Transcript
Speaker: Hi, I'm Kyle Gois, and welcome to the Inwards and Onwards podcast.
Speaker: For the longest time, I've been fascinated to understand more about showing up authentically, vulnerably, and presently in life.
Speaker: As such, I started to understand that my external world was a reflection of my inner one.
Speaker: And when I've had moments of hitting rock bottom or needing to pivot in my life, I've had to go inwards to move onwards.
Speaker: So come join me as I explore other people's journeys, from entrepreneurs to coaches, spiritual teachers, friends, and beyond.
Speaker: as we learn their innermost thoughts and peel back the layers to share the moments where they've had to go inwards to move onwards.
Speaker: Let's jump in.
Speaker: To all the men out there who are trying to figure out what it actually means to show up as a quote-unquote man, I want you to know that you are not alone.
Speaker: What does healthy masculinity truly look like and what does it entail?
Speaker: Well, you're just going to have to listen in.
Speaker: Gonzalo Cardozo, a close friend of mine, reveals that it goes beyond superficial stereotypes and embraces the multifaceted dynamics of masculine and feminine energies that actually reside in each one of us.
Speaker: He shares insights into the balance between strength and vulnerability, structure and flow, and doing versus being.
Speaker: Through his own experience, Gons illuminates the significance of acknowledging and integrating these energies within ourselves, leading to a more harmonious and authentic expression of masculinity.
Speaker: Healthy masculinity is not about overpowering, suppressing, or hiding the feminine within, but rather embracing the richness and diversity of both in your human experience.
Speaker: He shares his insights, struggles, and challenges, highlighting the importance of vulnerability, role modeling, and community in cultivating healthy relationships within ourselves and those around us.
Speaker: Join us as we unravel Gonza's extraordinary narrative and discover the invaluable lessons he's learned along the way.
Speaker: Prepare to be moved, motivated, and empowered as we delve into the depths of his journey and explore the intricate dance of masculine and feminine energies within each of us.
Speaker: So, grab a seat, open your mind, and get ready to explore the limitless possibilities of healthy masculinity.
Speaker: Welcome, welcome, Gons.
Speaker: I am super excited, mate.
Speaker: You are one person I've been waiting to get onto the podcast just with the experiences we shared together and the knowledge and wisdom that you hold as well, especially around relationships, healthy, unhealthy, toxic masculinity, understanding that polarity between feminine and masculine energies in the body.
Speaker: So, mate, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker: Oh, thank you, brother.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: It's an absolute pleasure to be here.
Speaker: I feel like this has been coming for a little while.
Speaker: So I'm really glad that it's finally synchronized and we're both able to come together and sort of have this chat and hopefully share a little bit of wisdom from our own journeys individually, but also together.
Speaker: So yeah, absolute pleasure.
Speaker: Thanks for having me.
Speaker: Hey, no, my pleasure, man.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Mate,
Speaker: We're going to kick it off and get straight into it because this is something I know we always, so me and Gans have a weekly check-in men's call together.
Speaker: We also have a men's group that we do on a fortnightly call.
Speaker: So we have a lot of these kind of heart-opening conversations, but also, you know, like little breakthrough conversations.
Speaker: And the parallels that we share in each other's lives sometimes is a little bit scary.
Speaker: I'll be going through something with myself, whether it's in my relationship or in work,
Speaker: and a roadblock that I'm hitting, and guns will be going through the exact same experience, but in a slightly different reality or a different flavor or a different experience.
Speaker: But then the wisdom that you share from your things usually helps piece things together for me, and hopefully vice versa, the things I share piece it to you.
Speaker: And yeah, they're just like...
Speaker: excited for this conversation, man.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thank you, bro.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: And look, I want to take a moment to acknowledge you for the work that you're doing here.
Speaker: I'm so inspired by the work you're doing via the podcast, this project.
Speaker: what you're sharing, you know, adding to the world.
Speaker: And, you know, come back to your point about the way we hold space for each other.
Speaker: You know, I acknowledge you for that, you know, for holding a special place in my life, in, you know, in cultivating a space for you and I to share into, because that's had an incredible impact on my life, you know, in terms of being able to
Speaker: have other men, you know, in my life that I can lean on, that I can trust, that I can be vulnerable with.
Speaker: And you certainly, certainly a big part of that.
Speaker: And so I'm very grateful for the space that we hold, that you hold for me.
Speaker: And I think it really speaks into some of what we're going to share, hopefully share on today, right, in terms of the power of
Speaker: men supporting each other in that way so uh thank you for the work you're doing bro it's it's it's very much needed uh it's important and um yeah happy to happy to share no man and thank you so much for the the kind words and yeah
Speaker: definitely uh hitting yeah hitting deep in the heart center man so i really appreciate it um mate you you know what i think you've kind of opened up the doorway already men's work right yeah what is your definition firstly of men's work what have you done to date um yeah run us through that and what called you as well to men's work as well oh man definition of men's work i think um
Speaker: So I volunteer a fair bit of my time with an organisation called the Mankind Project.
Speaker: They're an international organisation that's been around since the late 70s, early 80s, started in the US and slowly branched out internationally.
Speaker: Now in all parts of the world, all over Europe, through Australia, the Americas and Australia.
Speaker: So I described the, you know, so that's all about men's work.
Speaker: We run initiation programs, rites of passage programs for men, circles, men's circles all around the world that cultivate spaces for men to, you know,
Speaker: to feel supported, you know, to feel heard, to feel seen.
Speaker: So it's super important work.
Speaker: And it's something I really I've only discovered relatively not long ago, you know, it's probably three or four years ago that I came to know man's work.
Speaker: I'll talk about how I discovered it in a sec.
Speaker: But for me,
Speaker: If I think about the work and the purpose of the work that we do through Mankind Project, a big part of it is about helping us come home to ourselves.
Speaker: You know, it's about really slowing down and helping us really look inwards, you know, to understand who we truly are and who we want to be in the world, you know, for ourselves, first and foremost, for our families, our loved ones, our friends, our communities that we support.
Speaker: um, be it in our personal or professional lives, you know?
Speaker: And so, um, for me, that's, uh, that's important because in my experience, um, a lot of men are lost in that, right?
Speaker: Because of, uh, the pressures of the modern world.
Speaker: You know, I think there's a lot of expectation around who we feel we might need to be, you know, in the world.
Speaker: be it like for me, one of those places in is in the corporate world.
Speaker: I do a lot of my professional work in the corporate world.
Speaker: You know, and aside from all the beautiful gifts that's given me and experiences, you know, can come with a lot of challenges too, right?
Speaker: In terms of how men might feel like they need to show up in spaces like that, you know?
Speaker: and not being able to fully be themselves, you know, their fully expressed authentic selves.
Speaker: Yeah, and that's just one example.
Speaker: I think, you know, we see a lot of that in the world at large, you know, speaking really generally, I guess, you know, I think so many men don't feel like they can be fully themselves and perhaps need to feel like they need to hide parts of themselves or, you
Speaker: In many cases, you know, coming back to my point around coming home is haven't even really spent the time connecting with who they are.
Speaker: You know, they've been, a lot of us has really come up through life learning from who others are, being role modeled certain things, you know, perhaps healthy, perhaps unhealthy.
Speaker: And a lot of us haven't really done the work to understand, deeply understand
Speaker: what type of man I want to be, you know, and so I guess that's what's brought me to the men's work, you know, is I was fortunate enough to
Speaker: I had a friend that shared a documentary with me.
Speaker: It's called The Work.
Speaker: Maybe I can share the details with him.
Speaker: You might be able to link it in the show notes.
Speaker: And it's linked to some of the work that Mankind Project do in the US.
Speaker: And they do some of this work in high security prisons with incarcerated men.
Speaker: And basically...
Speaker: films the experience of these men as they go through a rite of passage program to explore what it means to be a healthy, masculine man in the modern world.
Speaker: To discover what that looks like for themselves.
Speaker: And it's an incredibly powerful documentary because it really shows the transformation of those men.
Speaker: You can imagine
Speaker: You know, some of the trauma, the experiences of those men holding and live with and to see them transform so powerfully, you know, right before your eyes in this experience, it just absolutely blew me away.
Speaker: And I was like, wow, like, what is this?
Speaker: I'd never seen or been exposed to that work before.
Speaker: And so I was like, as soon as I saw that, I was like, that's for me.
Speaker: That's for me.
Speaker: Like it just called to me.
Speaker: And anyway, it took some years to finally sort of really get to a place where
Speaker: maybe I was ready to sort of fully step into it.
Speaker: And, you know, obviously you and I were connected by this point and it really wasn't that long ago that we did our rite of passage, right?
Speaker: With Mekong Project back in March in Bellingen last year.
Speaker: March 2022.
Speaker: And even that, I just want to put it out there.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: Gons has this natural aura around him just in terms of the way you show up vulnerably, authentically in your own life.
Speaker: And even when we first connected and how you showed up like that for me and Savage at the time.
