean, it feels so peaceful, it feels so wonderful in our nervous system. How do you fight the enormous momentum of unconscious, hypersexualized media, specifically for men? How do you turn the tide on that for them and take them through deep clean? I know we're not going to go through the entire program because that's what's on the screen right now, but share with us the beginning steps of that. Who this is really for and who it may not be for.

Yeah, for sure. And I'm. I'm realizing I didn't fully answer your question before about kind of desexualizing things. So I'll make sure that we. We talk about all of it here in, in kind of this response. The one thing that's really cool, Josh, is when I started doing this work, people were like, oh, you're gonna go help guys quit porn. Cool. You know, good luck. It was. It was like a very kind of flippant encouragement, you know, from my friends and my loved ones. And. And, you know, I was. I was convinced that I could help people, and I was determined. It didn't stop me. But what's really cool now is, you know, you referenced Dr. Huberman, Dr. Jordan Peterson, and even just like, actually, even just fitness influencers online, you know, they'll say, don't eat sugar, exercise three times a week and stop watching porn. You know, like somehow, like, the world has kind of awakened to the harmful effects of pornography, which I'm really Yeah, really excited about. It's really cool to see. I think what's missing in a lot of people's understanding is how to actually get to the roots of porn addiction. And, and the reality is, and you said this earlier, I loved it. The reason that we watch pornography is rarely actually a sexual reason. Almost never. Yeah. It has nothing to do with sex. It's not about your sexual needs. It's not about any of that. It's actually much more fundamental. And so for us, when we talk about the root issues, we'll try not to be too ethereal here. We've broken it down into three primary buckets. So the first is what we call emotional fitness. So when we're trying to help people, we're trying to help people build emotional fitness. When somebody lacks emotional fitness, it's that numbness. It's that inability to access the inner world. Thoughts, feelings, everything that's going on within. And this is sort of like the gateway, you know, because, like, if you ask somebody, like, well, why did you watch pornography? You know, you said you're trying to stop what happened today. A lot of the guys that we work with are like, oh, well, you know, I was stressed or I was bored or, you know, I was, I was horny. I don't know. It just kind of hit me. It's like, no, no, there was stuff going on underneath. We need to, we need to access it. So that's the first bucket. The second bucket is what we would call a transformation of the heart. And this is where people are working through traumas. It doesn't mean that you have like a sexual trauma history. Again, like, for me, some of my traumas were just of parent child dynamics that existed growing up. And I grew up in a. In a. Actually relatively stable and, and healthy home. But no one's perfect. You know, there's always going to be those dynamics. And so when we're talking about transformation of the heart, we're talking about really working through different experiences in life that have ultimately contributed to the decisions you're making now. And then the third thing is shifting your identity, and this is shutting off the old beliefs. You know, I, I'm so grateful for like an Alcoholics Anonymous or 12 steps that have kind of paved the way for addiction coaching and addiction recovery. There are some things I'm not a huge fan of, and, and I, again, I think they're fantastic and they do very good work. But one of their, one of their philosophies is, you know, once an addict, always an addict. You know, you introduce yourself. Hi, I'm Josh. I'm an addict. We just can't subscribe to that ourselves because we believe so much in the shifting of an identity. Like if you believe you're an addict, then you will continue to stay addicted by faith because you believe that's what you are. So we really, we really believe in that. And the way we know somebody has properly gone through it, we have a little saying which is that you reach a place where you would rather be 100 your true self and rejected than 80 your true self and accepted. So what we're trying to instill in people is this radical boldness to be their true authentic selves. And, and almost unapologetically, not necessarily rudely, it's not permission to be a jerk, but it's just like you said earlier, being so comfortable in your skin that even if it did mean you'd be rejected, you'd be willing to risk it. And, and that, that to us, when you kind of embody that in community, you know a lot of the addiction research. I'll summarize most of the addiction research for you in one statement. This statement's from. The British journalist Johann Hari had a viral TED talk about 10 years ago. The opposite of addiction is not sobriety, it's connection. So when you have a system that is helping people get to the roots, and you know, these three buckets we've identified to be primarily where people need to change and you embody that with community. You put like minded men who are on the same mission, who, you know, are serious about getting their lives back on track, Some really cool things start to happen and that's where you start to see the rewiring of the brain like we talked about earlier. And I think, you know, to be maybe a little bit more direct about, you know, how do people survive in this world that's so hyper sexualized? How do people actually, you know, stay stable and stay sane? You have to, you have to know where your shortcomings are, where your weaknesses. So I mentioned earlier, I don't have social media on my phone. The reason for that is twofold. Number one, social media has become very sexualized. There was actually a time where it wasn't as bad, if I'm remembering correctly. But social media is often a middle ground for people that relapse. So what happens is they get triggered, they get a temptation, they get an urge, they get a thought, they see someone attractive and that kind of gets into like a one out of five. But often it's the, the dead scrolling on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok that elevates things from like a two to a three to a four. And then the five is where it's like the engine, the dopamine engine is so revved that now it's like everything's on full blast. And they're looking for pornography, they're looking for that next hit. So I think it's, there's, there's a part of it where it's like, yes, we want to desexualize and we want to make sure we're not getting too exposed. I'm all for that. I think the greater measure, the greater strength is actually trying to identify what are the things that rev the engine. So to Speak week that put me in these precarious places. And I think that's real strength, actually, if you can say, oh, I'm not even going to take a step down that path because I know that once I take one step, it's easier to take two steps and then it's easier to take three. And before, you know, this thing spirals out of control. I'm just going to resist it all together. I think that's where real power is. So it's not even just about resisting the things that are sexual. It's about managing yourself in such a way that you're only engaging with things that are going to benefit you and align with the priorities of your season and the goals that you have in your life.

