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Become Untriggerable: Masculinity, Intimacy, and Healing with Adam Rice · The Stoic Handbook with Jon Brooks

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Adam, I'd like to welcome you to this conversation.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh you are probably one of the most kind of uh sought-after guests for me that I think I've ever had.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: Even though it might seem like this conversation's kind of come out out of nowhere, I I really I mean it when I say this, I don't know anyone quite like you.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I in the best possible way.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think that it's novel.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I've just I've just known for a long time that this conversation is something that I've wanted to do, and I'm really glad that we can uh we can do it.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I think a good place to start would be if you could give a a summary of some of your background, you know, your professional background and some of your interests, um, just to give people a kind of rundown of the types of things that you've been studying and and interested in throughout your life.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I feel like I have lived the life of 10 different people somehow.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I started out uh um, you know, wanting to wanting to create a person in myself who was something sort of special.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: This was my, you know, initially when I was a kid, uh my greatest fear was ending up being mediocre somehow.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um and my model uh as I was growing up was kind of James Bond, actually.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: James Bond was kind of a do-all kind of person.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: He could do anything, you know.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: He was, he was, uh, you know, he was tough, but he was also soft.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: He was good with women, but he could, you know, fix a tank, he could uh, you know, turn a pine cone into a hand grenade, uh, get out of any situation, but he was also well read and could speak different languages.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that sense of adventure that I saw in James Bond always really kind of attracted me uh to that lifestyle.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I spent a lot of my life just soaking in information and new experiences.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but a lot of that was driven in the beginning by uh this desire, the family dynamic that I had, especially with my father, uh, this desire to stand out to him, you know, to be seen by him, to be recognized by him.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so my idea early on of success was okay, go to go to college, get good grades, be the absolute number one best that you can be.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, have a job where you carry a briefcase and wear a suit and go to a big fancy office building.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_01: That was my idea of what success meant when I was earlier.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: So um I studied uh political science and Russian and ended up uh becoming a banker for six years.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I had everything that I thought I wanted in that.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the fancy car and the fancy house and all that stuff.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: But uh I was really not very happy.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: I I hate math, which is funny how I got into banking.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: But uh what happened was I was having a lot of physical problems because I was an athlete.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: So I was a fairly high-level athlete.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: I was uh a junior Olympic wrestler and I was a soccer player and um the typical overachiever, always trying to make daddy happy somehow.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: And uh when I was in uh when I started working, I started having a lot of physical problems with my body.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I started going to see doctors and massage therapists and chiropractors, and uh one day a chiropractor told me I should go try some yoga.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I said, I'll do anything.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, okay, yoga is just gonna be sitting there and oming and and life was gonna be boring.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I ended up um coming out of my first yoga class feeling grounded for the first time in my life.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And this was sort of turning point in my life because I said, I want more of this feeling.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: And through my yoga practice, as I started getting into meditation, um, connecting with my body, uh, connecting more with my spirit and my soul, I started to see the expectations I was living under, these false expectations that I had um put on myself in my life.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I started to shift out of that.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: So that led from one thing to another.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: I got out of banking at some point, uh, I got into something more creative, which was marketing.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it gave me the ability to start my own company also.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I had a marketing company for uh about six or seven years.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: That allowed me, because I was in business for myself, to kind of follow my dream of moving overseas.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I moved to Europe and lived in Germany in Berlin for uh uh 17 years, started a company there.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um during my time in Berlin, I also started an electric car company.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: I uh continued teaching yoga.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I've been teaching yoga for 25 years, mindfulness, meditation.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: But I always had one foot in kind of business, the entrepreneurial world.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: And what I found was that my kind of my pursuit of personal development uh and working on myself, understanding myself, understanding where I came from started to become more and more part of my lifestyle.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: And the business side of my life was becoming less and less.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I my dream was to kind of step completely out of that business side and fully into my spiritual path of yoga, teaching yoga, um, teaching mindfulness.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: And what really shifted that was about 10 years ago, I discovered plant medicines and shamanism.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I people have heard of this probably ayahuasca, magic mushrooms, and that changed my life again.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: I've gone through these phases of life-changing events.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so I went to the jungle, went to the to Peru, sat in the Amazon for a couple months with shamans, and I've been in India many times, I've sat with gurus, I've sat with a lot of great teachers in my life, and have soaked up all of this energy of spiritual transformation, this idea know thyself, going deep inside instead of looking for uh you know, for the attention from the outside.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that has become my life.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of have not completely given up on all my business, but my lifestyle now and my life revolves around this idea of service, being in the service, being in service to others.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm currently uh coaching, uh doing life coaching.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm coaching men mostly.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: I have some coaching programs.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: I'm teaching sexuality, I'm a tantric healer.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: I am guiding uh plant medicine retreats all around the world, which is where you and I met, you know, with apotheosis, facilitator of apotheosis.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Had some great, great times and great days in the jungles of Costa Rica together.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I really am highly focused on helping people, not just men, but people, to step into their full power, into the realization of who they really are and get down to their core essence beneath all of the layers that we get built up through our lives.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: And because I had so many of those layers myself, I really can recognize that.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: And my work in primal therapy, so I'm a facilitator for inner child work as well, has helped me to see the origins of a lot of our conditioning and patterns and addictions.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I bring that into my work too.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I'm just trying to create a holistic kind of being and always still working also on myself, which is very important, going deeper and deeper into myself to distill exactly what is it and who is it that I am.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes you meet people and their passion comes through so strongly, it kind of rubs off on you and you kind of become passionate, right?
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's you could say that's charisma, but I think that's why we like being around people that are passionate about things because it makes us feel more alive and more excited.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was wondering, um, you initially said that you aspired to be someone like James Bond, and that kind of made you an overachiever.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um what about the path that you're on now, the spiritual path?
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: What do you love most about it?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like why does it still make you so passionate day after day after day?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think because it is the most real and authentic that I can be.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: When I'm in my when I'm in my when I'm on my spiritual path, when I'm doing my practices, whether it's meditation or yoga or energy work, it it feels authentic because I'm dropping the facade of what uh I think other people want me to be.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_01: And this is this is one of the keys, I think, for anyone to find their own passion is to distill beneath, again, all of the uh, you know, what culture and society says that you should be, or how much money you think you should make, but instead to uh find out what truly resonates with you.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: And when you find that thing, and we say sometimes uh do that thing that you just cannot not do.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's your passion.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And for me, my medicine work, especially my shamanism and and and uh coaching, these are the things that I can't not do.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: I just have to do it.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_01: I feel this drive to do it.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the the reward that I get from seeing others break free and break through their issues, their problems.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, maybe it's you know depression or grief or shame.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, maybe they've lost their way in life, their purpose, they just don't know where the next thing is or their blocks.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: To see that opening and that expansion in somebody else is the best reward that I can receive because my mission in this world, and may sound quite lofty, I suppose, is to help others evolve to the highest place that they can so that that will contribute to the evolution of humankind and the evolution of the planet.
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: Because I really believe that it doesn't take every single person on this planet to kind of wake up.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: We just need to reach a critical mass of people.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: And if we can get that critical mass to kind of shift their consciousness and start to expand and move up, then it will be like dominoes.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: It'll start to spread, and that is what will create this collective shift in human consciousness.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel like I'm I'm trying to do my part in that as a conduit for the energy that is coming down through me, especially in my shamanic work.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it's, I don't feel like it's me doing the work.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like I've created a conduit for universal energy or God energy or divine energy, whatever you want to call it.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and that also helps me to take the ego out of it.
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm always trying to check my ego because I'm yeah, I'm human and I've had a very healthy, strong ego in the past.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I'm really trying every day to to kind of chip away at that ego so that I can be in service to others as much as possible.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love where this is going.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you mentioned ego there, and you know, it the ego is not uh necessarily something that is always terrible and evil, right?
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes ego can be the thing that helps you to maybe uh assert boundaries or assist someone in need or achieve things that are good for you and your family, for example.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but then it can also cause a lot of problems.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm just curious how your own ego in the past has shown up for you.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: And how would you kind of describe the influence of the ego?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Do you kind of think of it as like a voice in your head?
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Or like how like how do you think about it?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's a very common word in spiritual circles.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, the first thing I want to say is you're absolutely right.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: The ego is not evil in itself.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's necessary, it's necessary for survival.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think the goal is to have a healthy balance in your ego and to not let it control your life.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the thing is that very often the ego is steering us based on our conditioning.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: So the ego learns something from the childhood that, I don't know, um, maybe you are told by your dad that uh, you know, in order to be successful, you need to drive a BMW.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's what you see, that's what you witness, or that your your parents talk a lot about money, and that's success is to have a big house and have X in your bank account.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's what you grow up with, and your ego is going to then react in any situation that happens to come up, that is where finance or money is is a question, right?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: So that's where you're acting out of your ego.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: But maybe success isn't just determined by money, it's a lot of other things.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have a healthy relationship?
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Do you love yourself?
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Do you have a healthy physical body?
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: So the ego, I feel, can tend to skew our view of what is best for us.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_01: So the the goal is that's the whole point of finding yourself, right?
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: People talk about, I want to find myself.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: Who am I really?
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like it is that person who is beneath the conditioning, beneath the ego in your core essence, right?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're all born with an ego because we need it to survive.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um for me, I would say that ego has I don't think about it, it's not a voice in my head, it's more of a feeling in my physical body.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: So if I get triggered by something, for example, the first place I notice it is I get tense.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: If my wife uh says something that triggers me, or maybe I have an idea that's different from hers, and we're arguing about I don't know, the best way to educate the kids.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I have my ideas, she has her ideas.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if she's not going along with my idea, then I first feel it my physical body, and it's like, oh, frustration, or maybe some anger, or it could breed resent.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a lot of different emotions that can be attached to ego.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I feel like the physical body is a really good place to check in if you have a trigger and an ego reaction.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: Then you can start to think, be aware of it, and say, okay, I know that when I get triggered by this particular subject, I feel a tightness in my chest and in my belly.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, that's happening now.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Instead of reacting like I normally would, I'm gonna stop and say, all right, what is actually happening here?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: Is what she's saying my truth?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Is it her truth?
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: Is it my ego that is fighting against this?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Or maybe what she's saying is actually true.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_01: But because the ego can be so strong, it bypasses our rational thought sometimes and it creates an instant reaction.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the problem, for example, in a lot of uh relationships these days is that people just react.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: They don't think about it, they don't take it in, they don't feel into what's happening with them.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a reaction.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when you say things that uh, you know, become defensive, or you become passive aggressive, or you become angry.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I try now to be aware when those ego things come up, and of course they still come up, but then to look at them, take a moment, and to not take things personally as often.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's another key, I feel.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because that the thing that that person is saying or doing, that's their reality, that's their truth.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and to try to see it from that side also, I think, is important.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: But to then feel that ego come up and to say, okay, let's look at what you're saying.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Is that my reality or not?
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then to say, you know what, I I get that, I see what you're saying, but that doesn't really resonate with me.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then to have an open discussion about it.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: What you're describing there on the surface seems, you know, quite quite simple and quite understandable.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I think what you're actually describing there is one of the most important things human beings could learn to kind of reduce global catastrophe and suffering.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, if you think of the violence, the wars that have been caused by people who can't do that, can't recognize when they're triggered and take a step back.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and even, you know, myself with like a lot of reading and stoicism practice and meditation, from time to time, I can still feel that feeling of being triggered.
