Moore Style - Improving Men’s Sex Lives with Taylor Johnson

Episode Date: March 11, 2024

Sexologist and sex coach for men Taylor Johnson joins us this week for an informative conversation around men's sex lives. Whether you are looking to improve your sex life or you have specific struggles that you deal with, this episode is for you! Taylor shares with us practical tools for premature ejaculation, how semen retention can help you in various areas of life, and the importance of men’s groups. Taylor also shares his struggle with porn addiction and how his life looks on the other side of it. If you’re looking to thrive in your sex life - make sure to tune in! In this week’s episode, we discuss: [02:07] About Taylor Johnson [02:45] What led Taylor down the path of helping men in their sex lives? [05:25] Practical tools for premature ejaculation? [12:17] Having sex without the goal of orgasm & semen retention [18:11] The impact of learning how to relax more deeply [23:35] The sexually stimulating aspect of porn & porn addiction [33:16] The financial impact of eliminating porn [39:07] What shifted Taylor into a new way of living? [43:04] The importance of men’s groups [48:20] Taylor's favorite date   Connect with Taylor: Website  Instagram Podcast Free 7-Day Semen Retention Challenge

Welcome to the Down and Dirty Podcast, the ultimate guide to modern midlife dating. I'm your host, Celeste Moore, and I'm here to help you navigate the challenges of today's dating world. Think of me as your female version of Hitch, but better. With over 16 years of experience as a certified image consultant and dating coach, I've got the inside scoop on what women want. In this podcast, we're diving deep into the world of healthy masculinity and modern dating. It's a fast-changing industry. And here, you'll find personal stories, expert insights, and candid conversations that will empower you to take control of your dating life. There's never been a better time to achieve your desired outcome, whether it's marriage,

finding a significant other, securing a life partner, or simply regaining your dating confidence. We're here with you twice a week to explore the viewpoints and challenges in today's dating arena that resonate with every man seeking dating success and love. So let's dive into today's episode. We've got an exciting discussion lined up for you. Get ready for the double D's of dating where dating dilemmas turn into dating triumph. i want to welcome everybody to another episode of the down and dirty podcast as always i'm your host celeste moore and i want to tell everybody thank you again for jumping on and listening to the show it absolutely means the world to me and i'm forever grateful for all the amazing guests

I get to interview and continue to educate everybody here. All you new listeners, thank you for jumping on. I hope everybody takes a little nugget, a little piece of information from these episodes that you can put back into your relationships because I'm really truly here to educate and be of service. If you feel so inclined to leave a review on the show, I love a five-star rating.

If you do, this really helps the show get to the forefront and makes the content easier for everybody to see. So, but before I jump into this episode, I'm super excited to introduce you to my guest today. His name is Taylor Johnson. He is a certified sexologist and sex coach for men who is dedicated to helping men thrive in sex, life, and relationships. Thank you, Taylor, for being on the show today. Happy to be here with you. Thank you so much. And thank you, listener, for being here with me too. Yeah. Amazing. I love it. So, you know, I know that a lot of podcasts, especially when you're on them and you do interviews, we kind of like to get to how you got to this point of becoming a sexologist, a sex therapist, especially for men in particular, what kind of led you down that path of being of service to men and having healthy relationships with their sex life?

yeah thank you for that question i'll do a brief version of that and then i might expand on that if you're so interested afterwards the brief version is basically i used to struggle intensely with sex when i was younger like i struggled with most of the things you could imagine when it came to sex i struggled with premature ejaculation regularly i was the guy that would ejaculate in less than 60 seconds less than 30 seconds regularly and it ruined my sex life. It destroyed my sexual confidence. It destroyed my romantic confidence. I went through a period of time of avoiding women completely because I was afraid of ever getting sexual with them and being the guy that would come too soon. I also struggled with erectile

dysfunction because of my nerves and anxiety around sex. So either I would not be able to get an erection or I would get one and ejaculate too quickly. And I also struggled with a porn addiction. And that really hurt some of my earlier relationships. And I know there's question as to whether or not porn addiction is a quote-unquote real thing or not. Throwing all that conversation out of the window temporarily, I'll just say I had a very unhealthy relationship with pornography and it really hurt my life overall, my ability to achieve financial success, happiness, and relationship success, and sexual success too. So all that made a really messy package of who I was as a younger man. And it was hard. It was really hard and it ruined my identity as a man.

And then I decided at a certain point that I was going to fix this. I went on a huge journey, spent many tens of thousands of dollars studying for people all over the world, eventually got to a place of success in my sex life. And then using all those principles, had success in my previous business life as a commercial photographer, got hired by all these big companies, and then realized, hey, the only thing I wanted you actually is talk about this stuff. Why not start a blog? And then I did that and it snowballed. And here we are today. And yeah, I just, I, when I think back to being younger, I wish that, or I wonder how my life would have been different had I had a mentor to say, Hey, maybe you would want to try this thing

