Victor Mifsud is a DJ and artist from Canada. He is also known as the ‘Blind Biohacker’.
Victor is legally blind due to a condition called Retinitis Pigmentosa, which causes symptoms including an extreme decrease in peripheral vision.
He recently starred in a documentary called ‘My Neuroplastic Adventure’ in which he embarks on a mission to supercharge his eyes, mind, body and soul using new combinations of ancient wisdom and modern biohacks and science.
In this interview, Victor opens up about his incredibly inspiring story and journey up until this point, and reveals some of the latest cool biohacks he’s been experimenting with.
He also shares some of the wisdom he has taken from his interactions with renowned author and physician Dr Gabor Maté, as well as his hopes for the future.
And Victor also explains how his journey has led him to become fascinated by the intricate connections between mind, brain, body, and self.
It was really great to spend some time with Victor while he was over in London for the Health Optimisation Summit, and I hope you enjoy the interview!
Victor, thanks for taking the time to speak to HumanWindow. Could you fill us in on your story and your journey until this point?
I was diagnosed with a ‘genetic’ condition at the age of nine called Retinitis Pigmentosa.
It didn’t really mean too much to me at the time because it slowly started to progress as I got older. When I was younger, I thought that was my normal way of seeing.
It didn’t hold me back too much, aside from some night vision issues and tripping over some things here and there. But as I got older, my vision started to worsen.
When I was 21 I lost my driver’s licence. That loss really made be think that something a lot more serious is going on. Needless to say, I didn’t take that very well.
I was dealing with a lot of depression and emotional issues beforehand. That really opened the door to making me realise that something a lot more serious is happening to my eyes.
I lost my independence. It was a huge challenge to figure out the bigger picture of what was happening with me. Fast-forward to 10 years ago, I started to learn a lot more.
I learned more about my mental health and how much of a serious problem that was. I needed to really start digging deeper to do something about it.
I was on anti-depressants, anti-anxiety medication and on top of that, my vision was getting worse. I came across this book called The Brain That Changes Itself by Dr Norman Doidge and started to realise that the brain can change.
I realised from reading that book that I had learning disabilities. The book gave me a lot of hope because it made me realise that I can change my brain. We’re often taught that we’re stuck with the brain we have and don’t bother trying.
I thought that if I could do that with my brain, I could probably do that with my eyesight too. That just opened a huge wormhole of me basically becoming a biohacker. That’s the short of it!
(Photo: Victor Mifsud / Instagram)
How did the documentary come about?
Through my years of meeting Dr Gabor Mate and Barbara Arrowsmith Young… through my own hacking and meeting these forward thinkers and researchers…
I just thought that I know all these people and it’s helped me so much, I need to bring this together in a story to leave behind for people to watch.
If they’re in this messy situation and don’t know how to get out of it, this film could be a bit of a roadmap to help them through these strange times that they’re dealing with.
It’s really to empower myself and them to basically take control of their own life. The mind, body and soul.
You identify yourself as a biohacker. What are some of the most useful hacks that have helped you?
The most useful hack is connecting to nature. You just end up realising how disconnected to nature you actually are.
Growing up in a tech world and living indoors, wearing rubber shoes all the time, hiding from sunlight, staying up late… All these things make us so disconnected.
I grew up in a city and have lived in a city my whole life but I always knew that I felt better when I was in nature. That is one of the hacks you can do and it’s almost funny to call it a hack. It’s just living ‘au natural’, how we were supposed to be living and how our ancestors were living. That’s what it’s all about.
With eyesight, we’re often taught that we’re stuck with our vision and you’re going to have to wear glasses for the rest of your life.
Basically, I improved my prescription with eye training and improved my visual acuity by 33 per cent.
Our body is so powerful, and we often forget how powerful it actually is. It’s really up to us. We’re the only ones who can really heal ourselves by exploring the depths of our inner worlds and our outer worlds.
What I mean by that is our spacesuit and the environment that we function in is our outer world, and then there is our whole inner world of our unconscious mind, dealing with our traumas and patterns.
We have to explore our inner and outer space to really become a balanced and optimised, loving human being.
