The Melanie Avalon Biohacking Podcast Episode #127 - John Gray (Part 1)

TRANSCRIPT

Melanie Avalon: Hi, friends. Welcome back to the show. I am so incredibly excited about the conversation that I am about to have. I know on this show, we often dive into a lot of "biohacking topics." So, diet, health, fitness, things like that. I haven't had a lot of episodes on relationships and interpersonal relationships. So, I'm so, so honored to be here with basically the author of the bestselling relationship book series of all time. That is John Gray. He is the author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. I'm sure, everybody is super, super familiar with his work. But if you are not, he has written over 20 books. In preparation, I read about four or five of them. I have so many notes here. But he's been all over the place. Oprah, Dr. Oz, Today, CBS, Good Morning America and his work has truly changed the lives of I assume, thousands of people. So, Dr. Gray or John, thank you so much for being here. 

John Gray: John's fine. Such a pleasure to spend this time with you. I really like biohackers. Actually, I even have a health food store online with all the different supplements and everything for the brain. I had early-stage Parkinson's 25 years ago, and with natural supplements, completely reversed it. And created a whole clinic and using all-natural supplements for everything. Amazon put me out of business because they're selling stuff at the same price, I buy it for. So, I couldn't sell that anymore. So, anyway, I still have my wellness guide for people like some recommendations of supplements. But today, I will be talking about I think, relationships. And ultimately, I think, relationships are the ultimate biohacking guide. People in the ancient days could live for hundreds of years and express their potential at that time. These would be the masters who figured out sexual energy, relationship energy, and we all can do that today.  

Ever since I started really applying myself with my meditation, and the quality of relationship, and the quality of sex, I actually haven't felt the need for any med supplements. [laughs] I just eat real, of course, I eat real food. I stay away from processed foods. I just eat things that are all natural and real. But I have more vitality and energy, and I used to even say in the old days that I was taking all these supplements, because I'm traveling all the time. And anything you eat in the restaurant is junk food. Anything you eat in the restaurant is junk food, and putting bad hormones into your body, throwing your hormones out of balance, causing you to age. But we can learn some relationship tips today that are total biohacking. 

Melanie Avalon: Honestly, one of the best, because I listened to so many podcasts, and one of the best interviews I ever heard was when you were on Dave Asprey, who I've also had on the show as well. The things you talked about were just really, honestly mind blowing, and actually, so, a huge question I have for you is, for me, I've actually, I've never been in an exclusive romantic relationship. When I tell people that, I don't know, they give me really strange looks. But you actually were a celibate monk for like nine years or so? 

John Gray: Yeah, in my 20s. That was also biohacking. I experienced the ecstasies of a super advanced meditator put it that way. Now, I'm a master meditator. I meditate six to eight hours a day on average. At time where most people are sleeping. So, it's not like, I'm just meditating all day. [laughs] But it's effortless, easy for me. It's hard work, though. It's a part of who I am in terms of biohacking. But it's not enough. Meditation isn't enough. It takes you to a certain level. But for me, I know the power of semen retention because I never masturbated from 19 to 28. Certainly, as a kid, I love sex. I mean I'm a healthy sex addict, so to speak. [laughs] it's like almost every day. But I do it in a way that'll have semen retention for men. And that allows women to be multi-orgasmic without any techniques.  

You see, what happens is for women, they lose interest in sex with their partners quite commonly, because each time men have sex, they ejaculate, which means he pulls away. So, at a time where she has peaked in her estrogen levels, and women need 20 times more estrogen than men to be orgasmic. They need 10 times more estrogen than men just to be happy. Whereas men need 10 times, 20 times more testosterone in order to sustain attraction to the same woman. But what happens is, it's a biological response is that, when you have sex with somebody, there's the recovery period, where you just can't suddenly get it up. So, here's this guy who was completely focused on you enjoying sex with you, loving you, and then, suddenly, he disappears. That's where you kind of roll over and go somewhere else. Well, that affects her on a condition level. That's called conditioning. The foundation of psychology is that conditioning that takes place when something happens which isn't positive, we will naturally start to avoid that in the future.  

Now, if you practice your sexual energy correctly, you can do what's called Counter Conditioning. So, if every time she opens her heart to you and has an orgasm, and you pull away, that's conditioning, which teaches her don't open up that much, because he's going to pull away. This is all just biological in the body. So, then if he goes, this is what the science tells us. If you go for six days, men without ejaculating, then, on that seventh day, when you have sex, your testosterone levels will be-- Actually, when you wake up in the morning even, you'll have testosterone levels 50% higher than your normal level. That is called Counter Conditioning, which is what allows women to open their hearts in the first place is that, men's high testosterone levels. And we also have research on that is it when men's testosterone levels peak, we put out smell pheromones that activates a woman's estrogen response and helps to raise her estrogen back up.  

You know if you're still having sex where you ejaculate, that's the next step up is having lots of sex, but not ejaculating. But you're still ejaculating as a man, that's a heavy-duty addiction without a doubt. Then, what happens is, you ejaculate, there's always going to be that conditioning, which is why we see throughout society that couples stop having sex. You think, your parents had great sex after 10 years [laughs] doubtful, and if they did, she was doing it for him rarely. That's the traditional relationships where they lose interest in sex. That's why so many wealthy men would have affairs because they had to take a-- The woman didn't mind as long as he took good care of his wife, he did it discreetly, her needs were taken care of. She didn't mind him spending, fulfilling the needs of other women, which is like you'd see in France. The President of France dies, and there's the mistress, and there's the wife, and they know each other, they're fine with each other.  

But typically, due to the relationship skills of the past as well as expectations, you didn't expect romance and passion to last. But what happens is, when you start a relationship, whether it be then or now, there's the honeymoon period. There's a place where you get naked with somebody, you haven't been with them before, that's fresh skin. It will increase your testosterone 50%. So, she's able to bond with you in that way as those high estrogen levels in women, high testosterone in men allows us to bond at such a level where we can be fully satisfied with that person for a lifetime. But if you don't sustain that high testosterone in a man, then, other women, just the newness of it will kick you back up to that 50% higher level. But the newness will always go away in relationships. That's what we want. You want to feel comfortable, familiar, at ease, but you also want to feel that strong attraction. That's the dopamine level. Dopamine goes higher for women, they fall in love because when dopamine goes up, the newness allows her estrogen to go up if she feels safe or if she feels in danger. Either way, it will produce-- dopamine goes up, and she will experience high estrogen, sex will be great, and then, she loses interest. What's wrong with me? Nothing's wrong with you. It's just how the relationship is managing the sexual energy. A lot of that has to be happening outside the bedroom as well. So, that's a fun topic. 