But just like the seasons change, so do we. And then I'm sure you can relate as a father, as you take on more responsibility, your seasons change in ways that you never even imagined.

Yeah, true.

Some seasons might be massive sleep deprivation. I remember I was doing research on behavioral psychology when we interviewed Dr. Judd Brewer, who's a very famous neuroscientist, and he's been on the show a few times, actually. I remember he said something so profound. He said, when you're hungry, when you're angry, when you're lonely, or when you're tired. H A L T, the HALT acronym, which is talked about a lot in, in many different healing addiction communities. When we're tired, I think is a really big one because we live in a world of overstimulation and really visual saturation. I actually love that you. You don't have social shout out to Maggie and our team and Marketa for running our entire social media online presence. Thank you ladies so much for doing that because, yeah, I got a team.

That does it all for me.

If we tried to do it on Our own and respond to like, these thousands of comments and respond to all the energy that's happening there in an authentic way. I don't know any limbic system that could take that in and still be able to function. I want to go back to something that you said, and it's. And it really hit me. You said the seasons sometimes, especially as entrepreneurs or let's say, intrapreneurs, somebody's listening. A man is here with us or a woman is here with us. And, and they're driven, Satya. They're driven. They want to accomplish. They want to reach their goals. What happens is, is they get sold a bad story from unfortunately, very wounded leaders that are leading from the light of the flashlight I talked about. I think what's being called forth is that we hold up a lantern because a lantern shines light on me and it shines light on you. Leaders hold lanterns. Leaders don't hold flashlights because leaders that hold flashlights can hide behind their flashlight. For the people that have been taught by those holding a flashlight, can you bring the lantern for us right now? Can you shine the light on your own story and on how that story can actually relate to somebody who's dealing with exactly what you. You dealt with yourself? I. I'll pose the question again. How did you. You talked about the neuroscience in a very beautiful way. How did you desexualize your brain and transform your life on a personal level? Was there a moment where you just said, enough, I won't do this anymore, or it was an amalgamation of things? What was that for you on a personal level?

Yeah, it's a great question. It goes back to that university lab that I was working in trying to figure out the meaning of life. You know, do I believe in God? And when I did ultimately conclude, okay, God is God is real, and for me, it was. It was Christianity. I'm going to commit my life to Jesus. I knew that I had to make some lifestyle changes because I was, I was not really living that life up until that point. And most of those lifestyle changes came relatively easy. And I always told myself pornography. I'm sure I'll stop watching one day. You know, I remember telling myself that as a teenager and even in university, I'll stop watching whenever I need to.

I said that for decades, literally decades. That. Exactly. I'll stop when I'm, you know, I'll stop. I'll stop 100.

Yeah, especially like, you know, in university. I mean, I, I plan my days around it. You know, I was like, oh, it's just helping me cope with stress now. As if life gets less stressful, you know, as you go on. Like, I was totally misled, and I had no idea. So I. So I made my decision. It's like, okay, I'm done. I'm done with this stuff. And I think I went three days, and it was like, oh, okay, I guess I'm gonna have to up it. So the only. The only thing I knew how to do at that point was willpower. It was like, willpower, and I'm gonna pray more. And so I did those things. And, you know, eventually I got to, like, a week, but, you know, a couple months in is like, man, something's. This is crazy. You know, I didn't. I didn't think it was this hard. And that's when I start to just realize, okay, this is a real problem, Josh. That was. It took five years from that season before I finally experienced what I would describe as freedom from pornography. And there is a difference between sobriety and freedom. And we can get into that. But I'm talking about actual freedom, where it's like, okay, this doesn't have a stronghold in my life anymore. The first three years I was doing all the things that I said earlier on the show that you shouldn't do, you know, it was trying to find the quick fixes. It was behaviorally focused. It was Internet filters. It was really poorly constructed accountability systems. It was. It was totally short term. And so I would go a week. Eventually I could go maybe a couple weeks, maybe even a couple months. But something always came back because that root system was still there. It was still at play. You know, there were wounds in my heart that were still wounded. There were issues in my belief systems that were still there. Like, I. I didn't actually deal with the things underneath the surface. The last two years of recovery is where I started to do the work. You know, start to work through trauma, went through a really deep process of forgiveness, Started to understand some of my origin story and some parts of my past that contribute to my sexual development. And that's when I found real healing. That. That's when it wasn't just that I wasn't watching less. In fact, I start to think about that less. It's that my whole view of sexuality changed. It's that.

