The Embodied Relationship Experience – Connor Beaton

 

01:00:03.600 — 01:00:30.000 · Speaker 1

We as men have either completely missed or forgotten that emotional mastery is one of the highest markers of status. We think that status and viability and what attracts women is, you know, financial success. And that’s like the highest marker that we can look for. But I really believe that in today’s culture and society, it is emotional mastery.

 

It is grounding. And if if you can really begin to embody that, you will stand out.

 

01:00:33.360 — 01:05:35.690 · Speaker 1

Welcome to the embodied relationship experience. I’m your host, John Wineland. We’re starting season two off today with my dear brother, Connor Beaton. Before we jump in a couple pieces of business. The first is that the embodied relationship experience platform has tons of practices, has a lot of content, thousands of hours of content, hundreds of practices.

 

If you’re interested in diving deeper into some of the things that I discuss here, some of the practices that I lay out here, the embodied relationship experience platform is a beautiful way to do that also. The Embodied Men’s Leadership training is starting in January, and there are a few spots left for men who want to dive into a deep six month container.

 

We get into strengthening your nervous system, finding your life purpose, working with the feminine, developing a personal practice, and a lot more. It’s a beautiful brotherhood. We’ve been doing it for almost ten years now and it’s something that I’m incredibly proud of. If you’re interested in that, the link is below.

 

All right. I’m here with my dear friend and brother, Connor Beaton. Connor is the founder of Man Talks. He leads men into how would you. I’ll let you describe it. Right. But Connor is sort of a one of the leading voices in men’s work. In fact, he wrote a book called Men’s Work. That’s an incredible book. And him and I r know each other very well.

 

I’ve been on your podcast. We’re actually in a men’s group together, which we’re going to get into and discuss. And I’m just so glad to have you here, man. Because this is one of my favorite topics, like what’s going on with men and what can we do to serve them. So before we jump into that, just can you give us a little, you know, five minute intro to your journey and your story and like, what brings you to this moment?

 

Hahaha. Yeah. I mean, my the basic version of it is that what we do is really around, um, supporting men with real life tools so that they can, uh, lead themselves, lead their relationship, lead themselves into purpose. And, you know, I, I think one of the reasons why I’ve built what I’ve built is wanting to give men more tactical ways of doing the work.

 

I think for a lot of guys, they go into the therapy space and it’s like a little too soft or ephemeral or ambiguous. And so our slogan is it’s not therapy, it’s training. Right. And so we take therapeutic modalities and make it practical and tactical for men to actually implement in their life. Because to be honest, those things have been incredibly supportive for me.

 

You know, they’ve really changed my life. And so wanting to bring that out to men and how I got into this, the sort of like condensed version is I’ve heard the long version. Yeah, the condensed version is, you know, I bottomed out, I hit rock bottom and and it came out of that and had a whole slew of realizations.

 

One of them was working with a mentor who was in his 70s and was very well versed in Jungian psychology, and he supported me and working through some of the stuff that I’d been going through. And then and then I apprenticed with him, you know, for two and a half years and learned about how to work with the shadow, how to work with the unconscious, how to work with archetypes and symbols and do Jungian analysis.

 

And it was really profound in a lot of ways, even though I had no idea at the time how I was going to implement any of that in That Wild Man, I had any idea that we would be doing this for a living. And no, you know, that would I just would have I would have never known. Yeah. I mean, I was working at a Best Buy at the time, you know, like I was selling.

 

I was selling flowers. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. You were selling flowers? I was selling home theater equipment. Right? Like it’s so wild. Yeah. Um, and that just took me on a whole journey. And one of the one of the moments that really changed things was when I was sitting across from a good friend of mine in university that I had gone to university with, and sharing with him how what what had happened.

 

You know, everything had kind of fallen apart. And, you know, there was lying and infidelity and substance abuse and, and I had really fallen into this male trap of creating an image on the surface that looked great and wearing a mask, that everything was wonderful. And behind the scenes, everything was a shit show.

 

Yeah, yeah. And he and I were sitting across from one another and I was sharing what what had happened. And I opened up and was just transparent and stopped and paused and, you know, was worried about him judging me. And and then he opened up and told me that he had tried to take his life six weeks before, and it really rocked me.

 

You know, I was like, how I knew what type of scotch he liked to drink, the TV shows he liked to watch, the women he liked to date. I was like, how do I know all of these things about you? But I don’t know what’s been going on underneath the surface, and you don’t know what’s been going on in me underneath the surface.

 

And I just started to see that over and over and over again in all of my male friendships, where it was like we were swimming in the shallow pool and we didn’t really have any depth in our relationships. And so that that became the sort of the push to build something, to support men, to have a deeper connection with self and then a deeper connection with one another.

 

Yeah. Yeah.

 

01:05:35.730 — 01:05:49.290 · Speaker 2

It’s a you know, you and I shared our last retreat, like we actually have a very similar story. Right. It’s interesting how we were both little klepto, as little as we were growing up. We really were. That was.

 

01:05:49.450 — 01:05:50.330 · Speaker 1

That was a fun I think.

 

01:05:50.330 — 01:07:14.560 · Speaker 2

It was shocking for the other guys that were like, Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the two leaders had men’s work. Yeah. Little leftovers. Shit. The servers. Um, but also, you know, bottoming out and then finding something that was incredibly valuable, valuable and transformative and really putting that into practice, dedicating yourself to it so that you could change.

 

And then all of a sudden, the impulse starts to develop. Like, wow, I feel what’s going on with other men. And I think, you know, I had a very similar journey, a little different, more in the yogic and meditative and embodiment realm, but similar thing. And so I think that that brings us. You know, I just want to say to the people who don’t know, Connor, you know, not only does Connor lead this incredible community of men, he’s also an incredibly devoted father and husband.

 

Right. A really, you know, beautiful friend. We’ve really gotten to know each other over the last year and a half, and it’s been a joy for me. You know, so you just like a like a well-rounded man. You’re in it. You’re in life. You’re doing life. And you speak to a lot of men. So I think, why don’t we just start off with this.

 

You know what is going on with men. You know, this is a question I get from a lot of women. I think men don’t really speak to it, but there’s just this growing sense of knowing that men are suffering when men are struggling. And there’s a lot of men who, like you described, have these really great lives on the surface.

 

And then there’s all kinds of shit stirring around underneath. But just tell me what you’re seeing.

 

01:07:14.560 — 01:10:29.780 · Speaker 1

I think that there’s a there’s a bunch of things that are sort of creating an intersection of chaos with men right now, and one of them. So maybe I’ll just lay them out in a, in a high level way, and then you can kind of pick and choose where we want to go. Yeah. So one of them is, um, like the first line in my book, Men’s Work, I said that a man’s work begins with pain, with his own pain.

 

And I think a big part of what’s happening with a lot of men is they have an intense quality of pain inside of them that they’ve just never dealt with. Nobody’s ever taught them what to do with it, and it’s directing their life. It’s really causing havoc in their life. That’s one piece. The second piece is a lack of initiation processes in our culture.

 

We’ve strip mined initiation out of our culture. And so because of that, there’s no demarcation between when we’re a boy, when we’re an adolescent, and then when we’re a man. And like me, what what I ended up doing was creating a kind of pseudo initiation, a forced initiation, my own life. And for a lot of men, part of what is happening is that when we lack that initiation, we will try and create it in some ways within our own life.

 

And usually that looks like a bottoming out, you know, a destroying relationship, etc. in an effort to try and see what we’re capable of and whether or not we can make it out of the hole that we’ve dug in our life. I think the other thing is the the really rapid change in social roles, I think, has, you know, relationally, a lot of men do not know what their role or what their place is in society, in relationships anymore.

 

And I think that’s very confusing for a lot of men. Like, we’re very logical and linear. And so for a lot of men, it’s like, I don’t know what’s expected of me anymore in relationship. And I’m not saying that we need to go back to some 1950s version of how things looked. I’m just saying that I think for a lot of minutes they don’t know where they stand anymore, and they don’t know where to find value and how to be of service and how to contribute.

 

And that’s deeply confusing. And then I think the last thing is, in large part, society has been telling men for the last decade or two that they’re the fundamental problem in the West. And when you tell men long enough, loud enough, hard enough that you’re the issue. Yeah. Eventually they stop trying to contribute to bettering the culture and the society that they’re in.

 

And so a lot of men are checking out because what they’re hearing is you’re the problem. Yeah. And and the issue is that when you look at the, the the data and the stats around men, men are really in decline, like in every measurable and observable category. Men are really declining. And the challenge is that in our society we hold this belief.

 

Not everybody, but there’s this a large percentage of the population that holds a belief that men don’t have problems. They just are the problem. And so I think because of that, a lot of men are checking out. And because of that, a lot of men are checking out of relationships. They’re checking out of the workforce, they’re checking out of the economy because the economy is hard.

 

You know, it’s really hard. It’s harder now to make a living than it was, you know, 20 years ago. So I think it’s I think it’s a number of things.

 

01:10:29.820 — 01:12:32.970 · Speaker 2

Yeah. There’s not a lot of hope and celebration. You know, you said something that I do want to double click on, which is men are being told they’re the problem. What I see in men, you know, as, as, as I in my work try to, you know, help them go into the deeper layers of pain that they’re holding because I think you’re absolutely right there.

 

What I inevitably find is a core wound of I am bad. Mm. Right. There’s something, you know, for for women, it tends to be the core wound tends to be I’m not safe. Right. For men, the core wound tends to be I’m bad or there’s something wrong with me, or I am broken or something. Something that something that that is shame inducing.

 

Right? And it’s hard to evoke a king, you know, when you’re constantly inducing shame. In fact, you know, I mean, you know, it would take quite the king to be able to, to handle that. Yeah. And so, you know, this, these core wounds that I think men are, you know, having to address, I think you hit on a couple of them belonging like where do we belong in not only in society but above and beyond, just making money, but also, you know, where do we belong in terms of serving our communities?

 

And then this sense of like, how do we start to be seen for our beauty, you know, like that there’s a lot of you and I get to experience, like the most beautiful aspects of men, right? As they hold space for each other, as they go deep with each other, as they reveal this, this, these layers of pain. Like it’s just fucking amazing and gorgeous to watch men do that.

 

And I think they’re just really craving that. They’re seen for that, you know? And and luckily I think in our communities and there’s this growing swell of men’s work, luckily, you know, at least we’re creating, you know, containers and communities where men can see each other and hold each other for that.

 

Right? Um, so I’m curious if you’re seeing change, like, what are the what’s the sort of a path to like, let’s say a man shows up to you, right? And is having all of these problems and issues that you discussed. Like what’s the path to transformation for him? Is he, as he gets into the work?