Speaker: And I remember as soon as you were like, oh, yeah, I'm doing this.
Speaker: I was like, I'm in.
Speaker: I didn't even ask.
Speaker: I had no idea what this was.
Speaker: It was like, yep, sign me.
Speaker: And it was like, I had just so much trust.
Speaker: Yeah, full trust.
Speaker: Thank you, bro.
Speaker: So I appreciate it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And so I guess that's how we discovered the work, right?
Speaker: I guess for me, a little bit about what men's work is and why it's so important.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And look, I want to go back to this.
Speaker: You said the phrase, it's men coming home to themselves.
Speaker: I want to just maybe expand that a little bit of what that means to you, what that means to someone else.
Speaker: Because when you say coming home to yourself, especially when you talk about society, we're talking about the corporate world and things like that, which I would say, at least I'm still operating and you're still operating in a lot of men can be operating in this space.
Speaker: how do you come back to yourself when you don't even know who yourself is?
Speaker: Like, you know, so you're like, I'll come back to yourself, but you're like, there's so many layers of trauma, of dis detachment, of disconnect through to not just yourself, but to others around you and stuff like that, that sometimes coming home to yourself, just, it feels so sad.
Speaker: It feels like miles and miles and miles apart.
Speaker: The universe is apart.
Speaker: What does coming home to yourself mean?
Speaker: How do you, how did you start taking steps to get there?
Speaker: Yeah, well, that's a great question.
Speaker: Maybe the best way to describe it is like through my own experience, through my own journey with that.
Speaker: So for me, what coming home looked like to myself is doing the work to understand
Speaker: what does being a man mean for me?
Speaker: You know, to explore, to deeply contemplate, to,
Speaker: the sort of man that I want to be in the world, which is something I hadn't really ever done, not intentionally anyway.
Speaker: It's something that I'd learned, it's something that I'd sort of had thoughts and beliefs around that I think were largely cultivated by my upbringing, by my own parents, by people around me, by learning through other men.
Speaker: through society, through the movies, you know, things I watched, things I read, social media, all of those things, you know, helped influence who I thought I needed to be.
Speaker: But what I realized when I stepped into this work is that I had never really taken the time to deeply understand and embody the type of man that I wanted to be, you know, through a, I guess, through the right questioning, you know, through the right challenge, through really holding up the mirror to look at
Speaker: the man perhaps I was becoming and what I liked and what I didn't like about that.
Speaker: You know, and so I guess what I mean by coming home to myself, like for me, I guess it really gave me the opportunity to shine a light on the parts, all the parts of me, you know, that make me who I am.
Speaker: Um, be it, you know, and the, and the different roles that I play as a man, um, be it as a husband and life partner, um, be it as a father, I've got two, two young children, you know, be it as a, you know, a brother, a son, um, a friend, um, a professional, um,
Speaker: you know, these are all the different roles, you know, that I wear, you know, as a man.
Speaker: And with that comes a whole bunch of, I guess, expectations, you know.
Speaker: And so through coming home to myself, you know, and doing this work, it's what I got to do is reestablish a relationship with myself in terms of, you know,
Speaker: getting really getting real clear around important things such as
Speaker: What's important to me?
Speaker: You know, what are some of the principles and the beliefs that I want to hold in terms of how I show up for people and in the world, right?
Speaker: What's important to me in terms of where I'm going and my vision for life, you know, and what success looks like.
Speaker: And that was important because it gave me an opportunity to sort of redefine and reframe what success looks like for me.
Speaker: You know, I was coming up in the world with a very specific view of,
Speaker: success you know and for me at the time you know a lot of that was about um material success you know financial success professional success and i was putting a lot of my time and energy into that and that's all good like it's i'm not i'm not judging that in any way i think through persevering and um and leaning into those spaces um you know i've been able to achieve a lot and it's and and it's um
Speaker: Again, it's brought many wonderful things into my life, but I got to realize that that was just one aspect of me.
Speaker: And there was all these other layers and all these other things that were important to me as well, you know, in terms of how I love in the world, you know, the sort of impact I want to have on people around me, you know, how I...
Speaker: how I make a difference in the world, you know, how I, um, that the sort of man I want to be for, for others in terms of their supporting their journey, you know, their healing.
Speaker: Um, I got to discover that all of these things were also really important for me, you know, in terms of defining who I am and defining who I wanted to be in the world.
Speaker: And so, um, you know, uh,
Speaker: it allowed me to come back to that.
Speaker: It allowed me to actually really come back to those things that were sort of in here.
Speaker: And I sort of point to here, I point to my heart space, not here, because that's what coming home means to me.
Speaker: It's about stepping into this and really coming back into alignment with who I am, with...
Speaker: who I was born to be, you know, so.
Speaker: You kind of, you stepped, you touched on this and I want to explore this because this part is really, I find it's quite important.
Speaker: You said like to uncover your true self, like your inner alignment was asking the right questions and, you know, going through the right challenges.
Speaker: Like that's kind of those two words you kind of said before and why that was with what you shared.
Speaker: is sticking with me is that when we are as men kind of exploring ourselves, it is really confusing.
Speaker: At least I have found it for myself quite confusing.
Speaker: One, to know whose voice is in my own head, what narrative is playing, and is it my own narrative that I'm saying?
Speaker: Or is that, you know, I like the question is like, whose voice is that?
Speaker: You know, so when you're thinking something, it's like, whose voice is that?
Speaker: Is that yours?
Speaker: Is it your dad's?
Speaker: Is it your granddad's?
Speaker: Is it your uncle's?
Speaker: Is it your friend who, you know, like these people, like different people,
Speaker: When you can ask that, because you can at least step a little bit outside of yourself and be a bit more of the observer, not judge yourself for having that thought, because you might be like, oh, I'm thinking this, but then you're like, oh, that was not, I don't think that was a good thought.
Speaker: But then you can ask, whose voice was that?
Speaker: Was that actually your voice or was it someone else's voice?
Speaker: And majority of the time, it's never, like, I feel like there's an innocence with our own voice, but it's just masqueraded with, like, all the other shit that we've experienced and lived in our lifetime that clouds that.
Speaker: How do you, or what questions do you ask yourself
Speaker: to know that that's your voice.
Speaker: One, how do you then differentiate?
Speaker: Because, you know, say, and I'm just thinking like, you know, a little bit outside the box, but like, you know, what about people who are trying to come back to themselves, but the voices in their head are so loud, one, that they find it too hard to differentiate what's their own true inner voice.
Speaker: Two, um,
Speaker: when they're trying to differentiate their own true inner voice, how do you know, like, what's good and what's bad, you know, and I know that's a very arbitrary terms in this kind of men's work.
Speaker: But I mean, good and bad isn't like, if this voice is like, how do I know this voice that I'm listening to is my own?
Speaker: And if it is my own, is it a good voice that I'm listening to?
Speaker: Or is it built up by trauma right now that I've, I've, maybe I'm approaching this with a unhealthy view of this, like, you know, like,
Speaker: And we'll go into this later on, but it's like, this is what I'm talking about, that kind of toxic masculinity side of things, right?
Speaker: It's like, oh, my voice in my head is I want to help my wife.
Speaker: Yeah?
Speaker: But you know how I'm going to do this?
Speaker: It's trying to solve every single problem of hers.
Speaker: That's not fully helping my wife in that kind of sense.
Speaker: But it's like, how do you know?
Speaker: Oh, but I was trusting my inner voice, right?
Speaker: Like I was trying to be there and help.
Speaker: And I know there's more layers to this, but I'm just trying to understand what are those questions you ask yourself?
Speaker: How do you then differentiate the kind of, so to speak, right from wrong action or good from bad action?
Speaker: Interesting.
Speaker: Look, it's a good question and I totally relate to what you're saying about the voices.
Speaker: I think what I want to speak into there is that in my experience through this work is as you start to deepen into some of those aspects of yourself that I mentioned earlier, in my experience that
Speaker: your true voice, your authentic voice becomes louder.
Speaker: It becomes more clear, you know, and you start to develop a relationship with that voice, you know, in a deeper way.
Speaker: And so coming back to your question around what questions do I ask for myself?
Speaker: I actually think it's less about thinking and more about feeling, you know, so I think for me,
Speaker: the way I align more with that voice, you know, thinking about it now, it's actually something that I feel in my body, and less so about what I think, you know?
Speaker: So when you ask me, like, what questions do I ask?
Speaker: I actually, I'm not even sure that I sit there and ask myself questions from a mental space, you know, or in that sort of real practical way, like I normally would when I'm trying to solve a problem for work or something.
Speaker: What I find myself doing more and more now to come back into sort of that alignment with that voice or, hey, is this aligned for me?
Speaker: Is it aligned with who I am, who I want to be?
Speaker: For me, it's something that you feel into.
Speaker: You feel your way through rather than think your way through.
Speaker: That's how I interpret it.
Speaker: Yeah, no, no, true, true.
Speaker: And even like with what you're saying, I was like, as I asked that question, and you started speaking, I was like, man, I went all in my head in terms of that question and the response we're looking for rather than feeling through it.