Melanie Avalon: That was one of my favorite things from what I read in your books was the actual biological, like what was happening with the hormones and how that related to everything? Actually, a huge question I had for you was, you talk about something called "you time, me time, and we time." The hormones that relate to that, and then how a woman, for example, transitions from you time, to me time, and how it requires 'we time', which requires oxytocin. So, I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, and does that mean that for a woman to, especially, like a career driven working woman for her to transition to her 'me time' at the end of the day that progesterone. Does she have to have like a romantic relationship with somebody like that 'we time' to actually have that transition or what do single women do?  

John Gray: By the way, we can discuss all the me time, we time, you time. I want to mention that we have a course online at my website, marsvenus.com, which is for women only teaching them the details of how to do that. 200 pages of my 400-page book called Beyond Mars and Venus. 200 pages is to help women understand their hormone system, and for men to understand it as well. It took me nine years to figure that out. I already understand that men, women different, how to improve communication, supplements, brain function, sex, sublimation, all of that stuff. But boy, figuring out hormones and see what triggers hormones, many women know they have issues with their hormones, it's very common thing today, and they often take replacement hormones because they don't understand how your mindset, your attitudes, your priorities, and your behaviors, and how much time you spend doing one thing versus another, how it triggers your hormones?  

At different times of the month, you need different hormones. So, simply put, after your period, and this is, if you look at a happy woman, you'll see that-- because she's getting the support in her life, she feels supported, she's a happy woman, right? Whether she's single or married, it doesn't matter. The happy woman. After her period for about five days, there's a surge of testosterone and estrogen, that's naturally happening. You kind of feel like, "Okay, I can go out and do it myself." That's testosterone. You know, my book, I list a lot of different things that attitudes to stimulate testosterone, attitudes to stimulate estrogen, progesterone, and oxytocin, and all host of hormones. But it's our behaviors and mindset that actually triggers these hormones. So, if you don't have enough estrogen, you go to your doctor. You're anxious, you're depressed, you've pain, you aren't digesting well, all so many things. They look at what are your hormones, and then they think, "Oh, low estrogen. We can give you estrogen.  

Of course, it all started with menopause where women really suffer a lot and they don't in indigenous cultures. I say, they don't there because they have a natural lifestyle. We don't have a natural lifestyle today and we can talk more about what that is. The estrogen levels, when they go down, the doctor says, "Okay, take estrogen." In some cases, it really makes you feel great and other cases, it doesn't. There's a lot of disaster stories of taking estrogen and so forth are taking progesterone, and birth control pills, and all those things. Having said all that, rather than having to take hormones, you can make hormones by your mindset and your behaviors. So, that's the ultimate bio hack of your body is your mind. Okay, that is it. It behooves us to understand after your period, that's a time where more independence which is testosterone and increasing dependence.  

Interdependence is really what it's about, At time of interdependence for five days, you're have rising testosterone, rising estrogen. Then, for the next five, six days towards ovulation, your body, if you're happy, fulfilled woman, is going to double in estrogen and testosterone is going to go down a little bit. Then, it's going to go back up a little bit. And that's going to increase around ovulation, a desire for a lot of sex. Men become very attractive at that time. From studies show that, men who have more manly characteristics are more attractive to women at that time. That's because those men at that time, those are men who just naturally have higher testosterone levels, they put out a pheromone that says to her, "Ah, you know, this is the guy who could do it." So, her estrogen levels will go higher, because one of the key things for a woman's wellbeing during that time is high estrogen levels. If she doesn't have them, it just means she's more in touch with what she needs, and her needs are greater for intimacy, for safety, for security, for understanding, for romance, this is where she feels her needs the most.  

If she doesn't get them, she's going to be more upset, more unhappy at that time. But after ovulation, now, for 12 days, it's a very important need that women have is a balance of estrogen and progesterone. Progesterone is not that important up to ovulation. But her physiological body requires in order to be healthy, more progesterone than estrogen. Now, she has no estrogen, that's not good. But if she has too much progesterone, that's not good. What typically happens is, if you look at the biology, we're looking at the biology here. This is all biological. If you're making testosterone as a woman during that time, not that you can't make testosterone, but if you're making more testosterone than your body thinks you should, where does it get that testosterone? It actually converts your progesterone into testosterone. The more stressed you are, which is challenge, okay, whenever you're feeling, "I have to sacrifice, I have to do it myself, I have to fight a battle. I'm not feeling supported. I'm not getting help. I'm not doing what I like to do."  

The number one symptom of the attitude that inhibits progesterone at that time is, the feeling, I have to do this. I don't want to do it but I have to do it to make money, I have to do it, I have to compromise, otherwise, something bad will happen. Not that life is filled with testosterone stimulators, but it's which is I have to do something. Men thrive. The difference between men and women here, men thrive on I have to do this because that produces testosterone. Then, if they have to do something and they don't have training to do it, or they're not good at it, or they can't do it, or they are in particular relationships, you know, he wants to make her happy, and I have to do certain things to make her happy, but then those things aren't working, because he learned them from his father and none of that stuff will work today, what happens is, he loses his confidence. I have to do this but I'm not good at it. I don't know, why I'm not getting the result. I want, what's wrong with her, what's wrong with my life, what's wrong with me? 

Any of that loss of confidence, low self-esteem, suddenly that surge of testosterone from doing what you have to do or trying to do something converts into estrogen and then he becomes defensive, argumentative, he pouts, he loses libido, loses his interest, and we now know, anytime a man is angry, actually his estrogen levels are soaring. Anytime a man is depressed, his testosterone levels are down. Anytime a man is feeling hurt and vulnerable but not positive, his estrogen is too high. You know what, women really want is a guy who doesn't whine, and doesn't complain, and doesn't do this thing called tit for tat. What you did this, what you did that, you did this. Somebody has to rise above that. Men are designed to do that. We're designed to suck it up. Sucking it up actually makes testosterone and takes away all of our problems. [laughs] Everything has gone in the wrong direction here as we feminized men, and they talk to therapists, what do you feel, what do you feel that women are saying to him? What do you feel, what do you feel? All feelings produce estrogen.  