 

01:12:32.970 — 01:13:00.680 · Speaker 1

I would say that. I mean, just like what I, what I wrote in the book, I do think that the first step is really coming into contact with the pain that he’s caring with, whether it’s, you know, childhood abuse or trauma, neglect, abandonment, you know, the the things that because in male culture, what we have done in the last, you know, 150 years has taught men that you will develop strength through suppression.

 

So for men.

 

01:13:01.560 — 01:13:03.200 · Speaker 2

The repressing, expressing others.

 

01:13:03.200 — 01:13:04.200 · Speaker 1

Suppressing, suppressing.

 

01:13:04.200 — 01:13:04.840 · Speaker 2

Their own emotions.

 

01:13:04.840 — 01:15:11.990 · Speaker 1

Got it. Yeah. And so for maybe suppressing others to some degree, but I think more so. It’s suppress what you’re feeling. Suppress what’s happening inside of you. And so a lot of men are literally these walking heads, you know, that are just floating through the world, disembodied, disconnected from their emotions, disconnected from their internal experience.

 

And so the first step really is kind of putting on the scuba diving gear and going inside and getting a sense of what is the intensity that lives inside of me. Because in in the work that I’ve done, I’m sure you’ve seen this. Every single man has a quality of energetic intensity that lives inside of him. He has no fucking clue how to deal with, and it really is causing havoc in his life.

 

Yeah, and the problem with that is that that’s part of what a father figure is supposed to do, is help him to deal with his intensity. We talked about this on the way here with me and my boy. Right, right. Um, but also that we’re meant to learn what to do with that intensity and and have some containment around it.

 

Yeah. Not just numb and disassociate from it. So I think that’s the first place that a man really needs to start is what is the quality of intensity that I’m carrying? Is it really intense grief. And that’s weighing me down from taking action on anything? Is it a really intense quality of fear, of life, of things going wrong, of being abandoned, of not being loved?

 

Is it a really intense rage and and violence and anger that lives inside of you because, you know, you were put in positions of of powerlessness and helplessness growing up as a boy. So I think it’s it’s helping men come into contact with what is that intensity? Because the truth is that if you, as a man, aren’t aware of the intensity that lives inside of you, and you’re not able to work with it in some capacity, or at the very least get support with it, then it’s very hard for women to trust and feel safe with you, because what they’re tuning into all the time is there’s this big intensity inside of you, and you’re either not aware of it or you don’t know what to deal with it.

 

And that makes me afraid.

 

01:15:12.030 — 01:15:28.350 · Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah. And that makes sense, right? Yeah. And I’m I’m curious, you know, like, one of the ways that I like I totally agree that the first step is, is getting into the pain and then letting yourself be witnessed right by other men who are holding space and love.

 

01:15:28.350 — 01:15:28.830 · Speaker 1

Which is not.

 

01:15:28.830 — 01:15:29.230 · Speaker 2

Sexy.

 

01:15:29.510 — 01:15:30.590 · Speaker 1

It’s not sexy.

 

01:15:30.710 — 01:16:57.980 · Speaker 2

It’s lying. You know what I mean? Like shaking. It’s it’s it’s not sexy. But but. But I’m always surprised at how when a container is built that will allow a man to touch this pain. I’d say safety 5 to 90% of the time. He’ll go there. Yeah. Now there’s a few people that are the pain so intense that they just they can’t they can’t tap it.

 

And one of the first things that I will do that is an initiation. It’s called an unfilled like the unfilled feeling practice. And so we go out to the desert. And literally the second day were there were mining. Like, what are the feelings you haven’t felt. And we’re actually having them do inventory and find these feelings.

 

And then we go into a practice that, you know, gives them the space to tap that feeling. And it’s in the container, which is what I think is missing. Right. Because, you know, in previous centuries, men had a container to deal with the intensity. Like they would get together, they would go out and hunt, they would go out and, you know, and, and war together.

 

They would go out and do things. They would do initiations together and trainings together. There was a container for this intensity to move. And so to me, our work is basically just creating containers and some simple processes to give men a chance to to tap into that stuff and clear it from the system.

 

And so I’m curious how you take men into, you know, like how you would suggest taking men into that pain, what that looks like in your world.

 

01:16:58.020 — 01:20:04.160 · Speaker 1

Yeah. I mean, the the group part of it is very important. It can be a huge helper, you know, whether you’re a man that’s working with just one person or, you know, you’re working with a group because you need a nervous system bigger than yours. And the group dynamics provide a kind of collective nervous system where it’s like, no matter how intense what you’re feeling and going through, whether it’s the anger or the grief or whatever, no matter how intense it is, you have 30, 40 guys.

 

It’s like, well, the collective nervous system can hold whatever it is that you have it like. Doesn’t matter how big it is. Yeah. And so I think that that really is a piece that has been missing that for so many men when they experienced it, it’s like, Holy crap. And now I know how to work with it. So what what we do is a number of things.

 

The first thing that I’ll do with a man is, is really bringing them into eyes closed into the body, into the energy, and helping them locate the intensity that’s inside of them. It’s like, let’s go straight there. And for me, this is a shadow work practice, right? Like, it’s it’s what has been disowned. Denied.

 

Rejected. Right. Avoided that you fundamentally do not want other people to know about. And sometimes where a man needs to start is the lies that he’s told. Sometimes where he needs to start is the admission about something that happened to him as a kid or something that he did. You know, Jung said, that the first step in any therapeutic or spiritual process is confession and the where we need to begin is just the admission of what’s true.

 

And so that’s really where I start with men, is like helping them to turn towards and admit some type of truth that they’ve withheld, and then beginning to go deeper into what’s the energetic imprint that’s underneath that? You know, what intensity and charge is attached to that, and then supporting them and being able to bring that out and being able to express it in some genuine way and to direct it where it has needed to go, you know, like if you were a kid that was, you know, you grew up with a dad that was, you know, abusive physically and verbally.

 

There’s probably a quality of rage and anger inside of you from being put in this position of helplessness and having somebody that you loved, that anger and that rage needs to come out and it needs to be properly placed. It can’t just be. And this is where sometimes different people like different people’s processes, especially in different parts of the therapeutic world.

 

They miss this crucial component, which is there’s just an expression of the emotion, but it’s not directed in landing where it needs to go. So the man often needs to be able to say this anger, this rage needs to be placed with this person. Like, this is where it really needed to go. This grief, this sadness, this is where it needed to go.

 

Yeah. So that’s that’s part of the process. And then, you know, if it’s group work, getting other men involved, having other men support that man’s process as he goes through it so that again, there’s a there’s a larger nervous system for himself.

 

01:20:04.160 — 01:22:08.550 · Speaker 2

I’ve just seen men are so generous around that, you know, it’s just it’s just it’s so amazing to watch it when when men are really given the opportunity to hold a man through a deep process. Right. Something shifts in them and they all of a sudden they feel like, oh, wow. Like they get to see that. Oh, that’s that’s possible.

 

And it’s beautiful. So if it’s beautiful, if I’m watching this guy and he’s just, you know, letting me see the anguish, I like to use the term anguish because it feels like it covers a lot. He’s seeing the anguish of what this guy has been carrying for his whole life, and all the ways that it’s all the ways he’s bound.

 

Like, if I was going to describe what I, what I see in men, it’s at their bound. They’re bound by the anguish, by the shame, by the stories, by all of the, you know, by the beliefs, by all of this stuff. They’re bound and and men are longing to be free. You know, it’s the quintessential David de la 101 right there.

 

The masculine value is freedom. And if we’re bound by these unfilled feelings and these patterns that, you know, just keep repeating themselves, it’s amazing when one man sees another man break free. Yeah. And what it does to him. So I’m just always, you know, for those of you who are listening, like, what Conor and I are seeing in these spaces is that, you know, men are going in and really doing the work with each other and holding each other, and they’re liberating each other in the doing of it.

 

That tends to be the first step, right? There’s a whole yeah, there’s all this other follow up work that needs to be done, but clearing that reservoir of pain and anguish and and I would argue shame. Yeah. Like just so much shame, you know, so much shame. I mean, you know, we we get into it too, you know, we’re not immune to that in any shape or form, but this ability to, you know, touch our shame and self-loathing, I would argue.

 

Right. There’s a lot of self-loathing. And so, wow, you know, the the who knew that this would be an industry. Like it’s literally that taking care of men like this would become a sort of industry. Yeah. How how amazing. You know what I mean? Like, do we really need more lawyers? Yeah. Right.

 

01:22:08.550 — 01:22:09.190 · Speaker 1

Or do we.

 

01:22:09.550 — 01:22:17.670 · Speaker 2

Do we really need more lawyers, or do we, do we need, you know, men who are capable of holding other men through these? I’m going to call them evolutionary processes.

 

01:22:17.670 — 01:22:18.350 · Speaker 1

I would agree.

 

01:22:18.390 — 01:22:18.830 · Speaker 2

Yeah.

 

01:22:18.870 — 01:22:36.270 · Speaker 1

Yeah, I would agree. And I mean I’ve worked with guys now for over a decade and it really was a shocking thing. Working more and more with men and discovering how many men really fucking hate themselves. Really. And like, intensely. Yeah, hate themselves and.

 

01:22:36.270 — 01:22:37.430 · Speaker 2

Can’t let anybody see it.

 

01:22:37.470 — 01:23:07.510 · Speaker 1

Correct. Yeah. And like that was me to a tee. I hated myself. Yeah. Yeah. And the way I treated myself was, like, deplorable. You know, it was really bad, but I didn’t want anybody to know that, because, again, that that would signal weakness. That was signal? Was something wrong with me? I had to pretend like I didn’t fundamentally feel broken inside.

 

And I think that that’s that’s the trap that so many of us men fall in. It’s like the shadow of the masculine right is signaling strength in a way that’s not real.

 

01:23:07.710 — 01:23:10.310 · Speaker 2

The shadow of the macho is self-loathing.

 

01:23:10.350 — 01:23:48.700 · Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think a big part of men’s work. And I think the reason why, you know, some of the things that I’ve really focused in on the shadow for the last, you know, 5 or 10 years, because men have really dense shadows, and men have, in my perspective, sort of denser, more potent shadows because of masculine culture, because of male culture being the way that it is, which is, you know, find strength, find identity through suppressing what you’re experiencing.

 

Stuff it down, pour whiskey over top of it, smoke a joint, rub one off, watch some porn, you know, and just fucking move on with life.

 

01:23:48.740 — 01:23:49.740 · Speaker 2

Get up and do it again and.