That.

It's that I start to see people differently. And I almost start. I had such a high value for myself that I. Eventually, I couldn't stomach the thought of objectifying another person. You know, like, it was. It was all these. These Micro shifts that took place on an internal level that eventually led to this place where watching. Not watching porn was just an inherent byproduct. It just felt normal to not watch it. And so I had my last slip. February 2016, I think it was. And so it. It took time to get there. It was a lot of back and forth. I. I wish it was like a one and done and I was there, but for me, it was a real process and a real journey of trying everything under the sun and only in the last little bit, really identifying the things that actually move the needle forward.

How much of the. You talked about wounding, which I think is really important. We had John Wineland on the show, and I remember he was sitting here and he was crying, and he said, you know, the wound is actually where we can serve from if we have the wisdom to not let our wound cloud our wisdom. And I wonder for you, what was the wound like with your father? And how did that play into pornography itself?

Man. Good question. You know, the. The wound. So I would say fathers are most responsible for instilling identity. And I talked about this earlier. You know, my. My sense of self was very much predicated on purpose performance. And so there was this thing of me that felt like if I perform well, my dad will love me. And the. What really made this debilitating is that I. I transferred that paradigm of relating with my. My father to my relationship with God. And so with God, it was the same. It was all about doing the things that look spiritual. It was all about behaving a certain way, acting a certain way. It was really performance driven.

But I'll tell you, there's a term for that. Sorry to interrupt you. There's a term for that. Spiritual narcissist. Someone that loves. Yeah, someone that loves to look spiritual. My friend JP Sears makes fun of people like that. It just says, he's a comedian.

He doesn't narcissist.

On the outside, They're. They're so spiritual, and they're wearing the jewels and the, you know, the beads and everything, but when you really talk to them, they have zero spiritual depth. So I digress. I had to say that because, put in the show notes, spiritual narcissism is really.

Okay. I learned something. What I was gonna say is, truthfully, the greatest healing actually happened in my relationship with my mom. Is it okay if I go into that a little bit?

Oh, please. Wow. So it wasn't the father wound. It was more the mother wound that was the origin.

And truthfully, in most of our Clients, we see a lot more mom issues than dad issues. And there's, There's. Well, I'll tangent just slightly and then I will get to the. I'll get to this. Pornhub, the world's largest porn site, they every year do a year in review and they release data about, you know, what people have been watching, how long they've been watching, where they're watching from, all that kind of stuff. Which, by the way, you know, we've been catering this conversation to men. But the, the pornhub insights would suggest that for every two guys watching pornography, there's a woman watching. So very much a female issue as well. Yeah.

And that's recent data.

Yeah, that's reason. Well, that that trend's been existing for probably a few years now. But yeah, like as recent as 2023's data, it was 36 of all viewers were women.

That's so surprising. I would not. I would never have thought that.

Yeah.

Well, this is why, this is why science can help us spiritually grow if we use it in a conscious way.

This is why we know that pornography is not about being sexual. Right. Because that was always the theme. It was like, like, oh, you know, guys watch because they're, they're way more sexual than women and whatever. And it's like, no, porn isn't. Porn addiction is an intimacy disorder. You know, like, this is. This is people trying to get their needs for intimacy met. And men and women both have those needs. Anyways, I digress. If you look at the, the stats, the, the viewership in the top five keywords year after year after year is mom related searches, whether it's like milk content, stepmom, all that kind of stuff. And what the research would suggest, the more clinical psychology research would suggest, is that where we are the most wounded or the most deficient is often reflected in the nature of the content that we are drawn to. So why are, why are so many viewers online looking for this content? Because of mother wounds. Because they have maternal wounds. So for me, I have an amazing moment. She, you know, she immigrated from India, had an arranged marriage to my dad. Another story for another day. They spoke for 10 minutes before they got engaged to each other. Yeah.

Wow.

Barely knew each other. And so she immigrated to Canada. My dad was already living here for a few years. He was an immigrant as well. And so, yeah, so she moved overseas to basically live with a stranger, set up her life here. And truthfully, my mom was always there for me growing up. Just an incredible woman. One of the things about my mom is. And part of this is Indian culture, and part of this is just her, but she's a much more reserved Persona, you know, doesn't express herself a ton. And I always knew she loved me, but it was implicit, if that makes sense. And when I was working through some of these more core root issues, one of the things I discovered is that I actually grew up most of my life feeling a degree of neglect from my mom. Not that she was neglectful in an overt sense, but rather, she didn't express love to me in a way that I needed it, which was, you know, words, verbal affirmation, physical touch, some of those things that, you know, a little boy is looking for. And having that deficiency ultimately led to chasing girls and pornography in my high school years, which then developed into the addiction. A lot of it was sort of trying to scratch that itch. It was trying to satisfy those deep core needs that had gone unmet in my childhood. And one, you know, most of recovery for me was, like I said, getting 1% better every day. It was, it was very rare that I had, like a huge breakthrough moment. I wasn't able to quit cold turkey. But I can tell you there was one particular moment I had where I felt different. I felt different in my body, I felt different in my spirit, I felt different in my mind. Something shifted, and it was the day that I forgave my mom for that experience of neglect when I was a kid. And I. I remember I had somebody walking me through. I think it was a therapy session. And I walked out and I just saw I was lighter, my shoulders were relaxed, you know, like something had shifted. And. And so this, this whole parent wounding thing is a really big deal and hopefully drives home the point that, like, it's not the sexual things. It's. It's not those things that drive us to engage in things like pornography compulsively. It's often the much more fundamental psychological roots of trauma, parent, child relationships, our sense of self and identity and all those things. And so for me, it was really the. The clinching piece or one of the big final pieces for me was actually working through that stuff with my mom.