Speaker: Because I was like, I know that that's one of the biggest things is that we're taught to, you know, respond through here, the mind, right?
Speaker: Rather than respond through here, the heart.
Speaker: you know?
Speaker: And even though the heart has, you know, what it's like, the heart has like 40,000 neural connections, which is like way more than the brain actually has.
Speaker: But it's like, we've just in today's society, unfortunately, we've just been told to respond to the brain because that's got the answers.
Speaker: That's what we need rather than listen to the heart, which actually is connected somatically to the rest of the body and actually gives you these.
Speaker: When I say somatically, it's like, it's like, it gives you like a bottom up approach.
Speaker: Your body will tell you what it needs through that feeling and actually tapping into that feeling.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You know, what I'd say is just to add on to that, because I'm sure some people might be listening to that and going, you know, what does that actually look like?
Speaker: You know, what does that mean to feel into it?
Speaker: You know, and I think coming to connect it back to what you're saying about the heart, you know, is that...
Speaker: I think the point you're making is the heart is incredibly intelligent, but some of us don't even realize that that intelligence is there.
Speaker: It's right there in the center of our bodies.
Speaker: And it is incredibly powerful when we can tap into it.
Speaker: And that's when I say feeling into something, that means dropping down, actually intentionally bringing your awareness down into your body and more into your heart space, out of your head and into your heart, as they say.
Speaker: And what does that actually look like?
Speaker: It means slowing down.
Speaker: It means taking a moment.
Speaker: It means going inwards.
Speaker: It means...
Speaker: know maybe just closing your eyes and pausing and allowing yourself to feel you know it's and it's amazing like as you start to do that more and learn that more as a practice um it's amazing how quickly things can shift you know it's amazing how quickly those insights can come to you or you can answer sort of that question that you're holding as you're saying
Speaker: to get a different outcome, you know, to bring a different energy and a different intention to something that creates a different outcome, you know, from a heart space, not a head space.
Speaker: And so I think that's incredibly powerful.
Speaker: It's certainly been really, really powerful for me.
Speaker: I think the challenge with it though, as we learn to do that is, I think coming back to your question earlier around questions, it can actually be really difficult to do that on your own initially, you know.
Speaker: I think to learn this stuff because, I mean, where do we learn this from, you know?
Speaker: Like it's certainly not common, right?
Speaker: It sounds like sort of common sense, right, in some ways, but it certainly doesn't feel that common for me as a way of being for men.
Speaker: I think it's starting to see it a lot more, which is really beautiful.
Speaker: you know, I think this is where guided experiences and things like rites of passage are so important, are so incredibly valuable and why I sort of come back to this work time and time again because I had the gift and was so fortunate like you to be able to go through an experience where we were taught these things.
Speaker: We won't
Speaker: We were taught, but we were shown, we were role modeled by other powerful men, other wise men that have walked that path before us and were able to then show us and share their wisdom with us.
Speaker: And that's what rites of passage are about and initiations are about, to initiate men into these new ways.
Speaker: old ways actually ancient ways that have been lost, you know.
Speaker: And this is, you know, what I'm talking about just one small aspect of those experiences.
Speaker: But I guess the point I'm making is that it can be really difficult on your own, you know, to shift the dynamic, you know, to start
Speaker: living and being in a different way.
Speaker: And, you know, I'm very thankful.
Speaker: I'm very grateful that I've had exposure to this work, you know, to these communities, whether it be through Mankind Project or, you know, organizations like Becoming that I've done a lot of work with.
Speaker: Yeah, you know, I've been very fortunate in that way to be guided by others, other teachers, other wise people that have shared their medicine and experience with me, you know, and that's slowly permeating and now I'm able to share it with others.
Speaker: And I want to kind of rewind and explain a little bit about this rites of passage.
Speaker: When we talk about men's initiation or rites of passage, it can be, at least for me, when I first looked at this, I remember it can be a bit of an overwhelming term just because it's not common language.
Speaker: We don't use rites of passage in today's society.
Speaker: We don't use men's initiation in today's society.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: when we talk about this, rites of passage, men's initiation, the core of how I've always understood it was like, we never got to be given the right kind of parenting or understanding or regulation of who we are, who we're meant to be, how do we start tapping and
Speaker: allowing ourselves to step into actually showing up as a man and the dynamics of what a man was portrayed to me, you know, as, and, and this is kind of, this is my own story.
Speaker: It's like, like, you know, I was told, you know, boys don't cry, right.
Speaker: Crying is just, it's something that's shown as weak.
Speaker: It's shown as lesser.
Speaker: So you don't understand how to express then like, and just by being told like boys don't cry,
Speaker: That expression of that emotion of whether it's hurt, whether it's pain, whether it's embarrassment, whether it's sadness, you've stopped now an avenue for that emotion to be released, that charge to be expelled from your body.
Speaker: When we were talking about this rights of passions and stuff, it's actually going like, wait, this is what a healthy man looks like.
Speaker: And what a healthy man looks like is different for everybody.
Speaker: But that's actually what a healthy man looks like.
Speaker: There's not one type, you know, big, you know, if you're talking about like the 90s, 80s, whatever look of a man, it was like, you know, hairy chest, big, you know, broad shoulders and all that stuff, very rugged kind of thing, always doing the protector, the provider kind of role.
Speaker: And there's a certain dynamic that is good and healthy in that.
Speaker: But then it's like, no, it doesn't really have a strong relationship with the kids.
Speaker: It's more just like they're harsh with their words, very controlling in what they do and all that stuff.
Speaker: It's the problem solver, but doesn't know how to hold space.
Speaker: You know, those kind of things.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And why I'm saying this is that I was like, yeah, when you start realizing that every man has its, like, your truth in these rites of passage and these initiations is to uncover your own essence.
Speaker: It's actually going like, hey, all these stories that are built up that are no longer saving you in terms of who you want to be, how you want to show up in your family, in your relationship, in your friendships, you know, in your community.
Speaker: If they're no longer saving you and all that stuff, what are you then doing or how are you understanding to change that?
Speaker: Are you doing or taking any steps to change that?
Speaker: Because otherwise, it's like, like you said, like men trying to do this on their own.
Speaker: They don't realize how many layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of...
Speaker: shit they've consumed, they've absorbed, not only from their early childhood, but then they keep getting this reinforced later in adulthood, you know, because your brain kind of looks for those signs of like, oh, this was a shitty experience.
Speaker: I'm going to reinforce this with this, like, you know, by this was this is the result I got.
Speaker: So it's like an example of what I'm trying to say is like, you know, the first time you want to show up and be vulnerable in your community, you get shut down.
Speaker: Some other person or some other guy, unfortunately, might be like, oh, what?
Speaker: Why are you being a little, you know, a pussy or you're being a sook or whatever the case may be, whatever, you know, insult they want to throw at you, right?
Speaker: But that then reinforces you going like, oh, that's why I'm not meant to be vulnerable.
Speaker: That's why I'm not to show up.
Speaker: But it's like all this work is actually showing you the power of vulnerability.
Speaker: You know, Brene Brown does a lot of work in this space and it's beautiful.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But it's actually showing you that power of vulnerability, the power of having healthy men's circles, the power of actually what it means to them as you step from like, and it's like, you know, you said this is ancient knowledge.
Speaker: It's like, you know, way back when in different ancient cultures, you know, they would go through this piece where it's like boys to even become a man had to go through these like certain trials or challenges in their lives to actually get initiated as a man.
Speaker: And a lot of this involved like looking into those deeper, darker, uglier places of themselves so that they can actually then go like, holy crap, this is, I didn't like that part of myself, but it's like that part is me.
Speaker: And until you can bring that part into alignment with you, you can't actually move forward.
Speaker: You'll always have this weight dragging you backwards.
Speaker: You know, and that's that it's that it's that kind of, yeah, integrating all that darkness, all that shadow with the light, and actually showing you that the light and darkness are one in the same.
Speaker: It's just, you know, different experiences.
Speaker: So yeah, so beautifully said, brother.
Speaker: I couldn't agree more.
Speaker: You know, I think right to passage is really changed my life.
Speaker: Hmm.
Speaker: It's changed my life, you know, as a form of development, you know, as to build on what you were saying, you know, what the indigenous cultures understood very well, you know, in the First Nations peoples is the power of community, you know, in how we raise and develop
Speaker: how we raise children and develop human beings.
Speaker: And I think unfortunately throughout the years, that's a practice that's been lost in many ways.
Speaker: It's almost like an ancient technology that has been lost.
Speaker: And thankfully, I'm so grateful that it's coming back and it's coming back in a big way.
Speaker: Rites of passage are so important.
Speaker: Maybe let's take a moment to define what a rite of passage is.
Speaker: For me, a rite of passage is an experience.
Speaker: It's a facilitated experience, an intentional experience that's designed and facilitated.
Speaker: to help a person move, to transition from one place to the next.