 

01:23:49.740 — 01:24:58.930 · Speaker 1

Get up and do it again. Right? And just like, do that every single day, right? It’s just like there’s a badge of internally we have this, this flawed perspective of if I can just wade through shit for long enough, that will prove my masculine core right when it’s actually the inverse, I need to be able to go in and confront the thing.

 

You know, Jung had this great line where you said, unless you make the unconscious conscious, it’ll direct your life and you’ll call it fate. Yes. And what he’s really saying, and you drill down into his work, is until you meet your shadow, until you go in to the disowned parts of yourself that you think are bad or wrong, or discussing, or that you hate, that you really try and hide from other people until you go into those parts and you start to make them conscious, and you start to have them be witnessed, and you start to discharge the charge around those parts and integrate them into your being.

 

They will literally direct your relationship, your sex life, your finances, your health. And, you know, as I wrote in my book, your pain has its own intelligence. Like your pain literally has.

 

01:24:59.010 — 01:27:36.600 · Speaker 2

The pain, the pain body. It does have an intelligence. And it does. It’s it’s, uh, it literally has a pattern. Yes. That’s the way I would describe it. Right? It has a pattern of behavior and defense and hiding. And so yeah, the the capacity it seems what I think I hear you saying is that, you know, for people who are wondering like, okay, how do I get initiated right now nowadays, right.

 

And I think what you’re talking about, and certainly what I’m seeing, I haven’t thought about it this way, you know, expressly, but it’s the initiation is face your pain. Yes. The initiation is find and face your pain. So for the modern man, for those of those of you out there listening to us. Right, that’s the initiation that you probably have not gone through, right?

 

It’s not fraternity hazing, right? It’s not imitated by some. It’s not the it’s not the military rite, although there’s some initiatory processes in that. No, it’s it’s like, how do I warrior up. Right. Because it takes a warrior’s consciousness and a warrior’s heart. How do I warrior up, create a container, create an environment where I can be supported, go into my pain face, put my head in the mouth of the demon, and literally, you know that parable where you put your head in the mouth of the demon and the demon dissolves?

 

Right? It’s it’s it’s like that, right? And so getting men, you know, into this initiatory process is what you do. It’s what I do. There’s other guys that are doing it to doing it well too. There’s some some that are not. Yeah. And you know and but that’s the initial step for men that are watching this. They’re like all right how the fuck do I start I would say and I’d love to get your thoughts on this.

 

I would say, face your pain. That’s your first that’s the initiatory process. But also strengthen your nervous system. Yes. Right that you’ve got and the two are kind of linked. Right. Your capacity to face your pain is absolutely a nervous system strengthening practice. Yeah, right. You literally have to expand to be able to clear this stuff and face this stuff.

 

But I would also say on the more yogic and meditative and embodied side, like there is a call for more potent nervous systems and regulation and self-regulation and expansion and just the capacity. The other piece of the initiatory thing that I think happens is a man’s capacity to be with discomfort, not just his own pain, but the discomfort of physical discomfort or the discomfort of his.

 

Relational discomfort. Right. Like just, you know, chill with children, right. We talk about that. You know, like when you’re when your kids are testing your patience and the capacity to do that. So for the guys that are watching and you’re trying to think, all right, how do I start this? It’s how do I strengthen my nervous system and how do I face my pain?

 

Is there anything else that you would add to that?

 

01:27:36.600 — 01:28:01.160 · Speaker 1

I’m going to speak to initiation and I’m going to go into like the tactical. So there’s a misconception around initiation that it’s somehow for the self, that it’s for the individual. And traditional initiation was in place so that a man could come back to the village and be more capable and competent at contributing.

 

So it actually wasn’t for the individual, it was for the collective.

 

01:28:01.200 — 01:28:01.840 · Speaker 2

Yeah, that’s a great.

 

01:28:01.840 — 01:29:10.580 · Speaker 1

Point, because we all know that an ineffective man, that a man who is marred by his pain, that is, you know, sort of controlled by his own demons. He’s going to wreak havoc on the community. And so the one of the key points of initiation was that you were meant to go on a journey of being put in a kind of contained experience of powerlessness.

 

And Richard Rohr had this great. He’s this Franciscan monk, and he had this great quote where he said, unless a man goes on a journey of powerlessness, he will always abuse power. And so real initiation is about meeting either externally or internally, something that is bigger than you, something that you cannot dominate, you cannot control.

 

You cannot conquer. And then you begin to meet who you are. When you feel helpless, who you are in the face of powerlessness, who you really are as a man, when you can’t conquer something and then you have a proper relationship with power. But until that happens, you can kind of walk through with this adolescent like I’m fucking Invincible.

 

Nothing can take me down on this shit.

 

01:29:10.860 — 01:29:11.700 · Speaker 2

No followers.

 

01:29:11.740 — 01:29:23.180 · Speaker 1

I don’t have to deal with this pain that’s inside of me. It’s no big deal. It’s not affecting me. And so there’s this ignorance and kind of omnipotence that starts to come out when we haven’t done that.

 

01:29:23.220 — 01:30:08.580 · Speaker 2

I think that’s such a great point that that, you know, that a man who is trustable. Right. And we know lots of men like this and we’ve helped each other and these experiences. Right. Like a man who is trustable is a man who’s gone in and met something bigger than himself, even if it’s even if it is his pain, even if it is something you know.

 

For me, it was a child whose illness I could not cure. And and other things too. But, but but this. I think if a man does not do that and and I think women are really great at sniffing this out. But if a man who has not fully faced his pain, you’re right, will seek to accumulate, will seek to dominate, will seek to manipulate, will seek to, you know, kind of consume rite experience.

 

01:30:08.620 — 01:30:47.780 · Speaker 1

Where he’ll just become, which is what’s happening for a lot of younger men in our culture. He’ll get swallowed up by the shame and the depression of feeling useless, and he’ll he’ll get stuck under the weight of the thing that feels bigger than him. It’s like, well. And then he gets a case of the buckets, right?

 

It’s like fucking. Why should I bother? Why should I even try? Why should I even, you know, try and put in the effort or, you know, build resiliency. And this I see a lot of men succumb to this where they just it’s like the gravity of that powerlessness just starts to push down on them, and then they’re stuck underneath it just kind of.

 

01:30:47.900 — 01:31:12.610 · Speaker 2

Yeah, just surviving. Just surviving. It seems like two sides of the same coin, right? You know, either you are, you know, powerful in the world, right? And still not having faced this stuff, and you get addicted to this sort of accumulation of power, right? Maw. Maw. Maw. Maw Maw, Or you’re totally dominated by the world and you literally collapse into, you know, incel and you know, just what you describe.

 

01:31:12.650 — 01:31:13.170 · Speaker 1

Disconnection.

 

01:31:13.370 — 01:31:13.930 · Speaker 2

Disconnection.

 

01:31:14.170 — 01:31:40.730 · Speaker 1

Well, and I think that for some men, I came up with this concept called dark motivation or shame based motivation for the guys that end up accumulating and sort of like rising. They what they end up doing is using their shame as a fuel source, and it like propelling themselves as a driver and a motivator. But they always reach this plateau where they accomplish something that seems monumental.

 

They have these achievements and it’s hollow and it’s empty.

 

01:31:40.770 — 01:31:42.530 · Speaker 2

I work with a lot of these men. Yeah.

 

01:31:42.530 — 01:31:46.130 · Speaker 1

Same here. Same here. I’m like, this is like the archetypal, you know, man, that I end.

 

01:31:46.130 — 01:31:46.930 · Speaker 2

Up being achiever.

 

01:31:46.970 — 01:33:23.120 · Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah. And and then they collapse, right. Because the fuel source that they’ve been using for so long, the shame that they’ve been using to fuel their drive and their motivation no longer works. And it’s like the engine needs a different fuel source at some point. And they have to. That’s like the call for them into this initiatory process.

 

But I think to go back to your initial question, how do men deal with this? I think there’s acute work, which is the acute work is being able to go into a retreat space into a group and do the acute work of getting into the pain that you’ve been carrying, getting into the neglect or the abuse or the abandonment that you experienced, or just the level of self-hatred and loathing that you’re carrying inside of you.

 

And there’s like these acute moments of work that need to happen. And then there’s the practice outside of that to begin to develop a vessel or a body that’s capable of dealing with that charge when it comes up. And I really believe that the men who are the leaders of the future, the men who are going to lead us through everything that we’re experiencing right now, are going to be the men that have a greater capacity for regulation.

 

If you can out regulate the man next to you and the other people online. You’re just going to win. You are. Because the in the West right now, especially people’s nervous systems, are so fried and so fucked. Yeah. And so they can’t think clearly. They can’t choose clearly. So if you’re grounded and you have a secure, you know, safe nervous system and you’re able to regulate in a way that other people aren’t.

 

It’s like a superpower because everybody will be losing their shit around you.

 

01:33:23.160 — 01:34:11.759 · Speaker 2

And you’re just like, you know, men come to my programs. I’m sure you hear the same. Like, here’s the ROI. You just laid it out. You just laid it out. Yeah. Like women will trust you more. You have this sort of superpower that you can actually rise above the others versus it’s not just intellect. Because I know lots of successful men with incredible intellect and capacity to create, you know, with their minds.

 

And then again, they hit that. They hit that. They explode at board meetings. They they blow up their teams, they, you know, addicted to ketamine. They you know what I mean? All of, you know, like, all this, all this stuff is happening and this point about like, how this is why I love that you call yours a training, I call mine.

 

It’s a training, right? Like good men’s work should be a training to face your pain and then build the kind of body that you’re talking about for the reasons that you just laid out perfectly.

 

01:34:11.800 — 01:35:50.110 · Speaker 1

Yeah, yeah. And I, I think that those all men want to feel competent, you know, and when you look at how we as men build identity, build social structures, it’s usually a very hierarchical, hierarchical endeavor. And it’s a kind of competency game. And we find value in that. Men, you know, whether you want to say that that’s socialized or it’s biologic or whatever, we find value in that.

 

I haven’t met a man yet who doesn’t feel good about being competent in his life. I think what we’ve what we’ve missed out on is that for us as men, emotional mastery and being able to regulate, it’s a kind of achievement. I almost don’t want to call it that. That is so deeply rewarding because the end result is that you trust yourself in a way, and you have a respect for yourself that is largely unshakable.

 

And I think that that’s the pursuit that most men are after. They want to have a deep level of trust in themselves, to be able to lead themselves, to be able to have some level of say over their impulses, to be able to direct their lives in, in a way where they know that they’re influencing themselves towards something meaningful and purposeful and that they, at the end of the day, respect their choices and decisions and actions.