And if a guy's pulling away which happens all the time, because pulling away, detachment is taking, disconnecting from your feelings temporarily in order to build up your testosterone. See, that's what happens when men detach. It's what the Buddha taught. That's what I learned to do through meditation. Anything bothers me, I can just take time out meditate and my testosterone soars, again. Mine at 70 years old is 50% higher than when I was a young man. That's my baseline. Now, my actual testosterone levels after when I have sex are soaring beyond that. This is like a whole another life that I live now. It can just get better and better if we bio hack our bodies, and behaviors, and attitudes are so, so good. If you don't have the advanced technique, which is learning how orgasms without ejaculating and having sex with somebody you're monogamous with, who loves you, who'll surrender to you, or lose her mind in sex, that takes her to the highest levels of estrogen and fulfillment in her body.  

For a man, he has testosterone levels that will soar higher and higher and higher. And then, you live these long lives, and you are healthy, and this has always been known as in India and ancient scriptures there, and Taoism of the masters, I have teachers and master who've taught me stuff in China, I spent nine years in China, 23 trips to India. I studied this stuff and it's all out of date, too. We got to update everything but there're some foundations in the past that we want to hold on to simply put the whole theme of Beyond Mars and Venus is that, all the rules of the past don't work anymore, because women are working. [laughs] That's it. You're an independent woman. What do you need a relationship for? So, you need somebody to guide you and realize what you need a relationship for is someone that you can fully trust to be there for you and you can be completely vulnerable. Vulnerability doesn't just mean, "Oh, you hurt me." This is a big rip off on everybody. It becomes psychology 101 to say, how do you communicate to a partner? You say, "When you do this, I feel hurt." That's all bullshit. That's just complete blame and it's the most primitive form of blame. It's a really reptilian part of your brain is the part of you feels hurt as opposed to a part of you and your prefrontal cortex would be more like, "It's really frustrating for me when you do that, and I'd prefer this, I'd like that."  

But we go down in these really heavy dark emotions of, why you hurt me, that's a child. A child doesn't have the brain, yet, the logic, the prefrontal cortex hasn't really fully developed if it ever does, until you're about 28 years old. To indulge and all these primitive feelings are okay as long as you're holding in the context, this is not my adult self-talking. This is a child, a wounded child talking and that's where psychology helps us as well. But what we do is, we emphasize feelings with men, very big mistake. Men need to analyze. That's how Freud started psychology study. He had men lying on a couch in a dark room looking in another direction, no eye contact, no mm-hmm, I know how you feel, none of that stuff. It was simply, why do you think that's the case and why do you think that happened, and why do you think that happened? This is what works for men is to analyze because when you're thinking, you're producing testosterone, and when you're feeling and talking about your feelings in a safe place where somebody is not trying to change you or make you wrong, estrogen levels soar.  

We have this big business in America called Counseling and Therapy and it's 90% women that go. Why? Because if you're stressed and you're a woman, if you can talk about your vulnerable feelings that are irrational, irrational, then, what will happen is, huge amounts of estrogen gets produced and your stress levels will go down. We know that women's cortisol levels elevate, her estrogen level is very low. For men, when men are stressed, their testosterone levels are very low. A depressed man has low testosterone, a depressed woman has low estrogen. However, just taking the hormone is not a fix. For example, we all know men die of heart disease way more than women do and we do it so early, younger, and usually just takes about three years after retiring, or men will start having heart disease. In every case, heart disease, we don't for every case, but according to the experience of doctors, if you measure hormones when men have heart attacks, their testosterone levels are very low.  

Another way of saying that is, when you retire, your testosterone levels drop. We know that. We also know that from insurance companies, when you retire then men are vulnerable to heart attack within three years. Testosterone is everything for a man, nothing more powerful to pump your testosterone levels up then they feel independent that I can be happy without depending on a woman, and then, having sex with a woman, making love with a woman who loves me, who thinks I'm the greatest, that woman having sex with her, my testosterone levels will continue to rise and rise and rise. That's what's happened for me in my life. What happened to the average male at 50, his testosterone levels are half? And then, when he retires, he doesn't have meaningful work, which makes him be fulfilled. So, he's not dependent on his children or his wife in order to be happy. That's your estrogen side. I'm totally dependent on my relationship in order to be happier. I'm dependent on myself to be happy, my work, my mission, my success, my confidence, taking care of myself, my exercise, my own hobbies that are separate from my partner, all of that independence stimulates testosterone.  

As a dependent woman for you, that's a big challenge. It doesn't mean you have to get married or be in a relationship unless you want to be multi-orgasmic. That's a different story. Of course, it is to be really happy, you need to have somebody in your life where you can completely reveal vulnerable feelings that you don't like to admit. This is I'm talking all women here that you wouldn't want to admit in your workplace, [laughs] He can't say, "Oh, that's so disappointed about that. Oh, I'm so worried about this. Oh, my God, why are you treating me that way? I'm so resentful." All these emotions, you can't talk about in the workplace. [laughs] One other therapist said, "Women, you should talk about your feelings in the workplace, are you kidding? That's nonsense. That's insanity." You'll lose all credibility because having it together, not being upset about things is selflessness. And that's what you need to be successful as you're doing this to be of service to others. It's not about me, it's about you. Then, you go home to your relationships where it's about me. [laughs]  

And that's particularly why I encourage women to do the relationship is about you and for men, the relationship is about her. Because anytime you sacrifice yourself for the wellbeing of somebody else, your testosterone levels go up as long as that person appreciates it. Now, men make a lot of sacrifices in the beginning of relationships and the woman doesn't appreciate it, because it's not really she wanted him to do. [laughs] You got to make the right sacrifices, which is kind of like the guy going into the army and saying, you know, going into battle, he says, "I'll give up my life if it will save others." My wife says to me, "We bring the dog to the vet." This a funny story to make my point and what I mean by sacrifice, because so many people misinterpret it as victimness, it is not being a victim, it's like this, this is not what I want to do. But if it makes you happy, if it's necessary, then I'm happy to do it. It's very hard for women to comprehend, that a man can actually be happy to do what he doesn't want to do, and suddenly, want to do it without resentment, if it makes you happy. That's the bottom line for men. That's not possible for women. [laughs]  

