Anthony Blood is a social media activist using Tik Tok to share the good news about foreskin restoration. In this episode, we explore various platforms where intactivist communities exist, we discuss the potential of modern regenerative medicine to restore the foreskin, and explore the healing process, including useful tools for healing trauma such as the Completion Process. Plus, Anthony and Brendon joke around and have fun.
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AI tools used to create this episode include Autopod and Cohost AI. Amazon affiliate links used.
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https://brendonmarotta.com/show/
Anthony Blood is a social media activist using Tik Tok to share the good news about foreskin restoration. In this episode, we explore various platforms where intactivist communities exist, we discuss the potential of modern regenerative medicine to restore the foreskin, and explore the healing process, including useful tools for healing trauma such as the Completion Process. Plus, Anthony and Brendon joke around and have fun.
Timestamps (Generated by AI):
Resources
AI tools used to create this episode include Autopod and Cohost AI. Amazon affiliate links used.
Subscribe and support the show directly:
https://brendonmarotta.com/show/
You got to start a podcast called The Restoring Bros And I got to raise $10 million. Pretty much That's our. So we've learned from this conversation. We've just discovered podcast cold.
Speaker 2:That would be hilarious. You're listening to the Brendan.
Speaker 1:Murata show. In this episode, i talked to Anthony Blood, a social media influencer who is spreading the good news about foreskin restoration. Now, if you don't know what that is, you can watch my feature link, documentary American Circumcision, or continue listening to this episode, because we're going to talk about that and a whole range of topics, including how to build a platform on social media using short form video. We're going to talk about foreskin restoration versus regeneration, which is right for you, which you should either wait for or do now, and we're going to talk about the healing process, especially how men heal differently, and I'll talk a bit about the completion process, something that has helped me in my own healing journey. Plus, as you probably guessed from the intro, we joke around a bit and have some fun. So, without further ado, here is Anthony. For those of my audience who are unfamiliar with you, how would you introduce yourself or what would you say that you do?
Speaker 2:Well, i just say I'm a pretty ordinary guy who just discovered something that is ordinary at least in this culture, which is that I was generally mutilated at, aka circumcised, to use the euphemism that we all know. And I discovered that very late in life, 25 years old, a couple of years ago now, and I had never identified as a circumcised male. I had only known of that word as that you know four syllable word. I knew that I had to do with genitalia and that I guess it happened to me. I don't think I ever really thought about it. But once I discovered we can go into that the story of that, the truth of it and what it really was, i had that obsessive epiphany.
Speaker 2:I decided, as someone who is very introverted, never really used social media, didn't even post on, say, my Facebook wall, even just with text I took immediately to the most popular at the time social platform, which I found to be TikTok, and started recording long, long form videos you know minute, sort of long form minute, three minutes for that platform, usually three minutes and just rambling about what I was learning And it did strike a chord, relatively speaking. And within six months I had about 10, 12,000 people following me And you know that's that's pretty much what I've done. But I did it because for two reasons, and then I'll you know you can respond, but two reasons I knew virtually nobody knew this information and that it was pertinent to absolutely everyone.
Speaker 1:And you mentioned how for what. How is it you discovered this issue? Okay, so I discovered, i discovered this issue.
Speaker 2:I discovered it randomly. Just I can't even remember specifically how I found it, what I was looking for on YouTube, But for some reason the KUFO campaign, the Human Foreskin Campaign by Foragen. You're familiar with that video, Enzo Benchenzo Aiello, the president and founder of Foragen. He had this video where he depicted his KUFO sculpture, which is just a silicone mold of a lifelike sculpture of the human male foreskin, And I saw the vasculature, I saw the specialized tissue, I saw the structures and I I just immediately knew, without your naked of anything, that he was saying, which of course is very valuable.
Speaker 2:But naked of all of that, I knew immediately and intuitively this was a very specialized tissue, designed by no man, with tremendous function and tremendous value and purpose, and that it was something valuable that was lost. And so, like I said before that time, before I, I I saw that video. I didn't associate circumcision with really anything Because of course, the foreskin is, is omitted from nearly all discourse and all, even medical textbooks in our culture. So so it was, it was, it was quite jarring to to see what it actually looked like and and that there was obviously value, obviously function.
Speaker 1:It sounds like you reached for TikTok because you needed to share this information in some way, but was there also a desire to find others or community who was aware of it?
Speaker 2:Certainly I would say so. I mean one. The whole reason that I discovered the concept of foreskin restoration was because I was searching on on Reddit for any Reddit communities surrounding foragen And there there is one on Reddit. There's only a few thousand people in there, but just by. I guess more than happenstance, because the algorithm will be like okay, you follow foragen, some other, some other people in that community follow or or slash foreskin restoration, the the restoration subreddit, and I did find a tremendous amount of community in there and there are still dozens of people I talked to pretty regularly from that community. So I wouldn't say it was necessarily a conscious motivation of mine, but it may have been a very strong subconscious one.
Speaker 1:And one of the things I've noticed is that intactivist communities kind of tend to live on certain platforms. So the the older activists are all on Facebook and they kind of live there And I don't think people realize how segregated certain communities are by platform. So I noticed that there's a very different flavor to the intactivism that exists on Reddit And there's a whole community on TikTok that I don't think many of the older activists are even aware of. So I would be curious to know from you what you perceive as the people you've interacted with on TikTok. What are they like, what's the energy like there, what are the interactions like there And how is that different?
Speaker 2:Well, it depends on if you're you're asking about it sounds like you're asking about the, the fellow creators in that environment And I would say, in TikTok, it's the best.
Speaker 2:I mean the people that are willing to show their face and give their personal experience and and even if not doing that, just just advocating for something that is traumatic to many Americans, just to hear, just to hear the word circumcision, It takes a pretty grounded person and integrity And that's usually very positive. So I've had many great relationships from from just communicating with fellow creators on TikTok to advocate for this issue And of course, if you're talking about the consumer on TikTok, it's a very, very different answer there.
Speaker 1:I'm interested in both, so so tell me about the audience in the general public too, right?
Speaker 2:I mean it's, it's, it's a. It goes from zero to 100. I mean it could be, it could be them telling you that you know it's a. It's a wonderful thing that they, they almost males in our country a significant level of our sensation ablated and destroyed at birth because men are the primary, the primary perpetrators of sexual assault, sexual violence And and they say that in a lot less, i guess a lot more Kirk terms than I just put you know very aggressive and it does often get that bad.
Speaker 2:I mean it isn't, that's not a rarity by any, by any means. And of course I think if you think about it a little bit, it's. It's easy to understand why that is because maybe they did it to their child, maybe they, their partner, had it done, maybe maybe it was done to them. So it's quite obvious that that's kind of a defense mechanism, but it could be very positive. I mean there are a lot of people, especially in other cultures, that see this content and support it wholeheartedly, and they'll even support you wholeheartedly. They'll get direct messages from them expressing, you know, just how courageous it is what you're doing, and the level of emotional support you can get from people who see what you're doing is tremendously valuable and even, frankly, an ethical and moral necessity in this, in this culture. So it really does range drastically.
Speaker 1:Hearing you describe it, it sounds a lot closer to street activism than social media activism, because you're putting your face out there and talking to people And it's the interactions you're describing sound a lot closer to the interactions I've heard of activists having when they go into a protest and they're just talking to people in the street, because TikTok will go across the feed of everyone and it gets pushed to people who interact with it and the people who interact are either going to be supportive or emotionally reactive to the content in some way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i would definitely say that there's something missing when you're advocating online, in the sense that the person's physical energy is absent from the situation, as is yours. I've I've protested with the blood same man a couple of times and it is quite different You, but you very seldom get people really coming up to you and saying something. I think in both of those times that I I did protest with them in person. I'm not sure I ever really had a conversation with anyone, so for me it was more just a matter of accessibility. And in the beginning stages and even up until now, most of what I do in terms of the form of my video is just reply to comments. So it's kind of like you're having a mini conversation with people and you'll often go back and forth and reply to each other's comments and it's like you're speaking directly to one person while everyone else listens, kind of like this, but in a much more chopped up version.
Speaker 2:But I still think that there's something that's that's naked from that or absent from that situation where they're, they're entered because it's a lot more difficult to talk about this face to face with somebody. It just is. It might seem like kind of ineffable, but there's an energy that's absent when you're not physically in front of a person. I guess it could just be, if we want to talk about it, like evolutionarily. There's no threat of violence. You know there's no threat. Threat of direct violence.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it also sounds like, for because I'm an introvert as well. there's an advantage there where you don't get the emotional drain that sometimes comes from intense social interaction, but you still get to put your energy out there in an emotional, connected way.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, yeah, absolutely For sure, and I think that, again, i wasn't, i wasn't very comfortable doing it. I just I felt it had to be done. Even as introverted as I am, it had to be done and I didn't think I didn't expect anyone to be doing it, and I was pleasantly surprised when I saw a dozen or so creators at the time that I connected with pretty quickly in a matter of days or weeks. So that was. That was wonderful to see.
Speaker 2:And one thing I will talk about or will mention with regards to activism on TikTok, activism of any kind. I didn't know this going in. I just knew that offhand. You know TikTok was a very popular app at the time, a couple of years ago now, and I but what I recently, what I discovered very quickly after making my first two videos, was this concept of the for you page, where most of your content, like a good 95 to 99% of it, is seen by people who aren't searching for that topic to hear you specifically or that topic in general, and which is crucial for a human rights issue like this, where people don't even see it as a human rights issue. It doesn't, it doesn't come up like, for instance, someone like myself, who cares deeply about it now, was never introduced to it for the first 25 years of his life, and so it's very important for unknown human rights issues or ones that are don't have a tremendous amount of awareness, or very little.
Speaker 1:I need to get on that more. I know that the short form video that TikTok popularized is now what's on every platform. That's Instagram, that's YouTube And I've. I did a podcast in part because I knew I could break it into shorter videos and I was originally thinking of doing that for YouTube, but I just haven't put the time in yet to breaking this down into things for TikTok and all those platforms. So eventually it's going to come.
Speaker 2:I think that would be. I almost want to say that's more important if you're trying to acquire followers, Because-.
Speaker 1:Oh, i know it is. I know it is, i know it's something I need to do. In the past, i've either had to do it myself or I have to pay someone to do it, and so you know-.
Speaker 2:It doesn't take much because when I started I was doing four or five videos a day, which might sound like a lot, but I wasn't. it wasn't professional, It was just Yeah, one.
Speaker 1:It doesn't have to be.
Speaker 2:You know it wasn't professional at all. I didn't script anything And it just didn't. it took maybe 20 minutes a day if I was going kind of hard at it, and yeah, and several months I had thousands of followers, which again isn't a lot, but it's not necessarily-. I think that in a year someone who is taking it pretty seriously and by seriously I mean just posting as frequently as possible could get to 50K in a year even for this subject, and that's not a joke anymore. I don't think. But it's tough at that point because then you have to deal with, specifically on TikTok, people reporting you constantly breaking what would they call it, the community guidelines. You know being tempered and being permanently banned.
Speaker 2:I've been permanently banned And I recovered my account because I had discovered that there was a feedback link on TikTok's website And I just wrote up a semi-formal but terse email saying I talk about a human rights issue, none of my content infringed upon the community guidelines. Thank you, it's pretty much it, and I spammed them, you know, both times a day, just sending the same thing, until three days later they gave it back.
