Heat, Cold, and Breath: How to Train Your Brain to Stop Escaping Into Porn and Stop Fearing Cravings
- Jake Kastleman
- 6 minutes ago
- 33 min read
There’s a truth I’ve had to face in my own life—one that I see reflected in the men I work with—and it’s this: porn addiction is not primarily a willpower problem. It’s a nervous system problem. More specifically, it’s an inability to regulate emotional discomfort.
And that matters, because it changes how we approach recovery entirely.
This isn’t about you being weak. It’s not about you lacking discipline. It’s that most of us were never taught how to actually sit with what we feel. We learned how to push through, how to distract, how to stay busy, but not how to slow down, feel discomfort, and stay grounded inside of it.
So when discomfort shows up and it always does the brain looks for relief. It looks for regulation. And in today’s world, porn has become one of the fastest and most accessible ways to get that relief. Not because it’s what we truly want, but because it works quickly. If you don’t understand this, you’ll keep fighting the wrong battle, trying to control behavior instead of addressing what’s driving it.
Porn Addiction and the Nervous System: What’s Really Driving Cravings
If you want to understand porn addiction recovery, you have to look beneath the surface. Cravings aren’t random. They’re not just about sex. They’re signals from your nervous system.
At its core, a craving is your system saying: “I don’t feel okay right now—help me regulate.”
That’s why so many men feel stuck asking the same questions—why can’t I stop watching porn, why do I keep relapsing, why are my urges so strong? Because when your system is dysregulated, your brain will reach for the fastest available solution. And in a world full of high-stimulation options—porn, social media, junk food, endless entertainment—it’s easy to get pulled into patterns that reinforce the cycle.su
These are what neuroscience calls supernormal stimuli experiences that give your brain more stimulation than it was designed to handle. Over time, they reshape your reward system, making normal life feel less engaging and increasing the intensity of cravings.
Dopamine and Porn Addiction: Why Your Brain Keeps Pulling You Back
Dopamine plays a central role here, but not in the way most people think. It’s not just about pleasure—it’s about motivation. It drives you to pursue, to engage, to move toward something.
The challenge is that dopamine evolved in a world where effort came first. Food, connection, progress—these required work, uncertainty, and discomfort. That process kept the system balanced.
Today, we’ve reversed that process. We can access high levels of stimulation instantly, without effort. And when that happens repeatedly, the brain adapts by reducing dopamine sensitivity. This is known as dopamine downregulation, and it changes how you experience life.
You begin to feel:
Less motivated
More restless
More easily bored
Less satisfied with normal experiences
So the brain starts craving stronger stimulation just to feel okay. This is one of the core neurological drivers of porn addiction.
The Modern Trap: How Comfort Is Weakening Your System
We live in an incredibly comfortable world. We have access to convenience at a level no generation before us has experienced. And while there’s a lot of good in that, there’s also a hidden cost.
For most of human history, discomfort was unavoidable. Life required effort, patience, and resilience. Those conditions built strong nervous systems by default.
Now, we have the option to avoid discomfort almost entirely. And when we do that consistently, our tolerance for stress decreases. Our resilience weakens. Our ability to stay grounded under pressure starts to erode.
So when discomfort inevitably shows up—as it always does—it feels overwhelming. And in that state, the brain looks for escape. This is where addiction thrives.
If we don’t choose discomfort intentionally, we end up escaping discomfort unconsciously.
The Pain-Pleasure Balance: Why Escaping Pain Creates More of It
Your brain is constantly balancing pain and pleasure. When you spike pleasure through easy, high-stimulation behaviors like porn, there’s always a corresponding drop on the other side.
That drop shows up as anxiety, cravings, low mood, and restlessness.
But when you flip the pattern—when you choose effort and discomfort on the front end—you get a different result. You experience a form of pleasure that is more stable, more grounded, and more fulfilling.
This is the difference between:
Base pleasures: easy, immediate, but costly
Noble pleasures: effort-based, meaningful, and strengthening
Recovery isn’t about eliminating pleasure. It’s about choosing the kind of pleasure that actually builds you.
Hormesis and Biology: Why Your Body Needs Stress
At a biological level, your body is designed to grow stronger in response to stress. This is known as hormesis—the process by which small, intentional stressors promote adaptation and resilience.
Exercise strengthens muscles. Cold exposure improves stress tolerance. Breathwork regulates emotional response.
This principle extends down to your cells. When you expose your body to healthy stress, you improve mitochondrial function—the system responsible for producing energy. This leads to better focus, improved mood, and greater resilience.
When your life is dominated by comfort and overstimulation, these systems begin to weaken.
What feels like a lack of discipline is often a body and brain that haven’t been trained to handle stress.
Training the Nervous System: “I Can Handle This”
Your nervous system is always learning from experience. Every time you avoid discomfort, it reinforces the belief that you can’t handle it. Every time you face discomfort and stay present, it builds a new belief: I can handle this.
This is how you begin to rewire your brain.
Over time, your system becomes more stable. You respond instead of react. You stay grounded under pressure instead of getting pulled into it. And as that happens, cravings begin to lose their intensity.
