What Happens When You Break Old Rules About Being a Man with Jason Lange

Many men struggle with outdated expectations of masculinity, creating disconnection from purpose, relationships, and self while carrying the weight of social norms that no longer serve them. Jason Lange joins us to explore how embracing men's work, uncovering shadow elements, and building supportive relationships can help men reclaim their vitality and purpose.

• Shadow work involves making the unconscious conscious, bringing to awareness what might be running your life without your knowledge
• The "man box" confines men to behaviors like never showing emotion, never asking for help, and always appearing tough
• Studies show men who strongly identify with traditional masculine values are more likely to commit suicide
• Loneliness and isolation are as harmful to health as smoking a pack and a half of cigarettes daily
• The "fierce, loving masculine heart" offers a third path beyond macho jerk and passive nice guy
• Integration of masculine and feminine energies creates wholeness regardless of gender
• Community builds resilience—men need other men to model healthy masculinity
• Many men push themselves with strategies and goals while ignoring their dysregulated nervous systems
• Connection and rest often naturally lead to renewed motivation and energy

Join a men's group or find ways to build deeper connections with other men. Visit evolutionarymen.com to learn more about Jason's work and programs.

How to reach Jason:

Website: https://evolutionary.men/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/evolutionarymenswork

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evolutionarymen/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@evolutionarymen

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Men's Struggle and Purpose
• 3:16 Jason's Journey and Shadow Work
• 10:05 Understanding the Shadow and Reclaiming Vitality
• 17:18 Societal Expectations and the Man Box
• 23:41 The Fierce, Loving Masculine Heart
• 31:02 Integrating Masculine and Feminine Energies
• 42:47 Community is Immunity: Final Thoughts
• 46:07 Podcast Closing

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

imagine living your life feeling disconnected from your purpose, your relationships or even yourself. Many men are struggling with outdated expectation of what it means to be a man carrying the weight of social norms that no longer serve them or anyone else, and these pressures can create loneliness, confusion and a lack of clarity on how to lead in love, life and community. But what if there was a way for you to break free, to shed these old paradigms, to step into a healthier, more empowered way of being? In today's episode, we're going to explore how embracing men's work, uncovering shadow elements and building deep, supportive relationships can help men reclaim their vitality, purpose and leadership in all aspects of life. And so if this sounds like a topic that could be interesting to you or to someone else, why don't you take a moment and hit like subscribe and leave a comment? Let us know what you think about today's episode. Please do share it so that others who are also interested can find this episode even more easily. And with that, let's get on with today's episode.

Speaker 2: 1:10

The average man today is sleepwalking through life, many never reaching their true potential, let alone ever crossing the finish line to living a purposeful life. Yet the hunger still exists, albeit buried amidst his cluttered mind, misguided beliefs and values that no longer serve him. It's time to align yourself for greatness. It's time to become a revolutionary man. Stay strong, my brother.

Speaker 1: 1:39

Welcome everyone to the Revolutionary man Podcast. I'm the founder of the Waking man Movement and your host, Alan DeMonsoul. What if parts of yourself might be hidden, maybe even disowned Silently? These things are holding us back from living the life we truly want, wouldn't you agree? How might joining a men's group or engaging in men's work transform not just our personal growth, but also our relationships and our ability to lead? Now, this is a journey of reclaiming purpose and vitality, and it starts with truly understanding who we are, embracing our shadow elements and building connections with others that support our growth. Today, we're going to explore how some tools can help you transform the men that we show up as in the world today. So I'm going to introduce my guest. Jason Lange is a men's embodiment coach. He's a group facilitator and an evolutionary guide, and he helps men drop in and wake up to a deeper clarity in their life's purpose and their relationships. He believes every man should be in a men's group for the growth and support of opportunities that they provide, and I couldn't agree more. Jason's a certified no more Mr Nice Guy coach, and he's studied and trained with leaders such as John Weiland, dr Robert Glover, junpo Roshi, tripp Lanier and Ken Wilburn. So we're going to get into lots of topics today. Welcome to the show, jason. Thank you so much for being here. Brother, so excited to be here. Alan, thanks for having me Excellent Well here.