Speaker 2:I'm amazed that worked, but I'm glad it did I know, and it's worked several times, but that's especially once you get to. It could just be because I only have 12,000 followers or whatever I have now. So but, and I think it's part of the reason, i haven't really been focused on trying to grow so much, because I wonder what would happen if I made it to six figures. But at that point, you know you, actually you have a tremendous amount of influence, i feel like, at least relatively so, certainly with respect to this issue. I mean, i don't, i'm not sure there are any, any people who have a six, six figure audience who are talking solely about genital mutilation of infants. I mean, that's I don't think anyone has. That. I'd love to be proved wrong. But but once you do, of course, the, the, the disproportionate amount of people reporting you to tick talk for infringement upon community guidelines is going to be pretty astronomical.
Speaker 1:And they're just doing that because you're talking about things that pertain to human sexuality and that's going to get bumped in with all the stuff that's just showing human sexuality.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, and I mean I think that that's the the sexuality part's kind of the scapegoat of it, the real motivation of trauma. I mean the fact that, like again, i can't, i couldn't imagine what it'd be like to to have a child and elect for this for them, even mistakenly, you know, being lied to and being completely ignorant of the situation, but recognizing that you know your signature caused this to happen to your kids, like that's so apparent to me that that's where those reports are coming from primarily.
Speaker 1:Give me one second. I have one thing I need to fix in the background.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:I know what that is now. Sorry, i was having a technical thing because I'm using a new platform.
Speaker 2:Wait. I want to say I feel like if you posted three to five times a day on TikTok for a year, i would be flabbergasted if you didn't have 25,000 followers at the end of the year.
Speaker 1:Interesting. You're pushing me in the direction a little bit. I would consider. Here's what I'd really like.
Speaker 1:There are some people who've gotten big on TikTok not by posting themselves, but by having their interview clips thrown across multiple channels. I know that you know and rotate his strategy, if you will, was he just got like 50 accounts all posting interview clips of him. In the algorithm, if you liked, one of them would blast you with 50 more accounts that were just him talking. He didn't post himself on TikTok. He was paying people to do it for him. I'm putting that out there because there's a lot of clips of me speaking on the internet. There's a lot of episodes of this podcast. You have my permission to go and post them all over the internet. If you want to build yourself a 50,000 person account on the back of my content, i'm fine with it, as long as you're posting the good clips.
Speaker 1:Part of the reason I'm creating a long tail of content is so that I can do that. It's also the reason that I have guests on multiple issues, not just because I'm interested in multiple issues, but I figure that someone who's interested in the history of human rights or the school system or the subjects like natural birth. They're going to be interested in this too. It's one of those things where I it's also like I don't know if I want to put in the time for an audience that I don't own. That's always been the other debate for me is I like having an email list because I own it and TikTok is? there's that algorithm which I know is powerful. I know it brings you to the people who wouldn't otherwise see you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. It's really, i think, a labor of love at the end of the day, which is why I've kind of really fallen back on how many videos I've posted in the past several months. It's really like you said, you don't own it, it's really just trying to get it out there. The message and it is because it could be taken away from you in an instant, like you said, like you alluded to, that email list is yours. Nobody can take that from you.
Speaker 2:And, to that end, the way Andrew Tate decided to grow his presence online and become the most Googled man on the planet for some months was and perhaps even now, i'm not sure, but was just a pragmatic decision of just I want to save as much time as I possibly can. Let's have other people do it for me, and of course, he had the resources to achieve that. But it's not necessary. It's not that much time. If you want, if you don't want to be the most Googled man on the planet, if you just want a couple dozen thousand followers or maybe a hundred thousand, that doesn't take that much time, especially with a setup as professional as yours. I think that you'll get people that that would listen to you, especially if they're going to listen to me over and over again. I think they're listening to you over and over again on this subject in particular. So I think it's, i think it's probably worth it, but I it's hard to say once again, because you just don't own it. You just don't own it.
Speaker 1:Well, i might. I might have to start putting my. The other thing that's made me think I should start doing it is there's some AI tools for breaking podcast clips down into short form video, and if I can get the robots to do it for me, then then I'll be more likely to do it. Yeah, it's, they're not quite there yet. I tried one of them and it was a little. It was kind of janky. Okay, we'll see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it doesn't got to be perfect Once it is, you know you know, over perfection.
Speaker 1:I agree And you're you're showing. One of the things I've repeatedly told people is that if you make content of some kind, you really can just do it for a little bit of time each day, like the articles that I'm putting out on substack are about a half hour of work each, and, you know, an hour a week and you've got an ongoing place to publish basically. So it sounds like you're doing the same principle on TikTok of just, you know, 20 minutes a day posting a few videos answering people's questions, and that's what I've seen from people on TikTok. Creating, you know, content around. This is that they're reaching and having conversations with an audience that wouldn't normally hear this, and so I would be curious to hear more, too, about what sort of responses you've gotten. Are there any people who've had a shift of some kind as a result of hearing your content on there, or who thought about this issue, who wouldn't otherwise think about it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, i would say that it's out of the norm when that does happen, just by virtue of the nature of people and how they hold opinions and they change them. I had this conversation with Brother K and he confirmed it. I would say roughly 10% of the time. I told Brother K that you would get someone who actually changes their mind And it might be less than that He's give or take, but it's certainly less than half. I mean well, less than half. Most of the time when people come to an argument or discussion where opinions differ, especially about something so intimately related and related to your kids, related to sexuality, it's just that percentage is going to dwindle and dwindle, but it does happen. It does happen. I mean, sometimes it could be.
Speaker 2:You know, i'm honest, i'm honest and open, kirk Frank, with a person that I'm not here to change your mind. You know, i understand that these one to three minute clips are not going to be necessarily sufficient, especially for a scientific person, because it's just me talking. You know, what evidence do I have? I don't have, you know, enzo's model. I don't have a foreskin, i can't tell you the experience of that empirically, but I have, you know, many hours reading books and watching these documentaries, listening to lectures at Ivy League schools. Here's a resource. Go check it out.
Speaker 2:And then, when they come back if they ever do which I could probably count on one hand how many times that's happened they're like holy crap, i was very wrong And this could have been, and sometimes was someone who is very aggressive beforehand, but for some reason, you know, their intuition was maybe I should go watch this. It just doesn't happen that often, but there are people who are, who are already at a level of consciousness where they were open to being wrong right off the bat And your content did it. You know your content was just oh man, i didn't know any of this stuff, and just a simple Google search checks out. You know it checks out what you were saying. You know those facts were true And and there you are, i changed my mind and I'll protect my kids.
Speaker 1:So even if 10%, you said, change their mind, you've got 10,000 followers. 10% of that would be 1000 people, and I think that that is something that gets lost when talking about reaching people through media is oh, like, most people don't change their mind, but if only a small percent change their mind and the content has a large enough reach, those are big numbers.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's just the followers I mean, that's not people who decided not to follow me and just went on with their day And which is probably most of the people whose minds have been changed, people who didn't want to continue listening to the guy saying don't cut baby day to be to be kind of, you know, joe Rogan, and comical about it. But, yeah, be careful of the frame.
Speaker 1:You're losing your eyes sometimes. Here we go. You can adjust it up if you want to lean forward, but just you know we'll make sure we get we get a good job.
Speaker 2:I think this is as good as it gets right here All right.
Speaker 1:So what else? So you've been reaching people through TikTok, what else? What else have you been doing or discovered on your own journey with this issue?
Speaker 2:I mean, the only other place I've been extraordinarily active would be maybe extraordinarily, but been active in a community is the restoring. I mean particularly on Reddit. Like you said, there tends to be some segregation with respect to certain avenues in the interactivist community And Discord is pretty big, although I don't like that platform too much, so I don't know a lot about about that. Just the user experience for me isn't. I don't fancy it, but Reddit has been a place I've been active And then just in my personal life, i talk about this issue with a lot of people and a lot of.
Speaker 2:I meet a lot of people because I've done ride sharing quite a lot. I've given like a thousand rides in the past. I don't know how much time, but I've spoken with most of those people on this issue. It only recently got me in trouble, but I just don't really have much of a filter. I know everybody needs to know this And there's no good place to bring it up. There's no good place whatsoever. So, and most people have been amenable to having that discussion, all but one who did report me and I was banned for like a day, but but I'm fine now.
Speaker 1:Do you have bumper stickers on your car? when someone's Uber arrives, do you roll up?
Speaker 2:or whatever ride sharing platform. It's funny you out, because I do, i have your whole baby sticker on my bumper, but that's pretty subtle.
Speaker 1:That's true. I've seen some intacto cars that are not subtle.
Speaker 2:That was when I started the ride sharing. I had a four skin is not a burst effect, but I took that one off before I started giving the rides. You know, it's funny because the instance where I did actually get reported, i used thicker kid gloves than I ever did And in the report they said that I explicitly referred to my own personal genitalia. But what I actually said was I had an unconcential surgery that most males have in America And I, honest to God, left it at that and talked a little bit about human rights, never referred to genitalia, or let alone my own, and they knew what I was talking about. I'm 90% sure they had a son or multiple sons and that's why they consequently reported me. But most of the time you're not going to get that. It was once again kind of surprising to me how many people were willing to discuss it, perhaps out of being overly agreeable, maybe much of the time, but still a lot more people know, and that's all that matters to me.
Speaker 1:It's funny, sometimes the conversations that most offend people have nothing to do with what you said to them, but their level of capacity to be offended I'll put it that way or their preexisting triggers. I found that sometimes, when I'm publishing something, they're saying something that's very gentle. From my perspective, what determines whether how it's received often has nothing to do with me and it has to more to do with the other person, and it's also that it sounds like a lot of the time you're speaking to people, you're coming from a place where it's okay for you And that energy of this is a normal thing to talk about transfers to them, and so they fall into that frame.
Speaker 2:Well, that happens so frequently.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you said that And I've had people explicitly note that to me that this is something I don't ever talk about with people my own family, my own male friends We never talk about this, but for some reason with you I'm comfortable talking about it.
Speaker 2:I've had dozens of men after I do a TikTok live, which has been very successful for me in terms of how many people see it, how many followers I can acquire from it, but also been very successful at getting banned. I've never been more reported than when I do these lives, because sometimes you have 25,000 people that saw it over the course of an hour And you get a lot of eyeballs on it. But after that I'll sometimes mention my telegram or my Snapchat or something for men to come and inquire about respiration or just to chat about the issue and learn more. And I remember sometimes after a live I'd have a dozen people that added me on telegram or something and then we'll talk about it And they'll remark on that. They'll say I don't have anyone else that I can talk about this with, but it could have just been that phenomenon that you mentioned of just when you have a comfortability with the subject that translates and transposes into their own attitude.
Speaker 1:I'm curious what percentage of men that you speak with are interested in restoration or things like that, because you mentioned a significant portion becoming interested in that or reaching out to you and wanting to be involved in conversation around that or communities around that after speaking with them.
Speaker 2:Nearly all of them.
Speaker 1:Interesting. So once someone becomes aware of the issue, their next question is okay, well, what can I do about it? How can I solve?
