Suffer with Grace
Two stories
Explore the backgrounds that lead us to MOM.
Finding the Golden Thread
Life can often feel messy and unclear when you are in its tumbles. Only after can we see the golden thread that carries us to exactly where we are meant to be.
Years ago I realize the scientific models of Kinesiology and Psychology when paired with the lens of Philosophy revealed a hidden Blueprint to awakening that uses predictable and repeatable mechanisms.
I'm certainly not the first to make this connection, but I did study with a few of the great minds of the 20th century. My time in psychotherapy lead me to study with the last colleagues of Wilhelm Reich (pioneer of Body Centered Psychotherapy). While my years performing on the stage & screen lead to seeing the magic of a fully awakened life through my connections on Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and the Planet of the Apes franchise. My methodology was born from this intersection between Science, Parapsychology & the Hero's Journey.
I was born Eric Joseph Youssef
​My mother was adopted at birth and my father's family left Egypt and then Brazil avoiding two dictatorships before landing in Canada. Family troubles run deep and while I was raised in a broken home after my own parents divorced when I was 9 months old, the Cosmos offered me a life-line. I don't believe in sob-stories so this bio will be less about what I've suffered and more of a testament to how life gifts us our personal both in the good and the ugly.
In 1999, Disney's Tarzan was released to the world but as far as I was concerned that movie was made just for me. I lived and breathed on my knuckles after that movie.
Two years of gymnastics later and I began shifting from walking on my knuckles to punching with them. My career in Shotokan Karate started early and carried me to my first coaching gig at age 10 when I began teaching to get my first black belt. You never know what moments will shape your life for your ultimate mission but this was clearly one of them. I can't spare all the details here but rest assured you can do it too!
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This is where the story has it's first peak, and subsequently its first fall. The cracks in my middle class privilege begin to rear their head and in the coming years my father's second marriage imploded putting a real divided between my father and I; my closest family member was sent to prison; and to top it all off the father of my first love personally threatening to break my knee caps in if my family stayed in contacted his daughter. These are all separate yet loosely connected events, mind you.
Age 10, I became a blackbelt.
Your passion holds your light and your darkness
Pressure makes diamonds... and rubble.
I eventually found two refuges during this time to remind me that the world was still beautiful and my heart not broken. Diving into epic Silver Screen movies like Lord of the Rings and Pirates of The Caribbean sparked my interested in stories (or the Energetic realm I would say), while athletics became an outlet for the building emotional pressure in my body.
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​I would soon find out any good passion holds both your brightest light and darkest shadow. After years of pushing my body to its limits, tracking my caloric intake for competitions and ignoring it's cries for help, I became bulimic. I chose to ignore the calls of my Soul begging for relief. I didn't know there was a better way.
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It's no surprise the universe intervened and took me out: tearing both my shoulders, having to undergo 4 + years of rehab, I transitioned fulltime into filmmaking.
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The Stage & Screen were ways to express my longing for depth. Little did I know the types of stories I was attracted to mirrored my own yet to be discovered shadows. Thankfully I love movies with happy endings.
Studying with Legends
Dr. Bennet Shapiro
International Institute for Bioenergetic Analysis
I began my own Hero's Journey moving from little Orleans, Ontario to Hollywood North (Vancouver, BC). I had just graduated High School, legally changed my name to Logan and was taking a sabbatical year to finish a passion project set in the Star Wars Universe when I was accepted into Film School.
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It was a dream come true, but I knew I couldn't follow my callings anymore without getting to the bottom of my emotional baggage. Years earlier I came across a Powerlifting coach on Youtube named Elliott Hulse. He spoke of a Body Therapy that helped with emotional schisms while making you a better athlete in the gym. the therapy was called Bioenergetics, and I was about the to make the discovery of the decade.
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Ben Shapiro, and elderly 80 year old Obiwan Kenobi looking fellow was the first person I found and he lived 4 hours away. Little did I know when I reached out by email that I was embarking on a 5+ year journey of shadowing one of the cofounders of the Bioenergetic Psychotherapy method and learning from Psychotherapists all over the world.
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My inner cave was beginning to call, but elsewhere in my life the sun was still shining. By the end of my first year in Film School a life long dream was being fulfilled - meeting Carrie Thiel. Carrie worked on my favorite movies growing up Lord of the Rings and we met while she was teaching at my school. For a time we became allies as she invited me to help her in her acting classes on campus which allowing me to shadow her. Carrie was eventually the force that lead me to running away with the circus.
Never thought that would ever happen... Honestly. Circus and Movement Arts carried me through university. While attending school for Kinesiology and Filmmaking, I trained as a multidisciplinary coach, eventually landing a job at Capilano University teaching my own method.
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On the home front it wasn't all rainbows and butterflies though. When you work with Ben Shapiro you'd better buckle up. After working with him on a weekly basis for a year, I finally cracked. At my first annual workshop with his Practitioners I lost my mind. Ben's work occasionally uses exercises induced psychosis to free the body of the mind.
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Once my preverbal "cherry popping" was over, Ben invited me to shadow his PHD Practitioners program for the next 4 years. I changed a lot over those years, and I wouldn't be the man I am today without my mentors in therapy and film.
Carrie Thiel from Lord of the Rings
Then the world and I died
My time in School and with Ben came to an end right before the pandemic hit. Like everyone I had to find my own way stumbling in the dark.
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I in 2020 I launched a private massage practice, traveling to people's homes to offer help. It became apparent through my work that most of my client's physical symptoms, like my own, were due to unaddressed emotional under currents. Thanks, Ben! So, I began using his method inside my massage sessions to bring emotions to the surface and help clients process their trauma. Needless to say, it was a big hit. I loved my work but something was still missing in my heart.
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In December I overcame my fear of plant medicines and attended 3 private ceremonies that opened my eyes to the Cosmos and how the mind and body evolved inside of it. To die on medicine is ineffable. I can't encapsulate the profundity of that experience here but it has now been 5 years of deepened work helping myself and my clients find their Soul beyond the confines of the mind and body. I developed my own method of therapy and continue to fall deeper in love with myself, the world and the people in it every year.