It’s crazy how the modern world, with all this great technology, fails to meet basic human needs…
It’s a bit ironic in the sense we’re all now meeting through technology, but at the same time, it’s a big double-edged sword. The quote often comes to mind: it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
Because the technology is amazing. There are other ways we can practice safe tech and be aware that tech is harmful. I’m a big proponent of practising safe tech and non-native EMF awareness.
One of the big things that I say is that going blind taught me how to see. Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. We often think that we need to see things to believe them, but from an EMF perspective, that’s not true.
Victor Mifsud and HumanWindow’s Martin Caparrotta
From a light perspective, we think a light is on or off and every spectrum of light is all the same. But light can heal you or light can make you sick. EMF can make you sick and also heal you with pEMF and whatnot.
That’s really been my message when it comes to what we see, how we see and why we see.
How important is it to work on both your inner and outer worlds?
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
It’s like navigating a friendship with your shadow self, which is very hard to do consciously because we are always living in this conscious state.
I think Western society has not taught us to go into these altered states of consciousness, whether through psychedelics, meditation or yoga, to connect with our unconscious.
Our unconscious forms a lot of these reactions. It’s why something pisses you off, the gut reaction. We need a reset or to come to terms with these blockages so we can really have this ultimate communication with our higher selves, who we are truly meant to be. These are all just lessons.
It takes some guts to explore those areas and to address your shadow side. Everyone thinks ‘I’m happy, I’m never angry, I can’t be sad’.
These are all parts of us and these emotions are really important to acknowledge.
The more you squash things and put them away, especially when it comes to the unconscious mind, the more it will say listen to me. It’s not easy.
Could you explain exactly what it’s like to live with Retinitis Pigmentosa?
Sure. So when people see me for the first time, I don’t look blind, because I’m making eye contact with them. Basically, my central vision works quite well.
I see colours, shapes. What isn’t working properly is my visual fields and peripheral vision. I have this fluctuating tunnel vision. In the evening, where these is a lot less light, that tunnel shrinks.
So at this distance and light, if I’m looking at your eyes, I can’t see your mouth. Then I look at your mouth, I can’t see your eyes. I’ve been looking through this tunnel for the majority of my life.
It’s how I’m used to seeing and I don’t remember seeing any other way. I’ve never seen a full visual field. But I’ve adapted. For a long time, I never used a white cane, which I’ve been learning to use for about five years. A lot of it was this fear of being labelled as blind.
For a lot of my life, I hid my condition, which didn’t serve me very well because there was a lot of anxiety that built up with it. I was actually in Amsterdam one year and by myself. Europe is different, with old streets and bikes everywhere.
I realised I needed to use the cane or I would be hit or something. From there it’s been radical self-acceptance.
My ears really help, I have a really good sense of hearing and often I do say that it acts like my peripheral vision when it’s not jammed by louder sounds. That’s where it is right now.
In terms of surgeries and things like that, there’s nothing that can be done about it. But I have been learning quite a bit in the peptides front. There is some really interesting data coming out of Russia and I’m going to be working on something pretty big with a compound pharmacy in the States.
I’m pretty excited for it. We’ve built a pretty good team and they think they can actually put a dent in some things and possible reverse the condition. Peptides are pretty interesting molecules right now. It’s possible that I can regain some visual fields and night vision.
What’s one of the best insights Gabor Mate gave you on your journey?
So many. He is laser-like in his approach to see your triggers. One of the big things he taught me was in regards to my parents.
When I was younger, I had a lot of blame towards my parents. He really taught me that they were probably traumatised themselves and they didn’t really get a chance to acknowledge their traumas. They did the best they could in terms of raising me with the whole situation.
He also taught me that trauma is inherited and can be passed down. That was one of the big insights I had doing my medicine work, that my vision condition could be an ancestral post traumatic stress.
That’s what Gabor taught me – about parents and how much unconscious trauma we hold onto and what we can do about it. I tell everyone to look up Gabor’s work.
What advice would you give your 18-year-old self, if you could go back, knowing what you know now?
Don’t take things too seriously. You’re smarter than you think you are and trust your gut, because it’ll take you far.
You can follow Victor on Instagram and be sure to check out his documentary, My Neuroplastic Adventure.