Speaker 2:this for myself, absolutely Nearly all of them And in part because they just don't know that that restoration isn't, because they strike me as kind of gung-ho about it. What can I do about it? But they don't know the specific anatomical features of the foreskin, just how specialized it is and just how incomplete the ancient structured technique of foreskin restoration actually is. That's not to say you shouldn't do it. There's tremendous benefit to it relative to being circumcised. But it is still incomplete and it is as I've heard before and I kind of liked this. And this again doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.
Speaker 2:But it is kind of the wild west of body modification, which is also kind of ironic because we're just restoring something that we were born with, that every male is born with and has been born with for tens of millions of years if we extend back to our mammalian ancestors. So it's, even though it is kind of the wild west of body modification, it's just because it's such a sensitive part of our anatomy. It's something that hasn't been scientifically discovered, it's not popular, it's not quote normal by any means in most people's eyes. But ironically, we're not trying to augment ourselves, we're trying to put back something that was lost, which of course we can't actually do.
Speaker 1:I mean, is it the wild west, though? Because at this point, there have been tens of thousands of people who've done it, there's organizations dedicated to it, there's a subreddit. It's certainly more established than various other body modifications that people are interested in.
Speaker 2:For sure. I mean, i think. I mean I just think about how many people probably have gauges. It's probably millions. I think Ron Lau, who I know you've, i think you probably interviewed for Americans.
Speaker 1:He's in the documentary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i think he quoted, i think he said something like a quarter of a million men worldwide. he assumes. Now, let's say, even if it was double, that, even if it was a half a million, there's a lot more people getting piercings and gauges and probably breast augmentation and all that sort of.
Speaker 1:It's still more than the various transhumanist things people are interested in. So it's still more than people who've had, like, a computer chip implanted, or interested in neurolink or are wanting to do various other like gene therapy. It's more than that. I mean, these are things that people are talking about just as possibilities now, and I remember when I was growing up I read a book by someone who'd gotten a computer chip attached to their nervous system that allowed them to interface with certain things, and this was like a brand new thing that people were talking about. So that is what I would consider the wild wild west. Or there's a documentary I saw where someone injected something that was supposed to alter their DNA. Like that's something where people are doing stuff and no, i agree with you.
Speaker 2:I agree with you in actuality, like in reality. You're right, that is the wild west, because God only knows what's going to happen. We know what's going to happen. If you cover your glands, it's most likely going to dechlorinize and become mucosal again. You won't have the same kind of sensation you otherwise should have had. And we can talk a little bit about how much you may or may not have, because I feel like I have a pretty good concept of that, although it's certainly by no means objective or scientific, it just studied.
Speaker 1:You know. what I think you're getting at, though, with the Wild West comment is that it's not yet commercialized or publicized. I would might use the word underground in the sense that something like breast implants is commercialized. There are people who make their living doing that. You can see billboards for it in LA and Las Vegas and places like that. It's a known thing that people do. that's a part of the culture, to the point where people will make jokes about it, whereas this is a thing that exists, that not everyone is aware exists, and so, even though it's known how to do it, there are some people who are running businesses that sell products to help people do it. It's not established in the mainstream. the same way, i might use the word underground, but the process by which you do it is kind of established at this point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, but I think you're right, certainly it's. I think that it's sort of the Wild West because of that underground nature, but it's also because it's your most sensitive anatomy and your anatomy that, specifically for young men, you care very much about And you are doing something that is permanently altering it and it has not been studied. Perhaps most importantly, what you're going to feel and just how normal it's going to feel relative to being intact and feel and function. It's not assured for you. You just have what other men have done it and say. So that's really what kind of, in my mind, makes it the Wild West. You just don't know what the outcome is going to be.
Speaker 1:I wonder how much of that is socially constructed, though. On the other issues, so I mean there's things with breast implants where those go wrong or like they burst inside a woman's body or something that they used in the implant that was toxic. And it seems to me that those, because they involve a larger industry, there's this veneer of safety. That's while a doctor is doing it, so it must be safe, right, whereas I don't know if plastic surgery is actually that safe. And if you look at the outcomes of plastic surgery especially, you know photos of before and after people like doesn't always look that good.
Speaker 1:And there's someone I knew at a gym who had gauges in his ears and he stretched them to the point where they would move around too much when he ran And so he would wear headphones when he ran because like it was actually uncomfortable otherwise he had to have headphones to hold them in place. And that's something where I look at that and like I don't know if that's a body modification that he necessarily wanted to turn out that way. You know someone who had a lot of tattoos and I think that was probably something he did as a part of a punk phase or an interest in that subculture, and I wonder how much the safety of those other things is like socially constructed and maybe it isn't. Whereas you know this, i guess the safety risk is something that might be perceived as more serious because of the part of the body it involves, but I don't know that the safety difference is actually that different between it and other body modifications.
Speaker 2:I want to say it's safer.
Speaker 2:I haven't heard of that many anecdotes of people injuring themselves and more often than not it's going to be with, i would imagine with device use, because it's not just in it's.
Speaker 2:This is an assumption.
Speaker 2:I don't have data for this or even just very powerful anecdotes that I can rattle off the top of my head, but I just imagine if you're using something other than your own hands or for a tensioning system to the force that you're putting on, you're exerting upon the tissue that you want to expand through mitosis, you don't have that direct feedback from your own body, you're not the one doing it, and so I'd imagine most injuries can just be avoided by foregoing devices and doing it the way that men did it thousands of years ago, by using they used to use I forget the phrase, but it was like leather twine, because they didn't have that much to grow back right, because the circumcision of old was drastically different than the contemporary one And much of the glands was still covered, much of the head of the penis was still covered and it was mucosal.
Speaker 2:So all they had to do was just tie a little bit of leather string or something and keep it there and eventually, over months or years, it would stretch back to where it should have been, and so I kind of think that that is the way to go keep it as simple as possible for those reasons, apart from for risk mitigation, but for other reasons as well, which of course we can discuss if you wish.
Speaker 1:Well, i'm curious what sort of decision making process people go through around that, because restoration is a multi-year process based on everyone I've spoken to about it. Some people are able to do it quicker if they commit and they're young and healthy. There's also the possibility of some future technology allowing for a more complete regeneration, so there's talk of things like stem cells or gene. I mean, i've seen a lot of headlines too that say, oh, if you can make it another 30 years, then you'll live to 150, but the future is unknown. So I'm hopeful for that. but who knows? I'm curious what sort of decision making process people go through around this when you talk to them, because it's a decision that involves a lot more than just reason. It brings the whole of a person and all of their emotions and feelings and subconscious mind into it.
Speaker 2:Right. Well, i can share my experience, first, because I'm not sure that's a question of necessarily asked many people and they all seem to be very motivated and it's just because they recognize it's something they should have had. So there's not a lot of. Once they realize that it should be on their body, they want to get it back and they're very passionate to do that, especially when it pertains to their sexual fulfillment Interesting. They're a young man. they want to get that back. It's obvious. let me do something. Okay, this is all I can do. all right, i'll do that.
Speaker 2:And so I don't think there's that much beyond that, there's certainly men who start to restore and never finish, and it could be because it was just taking too long or too difficult or because, like you alluded to, there is potentially promise of something that is more regeneratively complete.
Speaker 2:And I would say for myself, it was kind of unique for me to discover this issue through one of those avenues that was addressing how to solve this problem for men.
Speaker 2:I discovered the issue of circumcision, the reality of it, through FORAGEN, which is, of course, a regenerative medicine company that you're familiar with.
Speaker 2:You did a podcast with the chief science officer and former chief operating officer of that company, which I'd absolutely recommend to anybody listening to learn more about that company. but we won't belabor the point, but that's how I discovered it, and so for about a month I didn't know about restoration. So I was just constantly asking myself how can we get more eyeballs on this company? How can we let people know this is an issue that needs to be heard and needs to be supported? And about a month later I was on Reddit and discovered the restoration forum and it took me about 24 hours to realize that, at least at the time, restoration was absolutely the way to go. And still sometimes I wonder if that's absolutely true because, again, we just don't know how it's going to impact a future surgery. But the consensus seems to be when you ask, even I gotta be careful about what I say here, because I've talked with some of the people in Foragen who probably wanted to keep some of this information.
Speaker 1:I can edit stuff out if that's the problem.
Speaker 2:I just know that they don't want to make any promises that they can't keep, but what I will say is that people I've talked to have been very confident that there shouldn't be any issue, although those same people are not scientists.
Speaker 1:This is true of every startup that anyone who starts a company or is trying to do something is doing that because they believe it's possible. Yet they are trying to do something that's never been done, and anytime you do that, there are unforeseen challenges. So, without even talking about any inside information, i've looked at their public stuff about how they plan to do it. It looks possible to me, and yet anytime you do something new, what is possible on paper might be completely different in practice.
Speaker 2:Yes, so they're very confident that achieving their mission is possible. I think it was Eleanor Bondioli, one of the chief scientists on the biologists on the team had said was absolutely it's possible. When Enzo asked if it was possible. But what I meant was whether it's possible to man who's already been restored. They don't like that question because they don't want to be sued if it's not possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, and it's like it's. We don't know what the impact would be on someone who's already what's and whatsoever.
Speaker 1:I also think it's possible using technologies that already exist now, and even in ways that forging isn't looking into. So I've seen stuff where people use sonic waves to regrow teeth that someone has lost. I've seen research around using gene therapies to do regenerative medicine, so injecting the DNA of an animal that already regrossed its body like a salamander. I've seen the there's the method that for Jen wants to use, which involves building a scaffolding out of stem cells. I actually think there's probably a dozen different ways to do it, and some of which already are possible with the technology we have now.
Speaker 1:You just need a pile of money to do, and so I'm one of the things I've dreamt of doing is getting you know like $10 million together and doing what Elon Musk did with SpaceX and saying this is you know, instead of the X prize, we're gonna have the D prize. First person to do this with you know these requirements you have to have the nerve endings, and the nerve endings have to work, and whatever else you put in there, first person to do this gets the pile of money, and then you just have teams compete. I feel like that would be a great way to do it. You know which you know you have to get a pile of money, but piles of money exist in the world.
Speaker 2:It's possible. That's a fantastic idea actually, And I do the D prize.
Speaker 1:Who will be the first to get the D? That's a great idea for sure, the memes write themselves.
Speaker 2:No, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, if this is possible, which I think we both assume that it is, it's not like four gens working on the only possible way to do that. They're just the farthest along and, frankly, the only that are working on it. And so, in the mind of someone like just the average person who sees either of our you know content your professional formal documentary or a three minute clip from me just in my bedroom on TikTok just what can I do to get this back? Because this really sucks for me? It's like, yeah, my kid's going to be protected, but what the hell am I supposed to do? They see, just stretching this with this ancient stretching technique, or, you know, wait for it, Wait for four. Jen.
Speaker 1:You know, what it strikes me is that the choice between those two has a lot to do with the availability and agency of the person. So if you want to do restoration as it exists now, you can take action on that immediately. If you want full regeneration, for most people that's beyond their agency. They can't start a company and go into regenerative medicine. So there there's a powerlessness there of that. What you want is outside your control, and it sounds like for a lot of people, what they're wanting from this process is to take something that was outside of their control and bring it back into their control Absolutely, whereas I'm insane enough and high agency enough that I look at a multimillion dollar price tag and go, oh, i'm going to go for that. I think I could pull it off.