But woman's all the time saying, "I'll do this, if it makes you happy." She's just going to keep remembering. "Yeah, I did that for him and what did he not do for me? I did for him. What did he not do for me?" Resentment is a disease that women are rampant with the day that along with overwhelmed feeling, "I have to do everything." When you have to do stuff that's your male side and it reduces your estrogen, and that pushes you even more to your male side. So, the answer to that is like, what you're saying, "Well, what do we do? You're independent woman or you're a rich woman?" I just cancelled a couple where she has 10 times more money than him. So, she can't have an orgasm with him. She doesn't feel she needs him. What do I need him for? The vulnerability comes when you feel, I need you. I need you to affect me in some way, whether it be make money for me, feed me if I'm hungry, protect me from danger. I depend on you to provide something meaningful to me that I cannot give to myself. So, what is it that you can give to yourself in life as a woman today if you can do everything yourself, except that's not going to make high levels of estrogen? So, what is it that women really need?  

That's part of what biohacking is all about is figuring out what you're deficient in and then providing that. Because our diet today is completely deficient in almost everything we need. If you go to restaurants, you eat junk food and whatever unless you're just eating real foods, which happened to be grown in my garden most of the time because otherwise it's polluted. Even still, if I grow in my garden, it's still polluted because airplanes are flying over, and stuffs getting into the soil, and it's toxic. So, I go on cleanses. It's another big part of great relationships, great sex is cleansing. I just did-- my partner went to Florida for a week. So, I was at home, I said, "Great opportunity." I cancelled all my appointments, I'm going into darkroom, I put on these goggles that you can have your eyes open, but they block everything out, then wrap that with a towel. So, I got no light at all, had a cup of coffee every morning because I'm used to two cups of coffee a day and if you don't have coffee, I'll get massive headache, and I don't want to suffer at all in my life. So, what I did is, no light, no talking anybody, complete fasting on a glass of water and cup of coffee, and it was fantastic. All of that deprivation, that sacrifice of normal contact and whatever. It's not like I do that all the time. But boom, I come out of that with more power, more vigor, more testosterone, more wellbeing, and also, more estrogen, but estrogen not dominating my testosterone. 

Melanie Avalon: Wow. Okay, so many things you touched on. This is absolute-- This is incredible. 

John Gray: Yeah. I just went on a little rant there.  my stuff. So, I just want to put some of that out there. I appreciate it a lot. 

Melanie Avalon: You just touched on, I mean, not to go on a soapbox myself. But one of my biggest, I don't know, pet peeve or something I think about a lot is, what you talked about with people's feelings and blaming them on other people. That just seems so like, your feelings are your feelings. They're your reaction to other people. I don't think it's the responsibility of somebody else for my feelings. 

John Gray: But now, let me upgrade that. So, this is taking it to another level because that's true. We need to be responsible for our feelings. But when you are responsible for your feelings and you don't tell anybody what you feel, you suck it up, that increases testosterone. Sucking it up has always been the way to make men into men. That was back in the old days. It's dysfunctional. It's not what I say, you have to do. I do a variation of it. But you'd line a bunch of jerk guys, young guys who don't know anything, and you stand in attention, and don't give me attitude. And then, you would berate them, you'd abuse them, and they learn to suck it up, suck it up, suck it up. If you give a look, a smirk, roll your eyes, give me pushups, and everybody's going to do 20 laps because of you. [laughs] You're terrified of expressing how you feel. I'm terrified anytime in my life to verbalize what I feel. I'm so high charged so much both high estrogen, high testosterone. Right now, I'm solving problems, you can feel it in my voice. I love it, I'm passionate about it, I enjoy it, I get energy from it. High testosterone, all that high performance in my field.  

Now, having said that, it's very easy when you're at the high level to go out of balance. My testosterone so high and if I lose confidence, that testosterone shoots into estrogen and throws me out of balance. Now, anytime, a man has cortisol levels, that stress hormone fight or flight, your testosterone levels are converting into estrogen. You're becoming estrogen dominant, which is disastrous for men. All retired men basically have estrogen dominance. That's why they just go down, down, down, they get grumpy, they get irritable, they get stuck in their ways, and I think, all men maybe 0.01% don't. This is just the trend that we have. We can see it on our statistics. Now, having said all that, we should be afraid of men. Your biggest danger is to speak. Speak, if you're angry. You're right there. So, I'll just say this thing which is, if you speak when you are angry men, and that is not like you're talking to a friend and you're expressing your anger, but you're not trying to change your friend in any way. You're just venting, maybe, using some cuss words like, what's his name? Joe Rogan does all the time. [laughs]  

He does vent all the time. It comes right back to being happy. The guy's happy, he's not trying to change anybody just saying what he thinks. That's different than when you're angry at your spouse and you're complaining, or arguing, or doing a tit for tat, any of that stuff, where you're trying to win, be right over it and cause them to change their point of view. That's called anger with the intent to change the outer world. Same thing, I feel hurt with the intent to change the outer world. Same thing, which is I'm afraid I'm scared. So, I'm not going to do anything in the outer world. That's why I call it part of being a man is, you might be afraid but do it anyway. That's going to be one of the biggest testosterone producers. That means, don't let your emotions control you. If you're angry and you're mad, if I'm angry, literally, for one minute, if I'm say anger for one out loud for one minute, I'll get a fever blister. I can't get fever blisters. They're so ugly on me. [laughs] I go visually, I'm a public person. If I get a fever blisters on my lip as long as I don't express anger out loud.  

That's because if a man uses language, soon as you start talking when you're angry at someone and trying to change them, your cortisol levels surge. When your cortisol levels surge as a man, your estrogen levels spike and your testosterone starts going down. So, you're out of balance. Anytime you pout man, anytime you're indulging in negative thought, thinking, stop it, and definitely, don't talk about it. Go do something that will raise your testosterone. Then, you can reflect on what that problem was, and see what the other person did wrong, and don't tell them. Once you reflect because the brain always wants to make somebody else wrong, so you enjoy watching your foolish brain do that, then you look at, "Okay, I made them wrong. Now, what did I do wrong and how could I have done that differently? How did I contribute to that problem?"  