Heat, Cold, and Breath: Practical Tools to Reduce Porn Cravings
If you want to reduce porn cravings naturally, you need practical ways to train your system. Heat, cold, and breath are three of the most effective tools because they directly engage the nervous system.
Heat exposure—through things like sauna, hot baths, or intense exercise—creates sustained discomfort that your body must learn to tolerate. As you stay in it, you build resilience.
Cold exposure—through cold showers or ice baths—creates immediate, sharp stress. When you step into it voluntarily, you train your system to face discomfort without escaping.
Breathwork gives you control in the moment. A simple technique like inhaling for four seconds and exhaling for eight helps calm the nervous system and create space between you and your cravings. It doesn’t eliminate the urge, but it gives you the clarity to choose your response.
Emotional Training: Learning to Stay
Physical tools are powerful, but emotional training is where the deeper work happens. You have to learn how to sit with your internal experience without immediately trying to escape it.
This means allowing yourself to feel discomfort fully—without suppressing it or acting on it. Over time, this builds a new relationship with emotion. You begin to trust that you can feel intensity and remain grounded.
And when that happens, the need to escape starts to fade.
The Identity Shift: From Escaping to Leading
At the core of this process is identity. The old identity says, I need relief. I can’t handle this. The new identity says, I train my nervous system. I can handle discomfort. I choose growth over escape.
This is what it means to lead yourself. Not perfectly, but consistently. Not through force, but through presence.
Final Thought: Discomfort Is the Way Out
If you train your body and nervous system to handle discomfort, you won’t need porn to escape it.
Discomfort isn’t the problem. It’s the path.
In a world that constantly pulls you toward ease, stimulation, and distraction, choosing discomfort is one of the most powerful decisions you can make. Not as punishment—but as training.
As a way to build a life that feels grounded, meaningful, and fully your own.
For a complete collection of all recovery tools and training, visit nomoredesire.com/tools. This is your central hub for the Free eBook, Workshop, The RAIL Method ™, online courses, and more — all designed to equip you with the practical strategies and deeper framework needed to break free from porn and build lasting freedom.
If you’re ready to build the mindset and lifestyle that lead to long-term freedom from porn addiction, apply for my Porn Addiction Recovery Coaching Program. You'll receive weekly group coaching sessions, private community connection, online course lessons & applied exercises, and weekly 1-on-1 coaching sessions for emotional regulation and nervous system integration training.
Recommended Episodes:
Full Transcription of Episode 138: Heat, Cold, and Breath: How to Train Your Brain to Stop Escaping Into Porn
Jake Kastleman (00:00.106)
Welcome to No More Desire, where we build the mindset and lifestyle for lasting recovery from porn. My name is Jake Castleman, and I'm excited to dive in with you. Let's get started, my friend.
Jake Kastleman (00:22.799)
Heat, cold, and breath. For generations, our ancestors lived in a world of harsh conditions. It's just the way that things were. We were required to struggle, work, sweat, breathe, and is taxed our bodies. Life hurt, food took effort, and the path toward prosperity seemed a never-ending staircase.
For thousands of years, we've searched for ways to make life more convenient, less harsh, less stressful. And in our efforts to advance and make things better, something strange has happened to us. Our bodies and minds have adapted to weakness. These days, most of us don't have to live in physical discomfort, myself included.
We have heated and cooled homes and vehicles. We have desk jobs and meet virtually. We enjoy food prepared for us that we pick up from a grocery store or restaurant. And we can spend our days in endless entertainment in the palm of our hand, if we so choose. We did all this thinking it would make life better. And in some ways, it has. But again, it's created an unanticipated effect.
Our society is more anxious, depressed, disconnected from each other, and less motivated than ever. Many of us have been taught it's normal for us to feel these ways every day. We receive diagnoses that condemn us to a life of halfway misery, and we accept these prognoses. As a people that are anxious, depressed, and less present,
We are inevitably drawn to addictive behaviors in order to escape our ever-present pain. But is this really the way that it has to be? Or do we have a choice? Today I talk about simple methods for nervous system regulation and improvement of mental and emotional health. Heat, cold, and breath. I'll teach you the neuroscience behind why these simple things
Jake Kastleman (02:48.502)
that are as old as humanity itself increase our mental resilience and emotional peace, and why this decreases our cravings for porn and fuels our recovery. Before we dive in, a reminder to follow and rate this podcast so that others looking for help can find it, and make sure to hit that notification button so that you can keep finding it. All right, my friend, let's get started.
Jake Kastleman (03:29.933)
Addiction in part comes down to an inability to feel emotional discomfort. Before anyone gets offended, more specifically, what I mean is we don't know how to regulate discomfort. And I've been through this my whole life. It's not that we are weak or incapable inherently. It is that we were not taught these skills in our childhood.