 

And if a man doesn’t have that, he’d have all the money in the world. He can have all the awards, he can have all the trophies. But if he feels out of control and out of respect with himself, he’s always going to struggle. He’s always going to suffer, and then he’s always going to pass that on. Yeah. In in his life.

 

01:35:50.150 — 01:36:37.180 · Speaker 2

Okay, so I wanted to double click on this thing you were talking about just a minute ago, right about emotional mastery and and being able to create the kind of body and nervous system that can carry a man forward into the world in an impactful way. I have my own sort of approach to that, which, you know, includes everything from breathwork to, you know, sort of holding very difficult poses for long period of time to all this other, all this other sort of nervous system strengthening work.

 

But what else do you see in your world will help a man to develop the kind of emotional mastery, nervous system strength, you know, so that once they face their pain, now they have to go back into the world and figure out how to deliver a better version of themselves to the world. How do you see that happening?

 

01:36:37.260 — 01:37:53.610 · Speaker 1

Yeah. So I’ll just say that that breath is for me, it’s the ultimate access point. Like you just. Yeah, it’s the tool of the tool. It’s like you can’t get better than that. Yes, because your breath really is like the modulation dial between your sympathetic and parasympathetic. So when you move into a stress response or when you’re calm and relaxed.

 

The breath is pretty much one of the only ways to alter and shift that seesaw. I like to think of it as a seesaw. Yeah, right. And so if you’re really stressed out, which a lot of guys are. Your breath rate goes up. You’re taking shorter, shallower breaths. Your heart rate goes up, you have more stress chemicals in the body.

 

And so, you know, because I have a lot of men that are like, oh, like it’s breathwork really that big. It’s like, yes, it is. The breathwork is the thing because it is the way in which, you know, if you just simply inhale through your nose for a count of four and accelerate your mouth for a count of seven for 2 or 3 minutes, you’re going to naturally force your breath rate down, which forces your heart rate down, which signals to your brain to actually slow and calm.

 

And then it changes the neurochemistry in your body. Yeah. So it really is the access point. So I just I can’t stress it enough because for some, for a lot of guys it’s like, okay, yeah, breathwork. I’ve heard a whole bunch of that and blah blah blah blah.

 

01:37:53.650 — 01:38:16.330 · Speaker 2

No, no, I want to I want to double click on this and say, master, that’s work, right? It’s not just like something you pick up and do like, it’s something that you if you really want to be a high performance man in this world where everything’s moving the way it’s moving, and women are demanding way more from us than they ever have, and life is demanding more and moving faster.

 

You have to master breathwork.

 

01:38:16.370 — 01:44:42.410 · Speaker 1

Yeah, well, and I, I have an unfair advantage, which is I got a degree in music and I was a classical singer. All right. And so my, my joke is that I got a degree in breathwork. Like, I literally spent four years learning how to breathe and how to sing. And so I had four years of, you know, essentially eight hours a day of study and tutelage around awareness of my breath.

 

And so I was just constantly my consciousness, my awareness was just constantly on my breathing day in, day out. From the time that I woke up to the time I went to bed thinking about the breath. Because if you’re going to be an opera singer, you have to learn. It’s like controlled yelling, essentially. Yeah, which is what opera is.

 

Yeah, but all of that is about mastering the breath and the diaphragm and having attunement to the body. And so I had an unfair advantage, which was, you know, I inadvertently learned how to be with the breath and constant exercise and yada, yada, yada. So I would say that, you know, start a daily practice of just bringing your awareness into your breath, set an alarm on your phone to go off every hour so that it’s just like checking on your breath, and you just take a breath and come back and bring your awareness and your consciousness back to, oh, my breath is really shallow right now.

 

It’s really held or it’s really fast. And I there’s, you know, there’s anxiety or whatever it is or my breath is really calm and it’s grounded and let me deepen that. We need to retrain, yes, ourselves, the way we breathe when we’re when we’re young, right before the world gets Ahold of us. Yes. We breathe beautifully.

 

Right. Belly breathing slow and, you know. And breathe through your nose. Stop. If you are a mouth breather. Yeah. Stop it right now. It immediately puts your body into a stress response. Yeah. James Nestor’s Breathe is a great book to pick up from books. Yeah, yeah. I interviewed him, he was awesome. And I just do a little I want to do a little aside here.

 

So, you know, I teach a few people who work in big corporations. And what I’m loving seeing is that they’re starting to take breathwork, like some of my students or one student in particular works for Blackrock, VP of Blackrock. He’s taking breathwork into the cool, you know, into the executive space.

 

And and I’m starting to see this more and more. And I think we’re in this weird moment. I digress a little bit, but I think we’re in this weird evolutionary moment where men in particular are realizing that, like you said, that my evolution to become stronger and more capable is going to involve a different set of skills that it involved before, right?

 

It’s not so much about, you know, warring or even dominating in the boardroom or dominating in the finance area. There’s a different set of skills now that are required for men, and I think it’s starting to catch on. I mean, why else would have men’s work in the last ten years exploded onto the scene the way it has.

 

And so this is evolution, man. And I think that what you’re talking about, like, these are the evolutionary skills that men need not only to survive in the world, but also create better offspring, you know, and raise better children. Yeah, right. And attract stronger mates. I mean, you know, if you want to get into the evolutionary framework of it, like this is the kind of thing that’s needed.

 

So, you know, for the guys that are listening to this, like we’re giving you the evolutionary tools that you need in order to thrive. I said this to Chris Williamson the other day. I was on Modern Wisdom and I said, we as men have either completely missed or forgotten that emotional mastery is one of the highest markers of status.

 

We think that status and viability and what attracts women is, you know, financial success. And that’s like the highest marker that we can look for. But I really believe that in today’s culture and society, it is emotional mastery. It is grounding. And if if you can really begin to embody that, you will stand out immediately.

 

It’ll be like, you know, I mean, it’s a horrible analogy, but it’s like driving a Ferrari. Yeah, right. Because women feel it first. Yeah, they feel it from you. Yeah. So it’s so funny because people are immediately going to say, well, what about our president who has no emotional mastery yet he’s president.

 

Right, right. But but anyway, you know, so but I think I want to say to you and the people out there, because I know you would agree to this, is that emotional mastery is not the same thing as emotional repression. Yes. Right. And that part of emotional mastery, for anybody to just not misunderstand this is that you have a motion, but that there’s a nervous system regulation to your emotion.

 

You might be tears might be flowing down your face. Your heart might be totally bloomed open. There might be really, but there’s a containment to it. You know, you’re not you can be incredibly, deeply emotional and still have some level of containment. And that is also incredibly attractive and beautiful and healthy.

 

Like, it literally makes you more healthy if you can properly cry. Yeah, without losing your shit, but, you know, but still really feel feet to feel right. So to go back to where we started, you know, part of I would argue that part of this path is not just to sort of face the pain that’s been locked in there, but then how do I deal with the pain?

 

That’s just a natural part of my life, right? If things happen to my children, you know, our relationships can get sticky. There’s disappointment. And so how do I how do I learn to properly emote in a way that keeps me strong and healthy and also models for other people? What that’s like, you know, I mean, I just want to say, because you and I are in a men’s work men’s group together, right?

 

It’s been beautiful to watch you like in the last couple months. Like, really get in touch with your heart and feel the way that you’ve, you know, I’ve seen you cry, you know, about about your children and just being able to, like, touch your heart and and it just to watch that has felt so good. I mean I’ll cry at the, you know, drop of a hat and you know that about me.

 

But you know fucking Pisces moon Irish soul. But to watch it in you, who’s not that. Not that way. Like you’re more of a, you’re more of a dudes dude in that way, you know, and then to watch you soften and learn how to really bring your emotions in a way that is mastery, that’s emotional mastery. And so I just want men to realize, like, hey, you know, emotional mastery does not mean that you do not have emotions or show emotions.

 

Yeah, totally. Yeah.

 

01:44:42.410 — 01:45:59.120 · Speaker 3

So I think to come back to the like, tactical piece of what you’re saying, the breath is a huge part of it. I think you need a body practice. You know, I love yin yoga because I’m just naturally, you know, I work out a lot and I carry a lot of tension in my hips. And so, you know, Yin yoga is a great body practice where again, you have to breathe and deal with the like the physical intensity, but also the energetic intensity comes along with it.

 

I think that a lot of men need some type of warrior practice. I do Muay Thai, you know, once or twice a week, and I think that that is important because every man needs to be in touch with the violence or the danger inside of him. And, you know, my friend Trevor has that saying of be capable of danger, but not dangerous.

 

Right. And I think that that’s, you know, the other saying of like, it’s better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in the war. I think that all men have a capacity for violence, and all men have a capacity to be dangerous. And the most dangerous men are the ones that are completely disembodied and disconnected from it.

 

So really having some type of a practice where you it’s not about you necessarily breathing through the intensity or, you know, identifying where it’s come from or anything like that. It’s just, how do I be that intensity in.

 

01:45:59.360 — 01:45:59.920 · Speaker 1

The energy.

 

01:45:59.920 — 01:46:28.920 · Speaker 3

Where it moves that energy and it’s directed into a kind of battle, you know? And I do think that that’s a very like one of the things that we talk a lot about in our culture is a woman’s experience of sometimes being afraid all the time and feeling like prey. Yeah. What we never talk about is a man’s experience of being a predator.

 

Yeah. And being the more dominant of the species physically. Yeah. And what that’s like to walk through the world. And I think that a lot of men have, there’s kind of like this.

 

01:46:28.920 — 01:52:56.240 · Speaker 1

Sometimes there’s a, like a enjoyment of that. Sometimes there’s a pretending like that’s not true. There’s a lot of pretending. There’s a lot of a lot of shadow stuffing going on there. Yeah. And so a lot of men are. They’re disassociated from their anger. They’re disconnected from their capacity for violence and for being dangerous.

 

And that is that is probably the most dangerous thing. Yeah. Like, it’s they’re not owning their shadow in that. Right. In that, in that instance. Yeah. And so I think you need a practice where you can reconcile, you have a place, a specific place to reconcile with that part of you. And like I love it. It’s been, you know, the last couple of years.

 

Like, it’s like, I know I can kick some dudes. It’s like six foot three in the head and probably knock them out, I love that. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Yeah, I think I think that this will this I want to hear here, you complete this this thought, but I really would like to get into some of the shadows that like, some of the most common shadows because you just mentioned one, which is the sexual predator, right?

 

And, and, you know, most men will totally recoil in women, too, obviously, for the right reasons. But but it’s in there for most men. You could call it a sex pig. You could call it like, you know, the part of us that just wants to fuck. And, you know, and and the level of disowning that I see in men and the lack of capacity of.