Well, thank you for sharing that because like I said, the mirror of your story can shine. I think for most people to be reflected upon. And that shining is that when you're able to actually talk about your life, that you're not on a mountain, you're not wearing a white cape, you don't speak from a pulpit. Well, maybe you do, but you're not speaking from a pulpit right now, I think that allows people to. To really feel you as a leader. Because in my experience, especially like leading my mission and leading my team, whenever I'm disconnected from my heart, I am not going to be an effective leader, period. Full stop.

Yeah.

If I don't have the. The vulnerability to share what's really real for me and also have the emotional intelligence and awareness to know when to share a story and to where not to share a story when I'm connected to my heart, it just makes me a more powerful leader. And some of my work on this has come from my studies with Hawkins and the frequency scale. And when you think about David Hawkins work, I mean, he was so deep on the emotional vibrations that rule us. And you've talked about this. It's not about the orgasm. It's not about the sex. It's about the energy in motion, the emotion that is happening in our body that almost Sophia gets blocked. The energy blockage and the pressure that builds in our unconscious and in our nervous system that really is completely blind. It's unconsciously incompetent for many of us. We don't even know that. We don't know it's there.

Yeah.

Was there something when you walked out of that room and the shoulders dropped and the air, the hot air was released from your system that you were able to go to your mother and say, I love you, I forgive you. I got you. Thank you.

Here's how I knew something shifted. The. The next day I was. I was in the kitchen. And for whatever reason, I haven't fully figured this out, but I would often begin to have tempting thoughts in the kitchen. So I'm in the kitchen, and this thought pops into my head, you know, typical tempting thought, and it left just as quickly. And that's when I knew something shifted. And I think I told you this before. I did. I did say this before. I think when we were hitting record, I had a history of jumping the gun. So I didn't come out of that session and go, oh, I can't wait to go tell my mom. Because I was a little bit like, I feel good now, but let's see what happens tomorrow, you know, or a couple days down the road. But that experience the next day was so different that I realized, okay, something has actually shifted. And that experience continued. So I, I did, I. I did have a conversation with my mom, and I talked to her about some of these things. And the really cool thing for me is what I realized in all of this is my Experience of neglect when I was young was stopping me from having the relationship that I wanted with my mom. And so it was cool to talk to her and to explain, you know, some of my experiences and to process it with her a bit. But the really cool thing is, out of that conversation, I was like, mom, I really want to have a better relationship with you. I want to have a better connection. And, you know, that has been the really cool byproduct. And we've been able to help tons of other clients. I mean, we have some really crazy stories of guys reconciling with their moms. I was just writing about this today, actually, for my email list. We had a client who, you know, his parents divorced, and he sided with his dad. And so all the narratives he heard were about how terrible his mom was. And so he naturally just basically cut her off. And he's going through our system, and, you know, he kind of feels like he's got his tail tucked between his legs when we start talking about forgiveness and maternal wounds and all that stuff. And he's like, ah, you know, I wasn't really ready for this. I don't know if I want to go here. And, you know, we. We're very gentle. So we. We weren't forcing anything. But we're also, at the same time, we're like, hey, you go. You have to confront your stuff at some point. So that point comes. He starts working through his stuff. And he sent me this text afterwards. He's like, dude, I have not felt this way since I was a little boy. Like, just the relief, the joy, just like, oh, I finally let it go, you know, I finally forgave her. And he and his. He and his mom reconciled. He. He had some very honest conversations. It wasn't the easiest, but they reached a place of understanding. They hang out together. They can be around each other. The relationship looks totally different than it did a few years ago. And I think that's the. Again, like, even just thinking about what we said earlier, the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. It's connection. And not everybody's going to reconcile. That's not what it's about. You don't have to make that happen if you don't want to or it's not possible or whatever. But I think that's how we know people are really making a recovery, is that they're. They're forging meaningful connections. And some of the areas where a bridge was burned or there was a gap, those areas are being mended and healed as well. And that is not just necessary to make a recovery, it's necessary to sustain it.