Speaker: And in ancient times, for thousands of years, they've been used as a way for boys.
Speaker: In one example, there's lots of different rites of passage.
Speaker: There's rites of passage for all kinds of things.
Speaker: But in this case,
Speaker: used commonly for boys to help them transition into becoming a man.
Speaker: And to your point, to help them discover what that looks like for themselves and to define that for themselves rather than have someone else define that for them.
Speaker: So, yeah.
Speaker: Why I think it's so important is that...
Speaker: To your point, the other thing I wanted to add to that is that that's always done in a communal setting, right?
Speaker: It's always done facilitating it through community, not through one individual.
Speaker: And there's immense power in that because of the shared knowledge and wisdom and experience that can be imparted on that boy or those young men.
Speaker: but also because of the role modeling that happens, right?
Speaker: They get to see with their own eyes and feel with their own body what it looks like from different perspectives, not just one man, you know?
Speaker: And if you think that, if you translate that back to how we
Speaker: how we sort of tend to do that in our modern society.
Speaker: If I sort of pick parenting, for example, and again, I sort of talk to my own experience with Fabian, my son,
Speaker: You know, so much of his upbringing has been through my own direct experience and that is.
Speaker: You know, so much of the wisdom that we're sharing and experience that we're sharing to help him understand who he is and navigate the world is through my own direct experience.
Speaker: Obviously, to an extent, you know, to other men in his life, our friends, you know, uncles, family,
Speaker: all those things which we naturally learn from as well.
Speaker: But I think for the most part, our children spend their most time and learn most things in terms of what it means to be a man through us as parents and through what we see out there in the world.
Speaker: And so,
Speaker: coming back to a rite of passage, it's a rite of passages intentionally designed to help someone go through a process of discovery, you know, to help them start to define it, you know, start to define themselves in a new way.
Speaker: And so what I love about that, coming back to the intentionality behind those experiences is that
Speaker: it's really those experiences are crafted in a way to support transformation you know yeah and they're incredibly powerful they're incredibly sacred in my experience and they can leave someone with
Speaker: quite a different view, right, of themselves in a good way, you know, coming back to some of the things that you were sharing in terms of what happens in some of those experiences and the type of work that men do.
Speaker: So, yeah, I mean, that's my experience with rites of passage and why they're so valuable.
Speaker: What was probably one of your biggest challenges that you say when we did the MKP together?
Speaker: What was one of your biggest challenges that you had to overcome or that you maybe were able to transform in that experience?
Speaker: Just to give a bit more of an example perspective.
Speaker: I know there was a lot, but one that kind of resonates quite deeply for you.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: Sure.
Speaker: So there was many, but perhaps the one I can talk to most powerfully is relationship.
Speaker: So I have been in a relationship with my wife, my life partner, Nadia for 27 years.
Speaker: We're high school sweethearts.
Speaker: We met in high school, I think maybe 14 and then got together at 15.
Speaker: So we've been together since then.
Speaker: You know, a few breakups in between when we're younger, as you do when you're teenagers.
Speaker: But for the most part, it's been a 27-year journey and married for 15 years.
Speaker: And so, you know, going back a few years and sort of why I came, part of the reason why I came to this work was because
Speaker: Um, my relationship wasn't where I wanted it to be, you know, and I knew there was part of that was about how I was showing up in the relationship, you know, but I didn't know, I couldn't quite put a finger on what was wrong or, or how I needed to fix it.
Speaker: I just knew that I needed to do something different, you know?
Speaker: And so, um,
Speaker: my calling to that first rite of passage experience was very much about how do I transform my relationship?
Speaker: And for me, what I felt I wanted was a fully expressed, fully authentic, deep relationship, you know, based on a deep sense of love and care.
Speaker: And a lot of those things that we already had, but there was,
Speaker: there was levels of that that were missing, you know, those levels.
Speaker: There was just a depth that I was looking for, you know, and a depth of intimacy that I was looking for.
Speaker: And I think Nadia was looking for too that I felt like we needed to get to.
Speaker: So as a result of doing that work and not necessarily just that experience specifically, but although, you know,
Speaker: I think it was a massive catalyst for us getting to the place we are now.
Speaker: It brought that about, you know, it's brought that about in our relationship.
Speaker: So, you know, where we are now is in a completely different place.
Speaker: You know, we are at the level
Speaker: of the way our love has deepened even after all these years, you know, and is deepening still, you know.
Speaker: Geez, yeah, I'm actually moved by it now because it's just so rich, you know, and it nourishes me in so many ways, in new ways that I was never even expecting, you know.
Speaker: And obviously, a lot of that is credit to the
Speaker: to my wife and who she is, you know, as a human being.
Speaker: But, um, I think a lot of the work that we've done together has come through this work that I've done and, um, getting to realize how I was showing up in a relationship, in the relationship that was actually, um,
Speaker: blocking a lot of these things that I was trying to manifest for us.
Speaker: And so what does that actually mean?
Speaker: What does that look like?
Speaker: It means in some ways I was withholding.
Speaker: In some ways I wasn't showing up fully for her or in the relationship.
Speaker: not allowing certain aspects of myself to be seen, you know, feeling like I needed to hide aspects of myself and who I was or even for the most part, actually, the way I was communicating, you know, the way I was actually showing up in communication, in conversation, in relationship, in presence, you know,
Speaker: you know, and for me, so much of this work that we do is really about healing the relationship between the masculine and feminine dynamic, you know, and in my case, obviously, what that looks like is the relationship with my wife, you know, as one example, but
Speaker: Yeah, through me doing my own work and starting to change and show up differently for her.
Speaker: What that's allowed is for her to open, you know, for her to feel more safe, for her to feel like she can trust me more wholly and fully, for her to see me more wholly and fully for who I am as not just her partner and husband, but as a human being.
Speaker: you know and so um what comes with that is new levels deep levels of of trust connection intimacy um love sexuality you know um that um
Speaker: many of us are wanting, you know, I know you can speak to this as well, you know, through the journey that you and Savage have been on.
Speaker: So to wrap this all up, I guess what I'd say is that I got to realize who I was being in the relationship and got to realize the impact that that was having and got to then choose something differently.
Speaker: as a result and to start to be in a different way.
Speaker: And I'm so grateful for that because that's then allowed Nadia to fully step in to that with me.
Speaker: And, you know, and the places we're getting to now are just magical.
Speaker: And I think you're opening up the flower right now.
Speaker: This is a beautiful transition into what I think you hold so much wisdom about, but in terms of in relationships.
Speaker: Firstly, 27 years you've been together high school sweethearts, man.
Speaker: That is crazy, right?
Speaker: And when you actually look at that, you're just like, what?
Speaker: High school sweethearts still together have gone through a lot of transformation and
Speaker: This, the reason why I want to go now transition into this side of things of like relationship, that masculine and feminine dynamics is
Speaker: This is something I don't, I feel like it's not talked about much at all.
Speaker: And if anything, it's quite a shameful, embarrassing kind of topic to discuss with people.
Speaker: Literally just the other day, I was having a conversation with one of my friends and the same sort of feeling and thoughts had come up where it was like, you feel embarrassed and ashamed to talk about the challenges that you face or you've gone through in your relationship and
Speaker: you know, or if you've, you know, like, you know, I now define it as like an unhealthy or toxic masculinity kind of energy comes out within me.
Speaker: But you get embarrassed to even share that with someone because you're like, oh, like, were they going to judge me for this?
Speaker: Are they going to question me?
Speaker: Do they not want to be my friends?
Speaker: Are they going to isolate themselves from me because of this?
Speaker: But the truth is, like, the more we are able to share about this, the more we're able to start creating awareness.
Speaker: And once we start creating awareness for other people and within ourselves, then I feel like that awareness allows for mobilization of change.
Speaker: But only until we can start creating awareness, do we, without awareness, we won't even be able to mobilize anything.
Speaker: So this is something, yeah, I want to talk a lot more on.
Speaker: And one thing that I wanted you to maybe see what your definition of this is, is what do you firstly understand as masculine and versus feminine?
Speaker: And also, can you explain a little bit more about what that means within the body or within you, within oneself, rather than this concept that we have that men are masculine only and should only be masculine?
Speaker: female shouldn't be feminine you know in that kind of uh dynamic yeah beautiful um yeah look it's it's it's a big topic you know and and i think it's it can be a tricky one as you said because um you know i i guess there's just so many different perspectives and and ambiguity and um
Speaker: And even some of the language, you know, and emotion in the language can be quite, I think, triggering for folks, you know, just the words, masculine, feminine, you know, the fact that it's, you know, I think so many of us attach it to gender, you know, which personally, I just don't know that that's necessarily helpful because it's actually not about gender.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: you know, masculine and feminine for me is about energy, you know?
Speaker: So the way I define it is there's a masculine energy and there's a feminine energy.
Speaker: And the misconception is that men are only masculine.
Speaker: Those who are, you know, those who define themselves as men hold a masculine energy, you know, and those who define themselves as feminine and women,
Speaker: only hold a feminine energy.