 

Actually, it’s one of the first things that I do in men’s work is like, all right, let’s let’s go into the part of you that is, you know, dominant, hungry wolf like primal sexual being and own that. And it is a really challenging thing for a lot of men. So we’ll get into the shadows in a second. What else do you see in terms of being able to, you know, take the, you know, not just emotional mastery, but build the nervous system capacity to, to live in the world in a, in a beautiful way.

 

So we got we got martial arts. Yeah. That’s great. We got breathwork yoga. We got yoga. What else? I think I think you just need. You need rituals and routines, right? You need a morning ritual and you need an evening ritual, and you need something that’s going to bookend your day so that you have these small rituals and moments to just be with the self, to be with the body, to be with the nervous system that are going to interrupt the normal patterns that you would have, that would disconnect you from your nervous system.

 

Because, you know, most guys that are could this be meditation? It could be meditation, you know, like, I mean, it could be meditation, it could be journaling to just have some like I love stream of consciousness journaling of just there’s no. And for a lot of guys, it’s it’s deeply infuriating at first because you’re, you’re building this relationship with the unknown.

 

But for me, like in the Jungian framework, like the body is the unconscious, your body and your nervous system is the vessel or the mind of the unconscious. And so what you’re doing is you’re building a relationship with your own unconscious by being in connection with your body and part of that. The reason why I like stream of consciousness journaling is it’s not some rational, you know, I’m going to answer these five questions or I’m going to, you know, journal about this every single day.

 

It’s I’m going to do the hard thing. I’m going to do the hard thing of sitting with what actually is inside of me right now, and then letting that out onto paper. And that can be a beautiful practice to just without editing. Without. Yeah. And sometimes it’s just like, I don’t know what the fuck to write right now.

 

I hate that Connor recommended this. Like, this fucking guy. You know, it’s like it can be that. But it’s also just about building attunement with the unconscious processes that are always unfolding inside of you in any given moment. And that is such a profound practice. I would I would argue that shepherding your own feminine right, the unconscious is the feminine right.

 

So I wrote I wrote about that in my book about like, hey, how do you actually do that? That’s a beautiful way to do that. So I think having those because for a lot of guys, especially guys that are high performers, it’s like wake up and go right, get into the task list. And I think having some type of practice where you allow for fluidity you make, maybe you have some very, you know, like in my morning routine, I went through a phase of it was hyper masculine.

 

You know, there was eight things that would happen and they would happen sequentially. And that’s what I had to do. Right. Whereas which is, you know, it’s like very in me, it is unlikely. But it was infuriating because to begin with it was impossible for me. I had no discipline. I had no impulse control.

 

I really had to curate that. But now there’s like a fluidity, you know, and I have some simple things that I do every single day, but it’s fluid. So I think to get yourself out of the the unconscious routine of rolling out of bed, going on your phone and having you’re starting your day off with no connection to your nervous system.

 

So you need to you need to create an environment where the first thing that you’re doing in the day is connecting to your body, connecting to the nervous system, and building that relationality straight out the gates and then building that relationality at the end of the day. So at the very least, you’re bookending you’re bookending your day with that type of connection.

 

And the other thing that I really like is just some form of of stretching, qigong, tai chi. I have a routine that I do every single day. I have a stretching routine that I just do every day. It’s 5 to 10 minutes long. More often than not, it’s ten minutes long and I got my kids involved in it. Now, you know, I’ve created a little song so that when my son wants, he can come and and stretch with me.

 

And that’s the other thing that I would just say to men is, don’t underestimate if you have kids, if you’re in a relationship, the influence that you starting to enact, some of these principles and behaviors can do. My son four and a half. One of his favorite things is when I’m like, I’m going to go do breathwork.

 

And he’s like, I want to do breathwork too, right? And he’s sitting right next to me. And now he doesn’t do the whole cycle, right? He takes ten breaths, and then he’s reading a book and Lena laying in my lap and stuff like that. But he’s around that nervous system and that behavior. Yeah, he’s around the stretching.

 

He sees it. He’s around me working out in the gym. He comes to Muay Thai with me. You know, I think sometimes we as men, we sequestered our practices away from people. Yeah. And what I would say is, even though it might be frustrating sometimes bring those practices into your relationship, bring them into your family system and invite invite people in without forcing them to do them with.

 

Yeah. No.

 

01:52:56.280 — 01:53:42.320 · Speaker 4

Claire used to sit in my lap at first when she was really young, when I chanted, because I chant every morning, it’s my ritual. And then she was next to me, and then she would jam with me. Over the course of the years, it became something that she she took on. And I think that’s such a beautiful, that’s such a beautiful.

 

Again, the work that you do as a man will absolutely change the destiny of your children. Totally right. It really will. And it you know, I think the thing that I’m always bumping into as well is, you know, convincing men to prioritize this kind of work, right? Because they’re so they’re driven by this idea that if I make enough money, if I get enough power, if I get enough status, then love is guaranteed for me, right?

 

Then then I will belong. Right. And.

 

01:53:42.320 — 01:53:44.480 · Speaker 1

And sex might be guaranteed.

 

01:53:45.040 — 01:54:32.510 · Speaker 4

Maybe. Yeah. Sex might be guaranteed. Yeah, that’s guaranteed too. Right. So all of those things. And there’s still truth to that? Yeah, there is still truth to that. I’m not sure about the love piece. Yeah. And I’m not sure. But what I think men are running into, like you said, is that that drive is leaving them hollow.

 

And you could be 30 and have sold your first company. Or, you know, we have a friend who’s in his mid 30s who, you know, sold the company and is is facing this very thing and has had to change his whole life. And so you’re going to get hit by it at some point. You’re going to get hit by it. So so you know trust us on this one.

 

Get it? Get a head start. All right. I want to get into I want to get into some of the shadows that you know, because you have your own shadow process. I do a ton of shadow work, and I think this would be interesting for men to hear. Like, what are some of the shadows that you see men like bumping into?

 

01:54:32.550 — 01:54:58.430 · Speaker 1

Yeah. Okay. Anger. Let’s just start with anger because that’s a huge one. Is the nice guys, the people pleasers, you know, the guys that grew up with the single moms that were like, don’t be like your dad or angry men or bad men. Yeah. Um, you know, men need to control their anger. And so a lot of men have completely disassociated from their anger and sort of castrated themselves.

 

And how does that.

 

01:54:58.470 — 01:55:05.150 · Speaker 4

How does that show up? Like, if you don’t own your shadow, how will that anger shadow show up in a man’s light? So a lot of aggressiveness maybe.

 

01:55:05.190 — 01:56:32.460 · Speaker 1

Yeah, a number of different ways. A big one is that you will lack the energetic quality of being able to set boundaries and express your needs. It’s really it’s really harmful in that way because the internal indicator that a boundary has been crossed is a little charge of anger. You know, it’s like, oh, I didn’t like that.

 

That wasn’t okay. How we detect that is a little bit of anger and frustration. So anger is a very important quality for being able to understand where our boundaries are. The other piece of it is the expression of needs. We have to have. Not that you need to express your needs in an angry way by any means, shape or form, but there is a kind of risk that you’re taking in the expression of a need.

 

And when you are disconnected from the charge of your anger, you’re disconnected from the intensity of a vitality of being able to take that risk as a man and say, I really would like this, I really need this, I really want this, or to be able to pursue what it is that you want. A lot of men that are disconnected from their anger, they’re lost their confused about what they want.

 

They’re confused about whether a relationship is right for them or not. They are resentful in a relationship, it’s always leads into resentment, and a lot of the times they are living a life that is lacking in pursuit, and they kind of feel like life is happening to them constantly and they have no drive.

 

01:56:32.500 — 01:56:33.820 · Speaker 4

They seem to lack agency.

 

01:56:33.860 — 01:56:48.580 · Speaker 1

Yeah, the lack agency. Yeah, yeah. And you know, anger has a bad rap in our culture. I think sacred anger is very necessary for containment, for boundaries, for all of the things I think talking about is spot on. Yeah, but most men conflate. It’s not.

 

01:56:48.780 — 01:56:55.700 · Speaker 4

Okay. Yeah. I don’t like that. Yeah, right. You know what I mean? Like, those are those are those. Yeah. That’s not all right with me. Yeah, yeah.

 

01:56:55.740 — 01:57:27.930 · Speaker 1

Like, there’s a story that my wife always tells, which is in the beginning of our relationship, we were in Hawaii and we were driving, and she said something. I have no idea what she said, but I just turned to her, and I was like, I didn’t like that. Don’t don’t talk to me like that. And it wasn’t a threat and it wasn’t angry.

 

It was just it was firm. Yeah. And she was silent. And then after she was like, I’m sorry I didn’t. You’re right. That wasn’t okay. And but she tells that story from a place of it was the very first time that she ever felt safe relationally, because the majority of the time, what what guys would do is either collapse and not say anything or lose their.

 

01:57:27.930 — 01:57:29.770 · Speaker 4

Shit or, yeah, explode. You know.

 

01:57:29.810 — 01:57:45.210 · Speaker 1

So I think anger is a really big one culturally, because men have kind of been, especially in the therapeutic world, have been beaten over the head with this notion that they they need to provide safety for their woman. And because of that.

 

01:57:45.290 — 01:57:46.330 · Speaker 4

Don’t even get me started there.

 

01:57:46.330 — 01:58:19.330 · Speaker 1

Yeah, no, that’s a whole conversation. But because of that and because we’re so linear, what a lot of men do is, well, then I’ll just castrate myself off from my intensity, from my from any type of anger, and I’ll just be this kind of docile individual for you. And, and then I’ll take on the responsibility of you feeling safe.

 

And that doesn’t work, because what ends up happening is that the woman’s emotions become the sort of intense force in the relationship that everything kind of revolves around. Yeah.

 

01:58:19.370 — 01:58:39.410 · Speaker 4

And then she’s setting him up to fail. He’s setting himself up to fail. Correct. Yeah. There’s no there’s it’s safety is an internal process. Yeah. For both. For both partners. Yeah. So that’s assuming you’re not with a caveat. Yeah. For everybody you know, assuming you’re not with an abusive narcissist.

 

Right. You know, but for most people, safety is an inside job and it needs to be treated that way.

 

01:58:39.450 — 02:00:03.240 · Speaker 1

Yeah. So I think anger is a big one. Another shadow is shame. Men have a tremendous amount of shame. And I think men have a tremendous amount of shame, because how young boys are often raised is different than young girls. And shame is this control tool. And it’s not to say that that girls don’t get shamed.

 

They absolutely do. But shame is this control tool, and it’s a behavioral change mechanism that people will try and deploy that a lot of parents have tried to deploy over the years. So for a lot of young men, they experience an environment where, you know, for example, at age three, by age three, boys will experience half as much physical touch as girls.