Speaker 2:No, i mean you might be right. I mean I hope to God you do it Or someone else does. Someone else gets tipped off from your podcast and says that's a fucking brilliant idea. I'm going to do it.
Speaker 1:Well, i like. I like the prize idea because you just have to put the pile of money in escrow. You don't have to actually spend it. So if you're someone for whom money is is no object or that's not a significant amount of money, but maybe you want to have that experience just put it in the bank for a little while and let others do the work. That's my pitch for it. I don't use any Saudi oil sheiks, russian billionaires, people high up in governments around the world sitting on large sums of money, rich Wall Street Bankers. If you're watching this podcast, send me your money. I will hold it in escrow and return later with technology that allows you to have stronger orgasms and a larger piece.
Speaker 1:Oh man, that's funny, I think you're, you wouldn't trust $10 million to a picture.
Speaker 2:I think you're absolutely right When you you, when you mentioned that, the agency and the how did you put it?
Speaker 2:the agency and the power of the individual, or of the individual, so like how much money you have.
Speaker 2:I also think it comes down to how emotionally okay you are with your, your circumstance at present time, the degree that you have done the work to heal the trauma and let go of that being part of your everyday fulfillment, or every week or every month fulfillment, and just recognize, okay, i'm okay the way I am, and I may die without ever having this experience. I may die without ever having this. You know, biologically natural and naturally intended experience that I was supposed to have to even remotely the the way it should be, at least in terms of sensation, maybe not in terms of emotional fulfillment I mean, perhaps that's that can still be achieved to be identical as to what it should have been if you were intact but but certainly in terms of functionally and mechanically and sensationally. It's not, it's night and day, and so people who haven't overcome that and this is part of the reason I wanted to discuss this with you, because it seems as though, at least outside, looking in, that you've done a great deal of that work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i think that when I first started working on my film, that was a big part of the action I was taking, and it sounds like if someone needs change from the state that they're in, they might need it now and not later, and if they're emotionally okay with where they are, then they can have a longer time horizon. And so it sounds like a lot of the people coming to you or talking about restoration with you just found out about this issue. They haven't done any emotional integration around it yet. It's very raw for them And this is part of their process for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it's not necessarily going to achieve that result. I don't think You're not going to find full peace by restoring through stretching your remnant foreskin. Now, i know that's kind of a general statement, but I think it to be generally true, because it's not going to recover everything and someday you're gonna discover that, more likely than not. And so there will still be some kind of, you know, victimhood or gripe to attach yourself to emotionally or mentally that you still need to do some kind of emotional or psychological work to overcome and let go of. And so certainly it just comes down to fundamentally, restoration as a physical solution to potentially a psychological problem, in this sense of we're trying to find some kind of power through doing this and overcoming a problem that we were at one point in time powerless over happening to us, and the answer is actually a psychological solution.
Speaker 2:Even in the event of origin or some other surgery, it's still not necessarily going to heal the psychological trauma, because it's much more than just the loss of function and sensation, although that is a major fear that humans have. The thing that we fear the most, i think, is the loss of the capacity to experience. Of course, in absolute form, that's death itself. But, you know, the next closest thing might be the loss of capacity to experience sexual pleasure And so or intimacy, or love connection with another person physically, and so it does prey upon our deepest fear. But there's something extra to being thought upon. When you first enter the world, you're a fresh human being and you're supposed to be bonding with your mother and instead you're strapped to a board, and there's something extra there, psychologically, that's beyond just losing the structure that I do think needs to be healed, whether or not we get it back instantaneously.
Speaker 1:You just dropped one of the most interesting psychological, philosophical insights I've ever heard, which is the loss of experience is death. but death is when you can't experience new things, and so losing the ability to experience some things is a little bit of death.
Speaker 2:Oh, it is a death. It is certainly a death, and I'm not saying that experience doesn't end there. It certainly does, for our idea of ourselves. You know, anthony's not going to be here after his thoughts, you know, and so, but it is a mini death. I mean, it's for sure a mini death when a part dies. I mean if, in the sense that, like, you lose a leg, or maybe you lose some part of your body that is no longer functional, it's a death of that function and of that experience.
Speaker 1:But that's a really transformative philosophical insight. It explains why when a child dies it's so much more tragic than when an old person dies, because the child has more capacity for new experiences And it means that if someone is closing themselves off to new experiences, there's a way in which they're saying no to life, like there's so many interesting other things that you can get from that one insight, and so removing the capacity for someone to experience something is in a way, removed, like it's just like a small death. And what it strikes me is that it also means that if you can have a healing of some kind, you're actually having even more life because you've had the experience of loss and you've had the experience of the opposite perspective Exactly. And I mean I think you know philosophically like that's part of the reason that people on a spiritual level opt to experience negative experiences is so that they can have both experiences, have multiple perspectives.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i think Alan Watts talked about that a lot The English-American philosopher that you wouldn't know soft if you didn't know hard. You know just to make it as basic as possible. And on that end you know people that are, and men that are intact, that have had their foreskin from birth and added through sexual maturity. They often take it for granted Not all of them, of course, but they often do And meanwhile you know, once there's the first man who's regenerated, who lived his entire life sexually diminished and dysfunctional, will will be eternally grateful for it. And so it's just, it's just a matter of perspective.
Speaker 2:But I think that the fear of the loss of the capacity to experience it I focus in large part on the fear there That's why there's there's so much, so much trauma around this issue, whether so much denial, anger. You know there's the stages of grief because you're grieving. You're grieving something that is is kind of a death, that is a loss, and often for another person, not yourself, you know. Even if it happened to you, it's kind of a loss for your partner as well. It's in, and if it was your parent, it's a loss for your child. You know. God forbid.
Speaker 1:By the way, i'm curious have you done any emotional healing work around this issue in some way?
Speaker 2:I wouldn't say specifically I've definitely. I think the one thing I've tried to do is just psychologically try to surrender to whatever I'm feeling and not and not try to push it away. I wouldn't say I'm even remotely perfect in that. I would say it's a mustard seed of faith I have when I try to do that. So you know, maybe 10%, 5% of the time I'm doing that, but I think that's kind of just. It's really the only thing I've been doing, apart from just trying to be of service as much as I can, which I know you criticized actually in your podcast with Jordan Rell, that intactivism in and of itself isn't remotely therapy, it isn't remotely your own trauma healing or shadow work or whatever you want to call it. But yeah, i wouldn't say I've done a tremendous amount of work on it. I just, at this point, i try to not push away any of the negative emotion that I feel around it.
Speaker 1:I want to update that criticism a little bit, because I feel like there is a way that people do activism as a way to push the feeling away. In other words, if I can convince everyone else to have a different perspective on this issue, then I don't have to be with the feeling that comes right, being around people who are advocating for this awful thing, right. And there is also a way of doing activism where you really are being with someone else's different perspective and it. What strikes me about what you're doing, especially with the stuff on tiktok, is that you are very present with people who maybe don't want to be present with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or what you're doing is certainly by no means am I perfect with that. I've had some aggressive. No one has. I would put that statement in, but you did say something just now that struck a chord with me and it's also kind of insane that we believe this, that we can change the opinion of everybody and then we can be comfortable and relax and, okay, everyone agrees with me and they're not.
Speaker 2:There's no evil nor no, that's never gonna happen, and so you have to, to focus on being okay with that reality, which is another death, yet again, just the death of the idea that everyone's gonna be on the same page, but relation which happens, it's not achievable, it's not rational.
Speaker 1:That's interesting that you're letting go of the idea that you might experience this person changing their mind and being present with the mind that's in front of you which is unchanging Right yeah, and it's.
Speaker 2:It isn't furiating. Though. It isn't furiating when people can't see the so obvious back. It's just so obvious. I don't the only way to understand.
Speaker 1:Well, there's a way which they're saying no to a new experience too. They're saying no to the experience of having their mind changed or learning new information of like I'm good where I am right here, don't try to move me. Yeah, it's just, i don't want to grow.
Speaker 2:It's saying no to chaos.
Speaker 1:Well, hold on. why the word chaos?
Speaker 2:I think it was. I mean, i'm I'm borrowing from JBP, from Dr Peterson, when he said that most people say no to something new that they could learn because they don't believe that they could accept the or tolerate the chaos. They don't believe they could even really survive the chaos of learning that new ugly truth, and I put that dreadfully when I paraphrase that's. I think I got the point for us.
Speaker 1:I like that, i I love chaos. I'm trying to invite a little bit more chaos into the world.
Speaker 2:Well, maybe you can, if you're on up that ten million dollars.
Speaker 1:Think of the chaos I could cause with more money. That would be beautiful Motivation.
Speaker 2:I hope you get a ton.
Speaker 1:Well, it exists. I think this is podcasts, is the. I've had the idea for a while and shared it privately with some people. I like it because you know some people have said that we, maybe you, could start our own version of fortune and that would sort of put you in competition with them, whereas with this you're just creating a bounty for them, like if they're the ones, the first ones to get it, then they can have more money right and they can roll that into whatever they're going to do to promote it. You know.
Speaker 2:No, that's a really good. It's a really good point A and also B the competition is good. I mean, it just means that each party is gonna have to step it up. Step it up. Maybe we'll ask.
Speaker 1:Please, can we have more competition for making the world a better place? What a wonderful thing that right, right, absolutely.
Speaker 2:But no, i do think that is a brilliant idea.
Speaker 2:I'm not I'm not necessarily a person whose whose opinion in terms of business to value it's not predicated on any of my experience but I think that it sounds to me like a wonderful idea because you're not really risking much and you have far more parties ideally working on the solution, at least more than you'd imagine.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, i think it sounds a great idea, but, of course, the issue comes in funding. And if clopper wasn't able to pitch to to men, to because I don't know if you've seen his world world stem cell summit monologues, but my god, they were impressive. I mean, i've never seen someone talk about this issue with such a thorough nature and meanwhile, understanding how people's minds are going to work when they hear each fact, and in such a short time frame you know, for instance, that is 2015 or 2016 World Stem Cell Summit pitch you did it in like 15 minutes. It was shocking. And I was even more shocked to hear that there wasn't a millionaire in the audience who said, yeah, here's a check, but anyway, not to discourage, but if you can't do it, it's gonna be a tough, a tough thing to acquire that kind of funding.