So we did not grow up with the habits, right? Instead, most of us grew up with habits of instant gratification, escape from suffering, self-criticism, and willpower to get things done. We were not taught self-awareness, breath work, leaning into discomfort, emotional regulation, and internal communication with ourselves.
come and understand deeper emotions and actually inviting and welcoming pain as Buddhist monks teach and also as multiple faiths, religions, philosophies teach. We were not taught how to calm our nervous system. Instead, we were taught to either suppress or ignore our nervous systems, to control our painful emotions through willpower or through escape.
through external distractions. Here's a really hard reality. That's that delayed gratification is good for us. And delayed gratification used to just be built into normal everyday life. It was the way that things were. We didn't have a choice about how long things took. We grew food. We hunted for food. Obviously I'm going back quite a bit here, right?
several hundred years, if you will. But we didn't have a choice about how convenient that was. And obviously we built systems and industry to make things easier and more convenient. Why did we do that? Because we thought it would make us happier. We also wanted to obviously experience less pain. We thought it would speed things up so we could be more productive. One of the amazing things that's occurred
Jake Kastleman (05:54.796)
in our society is it seems like the more we speed up, the more that technology helps things be quicker, the more we increase the speed of our lives to just match it. We're always striving for more. And I think our goal orientation and our deep desire, especially in Western society, to accomplish and to be ambitious and to do a lot of great things is so good.
I am heavily influenced by these motivations.
but also we've forgotten how to just be. And the constant stimulation that we go through is consistently training us into that. And that inevitably this ongoing entertainment, this convenience, this ease of life, this lack of pain has conditioned us toward being weaker emotionally and physically. The reality is that pain is good for us.
Pain is half of life, the other half is joy. And I don't think it quite works out 50-50 like that, but the point is it's an ongoing part of life and one that we're taught to, again, control or ignore or try to escape. We're taught to...
be positive, most, I wouldn't say most, a lot of things in psychology actually teach us ways to try to get rid of pain. And we definitely wanna decrease suffering, but what we don't wanna do is demonize pain because it's a part of life and it's ultimately a very necessary part of life. And I think that this is hard for all of us to embrace. I know it's been hard for me.
Jake Kastleman (07:48.107)
I talked about this in the episode previously, just a couple of weeks ago, the over-stimulated man. We are going to go, little bit of what I talked about today will be a tiny bit of review on that, but we're gonna talk about some new things as well. Society has trained us for weakness, I talked about in there, right? This is not our fault. And it is also not born of malicious intent, necessarily.
right, from those who've created this through industry. It's born out of convenience and advancement in technology. And there are a lot of businesses that wanna make money from the technologies that they sell. And many of us want these conveniences, myself included. Okay, we're blessed with heated and cooled homes and vehicles, food that's delivered or made for us, including at the grocery store, entertainment that's easily and automatically accessible, and now artificial intelligence.
Right? Artificial intelligence. my gosh. AI.
both a miracle and a joy. I think it's amazing. I love AI. And it's also the condemnation of our society, the destruction of humanity. And I know that's intense, but there's a lot of people talking about this right now. And one of the biggest reasons when it comes to recovery and emotional regulation, when it comes to recovery,
I have to live a life of purpose and meaning. I need to live a life where I feel fulfilled, do things that I'm proud of. This has everything to do with recovery. And AI is taking that from people. Now, not without our consent, right? We have a choice. Our power of choice is expanded with the creation of AI.
Jake Kastleman (09:50.73)
Now I can choose, do I want to create a podcast episode of my own? Or do I want AI to write it for me? Because it can. It has access to an endless amount of information in an instant. It can take what might take me hours and decrease it down to maybe 45 minutes total.
to produce an episode, not including the recording, but having it generated for me and then me simply editing it, right? An easy choice for me to make. Same thing with college classes or school. Now kids are growing up in elementary school, middle school, high school and college of course.
where they can say, they can opt out. I'm done, I'm opting out. I don't actually need to work. I'm just gonna have something else do my thinking for me. And I was talking to one of my friends, Todd about this, who I'm gonna have on the podcast soon. And he was saying how, you know, we're gonna get to the point in our society where so many of us, I think,
we will be asked the question, what do you think about X, Y, or Z?
And many of us are going to say, I don't know, or we're going to have a very difficult time formulating thoughts, formulating ideas. I often say again that our agency or power of choice has expanded greatly in this day and age. The further our technology advances, the more options available, the more our agency increases. The internet is now here.
Jake Kastleman (11:50.696)
We can indulge in endless entertainment, endless pornography, all the sexual or violent or stimulating, exciting, entertaining experiences we possibly could want all in an instant with virtually no effort on our part. This is our choice. We can do this. We can also now not think and not create and have something else think and create for us. This is an option. If we choose that,
It will destroy us. It will destroy our sense of fulfillment and joy. We are here to cultivate gifts. Whether you want to look at that from a humanistic perspective or a biological perspective, we need creation. We need fulfillment to feel happy. Or if you want to look at it from a spiritual aspect, God sent us here to discover, to grow.
to understand. And if I opt out of that, I am not fulfilling the purpose for which I am here. In that way, AI is evil, right? It creates disintegration of the parts of me, disintegration of my intelligence and my gifts in favor of something else living for me, something else doing things for me.
And in other ways, AI can be used for great good and miracles. The good and evil are equal to each other, I would say. It just depends on how we use it, right? So, if these options are available, if these options were available, I should say to our ancestors, they probably would have made a lot of the same decisions that we are now for convenience and ease. These things that have fueled our addictions,
As a result, unfortunately we find ourselves in a society that is emotionally immature. Now, I'm in this group, okay? I struggle with some of this too. I've worked very, very hard on this and so many of us have. We are a people with fragile nervous systems and I'm not speaking definitively here.