 

So the average boy will go through the experience of having less physicality, less physical touch. Maybe they’re witnessing sister get that? What’s wrong with me that I’m not getting that right? And then there’s all of the pressure that starts to get put on them. And kids really need two things in order to develop.

 

They need high standards and high support. That’s the two things that they need. And for a lot of young boys, what they get are extremely high standards, very little support. You should be able to figure this out. Here are the expectations. Where’s the other 5%? How come you didn’t score the touchdown.

 

And this is just reinforced over and over and over and over and over again where it’s like, okay, you have super high expectations of me, but you’re not giving me the guidance and the support to show me how to accomplish the expectations that you have.

 

02:00:03.280 — 02:01:42.950 · Speaker 4

So I think I want to say it a little bit about shame, because I’ve recently Learned how some shame develops in a child. Not just. But I think this really hits boys when we’re young. We love our parents, right? We love our parents. No matter what we think, our parents love us, right? Even even if they their you know, this is why, even if they’re chaos, we think they love us.

 

So when our needs aren’t met as a child, we turn our awareness in and develop the story that something must be wrong with us. And so shame actually starts to accumulate by your parents, many of them probably well-meaning, not able to meet your needs. Like you talked about getting the support. And so the thing about shame is that it’s the byproduct of your parents lack of capacity to show up for you.

 

By the time men are older, it’s literally so ingrained that they think that it is something bad with them. And so I just wanted to say that because it’s such a it’s when I was told this by a therapist, I was like, oh my God, like, that makes perfect sense that that’s the birthplace of shame. Is this. My parents must love me.

 

I love my parents. They aren’t coming to pick me up out of the crib. There must be something wrong with me. Yeah. And that. That is something that, you know, most of these shadows, I would say even the angry one. They have this birthplace that is usually some event or some combination event, some dynamic that is quite sad right when you really get to it.

 

And so underneath both of those shadows and we’ll get into more. But underneath both of those shadows is grief. And I think, you know, to go where we started our conversation, there is a tremendous amount of grief that’s underneath unpacking these shadows.

 

02:01:43.110 — 02:01:54.230 · Speaker 1

Yeah, it’s it’s very true. Like shame in a, in anybody. It’s going to develop either externally that it’s something that you are told directly. There’s like a very direct component of what’s wrong with you and how that.

 

02:01:54.230 — 02:01:54.550 · Speaker 4

Happens.

 

02:01:54.550 — 02:03:15.540 · Speaker 1

Is right. And you know, and, and and it’s somebodys voice, a caretaker actually telling you that there’s something directly wrong with you or there’s an internal process that unfolds because kids are little bundles of egos, so there’s no perspective of, oh, dad’s having a shitty day or mom’s having a shitty day.

 

This has nothing to do with me. It’s everything that Mom and Dad do. Yeah, it’s it’s a reflection of me. Yeah. You know, it’s such a brutal experience, man. Being human sometimes. Yeah, exactly. But. So for a lot of for a lot of boys and a lot of men, they just have grown up in an environment where it’s like, okay, if I couldn’t get physically held, if I couldn’t get Mom and dad to tell me that they love me, if I couldn’t meet their standards and expectations, it means I’m not okay.

 

And I can’t tell you how many men I’ve worked with where they actually just fundamentally feel broken, that there is something wrong with them in their core. And that is part of the shadow, because a lot of men will walk through the world very successful. Maybe they have a good relationship and inside of themselves, you know, in corporate culture they call it imposter syndrome.

 

Right. That’s sort of the terminology for it there. But inside of them, what they’re actually feeling and experiencing is there’s something fundamentally wrong with me in my core operating system. Yeah, yeah. And so that’s part of the shadow. And then how it shows up is lacking expression of needs and desires.

 

Yeah.

 

02:03:15.580 — 02:03:18.940 · Speaker 4

Um, why would my needs be met if there’s something wrong with me?

 

02:03:18.980 — 02:03:44.820 · Speaker 1

Yeah. Sabotaging things are good. There’s another big one. Withholding is another big one, right? Withholding connection, withholding love because you don’t feel worthy in some capacity. So there’s a whole bunch of different ways that it shows up. I think some of the other ones that are in, uh, men’s shadow are.

 

Oh, maybe I’ll just list them off and you can decide where you want to go. Grief is a huge one. Grief and sadness is is a really big one. Trauma is something that’s really held. The amount of men that I’ve worked with who.

 

02:03:44.980 — 02:03:45.580 · Speaker 4

It’s amazing.

 

02:03:45.620 — 02:03:59.860 · Speaker 1

Have gone to therapy for years. And then they come out and work with me one on one, or at a group or at a weekend, and they expose something that they’ve never talked about in years of therapy is astounding. So trauma is in the shadow and then I think you have power.

 

02:03:59.890 — 02:04:20.170 · Speaker 4

Yeah, let’s touch on that. Let’s touch on that. Because I think this idea of how how the power shadow plays out. Right. For men, we talked about a little bit earlier, but it’d be nice to unpack a little bit more. How do you see the the shadow of power? I mean, obviously there’s powerlessness too. Right. So those those two things.

 

Right. How do you see that playing out in men’s lives?

 

02:04:20.210 — 02:04:52.610 · Speaker 1

Well, depending on how a man was raised and the modeling that he saw, you know, it’s like it’s I’ve seen a couple different patterns. One is the man that grew up with the sort of domineering, hyper successful, hyper driven father who, you know, was maybe disconnected or abusive or would abuse his power.

 

And so that man will will feign or sort of pretend that he doesn’t have any power. And it’s it’s such a weird thing because a lot of men who grew up with hyper successful fathers.

 

02:04:52.650 — 02:04:53.450 · Speaker 4

Have a softness.

 

02:04:53.450 — 02:06:52.080 · Speaker 1

To them, have a softness to them, but also they’re living in a way of their struggling to find the success and find their own power. Almost as like an adolescent, like fuck you to death. You know, so there’s a withholding of I’m never going to fully embody my power because I don’t want to be like you. Mhm. Yeah.

 

So that’s that’s one. Another one is, you know, growing up with like the spineless dad, the dad that was just kind of soft and didn’t stand up for himself and was, you know, walked all over. And usually those men either repeat that pattern and they find themselves in the exact same dynamic, or the pendulum swings so far in the other direction that they are cold, harsh, I mean, you know, and they’re, they’re really they can be cruel, you know, because there was no reconciliation with power.

 

They never saw their father embody power. And so and they grew up in an environment where it’s like resentment. Yeah. Like you never stood up for yourself. You never fucking stood up for me. I will never be a weak man. Yeah. And so there’s this impenetrable force that they become of never wanting to show any type of weakness or softness.

 

So I think that those are those are some really common patterns that I see. How the power shows up in the, in their shadow is usually for a lot of men, it’s a, it’s a dis embodiment of it. It’s not wanting to actually touch their potency or be in relationship with their power. Yeah. Because of everything. Right?

 

Because of society saying men in power bad. You know, men that are connected to power. It’s wrong. Men to relinquish power. Right. All this kind of stuff. And then, you know, when men use their power, it’s abusive and it’s harmful. And so a lot of men have just been like, well, I’m not gonna touch that. Then I’ll just leave that where it is.

 

And so it goes into their shadow, and they lack a quality of potency and, and sort of vitality and virility.

 

02:06:52.080 — 02:06:53.080 · Speaker 4

It shows up sexually.

 

02:06:53.120 — 02:06:53.320 · Speaker 1

Yeah.

 

02:06:53.320 — 02:07:04.040 · Speaker 4

It shows sexually an inability to sort of own their dark, let’s call it darker natures. But I say darker. I don’t mean evil. I mean like the more intense, the more primal. Yeah. You know, and women complain about it all the time.

 

02:07:04.120 — 02:07:47.560 · Speaker 1

Well, this is this is where, like, the Madonna whore complex comes up. Yeah, right. A lot of men that are disconnected from their own power in especially in a relationship, that’s where their power will come out sideways. They’ll try and express it by having, you know, some OnlyFans woman or pornography where they’re expressing that part of themselves or in a fair partner, where it’s just about being this hyper powerful man.

 

And that I see all the time where the man is with a woman dating a woman married to a woman that is kind of like this Madonna that he’s put on a pedestal. He doesn’t feel like he can bring his potency there, and where it goes is somewhere else. Yeah. You know, he it has to go somewhere else.

 

02:07:47.600 — 02:08:03.990 · Speaker 4

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I’m curious again, what do you see as a, as the steps to reclaiming power for for men who who didn’t basically didn’t learn power from their fathers, didn’t learn the appropriate use of power from their fathers. How do you see that?

 

02:08:04.030 — 02:08:51.220 · Speaker 1

Yeah. I mean, there’s sort of two prongs. The one prong is if you are in that place where not that you’re abusing power, but that it’s become a shield for you and a sword, and it’s like you never allow yourself to soften. You never allow yourself to have any type of weakness. It’s a very different piece of work, which is you have to learn to expose yourself, and it can be a very brutal process of being able to be in a group or being able to be in a dynamic and start to expose some of the quote unquote, weak parts of you.

 

And because for a lot of men who have used their power as a form of protection and shield, there’s a very deep fear of exposing that weakness, that softness, because they’re worried it’ll get used against them or etc..

 

02:08:51.260 — 02:10:27.420 · Speaker 4

I would argue, you know, a lot. Same thing. Same thing that you’re saying. But I would argue, really that the power source, the true power source is the heart. Yeah, right. And so a literal heart connection and the capacity to rest in your heart and sort of move through the world from your heart. Also your dungeon, right.

 

Also your core. Those two things, I think are the, you know, sort of yogic martial arts sort of approach to instead of moving from pattern and strategy as to how we accumulate power, how or how we feel safe in the world, all those sorts of things, how do we actually start to move from these parts of our bodies and really tap into the power of our heart, or the power of our center, or the power of our core, and then move through the world from there?

 

I agree. So, you know, this thing about the other piece about shadows, power, shadows that I’ve seen, and I do this in my teacher training where I literally I really have them own the part of themselves that wants to teach because it gives them power. Own the fucking God complex, like you’re up there teaching people to open their body.

 

It feels really good to do that. Like so. Like there’s something in owning, you know, the way I go about work is really going into the specific aspects of certain things. And like owning the part of you that wants to dominate in sex, totally owning the part of you that wants to, you know, sort of play God in a room full of people owning the part of you that wants to be able to, you know, move people around on your chessboard.

 

And in a way, it’s a sort of integration of power that that I think will be helpful for people as people to for men in particular. Yeah, but women too. Yeah. Women have power.

