Men, Body Image, Fitness & Porn: Healing Masculinity, Dysmorphia, and Sexual Energy

In this episode of Bridger of Worlds, I open up about a topic most men silently battle with: body image issues and the hidden pain of body dysmorphic disorder. For years, I carried the belief that my worth as a man was tied to the size, shape, or perfection of my body. In this conversation, I share how that distorted self-perception shaped my training, my masculinity, and the way I moved through the world.

I also dive into a difficult truth: pornography profoundly influences how men see themselves. The idealized, hyper-perfect physiques we see on screen create subconscious comparisons that eat away at confidence, sexual expression, and personal power. I explore how constant visual overstimulation affects men’s psychology, self-esteem, and their connection to their primal masculine essence.

This episode is a journey into masculine embodiment, sexual energy awareness, and the healing union between mind and body. I speak about the energetic dynamics between the masculine and feminine within fitness, how to work with sexual life-force energy instead of suppressing it, and why reclaiming the body is essential for every man walking the path of self-mastery.

In this episode, I share:

• My personal story with body dysmorphia and masculine insecurity
• How training, discipline, and embodiment helped me reclaim my confidence
• The hidden impact of pornography on male body image and sexual energy
• Why men unconsciously compare themselves to idealized porn actors
• How these comparisons create internal distortions and psychological complexes
• The energetic link between fitness, sexuality, and the masculine–feminine polarity
• Why men must learn to work with their sexual energy consciously
• A pathway to healing shame, rebuilding presence, and returning to the body as sacred

If you’re ready to reclaim your power, dismantle shame, and step into deeper embodiment, this episode will meet you exactly where you are.

If this episode resonates, you can:

• Reach out to me directly for 1:1 men’s work
• Join my online men’s circle (upcoming)
• Read my writings on masculinity, embodiment, and sexual healing on my platforms
• Connect with me on social media for more content on masculine spiritual embodiment

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction and Welcome
• 0:17 Addressing Body Image Issues in Men
• 1:44 Personal Journey and Fitness Evolution
• 8:15 The Masculine and Feminine Dynamics in Fitness
• 18:11 The Importance of Emotional Integration
• 24:24 Conclusion and How to Connect

Transcript

Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Bridger of Worlds podcast. I'm your host Ioannis Kokkinos. Thank you so much for joining me. If you're on YouTube watching, thank you for tuning in and if you're on one of the podcast platforms, thank you for tuning in as well. 

Addressing Body Image Issues in Men

So today I want to talk about yet again another tough topic amongst men's circles, among the men's community.

It's something that a lot of men go through in silence. Um, it's often seen as more of a feminine issue or a issue or a, a pain point among women. And, um, women's circles. But it is a very present and relevant pain point in the realm of masculinity and manhood as well. So that pain point is body image issues.

Um, not want to really put labels on something. The term, the scientific term or the psychological term is body dysmorphic disorder. In a nutshell, it basically means that we don't quite see our body the way that it is, right? So we develop a psychological complex. When we look in the mirror, we have, let's say, a certain body, but we see something else because we're, we've become so obsessed and so stuck on wanting to look a certain way.

Um, so it just kind of blurs the lines there a little bit, right? A little bit. A lot. It can blur the lines a lot. I know this is very relevant in my journey. So I'll be talking a little bit about that. 

Personal Journey and Fitness Evolution

I want to bring it to the space because I was at the gym before and I've just been reflecting on my journey, but also evolution as far as like my fitness is concerned and the way my relationship to exercise and training has changed over the years.

I've been training like seriously and well since 2012, 2011, 2012, 2010 is when I had my knee injury. So if you've, if you've been following me for quite some time, I did talk about my knee injury in one of the earlier episodes. Uh, but this is technically a rebirth. This is technically like episode three. I just want to, to put a little small parenthesis because this is relevant.

All my previous episodes are still on YouTube and on the podcast platforms, especially on YouTube, you'd find them under another channel under the archives, whereas if you're on a podcast platform, you can very easily go and search among the earlier episodes. So basically, yeah, 2010 was my knee injury.