Speaker 1:Maybe you know something like that I don't. I don't know what the audience would be like for that, so you can give the greatest pitch in the world, but if you're speaking to an audience that isn't like, i'm not expecting you know 10 million to show up because of this podcast, because I don't think that my average podcast listener has access to that kind of money nor the inclination to invest it. Based on what they heard on one podcast, my guess is that someone who had that kind of money, even if they were intrigued by the idea, would want to have a conversation with me and want a legal contract in place for exactly what we're doing here and what they probably more conversation, you know, ongoing, yeah yeah, be a whole
Speaker 2:thing, absolutely so nevertheless, it's a brilliant idea. And now my mind's just like how can you? how can you get it done? but that's the, that's the thing in us that just want to experience that for the average guy that learns this, at least at the outset we just want to experience it. We just, we just want I'll move back. We just want to experience that before we die. And it's once again that fear, and so I think that have one question I want to ask you is have you done any further podcast addressing the drama of this issue and how you specifically went about healing it and addressing it? and and also, i don't know if you're willing to share your experience within restoration or regeneration, where you're at with it now and how you've come to you know process being okay with the with the issue or not, the degree that you are what you said about just being present with the feeling is the first step of every healing method I've ever seen.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, so, and in fact I became interested in this issue through an experience I had during Zen meditation, and Zen meditation involves just sitting with whatever comes up into your mind, and you're not even meditating on a particular topic or feeling, you're just sitting with whatever wants to come up in that moment. So I really appreciated you saying that, because that's the first step of every healing method I've ever studied. First, you're present with what's there, and in meditation that's the only step. We just are present with what's there. I spent a really long time just doing Zen meditation and that got a lot of things for me, because I think the body and the mind want to heal and so if you're present with what's there, sometimes they'll work it out on their own without you trying to do anything. In other words, if you're just present with the feeling, it'll go through the stages of what it needs to go through in order to integrate, if it knows how to do that already, and a lot of the time, trauma has to do with feelings or things in the body that are stuck in some way. In other words, there might be a part of you that is stuck in a moment from when you were a kid and doesn't know that you're an adult now and the situation has changed. There's that story about an elephant that's tied to a post when it's very little and then it doesn't know, as it's gotten older, that that little piece of string is not as strong as it was for a baby elephant. And I've had a similar experience where there's a lot of things where I can't do that. Well, why can't I do that? oh, because I was in a situation growing up where people wouldn't let me do that. Okay, well, i'm not in that situation anymore and like once, once I'm present with that unconscious belief and notice it like I don't need to do a full process of any kind. It just kind of evaporates on its own. But other things it can be helpful to do a full process around.
Speaker 1:The other phrase I've used for healing processes is that they're kind of like permission slips, in the sense that if we're healing something psychologically, we could just believe something different and have it change because it's psychological. But sometimes there's a part of your mind that needs something to happen to show you that things have changed. In other words, if I, you know, psychologically, say, well, i can do this, your mind wants proof, not promises like show me, like, can you do that? I don't you know, whereas if you get reference experiences of the opposite, that's helpful. So I've heard the other thing, that healing is having the opposite experience. So if you were powerless and you have an experience of being empowered, that's been healed, right. And so I think that's the reason that many people are focused on physical regeneration, because it's a very obvious opposite experience that would be undeniable to your brain. So, like, if you look down and it's there again, clearly something has changed in an undeniable physical way, and whatever parts of you might not believe that you're healed, can't deny that anymore, right? so that's sort of an overview of healing.
Speaker 1:I could go into specific processes. Completion process is something that's worked really well for me, but that's not geared towards this issue. That's geared towards a feeling. So you have a feeling and you are present with that feeling and then you go towards the feeling. That's the first step, and then the other thing that's helped is somatic processes, so things where someone's work, you're working with the body in some way and just having opposite experiences. So I have a family, i have a child who's intact, like there's. There's something that has sort of psychologically quieted for me by bringing a child through the process of childhood in a way where they're safe in ways that I was not safe growing up and it's it's very interesting to do that. I feel like I'm seeing oh, this is who I would have been if I hadn't had any trauma, which is a really strange experience.
Speaker 2:I could only imagine he's great.
Speaker 1:I love him.
Speaker 2:He's the best, does that you know, does that then give you permission slips to do similar things like, or recognize that you maybe had more, maybe even have that power now. And it was just you were that elephant with the string.
Speaker 1:It kind of relate to that at all, but I feel like the biggest change has been normally don't curse on the podcast, but the only way I can express this is cursing. I give a lot less of a, in the sense that there's a small number of things that I care about. I care that my wife is happy and safe. I care that my child is happy and safe. I do not care about anyone else's opinion or what they think of me, and to the degree that others actions impact the things I care about, i care a little bit, but even then I don't care a lot.
Speaker 1:And so if someone is mad at me on the internet or doesn't like what I'm doing or has a different opinion, i kind of have an attitude of like, well, what are you gonna do about it?
Speaker 1:like I, my, my needs are dependent on those people being safe and having enough that I can stay alive, and beyond that I really don't care. And so when someone goes off, i mean even large problems, even things like larger conflicts in the world. I really don't care because, like the volume when all that's turned down, there have been one or two moments where I was worried about my, my son, being safe, and there wasn't any danger at all, it was just I was worried, and those were moments that, you know, i was like very present and very aware and like we have to make sure he's okay. And then he was okay and then that's it. So I think that's the biggest change. But, having gone through the experiences I did around this issue, it's kind of like what are you gonna do? you gonna hold me down and rip part of my body off, like that's already happened. So you know, fuck you, i'll do what I want, right? like like what are you gonna do to me? that hasn't already happened?
Speaker 2:I'm, i'm free you should post that. You should post that.
Speaker 1:On takedown first street how would I phrase that? I'll just post this clip. I've already said it no man.
Speaker 1:That'd be great but yeah, i feel like once you're present with the pain or the wound, i think a lot of people are afraid to have the feeling of that happening and they don't realize that once you're with the feeling, you felt it and it's done like that's it, it's over. You know, like I, whatever feelings I was gonna have around this issue, i've had them and the only ones that remain are the ones that I haven't been present with and you know, if I become aware of them, then I'll be present with them and I'll be done with them. That's pretty much it yeah.
Speaker 2:So it seems like the one thing was really, in a nutshell, meditate, you know, be as present as possible, fundamentally, and work to that end, and that's a very simple thing to do. I mean, it's a very simple thing, difficult, but it is very simple. I've been on a couple of meditation retreat, silent retreats, through the Buddhist context, although they did try to make it as naked as possible from that specific religion, but it was for Posenha in meditation, which Posenha is very close to Zen.
Speaker 1:I mean, it really is the breath when I lived in LA, there was a Zen group I sat with and there was a Vipassana group I sat with, and basically the only difference was the Vipassana group sometimes sat in chairs yeah, and of course you don't even need to do that.
Speaker 2:I mean you can be laying down. There's any posture, as long as they're with it, oh.
Speaker 1:Zen is strict about the post. Oh, it's Zen. Zen thinks those Vipassana people are, you know, a little little weak because they have to sit in a chair okay, so are you doing it, zen?
Speaker 2:are you close to Lotus as possible, or?
Speaker 1:yeah, i mean a lot of Americans, myself included, we can't do the like. The full Lotus posture? oh yeah, you know, i have a modified version of that. But Zen, i've heard it described as like it's a yoga position that you just hold for 20 minutes, like and. But you notice, if your mind starts to wander that position, people shift off that position. So if you start leaning, then it's a soft and assigned.
Speaker 2:Okay, you know no, i think that. I think that's it's. They're onto something there for sure.
Speaker 1:That sounds about right but you can look up the posture on the internet and find it and you know, start in five minutes yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:There's an app for that, many apps for that, i'm sure at this point so you said you've done meditation before, have you?
Speaker 1:what sort of experiences have you had from that?
Speaker 2:I wouldn't say any that are that profound, other than you know, after those retreats they were only about seven days and from what I've heard, you really is in order to go deep you have to be there for about three months and by there the meditation center that I was at was one in very Massachusetts called the Insight Meditation Society and, yeah, i guess a lot of people come from, even internationally, europe and maybe Asia, but primarily they come from it.
Speaker 1:Three months is a lot. I've heard of people having really intense experiences on like a week long retreat that's interesting, didn't happen to me, i would say.
Speaker 2:I would say that you know you smell better, you, any senses that are repressed are certainly heightened post the retreat, like immediately less mental noise. You know, just the ordinary things you expect to happen following your retreat, like that. But I wouldn't say anything particularly profound it could have been because when I was doing those I was a work retreat and so for, because I didn't have very much money, i could receive a huge discount on the retreats by doing, by signing up to be someone who would, you know, replenish the bathrooms, you know, the paper towels and maybe sweep here and there, do the housekeeping stuff, like that. So maybe I was getting half of the experience, but it's still. It's still had an impact for sure. It's still had it, you mean, for you're still in silence, you're not hearing, you're not talking to anybody you were chopping wooden, carrying potter.
Speaker 1:That counts. So that's a famous phrase about me. Really, yeah, chop wood, carry water. It's a saying that that you can do in work can be a meditation and that also after you've done the meditation and had a deep spiritual experience, you should you know, at the other scene I've heard around this after the X to see the laundry, like your daily tasks of life are still important oh, yeah, yeah, right for tour, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I'm sure it's hard for people to come back from that when they have a kind of ecstatic experience and not just stay there. But I don't know, i wouldn't know, i've never well, this stain.
Speaker 1:There is also a way of saying no to life, because you're saying no to the new experience of coming back down to reality and having to clean a toilet right.
Speaker 2:Right, yes, it's. I mean I can't speak from personal experience, of course, having any, any experience like that, but at least not sober, but but I do imagine for most people it must take a very long time. I mean I've had, i've heard from teachers at this, at this place, that quote-unquote teachers not to say they're not not disrespect to them, but just there's not much to teach. You know, it's you kind of you're learning on your own by just be confronted with with your own, your own thought process and your own feelings and emotions and all of that. But from from many of them that it often takes several months for for something like that to happen.
Speaker 2:And and I mean he was even Sam Harris who said that before his first retreat. Of course he's a, he's a you you're familiar with hopefully your audience is as well but he went on a kind of a hiatus for the better part of a decade, meditating almost, almost full-time, i think, for two years he was almost full-time but many times throughout his 20s And he said that before his first retreat, which I think was in Barry, massachusetts, he meditated for an hour a day for a full year And he still said, doing that and then going into my first silent meditation retreat. It didn't really prepare me, in particular for the 90-day retreat. You know, a week is fine but there's levels to it and levels that I'm not familiar with, certainly by experience, but at least conceptually I can understand that if you want some kind of profound clarity, or perhaps even healing regarding your own general mutilation, it might take a while.
Speaker 1:You know that's an interesting point that I think a lot of the times people want healing because the feeling is uncomfortable and they just want it to go away. And actually, if you give the feeling time, it will do what it needs to quicker than if you try to rush it. You know, is it saying, like, how long will this take? Well, it will take 15 minutes if we take our time and an hour if you try to make me rush. right? I think feelings are very similar in that if you don't want to be with them, they'll stick around longer. They're like cats If you don't want them around, they come towards you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, almost, like if you want it to be gone and you're fighting for it to leave, it's going to stick around and instead it's the law of reversed effort, which I think Alan Watts talked about in The Wisdom of Insecurity. I think that, yeah, that's the one I like the best out of his texts and I think that is the one where he discussed the law of reverse effort, and I won't go into it too much. but for those who are interested in what we're talking about here, that's the book to read. You might be able to speak to it. You might know exactly what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1:I am familiar with Alan Watts only through hour-long lectures that I've listened to online, but I understand his books are mostly just compilations of those lectures, so I think I've got a pretty good feel for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i think one of the examples he used to explain or describe the law of reversed effort that when you try to think, you float. and imagine if you're in a body of water, if you just lay there and you try to sink, you float. And if you struggle and try to float, you sink. And he uses a number of those kind of anecdotes or examples to describe how oftentimes, the more you want something, the more you fight for something, the more you need something. It ever alludes you, and vice versa the more you surrender, the more you relax, the more you become present, the more what you desire actually ends up coming to fruition.