• 18:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it's almost like a spiral for me where it's I I kind of know that I'm being triggered, but I'm still like falling into it and then coming back out and falling into it.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like it's not as easy as people think when you start getting sucked into it.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's like there's a gravity to it.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what is your process?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like when you get heavily triggered, how does Adam's mind work in that moment?
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm curious.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what you just said is very true.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's the simplest concept to understand, and it's one of the hardest things to actually do.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because the ego is so strong.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's a practice, you know, like when you said you fall in and out, that's what it is.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's a practice.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: You you fall in, you come out of it and see what you just did, and then the more you do it, the stronger that muscle gets.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the first thing that I do when I feel like I'm triggered is as I said, I try to feel into my body, like what's happening with my body, like where most people have a place in their body when they get triggered that they feel it the most.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: So for me, I feel at my solar plexus.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my solar plexus gets tight.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: And my I tend to do this thing with my brow, you know, like this.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_01: So the first step is to recognize what your ego trigger signal is.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you feel it in your body?
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that is your indicator that okay, something's off here.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: Once you do that, if you're in the heat of an argument, for example, with your partner or the friend or coworker, the first thing to do is, and this sounds very cliche, but take a deep breath and then to just express it out and say, hey, I'm feeling real really triggered right now.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: I can feel it in my body.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Let me think about this for a second, what you just said instead of answering what was just said or reacting to what was just said.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Just say that simple lie.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: Let me think for a second about what you just said and see if that is my truth.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: And this is the first step in conscious relating, especially in relationships, is giving a bit of space.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, if your partner is getting triggered and you notice that because you know their triggers and you can feel that, you can also be the one to say, you know what, I feel like we're both getting triggered here a little bit.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we should just think about this and then ask for an explanation or ask for more detail.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: So if I get really triggered by something that Selicia says, I'll say, you know, I'm getting really triggered.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just think about this for a second, what you just said, because it's really pissing me off right now.
• 20:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, all right.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: What do you mean by this particular thing?
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: If you need clarification, right?
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_01: It could be a very direct thing.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: And it could also be an arrow coming from them on purpose to trigger you.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's the other thing that we tend to do is we know the triggers of our partners, and we can use those as weapons, as arrows.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: So learning how to recognize that also is important.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I know she's bringing up, you know, this past event just to trigger me, to get under my skin.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And then making a conscious decision that you're not going to allow yourself to go into that reactive mode.
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: And you can say, hey, baby, I know you feel this way about that.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really sorry.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_01: I've apologized for that in the past.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let's try to focus on the issue at hand right now.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and it's hard, man, to stay calm in those situations.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's really hard.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: I get that.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: But it is like working a muscle.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: You have to practice it.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: And conscious communication is about practicing.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this topic is really, really important because people don't often talk about their triggers and how to deal with the triggers and things like that.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it can actually be quite offensive to some people to you know say, hey, I thought you got triggered.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know, that can actually that that used to be a trigger for me, where it would be like, What do you mean?
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: You know, and kind of allowed it to be another thing that I'd get worked up about until eventually you realize, no, there's actual actually a lot of strength in just recognizing it and owning it.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, so I I kind of want your comments on something I'm seeing a lot in society, where it's like a lot of people seem almost to enjoy triggering other people, you know, almost taking a form of satisfaction from it.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can see it in the online world with like trolling.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um you can see it like I think, you know, with with fighters, uh, you know, kind of the face offs, and it's almost like these videos go viral, like, ha ha, he got him.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_00: He's you know, he he triggered the other person.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, aren't they better?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's almost seen to some of us as like a badge of honor.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, if I can trigger Adam publicly, I'm I'm better than him.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like that's the kind of uh mindset.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just curious what your comments are on that whole thing.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I feel like that kind of action is a it's a power, it's a power game.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's usually people who feel some sort of powerlessness in their own lives.
• 23:24
  SPEAKER_01: So by having exerting power over somebody else by putting them down, it's no different than bullying.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the bullier is usually someone whose life is totally fucked up.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: They're they have an unhappy uh life at home, uh, they haven't been giving the getting the love that they need or the attention that they need.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: So what do they do?
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: They project and they take it out on other people.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_01: This, you know, like in politics, you see uh owning the libs, you know, or uh, you know, that's one of the one of the places where you see the most um you know underhanded kind of um necessity of people to put others down is in politics because it gives them this sort of leg up and makes them appear strong and uh and in control, uh, especially among men, I feel like this is the case.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: So men will often use trolling or putting other people down uh to regain some sense of their own masculinity, what they feel is masculine, uh to make themselves look strong or feel strong, when in actuality there's usually a deep insecurity beneath that.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I feel this dynamic is really about people trying to gain some kind of control in their lives.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: And you see this with men, for example, who use bullying to make themselves feel more masculine or more powerful.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um women can be kind of catty with each other.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: They can be very judgmental.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's a lot of you know, body shaming and uh a lot of direction towards how a woman looks by other women also.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just men.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: And beneath both of these dynamics, I feel is insecurities within themselves.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so this dynamic of kind of bullying others or trolling other people, uh, I really feel is simply a cover-up for deep insecurities within themselves.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's that old phrase, hurt people, hurt people, you know, that kind of stuck with me.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: Just there's a cycle uh that that that happens.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um so you know when I met uh when I met you?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: One of the things that I was struck with, this was back in 2000.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: When was it?
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: 2019?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Was that the first apotheosis?
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: 2009, yeah.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: May 2019.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so one of the things I was struck by you, and I'm sure you've heard this before, uh, is that you seem to embody masculine and feminine.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like you could say sacred masculinity, sacred femininity, which we can we which we can go into in a moment.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: But here you are, you have a kind of a gr leader energy who's also teaching yoga, right?
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And talking about embodiment and meditation and being heart-focused.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: That is very rare, like super rare.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: Usually it swings one way or the other.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's like he's a man's man, you know, he like works hard and grinds and doesn't talk about his feelings.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: Or it's like they're you know, they're quite soft and feminine, and you don't often see like a really good combination of the two.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so yeah, I'm just sort of I'd like to go into this a little bit.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_00: Is that something you consciously cultivated?
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And um, yeah, I I where does that come from in you?
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it was a conscious thing that I did.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like all of the different practices that I've done over the years um have kind of helped me to find that balance.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because for me, the divine masculine is a man who is balanced between both his masculine energy and his feminine energy.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_01: And there is the you know, the strength, the protection, the provision that is typically associated with the masculine energy, the holding space, the creating, you know, a foundation for the family where the family feels protected and safe.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the doer, that's masculine energy, making things happen.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: But without the feminine side of things, which is the energy of flow, of creativity, of intuition, then I feel like we men are only using a portion of our true power.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: Can't be in your full masculine power unless you also have the creative side, the flow side, the um uh the intuition, and men also have an intuition.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: Women have it very, very strongly, but men also have this, learning how to cultivate that.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: And being in touch with your emotions and being able to express those and be vulnerable in that is not a weakness, which is what our society has often taught us.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, it's a strength.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: And when I when I ask women, for example, you know, what do women want?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Right, the number one thing that I have been told by many is they need to feel safe.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: And when I say within the context of a relationship, when I feel when I say safe, I don't mean that they have this big strong man who, you know, will have their AR-15 assault rifle and protect the house from anything that tries to attack us.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean that they feel safe in being who they are and expressing their femininity, being able to be trusted in their intuition.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh many men kind of dismiss a woman's intuition because they're so in their logic, which is very masculine.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: They need to also feel like they can express their emotions and how they feel.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: And many men, because they're so uncomfortable with their own emotions, they reject that.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, she's too much, or she's a drama queen, or you know, they don't give space to that.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: So by doing that, we're not allowing women to be in their full expression of their divine feminine.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: And the divine feminine is never needy or uh or nagging or you know, bitchy, but they can become that if we don't give space for that.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the same with ourselves.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: We have to give space for the feminine within us in order to actually connect with the feminine outside of us.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want to have a really good relationship with your woman, you need to be in touch with your feminine side, but still be grounded in your masculine.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: Otherwise, as you said, you end up becoming one of these airy-fairy kind of ungrounded men, which we see a lot.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen a lot in the yoga community and the spiritual community.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and if you're not in touch with that feminine side, you can tend to go into the immature masculine, which some people call it the toxic masculine.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't like that so much.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: I prefer immature masculine because they simply haven't learned how to step into their true divine masculine power.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: We have to educate people how to do this.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that um that my development on this path has been just using a lot of different tools, learning a lot of different things, and doing a lot of shadow work too.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: Shadow work is about confronting these aspects of yourself that maybe you're not so proud of.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: You know, looking beyond the strength on the outside and going deep inside also into the dark corners of yourself.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that takes true courage and fearlessness and power.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: We call that in in you know shamanism the the jaguar medicine.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: Jaguar represents this these aspects of courage and fearlessness.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: And to look inward is one of the most difficult and challenging things that we can possibly do.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_01: And many men avoid that path.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is uh this is really important stuff.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I so I live in a relatively small town in Wales, and there's been some hard times over the last few decades for people, you know, a coal mine coal mining town, small community.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember I had a mutual friend Jordan Bates come and visit uh a few years ago, and he was kind of struck by the way that some of the men were acting here.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um when we went out, some of the men were kind of like pulling on his shirt and blocking his path, and there was this this kind of he described it as toxic kind of atmosphere, mainly with the with the with the guys that he noticed.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I I I think it must be really hard for for men in in that this kind of culture, and I think there's all over the world there's the same kind of thing, where there's this fear of judgment about emoting, about being seen as someone who might may cry or ask for help.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's also no surprise that male suicides is actually like one of the biggest killers as well.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: So there's clearly some kind of block that's that's there, and if you could describe it as a pandemic of of sorts.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, how do how do men start to move in the direction of opening and kind of releasing and not being so terrified to express themselves?
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it's a really good question.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um this idea of or this concept that men or the stereotype that men need to always be strong, and you know, boys don't cry, and all of these things are cultural cultural influences and societal influences that go back for often for generations.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: So your fear, your friend group, your peer group have also learned this.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so that makes it even more difficult to start to step into that place of, let's say, vulnerability and showing your emotions when you don't have a support network around you who is open to that.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it is a very difficult place to start.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what I could suggest is to start to discover your emotions with yourself before you do it with somebody else.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: So this could be journaling exercises, you know, starting to write about your emotions and how you truly feel.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh meditations, there are lots of meditations out there that will help you kind of start to feel into your body, feel into where you're at.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, men's groups, there's lots of men's groups out there who are now creating a safe space for men to be able to express themselves without fear of judgment.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're right, there's a lot of judgment out there, and men do have to be careful with who they share their feelings with and their emotions, who they show this to.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: Because, you know, you may make the decision, okay, today I'm gonna be a conscious man and I'm gonna start to talk about my feelings, and you get together with your buddies and you express that, and the the rejection can happen.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's a reality if you're not choosing the right people to do that with.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: So discernment plays an important part in this.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: If there's a good friend who you really trust, learning how to be honest with them and saying, hey, listen, this is where I'm at right now.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: I really feel like things are just kind of stopped up inside of me.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't understand why I get so angry all the time at every situation, why I get angry at my girlfriend or my wife.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's something in there.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I want to understand that.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna explore this path of going a little bit deeper.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, can I I like you, I trust you, you're my good friend.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: You know, do you feel like you could hold that for me?