Speaker: And that's completely untrue.
Speaker: In my experience, you know, what I've come to learn through the wisdom of others is actually the energies that we both hold, you know, all of us hold those energies within our bodies.
Speaker: And to dive into what the masculine energetic is all about.
Speaker: For me, the masculine energetic is all about creation.
Speaker: It's about consciousness.
Speaker: It's about awareness.
Speaker: It's about the energy and the masculine is all about wanting to create in the world.
Speaker: So it's about doing, yeah?
Speaker: It's about being in action a lot of the time, you know, and there's a natural sort of
Speaker: flow of energy that comes with that in the masculine where we want to feel like we're creating things in the world, you know, solving problems, making things happen, being in action.
Speaker: So it's very much an active energy, you know, whereas the feminine energy for me is all about
Speaker: being rather than doing right it's about the life force and tapping into the life force that exists you know in all things in us in particular as humans it's it's about holding space it's about slowing down it's actually not about doing it all it's about being completely um just whole you know and um
Speaker: and in stillness, you know?
Speaker: So it's a very, it's a very different energetic, you know?
Speaker: And what I've come to learn is that both are incredibly valuable.
Speaker: Both are incredibly powerful in their own right.
Speaker: But when we can learn to cultivate both of those energies together, it's, it's amazing what can happen, you know, because,
Speaker: If you think about it, we all need those two dynamics in our lives, you know, and in relationship, which I'm sure we'll get on to, but, you know, when we can learn to sort of be and hold both of those spaces within us, you know, generally what I find, what that does for me is that allows me to come more into balance.
Speaker: It actually allows me to find more energy, yeah, to create, to do, to
Speaker: to solve like I actually have more physical energy you know because I can sort of be more in balance whereas if I'm sort of too far one way too much in the doing and not enough in there sort of slowing down and and being or vice versa you know generally sort of I sort of tend to tap out pretty pretty quickly you know you burn out yeah yeah yeah and so
Speaker: And even on that, I just want to kind of expand a bit more on that, right?
Speaker: And it was interesting, like, everyone's got their own kind of definitions that they create, right?
Speaker: Because what you said, I love that simple split of, like, masculine's about doing, feminine's about being, like embodiment.
Speaker: And I love that.
Speaker: That's a really good thing.
Speaker: I always used to also define masculine more around, like, being a container.
Speaker: Masculine's all about structure.
Speaker: It's about form.
Speaker: Whereas feminine is kind of formless.
Speaker: It's about flow.
Speaker: It's about mystery.
Speaker: It's about that kind of presence of that.
Speaker: I did find it interesting that you said creation for masculine.
Speaker: Because masculine for me, I never would connect creation.
Speaker: Creation for me was always feminine.
Speaker: And the reason why I think creation was feminine, because when you say doing,
Speaker: If you're saying creation from a doing perspective, yes.
Speaker: But creation for me with feminine was that because it was embodiment, it allowed for mystery and creation to occur.
Speaker: Because the masculine was all about creating that structure in the container and then the feminine exposed it with that embodiment creation.
Speaker: So when you said creation, I was like, oh, really?
Speaker: Oh, okay.
Speaker: But I'm just curious on how you saw it.
Speaker: What was the difference that you saw there when you said creation?
Speaker: What was that to you?
Speaker: Yeah, like for me, creation is structure, you know.
Speaker: It's about the creation of structures, you know.
Speaker: Yeah, I get you.
Speaker: Yeah, be it in a sort of physical form or non-physical form, you know.
Speaker: So, about building things or...
Speaker: creating process or designing or holding spaces, you know, creating spaces.
Speaker: So yeah, it can be about that as well for sure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And then we were saying the, and that's one of the more important parts is that,
Speaker: when we look at these energy centers, these energy centers are poles within us.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: As in like the energy poles within us.
Speaker: And I like that.
Speaker: Like, it's like, you mentioned this before.
Speaker: It is about finding that equilibrium, that balance.
Speaker: And it's like, this is the thing is that way, like, again, I'm just going to bring it back to society.
Speaker: I think my, my, my personal opinion is society has been,
Speaker: kind of driven us down this path of like, you got to only be masculine to get to do things, to make things happen.
Speaker: You have to just be masculine and they forget the essence of feminine.
Speaker: And then at the same time, right, when you have a lot of these feminine movements, you know, feminism and stuff like that, they're beautiful.
Speaker: But then I think sometimes what feminism does, it's like feminism has been created
Speaker: in a masculine society that it's actually taken off some of the unhealthy traits the masculine society has and they lose the essence of embodiment of being of flow of of that of that nature of like what I feel I think right with that that I was like it's so
Speaker: important to make sure that we're not letting society impact the actual true essence of what masculine is what's feminine is because then it's like again it comes back to that what we said earlier in the the podcast where like whose voice is that you know like that kind of like that comes in my head a lot is that i'm like oh like who said that you have to be like this so that's a healthy like whereas now it's like wait this is the if you look at it just as energy then we can move that and actually start bringing that into balance and i think balance is different for everyone
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like you might have to need a little bit more masculine.
Speaker: Balance doesn't mean like an equal amount of masculine, an equal amount of feminine.
Speaker: Balance is situational for me.
Speaker: Like if I'm in a certain situation, I might need to be more, bring out more of that masculine energy in that situation.
Speaker: Whereas if I'm in another one, I might need to bring out more of that feminine, that softness, that openness, that vulnerability.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And yeah, I think that's like, it's like situational balance for me as well.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: And that's it.
Speaker: Some of us lean more towards the masculine side of things.
Speaker: We just naturally tend to hold that energy more.
Speaker: We're more sort of in that space of creating, doing things.
Speaker: thinking, using our consciousness, our awareness to create and do things in the world and have impact.
Speaker: It's very much an energy of the head for me.
Speaker: to use our gifts, our talents, to be able to sort of solve and have impact in the world, you know, be it on people, be it on other things.
Speaker: You know, so a lot of us might naturally sort of
Speaker: be there more, right?
Speaker: A lot of men may find themselves more in that place, you know.
Speaker: But coming back to what you were saying earlier is that there's also this aspect of ourselves that is the feminine, you know, which is all about, for me, feeling, you know, and flowing and, you know, it's a very different sort of space to cultivate.
Speaker: And so for me, what I've come to learn about myself is actually I have a strong
Speaker: feminine energetic as well you know um for sure i i you know i i'm in the masculine energy a lot because of just my what i do for work my professional life you know like i'm just just called to be in that sort of type of um
Speaker: space you know in in that energy um with with the nature of the the work that i do you know but but what i've come to learn more and more through doing more of this you know of this work is is actually to develop a connection and awareness and an appreciation for the parts of me that actually hold that that feminine energetic as well and so for me that that is
Speaker: allowing myself to feel, you know, allow giving myself permission to slow down to and to feel to express, you know, with a whole range of emotions without judgment.
Speaker: Absolutely.
Speaker: You know,
Speaker: And there's power in that too, you know, there's power in that too because what that's allowed me to do is to start to express myself more fully, you know, from an authentic place, you know.
Speaker: And that transmutes, that translates into the way I show up in the world for others.
Speaker: It shows up in my relationships.
Speaker: It shows up in the way people experience me, you know, and in the way I can hold space for others.
Speaker: you know, that allows them to step into the, you know, those spaces of connection and intimacy with me so that there's more trust and we can, you know, we can relate in a different way.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And there's great things that come with that.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: Yeah, it's pretty powerful, you know, as you start to bring an awareness to these things and realize how, what role they play in your life and how it influences certain outcomes.
Speaker: Yeah, and the relationships, how it influences and impacts the different relationships in your life from an intimate one to a friendship one, you know, because you were just touching on that.
Speaker: And I kind of want to let's segue into this a little bit, right?
Speaker: In your relationship, what have you found is within this masculine feminine dynamics, how do you find that your natural state plays out in the relationship?
Speaker: What was it beforehand and what has it changed into now?
Speaker: When I say beforehand, I mean previous to the rights and pastors that you had done.
Speaker: How did you kind of show up from that energetic space in your relationship?
Speaker: And now what have you found has massively shifted and this is how you're showing up, which has been healthier, more beneficial and things like that.
Speaker: And I share this from that perspective of like, I've had a toxic masculinity energy or what I define as toxic.
Speaker: Toxic, when I say toxic, I mean characteristics of the masculine that has been
Speaker: well, I was going to say skewed, but it has been, yeah, skewed to believe that this is what needs to be done from that masculine space, but it actually is like the unhealthy side of it, if that makes sense.
Speaker: So you've got the masculine energy.
Speaker: When you've got a certain experience, you've got the healthy side.
Speaker: I'm just using this as an example, healthy side and unhealthy side.
Speaker: I'll give you an example of this to put it a bit more context for me of how I've understood this is like,
Speaker: Toxic masculinity is, Savage is having an issue.
Speaker: There's something that she's experiencing.
Speaker: I don't want her to feel shitty or bad or anything like that.