instead, or here's some solutions to your problems that feel, I know you feel like you can't talk to anybody about it. So here's what you could try instead. And so that's why I'm here now. So if you're listening and you've struggled with any of those things, or you just want to have a better sex life. That's why I'm here to be that guy. Amazing. Well, I appreciate you sharing your journey with us. I feel that I could be wrong. Obviously, I'm a woman. I don't have a penis and I don't ejaculate in the same sense as you do. But do you feel that this is a common issue for men having premature ejaculation or is it just case by case? Oh, yeah. I mean, everything that I just talked about is very common. I think the statistic is something like at least one third of men

will struggle with premature ejaculation at some point in their life. I imagine that number is higher because people don't like to admit that that's happening. And when I've been in rooms full of guys who are in different men's groups and I ask the question, hey, has anybody ever ejaculated before they wanted to? Everybody's hand always goes up. And similarly with porn addiction or unhealthy relationships with porn or erectile dysfunction like that, that's very common. So one of my side projects that I like to do, at least on the business end of things, is I'm really interested in search engine optimization, keyword optimization, which is for any of you listening who don't know, it's basically doing research on the backend to figure

out what is it that people are searching for and how can they find your content that helps me create blog posts that people like you could find that are actually useful for people. And what I've found is that as it's, it's almost equivalent, but just about as many men are looking up solutions for how to stop watching porn or how to stop a porn addiction as there are men looking for how to last longer in bed. And I just saw that a few months ago and it blew my mind. I didn't know it would be that many. But yeah, unhealthy relationships with porn are very common as well. And I'd love to get into how to solve all this stuff. I love that. I'm sure everybody listening here is curious as well yeah let's start with what are some of the tools that you guide your

clients or some of the practices you put in place for premature ejaculation to help with that to help maybe for it not to happen i'm not sure but that's your expertise i'm gonna let you talk about that yeah well at this point in the conversation i recognize there are a few different roads we could go down and each one of them could take a little while like premature ejaculation erectile dysfunction, porn addiction, all that stuff. Let's talk about premature ejaculation first because they're all related in some way. A lot of times, one of the biggest culprits, one of the biggest reasons men experience premature ejaculation is because of the way they masturbate. And a lot of people don't really make this connection, but a lot of guys,

they masturbate just to get off, right? They masturbate to relieve tension. When they masturbate, they just sort of sit still or lay still and their hand goes up and down. They're not moving their body so much. They're not breathing deeply. They're not making sounds. They're not getting into the lovemaking experience like they would if they were having sex with another person. So their body's really just kind of sitting still and it's a hyper-focused attention on movement and sensation within the penis. And usually guys masturbate for just a couple minutes and then they ejaculate, right? So when you do that, you're training your sexual response system to see sexual arousal as a time curve that is just a couple minutes that's really focused on

penile stimulation that's not focused on a whole lot of movement and that sees ejaculation as the goal and then it's over in just a few minutes of time. And so most guys regularly are doing this and the way you do this is a training ground for how you have sex with other people and your body will want to start to do this more. So if you do that for a year straight regularly, when you start to have sex with somebody, your body's going to think, okay, cool. We've got the three minute window. I'm going to get aroused really quickly. I'm going to not focus on the rest of my body so much. I'm going to ejaculate. Boom. It's not a conscious thought. Men aren't thinking, oh, I'm ready to ejaculate quickly. In many ways, it's a very anxiety provoking experience. Like,

why am I going towards ejaculation so quickly? I got to stop. I got to squeeze this. I got to think about baseball or whatever. Ultimately, those techniques don't work as well as other techniques, but that's a huge, huge, huge one. And I think that if every guy out there made a commitment to himself, if you're listening and you made a commitment to yourself to not masturbate for any amount of time, less than five minutes before you ejaculate, and instead go for 20 minutes before you ejaculate, that would do a massive amount to help with premature ejaculation if that's something you're struggling with. Because when you go for 20 minutes, you get past that initial threshold of, oh my God, sex is happening. It feels so good. Boom. You actually,

your nervous system gets to relax into the experience of sex and your body somewhere around usually the 10 or 12 minute mark will have this embodied realization that's outside of your mind that ejaculation isn't the goal. Like, oh, maybe pleasure is the goal or connection is the goal. And once that switch is flipped, it's much easier to last longer. And so some guys might be hearing this thinking like, how the fuck am I going to last 12 minutes? That's crazy. Well, you can actually just go really, really slow and breathe deeply and make sounds and focus on connection, focus on other things. Just make a practice out of being in the sexual experience for an extended duration of time. And again, that'll do a massive amount. I have a whole

free guide on this. I guess we can link to it in the show notes too. But that alone, if you never look at my free guide, if you just start doing that, your whole sex life will improve dramatically. And that practice of self-pleasure, I like to call it, for 20 minutes at a time will really help with erectile dysfunction as well in a huge way. And it will actually help with sexual confidence too, because you'll build up this inertia. You'll build up this really strong foundation of a powerful sexual solo cultivation practice, which is something that most people don't think about. But if you actually cultivate your arousal, you cultivate this inner power within yourself, you're going to walk in the world differently. You're going to be a fundamentally different man

than if you just jack off for two or three minutes and ejaculate and then go about your day. If you actually spend time with your body and your system and your energy and your arousal and cultivate that like that's a really powerful strength that that you can't cultivate any other way like going to the gym every day isn't going to do that for you you know right and i think you said something so profound because this is something that's gonna it's like rewiring that part of your brain that the orgasm is not like let's get this done really fast so tell me a little bit about that i think i was watching something on instagram of yours and you were talking about how i mean you're very open and i appreciate that where you just making love having