Speaker 1:I was introduced to that concept through the Taddei Qing in a phrase in there called Wei-Wu-Wei, which means action without action, the idea being that you put an intention out into the universe and then let it come to you rather than taking any action towards it. In other words, you focus on the intention, you just completely forget about it and don't focus on it. And I first heard that concept when I was 18 and I just graduated high school. No, excuse me, it was right after I graduated film school And I didn't have anything lined up. I had no job, i had broken up with the person I was seeing, i'd moved back in with my family, and so when I shared that with me and I'd been trying to figure out what I was going to do, when I had kind of nothing going at the time, i thought, okay, well, i'm just going to not focus on the problem for three days. And no, it was a week, so I'm not going to focus on it for a week, and if after that week nothing's happened, i'll go back to worrying about stuff constantly.
Speaker 1:And that week I got a gig on a film shoot, and so I was getting paid. I had a job, and then I got an invite from someone who I'd known from film school saying, hey, are you moving out to LA because I need an editor, and I thought, well, i am now. And then you know, the trip out to LA, everything basically lined up. I had people to stay with the whole way and it worked out, and I've used that many times since of okay, if I've been focusing on this problem a long time, i'll just take a break from it and we'll go back to worrying later, but it's still going to be there in three days or it won't, and I won't have to worry anything to worry about anymore.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it just sounds like a very wise way to go about one's life, And I do, of course, wonder what the implications would be for the topic at hand if you go through life with that attitude And it's part of it. I wanted to talk with you about it because it seemed like you were a man who I believe it was your wife who shared with me that you did do some restoration early on, But let that go because you decided to go all in on the things that you found would actually work and serve you best, to come to a level of peace with respect to the issue, And this is what the result was. It seems to me like kind of essentially the most powerful way to go about it, because if you take it to its extreme, of course, maybe you will be the guy not you, but any person doing this and going through their life this way. Maybe you'll be the one that someone offers some money to put your money in escrow and get it back.
Speaker 1:Potentially, Well, i think going big for me was more exciting than restoration. So for me, restoration felt like a compromise of OK well, i can't get everything back, so I'll get some back. And I am more excited by taking all my chips and putting them on and seeing what happens And that's just more fun for me. When or lose It's more fun than making a safe bet. But that's also with my personality.
Speaker 2:Fair enough. Yeah, there's going to be some level of subjectivity to it and everybody is so massively idiosyncratic Although I think we are more similar than we are different but in terms of our skills and our personalities and we're very different And the way we're going to decide whether or not to rely upon it, i feel go ahead.
Speaker 1:I lost you there for a second. What were you saying?
Speaker 2:No, i was just saying. I think that the way that people respond to whether or not to restore or wait for regeneration, or perhaps just go all into the trauma and healing the trauma, becoming as present as possible, letting things happen the way that they're going to it, regardless of our desire for them to go a different way, and maybe the idea that something and the good will come out of it, something good, is exactly what we wanted. It's hard to conceptualize that with respect to this issue, of course, because think of how many men have lived and died being circumcised over the we live in a very different time.
Speaker 2:So there's that to take into account, with advances in regenerative medicine and and healing modalities of probably any kind advancing the way that they are, but there are a lot of. we wished for this and ended up dying, not getting it for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, see, that makes it more exciting to me, like we could be the first. No one's done this before.
Speaker 2:Right right, That's way more exciting. It's definitely one way to look at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if you tell me it's impossible. Like well, doesn't that make it more interesting? Isn't that a more new experience? Isn't that a bigger yes to life that you could do that to say no one's had this experience before and I'm going to be the first?
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you sign up for the trial right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, even if you don't, you're still, you know, like one of the first you know, for a first point in history, you can do this. Yeah, you've, by the way, you've asked about the healing more than once. What, how could I be of most help or use to you in terms of those questions, because I could do a whole podcast just on. You know any aspect of that, But I'm curious for you what the interest is or what would be most useful.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I mean, i think I think that, however you could be of service to me is probably how you could be of service to the average person struggling with that And, and it seems to me, most people just want to know what to do on a day to day, moment to moment basis. Just a pragmatic kind of instructional and what to do. You know what. What resource helped you the most? I know you said that the completion process was one of them. Another one Meditation. Okay, how do you do those X, y, you know, so really get meditation.
Speaker 1:You can look up the posture for Zen meditation online and start in like five minutes. Meditation is the most boring thing in the world. You sit and stare at a wall and do nothing And you're present with whatever's there. That's. That's basically a set of timer for 15 minutes And once you have done that set of timer for a half hour and then you can work your way up or you can just go all in on a meditation retreat, whatever it all works.
Speaker 1:I know there's a trend to detach meditation from spiritual traditions through things like mindfulness, but I think that a lot of the things that exist in those traditions are useful and there for a reason. So I find that people who want to introduce meditation as mindfulness don't know how to handle someone having a really big breakthrough or having something traumatic come up in meditation, Whereas existing spiritual traditions who've dealt with that for a long time have a way to handle that and have some ideas to how to respond to that, Whereas someone who's like doing mindfulness in a corporate setting doesn't necessarily know. So I think there is a lot of useful ideas in Buddhism and Zen that would be good for someone doing meditation. I would also say that the stuff that comes up around this issue is not separate from the rest of life. So I think there's a tendency in tact of a circle is to like, compartmentalize and say like well, this is a separate thing, But actually everything that exists on other issues, on spirituality, on business principles, on human nature, like that all still exists here. So the things that you would use to run a business are true. Whether or not your business is creating social change or having a breakthrough around stem cell research or any normal business, It's all still true. All those principles of healing are still true.
Speaker 1:Completion process has worked for me because, as the name suggests, it's about completing something. So a lot of therapy. You know you hear about someone going in to work on their childhood and they're still working on the same thing five, 10 years later. And it's like I don't, I want to be done. You know I, as we've talked about being present with it like there's, like I know there's a sort of paradox there of like you have to be present with it And, at the same time, being present with it is how it changes. So completion process you're present with a feeling, You validate it, You treat it as valid And then you go into the root cause, whatever that is. And so when I've done that, I'm not looking for anything related to this issue. It's just like I'm going to be present with this until I figure out where it's coming from, like why, what is the reason for this And sometimes a memory will come, Sometimes a feeling whatever's there is there, And then completion process.
Speaker 1:There's a process by which you meet the unmet need behind that feeling through visualization. So if you get the book, the completion process, there's a step by step guide in the back of it that just walks through the specific steps And then the whole book is, you know, teaching those in greater detail. And before I ever took a course on it, I read the book and just did it from that And probably did like 100 hours of that just from what I'd learned from the book. So, yeah, I mean like you can get a $10 book and just go from that. There's another book called Feeding Your Demons that uses a process from Tibetan Buddhism that I found really helpful, but I don't do that as much now. It's similar. It's the idea that parts of yourself that might feel, you know, like the title suggests, demonic or evil or bad in some way, things that are a personal demon for you are just parts of yourself that have an unmet need that you need to meet that need, and that's right, brown realization.
Speaker 2:I mean it's just it's digging deeper into the motivation or the precursor of whatever you're feeling. If there is one, you better find it, because whatever you're feeling might just be the surface of it.
Speaker 1:All right. So you said you had something you wanted to ask me before we finished.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we said that you meant that you, once you bought the $10 completion process book that you independently spent about 100 hours, you know, going through the exercises or instructions that were therein, and I guess I'm just wondering what did that look like, you know, was it you sitting in a room, almost kind of in a meditative kind of posture, and analyzing what was coming up? or were there actual practices that you had to perhaps journal or you know?
Speaker 1:Oh I'm. I was literally just sitting in a chair staring off into space for a half hour And then I'm like, okay, i got it. So I would go. Okay, what is? sometimes it was very deliberate about something I wanted. I would go.
Speaker 1:What is the part of me that is not a match to getting this particular thing in my life that I want? So what part of me, what feeling, what belief isn't going to get the thing that I want? Because very often the reason that people do not have the things that they want is because some part of them does not actually want it or is going in the opposite direction of that thing. So if you want a relationship but you have a belief that people can't be trusted or that having a relationship is going to take up all of your time, or that relationships aren't safe because people have hurt you in the past or whatever, it is, that belief, that aspect of you, is going to be pulling in the opposite direction of the thing that you want. So it's easier to shift that than to try to bulldoze aspects of yourself or beliefs that you have that are going in the opposite direction of what you want. And usually, if 100% of a person's consciousness, personality, who they are, is going for a thing, they usually get it right. If you're 100%, i am determined to do this, usually it works out. So what I would do is I would just sit and I'd go okay, what part of me isn't a match to the thing that I want or isn't going the direction that I want it to go? And I'm just going to be present with that and see what it has to say, what the feeling is there, what the belief is there and where did that come from and can I change that? So, very deliberately, going at those, one after the other, and I went to an event that Tilswan, the creator of the completion process, put on, where I learned this particular method from her of just if you want something, the reason that you might not be getting it if you haven't gotten it already, is that there might be aspects of your personality, you know, pulling in the opposite direction And I had wanted a particular kind of relationship And so I did that.
Speaker 1:I did that process for six months very consistently, and then met my wife. After that And I, literally the night that I met her around four o'clock, i went into the part of me that was not a match to the kind of woman that I was. I was kind of woman or sex that I wanted And I went into that around four o'clock and then I met her at six o'clock. So it was very quick, paid off very quickly And after I met her, all the parts of me that were scared of actually being in that relationship came up. And so when we would initially talk and get to know each other, sometimes we trigger each other and I go hold on, i am so upset right now. Give me a minute, i'm going to sit over here and then we'll continue this conversation. I would like sit down in the chair, i would do the process and I would come back and I would be fine. And what was previously a fight was no longer a fight And she saw that a couple of times was like what's going on, what are you doing? And so I taught her the process. And then she took to it and went beyond me and she's a practitioner right now and works with clients and has learned a whole bunch of other stuff too on top of that. That's also really useful and good. So that was what that looked like for me And I'm I use it in two ways.
Speaker 1:If something comes up, like, if there's a feeling or an incident oh my God, like, whatever it is that feeling that triggers me or whatever it is, i'll go into that. If it's like sort of a sudden thing, a reaction. What I mean by a trigger, by the way, is when the reaction is bigger than the situation calls for. So the sign of a trigger is that you're not just reacting to the situation, but the events in the past or beliefs you have about the situation that are not actually present in that moment. So if something really bad happens, like and you have a feeling about it, then it makes sense. You have a feeling about it, right? It's when you have an everyday occurrence and there's an overreaction to it. That's usually the sign of a trigger.
Speaker 1:And then the other way that I use it is that if there is something I am very consciously working towards, I would go into the part of me that isn't a match to that. So, like we were talking earlier about, you know, raising $10 million for a particular cause or initiative, i as I am right now, am probably not a match to $10 million. That feels like more than I can do right now And I'm not sure how I do it, and so if I was really seriously pursuing that goal, if it wasn't just an idea we were talking about, but something I was actually going to do, the first thing I do is I would sit down and go okay, what part of me is not a match to this? I like, well, i have to get a lawyer and I probably do much contracts. I don't know how to do that And I might need a 501c3. I'd probably have to have other people on the board, and are there other people I really trust on the board? Oh, wow, all my trust issues in a relationship are coming up right now. And now I have to have multiple other people who I would trust with $10 million. Like that's a new relationship.