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's that's a very direct way of finding somebody that you can speak with.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_01: You know, men are going to therapy now these days.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little, it's a lot more uh less, it's been less stigmatized, it's much more mainstream now to have a therapist or a coach.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, coaches are great because they can reflect back to you what you're saying and start to show it to you from a different perspective.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: Because what happens is in this bubble of conditioning that we have, we often are in a box that we can't see outside of.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: So if you're in this box, um you need somebody from the outside to start to give you a different perspective and to show you a different way out and to give you the space to express that without being judged.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: And a coach, a good coach or a therapist is going to give you that space without actually judging what you're saying.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what men are most afraid of, right?
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: They're afraid of being judged.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: They're afraid of being made fun of, or um, there's a lot of fear there, you know, and becoming vulnerable because it then displays in their minds weakness.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: But what I can tell you is my experience, because I was terrified of this.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when I when I was in banking and I first started with yoga, I didn't tell anybody I was doing yoga because I was afraid they were gonna, you know, put me down, make fun of me.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, back then, this is in the 90s, you know, it was mostly, you know, effeminate men who were doing yoga, if any.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't want to be grouped in with that for whatever reason.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so I didn't tell anybody.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: And now I have discovered the immense power there is in living a truly authentic life.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: And in order for you to be really authentic, you have to be in touch with your emotions and your feelings and knowing what's happening with you.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's how you develop empathy for others and compassion for others and love for yourself, and how you can be adaptable in almost every situation.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, if anything, um, learning to be in touch with yourself and your emotions and your feelings allows you in almost every life situation to be better in whatever that situation is.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: Now, if you put yourself into a situation where you just have to be an asshole all the time, you know, often that's like politics or, you know, different things.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you're a hitman, for example, you don't want to have a lot of compassion.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: But um, but for the average guy, you know, we want to, most men want to be good guys, right?
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: We wanna, we want to take care of our women, we want to, you know, take care of ourselves and our children and people around us.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we want to be seen by society as being a good person, someone people want to hang around with.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the more rounded you are uh and in touch with your feelings and in touch with, but also staying grounded, the more you step into your true authentic power.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: And what I discovered was as soon as I did that, people actually thought higher of me and liked me even more than when I was working under this facade of being the this or the that or the, you know, the the banker or the guy with with money or the guy with you know um fancy clothes on, whatever.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: They saw that I was authentic and real.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that has a lot of power in itself.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yes.
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: And uh to build on that as well, I think so.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: You've talked about um coaching and and therapists.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: I think the the first level that a lot of us um kind of get our therapy from is our friends.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like you could say that thre the good friendships is like daily therapy in a way.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's like they're good friends you can you can express to, you can offload to, you can get their perspective.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: I actually think that there's also a problem with people who don't really know how to be good friends, um, because they're probably not very good friends to themselves.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: And like, for example, if I if I was really struggling with something and I just like, Adam, out of the blue, I'm really struggling with something.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Can I send you a voice note expressing?
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: You probably wouldn't, you know, like tell me to cheer up, you know, or like give me some kind of cliche advice.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: You would actually listen, like wow, you know, like actually listen and try to hear and be mindful of what's being expressed.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: So few people actually have that is kind of tragic, actually.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: And in my own journey, doing a bit of traveling, you know, on a s on a small scale compared to what you've done, just a few years kind of doing this kind of work and going on some retreats, and then coming back home and then seeing the value that I can bring to my friends just from listening, just from talking, just from asking those questions like that they may be afraid to talk to other people about, you know, what were you feeling when this was happening?
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or were you jealous then?
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: Or were you super annoyed then?
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not judging them, I'm genuinely curious, like I want to know this stuff.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like you can just see like, wow, I've never had this before.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so you said at the beginning that your mission is to kind of uh help other people awaken and to kind of uh kind of grow up um and become the best versions of themselves and to step into their own power so that humanity overall can do that.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you said you don't need the entire population to do that.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_00: You kind of can create a domino effect.
• 40:47
  SPEAKER_00: And I've seen that with friendships, you know, like you can, and I'm sure you have as well, your presence from doing this work on yourself, the value that you can bring to your wife, to your children, to your friends, even like a stranger that you meet for an hour, right?
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: And you just have a real conversation, um, is just is just truly incredible.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, everybody wants to be seen.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody wants to be heard.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're we're all in this boat together.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_01: We all have our you know, our uh shadow sides, we all have the things in our lives that we're not so proud of.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: We've all had experiences that that were maybe difficult in our lives, we've all had relationship problems and work problems.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: We're humans, you know, and when we bottle that stuff up inside of us and push it down, it just like like water behind a dam, it builds up the pressure inside.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: And what happens when that pressure continues to build and doesn't have an outlet, when we start to feel like no one is listening to us, uh no one cares about us, um, you know, no one understands us, and those emotions are all down there, then what happens?
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: Well, eventually the dam's gonna burst.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: And how does that look?
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it looks like acting out, becoming it could become violent, uh, it could turn inward and become and turn into disease, uh mental illness.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: Some people take that drastic step of committing suicide because the pressure becomes so great and the despondency becomes so great because they feel very alone.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: If no one's listening to you, really listening to you, then there is no outlet for that kind of thing.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: And and this is where I feel like friendships, as you said, are so important, but true friendships, because a real friend is not gonna just listen to your story and be like, oh, it'll be okay, you know, chin off, you know, keep going.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what do the British say?
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: Uh uh carry on and chin up and carry on or something like this.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: Keep calm and carry on, right?
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's what the British right.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: But that is that is staying very much on the surface level.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: And how many artists, for example, how many musicians have ended up dying from drug overdoses or killing themselves because they're so depressed?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_01: Because on the outside they look so successful and they look so happy, and inside they're just dying because they have so much turmoil.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_01: And there's nobody really listening to them because they think, oh, this guy must be must be okay.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: He must be, he's having this fantastic life.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: So we need to find people who will truly listen.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_01: And in order for someone to listen and then develop empathy and compassion, they also have to be in touch with their own emotions.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_01: But one reason why people just kind of gloss over it and say, Oh, it'll be okay.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm really sorry about that, but I'm sure you'll be fine, is because they're afraid of their own emotions.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: They're afraid of what, you know, someone expressing their grief to them.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, oh, well, I don't know what to say to that.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm just gonna say, oh, I hope you feel better.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know, because they're afraid to really go deep into what's behind that grief.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you so sad?
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're because you do take on a, you take on that energy from somebody who starts to go deeper into their emotions, and it is an investment in that person.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: But a true friend will invest in their friend.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's what friendship is about, right?
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not going to invest in your friend and their well-being in every way possible, then you're just an acquaintance.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: You're not really a friend.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_00: I think people m mix those two up as well, right?
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and you you hear all the time, um, I thought they were my friend, and then this thing happened, you know, I got hospitalized or I lost my job or something.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, you kind of yeah, they were acquaintances all along.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that's not necessarily a a bad thing.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right, acquaintances can be great acquaintances.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's not like you need to turn every acquaintance into a friend, but um yeah, it it is there is a distinction there.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um so something I'm curious about, and this is I I've never spoken to you about this before.
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_00: So on the spiritual path, one of the I guess unspoken principles is that happiness, peace of mind, and joy is something that comes from within, right?
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_00: Something that comes from deep inside.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: And we've all experienced you know those states of pure mindfulness or bliss or joy with not much happening on the outside, right?
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like this feeling that comes from within.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_00: But then there are the world is also full of interesting external pleasures, you know, like nice food and nice objects and cars and technology and toys and experiences.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I I guess that's a tricky balance, actually.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the Buddhists try to solve this by just getting rid of it all.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like I'm just gonna become celibate and you know, not own anything, and that's how I'm gonna deal with it.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_00: What is your perspective on that, on this kind of tension that exists between inner peace versus like chasing nice a nice lifestyle?
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a really good question.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and the Buddhists, yeah, they've taken the easy way out in many ways.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: True.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: And the problem with that is okay, maybe you end suffering by not having attachment, but you also miss the joy of life.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: And my my personal feeling is, and I've gone through many different iterations of how I should be.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've I've I've gone the path of trying to be a vegan or vegetarian, denying myself that.
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've looked at my, you know, my sex life and think, okay, maybe I need to be celibate for a while.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm having too much sex with too many different people.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: What I now have settled on is this life is amazing, and there are so many incredible things to experience in it.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I feel like you should experience as much as you possibly can.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and I say this in my to my yoga students, to my yoga class.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's a lot of people who have very strong ideas about what it means to be a yogi.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, well, you can't eat meat and you have to meditate every day, and you have to get up at four o'clock in the morning and practice, do your asana practice, and and and and and and.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: And what I tell people is listen, life has a lot to offer.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to eat meat every once in a while, do it.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to take drugs every once in a while, do it.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you want to drink alcohol, if you want to have sex, whatever you want to do, do it, as long as it's not harming anyone else and it's not harming you.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: So it's practicing this yoga principle of ahimsa, which is non-harm, right?
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, in essence, what I'm saying is everything in moderation.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: Because as soon as those things, those external things start to control you, like an addiction, for example, or when your joy and your happiness is dependent upon those things, that's when you're out of balance.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: So if you've got this inner stillness inside of you're already coming from a peaceful place and you have a foundation of calm and joy inside, then the world is your playground.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: Everything will seem even better, and you don't have to chase it in order to be happy.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, this is where a lot of people fall off the path is they start chasing after money, for example, because money is the only thing that really makes them happy.
• 48:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, now you're dependent on money.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's an external force that you're reliant upon for your happiness.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: You lose the joy out of it because really, are you really happy?
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you have a million bucks.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: But people who have a million bucks, they want now two million bucks.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: People have two million bucks want to become billionaires now, right?
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it's you're always chasing something, and you I th my my my uh uh how I feel is that you can't be fully fulfilled unless you already have that foundation of joy inside of you to begin with.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_00: So it's so that that principle of not bringing harm to yourself or others, uh, that's a really good rule of thumb.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, so if you already have this kind of peace from within in a in a weird way, by avoiding things, that's just the flip side of desiring things anyway, right?
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like two sides of the same coin.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_00: If you are at peace, you'd have no reason to say no to this fun thing.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like you're kind of if you're flowing, you would be open to it.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I guess the follow-up question then would become how do you kind of keep an eye because uh on some of these behaviors and habits?
• 49:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes there's a slippery slope with certain behaviors, you know, maybe someone, uh a sugar is their thing, or video games, or pornography or something, and it's kind of like, oh, like it's one day it's moderate, and then two months later they're in like deep into it, you know.
• 50:09
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, but what's the kind of thing?
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_01: Very quickly.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_01: So this is where developing a practice of awareness is so important.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: So always looking at your actions, at your thoughts, at your emotions to check in with yourself in different situations.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: For example, um, you know, smoking weed.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_01: I like to smoke weed every once in a while.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I've gone through these phases in my life where I notice, oh, I'm smoking quite a bit.
• 50:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'm smoking like every night before I go to bed so that I can sleep.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, why am I not sleeping properly?
• 50:47
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, uh, let's let's go into that.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_01: And when I start to notice that I need something in order for something else to happen, I need to smoke weed in order for me to feel calm, or um, I need to have that one little drink before, you know, after I come home from work in order to come down.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or I need my girlfriend to tell me how great I am in order to feel like I'm great.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: That's the warning sound.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's when I start to slow down and say, okay, wait a minute.
• 51:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um, could I do without this thing?
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: I probably could, but do I want to do without this thing?
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't know.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: But I feel like that's where the warning starts to come in.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's why this practice of constantly being aware of what it is that you're doing and what what's happening inside of you is so important.
• 51:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um we have this beautiful thing in in yoga, I think it was actually originally from Buddhism too, is uh, you know, when I create my class, I put my hands to my third eye, my mouth, and my and my heart, and what it represents is the the concepts or the ideas of right thought, right speech, right action.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so behind that is basically every thought that you have in your mind should be a thought that is with pure intention, with good intention, non-judgmental, um towards yourself or towards others, right?