Speaker 1: 3:08

On our podcast, the Revolutionary man, we always talk about all of us being on a hero's journey. We call it a hero's quest, and so I'm going to ask you about that. Tell us about a time of year where you had that death and rebirth moment and how that experience shaped you in the man you are today and the work that you're doing moment, and how that experience shaped you and the man you are today and the work that you're doing. Sure, I would say it was actually in my transition to doing this work in a lot of ways. I had been doing it for my own heart and soul and growth and transformation and maybe about seven years ago decided, hey, I think I want to give this a go, and partially because of some of the pressures of the men's work world and partially because I just wasn't patient enough, I did a burn all the boats, burn the bridges strategy and I had been kind of making a living as an artist and a web developer and I let go of all those clients and was like I'm just going to go head in and make it work as a coach. And I had been recently married, we had been planning on starting a family and I fell flat on my face.

Speaker 1: 4:18

It was a brutal first year where I dug myself into many tens of thousands of dollars of debt and caused a crisis in my relationship, in my budding family in a sense, and in my bank account, and had to really with the support of some men in my life and coming to terms with some disagreements I had with my wife at the time get clear of okay, it's not that simple. I'm going to have to do both for a while and this dream of going kind of full time at first had to die and I had to create and cultivate a level of perseverance. And okay, I'm going to have to do two things right now. I'm going to have to do work I love and I'm going to have to do work I love and I'm going to have to do work I don't love. That allows me to do the work I love, and that was a long, hard journey that in retrospect I would have done very different, but taught me a lot of lessons. Actually, now that I'm through it, that I actually see play out with many men and some of the some of what you mentioned here, but some of the actual shadow work elements of even in the men's work world, particularly around purpose and drive and whatnot that I have found to be a lot more nuanced than we often wanna give it imagine it to be. Yeah, absolutely, boy, that story resonates loudly for me and, as I've been doing this men's work since 2020 and just actually just prior to the pandemic, and while it's still a, I'm in that same position of it's an and business for me.

Speaker 1: 5:54

There's the other work that I do that well, I enjoy. I don't desperately or deeply love it any longer. It does allow me the ability to do this work, and so it's interesting how life shapes us and puts these things before us, and really it reveals who we are as men, and so let's talk a little bit we're just tickling a little bit here about this idea of this shadow work. Let's get into that work and how that work has helped transform you and the work you're doing with other men. Yeah, shadow work is a big part of what I offer with men now and, like the word men's work or meditation. It can mean a lot of different things, but in general it's about making conscious the unconscious, bringing back to the surface, in a sense, that which we can't see or that which might be running the show for us that we're unaware of. And they call it the shadow right, because it's imagine looking at your shadow, you're like what shadow? But oftentimes to other people it's blindingly obvious, like you got a big shadow right there, man, part of why group work is so potent and so powerful.

Speaker 1: 6:59

But my journey with men's work and shadow work actually started around the same time. I was in my mid-20s and had been suffering for a long time. Grew up in the Midwest of the United States White guy, lower middle class, had my basic security needs met, but my family just did not have a sense of interiority. There was no emotional connection and there was no physical connection. Had a lot of neglect. Growing up Again, it wasn't a malevolent household, but I was just left to my own devices and that caused a lot of problems as I got a little older. When you're young you're just like this is what's normal.

Speaker 1: 7:41

And then, as I became a teenager and started leaving the house and going into other people's houses and then, in particular, as I hit puberty and found myself interested in my case and dating the opposite sex and found I was terrified. I had no idea how to talk to a woman. I would get extremely uncomfortable in my body when I was around them, sweaty, tight, and it caused a lot of pain for me and over time it didn't get any better. Right I saw my friends having relationships, having experiences, and I kept falling into the same traps over and over again and that pain was so great caused me to say hey, there's got to be a better way, right, there's got to be something going on here. And like a lot of men first, that took me in a philosophical direction where I started trying to study and learn about philosophy and how to have a better mind. But I got lucky, because then that eventually took me to men's work in somatic therapy and in particular they swirled together in.

Speaker 1: 8:44

One of my first experiences in a deep men's group was with an older male facilitator who led me through a shadow work process. I had been in therapy for maybe 18 months before that and it was useful, but it wasn't massively moving the ball for me. In particular. I was pretty sophisticated with my protective mechanisms and I could go in and talk about I'm okay and keep it on the surface and stuff I had built some skill at, apparently. But then I'm in this men's group with this male facilitator who leads a process of shadow work I'm now trained in and within 10 minutes I'm on my back and I'm crying like a baby, sobbing, my hands are up in the air and I'm saying hold me, like a two-year-old boy crying for his mother, and I hadn't wept like that ever in my life. And I got up from that and I was like what on earth just happened? What was going on? I didn't even know that was inside me.