sex with your girlfriend and you did not orgasm and but you were saying this was so pleasurable for you so can you talk a little bit about that and it's off the practice of having sex with with another person without the goal of orgasm yeah so i want to make the distinction i'm not sure which video you watched, but I am very, I'm a fan of sex that does not have orgasm as the goal of the sexual experience. And I'm a fan of sex where I don't always ejaculate during sex. That doesn't mean I don't always have an orgasm during sex. You can have sex and have an orgasm and not ejaculate. That's a huge other discussion. It takes a lot of practice to be able to get there, but that's something that can happen okay a lot of guys will hear what's wrong with you are you

an idiot like why would you ever have sex and not ejaculate and I just have to say like I understand that mindset I used to think that too when I was younger before I did all this exploration before I really realized how this kind of stuff impacted my relationships and my ability to be successful in the world I remember thinking one time I had sex and I didn't ejaculate many years ago and I got pissed I was like what is the what's the point of this there's a waste of my time. I could have just masturbated. So I really empathize with that mindset. I just want to say that upfront. And as a practical example of the type of lovemaking I like to do, for example, my partner who is a woman and I, we were sexual together maybe three or four hours ago earlier

this morning, and I did not ejaculate. I had a ton of pleasure. I did not want to ejaculate in part because it's my belief. There's no peer-reviewed study out there that supports this yet. I think there will. I've had conversations with biologists and all kinds of other people who think that, oh, this makes sense, but it's not in a study yet. But my thought is that if I were to have ejaculated this morning when I was being sexual with my partner, then today during this interview, I would have less mental clarity. I would have less zest. I would have less fire. I would have less of my metaphorical juice, you could say, available to give to this interview. And because evolutionarily speaking, when a man ejaculates, he's telling his

system, oh, you've succeeded. You have won. You have achieved the most important thing you could possibly do, and that is to ejaculate, which means you have probably procreated, potentially impregnated somebody, and you have done your job to perpetuate the species. Job well done. You can sleep. Now you can recharge, you can rest, you can let your system down, regulate. You don't have to work hard and you don't have to go out and seek a mate because you just did your duty. So go ahead and take a nap and eat a sandwich and, you know, do whatever the fuck you want to do. Right. And so instead of ejaculating, I did some Qigong exercises, which if you've never heard of that term before, it's kind of like, you could think of it as more of a martial arts form of

yoga, you could say, with some breathing and hand movements and some visualization and some self-massage in my genital area to move that sexual arousal so it didn't stagnate in my testicles and my genital area. So I didn't get blue balls. And so I actually felt enlivened by the experience. My partner felt enlivened by the experience. And then we went about our day. And here we are now. And I feel very happy because of it. And I've had enough experience experimenting with this at this point that i do know that if i did ejaculate earlier i would be less acute and sharp in this moment i would be kind of like sitting back more in my chair kind of relaxed like almost the vibe of smoking a cigar on the beach which to say isn't bad i just like to be

really intentional when i do that that is amazing i really think that's so cool that you've mastered that and other people i mean is this something also that you teach in your practice it is yeah i teach this to a lot of guys regularly and i'm not going to be some sort of evangelist and say everybody should go out and try to learn how to do this stuff but what i would say is that if you're desiring to have the best sex life you could possibly have and if you're desiring to improve your life in some ways and you're not quite sure how to go about doing it this can definitely help This sort of practice can definitely help. And if you look at the different traditions from where this practice comes from, they all saw this practice. So I'm going to call it semen

retention, which means more than just not ejaculating. For me, I like to call it integrative semen retention, which is basically just the lifestyle of being intentional with your sexual arousal, with your sexual choices, with your ejaculation or not, and being intentional with how you use that charge or use that energy, right? So this comes from a few different esoteric traditions, Taoist practices, different yogic practices throughout time. And they all saw, in terms of men's sexuality, they saw the decision whether or not to ejaculate as being incredibly important for his overall happiness and success in all areas of life. And that it was part of the whole tapestry of health and wellness practices that would help a man achieve

wealth and longevity and success and happiness and all that kind of stuff. So in Western society, we often think that our sexuality lives in a little box in our genitals and doesn't actually impact the rest of our life, but that's just really not the case. If I were to be sitting in my office every day watching porn, then when I went into the meeting on Friday morning, I would not be the same person as if I, instead of watching porn, I did something like meditation or i worked out or i did anything else you know besides that because everything we do it makes an imprint on us and shapes who we are so it all has an impact yeah and it makes a lot of sense but i love the fact that um i know that a lot of older traditions long like they've been doing

breathing practice within yoga and you said daoist not taoist right daoist exactly daoist okay same okay um that i know a lot of that is control and and breath work is that correct or is there more to it than that yeah so a lot of guys when they're first starting out they're thinking oh i gotta control this and i gotta squeeze and contract and be really like hard lined in this that is definitely a stage of the journey for sure the you could call it the more advanced or the practice that you will eventually get to is learning to relax more deeply. Because relaxation is actually the thing. Deep relaxation in your whole body, your nervous system, and your pelvic floor, that's the thing that's going to allow you to last as long as you want in sex.