Speaker 1:I have not had relationships in the past where there was that much at stake on them. You know the I mean there's my relationship to my wife, which obviously involves really significant things to me. But you know, like all of those things, i got to go. Okay, what is you know, do I, if I, if I meet someone who has that kind of money, am I able to express myself to them confidently? I think I could, but you know I'm going to go do a process and check right. So the other way that I use it is very consciously going towards the things that I want of okay, like, is there any part of me that isn't going that direction? And then, of course, once you do that, then you take action right.
Speaker 2:Right, and in this process, is you ever discover that, oh, maybe you actually didn't want that thing?
Speaker 1:Yes, oh yes. All the time You have to go into it with the awareness that maybe the part of you saying no is right Is an integrity, yeah. Yeah, Oh, totally Like I have done the process before, thinking that I wanted one thing and going actually I wanted that as a reaction to trauma. So if you're feeling unsafe, there was one around, you know.
Speaker 1:I was like I need control of this situation And it's like I want to control because I didn't feel safe And once I felt safe I could be present in it and I didn't need to control everything, right.
Speaker 1:So there's stuff like that all the time And it changes when you do the process and you have to trust that, like, maybe the part of you that is saying something different than your conscious mind is correct and is the part you should listen to. So every part of the philosophy of the practice is like all parts of you are trying to do what they think is best. You know there's, there's no part of you that is ever actually doing something that it doesn't think is good. It's just that, like in the real world, like in the external world, different people have different ideas of what is actually good. So the same, you know the in Zen, people meditate with their eyes open. A lot of meditations. You close your eyes and then they meditate with their eyes open, and part of the reason for that is the idea that the external world and the internal world are not different, that whatever exists out in the world is within you in some way.
Speaker 2:And certainly not as connected.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:No, yeah, one thing I did want to, because it sounds to me like a lot of people that end up restoring are restoring out of the fundamental, the fundamental response to, you know, trauma that you just alluded to. I forget exactly how you put it into words, but it struck me as that seems like that's what a lot of people are doing when they decide to stretch What. I'm not saying that that's a bad thing, i'm not trying to it Oh it's, it's a really good response for most people, oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And and most men, anecdotally, says the best thing they've ever done for themselves. And some, who, who maybe did it improperly, say it didn't really do much for them and it's like well, i understand why you grew one half of your foreskin, not the other, you didn't grow the cosa.
Speaker 2:And there are objective, you know, at least in terms of experience, measurable sensations, you will recover. but it is, of course, a compromise. And, and again, what, whether or not it's valuable, is kind of irrelevant. Of course it's valuable, you're going to have something there, and Usually things that are hard to achieve have some merit, which this of course does. But, staying on the top of trauma, it seems like a lot of us are really seeking that out because I need to do something to fix this now, and it's going to be a physical thing, because I know how to do that, whereas this, these processes like Zen, meditation or more, perhaps more appropriately, because it seems like a more complicated thing to do the completion process are more Ambiguous on how to start and keep going. And if am I doing it properly? It's not like oh, you just pinch here, you stretch, you put this device on and and in some months you're going to see results but I actually think that's really legitimate.
Speaker 1:There's a book Called swallowing the snake, which is about the way that men heal differently in the masculine form of healing, and one of the things that really recommends is that Men often want to do something. They. The physical process is actually really good, and talk therapy is often less effective for men because men heal differently and.
Speaker 1:So the process that book recommends and talks about and says that many men naturally do is Is that they create a physical, sacred or safe space of some kind and then they do something in that space that allows them to Move the energy of what they're feeling. And So I know that my dad did this very naturally When his mom, my grandfather or, excuse me, my grandmother died, so he would Go to the gravesite where she was buried and he would just spend time there and initially, right after she died, it was a significant amount of time and as time went on It was less, but that was his grieving process is he had a sacred space of some kind, which literally the gravesite, and he would be there and That was what allowed him to Feel what he needed to around that. And so It sounds to me like for a lot of men, force can. Restoration is a similar Process where there's obviously a sacred space. It's a part of their body that is sacred, but it's also a Space in their life and they're doing something physically that moves the energy over time.
Speaker 1:Hmm, and I think a lot of people try to get the same result through activism, and the challenge of that is that The space in which activism occurs is often not safe or sacred.
Speaker 1:A lot of times, activism involves going into spaces that aren't safe, that need to become safer in some way. But I Mean that's there's so many different masculine healing methods that revolve around that have created, i think, the space. Creating that element of it, too, is that Men often have to create space for others, and the general Everyday life is not a safe space for that. So it's very hard to go through a grieving process. Well, so you know, taking care of the family and going to work and getting everything done that you need to get done. So you have to kind of create a space that's separate from that, where it's like, okay, if I emotionally Fall apart or experience something really intense, it's okay to do that here, because I'm not letting anyone down by doing that here and no one is counting on me in this space. Like this is a space where it's okay for me to, you know, feel whatever I need to feel.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would say that resonates for myself and I did. I think I recall you mentioning that in the podcast She did with Jordan and rel.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna have to repost it on the main feed now, since you've brought it up a couple times.
Speaker 2:It was from a while ago valuable you did mention it, thank you the difference between That's the the genders, and how we we tend to want to heal and Men want to do something about it physically, and it would explain why so many men take to restoration the cofish and water, and I Think it just comes down to whether or not you're doing it with the proper intention. You know, perhaps perhaps Having some kind of marriage between your attitude when you're practicing Zen or practicing The completion process, going into With that same attitude, into your stretching technique or regiment or what have you, your regiment, and. But I definitely think there's there's something. However, however much the masculine Does heal that way I mean it's no accident that that you did a lot of the other internal stuff as well I don't think that there's.
Speaker 2:I think there's something extra there that you can't necessarily get By by doing something physical, but then again it's not that physical like creating a safe space for yourself, like you said your father had done to, to grieve properly. That's a very emotional thing. I mean, you're sitting there, you're dealing with your thoughts and your emotions and Processing them how you will, even though that is it kind of a physical seclusion. Maybe that's the aspect of it, that's masculine and whereas if you're restoring, it's a very direct, explicitly physical thing that you're doing. A physical Yeah.
Speaker 1:I think the purpose of the physical is to move the energetic. So It just sort of depends on how much you Feel like you need to move that. So I think for my dad, you know, being at the physical site of a gravestone, i don't know that you need to do a lot, much more than that, mmm-hmm, it just depends on what the person needs. I mean, there is something physical, though, about going to a particular location and standing there and being outside, and it's in nature and you know.
Speaker 2:Certainly certainly.
Speaker 1:So I have a question for you before we finish. Sure I Should have two questions, um one is there anything that we didn't talk about, that you would like to make sure we talk about, or anything I forgot to ask you or didn't we didn't get to, that you want to make sure we get to?
Speaker 2:I mean, i definitely had in my mind the the Desire to share an experience I had of with one young man who was circumcised when he was 20 years old in Spain, and in Spain, when they circumcised for medical reasons in adulthood they take as little as possible, or at least most of them do. He was unlucky in that he found a physician that Wanted to also take his frenulum, so he had a frenylectomy and he also had his Frenar band removed, which put him in an interesting position for people Who, like myself, for a restoring Or and in the sense that he's kind of at a place where it's it's sort of achievable. I mean, he was born with this foreskin. But for men who have a remnant left, likely have a damaged Frenulum, have no trace of a Frenar band, if they incur mitosis and generate Replicate skin cells from their inner mucosa that's remaining and their outer skin that's remaining, you're kind of gonna end up where he was, so it was you. It was unique in that he, he, he could kind of Have a very Because it was a quick turnaround, right like he's circumcised, he keeps his glands exposed because there's no Frenar band and Frenulum tethering it.
Speaker 2:Even though he can cover most of his glands. He keeps it exposed and three months later, once it's done healing, he has intercourse for the first time and And That's when the trauma kicked in and when he was suicidally depressed because he's like I had 20% of my sensation left and For the next eight months, after he found my content, i told him okay, maybe tether it, you know, at the the forefront of your glands with some kind of o-ring or string or something. And he did that. In eight months later It was much better. It became these glands, became your coastal again. Of course it wasn't as dry as as either of ours would be, because it was, you know, decades compared to several months. But he anecdotally said he's at about 60 to 70% of the his original sensation. And, of course, one thing I learned in just having conversations with this young man Who did end up healing his trauma Psychologically.
Speaker 2:Of course you may have you know, he doesn't have to deal with the trauma being cut on and betrayed, and he consented to this and all of that, but it was still a very traumatic thing for him to go through. He wondered whether or not he wanted to continue living. But but One thing I realized was that we're not necessarily chasing sensation. We're chasing sexual fulfillment and The joy that that would bring, and they're not necessarily like a linear kind of exchange, although the sensation is there for reasons, certainly has a function and and. But anyway, he told me any one thing I want to say, just because I want to reassure anybody who is, who's restoring, who may be struggled with a lot of the same mental blocks that I had in in Beginning that process of just, it won't be the same, it's not gonna. If that's something you really want to do and maybe you went through the completion process that that Brendan so eloquently described here earlier in the podcast And you've just, you've definitively discovered that this is what you want to do, you want to restore, but you're struggling with these negative beliefs that it won't be the same The most important thing, according to this young man, is having your glands being mucosal.
Speaker 2:You know, that is kind of the, the, the, i think an analogy he used was like having a mucosal glands is like Having is like being well fed. It's like the, it's like the meal of sex. It's kind of like the meal, like the dinner of sex, whereas Having the freenar band and the frengulum is kind of like the dessert. You know, it's a very different type of sensation. It is a fine, very fine touch sensation that will be missing if you restore. It will be missing. The closest thing would be Your scar line at the tip of your nascent foreskin, which is is not nothing. It will mimic that a little bit. It certainly won't be the same, but overall I do think it's. It's hard to it's hard to deny that Foreskin restoration is a pretty powerful modality For recovering sexual fulfillment and certainly the one that we have the most of Is the most effective today. Now maybe you'll be like Brendan and and you'll go all in on the trauma and be like ah, i'm okay, i'll relax for however long it takes to.
Speaker 1:To Looks like you want to say something here, but well, i was realizing that for me, my motivation is not sexual fulfillment, it's actually power. Oh, okay, i feel like There is a way in which I want power over my own reality and physical body. that Full regeneration would allow more, and so, because I have that motivation, that changes the equation for me. So it's like well, you can get more pleasure back if you did this, it's like, but I already have the power to do that. I'm kind of interested in the, the more power that I don't have yet.
Speaker 2:I think they're necessarily divorceable, i mean.
Speaker 1:What's that line from house of cards? everything is about sex, except for sex, which is about power.
Speaker 2:No, i don't. I there's, he's on to something there, like there's a power and being able to actually fulfill this or not, like there definitely is. No, that's an interesting realization. I feel like this for a lot of guys they just want the function back, you know, they just want the sensation. But to, to have the power of your own, it does strike me as a bit more conscious, to right, of being able to restore your human right. Is that what you kind of mean by power?
Speaker 1:No, by power I mean power, human right, human right, i don't know. I want power. Okay this, by the way, is the other thing that happens. If you do a lot of internal work is, i think, for a lot of people, admitting That they want power is something in their shadow. Well, i've like no, that's not not supposed to want. They're like no.