Speaker 1: 9:46

And so began my kind of love affair with shadow work, where part of my process was reintegrating a deeply neglected infant and toddler that had never really been held or touched and because of that, felt so much discomfort around that when I was around women in particular, that I would either totally freeze or come at them too aggressively because I was just so hungry for touch. And so I kept doing shadow work after that and eventually decided, hey, I love this work, I want to learn how to do it and trained with my trainer and now lead shadow work for men and it's one of the most powerful tools I think I have in my toolkit at least that I've experienced. And then, in particular, when we combine it with a group, something really profound and magic happens, because men get to see other men deepening into themselves and seeing the light bulbs of their nervous system go off essentially light bulbs of their nervous system go off essentially and for men to be able to experience and feel things inside themselves they had never felt before and suddenly for all these old patterns and conditioning and habits to become clear as to oh wow, I never would have guessed this. One time, when I was young, this thing happened and my whole nervous system has adapted to that and I've been living from that for the sometimes 20, 30, 40 years. And these things have massive repercussions for us, and particularly as us men get a little older, when we're in our 20s and 30s.

Speaker 1: 11:20

I kind of joke. It's like we come with a preloaded credit card that's got lots of space and we just we can work hard, we can of joke. It's like we come with a preloaded credit card that's got lots of space and we just we can work hard, we can party hard, we don't have to take good care of ourselves. You start hitting mid thirties and then forties and then fifties, and that changes fast and those bills come due. And one of the biggest things a lot of men I work with struggle with is just energy management. They get tired, they get overwhelmed, their bodies start to fail them, they sometimes get numb or depressed and what I have found is there's almost always a direct correlation to some kind of shadow material in there.

Speaker 1: 12:08

Because another way to think about shadow material is anytime, for whatever reason, we stop ourselves from feeling. So you can imagine if you saw a young boy fully crying because he hurt himself and dad comes up to him and he yells at him stop crying. How does the boy do it, nick? Yeah, he stops breathing, his body tightens up and he holds it without even realizing it. And that process of holding this stuff happens at the smallest levels inside our nervous system and it takes energy to hold things. And as we're holding those things, that energy, that life force is not available for us to heal our bodies, to move forward in our lives. So shadow work. Another amazing thing about it is it's a way to reclaim our vitality, and I see it time and time again.

Speaker 1: 13:01

Where men go in, have an incredible experience of sometimes feeling something they had never felt before in their lives, and on the other side of it, they look younger, there's more breath, there's more blood, their face softens, they're smiling, there's just more of them there. So that's a long-winded answer to the first question there. Yeah, no, what a great explanation there, just writing down a bunch of notes, and one of the things that I wrote down was you had these sophisticated mechanisms and you started off today's conversation about how you started on the philosophical side of understanding yourself and men's work. And that also resonated with me, because I think, as we start to learn something, that's where we go. We read books, we take courses, we do some training and we tend to keep it here in our minds. And one of my mentors said to me the longest journey that we're ever going to take is going to go from our head to our heart and being able to do that work. And then you talked about really finally getting the experience of releasing all of that through through shadow work, and and that was because of the one incident that has helped shape who you were and we developed these coping mechanisms and it continues to. Sometimes it's, it will serve us to some extent until it no longer does, and so I liked that. The way you've been explaining the shadow work. Did you want to expand on that? I know just, I love that frame in that.

Speaker 1: 14:31

Yeah, shadow work can be rooted in acute, one-time things. It can be chronic things. It can be all kinds of trauma that sometimes we just lock off in our nervous system and carry with us Again. The amazing thing I found working with guys over these last seven years is men will come to me in their 60s and 70s and have things they've never shared or touched from decades ago, and all of those years were spent with a little bit of their life force, a little bit of their consciousness, on holding that thing inside. And it has an incredible cost for us as men, another one of which is if we aren't able to fully bury it, and there's still some of the discomfort there. Most of us men are not taught from a young age to identify what we're feeling in our bodies and our hearts, let alone how to express them or process them. So when there's any discomfort in there, what do most men do? We turn to things outside of ourselves to numb it or change it. Weed, booze, porn, sex food, overworking TV, you name it. And those are the medicines that most of our cultures say are okay for men, but while they provide temporary relief, they never actually treat the symptom. Yeah, I completely agree, because it ends up by just another way to mask what it is, that we're what's truly going on, and because we aren't able to articulate it and name that feeling or that, that thing that's happening for us, and then we tend to find these other coping mechanisms to distract us away from actually diving in and doing that work.