That's the thing that's going to allow you to have an erection and not let any sort of anxiety or little distraction rob your body of your erection through activating your nervous system. That's what happens. If you have any amount of stress or anxiety or concern when you're aroused, that's basically a complete roadblock to arousal. So the more relaxed you are, the more easeful you are, the less likely it is that anything's going to stress you out. And then the less tension you're going to have in your body. So it's going to be easier for you to do all these things. it makes so much sense i mean even with with me right with females the same thing right we got to get out of our heads i mean like even more so but just that reminded me when you were talking

about how to relax like that middle of the night sex right where you wake up and it's like two in the morning and you're dead asleep and then all of a sudden you're aroused and it's like that moment of just being pure that's what i thought of when you said something like that and i said Wow. That makes a lot of sense because it's more of like the true enjoyment, the feeling good. And it's like, I don't know, that just brought me to a moment where I can see a man being completely relaxed. yeah yeah and a lot of guys will have the experience that first thing in the morning like morning sex they're able to last much longer without trying hard not to you know and like you said it's basically because oh you've just been sleeping for six or eight hours your system is very relaxed you haven't gone through the stresses of the day and you're you're you're operating from

a really nice healthy baseline most people don't realize the amount of stress we experience throughout the day and how it accumulates in our system. And then at the end of the day, it's like, whoa, lots of us are just like really pent up and have all this tension in our whole system and pelvic floor. And that tension leads to premature ejaculation, leads to anxiety, which leads to erectile dysfunction, which leads to anxiety in general, like all this, yeah, that's just downward spiral. So it's a real practice to maintain awareness of our nervous system, of our ability to relax throughout the day and to cultivate a space of internal relaxation. And then I want to be clear too that I'm not saying this from the place of having this 100%

mastered all the time, but it's a practice for me and for anybody else. And I regularly practice this stuff. And sometimes I fall off the practice train and have to get reminded, oh, whoa, I haven't been breathing deeply throughout the day. No wonder this is happening. you know time to get back to practice yeah like anything else it's like going to the gym eating healthy you know all of these things that that we do hopefully in our lives that our mindset you know practices that we help us be better in our lives so that makes a lot of sense we all fall off and gotta get back on but what i've heard from other um guests about let's just say ed for example is a lot of that stems from you know health what you eat exercise sleep now the missing

component whom i haven't talked to is somebody like you or you're incorporating like breath work and relaxation and and there's i believe all of that together is going to give you a beautiful healthy sexual life so thank you for sharing that because i think it all relates yeah it does and what you eat is very important, especially if you're not 18 or 20 years old, right? Like if you're in your mid to late 30s or older, your sexual response system is not the same as it was when you were 20, right? So you have to be more intentional with what you do because what you do in your lifestyle has a direct impact on your sexual abilities and your sexual function. So it is really important to do all those things and to treat your whole system, including your nervous

system and your brain as a sexual organ to treat it with respect and intentionality and work it out. You would never drive a car 100,000 miles without doing maintenance and changing the oil and changing the tires and doing all this stuff. Yet somehow, a lot of people think that our bodies should just naturally function optimally without doing much to achieve that or sustain that, but that's really not how we work. We have to have regular intentional input to thrive. That's a good analogy. I think everybody can, especially men, can relate to that, right? Yeah, for sure.

It's like, yeah, you need to do all the steps first. You had also spoken about porn addiction. And I know this is a very controversial topic. So I have also spoken on some of my podcasts, solo podcasts even, about I think it's fun to spice up relationships with some porn. But that's different. That is different. I'm not saying you should be it's like any addiction right I think when I'll let you speak about it but just from what I understand from people that are addicted to porn one they think

that you know sexual relations should look like porn movies when they're actors right and that's in so many different aspects of how fast how hard you know what to do with a woman all those things I promise you that's just a movie people but the problem that I think a lot of people are having is they're more and more they can only get off on that right and get off on porn right right so once they start then they literally cannot have sex when it comes to any kind of relationship so what are some of your practices or your thoughts or things that help men get past that yeah it is a nuanced topic for sure and i'm not going to sit here and say it's 100 black and white and you showed or shouldn't do anything but i will share some of my personal experiences and

if you're listening you can just see if you resonate or if any of this sounds familiar or not if it does and you want to take action on it great if it doesn't resonate cool like i'm not you know dogmatic about this got it one one thing i like to say is that porn is like cocaine for your penis or your sexual response system, right? It can feel incredibly good in the moment. It can also be very problematic if you do it regularly. Very few people can do it regularly without serious adverse effects to their sexual response system or their overall mental health and relationship health. Just like very few people can do cocaine very regularly without serious adverse effects to their life.