Which was like my wake up call, my cosmic slap in the face. And that was actually around the time I was finishing up my bachelor's in exercise science. So like my last term in university, I was also rehabilitating. I was on crutches till I was waiting for the surgery and then I got my degree, but it was a good year before I became a personal trainer.

So it is quite, very ironic that I developed such a love and passion for fitness and eating well and exercise because as a teenager I was the, I was one of those that used to forge notes to get out of gym class because I wasn't at all athletic. I wasn't at all comfortable in my body.

Again, if you've been following me for quite some time, you know that as a teenager I developed my pornography addiction. I had a food addiction junk food addiction, right? So all that pointed to total and complete disassociation of mind and body. So it's been quite a wild, epic, uh, or ridiculous ride. And I say ridiculous because it's really been up and down as far as my relationship to my body is concerned.

Right now, it's the best it's ever been. I do believe I have a very healthy, grounded relationship and connection to my body. But if I look back to five 10, especially like 15 years, I could not say the same. For back then, because of body image issues, because of body dysmorphic disorder. As a teenager, I was overweight, right?

So I was watching pornography. Obviously the men in porn are very fit. They're almost God-like, so I developed quite an obsession and compulsion as far as like my body's concerned and needing to look like that in order to be deemed masculine. And even after I quit the porn, and that stayed with me even when I started to train even as a personal trainer, even my earlier years when I started to really get active and fit, I still had that psychological component within me. I would look in the mirror and I would always see that I'm not muscular enough. I'm not, uh, um, ripped enough. I have yet to develop a six pack. But that doesn't mean I don't love my body. That doesn't mean that like my body is not good enough, worthy, or even masculine.

So I'm bringing this to the space today because I know a lot of men are suffering from this. I know it from personal experience. When I was a personal trainer and used to work with men, I've had men cry to me, uh, about their body, you know, that they were overweight and they could never lose weight.

I've had men that were muscular and lean who felt like they were not muscular and lean enough, right? So. I know the women feel like this is very much a feminine and woman's issue and you know, granted, because there's a lot of pressure there for them to look a certain way, but men have the same pressure, or I won't say same.

It's just like a different. I'm not comparing here, but men also very much have these pressures as well, as far as the body's concerned. And then of course, we have the very, very sensitive, the very tender, the very vulnerable topic of conversation that is penis size, which I will leave for another episode 'cause that's a biggie.

That is a biggie and I know a lot of men will not want to admit that or even talk about it, but uh, this is what I'm here for. These are the topics that I'm here for. And uh, yeah, we're gonna leave that for another episode. 'cause size, right? When we're talking about like the body size, we're talking about looking a certain way.

It's because we want to feel a certain way. And I'm gonna talk now from the man's perspective, 'cause. This is really what has been my experience and journey. And I'm not talking for every single man, but for the most part, spending so much time in gyms, right? Spending so much time training and being in the fitness world.

As I said, I was a personal trainer for five years. I've had many clients, men, women, a lot of recurring themes, a lot of recurring issues, a lot of recurring pain points kept coming up, and it was also very relevant for me. But at that point I was the personal trainer that had the knowledge of training properly, uh, I wasn't giving nutrition plans. 'cause I'm not a nutritionist, but of course because of fitness and exercise, I have developed a lot of knowledge and acquired a lot of knowledge over the years on how to eat well. You know, balancing macronutrients, calories, and so on and so forth. But yeah, I want to talk about the body image and the size, right?

Like muscles and the being jacked and shredded and looking like basically, a Greek God. To talk about like the, the energetics behind that and why it's so important for man and woman to look and feel a certain way. 

The Masculine and Feminine Dynamics in Fitness

Now, for the purpose of today's episode, I'm gonna be directing it towards masculinity and men, if you're a woman listening, you would just apply everything that I am saying to your masculine polarity.