Speaker 2:Power is positive for Yeah, force is negative. A lot of people say derogatorily they use the word power. There's nothing negative about power. Power is bone, Yeah, or isn't it? they really mean force. I.
Speaker 1:Appreciate that distinction, that's. that's very true.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not one that I made, it's one that dr David R Hawkins.
Speaker 1:So people check out that oh, oh, getting some check out very esoteric teachings that may or may not be on the shelf behind me into this conversation. Yeah, okay, so this is the second question that I wanted to ask, which is that I I was debating whether or not to talk about Completion process on this podcast and, and to the degree that I did in our conversation, because I feel like there's two reasons. One, i feel like it's kind of a secret weapon that I have and I Don't know if I want to give it away and to. I've had some people get really upset about the fact that I use completion process to the point where one wrote a hit piece just on that with all sorts of false and stupid things in it. Which man there's?
Speaker 1:there's a lot I could say about that. It's one of those things where, you know, in a movement where the previous leader, jonathan Conti, committed suicide, i think it should raise huge red flags. If someone writes a hit piece on someone else's healing method Or the way that they're like, am I healing my trauma wrong? You know, is essentially the the Argument that I I saw in this piece Like that should raise red flags, and the fact that it didn't raise is more red flags for me And it's also I think people need healing around this and if something you know this has worked for me, i've never Really said that like it should be a part of the movement in any way or anything like that. It's just like I did this and it helped and you know, maybe it helped you too. That's the sort of the extent of it.
Speaker 1:But I have a debate of like also. I don't know if I want to put pearls before swine. So like this is so effective for me And I know there's gonna be some people who are like we'll prove it or like you know It doesn't. Like I don't care. Like there's an element there of like I don't want you to know how to use this. Like you don't deserve the gains I've got from this. So I Notice that came up in our conversation to the point where I was thinking like should I edit that out? Should I not include that? I would be curious to hear your perspective on this internal debate that I'm having.
Speaker 2:I Don't know. I mean, i kind of feel like you could go with. I've certainly had some of that just in producing any of the short form videos I've done on Tiktok. But you never know who's. If you get even one person I'll use this analogy. I've often said in doing the videos that I've done on Tiktok and recording them and and posting them, if I just get one, if I just get one child to be spared, and by that, by that logic, like if you just get one person maybe to try this and and find that process very valuable to them, and maybe it'll do even what it did for you or them, it was worth it to share it. And the rest of the noise, who cares whether they deserve it or not? who cares whether they use it or not? That's my attitude toward it. I mean, and if it's a secret weapon, if you're scared of someone actually using finding a valuable, i think that might be Something within yourself. Don't tell me like co-opt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i mean, i know to get the amount Out of it that I've gotten out of it, they would have to put that much into it. So it's a bit like a workout in the sense that if you were to post your workout routine, Right, i understand now. Maybe that's your secret weapon, but like someone's still got to go in the gym and lift them, maybe you're worried that people will find it not valuable or ineffective.
Speaker 2:It looks poorly on your image image publicly.
Speaker 1:You know what you might, that might be closer. It's like I don't want to put a secret weapon out there or something that's that good and then have someone Not get it or like oh, i tried it and I didn't work right. Did you Like it's? it's, it's sort Yeah, it's sort of like when someone's like oh, i tried CrossFit, i went to one workout and I'm not in shape yet, and it's like But did you try it though? Is that what?
Speaker 1:trying it means or I meditated once in it and just my head hurt. It's like good, stay with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i guess I think that that's it that I don't want to give. Oh, it's, it would be. It feels to me like it might be painful to To see the, the foolishness In response to something that good. And it's it's. Also. I have the impulse that you know occult teachers have had throughout the Ages of like I got to put this behind a wall of some kind and makes him when go through an initiation Before I'll show this to them. We got to hide this and got to hide this in some encoded grimoire.
Speaker 2:It sounds like you have special love for that particular modality. That it seems kind of distinct from even Zen.
Speaker 1:It's worked for me, but I think it's there's a complexity to it that Zen doesn't have. So You sit and you meditate and and that's it, and Completion process has a lot more steps. So the first step is you sit and you meditate with the feeling you're just present with it, but then there's some stuff you do after that and so, yeah, it's, it's the feeling. It's the feeling you get if you saw someone playing your favorite instrument badly or Doing a martial art poorly, if, like, i Like this, but you're, you got to work on that. And it's also the the feeling of rejection that might come from, like someone not even giving something a chance, like not even actually Hearing it out, which maybe this is something you know a feeling to go Yeah, for my my next session.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I said I'm mentally valuable to tell people what's worked for you and however they respond is however they respond and you're gonna get every possible.
Speaker 1:All right, i found the next thing I'm going into. I wrote a town. This is also, by the way, why I find the process valuable. Is that, like in a conversation with you? I have a feeling come up and I'm like, oh, i don't like that. You know this is. And I'm like, oh, no, like now I see the next thing That I'm gonna shift in. Just doesn't that, and it's yeah, and that's gonna be so valuable of you. Know, now I'll be able to put even bigger Pearls out to my audience, you things that are even more personal to me, and I will be Totally impervious to it, whatever reaction I get. And if some people don't get it, that's like that's the next thing, but I'm gonna do that before I release the episode. So, if you're watching this, if you see this, i'm even stronger than before.
Speaker 2:All right.
Speaker 1:Anyway, all right, i found the thing there. I found the thing there. I'm looking, i'm writing it down, i'm gonna go into it later. This, by the way, is also How how my relationship works, is that? One of the things I found in my relationship with Christina and my wife is that whenever there's a conflict between us, we both We both have Something to go into, because our, our minds and our trauma are very similar, but our coping mechanisms are often opposite. So in a particular situation growing up, her reaction was to retreat, mine was to to aggressively advance, and so, like, those coping mechanisms don't work with each other, because she retreats and I advance, and it's like why? you know, like that just that's no good. But then we go into it and Now we're both, that all that goes away, right, but it's, you know, having someone who will do the work with you is really good, because then, instead of having the same fight over and over again, you just deal with it and then it's over.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that makes sense. I mean, i think that.
Speaker 1:I lost what's that? Yeah, go ahead.
Speaker 2:Your audio cut out for your audio cut out for a second Yeah, I've been getting calls several times since we started this. I don't know it doesn't end up happening, but it's happened now. Why don't?
Speaker 1:people want to connect with you when you're connecting with me.
Speaker 2:But, anyway, I don't remember, um, no, just that you said yeah, that makes no, there's a power. I mean it's kind of like how, if you, if you have restoring buddies, i mean it's a. It's different when it's your actual life partner. Yeah, that's you, it's, it's probably that times a million, i mean.
Speaker 1:Sorry the phrase restoring buddies It's boring buddy Uh Is Hilarious and a little bit, i know, i and.
Speaker 2:I get it, i get it. No, it's. It's of course What, uh, what people might think, but that's exactly what they are their zoom meetings even within the reddit.
Speaker 1:Um, okay, hold on if you start a podcast called the restoring bros That's just a bunch of dudes in a discord chat talking about this.
Speaker 2:That would be hilarious.
Speaker 1:Oh my god, i think you should do it. We've we've just discovered podcast gold here.
Speaker 2:That would be hilarious And you might get a lot of. You would certainly get a lot of people who would want to watch that, just to laugh.
Speaker 1:If you start each podcast with everyone introducing themselves and how much coverage they have so far, like what up? I'm john. I'm at c4 right now, like Done, it's happening.
Speaker 2:That'd be hilarious. No, that would be. They could take.
Speaker 1:They could take live callers. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 2:Oh, that would get ugly. That would get very ugly very quickly. We would all have to be doing Why would it be completion process and It'd be a lot of angry. Why would it be ugly? There would be a lot of angry people.
Speaker 1:They called into your show, though, like what do they have to be mad about? Yeah, well hang up.
Speaker 2:I saw a post recently that um That shared an anecdote of a mother who, uh, left her son intact And somehow someway his friend who was circumcised discovered that it is foreskin. So the circumcised male went to the mother and Said why does he have that? and then, long story short, she started trying to sell The other mother on circumcision. Why did she do that? She did that because she wanted to avoid having That conversation brought up with her child. So naturally there would be a lot of people who would be upset if we had a podcast where men were actively restoring Their son could then hear That they maybe did so, the elephant would be out of the bag. You're naturally always going to get people very pissed off with you Whenever you're talking about this issue.
Speaker 1:But I rate callers are great for radio, are you kidding?
Speaker 2:It's true.
Speaker 1:It is true, Yeah, if you once they call in their entertainment you just got to get some catchphrases and memes to dunk on this.
Speaker 2:If you can, if you can be there with them, be present, be uh um, undisturbed, or you know just that piece with them. Yeah, absolutely, i put new remorse you. Drama is an excellent entertainment.
Speaker 1:All right. So I think the big takeaways from this conversation are action points. So that I got to start Getting my clips on tech talk and short form video. Uh, you got to start a podcast called the restoring bros and I got a raise 10 million dollars. Pretty much, that's our uh. That's what we've learned from this conversation. Our next action steps pretty clear.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and it sounds like it.
Speaker 1:All right, anthis or anything else you want to talk about before we finish up.
Speaker 2:No, i think, that's pretty much it. I think I think, uh, there'll be a lot for people to do with this information, who have just learned this, this reality, and and don't know what to do, and uh, here's some things you can do.
Speaker 1:One last question Where can people find you? Where should they go and follow you?
Speaker 2:Tech talks really deeply. Um, i mean I still what's the app there now? Oh, it's ad bloodstained man. So it's not the thing I didn't realize you had the that label, i'm the one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no, i okayed it with. Uh, i think I did. At least they know about it and they don't care. You know other case, fine with it. Um, but my last name is blood. So I just thought, you know, kind of worked. This is all I talk about. On that, i haven't. I haven't, you know, since I discovered it I haven't cared to. I have many other interests but Nothing I care to talk about publicly. This is the one thing where I'm very sure that You know generally, my attitude toward it is correct, at least maybe not my attitude, but generally the Yeah, this statements I'm going to make regarding this issue I'm confident to put out there publicly. So that's all I talk about, hence the name. But on all the on all other platforms, i have some version of blood statement ever was available. So but if you want to reach out, you know direct message me there. That's pretty much how to do it.
Speaker 1:Cool, well, send me the links for that. I'll put them in the show notes and there's anything else you want to add before we finish up?
Speaker 2:None whatsoever other other than Other, than I admire the way that you handled this. I think very, very few people That discovered this you're certainly very few that I've met Uh, i've handled the grief of it the way that you haven't done something to actually Change that within themselves, mentally and emotionally, and if we all did that, god only knows How how good this world would be. So that's it.
Speaker 1:I appreciate that it's Like you've said it I I have had time, so The beginning it's different than where I am now, and probably 10 years from now I don't even know where I'll be.
Speaker 2:so Right, you'll have 10 think Going, throw at the.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll see No promises there, all right. Well, anthony, thank you so much for coming on. Uh, i really appreciate it. It's been a good, good conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me, brendon, it's a pleasure, thank you for listening to the brendon morata show.
Speaker 1:If you liked this episode, please leave a positive review on whatever platform you listen to podcasts on. If you really liked this episode, please support the show and become a paying subscriber, giving you access to special bonus material only available to supporters of the show. I want to thank you for listening to this show and I will talk to you all later.