You know, when you talked about the forgiveness piece, there was so much there. For me, my life has been a series of waves of forgiveness, forgiveness. And I heard Tony Robbins say this once, you know, forgiveness is not a gift that you give to the other person. It's a gift that you give to yourself. And there's no. I just got a full body chill. Just yesterday, literally just yesterday, we did a podcast here. It was a quadcast with Alex, Zach and Luke Story and Aaron Abke it was almost a. It was over a three hour podcast. And we talked about each of our own windings around our wounding with both mother and father. And it's no surprise, Satya, that we're talking today. It's no surprise, man. This is truly a breadcrumb from God in this, in this moment, what I'm about to share. When I got to the bottom of basically all the ways that I was disempowered in my life, any way that I wasn't free, any way that I wasn't liberated, was connected to an event that I made disempowering that was in some way connected to my lineage or specifically my mother or my father, period. Full stop. Yeah. And I think that people can hear you say that, you know, the kitchen and your mom and the healing, but they don't realize that they need support as they go on that path. If forgiveness was a light switch, everybody would flick it. It's not that simple. It's easy to conceptualize the moment you had with your mother. That was an amalgamation of years and for some of us, decades, to be able to have that spiritual awareness, to be able to have that expansion of consciousness.

Yeah.

And I want to preface this by saying, and we'll get right back to some other things I want to go over with. This is such a good podcast because it's so personal to millions of people. In the shadows, y'. All. You don't have to hide anymore. It's okay. Like, we're here talking about it. You're free. You're free. We just talk about it. And in the, in the curiosity of talking about it, there's so much to learn. What I really want to get clear with everyone here with us is this. Your journey is going to be up and down. You may take 10 steps forward, 20 steps back, one step forward, three steps back, seven steps forward. It just might happen like that. Because nowhere in nature is there a perfect linear curve of anything, growth or healing. So when we when you and I embarked upon our healing, specifically letting go of pornography. Notice I didn't say kicking pornography's ass, fighting against pornography, that's making us watch the pornography itself. What I'm saying is, in order to release the stronghold, like you had said, to be free of it, to not have to fight against it anymore, there has to be a journey of liberation of self. This is what we talk about in our liberated life tribe. It's like, in order to be liberated, you're only as liberated as your deepest shadow, as your darkest secret. There's no part of you and I that can sit here and be felt in truth, if we're not being honest about the shadows that we still hold. Now, granted, you and I can have shadows that we don't even know.

Yeah.

But I'll flip it back to you because. Because this process of forgiveness, I really want you to speak to the men listening that have tried so much. They've been down so many avenues of, like, buying this program. I remember I did it. I bought, like, different online programs. I bought the filters. None of it worked. Yeah, because it never hit the root that you're talking about. The lawnmower killed the top, but the root was always there. I could get any screen, filter, parent filter, program, support group. I even went to Sex Addicts Anonymous for a while. And I, like you, didn't believe that I was always going to be an addict. I'm like, no, this. This is not my identity. It's like a part of my soul knew. I was like. I don't like this vernacular of like, hi, Josh, I'm an addict and I'll always be an addict. Yeah, I don't resonate with that. Please speak to the true pathway of forgiveness and healing. When it comes to pornography, he who.

Is most vulnerable heals the quickest. So if people are serious about this journey, it's going to require vulnerability. You know, our society has completely misconstrued such a beautiful term. Vulnerability is not posting on social media about the hard stuff you're going through. The. The Latin origin of that word, vulnerable is woundable. And so vulnerability means that you are open with the risk of being wounded. And real vulnerability can only be experienced in the depths of relationship, the depths of connection. So that's why, you know, people should be joining your community, because you need to plug in with people where you can be seen and you can be known and you can still be safe. And those places are hard to come by, but they are the best. They're the best environments or greenhouses for healing and for recovery and where people get short circuited in their recovery. You know, in our program and what we've witnessed, it's usually because there's a block. Either they cannot access something that they need to access deeper within them, or they refuse to access the thing that they know they probably need to. It is that lack of vulnerability. And so I think being able to really get into the depths, that is where, yeah, you discover yourself. It's where you learn to love yourself and. And actually embrace who God's made you to be. And the inherent byproduct is your relationships become more meaningful because when you can be seen for who you really are, you know, scars and wounds and shortcomings and strengths and core qualities and greatness as well, when you can be seen that way, that. That's where real health is. That's where real freedom lies. The. The distinction I made earlier between sobriety and freedom. Sobriety is, you know, I haven't watched porn in two months, but freedom is. I'm a new person. You know, I am who I am, and I'm not apologizing for it. And I think a lot of people, A lot of people are struggling with porn and they don't even realize the. The depth of, you know, the grip it has on their life. There's a smaller subset of people who are sober, but there's really only a handful of people on the planet that know what real freedom from pornography is. And that's kind of my mission. You know, I'm trying to raise up a tribe of guys who are actually excited about freedom, you know, where they don't have to wake up and say, yep, you know, I'm one decision away from relapsing. That's sobriety. You know, sobriety is. Is the manipulating of behavior. But real freedom is that. That release. It's that freedom of heart, that comfort within self, and that ability to be seen vulnerably risking that wound, knowing that the payoff in return is the connection. The connection that trumps all. Addiction.