Okay, so basically, as I keep saying, and as I've been saying in many episodes, the masculine is the container, right? The masculine is the, the space for the feminine to do her thing. We can say for the sake of today's episode that during training, the feminine is the, the, the fluctuations and the shifts and the changes as far as exercise is concerned.

The elevated heartbeat, right? The warmup, the training, the stretching, like all of the diverse, various, um, different exercises that take place. Whether it's, you know, a squat, going to a deadlift, going to a ham curl, going to a chest press, going to a, um, lat pull down that's off the feminine. Right? And if you're, you know, if you're a man listening and you're training, you're probably thinking like, what the fuck is he talking about?

But let me explain. So that's the feminine and the masculine is the container. The masculine is like the space, the one that holds it down for all of that to basically take place. Now when we're training and we want to get bigger, let's say we want more muscles, this represents the container that wants to expand.

Because when we, we could say that our body is our container. As men, we, we should, and we, we definitely need to be perceiving our body as a container that holds space. So for the sake of the human body, it holds our heartbeat, it holds our organs, it holds our breath, it holds our vitality, it holds our energy, it holds our life force.

It holds our sexual fire. That's the container, that's the human, that's the body. So by wanting to get more muscular, by wanting to get more jacked, by wanting to get stronger through fitness and through training, it's because we want to strengthen our container. And why do we want to strengthen our container?

Aesthetics aside, why do we want to strengthen our container so that we're able to hold more. If we're able to hold more as a masculine container as men, then the feminine can do more. Right? And so there's very much points to Being able to hold more emotion, being able to hold more shifts within the body and in life.

Basically, we want to get stronger and get more muscular in the gym so that we can feel like we have a sense of control, right? Because that is a part of the masculine polarity. But control is never an outside thing, no matter how much we think we can control somebody or something that's an illusion, so let's say the distorted or the wounded masculine or the shadow masculine will want to oppress and try to suppress people and circumstances in his life. That is not healthy masculinity. That is shadow masculinity.

That is the oppressor and the suppressor. Whereas healthy masculinity and conscious masculinity is basically to learn how to hold space for everything. So when we are not in, attuned to that, when we, let's say, want to get super jacked and super big, it's most likely because we feel like we don't have control.

Because it becomes about compensation, right? And I could definitely relate this back to my journey, why I was so obsessed with getting big and jacked and muscular, and obviously because of the point of reference that I had to the porn performers. Um, to be jacked, to be big into mus, to be muscular, was to be powerful, was to be dominant, was to feel like you were in control, was to feel like you were strong.

So relaying this to my life where I felt like I had absolutely no control, where I didn't know how to be in tune, let's say, with my emotions. 'cause it's really like what are we trying to control is our, our inner chaos, our inner emotions or inner feelings that are running amok. So the masculine will want to compensate somehow because the masculine is the space holder.

But because we haven't been taught conscious masculinity or because we haven't been taught how to probably hold space and witness without judgment, we try and suppress, we try and hold it down. We try and deny it and reject it. But that's E, that's feeling right?

That's emotion, that's feeling. That's energy. Emotion is energy in motion. And here the emotion is not in motion. Right? Because it's being suppressed. So that will manifest, let's say, as someone who wants to try and take control as much as possible, because they're not feeling in control. They're just suppressing and denying. And that will manifest as someone who is very obsessed with becoming super big, super strong, and super muscular. Because then it becomes about this container, this inflated idea or this inflated container that is not about space holding. It's not about offering the witness, but it's really ignoring and suppressing and denying, and that's doing the polar opposite.

It's actually manifesting as obsession and compulsion as far as like looking bigger and looking stronger because of the lack of feeling of strength. And it's interesting because you think that only, let's say overweight men would have these body image issues or suffer from body dysmorphic disorder thinking that they're never gonna lose weight, that they're not lean enough, they're not muscular enough. But there's a lot of fit men as well that suffer from dysmorphic disorder that suffer from body image issues, especially like in the world of bodybuilding, which is very competitive and is solely based on aesthetic, right? Like you're going on a stage practically naked and you're being judged on how defined and muscular and proportional you are as far as your musculature is concerned.