right? And according to brain research, the impact of porn on the brain is very similar to the impact of cocaine on the brain. So it's just food for thought, food for thought. In my personal life, when I think back to the time when I was watching the most porn, I was in romantic relationship with a great woman and I was watching porn every day, masturbating to porn every day. I thought porn was very, I mean, yeah, it's very alluring. It's very stimulating. It's very pleasurable to watch. Whatever the fuck I wanted, I could see. It's amazing. Right there at my fingertips, video after video after video, endless, endless stimulation. And what I noticed was that in the peak of that time, I found my girlfriend less attractive,

less physically attractive, less attractive overall, energetically, physically, et cetera. I found myself more irritable. I found myself more likely to get into an argument with her. And I found myself experiencing a lot more erectile dysfunction, but it was an interesting form of erectile dysfunction. So what would happen for me is that we would start having sex and I would get an erection, a really strong erection at first, and then that would fade within about a minute or so. And then I wouldn't be able to get an erection back. and i was totally perplexed as to why that would happen you know and if i didn't ejaculate prematurely then yeah then the erection would fade and our sex would stop anyway so it was this total

head fuck of an experience i realize i'm saying fuck a lot in this podcast no you can it's okay that's okay because we're talking about sex what i realized later after doing research into all this is that that totally makes sense because when i was looking at porn high speed internet porn the stimulus the stimuli is changing constantly right i'll watch a video for 30 45 seconds switch to the next video switch to the next video and all these videos are professionally edited by people who've designed them to be as sexually stimulating as possible so you're getting these close-up shots of genitals in action mouths on genitals all this stuff like cut together really fast these really highly stimulating ways that would be literally impossible for any human

to compare with in terms of the level of visual stimulation. It's just not possible, right? And so porn would change so constantly. I could maintain an erection for a while with watching porn, but with my partner, my erection would just fade away. And then I would either make up an excuse or just stop and it would be awkward. And that was a big problem for us. And so I started to experiment with not watching porn. And I would notice that when I would go for a period of time without watching porn, it's like, if I could put a graph up, just imagine there's a graph, like amount of porn watching, it starts off high, then it starts to go down. Then there's an inverse relationship, directly inverse with how attractive I find my partner,

right? And the longer I would go without watching porn, the more attractive my partner would become, the longer my erections would be able to be sustained in sex. And also the less we would fight, the less we would argue. Especially I started to notice this if I ejaculated to porn or not, because it was around this time that I also started to discover Taoist practices, yogic practices of semen retention. I read a bunch of books and they said, hey, by the way, if you don't ejaculate constantly, it might actually be beneficial for your health. And I thought that's a bunch of bullshit. But eventually I realized, hey, you know what? You're actually very unsatisfied in your life right now. You're not having a good sexual relationship. You're not

happy with your financial success. Maybe you should try something that seems like bullshit and see what happens. So I started to experiment with that too. And I started to not ejaculate while watching porn. And I started to experiment and to see how that would impact our sexual experience too. And whenever I did that, whenever I held in my ejaculation without watching porn for a week, I was so much more attracted to my partner. I was so much more charged with her. there was a lot more zest in our relationship and the fire was there in a way that it never was if I was ejaculating to porn. And that was a really transformative experience for both of us. She had no idea this was happening at the time because I wasn't talking with her about it. I had a lot

of shame around it. I never admitted that I was watching porn in that timeframe. I think a lot of guys can relate to that. You don't want to say to your partner, hey, how's it going? Nice to see you. I just masturbated to porn and ejaculated. It was this wild threesome thing that I really want to have, but I don't think you'd ever do it with me. So I just masturbated to porn. You don't know what he says that you're not going to say that, you know? So it was this internal kind of shameful thing, but my whole relationship started to transform when I stopped watching porn as regularly and stopped ejaculating to it. And then fast forward a bit, it started to really improve my financial life as well, but we can pause there and I'll see how this is all

landing for you. Yeah. It's so interesting. You just said that. Cause I was going to kind of, kind of segue into that the financial aspect because you had mentioned that just a few times so within the relationship i'm hearing that your your partner at the time she got more attractive you were less irritable less fighting and you found that the actual sex with your partner was more enjoyable when you eliminated the well i don't say eliminate but you lessened or did you totally lessened okay okay and i would go through periods of time of elimination but it was never that long at that period of time in my life it was like maybe a week a week and a half and then i would get sucked back into the porn vortex wow it is an addiction right

some people would say for me at that time it very much felt like one yeah well i think i grieved like anything it's like if i'm addicted to netflix you know i know that's a little bit different, but there's still an addiction component. If I'm like, I can't stop watching this. And it's like all the time, should I be doing other things in my life? Am I missing out on things and my goals? And I know it's a little bit different, but I believe that we can easily get sucked into a lot of things. So when I think back to that time period of my life and taking a broad spectrum, look at everything that was going on in my life, that was, that was a time when I was generally dissatisfied with what was going on like i was living objectively a happy life

but overall i wasn't happy with my life direction i wasn't happy yeah with my money situation ultimately wasn't happy in my relationship but i didn't know it at the time and so all the positive reinforcement or stimulation that i would have gotten from going in a direction in life that would have been more rewarding for me i didn't have that so basically by looking at porn i was getting stimulation. I was getting some intensive stimulation that I needed in my life that I couldn't figure out another way to get. So instead of putting in the work to shift my life, to make it something that would have been really good for me, I just watched porn. And whether or not, yeah, it's just the question of addiction or not. I don't really know, but when I take a

broader perspective, that's part of the need that I was getting met through that experience. yes so something in your life like you said was missing for you and that was where you were able to get a moment of that pleasure totally so let's kind of move into the money part how did your life improve financially or success in in your business when you eliminated porn or when you started to eliminate porn yeah very nicely amazing but yeah but it wasn't an overnight thing and it wasn't this sort of thing where it was like, I didn't stop watching porn and all of a sudden I got more money. It's not like that. It's not like a get rich quick sort of manifest financial abundance sort of a thing. It was a very impactful, well, it was a lifestyle focused thing.