Man, there's like 50 different Instagram Reels in our conversation today. I knew it was going to be good. You know what's interesting? In total invulnerability, in the spirit of vulnerability, I'll share. I knew that I only had to feel your work by looking at it once to know exactly what kind of conversation we get to have today. I typically prepare a lot deeper for guests, but I trusted so much in just going to your homepage and give people the homepage right now. Please, the. The website where they get to go to just explore your general work.

Yeah, they can just go to deep.

Cleancoaching.Com When I saw that and when I listened to your. I'm not a huge 700 coach club fan, full stop. I'm not. But I. I loved what you were sharing. And when you said that the beliefs are really the predication of all behavior, I knew that we would just be able to have exactly what we've created today. And it's been monumental for so many people listening. Please, y' all share this right now, because this has the power. I. I say this on every podcast, but this one, specifically this conversation, has the power to change life, to. To ease suffering, to allow you to be liberated. Feel this. Feel this in your heart right now. It's real. I know. I know you can feel it, Satya. I know you can feel it. It's like there's so much power in knowing that it's not your willpower that's going to save you. It's not your willpower. It's. It's your awareness of who you are, your connection to something deeper, and a surrendering to being vulnerable that makes you powerful, a man. It took me a long time to learn that.

Yeah.

Like, it's like, it's so. There's so much peace in. In being able to just give yourself permission to be vulnerable, because that's where all power comes from. Real power only comes from peace.

Yeah.

When I take from others, when I take by force, somebody will take from force from me in the future. But when I'm. And I'm feeling so much emotion around this, because it's been such a journey for me to get here. It's been such a journey. I'm just so grateful that we even get to share this, that we even get to be here and share this to people across the world. Sobriety is not always freedom. True freedom is when you've actualized self and you've understood who. Who and what you really are.

Yeah.

Which is a divine, divine soul brought by the Creator to Earth to live out your Dharma, to live out your sacred purpose in this lifetime. And if y' all get anything from this podcast, please feel my heart. Please feel my emotion that, like, you don't have to do this alone.

Yeah.

You're not alone. It's a grand illusion that you feel alone because it's a choice that. That came to you a long time ago where you thought you could only do it alone, but it's never been true. It's never been real. The truth is, is that you're loved, you're supported, and you're here right now in this moment because Sathiya is here for you, to give you the tools that is going to allow you to liberate yourself from these shackles of dark energy, demonic energy, like it's here for you now. Trust yourself to have the courage to follow this path. Trust yourself, please. I, I, I ask you, I don't beg of you. I ask you if this resonates with your soul. If you feel this in your heart. Joshua.com pornfree Please share with us as we say goodbye this intersection of wounding and bondage and darkness and love and light. You know, I talked about earlier, we need leaders to hold the lighthouse, to hold down the actual lantern. A true leader holds a lantern. What is the lantern that you want to shine on the entire world? Like if you were to be put on blast on TV for 30 seconds or a minute and imagine that could go to everyone. I know it's a lot of pressure, but just have fun with it. What is, as a leader, what is the lantern that you're holding up to.

Shine that life is worth living to the fullest and we're robbing ourselves when we choose quick fixes, short term gains in sacrifice of something long term. You know, I think the mark of a man is longevity. It's, it's having that longevity in the things that matter the most. You know, his calling, his family, his community. And I think if there's anything I could say to someone who's listening, who's, especially if you're struggling with what we've been talking about today and you think, what's the point? Or who cares? Or could I even be successful? Your life is worth it, you know, and it's worth living to the ultimate fullness. And I just know, Josh, you know, this pornography will stop you from doing that. It'll stop you spiritually, it'll stop you mentally, and it'll stop you relationally from doing the things that you're meant to do in this life. Your life worth living, man, don't you dare settle.