It's like, I was just talking to a guy who kicked his wife out of the car because she was berating him and whatever. You can always justify doing what you do. He says, "Stop talking, stop talking. Okay, get out of the car." [laughs] I said, she'll never forget that, you jerk. You got to remember, there was another option for you that you didn't think of. Clearly, you needed to get out of there because she was triggering you. But instead of kicking her out of the car, you could have stopped the car and said, "Okay, I need to cool off." And you get out of the car. Take responsibility. What men have to know is, we're being feminized today, and women don't know better, they want to connect with you, and the way you connect with someone is through feelings. So, yeah, if I have positive feelings towards you, you communicate those and practice communicating those, guys. It's like, even making love and one of the mistakes I made, I didn't have all my enlightenment when I wrote my book, Mars and Venus in the Bedroom, which is so good about sex.  

I basically didn't talk enough about expressing words to communicate your love. Because it's hard for men to do that. So, they get lost in lust rather than recognizing the purpose of sex, if you're an enlightened guy and you're not an animal. You're a human connected to the divine. So, if you forget about the divine, at least, you want to be human, which is not animal. Because 99% of our brain is animal, but we use it differently, the DNA of it. So, what you want to do is reprogram yourself to be human. The way you do that with sex, which is the most unconscious drive that exists is, you have to use your conscious mind to regulate when you do it, who you do it, with how you do it. Now, you're connecting your intelligent self with your unconscious self, which gives you huge regeneration powers. Regeneration, rejuvenation, it's like these lizards, which are all just totally unconscious. The lizard brain, the fight or flight is a lizard brain inside of us, that's a part of a lizard that will, you cut off their tail, it will grow back. You want to regenerate your body, you've got to learn how to regulate consciously, the most unconscious part of you, and not let it control you. People don't think you're controlled by it.  

Just think, the last time you said, "I'm not going to do that again, and next, I'm going to go on a diet, I'm not going to eat these cookies, or ice cream, or whatever." Then, the next day you do it. Because the that monkey brain controls you. I'm not perfect at this stuff that I just know that the most powerful way is with sex. Because that's what keeps my testosterone very, very high, and that I've learned, and it takes a while to learn this whole process, how to have sex basically every day, and enjoy it, and want it just like the first time you met somebody, because your testosterone so high, you really enjoy it. But if you ejaculate, so, learn to have sex without ejaculate, a lot of guys are learning this called edging, and then, you learn at the edge, that's actually a little orgasm, and then, as you build up, your seminal potency, then that you start getting in waves of higher and higher orgasmic pleasure and now, you're being multi-orgasmic like a woman can be multi-orgasmic. It could be that too. There are lots of books written on that. They teach it differently than I do.  

But it's still a good thing to practice if you can get beyond the control ejaculation which means sex more than three to eight minutes. Intercourse, women need a lot of stimulation in the vagina. First, a little stimulation in the clitoris, and unfortunately, women are all addicted to clitoral sex. Well, Freud talked about it as a problem and everybody just discounted it and said there's no such thing as two different types of orgasms. There're tons of different kinds of orgasms. Tao was talking about nine orgasms. It's learning to be orgasmic is to fully enjoy every step of sex and it's got to be stimulated and stimulated. But when a woman is multi-orgasmic and a man doesn't ejaculate, you don't have to do all the foreplay stuff, you're ready to go. And then, you can really get the higher and higher levels with a little kissing, and touching, and then getting to the clitoris. But not putting all of your eggs in one basket. When a woman gets clitoral orgasm, she's done. She missed out on three or four other orgasms. There's a G-spot orgasm, there's E-spot orgasm. 

After a while, she's had many, many orgasms in her cervix, the C-spot, it actually comes down to touch the tip of his penis. Every, every movement at that point is an orgasm for her and for him. Men are always just trying to stroke in and out. Men have to learn, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a second, rub her clitoris with your dick first. Then the  area and then, gently go in a little bit and then take it away from her. So, she's starting to want it. It's like teasing her with your penis. You go a little deeper, and a little deeper, and a little deeper. Eventually, start getting to the G-spot, and then that's an emotional issue. Many women don't want their G spot touched because they're emotionally shut down. But that's the surrender. That's the orgasm. It's surrendering getting out of your mind. It's what's the French call 'little death.' It's losing yourself into sex, into the pleasure of sex, and for men, the whole purpose is not losing yourself into pleasure but to lose yourself into love.  

The reason you're having sex, this will change everything for men. The only reason I'm enjoying the pleasure of this is because we have no resistance as men, the pleasure. But we have resistance to all kinds of things. I think, the guy has to go in for a million years were designed to do the dirty things, the difficult things, the dangerous things, and to sacrifice our lives. That, you can't be a feeling person and walk into battle because you'll feel so scared you run the other direction. So, we're designed to push away our feelings and actually create wellbeing and survival for us to do it. That's why testosterone--, you push away your estrogen, testosterone goes up. We don't want to just be these insensitive males. We want to be on our insensitive side as a dominant, and then, become more sensitive. The way we become more sensitive is not by talking about our feelings. It's about making love, is having sex, because in sex, when you feel pleasure, you feel and nobody resists.  

We have this resistance to feel but when you have pleasure, you don't resist. So, suddenly, your heart opens, you begin to feel but you've got to be intentional about "I'm only experiencing this pleasure to feel my love for her and communicate that love, and for her to have more and more pleasure. Because women walk around knowing they need love, but they don't know that they need pleasure. [laughs] They don't know that they need pleasure. But men, when they open their enlightenment up is to realize the pleasure just there to open you up to your feelings, so, you can feel the love, and then, what helps you to sustain feeling love is communicating it. So, yes, talk about your feelings, men, when they're positive. Don't talk about your feelings when they're negative. That's like, you need to go to the bathroom, and get rid of your stuff, and wipe up afterwards. Then, you can come out with positive feelings. We all want more vulnerability. That's what intimacy is. But vulnerability has become so focused into 'you hurt me.' What that means?  