Speaker: So what am I to do?
Speaker: The toxic part of me is, so the heart of me, right?
Speaker: My heart is like, I don't want her to feel this, which every person is going to have that experience.
Speaker: And that's normal.
Speaker: That shouldn't be judged.
Speaker: That's normal to have that, like, you know, wanting to not see your loved one or your intimate partner in this sense of like hurt or pain.
Speaker: Now there's ways I can approach this.
Speaker: The unhealthy masculinity, which is what I've always played into because this is a dynamic I learned from my parents and stuff.
Speaker: Just without them probably not even being aware of themselves, what's to solve their problem?
Speaker: Not allow Savas to fully feel or express the emotion that she's feeling, but instead solve a problem.
Speaker: What can I do that will achieve the quickest outcome to stop her feeling this pain?
Speaker: It's solution mode and all this stuff, and it's driven by this need of not wanting to see her in that pain.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: But it's and the core of it is like fix, fix, fix.
Speaker: So that the reason I say that's toxic, because some people might be like, oh, why is that toxic?
Speaker: The reason why it's toxic is I'll share the healthy side of it and hopefully give a bit more of a polarity go comparison.
Speaker: Healthy masculinity in that situation is Savage's got a problem.
Speaker: I feel that pain that she's feeling.
Speaker: But what I'm doing now is I'm opening up space for her to allow her to fully feel and express what
Speaker: everything that she's going through that is leading to this pain without judgment, without criticism.
Speaker: And what that then means is that I start becoming, I look at it as like this container and I always look at it as this, in my head, it's this like big square container.
Speaker: And that emotion that she has for that problem is water flowing in that container.
Speaker: My job is to go how deep and why do I make this container to allow that emotion to keep pouring in until it has nothing left to pour in.
Speaker: Because then what that's doing is I'm holding that space from a healthy side to allow her to expel all this charged negative emotion, or not negative emotion, but this charged emotion she's feeling so that she can bring herself back to a place of equilibrium.
Speaker: And it's for me, that healthy masculinity is like allowing and seeing what she needs in that moment while just listening without judgment and all that stuff, not trying to fix.
Speaker: And then I can ask her, what do you need now from me?
Speaker: Do you need a hug?
Speaker: Do you need me to give you advice?
Speaker: Do you want to brainstorm?
Speaker: Do you want to riff on the idea?
Speaker: Do you want me to just sit quietly and just be present rather than assuming the action?
Speaker: But I would love for your experience or your understanding of like, how do you define that?
Speaker: Or is it just situational, like I'm saying, but that toxic and healthy masculinity?
Speaker: Look, much the same, brother.
Speaker: Like, you just showed such a beautiful example that, you know, is very much the way I relate to it too.
Speaker: You know, and that's how it sort of shows up.
Speaker: And...
Speaker: I could not agree more.
Speaker: I could not agree more.
Speaker: That's been the shift for us too, is that in those interactions, if we talk about this in a very real and practical way, it's like in those conversations that we have, it's in those interactions where we're
Speaker: we're being challenged, you know, or our partner's being challenged and how do we relate to them differently?
Speaker: How do we show up differently in those interactions that allow them to feel more safe, more seen, more like heard, like really heard, you know?
Speaker: and acknowledged without us needing to feel like we've got to fix it all the time, you know?
Speaker: And because again, and in my experience is that so much of what the feminine needs and, you know, if I speak about it from, you know, our relationship is,
Speaker: is to be seen, you know, to be acknowledged, to feel held, you know, so they can fully step into that, right, and to feel safe.
Speaker: And so it begs the question to us as men is how are we doing that?
Speaker: You know, how are we cultivating more of that space, you know, to allow that to come through, right?
Speaker: Is to create more of that safety.
Speaker: Now, the beautiful thing is, and I think the build on this is,
Speaker: what happens in relationship, in connection, in our relatedness, when we're able to do that.
Speaker: And there's some really beautiful benefits that we all get, you know, when that type of space is cultivated, right, in our relationship.
Speaker: Some of the obvious ones like just greater trust, you know, greater connection, you know, because we're hearing, we're fully seeing each other now, you know, greater, obviously deeper listening, you know, more awareness, you know,
Speaker: Even deeper expression.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Greater self-expression, right?
Speaker: Like more sharing, less withholding.
Speaker: But there's some other beautiful things as well which come with it, right?
Speaker: Like deeper levels of intimacy, you know, and expression in that way, you know, deepening of sexual connection and expression as well, you know, and isn't that a beautiful thing which most of us also want in relationship, you know?
Speaker: So as we sort of explore, it's incredibly powerful, this type of work, you know, when you can start to,
Speaker: work with it and put some intention behind it and develop some of these practices.
Speaker: And it really comes in quite simple ways, you know, but really profound, you know.
Speaker: Yeah, we can talk about this for hours, but it's been, and you know, like the other part, I guess I will, I want to share as well is that it's also not necessarily easy, you know, like relating in this way isn't necessarily easy.
Speaker: We might be making it sound like it's just this thing that you just do, you know, if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
Speaker: It actually takes practice and it takes conscious awareness and it takes intention, you know, so it's something that you've got to want to do and acknowledge that it's something that's important and that you want to bring into your relationship.
Speaker: You know, the practices themselves are actually simple, you know, but I think what I'd say to that is, you know, if it's something that you want to learn more about, there's plenty of knowledge and wisdom out there.
Speaker: You know, some of the people that I've learned from.
Speaker: you know, men like John Wineland, who I'm a big, big fan of, his book From the Core, completely changed my life when it comes to this type of work.
Speaker: I think, you know, David Data before him, The Way of the Superior Man, which is obviously, you know, for quite a different time, which John's now sort of taken and I think transformed and elevated to a different place.
Speaker: So, yeah,
Speaker: learn a lot through, through his teachings.
Speaker: I've learned, um, um, immensely through people like, um, Azria Becker and, and, and Benjamin Becker who are becoming, who do a lot of this work, um, as well.
Speaker: And then sort of really starting to shift some of the language and, and bring a lot more awareness, you know, on mass to, to the importance of, of, of this, of this kind of work.
Speaker: Um, but the other thing I'd say is, um,
Speaker: I want to shine a light on the importance and the power of having other people around you, other men, women, couples,
Speaker: to support you in your journey, you know, and I, for one, am so grateful, so grateful to have had close friends to us that are also interested in this work and cultivating this kind of space and creating this level of relationship.
Speaker: People like Savage and yourself, people like our close friends, um,
Speaker: John and Taz.
Speaker: So again, bring it back to community, right?
Speaker: Like the importance of having people around you that can hold you and support you and have got your back and are pushing you and challenging you as well to
Speaker: to lean into these things, you know, and there's no way Nadia and I would be where we are now if it wasn't for those people, you know, people like yourselves that are also on that path, you know, also committed to those things.
Speaker: And it's a really important strategy, you know, is to have to connect with people
Speaker: that want the same things, you know, and open up sharing, you know, and learning together.
Speaker: And this piece, I do want to explain that this, this is that like the, the, you know, you would have heard it if you've ever done personal development, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.
Speaker: Now, if you are trying to elevate in whatever way, especially what we're talking about right now in your relationship with that healthy, unhealthy masculinity, so like say healthy masculinity and stuff like that, you need to surround yourself.
Speaker: So it's a lot easier to kind of grow in, you know, if you're a flower trying to blossom in nourished, supported, well-fed, well-watered, a lot of sunshine kind of land than it is to do with like weeds around you, with thorn bushes around you, with, you know,
Speaker: unfertilized soil, those kind of things.
Speaker: It's not to say you can't grow still there, right?
Speaker: And there's a different level of resilience that I think you need for that.
Speaker: But it's so different because then you can, like for me, the community aspect that having like-minded people around you, like that you were kind of sharing before,
Speaker: it allows me to feel less alone.
Speaker: Like, and not, and, and supported is huge, right?
Speaker: Supported without a doubt, but that less alone.
Speaker: Like, I remember there were so many times where I'm like, I'm by myself on this.
Speaker: Like, who else is feeling this?
Speaker: Why are they like, and then when we would share, you're like, oh fuck, how the hell is this guy experienced?
Speaker: Like this parallel universe kind of experience.
Speaker: It feels like sometimes it's like, he's going through the exact same thing that I've been struggling so much with.
Speaker: And it's like, then like it just, that, that aloneness allowed me to then like,
Speaker: open up more because like when you feel alone for me, at least when I felt alone, I closed off naturally, you know, like it's kind of like alone is like close off, fetal position, want to curl, disconnect, detach myself from everyone else.
Speaker: By doing so, I kind of detach myself from myself.
Speaker: Whereas when I started having these conversations with you and other men, Miguel, Andrew, and stuff like that, and we started opening up this kind of realm, I noticed that I naturally would start being more vulnerable, being more open with my sharing, because then it had a certain energy or frequency to the words I was using that it would expand this vibration of going, the more I talked about this stuff, the more other people would talk, the more we would keep learning, the more we could expand.