Speaker 1: 16:16

And you started talking a little bit about societal expectations, and I think there's a lot of them, when we're going to see a major shift again now with the. You're in Colorado, I'm up in Canada, you just had your federal election, we're about to have one here in the coming months, and so, yeah, how society shapes us also impacts how we respond to it. And so let's talk a little bit about what are some of these societal expectations and how are they contributing to the struggles that men are facing today? Yeah, so you know this word is loaded and people have different feelings about it these days. In general, we'd call this the patriarchy, but in a more zoomed in way, we could call this the man box, which is really just this idea that there's a box of behaviors men are expected to stay within and as long as you stay within that you're considered a man. If you step out of that, you are not considered a man, and it's literally just like a checklist. In here in the West, which I would include Canada and the US in it's be tough. Don't share your feelings, never cry, don't ask for help. Men above women.

Speaker 1: 17:22

There's these different paradigms there that really confine men quite quite a bit and that it's pretty wild cause so much harm to men. It's not even just to women, it's actually to men. I was just reading a new study that came out that was talking about men who strongly identify with these kind of traditional masculine values, some of which can be associated with stoicism. In some different sense, they are way more likely to commit suicide. It has a real cost and that same kind of man box tends to emphasize lone wolf mentality. Right that it's better to do it alone. Relying on other people is weak, and the joke with that is well in nature. It's actually the lone wolf that's the one that's going to die sooner because it was kicked out of the pack. It's not going to make it. And in real life again, the evidence shows that loneliness, isolation they've done research studies just as damaging to longevity and health as smoking a pack and a half of cigarettes a day yeah, it has a huge impact on our well-being as men.

Speaker 1: 18:34

And the other wild thing about this idea of the man box, alan, that this other great study I was seeing is they told people about what do you see that marks the different, the transition from a girl to a woman. Like, how do you know when a girl has become a woman? And lo and behold, both men and women tended to report back biological things. So she has her menstrual cycle, she's developed breasts, her body has changed, she can rear children In those same polls. They asked the other question what marks the transition of a boy to a man? Lo and behold, it was not biological, it was cultural expectations of what a man is supposed to be. He's able to take care of himself, he's able to provide X, y and Z. So the big difference there is that you can be a fully grown man but still be considered a boy, right? Because of these man box attributes and all this stuff weighs on men from a very young age. I often even see it.

Speaker 1: 19:46

Most of us have seen it, if not experienced it, in just how we were parented. Boys are often parented very different from girls. You scrape your knee oh, get up, you're okay, you're tough, just get back on the swing. We're taught to stop crying, often as boys. Then we get into the school system, which Robert Bly has written a lot about. Often it's changing, for sure, but still predominantly women that are teachers. And then just the nature of the industrialized school system really is sit still. And then just the nature of the industrialized school system really is sit still.

Speaker 1: 20:18

And what we know about boys and their hormone profiles is they need to move their bodies. They need to move their bodies. But they get in school and we're told sit still, so stop crying, sit still. Two messages right there we get from a young age that are essentially what they're actually saying is ignore what's happening in your body, yeah, override it with your head. That's more important.

Speaker 1: 20:45

Then we become adolescents. We get into that kind of locker room age, very competitive. Some boys' bodies are changing, some aren't. Social dynamics come into play and we quickly learn wow, don't share anything vulnerable because you will be, at worst, made fun of for it and at best made fun of for it, at worst you will be actively bullied for it. Yeah, and then we get out of there and we get into the workforce and lo and behold what's success. Oh, he works 80 hours a week. He pushes himself, he never stops so great Same thing. He's ignoring his body.

Speaker 1: 21:17

And then I've worked with plenty of guys in their 40s, 50s CEOs who wake up one day and they can't get out of bed because they've just burnt out after decades of pushing their bodies too hard. But lo and behold, again, all that is pushing us as men into this expectation and this box of behavior that frankly kills us and causes us to hold even more of that stuff inside. Where I'll work with men who are saying, yeah, I went out with my buddies last night and yet I'm still terribly lonely. We talked about the game, but I'm in the middle of the worst divorce in my life and back at weekend I can't talk about that because I don't want to burden them and there's still this just deep loneliness and inability to share what's going on inside. Yeah, we've touched on a bunch of stuff there and I in your story.

