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“Small steps in life are actually the big steps. They’re not small at all. It’s the little things that make up the big things.”—Da’Vinchi. 

Sheen Magazine was on the Scene inside the Capital One Café at The Fashion Show Mall in Las Vegas for a delicious brunch and intimate conversation with one of the stars of Starz’ BMF and mental health advocate—Da’Vinchi. The actor made his third stop of a four-city tour, in the city that never sleeps, generously dropping divine gems on the power and effectiveness of mental wellness and how it has magnificently influenced his lifestyle. 

World Mental Health Day was established on the Tenth of October in 1992, and three years later on the same day, Abraham D. Juste—also known as Da’Vinchi, graced the universe with his brilliant presence. 28 years later, he chooses to not only celebrate his trips around the sun, but he also advocates that day by heightening the Mental Wellness conversation. 

In the Capital One Café, amongst mostly women, Da’Vinchi began by sharing with his family—not merely fans, he says, about how he developed trust issues during his childhood while growing up in Brooklyn as a FGHA (First Generation Haitian American Immigrant), stemming from exposure to excessive violent trauma. He had developed a fear of people who looked like him and knew he had to resist that concept and trust that everyone wasn’t like that. Da’Vinchi stressed the importance of how most parents spend an immense amount of time simply focusing on the basic needs of the child, as opposed to their emotional needs. His own personal receptivity to self-awareness guided him to therapy to process unhealed energy from his childhood. 

The Grown-ish and All American actor also discussed the importance of digital minimalism and how people can use different types of therapeutic tools to gain more attention span within our brains. He delves into how currently, a lot of humans attentiveness is comparable to that of a squirrel and how this is creating a lack of endurance, a mindset of instant gratification, and an appetite for low vibrational activities. Da’Vinchi explains that the mind is mostly sensitive in the beginning and end of the day, so he is very disciplined about disengaging with his phone during those times and instead, choosing to positively program his mental capacity before sleeping and when he awakens. He’s well aware of how the brain can undergo neuroplasticity and reshape itself if one chooses to catch it before permanently committing to bad habits and behavior. 

He emphasized how meditation is his medicine. “The dopest part about meditation is that it quiets your limbic system in your brain, which is similar to an animal brain. Shrinkage of that part through meditation, enlarges your prefrontal cortex and that’s the part of your brain that needs strength.” Other mental wellness practices that have aided him within his journey, consist of quality time in nature, persistent praying and balancing the type of music he listens too, limiting the oversaturation of his auditory system with music that celebrates stealing his girl and taking his money. He also invites surrounding himself with humans that he feels are smarter and/or more intelligent than him and Da’Vinchi says since he was a child, he finds great comfort in reading. He reminisced on how a teacher told him when he was younger, that prison institutions make predictions and are constructed based off of the literacy of second and third graders. Many people have attempted to debunk this as an urban legend, but these ideas were confirmed in a Spring 2012 Nevada Department of Corrections newsletter.

The BMF star admits, when asked how he mentally and spiritually releases and replenishes after portraying such intense characters, that depicting Terry can, at times, be triggering. The docudrama is very similar to his upbringing, revealing that he began distributing narcotics in the fifth grade. “I understand that I’m telling a true story. Then I just go to work, with my work hat on. When I clock out, when I say that I’m so far removed from that character, I am so far removed, that I don’t think about it.” He says, “I just let it go and understand that I’m telling the story of two brothers, and this is their lives in America, and this is what they had to go through.” Da’Vinchi then returns to his regular life and refrains from coexisting with people that are infatuated with his characters versus the reality of him.  

The final stop on Da’Vinchi’s Capital One Café Mental Health Tour, will be on October 21st in Miami, Florida. 

Season 3 of Starz’ BMF premiers on March 1ST, 2024. Stay tapped in with Da’Vinchi via social media at @davinchi