Speaker: And just this beautiful, energetic ball of expansion would just kind of occur from this.
Speaker: Coming back to, yeah, no, no, no, thank you.
Speaker: I think, oh, if I can, sorry to jump in there, but I think you've hit on something super important, you know, and I want to sort of try and connect the dots of, you know, some of what we're weaving through here is it's that point of aloneness, you know, and I don't want to gloss over, skip over that because
Speaker: so many men still in this connected age and world that we live in, you know, feel alone, you know?
Speaker: And so...
Speaker: That is why this work is so important.
Speaker: Coming back to the men's work specifically is there's so many men in our lives that don't feel like they've got someone in their corner, in their circle, in their community to lean on, to express with, to share, to be vulnerable with.
Speaker: And I certainly don't take that for granted.
Speaker: So I want to speak directly into that and actually speak to anyone who's listening, whether you know myself or you know Carl or anyone, any man that may be listening to this podcast or women or any sort of human, because I think this speaks to all of us.
Speaker: If you are feeling that,
Speaker: reach out, you know, reach out specifically, you know, if you're connected to us in some way, you know, I want to really speak to those men, you know, in my life that, you know, perhaps I haven't had a chance to connect with in some time.
Speaker: If you're feeling that,
Speaker: All I can share is to just reach out.
Speaker: There are people, there are communities, there's knowledge that's easily accessible, that can support you.
Speaker: with whatever it is that you need, you know, and if that's, as you say, just to feel less alone, you know, perhaps a little bit more safe, um, then.
Speaker: that's important, you know, and that's so needed.
Speaker: So I just wanted to speak into that.
Speaker: No, and thank you.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: It was very beautiful to share that because it's like sometimes we're doing all of this work.
Speaker: And you forget that like, I think part of, I think for every human, it's like, as you kind of go through your challenging, most challenging and difficult experiences, it's kind of pulled hand, like, you know, send your hand downwards, and then help the next person up kind of thing, you know,
Speaker: I think there's such immense power and that whole idea of pay it forward, but it's more, it's not pay it forward.
Speaker: It's like pull it forward.
Speaker: You know, like for me, where it's like, you, once you experience it, pull the next person for pull the next, like keep pulling people forward so that they start realizing that it's like the world can be a lot more beautiful, uh, delicious, exciting, connected by us exploring and open up these channels, you know, um, and which let's go back quickly.
Speaker: on what we were talking about in relationship, right?
Speaker: And I know we kind of expanded.
Speaker: We went down a nice little tangent just in terms of that overall experience.
Speaker: One thing that I was going to say was that masculine-feminine dynamics we were talking about, the equilibrium in relationships.
Speaker: I do want to also mention that it is a muscle.
Speaker: And I say it is a muscle.
Speaker: It's metaphorically, I guess we're talking about energy, but it's this muscle that you can train and we can enhance.
Speaker: And I think that's something that we forget that, you know, it's like you can't just drop everything unless you're some superhuman, but you can't just drop everything and go do a 100-mile marathon, 100-kilometer marathon, right?
Speaker: You need to train and develop the skills and build up to that.
Speaker: And it might be smaller, little feats of like one kilometer.
Speaker: It starts with the first kilometer, second, not even first kilometer, first step, right?
Speaker: before you move to something like that.
Speaker: And it's the same thing with this.
Speaker: When we're talking about this balance, we're starting to create, we're talking about creating that awareness of like that healthy and unhealthy masculinity.
Speaker: A lot of it is actually, um, it's experience and it, it does come down to, um,
Speaker: Training, like reminding yourself.
Speaker: And something that popped up for me when we were talking about this was this idea of the role the ego plays sometimes in this and the role of the ego when we get it.
Speaker: So again, coming back to a situation, situation being, you know, our partner's feeling hurt.
Speaker: So I just feel like it.
Speaker: What am I going to do to kind of alleviate this?
Speaker: Or how do I want to show up?
Speaker: The ego has this thing of like, it's about me.
Speaker: So how do I solve this?
Speaker: So I feel good.
Speaker: Whereas that stopping that or slowing that mind down a little bit to give that opportunity to see what they need to feel good.
Speaker: Like what's the vajka, the vajka's feel good might not be the healing that I think they need.
Speaker: And when you put it and flip it over to them, I think that's where we start entering into a realm of like this healthy masculinity, especially when in direct relationship to a relationship, it's going like, what do they need?
Speaker: and you don't know what they need, you can make assumptions of what they need, that person sometimes might not fully know what they need.
Speaker: So your role is to help them uncover what they need.
Speaker: And that's the kind of play of that, where I realized that that healthy kind of play comes into it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Couldn't agree more, brother.
Speaker: Maybe there's an opportunity here for us to give whoever's listening to this a little bit of gold and sort of really start to bring this into...
Speaker: what's something that they can do, you know, that's super simple, right?
Speaker: A practice they can do to cultivate this, which you and I obviously have been playing around with and it's certainly having an impact in our relationships.
Speaker: And why don't we sort of talk about the check-in practice that we do with our partners.
Speaker: Because it speaks to that directly that you just shared, you know, is how do you sort of create more of that interaction, you know?
Speaker: So maybe I'll create and then you can sort of add to it.
Speaker: It's the concept of a weekly check-in, you know, that we have with our partner.
Speaker: And the intention with it is to create a space weekly.
Speaker: In our cases, I know we're both doing this weekly, where you come together and you have a conversation about what
Speaker: to check in with each other.
Speaker: And we'll get into what that looks like in a sec.
Speaker: But the important thing there is to actually create the space, you know, and depending on, I think, the life you both lead, certainly for Nadia and I, we lead very busy lives.
Speaker: You know, we've got a lot on...
Speaker: both personally, professionally.
Speaker: So it can be quite difficult to find that space sometimes.
Speaker: So certainly from our perspective, what's worked is to actually build it in, right?
Speaker: To actually schedule it, right?
Speaker: Into our calendar, on a night, at a certain time.
Speaker: And what's interesting about that is that you can...
Speaker: it puts real purpose to it and it puts real intention behind it and it also creates clarity for both of you around what that space is for and when it's going to happen.
Speaker: So I think that's super important just thinking about how you create space and then when it comes to the process itself, it's really quite simple.
Speaker: It's literally taking a moment to sit in front of each other, be in each other's company, slow right down,
Speaker: and step through a couple of simple things.
Speaker: So the first one is, whoever goes first literally has an opportunity to share and check in with where they're at.
Speaker: And what that means is actually sharing from the heart, not the head.
Speaker: So taking a moment to actually drop down out of your head into your heart
Speaker: and speaking from that place.
Speaker: And that could be anything.
Speaker: It could be, what are you feeling in your body?
Speaker: It could be what's alive in you right now.
Speaker: It could be, what are you holding?
Speaker: You know, what are you struggling with?
Speaker: You know, it's less about what happened and the story and all the things.
Speaker: you know, that go on or it's like, I did this this week and I did that this week.
Speaker: You know, it can be a little bit of that, but in my experience, the value is really about what I'm feeling.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: The feeling, connecting.
Speaker: What I'm feeling, connecting with.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So it's deep.
Speaker: It's deeper.
Speaker: It's deeper than just like a tick the box, you know, Hey, Hey, this is where I'm at sort of thing.
Speaker: No, it's actually take a moment and connect firstly with yourself and
Speaker: And then express that to your partner to go, hey, this is what's really going on.
Speaker: This is what's really going on.
Speaker: And I think a big part of this is, before we go further, actually, I want to give this analogy, this little metaphor, because this is how I understood for myself and it just made a massive difference.
Speaker: Me and Savage call it, these conversations are window cleaning conversation, right?
Speaker: Nice.
Speaker: What the fuck is a window cleaning conversation?
Speaker: But what it is, is I can't imagine, and this is not just in your, like I said, like in your intimate relationship, it could be with friends, it could be with your family and relationships you have there.
Speaker: It's actually really powerful to start to have these kinds of conversations because it gives you a space to do so, right?
Speaker: Sorry, it gives you a space to clean your window.
Speaker: Now explain what this means.
Speaker: So...
Speaker: between me and Sauvage, there's this imaginary window, right?
Speaker: You've got this imaginary window.
Speaker: What happens throughout the week and that takeaway, if you've never even had this, this is years then, right?
Speaker: And even sometimes it can be difficult, but you've got this clear, transparent window when you first meet the person.
Speaker: Over time, the window gets a little bit dirty.
Speaker: Grime starts building up.
Speaker: Dirt starts splashing on it.
Speaker: Whatever disgusting shit you want to imagine gets thrown on it.
Speaker: As things gradually increase and increase and increase, what happens is that before we know it, we can't even see through this window clearly.
Speaker: We have this distorted picture.
Speaker: We're trying to see our partner on the other side of this window, but we have this distorted view in front of us with all the dirt, with all the shit that has just accumulated.
Speaker: These moments that we take out on these weekly check-ins is our way of literally bringing out whatever, Windex, Co, whatever you used to clean, the water.