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_01: So that's right thought.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh right speech is everything that you say that comes out of your mouth, should be the truth, should be honest, should also be without violence, because words can hurt just as much as physical violence, right?
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_01: And right action.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_01: Everything, every action that I take should in some way be to the benefit of myself or to the or to the world.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_01: And if you just kind of follow those three principles and applying it to your own life, uh, I think that's a really good way to kind of start thinking about things.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_01: So if I'm drinking a lot of alcohol, for example, uh, and my mind is going into um, you know, let's say I'm frustrated at work, right?
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_01: And my mind is looping in this like conversation I had with a boss, and it's just playing it over and over in my mind.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: And what's happening is it's making me feel like I'm disrespected.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: Well, okay, in order to get rid of that feeling of discomfort of being disrespected, I'm gonna have a drink, right?
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_01: So my mind is getting into this place of negativity.
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: Speech.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe I notice that I'm being very passive aggressive with my wife and constantly about a particular subject.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, starting to notice that shit, I'm saying the same thing over and over to her, and that's hurting her, that's hurting her feelings.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's that's uh that's these arrows that are coming out that I talked about earlier.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, we don't want to do that.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then my actions, of course, that kind of speaks for itself.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if I'm shooting up with drugs every night, or I'm, you know, uh cutting people off in traffic because I'm angry, or I'm cheating at work or cheating on my wife, then I can recognize, okay, what I'm doing is not practicing a himsa.
• 54:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's hurting myself, it's hurting other people.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that is a super powerful framework.
• 54:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna I'm gonna journal on that myself because that isn't really nice.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah.
• 54:16
  SPEAKER_01: And a good practice in that for your journal work, just to give you a tip, is to write down those places in your life where you do go into negativity.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, start with the mind and say, okay, what kind of thoughts do I have that are are harmful?
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I I'm very judgmental about, I don't know, fat people.
• 54:39
  SPEAKER_01: Or I hate this particular thing about myself.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm very judgmental about myself and this particular thing.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_01: Or I'm, you know, constantly thinking about harming this person, or I'd really love to just kick the shit out of that guy, or you know, whatever it happens to be.
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um about your speech, like how where in my life do I say things that are harming other people or harming myself?
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_01: And what are the actions I take in my life that are less than stellar, you know?
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, those are good sounds for yourself to start to see your shadows.
• 55:17
  SPEAKER_00: So one of the things that I'm and this is related, that I'm fascinated by in you is that you don't you don't seem to have days off in a way.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's how I would describe it.
• 55:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're you're all into this.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: You don't you don't take shortcuts.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's I guess you could say it's like holding yourself to high standards.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's you know, you kind of don't don't allow like bad behavior from yourself, or if you you know, if it happens, you try to correct it.
• 55:49
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is, you know, sometimes you may have this the days where you just think like, screw it all.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just not gonna care today.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna kind of self-sabotage, or what's the point of it anyway?
• 56:02
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, who cares if I'm mean to that person, right?
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: And who cares if I indulge in that thing?
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of just like whatever.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, if someone comes to me, I'm not gonna be the kind of good spiritual kind person, I'm gonna be the the immature type today because I've had enough.
• 56:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm too stressed.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, and it's I I guess you could call that sort of like not caring or apathy, uh, but it's actually very dangerous, you know.
• 56:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess it's another slippery slope that you could go down.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um what are your thoughts on that?
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_00: Do you ever uh you have days like that or in the past, or do you ever work with people who maybe slip into that and sort of how do you matter?
• 56:43
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I have those I have my bad days just like everybody else.
• 56:46
  SPEAKER_01: I have my days where I'm really unconscious.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, I I I get into fights with with Selicia, with my wife, and I can see my little kid coming out and being like, you know, you did this and you did that.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we can have some pretty big blow-up fights between us.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm at the point now where I'm I feel like I'm aware enough where I can almost observe that little Adam coming out, that little wounded Adam, you know, who didn't get something when he was a kid.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and I can see it and I can almost laugh at it somehow.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I can see her little wounded Selicia coming out also, and our two little kids are fighting it out, you know, and then afterwards we can kind of come down and and start to and and talk about it.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_01: But uh yeah, I am human.
• 57:33
  SPEAKER_01: We're all human and we're gonna have those slips.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not on all the time.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell you also that something I've learned from the feminine, especially from my wife, is that we need and deserve those days off where we are not, you know, where we allow ourselves to collapse into depression or collapse into being sad or collapse into, you know, stress or whatever it happens to be.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we need to give ourselves that space.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: We can't take ourselves too seriously all the time.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been kind of guilty of that, you know, it's the it's this overachiever thing that I still carry with me that I've really been working on for a long time.
• 58:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and she's she's a master at just saying, you know what, Adam, today, you know, I don't give a fuck about anybody else.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna take care of myself, and that means I'm gonna lay in bed and I'm gonna eat ice cream for the whole day, and I'm gonna watch Netflix.
• 58:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I've learned how difficult it is for me to do that, to just check out and say, well, I'm taking a day off from my spiritual path or whatever, and I'm just gonna, you know, lay around and do nothing, be unproductive, and uh uh, you know, I'm gonna, you know, fuck off and maybe I'll watch some, you know, some um, I don't know, some action movies and smoke some weed and just give me that day, give myself that day.
• 59:04
  SPEAKER_01: So it's almost like a cheat, right?
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 59:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that can also be healthy, just like everything else.
• 59:12
  SPEAKER_01: But if that starts, like you said, turning into a slippery slope, where now it's turning into two days and three days and a week and months and years now, that's when the problem comes up.
• 59:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not perfect.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: And the truth is that there are so many different situations in life that it throws to us that we will, it's very hard to react perfectly in every situation.
• 59:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we shouldn't have that expectation on ourselves either.
• 59:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's where we can really drop into self-judgment of like, oh, I'm supposed to be this spiritual being.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm supposed to be this evolved man, and you know, look at what I'm doing.
• 59:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm smoking a joint or I'm taking some MDMA on the weekend or something like this.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I'm I'm learning how to also kind of give that space.
• 59:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's beautiful.
• 59:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's actually something I'm working on myself right now.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually consciously trying to play more video games because I kind of got rid of it all for years, and then I kind of became relentlessly busy, this type of high achiever type mindset.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_00: And part of caring for yourself is allowing yourself to have fun, is to allow yourself to do things that don't always have a point, that don't always take you to the next level.
• 1:00:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I also think that for me, something that's opened up, and I'd like to get your thoughts on this, but when you parent, it opens up this kind of new way to relate to other people, and then you can start to relate to yourself in the same way.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is if my son was you know working really hard at school and was very kind of stressed, and maybe was a bit under the weather and emotional, you know, and you could just see irritable and uh maybe having a few tantrums or something, the caring father would not say to that son when Saturday comes, you know, we're gonna do work all day.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: You'd be like, You need to chill, you know, what do you want?
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: Let's have a movie day.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: It it would be that that love of that, even though you want the best for them.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: So when you see that, you can see that you can still love someone and want the best for them.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_00: And and that may may also include relaxation, fun, like pointless activities, just chilling out, eating ice cream in bed.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so that's been really interesting for me to kind of think of maybe one way that we can start treating ourselves is as a good parent would would treat their their child.
• 1:01:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a good point.
• 1:01:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where especially men can learn more from the feminine.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 1:01:49
  SPEAKER_01: Because that is the energy of the feminine is relaxing, is being in flow, is being soft with your and and the truth is we also deserve softness.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: We deserve to be in that place of rest.
• 1:02:03
  SPEAKER_01: And culturally, uh, you know, we not just men, but but people have been told, you know, be a productive member of society.
• 1:02:14
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta work hor hard and you can get whatever you want, you know.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_01: This is this is a myth.
• 1:02:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you're only working, if you're only doing and you're not giving space for things to come to you, then you're not stepping into your full potential.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a part that really gets missed a lot is the importance of rest.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: And this, again, is what I've really been learning in my current relationship from Selisha is the importance of rest and listening to that.
• 1:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: And we've clashed about that with the kids when I first arrived.
• 1:02:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, she has two children, and when we got married, you know, I stepped into being a stepdad, never had kids before.
• 1:02:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it's been a master class on, you know, on becoming a man and also understanding my role in the world, uh, understanding myself a lot better too, through these kids.
• 1:03:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so I came in with some preconceived ideas of what it means to discipline your kids, you know, and how how they should act and you know, punishment and rules and all this other kind of stuff, because that's what I grew up with.
• 1:03:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so one of the first things I did was I I noticed Alicia's so soft with the kids that we need some rules here in the house.
• 1:03:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if you you know, if you promise me that you're gonna do something, you don't do it, uh, well, there's gotta be a consequence to that.
• 1:03:33
  SPEAKER_01: And if you are feeling sick in the morning and you're not dying, well, you still go to school, just like you go to work.
• 1:03:41
  SPEAKER_01: That's how I was taught when I was a kid.
• 1:03:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, unless I had 106 fever and I was practically dead, I I had to go to school.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen the other side of that now, where Selicia says, No, this is not how it needs to be.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_01: Does it is it really that important that Mishka, that's our daughter's name, you know, goes to school today because she's got a bellyache?
• 1:04:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, is it really that important that she uh finishes her homework when she has an opportunity to go out with her friends and have this beautiful experience playing, uh, you know, going out on a boat or something like this?
• 1:04:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because those things are important too.
• 1:04:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I fought against that so much.
• 1:04:23
  SPEAKER_01: My my my ego was coming in saying, well, you know, but this is what I think.
• 1:04:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's this, and and this is how I was brought up.
• 1:04:30
  SPEAKER_01: And it's really caused me to stop and think.
• 1:04:34
  SPEAKER_01: This goes back to what we were talking about in the beginning about the ego when it comes up and your triggers.
• 1:04:39
  SPEAKER_01: I was getting super triggered when she would say, No, we're not gonna punish them.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna educate them and tell them why this wasn't the best thing.
• 1:04:47
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, we're not gonna ground them, we're not gonna do this because that's not really gonna do anything.
• 1:04:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and my whole system was like, no, they have to understand that this has a consequence.
• 1:04:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I'm starting to move through that and to become a bit softer in that, because there's a lot of truth to what she's saying, especially in parenthood.
• 1:05:07
  SPEAKER_01: Children learn better for the future if they understand why something is not appropriate or maybe not the best.
• 1:05:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but punishment is not always the best way to do that.
• 1:05:23
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe so in some instances, of course, there has to be some consequences, but I'm learning also to give them more space to be themselves, to allow them to make mistakes without consequences more often.
• 1:05:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because it is, you know, our our our 16-year-old, our 17-year-old now, you know, we went on holiday once and he stayed home by himself and he took the car out for a joyride.
• 1:05:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he doesn't have a license.
• 1:05:49
  SPEAKER_01: The age to drive a car here on the island uh is is 18.
• 1:05:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I was livid when we came back and I found this out.
• 1:05:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so I instantly went into this thing, we gotta ground him.
• 1:06:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is absolutely unacceptable.
• 1:06:02
  SPEAKER_01: And la.
• 1:06:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so he's like, well, Adam, you know, but he's 16.
• 1:06:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's what he's gonna do.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_01: He's gonna challenge that kind of thing and he's gonna make those mistakes.
• 1:06:10
  SPEAKER_01: And we can sit him down and explain to him why we're disappointed, you know, because he broke his word and what could happen if he got in a crash and these kinds of things.
