About Joshua
A little of my story:
I began my conscious spiritual journey in 2010 when I was in a public speaking class at a local college and we received a group speech project, and my group was given the topic of Buddhism, and my part of the speech was on the meditation aspect of Buddhism. Before that I had never really researched or looked into Buddhism, my family and I was raised in a southern Baptist Christian Church group. My only thoughts around Buddhism were seeing the Buddha statues places and always feeling a subtle aura of peace associated with them.
When I began to research my part of the speech, I came upon a website that recommended a Breath Meditation, one of the classic meditations taught in Buddhism and by Buddha. It was a concentration-based Breath Meditation, and there was one day that I was getting back to my parents house after a 2 mile run, which I regularly did to stay fit, and I went into my parents Sauna to sweat and relax, and I remembered the meditation technique and decided to give it a try.
I basically sat and focused on my in and out breathing to the exclusion of all other sensations and thoughts, and found after 15 minutes my mind had really settled into a peaceful state. I remember thinking it was so profound because I had a similar sort of bliss or peace that I got from smoking cannabis. After 20 minutes my mind had reached such a settled one-pointed concentration and suddenly there was like a pleasant energy that moved through my body. I had no idea what it was and it startled me out of the concentrated state and I lost it. But that experience was really profound and I pretty much was hooked on meditation after that. I would pretty regularly meditate, sometimes not every day, but eventually it turned into a daily morning practice, usually for 30 minutes.
Around the same time as discovering meditation, I was exploring other ways to reach altered states of consciousness, because prior to meditation and runner’s high my only tools for reaching altered states was my cannabis and magic mushrooms allies that I was growing and exploring with. I eventually happened upon a website called the Shroomery, where people share experience reports on psychedelics and plant medicines, but also there were sections on spirituality and health. I found one person sharing their experience of going Raw Vegan for 30 days and they shared that they experienced the usual detox, but then they also shared that they experienced days of euphoria or blissful states intermixed in between bouts of detox symptoms, and I was really intrigued by this.
I decided to go Raw Vegan overnight, with the help of my Mom, we went out to the grocery store and bought a bunch of fruits and vegetables. Prior to this I had never done any sort of intentional diet, I always just ate what tasted good or what I wanted in the moment. I ate a mostly standard American diet up to that point.
I basically went 100% Raw Vegan overnight, and made gourmet raw recipes from a recipe book I bought, along with making juices or smoothies from fruits and veggies. After a few days or weeks of this I started to experience some detox symptoms, but I was expecting it. It felt sort like getting a cold or slight flu, but after a few days it passed and what came next was really remarkable; I started to experience such bliss, and like a natural sort of high. I was hooked at that point.
Skip ahead a few months and I was taking a final in my accounting class at the local college and I overheard one of the students turning their test in and talking to the professor, and the professor shared that his daughter was in Hawaii and really enjoying it. For some reason this idea stuck in my mind and I thought HAWAII! I had been there before on two different vacations, once with my parents around 8th grade, and once with my Dad and best High School buddy during spring break one year. I loved my times there but the idea to actually live there didnt occur to me until my professor mentioned his daughter loving it there.
Around this time the first Avatar movie came out in theaters and I went to see that movie without any prior expectations to knowing what the movie was about. I was blown away by the visuals and the immersive experience, it was the most visually delightful movie I had ever seen, and it only triggered a deeper yearning to move to Hawaii, to be in that similar tropical environment with all the colorful fruits and plants and trees and nature. I decided to move there after finishing my semester at the local college.
With some financial help from my family I bought a camping backpack and some clothes and essentials and I applied to several intentional communities on the Big Island of Hawaii that were focused on growing alot of their own food and living naturally and sustainably. I was approved by a community called GaiaYoga Gardens and a few weeks later I was on a flight to Hawaii to embark on a totally new and unknown life!
My spiritual practice evolved when I arrived to Hawaii and began staying at GaiaYoga Gardens. My diet naturally inclined towards a more purely fruitarian diet, its what made me feel the lightest, and I felt naturally inclined towards fasting and cleaning my body out, I would do short water fasts occasionally.
I fell into a pretty consistent daily morning routine of waking up, going on a 2 mile run, coming back and doing some light yoga stretching and then meditating for 30 minutes before the morning community meeting. My meditation practice began to deepen each day, and my concentration grew stronger or more stable.