It is a form of art, right? It's a form of crafting. It's like the body. Our body is our canvas. Our body is our sculpture. We should be trying to craft it as best as we could and trying to build it as best as we could. But it's not only about aesthetics. Aesthetics is a very, very tiny, superficial, um, point or part of this, right?

The body is our direct connection to our aliveness. Our body is our temple, our body is, where our soul resides, and how we work with our body is How we also connect to the spiritual. And one very, very important means that we have in connecting to the spiritual through our body is our sexual energy. It is of the utmost importance for man to learn how to work with the sexual energy, sexual fire, because that sexual energy needs to move. It needs to vitalize the body. It needs to become spiritual energy. And let's say when we're training and when we are suppressing and when we're denying and we're, um, basically rejecting the parts of us that we don't want to deal with, that will also affect the sexual energy, the sexual fire, and that sexual fire will manifest as anger, as rage, as violence, as misplaced aggression.

Men need to feel a certain assertion and aggressiveness in their, in their nature, right? It's how we get shit done. It's how we can tap into our will and move through the world because that is the masculine polarity, the masculine polarity as a will and holding space. Holding space for that will.

So when we're training, when we're in the gym or we're doing some type of sport and we are going through the fluctuations, we are going through the rising and the falling of our breath, and like the way we're exerting our energy, that is all the feminine polarity because it represents the change. In order for the masculine and the feminine to really come into balance and feel integrated throughout training, and not just in training, but in life.

The masculine has to be able to hold space. It has to be about the container that is not suppressing and rejecting and denying, but allowing the feelings and the emotions to come through. 

The Importance of Emotional Integration

I mean, training can be very cathartic. Training can be very healing. I've had clients, they got pushed to the point of emotional breakdown. Not because the exercise or the training was harmful in any way. It's just they reached a wall, they reached an emotional, energetic wall within themselves. And because we are no longer denying, we're no longer suppressing, we're no longer ignoring.

That wall can come crumbling down and it can be a very healing, it can be a very liberating experience to have like a cathartic emotional release during training. And I know in my journey, not so much now, but when I first started training, when I was really, when I stopped basically denying myself and I stopped ignoring my feelings and I stopped ignoring my emotions.

There were a lot of emotional breakdowns. There was a lot of emotional release. And then that is what strengthens the masculine. That is what strengthens the container, because the container is there, the masculine is there to hold the feminine. So, the body that we want to make more muscular, bigger and stronger is there to hold emotion, is there to hold feeling, which is the feminine.

So this whatever's going on in the gym or the, or in the sport, or you know, in the fitness, the fitness world will obviously translate into life because we do want to be able to hold it down during difficult times, during challenging times, we do want to be able to hold space for difficult emotion and feeling.

And you know what's the most ironic is that as soon as I started to tap into this, let's say relationship and dynamic between the masculine and the feminine, between the container and strength and wanting to look stronger, bigger, and more muscular. That is when I saw the biggest shifts in the aesthetics of my body. That is actually when I started to get actual real physical results because matter follows energy. And what do I mean by that? Matter is the body, right? And energy is the way we think. Energy is the way we feel. So if you have someone who's feeling very negative, has very poor body image issues, who has very low vibrational thoughts and feelings on a day to day about their body. They look in the mirror. They don't like what they see, but they go to the gym. They're training four or five times a week.

That person will probably not get any results, and if the results come, they'll probably regress because the energy and the feeling is not matching with the container. The container, the body has to match with the emotion. The masculine has to match with the feminine.

And I'm bringing this to the table today. I'm bringing this to the space because yeah, we can talk about like the science and the psychology of body image issues and body dysmorphic disorder. I'm not a doctor, I'm not a psychiatrist. I like to look at the symbolism of the thing of anything, right? And of course, masculine and feminine energetics is what I'm here to talk about.

