JOSH IN A FEW WORDS

• Fitness Enthusiast

• Content Creator & Copywriter.

• Self-taught Photographer/Filmmaker

AWAKEN YOUR INNER SHAMAN

About My Content

We all have stories to tell. Stories make us human. The short version of my story is I went from being a chubby binge-eating overweight teenager that played video games all day long to being a fit, strong and mostly peaceful young adult (for the slightly longer version, read decisions equal destiny below).

My story is not unique or special. But I believe, as our ancestors once did around the fire millions of years ago, sitting together eating meat and mushrooms — telling stories of how their day went, what they saw and felt — it is our job to synthesise and express our stories because they are universal.

You are not alone in this world.

Healing doesn’t have to be complex. There is power in decisions and simplicity. It can be as simple as deciding you no longer want to suffer. Or you can start small: by taking a walk, going for a cold shower, doing breathing exercises, eating nutrient-dense animal-based foods, being mindful or picking up the phone and saying you’re sorry.

You have the power to heal your body-mind through meat (diet), movement (fitness) & mindfulness (consciousness). I’m obsessed with the union of these three healing modalities — making every day count by integrating all three. You’re never going to think yourself out of your problems. The way out is through; through the body.

Your animal flesh often has all the answers you’ll ever need. I’ve been on some variation of a low-carb diet now for nearly 9 years. My diet these days is more ketovore: an animal-based carnivore diet with a few pieces of fruit here and there.

While I enjoy writing and telling stories of human transformation through the power of ancestral, hormone-adapted meat-based diets — I’m equally as passionate about the role of movement and mindfulness in facilitating the healing process in conjunction with eating species-appropriate food.

Heal the body and the mind will appear.

We are not one-dimensional beings — we are multifaceted primates that are designed to be more than just pencil pushers. We are designed to experience the full range of what it means to be human: to love, meditate, eat shrooms, have sex, masturbate, cry, laugh, hug, hurt and heal.

Each of us has an Inner Shaman that knows.

Our Inner Shaman is our own guru. Being your own guru means listening to yourself; when you trust yourself the Inner Shaman that lays dormant in you wakes up. When you let go and be open to the flow of life you become your own guru. You begin to give the Inner Shaman what he needs to thrive. He begins to integrate all the inherently beautiful aspects of being human into his life.

You can model other people. And it might work. You might get the house, the body, the girl and the money — but that will never make you fulfilled in the long-term. If you latch onto ‘gurus’ or experts you’ll never trust yourself. Nobody can walk the path but you.

Take the plunge and dive into who you really are.

Join my tribe.

DECISIONS EQUAL DESTINY

About My Journey

Two decisions have massively affected the trajectory of my life. Decision #1 manifested in 2014 when I decided to not be fat anymore and Decision #2 was right before the pandemic when I decided to use the seemingly infinite amount of time on my hands to heal my body-mind through my art: the creative expression and alchemy of my blog, podcast and YouTube channel became the driving force of my life outside of my freelance work.

I’ve been meditating consistently for several years, done a few psychedelic retreats, read countless self-help books — all to realise the simple truth that: nobody can walk the path but yourself.

Life is one giant pilgrimage towards your true essence. Nothing has come close to the ancient wisdom of just plunging into the battle (ala De Mello) and facing your demons head-on. Fighting the good fight head-on. Facing your resistance.

Decision #1

Reading was something I was hardly interested in growing up as a teenager. I was more interested in golf — all I wanted to do was go pro and play on the PGA Tour as a kid. And when I was not trying to be the next Tiger Woods, my time was soaked up with video games (I’d literally spend over 6 hours a day playing PC games like Team Fortress and Call Of Duty until the early hours of the morning), chocolate milkshakes and porn. I used video games, food and porn to numb the painful emotions I was experiencing at the time. The idea of improving or changing myself in any way was illusory.

Until one warm winters day at my school in South Africa, the Dale Carnegie Training Institute offered a course on public speaking. I took the course. I quickly realised that I’d learnt more about life in those 2 months of deliberate public speaking practice than I had learnt during my entire schooling career.

Naturally, post-Dale Carnegie training, I picked up and read Dale Carnegie’s timeless piece, How To Win Friends and Influence People — a book that was cherished by all salesman: considered the self-help mecca on becoming an unstoppable, persuasive speaker. I also stumbled upon Stephen Covey’s The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People soon after.