• 1:06:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then he'll learn.
• 1:06:20
  SPEAKER_01: And if we express our disappointment because he made a wrong decision, that often is the worst thing for a kid rather than be grounded for because what happens, she said, for ground him, it's simply going to make him resentful and he's gonna be angry, and then he's gonna challenge you again.
• 1:06:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then she said, Have you ever stolen the car, Adam?
• 1:06:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I had to think, and the truth is, I did.
• 1:06:44
  SPEAKER_01: I snuck out my parents' house when I was 16 and took the car and went to my girlfriend's and had a license, but still I wasn't allowed to do it.
• 1:06:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, shit, I did the same thing.
• 1:06:54
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it felt totally okay back then.
• 1:06:57
  SPEAKER_01: It was exciting and it was so Yeah, I'm learning a lot through having having kids.
• 1:07:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's very wise, yeah, from Salisha there.
• 1:07:07
  SPEAKER_00: And it's uh I when when you're working with kids day to day, it's it's like um sparring, you know, like you you've done a lot of wrestling when you're younger, and you can theorize about these things all day long, but until you're actually like there in the moment with resistance, it's a different thing, you know, it's a completely different thing.
• 1:07:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we can we could have a like a logical discussion about you know the right and the wrong ways to discipline and give consequences, but you're in when you're in the in the heat of it, that's where you're really learning, right?
• 1:07:37
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where it's it's challenging and there's you know perfection doesn't exist and just kind of uh good enough is good enough half the time.
• 1:07:46
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, so uh to elaborate on that a little bit with the whole punishment thing, uh something that I found out recently was is the word discipline.
• 1:07:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if you go back to the origin of that word in Latin, it means something similar to guiding or teaching.
• 1:08:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that was interesting.
• 1:08:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not about causing pain or harm, it's about teaching, guiding.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_00: So the the the the right way to discipline is to ask the question, what is the best way to teach?
• 1:08:19
  SPEAKER_00: And um, that's a good question.
• 1:08:21
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe the best way to teach could be applying consequences.
• 1:08:27
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but in the example you just gave, you thought it through and you were like, well, hang on.
• 1:08:32
  SPEAKER_00: Making him resentful, giving him an excuse to not like us, to make us think that we're just kind of like the party killers and we don't understand him.
• 1:08:41
  SPEAKER_00: Is that really teaching him the best lesson we can?
• 1:08:45
  SPEAKER_00: Or is there another way?
• 1:08:47
  SPEAKER_00: You know, is there some other path we could take?
• 1:08:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's been hard for me to wrap my head around that because my conditioning is so strong on that.
• 1:08:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when those neural pathways are formed when you're young, they're really strong.
• 1:09:02
  SPEAKER_01: So this is where a relationship, if you're in a relationship and you're with a a woman or a man on your on the other side who is also willing to try to step into this conscious relating thing and be open and vulnerable and and and and and you know be radically honest, I think that mirror, having that mirror across from you is really important to be reflected back to you.
• 1:09:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I have learned so much by being in this relationship with a woman who is in that.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_01: She's constantly challenging me, constantly challenging my ideas in a very non-judgmental way.
• 1:09:49
  SPEAKER_01: She's not challenging me just to piss me off and to say you're wrong.
• 1:09:53
  SPEAKER_01: She's making me think.
• 1:09:55
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, David Data, who most people know, uh, he wrote the the way of the superior man.
• 1:10:01
  SPEAKER_01: He says, you know, uh a truly superior man, meaning a conscious man, will always choose a woman who challenges him.
• 1:10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because that's how we evolve, that's how we grow.
• 1:10:12
  SPEAKER_01: To have somebody on the other side, and it doesn't have to be a partner, it could be a therapist, it could be a coach, it could be a friend, but somebody who's going to call you out on your shit and challenge your conventional wisdom to make you really think like, okay, is that really what I think?
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_01: Is that feel is that what I feel?
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_01: Or am I am I saying this is my truth simply because a parent told me that, a priest told me that, a teacher told me that, a politician told me that.
• 1:10:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, where did that come from?
• 1:10:44
  SPEAKER_01: What what is really my truth?
• 1:10:47
  SPEAKER_01: So Yeah.
• 1:10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and I think we should make this very clear as well to the to the listeners, um, about the nuances of the being the one who's challenging as well, you know, because you're talking about your experiencing being on the receiving end of that.
• 1:11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but you also challenge Silicia as well.
• 1:11:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so what do you tend to keep in mind, best practices or principles, when it comes to being the one who's kind of being the mirror, uh, as to not unnecessarily cause like triggering incidents or um feelings of being, you know, attacked and things like that?
• 1:11:27
  SPEAKER_00: How do you give that kind of feedback?
• 1:11:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think the first step is establishing trust with your partner.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um you need to come from a place where it's not attacking, where what you are pointing out is not done from your own place of woundedness or ego or trigger, which is what we tend to often do and say, yeah, but you are like this.
• 1:11:56
  SPEAKER_01: You should take a look at that.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's not the way to do it because that's just going to be triggering for the other person.
• 1:12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And the intention behind it is not necessarily to help them see something about themselves, but it can be this sort of attacking kind of thing.
• 1:12:09
  SPEAKER_01: So really being settled in yourself and going into it with the intention of pointing something out or bringing something to another person's awareness from a place of non-judgment.
• 1:12:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it is hard, you have to learn the language for this too, right?
• 1:12:29
  SPEAKER_01: There's a language for conscious communication.
• 1:12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And many couples or many people just don't know this language.
• 1:12:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's something that you can learn.
• 1:12:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, everybody can learn this language, you know, these this idea of holding space.
• 1:12:41
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people don't even know what that what that term means to hold space for another person, creating a safe container, learning how to talk about your feelings within a situation, rather than saying you did this.
• 1:12:55
  SPEAKER_01: And say instead of saying, I mean, these are very basic conscious communication techniques, um, nonviolent communication, right?
• 1:13:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like instead of saying, well, you made me feel bad, you would say, you know, I feel bad because of this particular thing and how it made me feel, right?
• 1:13:13
  SPEAKER_01: So there is a there is a language that people need to learn in order to enter into this, which gives a framework for how to communicate with each other in a non-judgmental kind of way.
• 1:13:22
  SPEAKER_01: So practicing active listening first, and active listening is somebody's expressing the way that they feel about something, and you just shut up and you let them talk.
• 1:13:34
  SPEAKER_01: And you let them talk.
• 1:13:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's not about giving advice back, it's not about commenting on what they just said, it's not trying not to go into defensiveness, right?
• 1:13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Let them speak their thing, and then you can understand the situation fully.
• 1:13:47
  SPEAKER_01: And then if you start to see something that is a red flag, maybe for example, you know, Selicia has quite a bit of trauma in her past from her from her childhood, a lot of physical abuse there, sexual abuse also.
• 1:14:01
  SPEAKER_01: And if I notice that she's reacting in a particular situation that I feel has nothing to do with me, but it's instead being seen through the filter of her experiences and her woundedness and her traumas, I may bring that up and say, baby, I I understand what you're saying.
• 1:14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I just want you to, and I know that you've got a lot of trauma around this from the past.
• 1:14:23
  SPEAKER_01: Could this have something to do with that?
• 1:14:25
  SPEAKER_01: Are you can you see that it's it's coming through that filter?
• 1:14:30
  SPEAKER_01: And still owning my role in the situation, because I may have a role in it too.
• 1:14:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's not just to be blamed on her traumas, uh, but to bring it up and bring it out in a place of non-judgment and not attacking.
• 1:14:42
  SPEAKER_01: So the the the energy behind the way you say it is very important too.
• 1:14:47
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:14:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it does make sense.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:14:50
  SPEAKER_00: So there's a like where where do you where do you learn all of this from then?
• 1:14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Like the conscious communication stuff and the kind of vocabulary and all of that stuff.
• 1:15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Where where do you go to for that?
• 1:15:02
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I've learned it through so many different things that I've done.
• 1:15:05
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the the very first place I learned this was actually when I was in India and I went to the Osho Ashram in Pune.
• 1:15:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I took a actually a tantra workshop.
• 1:15:18
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the exercises in this tantra workshop was we had to walk through the room and we had to stand in front of somebody that we just didn't like.
• 1:15:26
  SPEAKER_01: For whatever reason, we didn't connect with them or we're just kind of annoyed by them or whatever.
• 1:15:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then you stand in front of that person, and then you have to tell them everything you don't like about them.
• 1:15:41
  SPEAKER_01: Fuck, are you kidding me?
• 1:15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Are you kidding me?
• 1:15:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, all right.
• 1:15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I walked through the room and I found this guy.
• 1:15:50
  SPEAKER_01: He had this long hair, you know, he was like, and he was kind of God's gift to women, he thought.
• 1:15:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I just he annoyed the shit out of me because I saw how he was in the space.
• 1:15:59
  SPEAKER_01: He had to have all the attention on him.
• 1:16:01
  SPEAKER_01: He wanted to have all the girls, you know, around him.
• 1:16:04
  SPEAKER_01: And the other person had to simply listen, attractive, active listening, as I was telling him all of this and not react to it, take it personally, because the truth is a lot of what I was saying to him was a reflection of what I didn't like about myself.
• 1:16:22
  SPEAKER_01: So when you have a problem with somebody or you have a trigger around them, that's why we have to look inside because very often it's coming from a place of woundedness, or it's coming from a place of insecurity, or it's coming from a place of something you don't like about yourself that you judge about yourself.
• 1:16:36
  SPEAKER_01: So the truth is, as I was standing in front of this guy, was I kind of wanted to be him.
• 1:16:40
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be the guy in the room that was getting the attention.
• 1:16:43
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be the guy in the room that the girls all liked.
• 1:16:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so it was a really interesting experience also of being on the other end of that, of someone um talking to me about what they felt and not uh and not necessarily taking it personally, but looking at looking at everything as okay, this is this person's trigger.
• 1:17:08
  SPEAKER_01: They have a history, they have a story, we all have our stories, right?
• 1:17:14
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not mine.
• 1:17:15
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't have to own it.
• 1:17:17
  SPEAKER_01: I can own my role in it and what I did, and I can learn from that, but very often the emotion behind it is is coming from an old wound.
• 1:17:23
  SPEAKER_00: I mean that story there of that experience on that retreat is absolutely it it's so good because to me it shows the power of embodied practice versus like disembodied theorizing.
• 1:17:42
  SPEAKER_00: Because someone could tell you you tend to not like the things in others that you don't like about yourself.
• 1:17:48
  SPEAKER_00: Someone can say that to you and you go, Oh, it makes sense.
• 1:17:50
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't change your life in any way.
• 1:17:52
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't do anything, right?
• 1:17:54
  SPEAKER_00: It just gives you something cool to say.
• 1:17:56
  SPEAKER_00: But that experience, you got it, and that was it.
• 1:18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like you felt what that was like.
• 1:18:03
  SPEAKER_00: You never had to do in it again.
• 1:18:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the power of practice.
• 1:18:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that transformed the way that I shared and talked with my partners from then on.
• 1:18:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because I I was more able to be really authentic and truthful in what I was saying about how I felt.
• 1:18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because I'm a I'm a harmony guy.
• 1:18:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I I need harmony in my relationships in order to feel settled because there was a lot of disharmony in my childhood, in my family.
• 1:18:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I always, when there's disharmony, I feel tension, I feel stress, I feel um ungrounded, unstable.
• 1:18:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's because as a kid, that was my whole childhood was this feeling of working, walking on eggshells.