I can reflect on so many times, so many times, Cynthia, where I was like disempowering myself and I can actually, for, for all the men out there, you know, you felt this and women too. Your dream comes up. You've whiteboarded everything. You have all the tools and all the skills and you're about ready to fulfill your mission. And then this little spider creeps up on your shoulder and it says, well, why don't you just watch porn? Why don't you just watch that screen? Why don't you just have that fake connection? And where you want to get to. And. And I think where Sathya can help you get to is not that you're angry at that voice. You're not, like, in resistance of that voice, that you see that voice for exactly what it is. It's a grand protector. It's testing your resolve that your mission and your purpose is so meaningful and touches your heart in such a deep way that no matter what protector comes around or what distraction comes around through this medium of pornography, that nothing in this world could take you off of your purpose. Nothing. Yeah. So I actually see pornography in a paradox. I see it as one of my greatest gifts, is what has allowed me to reach tens of millions of people in the world and touch the hearts of those people, even if it's just for a second, not from my ego, but through sharing the journey of my own pain and the journey of my own real amazingness, awesomeness, and faults. I am not perfect, and I am not wearing a white cape at all, but I. But I wonder, as we say goodbye, there's a. There's a concept I want to explore with you, and I'm so glad that I remembered it, because you guys out there that are sharing this podcast and watching it, feel this right now. We had Greg Woodhill on the show, and if you don't know him, he's someone that you get to connect with. He is a specialist that in some ways does what you're doing, but you're doing it in such a way where I really think he could be inspired by you, and I think he can learn a lot from you. And he talked about this concept. So, Thea of when people earlier you mentioned that the terms on pornography were all about mommy and MILF and. And things like that. And I've even felt that in my. My own self in. In the 2010s, and even in the late 2010s, what really allowed me to make sense of this was he talked about this term where we eroticize our pain. And when we eroticize our pain from a psychological perspective, our pain is. Is coming forth, wanting to be released by searching a term of, like MILF or mommy or whatever it is, because there's a wound there. And when we eroticize it, when we touch that wound, it gives us the spaciousness, even for a second, to be honest with ourselves about why it's there in the first place. But then the stimulus of pornography is so strong that it overshadows that wisdom. It overshadows that, that wounding. I wonder if you've ever considered this the concept that Greg brought forth. And we'll make sure we link that in the show notes today. Do you believe that men and women eroticize their pain?

I've never heard it put that way before, but I do agree with the concept. The way that we frame it is that your, your temptations can either be problems or they can be clues. And I think the, the things that specifically tempt us actually give us great insight into where we need the most health and the most healing. So I, I definitely agree with the premise. I think it's absolutely true. And I think what's really important, the only thing I don't like about this concept, and I don't know that Greg has done this, but what I have seen is like the charts where it's like, if you watch this, here's your wounding or whatever.

And that feels very intellectual to me.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's intellectual and it negates the individuality that's, that's, that's involved in this process. So I think it's important that people really pay attention to their own story, you know, and their own triggers, their own temptations, their own, their own clues, if you will. And of course you're gonna have parallels and overlaps with other people and all that kind of stuff, but I think if you have that individual mindset at play and you're really exploring like, yeah, why does this trigger me and what is this saying about maybe what my heart is after, that can lead you into some really powerful intel for your recovery.

Well put, well put. I want to give grace as we say goodbye before I ask you my favorite question in the world. I think you're going to love it because it's one of my favorite questions I ever ask, and I ask it on every show. Earlier you talked about the hypofrontality, which is an interesting concept in neuroscience. When we are under stress or duress, unless we've trained our neurological faculty, then the PFC just exits blood. So the PFC just completely loses blood flow when we're under times of stress. This is why I love breath work, because breath work turns down the volume in the default mode network. We're not necessarily scanning for danger in ways in which those hemispheres feel separate. It's, it's a, it's a really almost meshing of the hemispheres and a turning down of the fight or flight System, which is the sympathetic. One thing I love, that I'd love to send you and that I'd love to just talk about for a moment before we say goodbye, is the neurological component of the pfc. A lot of men and I dealt with this a lot in my life where before I found breathwork and, and specifically before I found a device that increases blood flow to the PFC called Mendy. It's on the screen right now. Joshtrend.com forward/mendy. The code is Josh. 20 for 20 off. Now, by the way, you don't need that tool just because I'm sharing it with you. If you have the income to get it, I, I promise you what I'm about to say will help you. You could obviously get the training for free and then move on to the deeper training, the deep cleaning with satya as well. That's on the screen too. Joshtrend.com forward/porn free. What I loved about this, though, and what I love about using the Mendy is you actually do a focal exercise through a cell phone, and it's training the PFC to increase blood supply in that time of focus, but especially in that time of distraction. And so I wonder, from a neuroscience perspective, there's a. There's a biological component to addiction. There's also, obviously, as you've shared in such a beautiful depth, a spiritual connection to addiction. Have you used any PFC devices like the Mendy in your programs for yourself or for your clients? I think it could be really powerful to do the, the biological work and the deep spiritual work as well.

Yeah, actually, I haven't. I've been. I'm in a season right now where I'm exploring some different options. I haven't tried the Mendy.

We're going to send you one. I'm going to send you one.

Sweet, man. Yeah, that'd be great. The one thing that I have found that's been really powerful and we haven't rolled this out yet, I want to test it a little bit longer. Is Brain fm. Have you heard of Brain fm?

Yes, Binaural beats.

Yeah, it's. It is binaural, but they, they're a little bit different even than binaural Beats. Really powerful stuff. And depending on what state you're trying to get your brain in, it, it's been more effective than just about anything else that I've, I've experienced so far. I'd love to see what the Mendy could do, but there is merit to that, you know, if somebody is able to find Something that re engages the PFC. There's a colleague of mine named Dr. Trish Lee. She's, you know, double PhD, neuroscientist extraordinaire and really does focus on helping people with porn addiction. And in her research, what she found is that when people are triggered or tempted, you know, the limbic system gets kind of engaged. The PFC starts to shut down. You have about a three to five second window to stop that process and to re engage it and to not go down the path where, you know, your likelihood of relapse increases. And so what she suggests is that you come up with a trigger plan, which means on the front end, if you do catch yourself in that moment, you know what you're going to do. That's the first thing. On the back end, it's that you're doing the breath work or the mendy or the brain Fm so that there's, there's a pattern that's already built into your brain that's able to re engage the PFC relatively quickly. So good merit to what you're saying. And that's a, that's a cool concept actually, that, it's good timing because I'm exploring that a bit more right now.