Speaker 1: 22:06

There you talked about how you hadn't been touched, and I think that's so true, for I'm the oldest of five and I can remember as, as my siblings were coming along, they sat on my dad's lap until they could walk, basically, and then after that there wasn't any real physical, anything physical happening, especially with the boys. Now I have one sister. She was always nurtured differently than us four boys, nurtured differently than us four boys, and I think that's true for a lot of men that we struggle because we don't, we didn't learn to have that affection, and then, on top of that, how to manage our emotions, and so we go into the habit of repressing everything, and we all know what ends up by happening. And you hold a basketball underwater. Eventually that thing's going to explode. And so I think it's really key that as men start to, as we start to do more men's work, we start to understand that it's okay for us to have feelings, to be able to acknowledge them and work with them.

Speaker 1: 23:12

I think that Viktor Frankl talked about that stimulus between that time, between stimulus and response, is that greatest opportunity for us to find growth and if we can just find that one moment to be able to exercise a different choice. So I do think that there's a spectrum on how we show up in terms of different aspects. And if you're built and you want to be the CEO and you want to drive and do that, I think that's great. But are you also paying attention to the other aspects of your life? Because, in the end, what is it going to be worth for you if you're stuck in a hospital bed at best or even at worst, much more painful for family? And you talk a lot, jason, in your work also about a fierce, loving masculine heart. Let's talk about what that is all about and how we can really embody this as men.

Speaker 1: 24:02

Yeah, part of the opportunity men's work and facilitators like you and me get to bring forward in the world right now is why a lot of men are struggling is we have not been given a vision of what we can grow into. Men love to show up and grow and move forward when they have a path. The problem is, as I say, most men grew up only seeing three potential archetypes for masculinity. One, the traditional kind of my way or the highway macho jerk. This is the old school machismo bravado. Yeah, I'm tough, do what I say I dominate you and I put myself first, regardless of the impact on you, and there's a certain power in that, for sure. But those men we have plenty of evidence throughout history cause plenty of harm to other men, to women, to children, to the environment, you name it. Now, a lot of men saw guys like that or were raised by fathers like that and said, uh-uh, I'm not doing that, no way.

Speaker 1: 25:10

And then the pendulum swung, starting in the 60s and 70s, a little to the other side of you know what? I want? To be safe. I want to be a safe person. I don't want to be mean, I don't want to be aggressive, I don't want to dominate anyone and that was the birth of this term, the nice guy right which is, yeah, I'm a nice guy, I don't. I'm not aggressive, I try not to cause discomfort, I want to make sure everyone around me is safe and is okay, and in fact, what I end up doing is I prioritize other people over myself. So I totally reverse that in a sense, where I'm only focused on other people. Meanwhile inside I'm suffering, I can't set any boundaries, I'm not getting any of my own needs met, I'm overworked, I'm over fried, I'm treated poorly. Whatever that might be, that one also doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 25:57

There's also this kind of older one that hangs out in cultures like I was talking about, which is the Stoic, and I sometimes paint the picture of this as, like you know, the grandfather that went through World War II yeah, never talked about it once in his whole life Just shows up, takes care of the family, tight lid Sh, shares nothing inside Again, really admirable in some sense but is often addicted to alcohol or really suffering on the inside. So we men, we see these and we're like, what are we supposed to do? Like, literally, who are we supposed to be and that's part of the problem right now In this kind of third way, the integrated man, whatever you want to call it, the evolutionary man, the revolutionary man, our sexuality, our want, our drive and our heart, our openness, our sensitivity, our attunement to impact, and then connect that with a deep level of awareness that helps us guide us through life. And it's absolutely incredible when it comes together, because most men are actually dying to have this kind of presence in their life. And I call it you've probably seen it in your groups, but it's like the spinach in the teeth moment, right where you want someone in your life who, when you're walking through the world and you got a big piece of spinach in your mouth, sticking there in your teeth, they're going to stop you and say, hey, man, you have a piece of spinach in your teeth and at first you're going to feel like a little embarrassed, then you're going to clean it out, and then you're going to stop you and say, hey, man, you have a piece of spinach in your teeth and at first you're going to feel like a little embarrassed, then you're going to clean it out and then you're going to be like, oh my God, thank you for telling me that, because I saw 20 other people today and no one mentioned it. And I've been walking through the world feeling now and looking like an idiot.