Jake Kastleman (14:12.516)
Obviously there are so many of us who've cultivated more strength and resilience, but if we allow ourselves to be this way, will condition us into it. If we are not very conscious about how we spend our time, about how I spend my time, many of us do not know how to put up with discomfort or how to stay grounded under pressure. Why? Because much of the time we don't have to. Again, I include myself in that group. There's a saying,
Hard times make strong men. Strong men make easy times. Easy times make weak men. Weak men make hard times. And the cycle repeats. So we find ourselves in this state of really strong men made easy times for us. And those can make us into weak men or we can choose strength.
and we can choose to make the next generation even better, but we have to learn something new, which we didn't have to learn before. Our technology has not advanced to this point in our written history that we know of.
We now have the option to opt out of life and we need to opt in. We need to make the choice. We found ourselves in easy times, but unfortunately we squandered that comfort on a grand scale and this led to a society that used our resources poorly in many ways. We have had such abundance and it has weakened us and disconnected us. We have chosen not to give, not to be connected.
to sit in our homes and watch TV for hours, to binge watch porn, to eat foods that are unhealthy for us, and to not exercise. We've chosen to not educate ourselves, even though we have access to education on anything we want in an instant. An entire world, an entire universe of information in an instant.
Jake Kastleman (16:17.532)
Now, am I saying this is all bad? No, of course not. There's so many of us that are doing amazing things. We're serving, we're blessing the world. There's so much good, guys. So much good. I actually have immense hope for our generation. I am optimistic about where we are headed. I think we are moving in a great direction, but I also think it's going to take a ton of growing pains for us to come out of so many of the habits we have formed as a culture of detachment, of laziness.
and of living for convenience and entertainment. We need to stop. And the internet and AI and the associated mental health struggles and suffering, emotional struggles and suffering that we've been through, the disconnection of society, like it's calling out to us. Hey, things gotta change.
Jake Kastleman (17:14.319)
It's March and it's time for a new monthly challenge. The theme for this month is Rewire Your Nervous System. And inside the No More Desire Brotherhood, we're doing something potentially life-changing. Your mission for the month of March, should you choose to accept it, is to reduce your screen time significantly for 30 days. How much you reduce it is up to you, based on where you're at now and where you'd like to be. For myself, I am going TV free for 30 days.
Does that sound crazy? In our culture, it is. But I want you to notice that. How deeply rooted is our reliance on technology and screens? And how is this affecting our dopamine levels and our nervous system, making us more susceptible to porn addiction? This impacts our motivation, our concentration, our presence, our sense of connection, and our sense of direction and personal identity. TV drains your dopamine. And so does porn.
Will you join me in this extreme and culturally taboo practice to be TV free for 30 days? Or will you choose another goal? You don't need to go all in, just choose a suitable goal for yourself. Here's how I'd structure your challenge. Number one, decide what activity you are going to limit, TV, social media, video games, or a combination. Number two, decide what your limit will be. Two hours per day, an hour, 30 minutes, or complete abstinence.
Note that this does not include work or other necessary responsibilities that require screens. Number three, commit to 30 days and track your progress. Does this sound difficult? If so, don't do it alone. Come join the No More Desire Brotherhood where we complete these challenges together. I'll stick a link in the show notes so that you can join the free online community. You'll get accountability, connection, and weekly check-ins as we pursue the challenge together.
So use the link in the show notes or go to nomordesire.com slash community and sign up.
Jake Kastleman (19:16.166)
Because of the immense ease our society now affords, it is necessary for us to choose discomfort, choose pain. If we, you know, can you believe that? We actually have to choose to put ourselves through hard things. People didn't need to do this before. Again, it wasn't an option if they wanted to survive. Because life does not provide these things as it did for thousands or millions of years. It makes me think of that scene in Back to the Future.
If you've seen it, I think it's the third one, I want to say, where Christopher Lloyd has traveled back in time and is in a town of cowboys. I hope it's not the second one, I could be misquoting. He's in the bar telling them about how in the future there are motorized carriages called automobiles. Automobiles. They ask him if anybody runs or walks anymore because they have these fancy automobiles.
And he says, we do have, we do walk and run, but for recreation and fun. And all these cowboys laugh in the saloon. Who would run for fun? That's crazy.
Out of necessity in the past, we had to live with discomfort and immense strain. We didn't have another option. And it hasn't been that long since then. know, a couple hundred years, we were, you know, a lot of us were farming. A lot of us were growing our own food. You know, we had to do, we had to toil and strain, right? In order to make it all work. And now we do. And now we do have this other option, right? And it has weakened us emotionally and neurologically.