My meditation, yoga and spiritual practice evolved over the years and I had changed into a completely different person from my high school years, I felt more my true self outside of societal conditioning and expectations, and my natural unique expression shined through, and I was the happiest I had ever been in my life!
Skip ahead a number of years and I have been living on my own 2 acres that I bought next door to GaiaYoga Gardens, and I built a cabin with the help from some friends that served as my abode for roughly 8 years.
Roughly 6 years into my Raw Vegan diet journey I started to experience some nervous system regulation problems from eating so much fruit sugar, and my body forced me to experiment with more low glycemic and cooked vegan foods, focusing more on fats and proteins and starches and excluding all fruit sugars for a time.
This immediately brought me nervous system rest and healing and it led me to learning about Taoist Energy Cultivation and the concepts of Jing Chi and Shen, as I began to recognize this deep foundational energy known as Jing, which can be depleted from too much chronic stress. When I down shifted my diet to cooked vegan I noticed a deeper sense of stability and groundedness in my nervous system, and this foundational Jing energy began to accumulate more, which further enhanced my Chi (vitality) and Shen (Mental Clarity).
This was such a relief after experiencing several years of some problems I didnt know I had from the fruit based diet, which was feeling too much energy flow in my body and not being equipped at the time to handle it.
Skip ahead another year and I started to experiment with including some animal foods, starting with eggs and salmon. I found some benefits from eating these foods, they sort of brought me into a really grounded Earth embodied state compared to all my vegan fruitarian years where I was flying high. The animal foods slowed my body and consciousness down and a sort of deeper primal energy and passion came alive, and I believe this ignited my passion for my jewelry art which I did for 6 years.
Around 2018, after the Lava eruption ended, I decided to embark on a new Life Chapter and I sold my land, and I bought a sprinter van and moved to CA to go to jewelry school and live out of my converted camper van and make art. During my 6 years in CA I pretty much threw all my dietary restrictions out the window and started to eat everything again, even stuff I wouldnt necessarily consider very clean or organic, such as gas station sandwhiches, slim jims, ice cream, deli sandwhiches from the grocery stores, etc. This was quite radical from my earlier years of being a pure raw vegan fruitarian that was very focused on keeping a clean body. My spiritual practice evolved or adapted to my new diet and lifestyle, and was very Taoist focused on conserving sexual energy and building and transmuting it, often channeling my energy into my jewelery art.
I mostly really enjoyed my time in CA, but it was a very stark contrast from my Hawaii life. In alot of ways it gave me alot of juxtaposition to see how people live on the mainland. After 6 years living in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Nevada City, CA, the long winters started to get to me and I decided to move back to Hawaii.
During the last 3 years on the mainland I had met one of my close friends and spiritual teachers Douglas De Becker, who I began to learn Ayurveda and Tibetan Medicine with. It was a relief to meet Douglas as I had been experiencing health challenges that I didnt know how to heal from, and meeting Douglas ignited a new passion for health and well-being, and now viewing it from two ancient medicine traditions: India’s 5000 year medicine culture known as Ayurveda, and Tibet’s medical system known as Sowa Rigpa. Douglas told me Ayurveda is the Science of Life, and Tibetan Medicine in the Science of Healing (Sowa means Nourishment, it also means Healing, and Rigpa means Science and also Knowledge or Primordial Awareness)
I share the above images for two reasons, one cause I think its funny, and also cause it was recording me at one point where I was severely out of balance. The first photo was me in 2014 after doing a 7 Day Coconut Water Fast, I was feeling clean and clear mentally, physically and spiritually; at this time I was mostly fruitarian. The other photo was in 2022, I think this was right before meeting Douglas, and also I was sort of sick with a cold in this photo; and I was going through a rough heart break and breakup with an ex at the time. Even with all my prior years of raw vegan and fruitarian healing and detox, and spiritual practice, somatic awareness, none of it clicked. I was still eating mostly standard american, things like sandwhiches, canned chick peas, almond butters, eggs, vegetables, salmon, but also alot of things like sugary treats. My body (and Mind) was definitely needing help, and when I started to learn about Ayurveda and Tibetan Medicine, understanding some of the principles of the Doshas and Imbalances brought immediate relief.