Speaker 1: 27:52

And this kind of fierce, loving, attuned masculine is the masculine that calls each other forward, that it's not shame based, so it's not about you're not good enough, you're bad. It's hey, man, I can see the vision of who you can be in the world and I'm going to hold that vision with you and if you don't hit that mark, I'm going to let you know. And again, I'm not going to shame you for it, but I'm going to join in there with you in that moment. And, as I say, the great gift of the masculine, the father energy we all need is let's figure it out together. Hey, man, yeah, what you're doing right now dating those two women without them knowing about it that's not cool. It's causing harm to you, to them. So how are we going to clean this up? And then we're going to workshop it. Okay, do I need to have conversation? Do I need it to end with one of them, both of them, whatever that might be, in that kind of fierce, loving presence of I see you and I'm not going to let you get away with being anything but your best.

Speaker 1: 28:58

It takes power, so it takes an ability to penetrate and be fierce, in a sense, and wake a guy up and, oftentimes in a loving way, confront him. Or this great new term I heard recently carefrontation. You got to confront him with care, right, and then it takes that heart, that and I love you and I'm here with you and we're going to figure this out. And that type of masculine presence. It's not even just men that are craving it. The world is craving it because the feminine women, they're doing their best to keep this whole thing afloat right now.

Speaker 1: 29:30

I would say and count me into the faction that thinks, right now we don't need less masculinity in the world. We actually need more healthy masculinity to join healthy femininity in terms of riding the ship and just creating as much love, truth and goodness for as many people as possible. I couldn't agree more. I couldn't agree more. I think we're in a position now in the world where more and more men are starting to really understand that we do have to have this integrated being of who we are, what we want, we think we do, but it's based on somebody else's perspective of who we should be, and so are we really truly solid on that. And the more times that we can do this work and understand everything about us, then we can show up and be much stronger as men, and that makes that makes the world a better place versus just being the being, the bully, like you talked about, that macho guy. Leave that for the wrestling ring Saturday afternoon. Saturday evening.

Speaker 1: 30:46

Go and enjoy an experience that does show a bit of what life's about but it's not really who we are as men and really become much better than we are. In men's work, too, we about. There's this feminine aspect of it. Sometimes that makes guys a little bit uneasy, maybe a little cringeworthy, but we still have aspects of ourselves, if we truly want to be integrated men, that the feminine does play a role in our life. So let's talk a little bit about how that shows up in your work and in your role.

Speaker 1: 31:18

Absolutely and some people get all charged up about these terms because they can be loaded and they have cultural baggage and, whether you want to call it masculine, feminine, alpha and omega, yin and yang, feeling and perspective, flow and go. There's so many ways you can talk about this. Consciousness and light these are two polar energies in the world, in the universe that just show up. The most simple is life and death. Inhale and exhale. You need them both. You need them both, and one of the big shifts of the last 70, 80 years or so has been the liberation of these energies from biology.

Speaker 1: 32:07

So it used to be if you were born a woman, you were expected to become a mother and do these certain roles. If you were born a man, you were a father, you had to do these certain roles and we lived in pretty narrow windows. There was some cultural variation, but overall there wasn't as much as you might expect. That started to change right in the 50s and 60s, particularly with feminism, women's liberation movement, where women were allowed to come out out of the kitchen, so to speak. I don't have to just be a mom or a wife. I can be a human being that has my own desires and wants and purpose and things I want to move towards. Maybe I want kids, maybe I don't want kids, and lo and behold, hey, I can have my own bank account, I can vote. My voice matters. I'm a human and that was awesome. This is such a positive thing for our world and we want that to spread as far and wide as possible. Again, it doesn't mean if you don't want to just be a mother, you can't just be a mother, but the point is you get to choose it, you are not forced into it. This is the great liberation.

Speaker 1: 33:06

A little bit after that, we saw the first burst with kind of hippie men. Men were allowed to start to have interiors. Oh, we can grow out our hair a little bit, we can play the drums, we can start to feel we're doing a little bit of drugs. Maybe we're not going to have a steady job, I can become an artist, whatever, but what's important is the shift for men started a little after women, so we're a little behind, but this idea of men are allowed to have interiors, we are allowed to feel we deserve to feel good. Not everything has to be attached to a goal or be about toughness. We can be connected, we can ask for help. Whatever you want to say about these different things, that started to come online and it's super important that this has been liberated for us men Because, like we said before that men's bodies were mostly disposable throughout most of human history because, yeah, it just takes one man to repopulate a village, but you need many women.