has clearly contributed to things like anxiety, depression, and other mental health challenges because our nervous system requires strain to strengthen and stress to condition us emotionally. Instead, we are getting these massive dopamine spikes from technology, entertainment, porn, processed foods, junk foods, and this just makes us crave more and more more and more because our bodies and minds feel overwhelmed by discomfort. Because
Jake Kastleman (21:28.032)
It's not such an ongoing part of life. This comfort used to just be an everyday thing. But now our minds are forcing us, our nervous system is forcing us into pain. This past week, by the time this comes out, it won't be this past week, but this week, I should say, when I'm recording this, in the inner circle, within the program, the group coaching that I do, we do lessons and exercises. You know, in each week,
I share a concept and this week it was the dopamine seesaw. You know, there is the reality of this pain pleasure balance in the brain where if I choose things that ramp up pleasure on the back end, I'm going to experience a bunch of pain because that's the way my dopaminergic system works. Whereas if I do things that are noble pleasures, instead of those base pleasures that are easy with no discomfort, no effort,
If I do noble pleasures that require effort and the effort or in other words, pain to pleasure ratio is pretty equal. Like when it comes to exercise, I front load with pain and I'm back loaded with the feeling of fulfillment, pleasure, right? There's no imbalance there. Pain and pleasure are about equal. Same thing with writing, same thing with reading, same thing with hobbies, sports, exercise.
relationships that are meaningful, creating a business, all these things require a lot of effort, a lot of pain, and they yield a reward, a natural reward that's about equal to that pain. This is how life is meant to work. And again, we talk in my course, Dopamine Overhaul, which has a, by the way, which has a 10 % discount if you join the No More Desired Brotherhood, which is free to join the public community. You get a 10 % discount on Dopamine Overhaul. Anyway.
in lesson two of dopamine overhaul. I get deep into the neuroscience of how this all works according to Dr. Anna Lemke, writer of Dopamine Nation. Very, very powerful stuff. When we understand how this works, it's life-changing because this then, if I understand how this works and I use it to my advantage, I begin to lose my frequency and intensity of cravings for pornography. Because my nervous system is more regulated, my dopamine-nergic system is more balanced.
Jake Kastleman (23:51.352)
In biology, there's this concept of hormesis. Hormesis means that small intentional stressors actually make the body stronger, more resilient, more capable. Without those stressors, the system weakens. This principle shows up everywhere in my body. When I lift weights, I create tiny tears and muscle fibers. The body responds by repairing them stronger than before. When I expose myself to cold, my body increases circulation, activates brown fat, and improves metabolic flexibility.
Okay, we're starting into, we're talking about cold here. We're talking about some of these different things we're gonna hone in on a little bit later. When you practice breath control, you train the nervous system to regulate stress chemistry. Your body literally adapts to discomfort by becoming more resilient. Okay, I wanna say that one more time. Our body adapts to discomfort by becoming more resilient. Discomfort is required for me to feel happy.
The opposite is also true. If the body experiences constant comfort and constant stimulation through things like TV, video games, porn, junk food, many of the biological systems responsible for resilience begin to down-regulate. Unfortunate. Unfortunate the state we find ourselves in, but we can choose differently. One of the most important chemicals involved in addiction and motivation is
What guys, I've talked about a billion times over like the last five episodes. Dopamine. Dopamine is often misunderstood as the pleasure chemical. It's actually more accurate and I've talked about it in previous episodes to say dopamine is the motivation and pursuit chemical. It drives us to seek, explore, learn, move toward goals. But dopamine evolved in an environment where rewards are rare and require effort. Finding food.
building shelter, hunting, forming relationships. We did this for a really, really, really long time, right? Each of us required, each of these things required effort. They were uncertain. There was discomfort. was anxiety that we felt about this, fear. I don't know if I'll get a meal. I'm not sure how it's gonna work out. When I grow these crops, I don't know if they're gonna work, right? Uncertainty was just an ongoing part of life. We're struggling with that uncertainty now because we try to measure everything.
Jake Kastleman (26:14.189)
We try to pretend that we have all the answers and then we can just ensure solutions. And in a lot of ways we can, we do try to control things and it sometimes works out and sometimes totally backfires. When effort preceded reward, the dopamine system stayed balanced. Just like I said, hormesis, right? Today, however, our brains are being exposed to super normal stimuli. Gotta love that term, super normal.
Stimuli. Highly processed food, social media, video games, streaming entertainment, and of course porn. These things create massive dopamine spikes with almost no effort required on my part. And when dopamine spikes repeatedly, the brain adapts by doing something protective. It reduces the sensitivity of dopamine receptors. Wow. My body is trying to protect me. My brain is trying to protect itself because I can only experience so much dopamine.
If I get too much, what will happen? I have no idea. There's probably some science on that. It reduces the sensitivity of dopamine receptors. This is called dopamine downregulation, which means the brain becomes less responsive to normal rewards. That is where we find ourselves. We're anxious, we're depressed, we can't focus, okay, these ADHD symptoms, all right? This all contributes to this stuff. It's not just genetic, friends.
There are environmental factors. are being, we are being, we are consumed by them. This is one of the reasons many of us today feel unmotivated, foggy, restless, chronically bored. Ordinary life begins to feel dull compared to high stimulation activities. And the brain begins craving stronger and stronger stimulation just to feel normal. This is a major neurological driver of addiction.
Okay, another thing, stress hormones and of course, system resilience. I've said the word nervous system like a billion times again in the last five or six episodes. Another piece of the puzzle involves our stress hormones, especially cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones are not bad. In fact, they are essential for survival. They mobilize energy, sharpen focus and prepare the body to handle challenges. Can you believe that? Okay, I was often told that cortisol is bad. Like that's how I was educated. I don't know about you guys.
