ESOTERIC MENTAL PRACTICES
Most Jiu Jitsu practitioners focus on developing effective submissions, or an unstoppable top-game, or a highly-technical guard. I was immediately drawn to the esoteric aspects of the mental game employed by elite competitors. Techniques developed by ancient Samurai, only mentioned in passing and never once, even to this day, have I heard taught in a formal class. Maybe these practices piqued my interest because of my favorite SciFi book Dune and its description of Mentat training. Or maybe because I carried a worn copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in my college backpack, which at twenty-four inspired a solo trip across the United States on a $225 beat-up motorcycle. Either way, I was hooked.
Under the tutelage of my Mentor, Rafa Mendes, I learned the mental techniques he employed to calm the inner chaos during competition, such as Mushin Mind (無心). To test my progress using this arcane technique, once I started competing I would step onto the mat against an opponent just to watch my mind react. Every match I would note the inner dialogue, disengage from it, and when I was on-point with my physical and mental training, during the match I would watch my body react not with emotion or logic, but the highest form of response: intuition.
Thus entering the sacred flow.
The flow of Jiu Jitsu.
The flow of life.
TAO 道: The Path
My journey actually started long before I found Jiu Jitsu. When I was ten years old, in order to help cope with a family tragedy, my mother taught me to meditate. At first using a form of kinhin, or walking mediation, and later with a mantra. I have mediated every day since. The practice helped immensely, but after graduate school, at 34, despite achieving family and career milestones, I still found myself overweight, over-stressed, and unhappy. Obviously I was missing a few pieces of the puzzle. Fast forward another five years and I was 45 pounds above my ideal weight, suffering from chronic back pain, and clearly on the path to a heart attack. Thankfully, I recognized the warning signs and vowed to change my trajectory. So I researched every nutrition practice under the sun, and just 30 days after starting an unconventional nutrition plan, I lost 40 pounds.
It wasn’t just the diet. When a craving hit, I realized that I could watch it rise and slowly fade, just like watching a thought rise and fade during meditation.
This was my initial glimpse of the immense power of the Mind-Body connection.
34 years old
20lbs Overweight
39 years old
45lbs Overweight
56 years old
Ideal Weight
(15+ years and counting)
NOTE: To prove the effectiveness of this program, I have Never used TRT, HGH or PEDS of any kind. However I do coach many people on TRT and they all benefit tremendously from The Zen Protocol..
THE ANCIENT SCROLLS
Approaching Jiu Jitsu training like law school, I poured through all the original texts I could find. The Old Masters inscribed much of this knowledge in secret scrolls and later books—The Book of Five Rings, The Tao Te Ching, The Art of War, Hagakure, etc.
These amazing tomes taught everything from mental training to combat techniques to nutrition.
FITNESS & NUTRITION RESEARCH
In 2014, in order to further my knowledge, I started a podcast that allowed me to sit with nutritionists, genetic researchers, best-selling health & wellness authors, successful entrepreneurs, sports psychologists, and yogis. I also penned a weekly column for Vice Media on these same topics.
Since then I’ve travelled and taught seminars not only across America, but in such far-flung locales as Russia, Amsterdam, Portugal, France, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Poland, Mexico, Chechnya, Spain, to name a few.
A decade spent learning from my Sensei 6x World Champion Rafa Mendes, at the famed Art of Jiu Jitsu Academy in Newport Beach, California..
Teaching a seminar to a young competitor in Florida.
WHITE LOTUS - A YEAR IN SICILY
Inspired by the ‘Healthspan’ research of author Dan Buettner, and later, Dr. Valter Longo, Director of the Longevity Institute at USC, I started visiting Blue Zones around the world, searching for the secret to staying young and fit as long as possible. On these journeys I met the most inspiring people. Old people. Young people. Entire villages of content happy people. No obesity in sight, yet their main exercise consisted of walking, something I rarely did.
Realizing I could only learn so much as a two-week tourist, I dismantled my life in the United States and moved to Sicily, where I immersed myself in a primitive Mediterranean lifestyle. It was a mind-blowing adventure. Living in the village where my grandfather was born, and where my family lived for nearly a millennia (according to family lore they were artisans who helped construct the famous il duomo di Monreale in the 1100s), I rented chambers in a hunting palace built in the Middle Ages. No one in the village spoke a word of English, so I learned Italian, and more important, I walked miles every day. Each morning, after visiting a cafe with the richest espresso, I would stroll through the town square. The old men in their wooden chairs would wave and shake their heads in confusion as they couldn’t imagine someone from California, whose grandfather escaped the village a century earlier, would move back!
Through the winding stone streets I walked to the local market, and there I picked out fresh vegetables, herbs and delicious red wines. Every night I rode my motorcycle into neighboring Palermo and taught Jiu Jitsu to young students eager for the advanced techniques from my home academy. I sparred with them every day, correcting their mistakes and teaching them competition strategy, alongside mio fratello Ruben Stabile, the owner of the gym. One of my proudest accomplishments came later that year when our small team won the Sicilia Open. On weekends I explored the island on my motorcycle, visiting castles and crumbling ruins while connecting with my heritage.
I was a Stranger in a Strange Land, savoring every moment.
THE LOST TREASURE
In Sicily I discovered unexpected treasure: despite gorging on as much of the most incredible foods as I could stomach every day, my body began burning through its remaining fat stores, until I found myself more lean at 54 than 18, when I wrestled varsity and trained intensely 3-4 hours per day while starving myself to make weight.
Not only did I grow ripped and vascular, I had more energy, my joints stopped aching, and visiting friends even remarked that I looked younger.
Holy shite.
Was it the water?
Or had I somehow actually stumbled upon the mythical geriatric Spice?
After serious analysis, blood tests and discussions with one of my Jiu Jitsu students, Dr. Federico, a young cardiologist from Rome, we pegged the metamorphosis not to a few dietary alterations—more olives, capers packed in salt, fresher tomatoes—but the result of a completely different lifestyle, or rather, a new Path that inadvertently combined both Samurai and Blue Zone practices.
The results came so easy that I felt compelled to share the program with others. So for two years I worked with clients, monitoring their progress, tweaking the protocol, writing and providing illustrative explanations and anecdotes…
Thus was born, The Zen Protocol—an exciting adventure into self mastery that addresses Mind, Body & Spirit.
December 2021 I underwent a 3-Level Cervical Artificial Disc Replacement Surgery… for months I could barely turn my head… Doctors said I would never train Jiu Jitsu again
MIND OVER MATTER: Almost one year to the Day of the Surgery in 2022 I returned from Europe and won a Second Black Belt World Championship
In the tournament I represented my ancestral homeland of Sicily via my (dual) Italian passport.