Speaker 1: 34:09

So if you're going to lose a body, lose a male body. But that's all started to shift. And what's so important here is again, whatever term you want to use, I don't care if you're the toughest manly man in the world. You have an inner feminine, just like every woman has an inner masculine. These are just energies and capacities inside of us and what's happening is culture and people grow, is they're becoming more fluid and more differentiated. So there's, instead of just this or this, there's a whole spectrum and again, that's beautiful.

Speaker 1: 34:46

The interesting thing about it is the more that differentiation and that spectrum and that fluidity comes online, though, the more important it is to spectrum and that fluidity comes online, though, the more important it is to understand these energies and how they work together, because the ideas at the pole, that's where they mostly energize each other, right? Yes, so just like poles of a magnet, if they're opposites, they pull together, they're attracted. If they're the same best case scenario they're neutral. Worst case scenario they actually repel each other. Yes, and this is one of the big shifts in the kind of relationship world right now is because a lot of men have cultivated their feminine and a lot of women have cultivated their masculine. There's a lot of reverse polarity out there right now, where women are out there kicking ass, making tons of money, and there's lots of men who have no sense of direction or purpose or are struggling, but are smoking weed every day, playing lots of video games, really enjoying their life, and it's causing a little bit of friction because everyone's how do we do this? Now?

Speaker 1: 35:49

This work is about consciously bringing these energies online, right for this more integrated piece we were talking about. That is that kind of integration of art in in balls, as we say, but another way to think about it is. It's the integration of our inner masculine and inner feminine. The yin and yang symbol is so great because the way it's set up right is there's a dab of each one inside of each one, which makes this super clear. And this integrated version.

Speaker 1: 36:18

What I would say is you can't actually be a fully integrated masculine leader in my book if you don't have access to your inner feminine, just like you can't be a fully realized feminine leader, I think if you don't have a certain capacity of masculinity inside and this is the big thing we're learning to do now as men that, yes, I can have drive, I can have goals. There's incredible things I want to create or serve ways. I want to serve people in the world, and if I am doing that at the expense of my own body, I'm still playing the old way. Yeah, I'm still playing by the old rules. So this knowing of I have an inner system, an inner feeling state, and call it feminine or whatever you want, but that it's. You can't always be in the season of build, it's not always summer, but that it's. You can't always be in the season of build, it's not always summer.

Speaker 1: 37:15

Sometimes we have to slow down into fall and winter and restore ourselves, take care of our bodies, bring pleasure into our bodies, not be totally goal-oriented. Connect with our friends, our family, our children, and this is a high order demand, in a sense, that not a lot of men have figured out how to do. How can I be kick-ass in my career but not be neglecting my child? So I'm not raising another son who, 30 years from now, ends up in a men's group and says, yeah, my dad was never around, I had to figure everything out myself. How do we do both?

Speaker 1: 37:52

I think that's a big part of what we're talking about here, and what I've just seen is as men make this realization and actually realize. The great thing about touching your own inner feminine in a sense is you realize. I think this is so great for gender dynamics. It's just as powerful as the masculine. I think you're all tough as men. Women can wipe a man out if they want. They always know how to take care of him, in a sense, and we think in that early masculine machismo, domineering sense like leading is the bravest thing. Surrendering is unbelievably courageous.

Speaker 2: 38:35

Yes.

Speaker 1: 38:36

When you just fully give your trust to someone, that is an unbelievably bold and courageous act of leadership, in my viewpoint, and as men experience that inside, it changes them outside. And then it changes how they lead in the world, because they've actually had the experience of what it means, in some sense, to surrender, to be held, to not be the one holding it all together. And when you've had that experience inside, it changes how you care for and can lead people on the outside. So I think it's incredibly important to realize it's way more nuanced than I'm a man. I got to just be in my masculine. You're a woman you just got to be in your feminine. These are energies we all get to play with.

Speaker 1: 39:23

Yes A full, healthy human being has to be cultivating and taking care of both. And when men don't their bodies fail and they pay for it, it does absolutely show up in our bodies. For sure, and I was doing some work with Owen Marcus and with his MELD group and really that was my first deep experience with somatic work and it was very powerful to realize and understand how much of this energy that I'm holding and that we tend to hold as men like to your analogy as a young child and having having being upset and told okay, you can't be angry, and they and we hold it in and we tend to do that. But I recognize that even more today, as I get close to creeping up here to being 59, how often I'm holding my breath and I go that's interesting, what's happening there for me? Why am I holding my breath? What's causing this? And sometimes it is just a habit, but more often than not there's something around that's a trigger, small or big, that it's happening and that's my body's reaction to it. And so getting in, just doing it, talking about what you've been saying, all this whole conversation is really helping us understand how to utilize all aspects of the energies that we hold in our bodies versus just trying to be the singular, less dynamic individual. Yeah, it's about another way to think about this is I think one of the new skill sets and capacities that's incredibly important for us men to cultivate is fluidity, the ability to shift back and forth as needed because we're able to actually be more effective in the world. That's the funny thing too, guys don't realize is you will, in the end, get more done.