So at that time period, it's also important to say I was self-employed. So my financial ceiling at that time wasn't limited by a salary. I was a professional photographer and videographer in the business realm. So I wasn't doing wedding photography or pet photography or any of that like couples photography. I was focusing on photography for businesses, for headshots, for companies, annual reports, marketing materials, all this kind of stuff. And while I was in the period of my life where I was watching a lot of porn, that took a lot of my focus and it took a lot of my energy. And it's sucked me down into this sort of black hole of internet pleasure. right and then after i would ejaculate to that i didn't have much effort left in my system much

energy left in my system to go do anything else productive so maybe i would i don't know watch a movie or eat some food or like do something else unproductive right it was this huge energy and time suck in my life that also sucked my confidence away from me too because if anybody if you're listening to this and you've watched a lot of porn or you're in the midst of watching a lot of porn And you'll know that if you do that and you go out in public, it's not like you're generally beaming with, oh, I feel great and super confident about who I am. I just watched porn seven days in a row. And so when I started to stop watching porn and when I started to be intentional with

my ejaculations, I noticed that overall I had more fire for life. I had more zest. I had more energy available. I had more clarity of mind available to me. I had more motivation available. And I decided, hey, I really want to actually... There was a turning point where I realized, I really want to know what it's like to be a good lover.

I really want to know what it's like to be successful. I'm never going to have that experience if I just stay here watching porn regularly and never put some effort into this. And so I funneled the desire and the energy that I would have put into porn into building my business, right? into building my business, into reaching out for different clients, into marketing materials, into improving my website. Instead of watching porn, I would spend time researching how to be a better photographer, how to get bigger clients, that sort of a thing. And then there was a certain

point, I remember the first time I had sex with that girlfriend and I did not ejaculate intentionally after reading this book called The Multi-Orgasmic Man by Montauk Chia, which I'm sure a lot of guys have heard of. It felt like I got the golden flashing star in Super Mario Brothers. My whole system felt supercharged. I drove to the grocery store afterwards and I was just beaming and coursing with all this energy in my system. Like, holy shit, this is the thing that they were talking about. This right here is the superpower of sexual energy. I had no idea. I thought it was bullshit, but it's actually real. And so I started to do that more regularly. And then whenever I would have business meetings or a client phone call to give them a proposal,

I had more confidence. I had more self-worth. And so I would ask for more money. And at the same time, they would feel that I would be more confident. So they would have less hesitation in paying my higher fee. So I started to get bigger projects, better clients, started to make more money. And I put that, I just recycled that back into my business, put more money in, stopped watched, you know, didn't watch porn, just like funneled it back in, funneled it back in all my

creative energy, just boom into the business, into business. And eventually I started to get noticed by bigger companies and I got hired by Nvidia and I got hired by Facebook and I got hired by Google and I got hired by these hospital systems and I had photographed a politician, you know, and it was because of this turning point. And because I started to be intentional with my sexual choices and my ejaculation and my porn usage. And instead of letting that out of my system, I built it up and used it as fuel to create the life that I wanted. And I do want to also clarify, I'm not saying I never ejaculated. In these different systems, they say that ejaculation is still great. And I believe ejaculation is great. And I still like to

have ejaculatory orgasms. The goal is just to figure out the frequency that works optimally for your body and your system. And that's going to be different for everyone based on your age and your lifestyle. And you can only figure that out by experimentation. But that's something that I think should be taught to all men. Like, hey, there's actually an optimal frequency for how often you should ejaculate. It's going to shift over your lifespan, but you should figure that out because it's actually going to have a pretty big impact on everything you do. That's amazing. Can you imagine? I mean, I think there's so many tools and coaches and and tools i mean just i said that twice but there's so many tools now available and i always

think about that i'm like wow if i would have had that if i would have had that so it's great that men can come to you not only one that you've experienced this yourself and i'm sure you can do it in a much shorter time than years of experimentation that took you right so i have a question on that and i love all of that but what was the shift for you what was the ultimate shift was it you were just done with the life were you just were you depressed were you because some people say you have to hit your rock bottom i don't always necessarily think that's true i think there has to be a catalyst sometimes was there something in your life at that moment other than living a subpar life that kind of really shifted you into to that new energy and new way of life

yeah that's a good question when i think back to that period of my life there was a about a two-month time frame where most days i would come back to my apartment and just lay on the ground of my living room and stare at the ceiling and i've just felt completely lost and it was like what the fuck am I doing with my life? Watching porn, I'm not confident, not happy, not making enough money, not satisfied in my relationship. I feel stuck. I feel trapped. So I stewed in that for a couple months. And I did hit some kind of a breaking point, which was like, wow, this is unsustainable. I don't want to be like this a year from now or six months from now. And it's really kind of impossible to pinpoint the moment that it