 

02:10:27.460 — 02:11:48.010 · Speaker 1

And and for men to have other men was just like, this is who I am in that way. You know how men can start to work with disembodied power, just like if they’ve disassociated from their own potency? Yeah, there’s a few things that they can do. The first piece is that you’re going to need some type of practice where you connect with your own physical power.

 

And that, I think, is a very important piece that you start to push really heavy weight, that you start to do some type of striking or martial arts or grappling, like Brazilian jiu jitsu, where you just are forced into your body and you’re forced to try and reconcile with your own physical potency. And for a lot of men that are really disconnected from their power, it’s really confronting.

 

You know, like I remember when I started doing Muay Thai, as much as I, you know, I’d been in bar fights and hockey fights and stuff like that, I’m having to reconcile with, there’s a part of me that wants to go full blast, but I’m, I’m sparring with somebody that’s fought in the UFC that can probably kick my ass.

 

Right. And like, it’s not I’m not supposed to go full blast, right? This is about the touch. But I found myself, you know, like, apologizing when I would like to land a punch, you know, like, apologize. An Atlanta kick. And I really had to get in this practice of my coach. You mean, like, stop apologizing.

 

You know it’s okay because.

 

02:11:48.010 — 02:11:49.010 · Speaker 4

You have consent. Yeah.

 

02:11:49.010 — 02:11:51.210 · Speaker 1

You have. You have consent to, like, you know.

 

02:11:52.650 — 02:12:42.570 · Speaker 1

Yeah. Because before I was out of control in that area. You know, it’s like when I would express myself. It was in a bar fight. It was in a hockey fight. It was, you know, it was not healthy. So I think you need a physical practice to start to grapple with your own physical power and to let yourself start to enjoy that.

 

You know, it’s like I’m 42. I’m in the best shape of my life. I love that, you know? And it’s it’s something that I wish for every man to find himself in a period of his life where he really dedicates himself to some type of physical potency. So I think that part’s there. The other part is that when men disconnect from their own power, they disconnect from having their wants, needs and desires be expressed or met.

 

So they might express that they have a want, need or desire, but they’ll cut themselves off from receiving. Yeah.

 

02:12:42.610 — 02:12:43.840 · Speaker 4

Or they’ll apologize for it, or.

 

02:12:43.840 — 02:12:44.040 · Speaker 1

They’ll.

 

02:12:44.040 — 02:12:44.560 · Speaker 4

Apologize.

 

02:12:44.560 — 02:14:10.000 · Speaker 1

For it. You know, they have shame around it. So part of the practice that you you can start to deploy is being very clear on here’s what I want, need or desire within my relationship with my partner, with my friends and my work environment, and beginning to do the really uncomfortable thing of exposing those wants, needs and desires and to unapologetically start to say, here’s what I’d like.

 

I’m not actually, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to go there for dinner. I’m not all right with that. I’m not going to watch The Bachelorette with you, you know, like just really start to say those types of things and then to allow yourself to actually receive that those needs are being met. And then the last piece is an expression of what most people in the therapeutic world call boundaries.

 

It’s just setting a standard or an expectation. So being able to say, I’m not all right with that, I didn’t like that. That’s a no for me. I’m not interested in it and really starting to express your know, express your boundaries in a very simple, very clean way that isn’t a threat but also doesn’t break relationship.

 

I think that’s a big thing for a lot of men, is that sometimes when they start the practice of saying no or expressing that things aren’t okay with them, the pendulum swings to this other direction where they break relationships. Right. So it’s like, I love you. I’m not interested in doing that. Yeah. You know, or hey, I didn’t I really didn’t like when you said that.

 

02:14:10.040 — 02:14:20.520 · Speaker 4

And this is a practice, right? You know what I mean? Like, totally. It’s not gonna come out as smooth as Conners making it look right. Be a stutter, and then they’ll, you know, there’ll be a little wiggle and squeak and like.

 

02:14:20.520 — 02:14:21.520 · Speaker 5

Yeah, like, oh.

 

02:14:22.160 — 02:15:45.420 · Speaker 4

It’s a practice. And it’s uncomfortable for a lot of men, you know, because we’re talking. I mean, you’re you’re younger than me, but, you know, there’s two generations of men who were not fathered. Well. Totally. Right. Robert Glover writes about this in his book, and it’s just so clear. You know, what I’m loving is this.

 

Let’s call it the men’s work generation that’s coming up. You know, I think it really started with BLI and Mankind project. But since the 90s, you know, there’s now a, a group of men who are doing this work. And there is fathering is improving in a massive way. Right. So hopefully, you know, the 2 or 3 generations coming after us will not have the same issues that we had with our fathers, right?

 

Absolutely. Um, anything else in the shadow world? Like, I’m just gonna say I have to touch the sexual shadow, right? Totally. And it’s also. It’s also men are going to use the word impotent in a lot of ways around this. Like, they just. I hear it all the I see this all the time in my coed workshops about you’re just being able to, like, play in a command space.

 

Yes. With consent. Right. With the women want it like command me and and you know, men just they can’t get it out. Yes. You know, they can’t own their sexual potency in some way or they do and they, you know, again, it’s a practice. Yes. And so, you know, one of the things that, you know. It’s it’s funny, actually.

 

I I’ll share this because, you know, when I get the men together in my workshops, I’ll have them practice on each other.

 

02:15:45.460 — 02:15:45.740 · Speaker 1

Totally.

 

02:15:45.740 — 02:15:46.220 · Speaker 4

We do too.

 

02:15:46.260 — 02:15:50.300 · Speaker 5

Yeah. Yeah. It’s it’s so cool to watch because.

 

02:15:50.380 — 02:16:23.940 · Speaker 4

You know, they’re in kind of a bit of a polarity practice. Yeah. But you know, the men are like, all right. Like, try to command me and I’ll tell you how it feels in my body. So one guy’s kind of playing the feminine, right. There’s nothing else weird that goes on, but. And the other guy is like, trying to practice what it’s like to command a body open.

 

Yeah. And it’s another area, this sort of sexual shadow piece that I think men, when men touch it, it sort of ripples out into everything, right? Ripples out into everything. Because sex is such a potent part of our lives. You know.

 

02:16:23.980 — 02:16:27.940 · Speaker 1

I think that for a lot of men, porn is where their sexual potency goes.

 

02:16:27.980 — 02:16:48.540 · Speaker 4

Yeah, over ejaculation too. Even if they aren’t watching porn, most of them are right. But even if they aren’t watching porn, like just coming every day just saps your cheek. It just zaps your cheek. I you know, I always get a little pushback on that, but, you know, it’s now proven right. It totally messes with your hormones.

 

It totally messes with your potency.

 

02:16:48.580 — 02:16:50.180 · Speaker 1

Yeah. And so I think I think there’s a lot of.

 

02:16:50.380 — 02:16:51.340 · Speaker 4

Stop jerking off every.

 

02:16:51.380 — 02:16:52.180 · Speaker 1

Day. Yeah. There you go.

 

02:16:52.220 — 02:16:55.060 · Speaker 4

Yeah, yeah. That’s our that’s our big piece of wisdom for men.

 

02:16:55.100 — 02:16:55.700 · Speaker 1

Stop, stop.

 

02:16:55.700 — 02:16:58.060 · Speaker 4

Orgasm. Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah. Fair enough. Yes!

 

02:16:58.100 — 02:17:21.060 · Speaker 1

Yeah. I mean, I think for a lot of men, there’s a disconnection with their sexual power, or at the very least, there’s a disconnection to their sexual desires. You know, there’s a shame around it. There’s not wanting to express it or explore it or be honest about it. A withholding, a shame around how much vitality they have or how little they might be experiencing, how.

 

02:17:21.060 — 02:17:21.700 · Speaker 4

Much desire.

 

02:17:21.700 — 02:18:38.970 · Speaker 1

They have, how much, how much desire they have. You know, and so I think for a lot of guys having a practice of, I call it expectation less desire or expectation less arousal. And so if you’re in a relationship. Just practicing bringing your arousal and your desire to your partner without the expectation that it needs to lead to an outcome.

 

Because we as men are so focused on outcome that energetically, when we’re bringing our sexual arousal to our partner, what oftentimes ends up happening is what the receiving is. You need to get off and you just want me so that you can get off. Right. Right. And and that pressurize the system. And for some women, that’s like, maybe they enjoy that or that’s like, that’s fun or arousing.

 

But for the majority of men and women, that’s that’s not super arousing. And so when we as men can practice bringing. Okay, I’m turned on right now. Oh, I saw my partner. They look amazing. Um, and we can let them see that. We can let them feel it from us. We can go and hold them. Touch them, you know, make out a little bit, but but with out in this very sort of clean way of this doesn’t need to lead anywhere.

 

Yeah. Then we infuse our relationship with this kind of, like spontaneity. Yeah. Of never needing to feel like, oh, this has to happen right now. It has to happen, right?

 

02:18:39.090 — 02:20:00.120 · Speaker 4

Well, it’s also a nervous system training. I mean, this is the way I see it, right? The men literally being in your desire without grasping for her or without retreating and hiding your desire, like being in that sweet spot where your whole body is lit up. Yeah. Your breath is deeper. Your. Your heart’s exploding.

 

You’re. You know, you’re just feeling fully alive. But you’re not. You’re not reaching. You’re just letting desire be in your body is a massive nervous system expansion. Yeah. And and it also trains the body. We didn’t talk about this around power that there is. The nervous system actually has to be trained to hold power.

 

And you know, the martial arts, you know, tai chi is a beautiful way to do that. Qigong is a beautiful way to do that, where you’re really training your body to actually accept larger flows of power through the body. Yeah. Wow. Okay, we only have a few minutes left, but I want to. You know, we’ve talked a lot about solutions to this, but one of the things that I know you and I are both passionate about is actually creating your own personal men’s group, and you and I are in a men’s group together.

 

There’s been six of us for a year and a half now. Right. And what would you you know, what would you say to men about, you know, what it’s been like to have a very tight personal men’s group what it’s done for you? Um, what you’ve seen it do for the other men. How would you how would you describe that?

 

02:20:00.120 — 02:20:29.270 · Speaker 1

I think what I’ve seen in our group and in so many men’s groups over the years, is that it’s a place for men to grapple with who they are and be witnessed and to bring, you know, everything that we’ve been talking about at this point around shadow and pain, frustration, lostness. It’s a place to bring all of that.

 

You know, it’s a home for that where there isn’t judgment, where there isn’t criticism. We’re not going to be abandoned or neglected, but it’s also a place for you.

 

02:20:29.270 — 02:20:29.910 · Speaker 4

Might be challenged.