• 1:18:45
  SPEAKER_01: So in relationships, I would often keep things deep down inside and not speak them out because I was afraid of rocking the boat.
• 1:18:53
  SPEAKER_01: I was afraid of creating disharmony.
• 1:18:56
  SPEAKER_01: I was afraid of my girlfriend crying because I didn't want to feel the stress and the guilt of being responsible, for example, for her pain and suffering.
• 1:19:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that also comes from my mom.
• 1:19:09
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was that's a long story there.
• 1:19:12
  SPEAKER_01: But what this allowed me to do was to be more authentic and truthful with how I was really feeling in the situation and trust that the person on the other side could hold that and give it that space.
• 1:19:27
  SPEAKER_01: Now that doesn't mean that the other person may not feel hurt by what you're saying.
• 1:19:33
  SPEAKER_01: Because we, you know, they have emotions, they have feelings.
• 1:19:37
  SPEAKER_01: But once it's out there, then it can be addressed, then we can work on it.
• 1:19:43
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's the that's the importance of shining the light on the darkness, because you can't fix what's in the darkness unless you shine the light on it.
• 1:19:51
  SPEAKER_01: So conscious communication in relationship has uh the the the beginning and the end, the alpha and the omega for me is discovering this way of being able to uh communicate consciously, communicate uh honestly, and uh give it the space that it needs in the recognition that okay, we all have our stories, and what I'm telling to my partner here, even if it's let's say I you know I just cheated, I slept with another one, and that's that's an extreme example.
• 1:20:28
  SPEAKER_01: But sitting down and explaining, okay, this is what happened, um, I'm willing to look at why this is happening.
• 1:20:36
  SPEAKER_01: She may be very hurt, but if she's conscious enough, she can realize also, okay, there's something behind that that maybe has nothing to do with me, or maybe it does have something to do with me.
• 1:20:46
  SPEAKER_01: But that could lead to the discussion that's needed in order to solve the problem.
• 1:20:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:20:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is so this is uh this conscious relating is a very important skill.
• 1:21:01
  SPEAKER_00: Considering the all the studies on human happiness indicate that relationships are, you know, right up there with one of the most important things that contribute towards a happy life.
• 1:21:13
  SPEAKER_00: If we look back over our best memories, it usually involves other people, people we love, people we're close to.
• 1:21:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um when we're on our deathbed, I'm sure a lot of us are gonna be thinking about people, relationships, you know, the the and and not things necessarily.
• 1:21:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um and so spending the time honing these skills, becoming a better communicator from the inside out, not just learning tactics is really gonna pay off.
• 1:21:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I I want to talk a little bit now about the kind of transition that I'm seeing you make.
• 1:21:48
  SPEAKER_00: So for a long time, I think the the only way someone could really learn from you would be to attend your yoga class, but then that's quite limited to yoga instruction because you've got to deal with the class.
• 1:22:01
  SPEAKER_00: To have one-on-one coaching with you, but then you don't have unlimited time, right?
• 1:22:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, to go on retreat with you, which is a a really good option.
• 1:22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but now you're starting to create online material that can be accessed by many people.
• 1:22:19
  SPEAKER_00: You're in the in the middle of building this um kind of course slash community.
• 1:22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I love this because it it will allow you to put your best skills and practices and recommendations and package them in a structured way.
• 1:22:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you can look at them and review them.
• 1:22:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a huge fan of courses, both consuming them and and creating them.
• 1:22:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think they're really powerful.
• 1:22:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I think this is an amazing transition that, and I think you will be able to help a lot of people by making this transition.
• 1:22:51
  SPEAKER_00: So, could you tell us what you're working on at the moment, what you build in?
• 1:22:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so right now I'm working on a program called the Real Men Training.
• 1:23:01
  SPEAKER_01: And uh doing it together with my uh my co-creator, uh Thibaut Martin.
• 1:23:06
  SPEAKER_01: And Thibaut is a uh is French and he's a sex coach.
• 1:23:11
  SPEAKER_01: And he's been working with a lot of men on you know sex techniques, becoming better in bed, guys who want to learn more about how to seduce a woman, about how to um have more pleasure in their lives, how to bring more pleasure to to their partners.
• 1:23:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and what we recognize was that there's a lot of men out there who have that side of it.
• 1:23:36
  SPEAKER_01: They want to learn that, but we want to also create kind of better men at the same time.
• 1:23:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because if we can give men these tools and teach them how to, you know, how to make a woman orgasm, you know, six times.
• 1:23:49
  SPEAKER_01: But if they're just using it for that, they're not really stepping into their full divine masculine.
• 1:23:56
  SPEAKER_01: They're not, they're not contributing necessarily to the healing of the feminine wound, for example.
• 1:24:02
  SPEAKER_01: They're not being the best men that they can be, uh, in my opinion.
• 1:24:06
  SPEAKER_01: This program is gonna have uh a lot of modules on the one side of helping men to be better lovers, which is gonna cover everything from sex techniques.
• 1:24:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we go into quite a lot of detail, uh, and it's quite graphic.
• 1:24:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-huh.
• 1:24:19
  SPEAKER_01: But it's things that men have maybe seen in porn but never learned for themselves, you know?
• 1:24:25
  SPEAKER_01: And and it's gonna also cover things like premature ejaculation, impotence, um, you know, stage fright, uh, all these things that a lot of men deal with but are afraid to talk about.
• 1:24:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:24:37
  SPEAKER_01: And on the other side, we're gonna teach men how to step into their full masculine power.
• 1:24:42
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna teach them a lot about shamanism, finding your inner shaman, how to, how to feel more grounded in their personal lives and in their professional lives.
• 1:24:53
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna teach them how to meditate.
• 1:24:56
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna teach them physical practices that are gonna help them get more connected to their bodies.
• 1:25:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna teach them about the primal model, which talks about where a lot of their conditioning is coming from so they can start to understand themselves and start to go deeper in.
• 1:25:12
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna go through meditations, we're gonna do all kinds of stuff.
• 1:25:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very holistic program that's gonna teach men how to be better lovers and better men at the same time.
• 1:25:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's gonna be uh an online live uh men's group, basically, that's gonna meet uh twice a month.
• 1:25:28
  SPEAKER_01: We're still working out the frequency, but it's probably gonna be twice a month.
• 1:25:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then they're gonna have access to all these different modules, teaching modules, uh, that they can access at any time.
• 1:25:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this is I like the way you describe that, the there's like the sex side of it, and then there's the I guess you could say character side of it, you know, where it's like the person that you are, the roots.
• 1:25:52
  SPEAKER_00: I think that that is almost essential to have both because you you could you could learn uh, for example, seduction techniques.
• 1:26:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I don't know the ones that we'll be being taught, so I you know, but let like in some some of the seduction techniques taught online, um, maybe completely different, but you could learn those techniques and it wouldn't be necessarily grounded in being a good person, you know, or you could learn to be a good lover.
• 1:26:20
  SPEAKER_00: But again, it's like is that I is that grounded in being someone who wants to help others or kind of you know share love as opposed to for kind of selfish reasons.
• 1:26:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I I really, really like that it's the both.
• 1:26:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um on the sex uh side of things, it's a real shame.
• 1:26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I'm sure you'll agree that sometimes even just mentioning that can maybe make people feel like really tense and like almost want to be judgmental when you mention that.
• 1:26:52
  SPEAKER_00: But then if you actually take an honest look at the situation, um if if you were to look at what are the key components to a fulfilling life, a kind of transcendent experience of peak experiences, sexual sexuality would have to be one of those chapters in that book.
• 1:27:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like it has to be in there, right?
• 1:27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Like the human race literally depends on, you know, it's a chapter one, right?
• 1:27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but then it kind of goes back to what we were saying.
• 1:27:27
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes guys feel like they can't share, they can't express.
• 1:27:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I was actually speaking to Dan Munro for a podcast a couple of weeks ago, and he's an honesty coach, and he was saying that he had crippling impotency.
• 1:27:42
  SPEAKER_00: And it would just, he said, if you're going through that, it just ruins your life, you know.
• 1:27:47
  SPEAKER_00: You could even meet someone that you like each other and you just know I'm gonna be embarrassed, this is gonna suck, and I'm gonna have to have that conversation.
• 1:27:56
  SPEAKER_00: How many people are going through that, but they don't talk about it to their friends, you know, outwardly?
• 1:28:01
  SPEAKER_00: So I I really commend you for being brave enough to kind of bring this forward and talk about it openly.
• 1:28:09
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:28:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it's an important subject.
• 1:28:11
  SPEAKER_01: As I said, it is chapter one.
• 1:28:14
  SPEAKER_01: It is the it's creation, right?
• 1:28:18
  SPEAKER_01: It at its core, sex is about creation, but sexual energy is the strongest and most important energy we have in our bodies.
• 1:28:26
  SPEAKER_01: It is the energy of creation, not just creating another being, but it is the energy of creativity also.
• 1:28:33
  SPEAKER_01: So if our sexual energy is not flowing, we can't be creative in our lives.
• 1:28:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's difficult to um find new solutions, create new things, new projects, new, you know, be successful at work if our creative, if our if our sexual energy isn't flowing.
• 1:28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a lot of shame around sexuality.
• 1:28:53
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of that comes from religious conditioning, especially.
• 1:28:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I was raised Catholic.
• 1:28:58
  SPEAKER_01: There was so much shame around sex when I was growing up.
• 1:29:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's, you know, if you look at what's happening in American politics right now, for example, there's so much focus on sex and banning anything that has to do with sex.
• 1:29:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're banning books and schools that happen to mention different forms of sexuality, sexual relations.
• 1:29:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, now I saw that there's something about wanting to ban images of the statue of David, you know, this Greek statue of David, you know, because he's he's got his junk hanging out, and it's a, you know, it's a it's a piece of art.
• 1:29:33
  SPEAKER_01: So it's gone way in the extreme.
• 1:29:37
  SPEAKER_01: And what we want to do is sort of destigmatize this thing around sexuality and give men an authentic real experience of sex, of pleasure, of enjoyment that they're not getting when they watch porn, for example.
• 1:30:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and this is this is also an epidemic.
• 1:30:02
  SPEAKER_01: Men are going to things like porn, and there's porn addiction is huge right now.
• 1:30:05
  SPEAKER_01: This is another thing we cover in this course is is porn addiction and how to overcome it.
• 1:30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's a lot of chemical changes that happen in the brain when men watch porn, and it and it's uh just as addictive as other forms of of you know drugs and and things like this becomes a drug.
• 1:30:22
  SPEAKER_01: So we want to give men the information that they need in a in a in a fun, very open, non-judgmental kind of way.
• 1:30:32
  SPEAKER_01: We also want to open it up to say we're you know, we're accepting of everything.
• 1:30:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we also have a course, for example, on on the dark, the darker triad.
• 1:30:44
  SPEAKER_01: We call it the dark triad, you know, and that is these, you know, dalliances into maybe you know, SM or bondage or things like this, right?
• 1:30:52
  SPEAKER_01: So we're giving a really clear understanding of what these practices mean and how they can bring pleasure into your life in a conscious way, because sex used unconsciously, as you were talking about earlier, can be just like a hammer, it can be a tool or a weapon.
• 1:31:09
  SPEAKER_01: And use it to dominate a woman, you can use it to control a woman or a partner.
• 1:31:13
  SPEAKER_01: I know I'm saying women a lot just because I'm speaking from the perspective of a man.
• 1:31:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you can also use it to let your energy flow to create intimacy.