Speaker 1: 41:12

One of the myths I see so many men I work with and I've fallen prey to it too fall for over and over is oh, there's something I want to do in the world. I'm having a hard time doing it. I need to set better goals and push myself more, when in fact, what's actually happening is their nervous system is dysregulated, burnt out, overwhelmed, and so, no matter how much you try to push or goal or structure, you know what? Maybe I need a little more connection in my life. Maybe I should join a men's group, maybe I should get into some therapy, maybe I should start sleeping more, stop drinking so much, and our nervous system comes back to a place of stability and regulation Almost inevitably. It's not that we have to force ourselves. There's an impulse to take action again. There's just oh, now I have some energy and I want to do this thing and I start doing it.

Speaker 1: 42:22

And a lot of men don't stop to do that part and will keep trying to push themselves with strategy and planning and goal setting. Oh, and I need this planner or this framework or getting things done, and they're just rearranging decks on the deck chair, totally ignoring the state of their body and nervous system underneath. Yeah, completely agree with that. That makes so much sense and happy to see that there's, that men's work is flourishing again and all the different ways that it's showing up in varieties, and there's something out there for some, for somebody, and so if there's a piece of work, whether you're doing stuff with jason and evolutionary men or you do our work or somebody else's work, there's. There is no lack of men's groups for you to get involved with, and I think there's. So that's where the most power resides is being around other men. It's how we learn healthy masculinity is by being around other men and getting an opportunity to model what's before us and of everything that we spoke about today, jason, and maybe there was something we didn't get a chance to touch on. What would be the takeaway you'd want our listeners to have yeah, don't do it alone.

Speaker 1: 43:25

As I say, the power of community is building resilience in your life as men. So a buddy of mine, another man, told me community is immunity. And this is my message to all the bravado kind of men who are still this current out there, especially now that, oh, we tried the soft thing and it didn't work, so we got to go back 50 years to the tough thing. And the message I just want to get out to you guys is I don't care how tough you think you are, how much power you have in the world right now, there will be a day where your body will fail you, where there will be something you want to do and your body will not be able to do it in that moment.

Speaker 1: 44:04

And that is the moment where you are going to get confronted first hand, right in your face, with what kind of community and connection have I cultivated in my life and they have done plenty of research studies with people who are in the terminal stages of their lives. They're about to die, and the one thing they talk about is always I wish I had spent more time with people that I care about. It's not I wish I'd done this goal or done this thing or whatever. It's man, I didn't spend enough time with the people I care about. It's not I wish I'd done this goal or done this thing or whatever. It's man, I didn't spend enough time with the people I cared about in my life, in relationships or love, whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 1: 44:41

In a lot of ways, I think that's really the only thing you get to take with you after death. So something like a men's group is a great place to start to reformat and be like your namesake. It's a revolutionary act against culture to say you know what? No, we can be allies for each other. As men, we don't have to hold this stuff in, and in fact, when we do that, we become stronger and more resilient and, like I said, you can get more stuff done. I've gotten way more done since I've been in men's groups than before. Absolutely what a beautiful way to wrap up today's conversations.

Speaker 1: 45:15

I want to say once again Jason, thank you so much for coming here and helping us really break free from these outdated and old paradigms, to really start to reclaim our vitality, build deeper connections and relationships with ourselves and especially with others. And so if men are interested in getting a hold of you and joining and participating in your work, what's the best way for them to do that? Yeah, easiest way to keep up with me is just head over to my website at evolutionarymen. You can see my programs, my podcast retreats, all that kind of good stuff Outstanding. I'm going to make sure that, as well as wherever else that you're hiding on social media, to make sure folks get an opportunity to reach out to you. I want to say once again, thank you so much and really enjoyed today's conversation. Thanks so much for having me, alan.

Speaker 2: 46:07

Thank you for listening to the revolutionary man podcast. Are you ready to own your destiny, to become more the man you are destined to be? Join the brotherhood that is the Awakened man at theawakendmannet and start forging a new destiny today.