Vulnerability means I have been affected by you. So, the vulnerability that makes relationships work is happiness and joy. When you're with your partner feeling safe, feeling comfortable, feeling seen, feeling appreciated, feeling accepted, that's all qualities of love and that's all vulnerability. And then, when we're not getting what we need, that's the problem. How do we manage to get what we need again? When we're not getting what we need, we're in a stress state, and then, what comes in in a stress state is primitive behavior. So, we need to check those primitive behaviors. So, what you're doing is really good. You mentioned and so many women do is, I don't want to burden anybody with my feelings. That's for me to handle. That's good. Particularly, good for men. Not so good for women. Suppressing handling your feelings on your own produces testosterone. Handling feelings with the help of others produces estrogen. So, a big part of my book that you read, Beyond Mars and Venus is the Venus talk.  

The Venus talk is to look at the kinds of feelings, emotions, particularly emotions, because emotions are surges of estrogen. When you have an emotion, whether it'd be positive or negative, it's a surge of estrogen in your body. Women require 10 times more, 20 times more than men. It used to be that if we're dependent on someone that also produces estrogen. But you're not so dependent on men anymore. But you reframe that, but I am dependent on him to hear my emotions which will allow me to go to higher levels of estrogen. And hearing emotions is called Intimacy. Intimacy, 'into me see' see into me. Now, intimacy for man is not the same thing. You don't need to see into me in order for me to feel close to you. All you have to do is appreciate what I do, and who I am, and what I do in life, and what I do for you. That's intimacy for a man. The feel I can be who I am in your presence, and this is what both men and women are the same as we do need to feel a great sex that I can be naked in my mind. I can be naked in my heart. Then, I can be naked physically, and sex, and making love is truly making love.  

Because what happens, this is so common. Love goes down. People love each other, they're committed to each other, they're loyal to each other, they're responsible to each other, and that's all really good. But they can no longer feel that love that they felt in the beginning. It's very hard to feel it, unless you're making love because in a sense, the world sucks love out of you. It sucks ecstasy out of you. If you have more of something and somebody has less, it actually gets drained out of you. You can actually measure the electricity in your body. There's a machine that will measure this, where, if I have higher energy and you have low energy and I touch you, your energy will start to increase, and mine will go down, and you can measure the ions going from me to you. This is all measurable. Everybody who does body work knows that. They come in well, all their good energy, and then, it just gets drained out of them after a while.  

Unless they're a master, where they really learn to practice is to never let your energy go into somebody, but let God's energy or divine energy flow through you. For me, that's what I do. I'm always recharged by counseling, by support. So many people get burned out as a counselor. For me, to stop counseling and writing books was like one of the biggest sacrifices in my life and also one of the part of a trouble in our marriage, because my wife would often feel so jealous that I would come home from work so charged up, feeling so great. But still, having done that, I still needed what I call in Men are from Mars, cave time. I needed time to come back to just caring about me as opposed to caring about other people. Because whatever you're caring about other people and connecting with them, your estrogen levels will go up. So, there's a place where I also need my time to pull away. This is also confusing for women.  

If you don't read my books and understand men, because rarely does anybody even understand this stuff. It took me 50 years to get here. But basically, you can have a wonderful weekend with your partner, a great vacation to Hawaii, you'd lots of sex, lots of estrogen going up, and then, on Monday, when you come home, he ignores you completely and you're over there feeling like, "Okay, we've gotten to a new level." He's not even interested in sex with you. He's like, working really hard, he's ignoring you, he's watching the news and TV, playing his video games. You're like "What happened, what happened?" What happened is, all that good time together, and happiness, and joy, and making love all that's estrogen producing for women and for men. But when estrogen goes so high in men, they need to detach in order to recover. They can't rebuild testosterone in the presence of a lot of estrogen. So, you can even see, again, many people like to know the studies on this. So, I say some of it sort of slows me down.  

But one of the biggest discoveries with this in the beginning was when they started measuring hormones is when a man's football team wins, that's his team, his testosterone goes up. When his team loses his testosterone goes down, and he's depressed, and he's angry. So, you see, it's that feeling of success and confidence that you're a winner, that you're admirer, that you're accepted just the way you are, all these things produce testosterone. What produces estrogen in women is when women feel safe to express what they hide from others. That's what intimacy is. Think back, like, you know teenage girls would become best friends because they share secrets. When you share secrets, that's called intimacy. I'm going to share with you what I don't share with anybody else. Just like sex. I'm going to share with you but I don't share with anybody else is a huge surge of estrogen in women. Why it's so important for women to be in a committed monogamous relationship? As opposed to this foolishness going around in open relationships, we're all free, we're all free love. It's just like, "Why do you need somebody else if you have great sex at home?" 

It's like, if you have the best restaurant, why would you even go out? Okay. This is the idea of making sex the best. What happens to make sex the best is a woman needs to feel she is loved by you more than anybody else. She gets more of you than anybody else. You don't share with somebody else this part of you. And that makes it secret, that makes it special. It was a challenge for my wife that you know, with their husbands out there teaching sex. That was really tough on her. So, she put a limit on how much I could share. You see that there's only and I respected that. Because she wants to feel that we have something which is special to us. The thought of, I'm just one of many, it doesn't create that high level of estrogen, which is, I'm special, I'm safe, I'm a priority, I'm not going to lose you.  

There was this great movie, and this is for men to watch, and I wish I knew the name of them. I'm just thinking about it now, maybe, 10 years ago, I was teaching this, telling men to go watch this movie. But there's one of those movies with that really beautiful movie star, and she's the voice of this computer. You know the one I'm talking about? The computer says all the right--  

Melanie Avalon: Which? Scarlett Johansen? 

John Gray: Yes, Scarlett Johansen is in it. Her voice and then, but what was the name of the movie, so guys going to watch it?  

Melanie Avalon: It's Her, I think. Her?  

John Gray: Her. That's the name of it. Right. You can just fall in love with her, if you're a man, you're just hearing all this stuff, this is what you want to hear from a woman, then you find out-- towards the end of the show, he finds out she's doing it with 500 other guys or 5,000 other guys. It's just my heart broke. It was like none of that was real. I got in touch with my pure female side that was to have it to be about me. [laughs] So, anybody that doesn't think women need monogamy, you should watch that and see how you feel when she pumped you up so much, and then you find out she's got 5,000 other lovers. [laughs] These are things that are just not spoken about. People didn't understand the logic of all of these things in terms of our biology. All we know in the past is that, couples, they were monogamous so that you can keep the family together.  