• 1:31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Because in the end, if you ask most women, most men, especially you know, ones are who who are saying, Well, I want to get laid more, or I want to have more sex or I want to meet more women, you really dig down into it at the base of it.
• 1:31:39
  SPEAKER_01: What they really want is more intimacy.
• 1:31:42
  SPEAKER_01: And sex can be an incredible experience of creating intimacy.
• 1:31:46
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, we we teach some tantric practices, uh, breath work and and really conscious sexuality in that as well.
• 1:31:55
  SPEAKER_01: So we're not excluding anything.
• 1:31:58
  SPEAKER_01: And we are, but we're having an open conversation about everything.
• 1:32:02
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where it starts, was to give men that space to really talk very openly about their challenges around sexuality, their challenges around women.
• 1:32:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I have found that a lot of men who have challenges around dating or relationships or women, it's because they don't feel confident in themselves.
• 1:32:20
  SPEAKER_01: They haven't known themselves yet.
• 1:32:22
  SPEAKER_01: So the other side of it, this holistic side of it, is helping men to start to discover themselves.
• 1:32:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that's that's the sex side is the easy part.
• 1:32:31
  SPEAKER_01: The, the, the challenging part is going to be going into those spaces, starting to explore vulnerability, starting to explore uh their emotions.
• 1:32:40
  SPEAKER_01: What does it mean to feel rejected?
• 1:32:43
  SPEAKER_01: Where is that coming from?
• 1:32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, also learning how to give space to the divine feminine and breaking through the conditioning that we have learned about what women are, the stereotypic stereotypes around women, you know, treating a woman like a goddess, like a queen.
• 1:33:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I have if there's nothing more beautiful than to be able to be with a woman that you bow down to her feet and you worship her as your divine goddess.
• 1:33:12
  SPEAKER_01: That is an incredible feeling, to be in service to the feminine.
• 1:33:15
  SPEAKER_01: It is not emasculating, it is not making you weaker, it is being in your true divine masculine when you can bow down at the feet of your woman and and and service her.
• 1:33:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what we kind of try to do with this with this program.
• 1:33:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and the other thing I want to say about this is I discovered something very important about the feminine in myself uh through my plant medicine experiences.
• 1:33:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I was uh in an ayahuasca ceremony uh in the jungle, and my one of my intentions was to open my heart.
• 1:33:52
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to feel my heart more open so that I could connect even more deeply with my partner.
• 1:33:58
  SPEAKER_01: And what happened was at one point is I was getting a little frustrated and disappointed because I was getting a lot of you know visions and stuff, but it wasn't really getting to that thing.
• 1:34:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then I saw my sister in my vision, and I started to feel my sister's pain because of the way that her ex-husband had treated her.
• 1:34:23
  SPEAKER_01: And then it went to my mom, and I felt her pain with the way that my dad treated her.
• 1:34:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then it went to my grandmother, feeling the pain of the physical abuse of my grandfather and my aunt, and it went back and back and back and back.
• 1:34:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I started to see all of the pain that men in my lineage had caused the women in my lineage.
• 1:34:44
  SPEAKER_01: And then realizing that I also carry all of that pain.
• 1:34:49
  SPEAKER_01: I have inherited the pain of the feminine inside of my feminine.
• 1:34:53
  SPEAKER_01: So I discovered the importance for me to heal the wounded feminine in me.
• 1:35:01
  SPEAKER_01: So most men, we all we carry also the collective wounding of the feminine inside of us.
• 1:35:06
  SPEAKER_01: In order for us to be truly in our balance masculine, it's not just about addressing the wounded masculine, you know, the absent fathers and the lack of love and the lack of being able to express yourself.
• 1:35:19
  SPEAKER_01: Those are wounds of the of the of the boy of the masculine, but also that wounded collective feminine that's inside of us.
• 1:35:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because we carry that that DNA, we carry that code that's been passed down from generation to generation.
• 1:35:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that's, you know, trauma has been shown to be uh scientifically now that it gets passed down also.
• 1:35:38
  SPEAKER_01: It actually changes, can change your genetic code.
• 1:35:41
  SPEAKER_01: So the idea of collective trauma being passed down from wars, for example, that's where they did these studies.
• 1:35:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think they were looking at the World War II and the Balkan Wars, how that affects generations going forward.
• 1:35:55
  SPEAKER_01: So we as men especially need to look at both of those sides and learn how to step into our masculine power connected with the feminine in order to also help the women in our lives to step into their divine feminine and to heal that collective trauma that's been happening over many, many, many generations.
• 1:36:22
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:36:24
  SPEAKER_00: What a what an experience that must have been for you.
• 1:36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 1:36:28
  SPEAKER_00: To go back into that.
• 1:36:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's it was.
• 1:36:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it's something that's not talked about very often in men's work, you know, is the wounded feminine within us.
• 1:36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I've never actually contemplated that until you've just said it.
• 1:36:41
  SPEAKER_00: But then that the story, just putting myself there, must have been just very eye-opening, visceral, viscerally eye-opening.
• 1:36:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, because we tend to lock into our immediate surrounding and we don't tend to go back, you know.
• 1:36:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, what about our past?
• 1:36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's not just our past, what about the generations before us?
• 1:37:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as you were saying that, I realized my two um grandmothers.
• 1:37:10
  SPEAKER_00: One of my grandmothers was like um her husband died young, so she had to be the kind of working like dad and mother in at in one, like super independent.
• 1:37:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then my other grandmother was uh evacuated in World War II when she was about four, had to go live with a different family for a few years, which you know, totally like, yeah, that's that's an experience to have.
• 1:37:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, and how does that then kind of filter through into my own life?
• 1:37:45
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, and I and you don't I I wasn't necessarily that close to them, but that doesn't mean that I haven't been influenced by their kind of stories and traumas and stuff.
• 1:37:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:37:57
  SPEAKER_01: This is how collective trauma works.
• 1:37:59
  SPEAKER_01: This is how conditioning works, also, is you know, there is that sort of sort of genetic passing down of it, but there is then the observation of the conditioning that results from it.
• 1:38:10
  SPEAKER_01: So your parents were influenced by their parents and their experiences, were influenced by their parents and their experiences, and it just goes back and back and back and back and back.
• 1:38:22
  SPEAKER_01: So if your father, for example, had a father who was in the war and came home depressed and angry and felt like uh the whole world was out to get him and took that out on his son, well, that those ideas that the world is out to get us then gets passed down to his son.
• 1:38:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then he learns, oh, the world is out to get us.
• 1:38:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I'm learning.
• 1:38:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I gotta be really protective of myself.
• 1:38:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and that's how conditioning works.
• 1:38:57
  SPEAKER_01: That's how generational trauma works.
• 1:39:00
  SPEAKER_01: And we have the opportunity, there's never been more tools in history than there is now for us to break that chain and to make a different decision and to go a different route and to stop passing it down to our children and the next generations.
• 1:39:15
  SPEAKER_01: And one way of doing that is this, you know, this process of self-uh self-discovery and going inside and, you know, maybe talking to a therapist or a coach.
• 1:39:24
  SPEAKER_01: But plant medicines, for me, have been one of the most powerful catalysts for transformation that I've ever come across.
• 1:39:35
  SPEAKER_01: Because they have the power to open the, to bypass the ego, to bypass the control mechanisms we have within us, to go directly into the memory system, to go directly into the, you know, the neural pathways that are in the brain to actually allow us to make changes, to show us, you know, where that original trauma came from, where was that original, uh, original uh issue that came up, that original wound, so that we can actually heal it.
• 1:40:04
  SPEAKER_01: And if you if you look at the neuroscience lately and all of the research that's being done on plant medicines, from mushrooms to ayahuasca to bufo, there's there's a lot out there.
• 1:40:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the scientists are really discovering the power that these medicines have to physically change the brain, to enable change and transformation.
• 1:40:23
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of different ways to sort of start to create change, but a lot of them are not sustainable.
• 1:40:28
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe you've had this experience of going to a really great retreat or self-development seminar or whatever, and everybody comes out and they're all like gung ho and they're all excited, oh, I'm gonna change my life.
• 1:40:38
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, and then three weeks later, a month later, they're right back in the same old habits again.
• 1:40:44
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:40:45
  SPEAKER_01: And often that's because our patterns and our conditioning are so strong because the neural pathways that are created in the brain are so strong that even if we wanted to make a different decision, go a different way, we can't.
• 1:40:59
  SPEAKER_01: So the the analogy of the metaphor that I often use in in my ceremonial work and my medicine work is if you imagine you're skiing down a ski slope and you're going down the ski slope, the same track every single time, well, your your skis start to get deeper and deeper into the snow and the track starts to get deeper and deeper, right?
• 1:41:20
  SPEAKER_01: So even if you decide, okay, I don't want to go straight down anymore, I want to take a right.
• 1:41:24
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you can't go right because your skis are in that, they're stuck in a rut, right?
• 1:41:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we mean by being stuck in a rut.
• 1:41:31
  SPEAKER_01: Literally, physically in the brain, that neural pathway is so strong, you can't really make that that change.
• 1:41:38
  SPEAKER_01: So when you take a psychedelic or you take a plant medicine, it's like a fresh snowfall coming down, which kind of covers up those tracks.
• 1:41:46
  SPEAKER_01: So that now, if you and that works through neuroplasticity, that's the ability of the brain to physically change, create new neurons, uh, change the strength of the bonding of the neurons.
• 1:41:57
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there's a lot of different ways that the brain can change.
• 1:42:00
  SPEAKER_01: That you scientists used to think the brain doesn't change after you turn 25 or something like that.
• 1:42:04
  SPEAKER_01: But now we know that's not true.
• 1:42:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very flexible organ.
• 1:42:08
  SPEAKER_01: So if we decide we want to go right now and make a different decision, you actually have the ability to do it.
• 1:42:16
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where the sustainable change can happen because it creates this sort of blank slate where you can now put a new program in.
• 1:42:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, in a way, it's deleting the old program, deprogramming, and then downloading the new information.
• 1:42:32
  SPEAKER_01: And creating that's how you can create a new habit.
• 1:42:34
  SPEAKER_01: So there are different ways of doing this.
• 1:42:36
  SPEAKER_01: You can meditate for 20 years, you know, you can uh you know, you can do lots of self-help books and self-help things, and that can create change.
• 1:42:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's true.
• 1:42:45
  SPEAKER_01: But in my experience, I haven't found anything that works as effectively and as quickly as these very powerful plant medicines.
• 1:42:55
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a, you know, there's a lot of um like forgotten wisdom that is being kind of brought into the light with the ancient traditions and shamans, and they have systems, you know, and and that's the thing that what we're talking about here is not compounds in isolation, it's compounds plus the philosophy that and the traditions with them, you know.
• 1:43:20
  SPEAKER_00: That's a very important component of it.
• 1:43:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, something that I I've always kept in mind a story about my dad.
• 1:43:27
  SPEAKER_00: We've talked a lot about in this conversation in the power of embodied practice.
• 1:43:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's not enough to just have an idea.
• 1:43:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I sometimes think that reading a self-help book about changing can fire you up with the new ideas, but it doesn't quite go to the core.
• 1:43:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I uh an experience that stuck with me.
• 1:43:45
  SPEAKER_00: My dad smoked cigarettes for 25 years.
• 1:43:49
  SPEAKER_00: One day he had chest pain.
• 1:43:51
  SPEAKER_00: He thought he was having a heart attack.
• 1:43:55
  SPEAKER_00: He went to the hospital, they said after a few hours of him waiting, you're fine, it's just must muscle pain in your chest.