Jake Kastleman (28:43.595)
People are like cortisol is bad, you shouldn't feel it. Cortisol is necessary for survival. We want cortisol. We don't want imbalance in cortisol, but there are so many factors behind that. We do want a cortisol release. It's important that we have cortisol. Otherwise, we can't get up in the morning. Well, at all. We have to have this driver. And the cortisol is involved in many.
In fact, I'm going look that up right now. What is cortisol involved in? Speaking of immediate gratification, cortisol produced by the adrenal glands is a vital steroid hormone primarily involved in managing the body's stress response, regulating metabolism, maintaining blood pressure, reducing inflammation, and controlling sleep-wake cycles. It triggers the fight-or-flight response, boosts energy by releasing glucose,
and regulates protein fat metabolism. Okay, it's crucial to understand we often think of fight or flight as bad, but if you think of just a proper amount of cortisol being released, we want to feel focused and we need cortisol involved in that to do so and other hormones in balance, right? So these hormones are not bad. In fact, they're essential for survival. They mobilize energy.
Here's the key. Our ancestors experienced acute stress followed by recovery. Hopefully. They might run from danger, hunt for food, endure harsh weather. The stress would rise, then it would fall. This created a nervous system that was flexible and resilient. Today, many of us experience something very different. Instead of physical stress followed by recovery, we often experience chronic psychological stress combined with physical discomfort. Life is much harder in some ways, right? All this said,
It's much harder in some ways psychologically for a lot of us. But here's the thing, we sit still, we stare at screens, we ruminate, and the nervous system stays subtly active for hours or days, years, without physical outlets like movement, breath, heat, cold, the stress chemistry doesn't get resolved. We gotta move. We gotta experience things physically. We gotta be embodied. And so much of life is disembodying us now.
Jake Kastleman (31:03.957)
This leads to a dysregulated nervous system. And what does that translate into? Sexual cravings for one, cravings as a whole for another. And it can translate into a lot of things, but when we have a history of pornography addiction, our body says, how do I feel better? Porn. And all we experienced is sexual cravings. We're like, I need sex. No. If you go back to my previous episode, the need for sex, I forget exactly what the title is, but.
A few episodes ago, I talked about this need we think we have for sex. not a need. Okay, it's nervous system regulation. When we feel the need and the craving for sex, there's a more broad reason that's happening. It has to do with our nervous system, our emotions, our biological needs. Without physical outlets like movement, we get dysregulated. And when the nervous system becomes dysregulated, the brain looks for self-soothing, which is exactly where addictive behaviors enter the picture, Porn, food, alcohol, endless scrolling.
These becomes the ways to artificially regulate emotional discomfort. Last thing I want to talk about, I believe it's the last thing. Yes. Mitochondria. And then we're going to dig into some specifics of heat, cold, breath. Heat, cold, and breath. So we've talked about dopamine, stress hormones, the nervous system, resilience. There's another factor at play that most of us never hear about. Inside nearly every cell of our body are tiny structures called mitochondria. Okay, we know about this. Talked about it in middle school, probably you learned about it.
Mitochondria are essentially the energy generators of the body. They produce ATP, the fuel that powers nearly every biological process, but mitochondria don't just produce energy. They also respond to stress signals. When we expose the body to healthy stress, things like exercise, cold exposure, heat exposure, breath training, the body responds by creating more mitochondria and stronger mitochondria. More mitochondria and stronger mitochondria. This process is called mitochondrial biogenesis.
I don't know about you guys, but what I was educated on in middle school was every cell contains one mitochondria. That is not true. Every cell contains many mitochondria and we can produce, cells will produce more mitochondria and stronger, more resilient mitochondria. Through our choices and what we put our bodies through, through building resilience, what we expose ourselves to, more mitochondria means more physical energy.
Jake Kastleman (33:30.643)
something pretty much all of us could use, right? Better brain function. We need that for recovery. Improved mood. Also need that for recovery. Greater stress tolerance. Also extremely crucial for recovery from pornography or any other addiction. When the body experiences constant comfort, low movement, high stimulation, mitochondrial function can actually decline, which contributes to fatigue, low motivation, and mental fog. All prominent causes
of seeking out addiction because our system is dysregulated and we're trying to escape our feelings of discomfort and pain. We need to regulate, find strength and resilience and feel well. In other words, part of what many people call lack of discipline is actually a body and brain that have become biologically under conditioned. Your nervous system is always learning from your experiences.
My nervous system is always learning from its experiences. When I regulate, when I regularly expose myself to manageable discomfort, cold water, intense exercise, controlled breathing, fasting, difficult conversations, emotional honesty, that's a hard one, especially with our wives sometimes, right? The brain begins learning something important. I can handle this. That's a totally different belief than what a lot of our culture has generated within us.
Prefrontal cortex strengthens its ability to regulate the limbic system when we do this. Much of culture has taught us what doesn't kill you makes you weaker. It has taught us to avoid triggers, avoid stress. False. Okay guys, that's not how it works. Triggers are trailheads. Triggers are trailheads for greater growth. If we know how to use them. It's one of the most complex things we face. It's why I focus on
Well, I'll tell you about that in a minute actually. The body becomes more efficient at managing stress hormones. we do this, dopamine receptors become more balanced, mitochondria increase, and gradually the nervous system becomes calm under pressure instead of reactive under pressure. So choosing discomfort, we do this through things like nervous system and emotional regulation training. That's what I was gonna tell you about. I teach the men in my program this to give you a few insights of how you can do this. Starting right now.