I'm flying out to Iowa next week, y'. All. There's some big stuff coming, everyone, so just be prepared with Nootopia and Mendy, because Utopia is the software that helps to really engage the actin myosin connections in the brain and, and really make us neuroplastic even more. Which we are, you know, you know, you can change thought and by conscious heart connected action because you've done it and you teach men to do it. And women, I'm sure there's some women that are aligned with your programs.

Yes, yeah, we, we work with men exclusively. Lots of women in our audiences on the podcast on Instagram. But our, our work is primarily with men.

So whether it's man or woman, we'll just speak to the man. We're plastic, you know, there's literally, I mean, not, not like physical plastic, like on a package, but there's a plasticity in our brain and so we can change it over time. And I think, yes, spirit is one way. Connection to God is one way. But I think biology, if we can do them both at the same time, I think there could be some really powerful. This is the blending of science and spirituality, right? Science and spirit. I think they can be mutually exclusive and I think they can blend really close together. Man, I've loved, loved talking with you. This has been likewise, man. So amazing. I'm so glad. Shout out to our friend who connected us, Adam Lane Smith, as we say goodbye. At this nexus point that you and I are in, and I already alluded to earlier, there's an awakening. I think we're at this 51% where I think the majority of us are awakening. And I think there will be sadly, a bifurcation of those that, that stay behind. And we're not here to save anyone. We're here to lead while holding that lantern at the nexus of this point, of the, the tipping point that we're at and the awakening that we're at. Satya, where do you see your own wellness in this? In other words, how do you even define wellness and what wisdom can you share with us about what wellness truly is? How do you live your life?

Well, yeah, man. Wellness to me is true. True wellness, I think, is the ability to preserve the good within you, physically, emotionally, spiritually, whatever, regardless of circumstance. I think a lot of people have a fraction of wellness where they have one area nailed down, but they have to have their morning routine and they have to do their three hours of meditation and all that. And obviously I'm a morning routine guy, huge advocate of meditation. But I think real wellness is when you can transport that into, you know, a sleepless night because your kid keeps you up, when you can transfer it into a stressful season where maybe in your company you're trying to roll out a new product or get on some bigger platforms. I think real wellness has that, that longevity that preserves the things that you value most for your well being. To me, that's real wellness.

Tell people again, joshtra.com forward/pornfree is on the screen where and, and how exactly they're going to go through this training. This is real, y'. All. Like, this is the chance that you've been calling in, otherwise you wouldn't be here. So trust yourself. If you're feeling resonance with this when they begin, what's it like? I mean, who's it for? Who's it not for? The training?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we work primarily with professional men 25 to 45. We've had men younger and we've had tons of men who are older as well. So by no means is anyone really excluded for their age. But I think this, this program is not for dabblers. That's what I'll say. I think if you're still figuring things out, you can always check out our podcast. You know, over 800 episodes there, lots of information. But the program is for people who are serious, who are saying, you know what? My, my marriage can't survive another day. My career can't survive another day. I personally can't survive another day. I'm ready to do this for the sake of my marriage, for the sake of my relationship with God or whatever it is. That's who our program's for. And I think if, if you've tried a hundred things and they haven't worked, I feel you, man. I've been there. Josh has been there. I can promise you this is different. This is unlike anything you've experienced before. We had a client just this week. He came to us, he did his first session with his coach and he's been seen a therapist for five years. He said in one session I got way more value than the five years combined that I did with my therapist. And not a knock on therapists or therapy because I've seen therapists and I love therapists. It's been a huge part for me. But if you're specifically want to help with porn addiction, we got something dialed in here that could really help you and change your life.

What a gift it was to connect with you. I'm so grateful for just trusting myself. I'm very selective of who I interview and I'm sure you're selective as well as we as we get to be because we're in a time of a lot of false prophets and for everyone as we say goodbye, like really listen to your somatic intelligence. The wisdom of the body is so, so, so pure. You know when it feels like a response, when it whispers and when it's slow for your intuition. And you know when it's a reaction because that's exactly what it feels like to be addicted to porn. It's a reaction instead of a response. So get clear. Use this training, use this podcast as a way to get clear on what it means to be responsible for your life instead of a reaction based human man. It's been great. Safiya, thank you for coming on the show. Really, really appreciate the work you do in the world.

It was a pleasure, man. Great to finally connect with you and it was an honor to be here.

Well, until both of us see you again, we're both wishing you healing and we're both wishing you love and wellness. We'll talk with you soon by.