So. Wanting to hold it down, wanting to feel strong, wanting to feel big, and wanting to feel muscular is wanting to have a solid container, and that's fine. That's more than fine to want to have a solid container, but that solid container is in direct relationship to our internal life, to how we feel, to how we emote, to even how we think.

Because if we develop a loving relationship between our body and our thoughts, our body and our feelings, our thoughts and our feelings, that is how we know that are inner masculine and inner feminine are very well integrated and are in loving relationship. Hieros Gamos, the sacred marriage within.

So body image issues are very prominent, very real, and very present amongst the lives of many men. Body dysmorphic disorder is also very real and prominent and present among men. In men's circles, we're probably not talking about it as much as we should, right? We do have a lot of point of references as well.

Porn, I think is number one. Uh, you know, when we're watching porn, whatever, sexual orientation, we identify with. Everybody in pornography has amazing bodies. Right? So there's a lot of pressures for women there. I know that. But there's also a lot of pressures for men, especially the dick size, um, dick size piece, which as I said I'll get into in another episode 'cause that too has a lot of symbolism. And culture, right? Movies, Hollywood. Action games, it's, we're constantly being bombarded with a lot of people that have great bodies and we've been programmed that, conditioned that we have to look a certain way in order to feel a certain way.

So it's like, I can't feel that unless I look like that. And in my case it was, I cannot be intimate with a woman because I don't look like a porn performer. Like, and I'm not saying every man who watches porn has this issue. That's not what I'm saying. But yeah, there are, there are a lot of issues and problems that arise with watching pornography, and this is definitely one of them. And I'm most definitely not the only one that has faced this issue.

Conclusion and How to Connect

So I'm gonna leave it here. I'm gonna cap the episode here. I did know that I wanted to talk about body image today, but I didn't quite know what was gonna come through, so there you go. I'm totally live right now as far as like working with me.

I've, you know, obviously you get to see these episodes a few weeks after I record them, so I've been working very hard to get everything up and running as far as how to work with me. You can reach me on threads on Instagram, on Substack. You can send me a message if you're on one of the podcast platforms.

You can send me a message down on YouTube, of course, down below. Email me if you want to work with me. I also have the website up and running. It's called Temple of fire.card.co. You'll find all the information there as far as our one-on-one sessions are concerned, and a weekly online men's circle that will be on Patreon.

So if you are interested in the online men's circle, it will be weekly. And I will be waiting to get a minimum of four men to start the circle. We can't exactly do a one to one-on-one, uh, men's circle just yet. So I am waiting to get a minimum of three to four. Three to four men. I think's a good number to start.

And I chose Patreon because it does have the community vibe as well, right? We can chat and talk throughout the week and between episodes, I also will be posting a monthly guided meditation. Now, obviously guys, these are all great ideas and I'm very motivated and like I'm here for it.

But I also have to see like how it's gonna go with time and timing. So for now, this is what the plan is. Um, if you want to just follow me on social media, as I said, threads, Instagram, substack is also a platform where I'm actually gonna be posting very raw, deep and intimate writings as far as conscious sexuality, masculine embodiment, and my porn addiction recovery is concerned. That's really where I'm gonna go balls deep for porn addiction, recovery and sexual awakening, spiritual awakening, conscious embodiment and all that. I am a writer. Before I was a podcaster, I mean. I love to write. I've been writing ever since I was a teenager. I write poetry, all kinds of stuff on social media.

So I think it's a fantastic platform where I can touch base with that part of myself too. And too, of course, connect it to the work that I'm already doing. I'm also gonna be posting my podcast episodes there, so there's a lot going on online and no matter where I see you or hear from you, it's gonna be great.

Uh, I'd love to start hearing from you as well. If there's anything you want me to talk about, if there's something that is alive in you and I haven't touched base with, please let me know. Um, I think that's it. Yeah. I said everything, so I will be back next week, of course. Every Thursday with a brand new episode on Bridger of Worlds masculine embodiment and spiritual Awakening podcast. Stay tuned for that. And in closing, as always, please remember that you are the medicine and I'm just the messenger. Thank you very much.