Speaker: I was like, yeah, yeah.
Speaker: What is it?
Speaker: Vinegar and... Oh, my gosh.
Speaker: Oh my gosh, now I'm going to struggle with that.
Speaker: But vinegar, the lemon and all that stuff to clean it all out.
Speaker: Whoever's listening on this is going to be like, I know exactly what you're saying, but I can't carbonate it or something.
Speaker: So what you're doing though is that like when you start actually bringing this out, you're doing the work to clean this mirror.
Speaker: Not this mirror, sorry, this window.
Speaker: And as you start cleaning this window, then you start seeing that person for who they actually are.
Speaker: The connection, the view of this person becomes so much more clearer.
Speaker: But what you don't realize is every week stuff still like dirt, shit still gets thrown up on this window.
Speaker: So it needs to be a weekly practice where you actually like literally like imagine like squeegeeing and spraying and wiping.
Speaker: And some of these issues that have caked on this window take a while to get work through.
Speaker: It's not something like you click your fingers and it's freaking done.
Speaker: It's like now you got to put some elbow grease into that, right?
Speaker: Like you really got to push and work together on cleaning it.
Speaker: And it's on both sides.
Speaker: Don't forget.
Speaker: because you can clean your side and all that and start creating a clear picture, but they need to also clear their side.
Speaker: So you can it's a you know, you can see two ways.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Beautiful.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: That's so beautiful.
Speaker: I'm really thought about it in that way.
Speaker: But yeah, I'm so glad you shared that, you know, like what I get from that is, let me see you.
Speaker: Let me see.
Speaker: Let's do the work here required to allow ourselves to be more fully and clearly seen.
Speaker: That's what I get from that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that's so powerful.
Speaker: And this is like when you realize this, it's like that's the metaphor of this.
Speaker: If we take it another level deeper, right?
Speaker: And we actually look at just the simple structure of this is like you have two of you in this situation.
Speaker: One person speaks without interruption.
Speaker: right that person when they speak like you said it's from a feeling state as much as possible i i'm feeling this so i'm feeling and remember feeling is not like we say don't say i feel and then talk about an experience feeling needs to be brought down to a feeling like an emotion yeah i'm actually feeling um unworthy that's the feeling i'm feeling sad i'm feeling depressed because when you start talking about that feeling you're tapping actually into the emotion behind it
Speaker: Otherwise, we talk about feeling more as an experience, so to speak.
Speaker: So you get clear on the feeling that you're feeling.
Speaker: And the feeling might be triggered by something that they've done.
Speaker: Like, Savage, I'm feeling unworthy because you cracked the shits at me the other day and you didn't actually give me a hug or any physical attention, my love language, that I needed to heal that part of me.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Now, this is not saying that she had to do that because the truth is like it's still up to me to regulate that, right?
Speaker: Like I need to work on that.
Speaker: But what we then do is so one, you speak without interruption from that feeling state.
Speaker: Two is that once that person's finished, the listener then just repeats back going like, sorry, two is telling the person what you need.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: So if I'm feeling this, I'm feeling like I'm feeling unworthy and all that stuff.
Speaker: Next time that we have an interaction with this, I would love if you are able to just be a bit softer in maybe your delivery so you can communicate it in this way because I think I will receive it better rather than being triggered and respond in a more aggressive way.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: And then the third thing that happens is that partner repeats it back to you what they've heard, what they've understood and what you need.
Speaker: Because when they repeat it back, without judgment or anything like that, it's just that's your sense of getting acknowledged.
Speaker: That's you going like, okay, they hear me, they understand me, they know what I'm going through right now.
Speaker: And that allows us to, I think, break it up into a...
Speaker: Yeah, a more of a balanced kind of way.
Speaker: So I just realized I opened it up on my phone just to confirm.
Speaker: So take turns speaking without interruption.
Speaker: Replay back what the other person said.
Speaker: Finish with asking what do you need?
Speaker: And then the fourth, which we already covered at the start, was that speak from the feeling.
Speaker: How did that make you feel rather than blame?
Speaker: Beautiful.
Speaker: Nice summit.
Speaker: And I feel like, yeah, naturally, I don't know about you, but like for me and Svaj, some weeks you don't have things there and you just have a lot of gratitude.
Speaker: It's like, hey, I just wanted to acknowledge you and honor you for really making me feel like a king this week.
Speaker: Like I was going through a really challenging week and you just made me feel super loved.
Speaker: You held so much space for me.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: And the reason why we're going into this as well, and just to link it back up to everything else, this is talking about healthy and unhealthy masculinity as well as femininity.
Speaker: It's that balance, right?
Speaker: Because creating the space is a very masculine thing.
Speaker: You're creating the structure for it.
Speaker: But allowing to express those feelings, that's a very feminine structure.
Speaker: When you're going into those things and all that stuff, like feeling understood and all that stuff, this is dynamics of communication and all that, right?
Speaker: But it's, again, tapping into those role models, those energy centers.
Speaker: And that's why I was just like, yeah, like, like, for me as a man, there is a massive difference when I feel space is being held for me.
Speaker: And I can actually share what the fuck is on my heart and what is like really weighing me down.
Speaker: And it's like, and then I want to like, I want to cry.
Speaker: And I get goosebumps talking about it because I can tap into the feeling of what it feels like to like, oh, I got a space where I can share and I can be vulnerable.
Speaker: To be held in that way, you know, by your partner.
Speaker: You know, yeah, that's been incredibly powerful for me as well.
Speaker: So thank you for breaking that down, for summarizing it so beautifully, brother.
Speaker: I think to cap that off, I think what I encourage people to do is, you know, maybe try something simple like that.
Speaker: You know, if some of what we're sharing in this conversation speaks to you, you know, in your relationship,
Speaker: um starting off with a simple practice like that you know a little weekly check-in um using those steps you just described you'd be surprised you know how much of a difference that can make very very quickly you know in in your relationship bringing it back to some of those things of you know more trust greater connection you know deeper intimacy um feeling feeling seen more feeling heard more you know
Speaker: And from there, you can co-create, you know, you can take action, you can talk about the things that need to shift, you know, but from a place of openness and listening, you know, and without judgment. 100%.
Speaker: yeah i think that's where yeah the the this feeling of um like and adding on to the summary sorry is this this feeling of masculinity no like and i say masculinity right now because we've been talking quite heavily on it but like being showing up as a healthy masculine it does take practice um and and you you mentioned uh this before you were saying like don't don't get me wrong there is still challenges there is still pitfalls and all that occur
Speaker: Plenty.
Speaker: Making it very clear to people that it's like, when you're doing this, a big part of this is giving yourself and asking as well for space.
Speaker: Like for space to fuck up, for space for you to go back into old patterning, for space for you to make mistakes and asking for that, like asking yourself for your own permission.
Speaker: So you're less critical of yourself, you're less judgmental of yourself.
Speaker: But then if you're in a relationship, whatever that may be or whoever that is with,
Speaker: Ask the same from them going, hey, I'm wanting to step into this version of me.
Speaker: This is what I see this person as.
Speaker: And it's having those conversations like this is my highest self as someone actually who is supporting you, who is playful, who is like feeling alive and ambitious with life, who's creating with the universe and things like that.
Speaker: But at the same time, there's this old part of me, unfortunately, that is still stuck in pattern that I have shitty money stories and all that stuff that it's like when I want to change things, or I'm aggressive still.
Speaker: And when I want to change things, sometimes I may snap and crack the shits or be rude with my words where it's not needed, but it's not my intention behind it.
Speaker: It's just, you know, I haven't, I'm still working on that energy and, you know, transmuting that energy in a healthy way.
Speaker: you know so yeah beautiful but mate I think this is a beautiful spot that we can leave off dropping a nice little tool that people can use in their own relationships that I know me and you both use and has been super super effective for us Gons thank you so much man I honestly you're like one of the wisest people and I am so very very thankful and fortunate that I get to call you a close friend of mine and I appreciate you sharing your wisdom on the podcast today mate
Speaker: Oh, man, absolute pleasure.
Speaker: Thank you.
Speaker: Hopefully that resonated, you know, landed with some people that listen to this.
Speaker: Again, thank you so much for the opportunity to come on and share more than anything just to connect, catch up, have a bit of a chat, you know, around some of the things that we're passionate about, you know, that made a difference in our lives.
Speaker: So thank you again, brother, for the work you're doing here.
Speaker: And, you know,
Speaker: uh yeah wish you nothing but uh ongoing success thanks man and for those like you said who gonz is a beautiful soul and uh i will share in the show notes how to reach out to him because i was like man the the impact you've had on so many men's lives um i think it's amazing and i think it needs to just keep uh growing more more more man so thank you much love thank you pleasure chat soon
Speaker: If you enjoyed this episode, it would mean the world if you could subscribe, rate, and review this podcast.
Speaker: And if you know someone who needs to hear this on their own journey, share it with them.
Speaker: Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker: And remember to go inwards and onwards, my friend.