 

02:20:29.950 — 02:20:44.150 · Speaker 1

Yeah, it might be challenged. That’s what I was gonna say is like, it’s also a place for confrontation. Yeah. And I think that I think that we as men, have created very domesticated relationships with one another that are terrible, that are really not our women.

 

02:20:44.150 — 02:20:44.630 · Speaker 4

For the most.

 

02:20:44.630 — 02:21:31.790 · Speaker 1

Part. Yeah, yeah. And so a lot of men don’t have any type of healthy confrontation between one another. And so I think one of the things that I’ve seen is that we we need that healthy confrontation to be like, man, you said you were going to stop drinking, and you just told me that you went out the other night and had three beers, like, what the fuck’s going on?

 

Right, right. You know, and so for other men to care about us enough to confront us and not to call us out, because that’s usually about the individual’s ego, that’s doing the calling out. But to love somebody enough to be able to say, here’s who you’ve told me you want to be. Yeah, I am in service of that. I’m actually here with you, And I care about you enough that I’m going to hold you to.

 

Who you’ve said you want to become.

 

02:21:31.790 — 02:22:58.140 · Speaker 4

And I’m going to do it right in a way. Again. This is the training of the nervous system. To stay in confrontation without either attack or retreat. Exactly. To just be like the tree. And, you know, one of the things that I see in our group and, and I think this is the, the model of the healthy men’s group is that we’re starting to get really good.

 

It’s took about a year, but we’re starting to get really good at seeing each other’s patterns. Yeah. You know, and like and noticing. So it might not be that I said, hey I don’t want to do x, Y and Z, but you’ve seen me do this pattern. And the moment I start to drift into that pattern, you know, one of you guys is going to go like, hey, man, like you, you know, this, this is this is the pattern, man.

 

This is what this is. And it’s confronting. It’s incredibly confronting. It’s incredibly confronting. Yeah. And it’s not a always comfortable situation. But one of the things that I’ve loved about the group that we created is that we very consciously created a group with very high standards. Oh, yeah.

 

And I’m constantly getting guys saying, how do I create a men’s group? How do I create a men’s group? And, you know, I lead a program that teaches how to create men’s groups. But the first thing that I say is like create really high standards or really low standards, and then nobody holds each other shit. Yeah, but that’s what you have.

 

Yeah, that’s the experience you have. But create really high standards and hold each other. And you know, I’m the, you know, the policeman of our group, you know, for people showing up. The warden. Exactly. John. Yeah.

 

02:22:58.180 — 02:23:09.540 · Speaker 1

Um, but I think it’s, it’s it’s exactly what I was saying before, which is raising a good human requires high standards and high support, and a men’s group is a place for that to take place.

 

02:23:09.580 — 02:23:10.220 · Speaker 4

Really? Well said.

 

02:23:10.460 — 02:24:18.420 · Speaker 1

It’s it’s you create really high standards. And I’ve seen other men’s groups have been a part of other men’s groups where there aren’t agreed upon high standards and then shit just falls apart. You know, some guys just stop stopped showing up or they’re intermittent and it’s not. They’re not really committed.

 

They get on the calls, they start, you know, just telling a whole bunch of story. There’s not any depth in it. And then nobody wants to show up, right. So you have to have really high standards. And that’s you know here’s the call structure. Here are the call times. The expectation is that nobody misses it.

 

You know. And here’s what’s happening when we meet. And da da da da da. So you have these really high standards, but then you have really high support I think for a lot of men. And it breaks my heart over the like the last decade. It really breaks my heart how few men actually have been loved enough where they know that somebody else gives a shit about them.

 

Yeah, yeah. And somebody else will show up and say, hey, I, you know, you came out on the call and talked about the stuff that’s happening with your wife, your girlfriend, or, you know, the shame that you’re experiencing. And I’m here, I’m checking in on you and, you know, tell me what’s been going on. And to show up in that way, I think is so rare.

 

02:24:18.540 — 02:24:53.970 · Speaker 4

For me, it’s a parenting. Yes, it’s a parenting. It’s sort of like there’s a whole there’s a few generations of men that kind of need to repair it and re father. Yes. Each other. Yes. Because it wasn’t properly done, you know, the first time, I mean, I’m sure some, some guys show up, have great fathers, but by and large there is a re fathering from a higher set of standards that happens in a good men’s group.

 

Yeah. And you touched on this. Part of the reason why that works is because there was a very high standard. There’s a very tight container. There’s agreements, there’s expectations. It’s time consuming. Yeah it’s time consuming but.

 

02:24:54.130 — 02:24:54.490 · Speaker 1

So.

 

02:24:54.530 — 02:25:58.210 · Speaker 4

Worth it. Yeah. But so worth it. Yes. So it’s so worth it. And you know for the for the men that are out there listening, you know, it’s, it’s really important that you find a group of men, you know, not necessarily. It doesn’t even have to be men that you respect. I mean, it can be, but it’s men who are committed to depth and to showing up and to growth.

 

Right? They might be wealthy. They might not be. They might be. Whatever it is, have lots of followers. They might not. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that you’ve got guys that are willing to show up, and it’s kind of a going to war together because we’re going into each other’s, you know, unconscious childhood wounding, childhood programing.

 

You know, you guys, when I was in my darkest time last year, you guys were there virtually every day, virtually every day. And, you know, we only talk once a week. So I was reaching out and it was like you guys were going to war with me, with my, you know, childhood wounds and with all the shit that I was going through.

 

And, you know, we did that for another brother, right? Yeah. And so that’s kind of like, this is the band of brothers that you go to war with.

 

02:25:58.250 — 02:26:08.010 · Speaker 1

Yeah. You know. Well, and I think to go, you know, all the way back to the beginning of this conversation, the really important piece of initiation is that it wasn’t solely on the father.

 

02:26:08.050 — 02:26:08.890 · Speaker 4

Mhm. All right.

 

02:26:08.930 — 02:27:41.470 · Speaker 1

It was of the men of the village. Yeah. And this is one of the things that, you know, when you look at male relationships in our society, they’re dwindling, male spaces are collapsing, male relationships are collapsing where men have less and less male friends. And so you becoming a functional, mature man within culture and society or in your marriage and relationship was never the responsibility of dad solely.

 

You know, it was dad and the men that were around him. Yeah. And that’s the one thing I’ve really tried to focus in on with my son is having really good men in my life around him. Like he knows, you know Michael, he loves Michael. He knows the men that I like lead my retreats with. And whenever I’m gone, like whenever I’m at our men’s weekends, when we’re together and I call home and I talk to my son, the first thing he says is, hi, dad, let me see your friends.

 

You know, he like, he doesn’t want to talk to me. He’s like, he wants to see you. He wants to see Michael. He wants, you know. And so I think that we’ve we’ve forgotten that, yes, a huge part of men’s groups can be about parenting and experiencing that. But another part of it is is really reconciling each other.

 

Yeah, yeah. Raising each other and reconciling relationships and having real non-biological brothers. Yeah. You know, like, you guys have become non-biological brothers to me, you know, and I think that that is so important. And I think it’s something that it’s like, you don’t know how detrimental it is not having it.

 

It’s so sad. I wish that I wish there was a way to bottle that up and give it to every man and be like, this is what you’re missing. Yeah. And he’d be like, fuck yeah! Hell yeah.

 

02:27:41.510 — 02:28:39.790 · Speaker 4

Like the depth of the word I use is nourishment. Yeah. Right. There’s a kind of masculine love that it can be expressed in good men’s programs. I’m sure it happens in yours. It certainly happens in mind and in men’s groups. That is so nourishing where you get to be the full spectrum from messy to, you know, power hungry.

 

You get to be the full spectrum of you and you’re loved, challenged, held, you know, encouraged from that place. There’s something that, like you said, men. It’s something that I think most men, with the exception of those that had the fucking unicorn father’s right, have not received. And when they receive it, there’s just something that happens in the system.

 

Something relaxes, something open, something strengthens in the system. And yeah, I, I personally think that the creation of men’s groups, you know, like I made the goal of creating 10,000 men’s groups before I die. I mean, I’m maybe 5% there, you know what I mean?

 

02:28:40.310 — 02:28:41.110 · Speaker 1

But pretty good.

 

02:28:41.110 — 02:29:05.670 · Speaker 4

They’re exponential right? They’re exponential through my programs, like the guys and my programs create groups together. And, you know, so if we can just be, you know, Connor and I are here because we’re in a men’s group together. So if this conversation wouldn’t have happened, probably without that.

 

But yeah, we’re not bullshitting. You know, if you are watching this and you’re a man, then probably the best thing that you can do is to create a men’s group that supports it. You can go through books together.

 

02:29:05.670 — 02:30:03.860 · Speaker 1

You can take practices from those books together. That’s my first men’s group was a David Data way, the Superior Man men’s group, And we will just go through one chapter a month and hold each other in that. So there’s all kinds of ways to get it started. But yeah, do not miss out on that opportunity to create a powerful men’s group.

 

Certainly changed my life. Yeah, I mean, that’s what saved my life. Saved my life for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that’s that’s kind of what we’ve done in the Alliance and the mentorship program that we have is like, there’s a thousand guys in there, and we support them in creating their own groups, and they go through either the courses that we’ve built to the pathways or a book that they want.

 

And I mean, it’s it’s wild to see the impact it has. Yeah. Freaking cool. Yeah. Well done. Tell us a little bit about what else you have offered. Like you have the Alliance. Anything else that you want to put out there? I mean, you can check out the book Men’s Work. Um, yeah, it’s really great. It’s like I tried to design it as a a book that you could read and learn from, but also a book that you would have to do work through.

 

02:30:04.980 — 02:31:08.260 · Speaker 1

It’s like the book that I ultimately wanted and needed. And so that’s a good place to start. And then I mean you can check out the Alliance. It’s a, you know, a men’s mentorship community. And we’ve got courses in there like my shadow work programs in there. There’s a relationship program in there. There’s tons of men from around the world.

 

I lead calls, um, and then there’s retreats. You know, we have men’s retreats that we lead once or twice a year. And I run some small groups with men called the Men’s Self Leadership Program. But outside of that, just I mean, I have a ton of free content on YouTube. Yeah. You do. You crank it out. Yeah. Just like go check out, you know, it’s man talks on Instagram on YouTube.

 

It’s yeah, that’s probably a great place to start because I’ve just poured so much of like my knowledge and wisdom and and self into into that. Yeah. You really have man. Thank you for all that you’ve done for men, you know, and for me. So thank you brother. Yeah. All right. That’s it for uh, this episode. We went into it as deeply as we could.

 

This is the first episode of the second year of the podcast. So thank you for joining us.