Even then, as I mentioned before, if the husband's not monogamy, women didn't mind as long as she wasn't embarrassed. There're cultures. I won't say all women in the whole world, I don't know about that, but I know for example, the French are famous for it. If the husband was a good provider which means, his wife was dependent upon him for money, that's a big deal. Is when you're dependent on someone you love the more. If you're hungry-- I was homeless once. After being a monk, I didn't have any money. I came back into the world, I wanted to study psychology to help my brother who was bipolar and depressed. So, I came out thinking, everything's going to be fine. But I'd no money. I'm living on the beaches, and I was hungry and scared, and it was dangerous and horrible. But I was handling it thinking I was preaching to all of the homeless people, but I was still hungry. A friend of mine came and he gave me $50. He said, "You know, John, you might need some extra money. Here's $50." 

Now, if you go back, that's 30, 40 years ago. $50, 40 years ago is like somebody's given you $500 in when hungry. Maybe, even $1,000. So, I am eternally grateful for him and will never forget that moment. I'm always there for him. Why? Literally, I gave him $200,000 once. Basically, this is somebody who helped me when I needed the most. And everybody can relate to that some way. Well, when a woman feels, I need something, and this person is there for me, and has been there for me, then there's a bond, it's deeper than with anybody else. And deeper than with your children. Imagine that you have a deeper bond with your spouse than your children, that's what we want to aspire towards. These are relationship skills, and children need to know that mom's more important than them. It's so easy to unconditionally love your kids, they are you. [laughs] They're acute version of you and a little version, you can control them. So, when I come home they'll run at me, "Daddy, daddy, daddy." Then Bonnie would complain to me that kids only listen to me and not her. Well, I change that very quickly. They come and see me and first thing I will say is, "Where's your mother?" After a while they say, "Mom's here, mom's there," because I'm going to go to her first. I'll carry them but I'm going to go to her first so, they see me prioritizing her.  

The women today need more respect and that's what they're trying to get. They just don't know how to get it, how to communicate it, how to talk to men to get it. But even when you read gender books, they all say, "Men need more respect." You do not need to respect. We all need respect but what is the real-- What we need more of, what men need more of is to feel successful, to feel appreciated for what they do, to be accepted for not being perfect, to be trusted that they're doing their best. All of those qualities of trust, acceptance, and appreciation bump up testosterone, admiration pumps up testosterone, acknowledgement bumps of testosterone. This is our doing side. Then, we have our being side which wants to be heard, seen, valued as a good person, as a loving person, as a vulnerable person, and to be protected, and the protection women need today is based upon getting what they need. They need to be able to open up and be protected from some guy who says, "Well, that's stupid." But why would you feel that or why are you telling me that? Are you overreacting to the situation? Let's all just wake up to mention, never say you're overreacting instead say, "Help me understand that better. Tell me more."  

What else? And don't react as a man knowing she needs to talk to raise her estrogen because if she needs to talk and raise her estrogen, she's in a stressed state and anything you say is not going to help other than asking questions. So, these are like new skills that we have. Even like dating skills. Women all have been taught by their mothers basically, "If you want somebody to be interested in you, be interested in them." No, don't be interested in him. If ever you're dating somebody and you're more interested in him than he's interested in you, forget it. Not going to work out most cases. Particularly, we have a pattern of men who don't call back, and men who don't commit, whatever. It's because you're giving too much. Every woman gives too much. She tries to please the man. Your job is to learn how to get a guy to please you. Give less, get more will raise your estrogen. Then, you actually walk around in a state of gratitude, and appreciation, and trust that you can get what you need. But when you're out of balance, you tend that to be too demanding to both men and women.  

When your estrogen levels and testosterone are not in balance, we demand more than what life gives us. Then, we want to change somebody else. Then, we use negative emotions to intimidate others, to guilt others, to threaten others in order to get what we want. We have to recognize, we want negative emotions, we don't suppress them, particularly, if you're a woman. If a man and I have them, I take time to rebuild my testosterone, then if I still have them, I look at what they are in order to analyze them the way Freud would do. Is what is the thinking that's off? The only time you have negative emotions is when you're not thinking aligned with your higher self. So, emotions serve a great purpose for me. I get upset about something, then I go, "Okay, why am I upset? Clearly, something I didn't know I really wanted is not showing up for me and now, I need to become aware that I'm not getting what I want." 

My thinking around that always has to do with, unless I change the outer world, I can't get what I want, instead of changing myself to get what I want. If you're focusing on changing yourself to get what you want, you're not upset with anybody. But the way you know you need to change your thinking, is you get upset with somebody and you analyze that and you look at it. If you do that as a man for analysis, you will raise testosterone and have better relationships. If you're a woman, you don't focus on the analysis first because that's testosterone producing. Just simply, what happened, and how you feel, and what's going on, and what else you feel, and don't stop at what you feel. Go to what emotion is linked to what you feel. This is a whole new thought for people, which is emotional intelligence 3.0 or something is you could feel ignored. I feel neglected, I feel unloved, I feel unsafe. Well, I feel you're getting more than me, I feel like you've changed, I feel like I can't get what I need from you, I feel that you're spending too much time at work, I feel that you blame me for everything, I feel that you don't care about me as much as before. These are all feelings. 

First of all, they're all overreactions. They have some truth to the outer world, certainly, doing something too, but you're reacting with a feeling to tell your brain something's amiss, and the way I'm behaving, and doing, and thinking. Something's amiss. But you can't self-correct, you can't let go of that feeling till you get to how does that feeling affect you? That's vulnerability. And there'll be something called an emotion. The emotion will be the primary emotions are red, yellow, blue, and green. They will make all colors. I used to have one of those big black screen TVs with little lights behind it and infinite colors on the screen, on a black screen with a white light going through those three colors and were they red, yellow, and red, yellow, maybe blue. I see a blue and yellow makes green. Yeah. So, red, yellow, and blue. From that with the software in the TV, boom, you get all colors. So, they really simplify this. You go back to any emotion, anytime you have a negative feeling, and people go, "Oh, that's my intuition. It must be right. No, if it's negative, it's wrong."  