Both these books radically changed my perspective on life. They transformed my mind and gave me hope in what was a very dark time for me. I was a chubby, overweight teenager who kind of wanted to die due to the pain and suffering in my heart at the time. I would cry myself to sleep wishing I no longer existed. Although my mom has given me everything I could ever wish for, the lack of a male role model in my life left me figuring most of the stuff out by myself. The prospect of being able to transform myself consumed me; I became a different person, seemingly overnight.

Those books and that course in public speaking planted the seeds of a journey I am still on. So in 2014 I decided on New Year’s Day that I no longer wanted to be fat anymore. I decided that If I was to take on this new role in life I would have to have the body to match it. Success has to begin on a biological level.

I started slow. Getting advice from my friends bodybuilding parents at the time, I began chewing my food for 30 bites at a time; mindful eating combined with the power of low-carb food and cardio allowed the fat to dissipate off me. I lost over 90lbs in less than 6 months. I went from a size 38 pants to a 28.

Not all success stories are without their limitations, however. As you’ll discover in Decision #2, the pain I’d been experiencing was from my unresolved trauma as a child. I thought that losing a ton of fat would grant me access to the eternal realm of peace and happiness. Not quite. I got into the habitual cycle of undereating, over-exercising and binge eating. I’d often do crazy amounts of Intermittent Fasting and exercise to make up for the amount of eating, drinking and recreational drug use I’d done on the weekend with friends.

Eventually, my body said no when I couldn’t utter the words to do so myself.

Decision #2

Decisions are the most powerful force in the world. When the Plague hit the Earth’s shores in 2020, I made the second most important decision of my life: I sat on Lundando Beach in Cape Town, unaware of the impending nature of what was about to happen — not knowing I wouldn’t see a beach sunset like that for at least another 2 years — and decided that I am going to use the time during lockdown to become the best creative I can be, heal my body-mind and find my essence (the voice, message and flow of my art).

Decisions equal destiny.

The early stages of the pandemic was a struggle for many and a blessing for some. I fell into the latter camp. I kind of enjoyed it. I quit social media for a couple of months, doubled down on my creative skills, read ferociously, recorded podcasts, attended a psychedelic ceremony and essentially became my own guru.

Eventually, to my own disbelief, I graduated with a Bachelors Degree from Vega School Cape Town in Creative Brand Communications, moved to Amsterdam and got a job. The sheer astonishment was born from me struggling with some serious health issues prior to 2020. I reached a point where I didn’t know how on earth I’d finish my degree.

Wind back the clock to 2019, during which I got a cyst that grew the size of a tennis ball on my face. One heavy course of antibiotics later and my gut was in no man’s land.

My body, in the most Gabor Mate sense of the phrase, literally said “NO.” My body was saying no when I didn’t have the words for it. I was heading in a direction that was not conducive to my true essence. On top of my physical pain, I was emotionally and spiritually ripped when a number of close family matters affected me (one of which was a death of a loved one).

I never really knew what had happened to me physically. And I’ve accepted the fact that I’m comfortable not knowing. My symptoms were: massive fatigue, constipation, unintentional weight loss (for the first time in my life), brain fog…and the list goes on. All signs point towards some autoimmunity issue related to my gut health.

I had a stool analysis done (basically, I sent my poo to Europe to get tested) and it came back with the results pointing towards SIBO (small intestinal bacteria overgrowth). I was also struggling with mold issues in the apartment I was living in. I could hardly walk up the street I lived in at Sea Point, Cape Town at the time, without being embarrassingly out of breath (it was embarrassing because I used to run a 10K on the weekend in under 50min for fun…after a gruelling CrossFit session). My entire personality felt muted and disordered (listen to my conversation with Judy Cho). I did not know the person who was living in my head; I felt strange and foreign to myself — like I had been invaded.

But I knew I just had to get through it. Something in me knew there was a light at the end of the seemingly dark tunnel that didn’t end.

My Inner Shaman was guiding me. I knew that what I was going through was the perfect fertiliser for the growth that was about to occur. A close mentor — a prolific business-woman from England who has worked with some of the biggest brands (and people) in the world — posed the question to me: what growth does your compelling future demand of you? She would say when you’re “up to big stuff in the world, the universe will put these perceived insurmountable challenges in front of you.” It’s your job to mount the fuck out of them (she didn’t say that part).

My future demanded of me to experience the pain I did so I could fully realise and appreciate the path of healing. In 2020 I attended a guided San Pedro psychedelic ceremony. I felt a level of empathy and forgiveness that has stuck with me to this day. It was one of the most profound moments of my life. The pain I had been carrying as a child had been made aware of and I felt ready to release it.

Imagine if we stopped looking at healing as one-dimensional?

#AwakenYourShaman

#MeatMoveMind