Dorian Yates Shares Keys to Happiness and Reflects on Ayahuasca Spiritual Journey

Dorian Yates is one of the most successful talents to emerge from the IFBB Pro League. In a recent interview with Rob Lipsett, Yates talked about his spiritual journey on ayahuasca, a psychoactive brewed drink chemically similar to DMT (dimethyltryptamine). 

During a tenure that saw him compete mostly during the 1990s, Dorian Yates established himself as a frontrunner in the Men’s Open division. Following eight-time Olympia winner Lee Haney‘s reign, Yates ushered in a new era of mass monsters. He used dry conditioning, size, and impeccable detail to cement his dominance. 

Yates adopted a unique training style en route to becoming one of the best bodybuilders in the world. He refused to tailor his workouts around reps or sets. Instead, Yates trained to near failure on the regular and pushed his body to extremes when he made time for the gym. 

While Yates left the sport on top in 1997, his love for bodybuilding is evident in retirement. At 61 years old, he maintains an incredible physique and often showcases training sessions and techniques online. In his latest endeavor, he discussed what it was like consuming ayahuasca at a retreat deep in the Amazon rainforest. 

Dorian Yates Talks Hallucination on Ayahuasca Journey: ‘I Thought It Was Poisoning Me’ 

While staying in Brazil, Yates said he was introduced to ayahuasca by a local. 

“We got a guide and went on a boat down on the Amazon [forest] for a couple of days to get out with nature. So, she came with me. We just met but I was still half in the party zone still there. I’m in Brazil, and I thought, ‘Wow I’m in the Amazon.’ I said to the guy, ‘Oh can we get some coke?’ He’s like, ‘Of course, it’s the best.’ It’s raw shit there, from the plant! I head there and we’re going out, do a bit of that, a bit of vodka, I don’t think I even knew, just keeping it quiet.” 

“That’s where I was at. We’re out on the boat. I’m like, ‘Hey when we go out on the boat, can you get that stuff, I heard about that stuff ayahuasca, that drink stuff.’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, I’ll get it.’ You know, I don’t know what he got, whether it was ayahuasca or really strong ayahuasca, I don’t know you know. Please kids, don’t do this at home. It’s not a recommendation here. This was wild west stuff. I didn’t know what I was doing. He didn’t know what he was doing. He got me some ayahuasca, apparently, I believe it was.” 

Yates said the ayahuasca caused him to violently throw up. Moments after, he could hear and feel a ‘female entity’ who told him to stop poisoning himself. 

“I had a guide that was Indian, and the guy said to me, ‘So you’re doing the ayahuasca tonight?’ He said, ‘Don’t smoke any weed then today,’ because you’re not supposed to. I didn’t do any of that shit I was smoking and drinking vodka the night before.” 

“I’ve gone and I’ve done the ayahuasca, I drank it; and I’m just being violently vomiting, violently sick [after taking it],” said Yates. “I thought this ayahuasca poisoning me but actually what it was was a female entity, something you can hear or feel [hallucinations], it’s talking to me, [saying], ‘Stop poisoning yourself.’ So that was that. That was my experience.” 

Yates Defines Success and Breaks Down What Happiness Means

Yates defined success as having a positive impact on the world and said happiness is achieved by ‘loving yourself.’ 

“What’s success? How do you define success? I mean, some people define it by material possessions, ‘Oh that guy is very successful, he’s got a big yacht and this and that.’ But that’s not necessarily success, it’s not necessarily happiness because there’s a lot of rich people who are very miserable. So, what is happiness? I think it’s being comfortable and being in love with yourself. 

And projecting that out to the world, and what success is that you learned a lot and ultimately you had a positive impact on the world and the people around you that you came in touch with during this life. So, when you check out of here, if somebody asks you or you ask yourself and I’ve spoken to a lot of other people who have clinically died because it was something I was interested in at some point, what happened to them? Normally, they go to this place of total peace and then they’ll see their life in front of them. But they don’t see it they feel it as well,” Dorian Yates said. 

‘The Shadow’ isn’t the only bodybuilding icon from the 90s who uses hormones to stave off aging. Bodybuilding veteran Rich Gaspari, who built a legacy with conditioning and striated glutes, continues to share various anti-aging peptide stacks he takes to preserve his body. 

RELATED: Dorian Yates Shares High-Intensity Training Strategies: ‘Make it Harder for Your Body to Recover

As of late, Yates gave an update on his health and revealed he was weighing 235 pounds. He used the update as an opportunity to underline the dangers associated with bodybuilding and said he was grateful to reap the benefits of hormone replacement therapies.  

This wasn’t Dorian Yates’ first hallucinogenic experience. Last summer, the 61-year-old received a ‘new perspective on life’ after trying out the popular compound DMT, which he described as a ‘powerful life-changing medicine.’ 

Watch the full video below:

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