happened, but there was a shift where I realized, hey, something has to be different. Something has to be different here. I have to make a change. Otherwise, life is going to suck. Life is going to be horrible. I don't want to live a shitty life. And all the blame, I was placing blame externally too. And I realized maybe it was through a combination of reading different books. I don't remember exactly what it was, but I realized like, wow, the responsibility for my life rests squarely on my shoulders. I can't blame my girlfriend for it. I can't blame society. I can't blame anyone else. Like, wow, I'm responsible for putting myself here. Holy shit. That means that the people who are successful out there, most of them are responsible for that through

their own actions. All right, it's time to man up. It's time to make a change and do something different. And so then that catalyzed the start of that shift. It was sort of a rock bottom of sorts. It wasn't like the rock bottom of my entire life, but it was definitely a bottom, that's for sure. And you were tired of living there, like you said. I mean, you just wanted more out of life, I'm sure, than what was happening every day. And like you said, it wasn't sustainable for that long so well i'm grateful that it wasn't something more tragic because it doesn't have to be and i think that's a clear message here to everyone listening you can make that shift at any point and it is i love that you said that and i love that you brought it back because we are all

responsible for our futures our happiness our health our sexual health and yeah it's really profound and i think i think we sometimes we know this but we don't practice it and so taking the victim mentality out there the blame on other things or the excuses and take ownership and that's really empowering when you do that yeah i also want to add that it wasn't a change that happened overnight right like i'm talking about years of effort actually after that point and getting into other relationships and repeating unhealthy behaviors, not knowing how to communicate in relationship, not knowing how to cultivate healthy relationship, like getting sucked back into porn. It was like, yeah, there was a journey. It was a journey for sure, but I was committed to

it. And eventually that commitment with the support of joining a men's group actually was really, really helpful for me. And that's a whole other topic, but starting around that time, I joined a men's group and I had been part of that men's group. That ended up going on for about eight years, actually. We met every month and having that close group of guys to share authentically with every month really provided me a strong backbone of support and grounding. I was lucky they were all a little bit older than me and a little bit more established too. So I could look up to them in a certain way. And that provided me a really strong motivating force as well. I love that so much. And I think the more and more I hear my guests and just in the community

and out in social media, and the more I see men's groups, and I think it's phenomenal because I think you know this is just from my experience and my education is that men in general have a more tough time speaking about their feelings and being vulnerable and saying oh yeah i went through that too when you can be in a group that all have similar i don't know issues but like they have similar availability to hold you up and to you know pat yourself on the back and like all of these things is just this community that i think is so needed and i love that you had that through your journey yeah that's so important yeah it was important and i didn't always follow their advice and i should have but that's such is the way of life you know yeah we live and we

learn right i mean but i love that you basically took all of that and compacted that into your programs and the things that you offer men here i think guys listening there's no shame in asking for help there's no shame feeling like you know you're less than and i just really admire that about you and i admire people that actually have those groups that are available to men out there so yeah thank you yeah it's really important and one of the things that so i run a bunch of different programs for men. And one of the things that regularly gets said in the men's programs is like, one of the most impactful thing for some of these guys is just being in a group of other men and saying, hey, I'm having this problem and realizing that there are like 20 to 60 other

people in the group that have that same problem. And they're like, holy shit, I'm not alone. You have this too. Whoa, I can relate with you. Wow. That in itself is very literally healing for the mind, for the nervous system, for the heart, for the soul, for the body. Because a lot of guys, my younger self included, they exist in this isolation bubble of shame, especially if there's any sort of sexual quote unquote dysfunction happening. As a society, as men, we're socialized to not talk about it. We're socialized to not ask for help, to man up, be strong, keep everything internal. Don't let anybody know about your vulnerabilities or weaknesses. And that's actually very unhealthy. I could see in certain survival contexts where

that would be useful, but we're not in a survival context in society. I'm not outside trying to kill or be killed for my survival. So I'm actually trying to thrive in the world. And to do that, I need a community of people who I can be authentic with and share my vulnerabilities who will see me for that and support me anyway you know yeah so like that's just super super important and it's very edgy and it's very hard to do but it's so worth doing well I think too like you you made a really good point there we're not back in the caveman days right and a lot of our biology doesn't like really understand that like modern society is different how do you act as a man without being that 1940s guy and the new you know this beta version or whatever how can you

still be a man be vulnerable be strong have all these things you know it's a new way of like navigating life and not easy yeah so but if you have a community you know what you're not alone And like you said, those guys probably just in that little piece feel that they actually have a network of guys that get them, that they can talk to about things. For sure. And there are lots of different networks out there. Tons of different people besides me doing this now. I mean, maybe not tons, but it's a lot more than it was even just five years ago.