This was a turning point in my life as I started to steer back to more of my focus being on health and spirituality, where the years just prior I was very focused on just my jewlery art and building my jewelry business online, which was my main source of income when I was in CA. I started to lose passion for my Art when I was dealing with my health imbalances and I became engrossed in studying Tibetan Medicine with Douglas.
I eventually decided to return to my familiar roots in Hawaii so that I could try and get back to the spiritual enlightenment that I had experienced when I was younger. I started to really refine my diet again, eating mostly whole organic foods, mostly vegan after returning to Hawaii, and circling back to a sort of raw vegan lifestyle with some short fasting. Some of my health started to improve when I started to clean my diet up again and this really re-affirmed to me the value of eating a refined and pure diet, and showed me with much juxtaposition how much our diet affects our consciousness, our emotions, our view points and mentality and outlook on life. I started to feel more myself when I didnt eat animal products and stuck to pure plant foods.
I noticed how animal foods have sort of residual emotions or the consciousness of the animal, and in a way I take on the karma of the animal I consume. Starting to eat plant based again I felt alot more clear mind/spirit and my true self, without any extra consciousnesses interwoven within my being. I started to study and catch on that alot of our personality and mentality largely come from the foods we eat, and also all of the microorganisms, fungi, bacteria, parasites, yeast, mold, etc that live inside us, which also subsist on the foods we consume. Our microbiome is very much contributing to our overall health, or lack there of.
I can confidently say I have experienced the full spectrum when it comes to diet (and also have explored many Spiritual Paths and Practices over the years), from pure fruitarian, to even experimenting with pure carnivore diet of eating solely animal products for a time. I dont think there are that many people on the planet that have experimented with diet as much as I have, or gone back and forth between different kinds of diets and juxtaposed as much as I have (except one youtuber Kasey/Vegetable Police :). I really like to see the effects of foods and substances that I ingest, and see how different diets make me feel and affect my body and mind. Some people would say that im too extreme or overly focused on diet, but to me food is very much one of the most powerful and foundational aspects of being human, in my experience my diet really can change me into a different person, its sort of like a drug, and I consider food just like any other substance or drug, it alters the chemistry of the body, it alters our mind, our body, emotions and consciousness.
I share this story to say, that through refined diet, fasting and prayer/meditation a person can pretty much approach Spirituality and connect to God. There is real value in cleaning the body out through fasting and eating clean, it purifies not only our body, but our Mind, our Emotions and our Spirit. And I will argue that the most subtle aspects of our consciousness lying deep within the unconscious and the subtle tissues of the body and nervous system cannot be accessed without fasting or deep cleaning.
But its also not just about cleaning the body out, what all of my years outside of a raw vegan lifestyle showed me is that there is also value and actual nourishment in food. Prior to venturing into other diets besides raw vegan I didnt consider nutrition to be real, I didnt see value in minerals or proteins/fats, etc, but during the time of studying Tibetan Medicine and studying my own mind and body, I came to see that minerals and other nutrients do play a role in having good balanced health. One’s body can become deficient in certain minerals or other elements and the health will suffer.
I have watched and studied over the years others sharing their experiences with diet, through places like Youtube, where some people are sharing their success stories eating raw vegan, or eating ketogenic, or eating carnivore, or mediterranean diet, etc, and also people sharing health problems they encountered with these various diets. It seems that no diet is perfect, and bodies do the best they can with what is given.
What has become clear to me now is that to be truly healthy and vital we cannot live by bread alone, but that we need a connection to God or Spirit, and that this is probably the most important nutrient for being happy and healthy.
When my spiritual journey led to be begin studying Ayurveda and Tibetan Medicine, it began to show me that spirituality and spiritural cultivation is just as much a physical matter process as it is a transformation or shift in consciousness, mind and body are interdependently woven together. There is a real physics or science to health and well-being, states of disease and states of radiant health have causes and conditions, and that symptoms can be explained through science.
The biggest thing I would like to convey by sharing my story, and part of my mission with Rejuvenation Science, is showing others that health and spirituality are very much rooted in the physics of the body, and that through the right knowledge and information, and applying them with wisdom, one can successfully steer their body towards greater and greater states of health and vitality.