Jake Kastleman (35:57.503)
One of the main things I work on with my clients is we sit down and choose something emotionally difficult that happened to them in the last couple of days. I then have them meditate and take themselves back to that experience and provoke the painful emotions that were present at the time. It's like an imaginative exercise. It's a psychological exercise. You're doing reps at the gym, but psychologically, emotionally. We then follow a framework, the RAIL method, which is an IFS and parts work based model.
to process through those emotions. We do the same thing with cravings. This trains us much like doing reps at the gym to put up with emotional discomfort. Not only that, it teaches my mind how to work through it. It proves to me that I can experience emotional pain or cravings and work through them. So the men in my program practice this in our weekly sessions. I also give them emotional regulation practices. A little bit of self-promotion here, but hopefully it's helpful to you. Thinking about it for yourself or you can come join us. Love to have you.
emotional regulation practices to do these things every day on their own as well in addition to what I do in sessions. Because we all want to develop this every single day. We all need it. Just like we need daily movement and nutrition, we need ways to regulate and release our emotions. This is why things like journaling, prayer, meditation, and other practices have been practiced for thousands of years. Okay? People knew what they were talking about forever ago. Buddhism, Taoism, and also in Christianity.
with the practice of prayer. And I would say more specifically, confession through prayer, getting deeply in touch with emotion and expressing it, getting it out. Now, are these the only ways to process emotions? No, remember that emotion is processed in the body. So in addition to things like emotional regulation practices, we can do things that are physical, such as heat, cold and breath, which is what we will focus the rest of the episode on. Okay, I've already mentioned some of these things and the reasons why they work.
but I'm gonna get deep into specifics of what you can do. Our body and mind need reasonable levels of stress to strengthen and for us to feel happy. We can expose ourselves to heat, cold and use breath to bring stress and pain into the body in reasonable amounts, which is paradoxically good for us. Okay, first heat. What do I mean when I say heat? We want to expose ourselves to heat regularly in our lives. Sweating, physical exertion.
Jake Kastleman (38:20.007)
We want to warm up our bodies. Being in the sun, being in hot water or in a sauna or a steam room, these things are powerful for recovery. Again, it's going to increase mitochondria. It's going to balance dopamine. It's going to balance stress hormones. All of these things are going to happen. And that is going to make me feel I can do hard things. I can tolerate discomfort and be okay. Crucial for recovery. We need this ability. Ways to do this are of course so that we stop trying to escape these right through addiction.
for those of us who are unfamiliar. Ways to do this are of course to get outside as often as we can. I'm very bad at this the last several months. Most work days I spend all day inside other than going to the gym, right? On the weekends I try to get outside sometimes, but that's a good thing, okay? I'll talk about some other things at the end of the episode that I've been doing. So second thing is cold. What do I mean by that? Again, exposing ourselves to very cold temperatures. How?
going outside when it's cold. That's discontinuing happening pretty quickly here. Already it's happening. But ice baths, also, if you have access to that. Cold showers is probably the most practical option for a lot of us. It's something many of us have access to. Doing something once per day or a few times a day to expose myself to cold, this helps my system grow more resilient. Sorry, a few times per week.
doing something once a day or a few times per week. I was like, did I really just say few times per day? That's a lot. Okay, a few times per week. It helps with recovery and my feeling of groundedness and ease. Okay, I take a cold shower most days, sometimes just for 30 seconds. Freaking hurts. It's a horrible experience every time. Sometimes I do it for a couple of minutes and I hate it. Okay, why do I do it though? I do it because it teaches me I can handle discomfort.
It acts, I voluntarily walk into pain. I choose pain. And that makes it so I can do things like fulfilling my dreams in my business or showing up as a dad or a husband when I'm tired at the end of the day, or walking into cravings and moving through them with inner stability. Third thing, breath. I teach the men in my inner circle a very simple breathing technique. I will teach it to you. Four, eight breathing.
Jake Kastleman (40:45.957)
In the nose for four seconds, out the mouth for eight seconds, for eight rounds. We do this at the beginning of every session because it calms the nervous system, focuses the mind and it gets the prefrontal cortex more engaged. It helps me make better decisions and feel clearer and helps them do the same. Helps center us on our values. The men in my program learn to do this anytime they face cravings or heart emotions due for a breathing. One of the men in my program actually just
talked about this the other day. He said he had a craving come up. It was rising. He started to become afraid he would relapse. He did four eight breathing very quickly. Immediately, the sooner you do it, the better to get yourself out of the cycle. Now, did this solve all his problems? Did it make him feel completely at ease? No. But what it did do is it gave him a little bit of space between himself and his emotions, himself and the cravings, a little more clarity.
This was enough to help him make the decision to choose to go cook a meal for his family, a noble pleasure, instead of resorting to base pleasures. Simple, slow breathing for just a few minutes gave him what he needed to make a better decision for himself and how he shows up for his family. Okay, another powerful breathing technique that I use a few times a week, you may have heard of it, the Wim Hof breathing technique. 30 rapid breaths in and out as deeply as you can.