And there's all sorts of in-person events you can go to, online groups you can go to. I think the important thing is if you're feeling the call, it's just like, do some research. find some stuff the rest of your life and all your friends and partners will thank you and your children too if you have those yeah i love that i love that i love that so i do have a little bit of a personal question it's not super like super personal i say that because i'm focusing it on you i ask all my guests what was one of your favorite dates and what was it did you say what was it or what was not like two different was was i try to focus on the one of my favorite dates that's an interesting question yeah oh that's sweet yeah one came to

mind right now so it's with my current partner who I live with we bought a house together in Asheville earlier this year close to the beginning ish of our relationship I lived in a different house and I invited her over and I cooked a really nice meal and I set up a whole bunch of candles in my apartment and had a whole bunch of instruments out. I'm going to disclose some things about my personal life here, which I'm happy with. So she came over, we ate, and then we both took some psychedelic mushrooms together. And not a ton, but enough to get the feeling of it. And then we just played music together for hours. We're both musicians. I play the guitar and the drums and a whole bunch of other stuff and she's a beautiful singer and we just stayed in that musically

creative space together for a long time we didn't take enough to where we were like having a full-on psychedelic experience like just enough to be in in the vibe you could say and it's just a really beautiful connective experience we ended up just doing some breathing together some breath work some massage some rolling around and just being really in our bodies and i remember so much just like the the romanticness of that with the candles and there were a lot of dark colors and just a beautiful way to to be together sounds amazing yeah i love that it was yeah i love that you incorporated like something that you both love to do you know and then it was just like this you know flow and connection and you know it was just like a beautiful space you guys created so

yeah thank you for sharing that i love that yeah and i'll share one other one that came to mind too it's totally on the opposite end of that spectrum okay uh so my also current partner who i live with her name is naima she took me on a surprise date somewhere and we got in the car and she said okay put on a blindfold and i rode in the car for 15 minutes had no idea where we were going she said okay make sure you do something relaxing before the date so i thought okay maybe we're going to a spa who knows maybe we're going to get a massage i don't really know and we get to where we're going she walks me out of the car to this door and i touch the door to go in it's like this weird like cold steel solid hard door like what the fuck like this is kind of bizarre we walk

in and i take off the blindfold and i'm just looking around and it's like it's a wall multiple walls of guns just like guns everywhere i'm like what and she took me to a shooting range as a surprise date and it's something totally random to do and i was like wow that is so cool and then we got a lesson from somebody there on handguns handgun safety all that stuff and then shotguns for a while and it was really sweet because it was so random like we don't normally do that sort of a thing you know i do have a that's that's a whole other topic but like the surprise of it and the it was a total shock and total surprise and total like different thing like something completely out of left field and because of that it was a really sweet like bonding experience just

to do something very different together yeah and you had that experience together with yourselves like that that's that's wonderful like i really love that and then blindfold i'm glad that she didn't like put out like a whole hood thing on right then she was thinking just cross Mexico I love that well thank you for sharing both of those I do this so that people can kind of some people are like I need date ideas or what really connects me to partner into relationship and so everybody has different experiences so I appreciate that and I'm happy to share both just because like some people think oh he lives in Asheville he must just like play music and sing kumbaya and take mushrooms all the time and that's not true it's like it's a full spectrum of things

happening here i have some friends that live there actually so yeah i've been there a couple times so it's beautiful it's like in the mountains or right kind of blue ridge mountains right yeah okay no it's a really cool city so a lot of good food there actually yeah well thank you so much for talking about all these, you know, topics that maybe could be uncomfortable for guys. And this allows a space where they can hear your story, hear what you have to offer too, so that, you know, there's someone out there

for them to talk to or to whatever that they need. And I really appreciate that. And hopefully you guys took something from this interview because I took lots and lots of nuggets though. where can anybody say they want to take a masterclass or sign up for your services or find more information about you where can they find you yeah well i'd first say thank you so much for having me here and thank you for listening and if you are listening i imagine you probably would like to know more before buying anything so i put out a lot of free content i have a podcast

as well it's called sex upgraded and it contains a lot of just my own personal stories of sexual discovery and exploration and challenges and a lot of guys really really like that podcast and find it really helpful to hear personal experiences of you know deeper dives of a lot of the stuff that we've talked about here so i would say check out that podcast for sure and then i do have free guides on everything we've talked about and courses eventually but yeah i like to say don't rush and sign up for a paid thing like do a little more research check out some of my other stuff and you can find me all over the internet. Look up Taylor Johnson sex. I'm on Instagram at Taylor Clark Johnson on YouTube as well. And yeah, I'd reach out if you have any specific questions.

Amazing. Yeah. I love that. And thank you for letting everybody know you have some freebies that they can download and they can find out some information. I really appreciate you being here and yeah, go check out some of his stuff guys. Thank you again for showing up and listening to the podcast. Have an amazing day. If you enjoyed today's episode and want to support podcasts like ours, then please hit that subscribe button, leave a five-star rating, and or invite others to listen. Your support is what helps us grow and continue to bring you valuable content. Thanks for hanging out with us on today's episode. Let's stay connected. You can find

me on Instagram at CelesteMoreImage, and I'd love to hear your thoughts on today's discussion. For all the links, resources, and additional information mentioned in this episode, check out the show notes on my website, CelesteMoore.com. That's all for now, but stay tuned for our next episode where we'll dive into more exciting topics. Until then, see you next time, friends.