Anytime you feel anything that makes you feel unhappy, it's wrong. What you're feeling is wrong. We have to get that. We have to get beyond these negative feelings or assign you need to change your thinking. That's biohacking right there. Those negative thoughts are actually raising your testosterone level and you can't digest or raising your cortisol level, I meant to say, and you can't digest. Everything's about digesting, and everything's about detoxing, and you can't digest or detox when you're in a state of elevated cortisol, and your immune system shuts down. People do-- Wim Hof, what's his name? Wim Hof, The Iceman. Oh, love The Iceman, love The Iceman.  

When I do my breathing technique and I'm way beyond that I do, I do this breathing technique because I really liked it. I wasn't doing before. I did it back when I was a yogi but I stopped. The reason I like to do it is, for me, I don't just hold my breath for two and a half minutes. I can go for an hour, two hours. I do his technique, and I go right into that deep samadhi state where you basically a tiny, tiny breath in top of your nose going into your brain. But anyway, the point being is that, if you even do his technique, even run round or two rounds, go and pee and you'll see your pee is completely alkaline. I mean you can go, even I can meditate a few hours, I still don't go full alkaline. But I do his breathing technique, full alkalinity, and what he's proven as you can inject him with viruses and his body won't be affected by it at all.  

If everybody was taught to do that breathing exercise, but nobody's strong enough to do it. I've taught some people they go, "Oh, I can't really do that. That's too hard." It's so easy to do if you just say, "This is going to save my life and make me a Superman." Come on. Put some effort into life. This is what we need. We are the biohackers. So, try that one. Go to Wim Hof and do his basic breathing techniques. So, great to alkalize the body, and then meditate after that. It'll be a whole different experience. As a yogi for nine years, we always did these breathing exercises before we'd meditate. Then, as the years pass, I wasn't doing that. Now, I am. It's wonderful. Also jumping into my cold swimming pool. 

Melanie Avalon: I love the cold and for listeners, I'll put a link in the show notes to the interview I did with Wim because he's just absolutely incredible. I have so many other questions I want to ask you, but I want to be super respectful of your time. So, I feel like I should just jump to the last question that I ask on the show to every single guest and it's perfect, because you were touching on it. I just realized more and more each day the importance of mindset and gratitude. So, what is something that you're grateful for? 

John Gray: Oh, I'm grateful for the abundance that I have in my life, I'm grateful to have found my mission, I'm grateful for the ability of me to help people in their lives, I'm grateful for that my beautiful partner who I love so much now, my wife died three years ago, and now, I have a new partner, and what's interesting is that, having grieved for three years, the worst thing that ever happened to me was my wife dying, and all these tragedies had my life, losses I've had, three years of intense, intense grieving, but understanding how to recognize. It's all the blocks to fully loving have come up. You know, when you lose something, you love it more. Like as a writer, if I lost a chapter I was struggling with back in the days when computers would crash, and I don't know, if I like this I don't want to do this, and I'd lose it, and then, my mind goes, "Oh, I can't get that back. That's the best thing I've ever done." This is what happens, its human nature, because we're all suppressing our ability to be totally loving.  

We haven't yet fully experienced it but often, we experience a loss if we can heal from it rather than just suppress it. The process all this triggers that it brings up of abandonment, and failure, and guilt, and shame, and sadness, and disappointment, and frustration, all those emotions are there of the different colors and a few more, then, when you process through it and keep coming back to love. Each time love for yourself, love for that person. I can love more than I've ever loved in my life. So, I have an amazing relationship now. It's just so wonderful. So, I'm so grateful that God has brought this amazing woman into my life, has opened my heart up, and helped me to heal from my loss of my wife who's always in my heart. I'm just so grateful for that. She's not jealous of it at all that you know, I still miss my wife, I love her so much, but I love her so much. And I'm grateful for where I live in my house, I'm grateful for living in California. Even though, if I had children, I'd be gone all these regulations and everything, I wouldn't put my children through it. But that's my approach. I'd be one of the people going to Florida or Texas, I prefer to pay less taxes anyway. [laughs] I'm really grateful. I'm so worried about paying so much taxes. 

My life has rewarded me back for the good I've done for the world and that I still feel motivated to keep going, and I'm so grateful that I have a multi-orgasmic partner and that I've learned how to be multi-orgasmic, and I look forward to living to 132. That's seems to be the number that's coming up for me and be an example. I just want to show proof that great sex by being multi-orgasmic without ejaculating can extend the life of a man and a woman who can do that. But we know the records are there, people who've done it whatever, it's just we've gone the wrong direction here with everybody doing the porn as a worst bio hack you can ever do a guy is to masturbate. Worse even to masturbate to porn and worse even more to masturbate in a vagina. Which means that you're having sex with somebody not to increase love, but just to experience pleasure. Really these are like foolish things we're doing and we've become such a society of people who have lost all values or maybe didn't know those values. And maybe, I'm talking about values that really haven't been around for a long time because we didn't have this knowledge when we are growing up. We have a chance to find it and grow with it. 

So, I really appreciate being on your show, and I hopefully, this was helping people learning about biohacking, and realizing that so many things in terms of our behaviors and our relationships can help us to experience our full potential as human beings through health, through mental performance, and through happiness. 

Melanie Avalon: Well, thank you so much, John. This has been absolutely amazing. I could ask you a million more questions, but my listeners are just going to love this. So, thank you so much for everything that you're doing. I'll put links in the show notes. You have a free gift for our audience at marsvenus.com/gift. So, people can grab that. But thank you so much. Hopefully, we can do this again.  

John Gray: Well, actually, if you have a whole bunch of questions for me, I know I talked the whole time. I'd really love to answer those questions. 

Melanie Avalon: So, should I book another interview session? 

John Gray: Let's do another interview, answer questions.  

Melanie Avalon: I have so many questions.  

John Gray: That'd be great. And then, what you can do is, we talk about the interview is like before you listen to these answering questions, listen to the first talk. I've got to lay down the checkers, the board has to be there before how do you move the checkers around. 

Melanie Avalon: So, this was the checker board?  

John Gray: Yeah, this was the checker board. 

Melanie Avalon: All right. Thank you. Well, have a wonderful rest of your evening. This was wonderful. Bye.  

John Gray: Bye-bye.