And then you breathe out and you hold your breath. Again, breathe out. So there's no air, basically no air in your lungs. But your entire body's filled with oxygen. You breathe out and you're holding your breath for a minute, a minute and a half, two minutes. When you do this, it's incredibly powerful from a neurological perspective. I don't have to anything about it because the knowledge about this is all over online. People are talking about it everywhere. It's a sensation.
He's not the first one to do it, but he is the person to popularize it in our current modern society. Very powerful. 30 breaths followed by holding breath, followed by a 15 second breathe in and then repeat that three times. Amazing, it takes about 10 minutes. You are much more calm by the end. And it again teaches you to, to...
Jake Kastleman (43:06.917)
accept discomfort to move into pain because it is an inherently uncomfortable breathing technique. It is, it is difficult. Okay. But the nice thing about it is it doesn't require any real mental effort necessarily. It's pretty straightforward. So something else that I want to share about that I've done, it's been pretty cool for me, totally new for me. I've done it three times now. I had an experience doing this the first time. Just tell you what it is.
I took an extremely hot bath followed by an extremely cold shower. Whoa, crazy experience. The first time that I did this, I'm in the bathtub and I've got this super hot scolding water. Okay, please don't repeat this and burn yourself. Don't do anything crazy. Also don't do the Wim Hof breathing technique while you're driving. Do while you're sitting or lying down.
Be smart with this stuff, guys. I don't want to give you instructions on this and then you go and hurt yourself. Okay, be reasonable. But super hot bath. I'm lying in the bath and I have arousal and cravings and very intense emotions, fear, panic, all that all at once rising in my body. And what I teach men in my program to do, what I...
practiced myself is it's a very Buddhist. Okay, it's just to welcome and allow the emotion to witness it and welcome it forward. I actually call the emotion forward rather than running from it. I provoke it. I say come forward my friend. Provoke sounds like a harsh word. I'm welcoming it. Okay, I'm inviting it and I just stay with the emotions. I just notice and witness what's happening in my body. I feel arousal. I feel intensity. I feel cravings. I feel panic. I feel fear.
Can I'm breathing into it. I'm doing that deep breathing technique that I talked about. Probably more rapid than that though, cause I'm kind of panicking, right? I'm voluntarily putting myself in this situation. A lot of people would say, why? Again, it is nervous system training. It is recovery training. It's so powerful. It helps so much. So I did that for a while. I welcomed all that emotion. And once I did that and welcomed all that, and then I moved into sadness and then I released the sadness. And then I just felt,
Jake Kastleman (45:32.349)
Peace, presence. That's the amazing thing is that's what's underneath all of that. Peace, presence. But I have to move through the pain to get there. Then I jumped in the freezing cold shower and it freaking hurt as well. Okay, and this also helped me develop more of this resilience. So I hope these practices help you in your own recovery.
Remember to not be too extreme with any of these. Remember reasonable stress, okay? You can do more than you think you can. I will say that as well, okay? But please do not take this too far. Be smart. Now, if you want to work with me, come join the Inner Circle. I realize I've done a bit of self-promotion here, but we do powerful work in the Inner Circle. I love it. We have weekly group coaching sessions and full access to the No More Desire online course library. 10 months of courses, and I'll be adding more down the line.
We are currently working on the dopamine overhaul online course. We move as a group, we motivate each other, we connect, and you get exclusive teachings and group sessions with me. This and all the other guys that are in the program, and we just, have a ton of fun, and we learn a ton, and it's extremely uplifting. So this inner circle will be opening up to the public soon. For now, if you want to join though, maybe by the time you're listening to it.
this, will be on my site, nomordesire.com slash tools. But if not, if you want to join, simply go to nomordesire.com slash program instead of slash tools to apply for a 30 minute consultation. And I can tell you all about it and see if it's the right fit for you. God bless and much love my friend. Thanks for listening to Nomore Desire.
It's a genuine blessing for me to do the work that I do and I wouldn't be able to do it without you, my listeners, so thank you. If you've enjoyed today's episode, do me a favor. Follow this podcast, hit the notification bell and shoot me a rating. The more people who do this, the more men this podcast will reach. So take a few minutes of your time and hit those buttons. If you want to take your sobriety to the next level, check out my free workshop, The Eight Keys to Lose Your Desire for Corn, or my free ebook,
Jake Kastleman (47:51.389)
10 tools to conquer cravings. These are specialized pieces of content that will give you practical exercises and applied solutions to overcome porn addiction. And you can find them at nomordesire.com. As a listener of the No Desire podcast, you are part of a worldwide movement of men who are breaking free of porn to live more impactful, meaningful, and selfless lives. So keep learning, keep growing, and keep building.
that recovery mindset and lifestyle. God bless.
Jake Kastleman (48:36.509)
Everything expressed on the No More Desire podcast are the opinions of the host and participants and is for informational and educational purposes only. This podcast should not be considered mental health therapy or as a substitute thereof. It is strongly recommended that you seek out the clinical guidance of a qualified mental health professional. If you're experiencing thoughts of suicide, self-harm, or a desire to harm others,
Please dial 911 or go to your nearest emergency room.