I’ve spent my life exploring how we can take control of our biology to enhance performance, longevity, and overall well-being and diving deep into the world of biohacking. Since I was a child I’ve always wanted to have fun, optimize my wellbeing, and be outrageously happy, and I’ve therefore always been interested in biohacking.

Growing up in the ‘space age’ in the 60s and 70s gave me confidence in technology. As an avid fan of science fiction I eagerly anticipated the invention of high-tech ‘pleasure pods’ such the “Excessive Machine” in the 1968 film ‘Barbarella’, or the “Orgasmatron” in the 1973 film ‘Sleeper’ and looked forward to biofeedback ‘pleasure therapy’ devices that could control our environment, manipulate our sensory inputs, and induce ecstatic and transformative states through real-time positive feedback loops. I also imagined the creation of artificial super-intelligence that could fully understand humans and care for us in ways beyond our imagination.

While I have an optimistic outlook, I read “Limits to Growth” in the early 70s and saw graphs of exponential increases in population and pollution that pointed to a looming world-wide crisis and realised within my lifetime, humanity had the potential to either destroy itself or break-through to a new level of civilisation. As I couldn’t tell which future was more likely, I decided that rather than fighting the pending apocalypse, I would fearlessly focus on creating the world I want and sought to create a world of wellness.

It was the pursuit of wellness that led me to study medicine in the early 1980s as I wanted to learn how to make average people (like me) extraordinary, rather than simply help sick people move back to average health. I was particularly inspired by stories of meditation masters and martial artists who continually improve with age, and wanted access to the treasure trove of health secrets from the world’s medical traditions so I could work out which ones to use in my own life. I’ve since spent the past four decades exploring the convergence of ancient healing traditions, medical technologies, biomedical engineering and wellbeing. This has led to an unconventional career path that has seen me spend more than 30 years as an integrative medical doctor and over half of my career as a tenured professor in the trans-disciplinary field of wellness.

While biohacking has been the focus of my career, the first time I encountered the term ‘biohacking’ was in the early 1990s after spending the 1980s completing an Honours degree in physiology and psychological medicine, a medical degree, and undertaking a PhD in Chinese Medicine. With a poster of Peter’s Laws (The Creed of the Passionate and Persistent Mind), on my wall, and books such “Megabrain: New Tools and Techniques for Brain Growth and Mind Expansion”, and “Would the Buddha Wear a Walkman?”, on my bookshelf, I aimed to stay abreast of technologies that expand human capacity and performance and was interested in the intersection of medicine and computing at a time when graphical user interfaces were revolutionizing home computing and binaural beat recordings, light and sound entrainment devices, biofeedback circuits, Schumann Resonance generators, and other ’consciousness tech’ were promising fast-tracked meditation and enhanced cognitive performance.