• 1:44:02
  SPEAKER_00: He never smoked again from that day on.
• 1:44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Embodied, right?
• 1:44:08
  SPEAKER_00: Never smoked again.
• 1:44:09
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the power of like an embodied kind of it's not enough to just he knew the smoking was not good for him before that, but it wasn't until he had that feeling, that true perspective shift, that it was actually easy to stop smoking.
• 1:44:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was disgusted by cigarettes from that day on and will walk away from people with cigarettes.
• 1:44:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh obviously that's not predictable.
• 1:44:31
  SPEAKER_00: You can't rely on something like that happening to make change, right?
• 1:44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, because it's just you have a heart attack in order to stop smoking.
• 1:44:38
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 1:44:39
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the the principle that I took from that is change is possible very quickly, profound change, if the if the if it's the right lesson, you know, if if the lesson properly hits.
• 1:44:52
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where these peak experiences can be so powerful in creating change.
• 1:44:58
  SPEAKER_01: So this could be perceived as a near-death experience, as your father maybe thought dying.
• 1:45:05
  SPEAKER_01: And that very strong, very powerful embodied experience worked not just on the mind, but uh worked in the body also.
• 1:45:13
  SPEAKER_01: You saw the result of it.
• 1:45:14
  SPEAKER_01: He became disgusted with cigarettes.
• 1:45:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um medicine ceremonies are also a peak uh form of peak experience.
• 1:45:24
  SPEAKER_01: And by stepping into those alternate states of awareness and having that peak experience, you take yourself out of the normal framework of your understanding.
• 1:45:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where we get stuck is we get locked in these boxes of our paradigms and what we understand the world to be.
• 1:45:45
  SPEAKER_01: And it's very hard to escape out of that.
• 1:45:48
  SPEAKER_01: So these peak experiences are are an alternate state of reality that gives you a different perspective on life.
• 1:45:55
  SPEAKER_01: Thinking that you're dying and you're having a heart attack will give you a very different perspective of life because you no longer feel like, oh, I'm invincible and I'm immortal, and smoking cigarettes hasn't hurt me up to now.
• 1:46:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's been 25 years.
• 1:46:08
  SPEAKER_01: So what's one more cigarette?
• 1:46:09
  SPEAKER_01: Well, until you see, that's not the truth.
• 1:46:13
  SPEAKER_01: The truth is you are slowly killing yourself, but you need that peak experience to understand that.
• 1:46:18
  SPEAKER_01: People who've had actual near-death experiences, that's one of the things they report when they come back, is it completely changes their life because they see things from a completely different perspective.
• 1:46:28
  SPEAKER_01: They also see the value of life and they start to treat themselves better in that.
• 1:46:34
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where plant medicines can help people without harming them, you know, with you don't have to have a heart attack or, you know, get cancer or anything like that.
• 1:46:42
  SPEAKER_01: You can do it before all of that to give yourself the insights and the downloads that you need to make those changes.
• 1:46:50
  SPEAKER_00: Are you currently uh offering anything publicly in this area?
• 1:46:57
  SPEAKER_00: You know, uh what oh currently not.
• 1:47:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I I Silicia and myself, we guide plant medicine ceremonies and retreats all around the world.
• 1:47:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we do quite a bit of work in in um in Mexico.
• 1:47:10
  SPEAKER_01: We do offer some things in Europe, um in uh in the United States as well, Jamaica.
• 1:47:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and if they want more information about that, you can check out my Instagram or our website, activate your what you said earlier.
• 1:47:27
  SPEAKER_01: I want to I want to make a comment about that, about the different wisdom traditions and things that come into plant medicines.
• 1:47:36
  SPEAKER_01: What I have discovered is that in order for plant medicines to work the most effectively in helping to create change for the Western mind, it needs to be combined also with some embodiment work, some somatic practices, some coaching.
• 1:47:55
  SPEAKER_01: You know, what I've started doing is working with people before even before the ceremony in order to explore where the origins of their issues are so that it gives the medicine a little more information on where to work.
• 1:48:10
  SPEAKER_01: So it starts to open the doors to those issues rather than just coming and saying, yeah, um I have relationship problems, I have commitment issues, I can't hold down a job, I'm gonna take, you know, some magic mushrooms and tomorrow everything's gonna be solved.
• 1:48:27
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't exactly work that way.
• 1:48:31
  SPEAKER_01: I found it most effective when I start to work with people in, especially going back into their childhood a little bit and exploring where some of their issues originated from, and then taking that information into the ceremony.
• 1:48:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then post-ceremony, the integration is just as important, making sense of what just happened and then how that integrates back into their lives.
• 1:48:51
  SPEAKER_01: So our retreats and our workshops and our ceremonies, we usually build those components into it.
• 1:48:57
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not just about you show up, take this medicine, have a trip, you know, see lots of great lights and colors and things like this, and then go home.
• 1:49:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's really a holistic experience of transformation because that's the goal.
• 1:49:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's healing, it's transformation, it's change, it's creating a catalyst for the alchemization of your spiritual lead into gold.
• 1:49:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the the best way for someone to ask questions, you know, because I'm sure there's there may be people listening to this that have follow-up questions.
• 1:49:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because this kind of work, it's you know, Joe Rogan is talking about it, right?
• 1:49:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like I it's keep becoming very mainstream, but people still understand that it's serious work and it and there is some trepidation around it, and people want to make sure they feel comfortable before moving into it.
• 1:49:49
  SPEAKER_00: So on the website, is there like a contact form people could ask questions, or is it best to DM you, or what's the best way?
• 1:49:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so the best thing right now the the website is being completely overhauled.
• 1:50:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but there is a contact form on the website.
• 1:50:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's very uh Silicia centric right now because activate your alchemy was her domain before, mine was ecstasys.
• 1:50:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're combining our forces together and we'll both be under activateyouralchemy.com.
• 1:50:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um but they can message us through there, they can message me through my um my Instagram, which is Adam RiceYoga, my Facebook is Adam RiceYoga.
• 1:50:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and they can ask, they can ask me anything.
• 1:50:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there is a lot of fear out there, I find, from people.
• 1:50:33
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of curiosity from people at the same time.
• 1:50:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's also a lot of bad actors out there.
• 1:50:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be very honest.
• 1:50:39
  SPEAKER_01: People should be careful about working with these power medicines because there are a lot of people out there who just don't know what they're doing when they serve it.
• 1:50:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've met many people who have gone and they've done an ayahuasca ceremony or Or they've done a couple of mushroom ceremonies, or they've done it with their friends, and now they think that they're they can guide a ceremony with other people.
• 1:51:00
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a much different experience taking some of these medicines in a recreational setting as opposed to doing it in a ceremonial or therapeutic setting.
• 1:51:13
  SPEAKER_01: Ceremonial setting is about really creating change.
• 1:51:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's about going into the depths of yourself.
• 1:51:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's an internal process, it's an internal journey rather than in recreational.
• 1:51:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's about the external, you know, it's about getting the input from the outside to have fun.
• 1:51:28
  SPEAKER_01: That can be great too.
• 1:51:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's nice to take a couple mushrooms and go walk through the forest, right?
• 1:51:32
  SPEAKER_01: Connect with nature.
• 1:51:33
  SPEAKER_01: But we're using these ancient mess uh uh uh methods, medicines, and technology.
• 1:51:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's like a it's a technology that these shamans uh have created over thousands of years.
• 1:51:45
  SPEAKER_01: We're using this now to to create true evolution and true, true change in people.
• 1:51:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you need to know how to how to create a safe container for that.
• 1:51:56
  SPEAKER_01: You need to know how to pick people up because if they go into a really deep process, you need to you need to know how to handle that.
• 1:52:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we have a lot of first-time people come through our ceremonies and our retreats.
• 1:52:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the feedback that we get a lot in the end is how safe they felt.
• 1:52:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because you need to feel safe in order to truly let go.
• 1:52:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you're not letting go and you're resisting, it's going to be a difficult process for you.
• 1:52:22
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe that's what you need in that moment, right?
• 1:52:24
  SPEAKER_01: But our goal, Solutions goal, is to create a really safe container to let people know that they can really feel held in that space uh and that we know what we're doing.
• 1:52:34
  SPEAKER_01: We have the experience in that.
• 1:52:35
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not just the experience of working with shamans and studying in the jungle and learning uh what can happen and and how to deal with it, but it's all of our other experience as well.
• 1:52:47
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's the psychological trainings that we've had, it's the coaching experience that we have, it's the energy work that we've learned.
• 1:52:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because we don't, we don't work in a real clinical way.
• 1:52:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like there's a lot of clinicalization happening in the field of psychedelics.
• 1:53:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, we are working more from the wisdom traditions, but combining those wisdom traditions from the shamans from the ancients with more modern psychological techniques.
• 1:53:15
  SPEAKER_01: And those two together are very powerful combination, especially for the Western mind.
• 1:53:22
  SPEAKER_01: The indigenous people in the jungle who've been taking this stuff for generations, they don't need all of that because they're not dealing with the same things that we deal with.
• 1:53:30
  SPEAKER_01: You know, city dwellers, uh, people, you know, we're going to jobs and skyscrapers, we're we're, you know, dealing with all this media and the news and and and uh devices and all this kind of stuff.
• 1:53:42
  SPEAKER_01: We have much different needs and experiences than the people who were living in the jungle for all these years.
• 1:53:49
  SPEAKER_01: So we have to address it in a way that speaks to the mind of people who are living where we're living, like we're living.
• 1:54:00
  SPEAKER_00: Update, innovate, adapt, right?
• 1:54:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:54:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:54:04
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 1:54:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like I see two things come up.
• 1:54:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um a lot of people meditate on their smartphones now with guided meditations, right?
• 1:54:13
  SPEAKER_00: Which would wouldn't make any sense 2,000 years ago when meditation was kind of being developed.
• 1:54:19
  SPEAKER_00: So that's a whole new, how do we navigate that?
• 1:54:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this thing is pinging and I'm meditating, it's a it's a whole new problem.
• 1:54:25
  SPEAKER_00: But it's also a great tool, right?
• 1:54:27
  SPEAKER_00: So you wouldn't want to throw out the the baby with the bathwater there.
• 1:54:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um the other thing as well is about the safety of these guides and you and Celicia.
• 1:54:40
  SPEAKER_00: Imagine if you get on a plane and the pilot says, Hey guys, welcome aboard.
• 1:54:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um I've just to let you know, I'm a very good pilot when there's no turbulence and it's good weather.
• 1:54:51
  SPEAKER_00: But if that changes, I am not so sure.
• 1:54:55
  SPEAKER_00: You you'll just be like, get me off this plane.
• 1:54:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:54:59
  SPEAKER_00: You want a pilot to be able to deal with everything turbulence, storms.
• 1:55:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's kind of what you what you want, right?
• 1:55:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the same is true for this kind of work.
• 1:55:08
  SPEAKER_00: You don't want someone who's like recreational and thinks that they're an expert after a few goes, right?
• 1:55:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's like maybe when things are fine, you're okay.
• 1:55:17
  SPEAKER_00: But you know, who knows?
• 1:55:19
  SPEAKER_01: And just because someone can land a 747 on a simulator on their home computer doesn't mean that they can do it when they're in the sky with 300 passengers on board, right?
• 1:55:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a it's a very similar thing.
• 1:55:32
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, integrity of the guide or the shaman is also very important.
• 1:55:39
  SPEAKER_01: And there are a lot of people who are serving medicine who are not necessarily living that path themselves.
• 1:55:51
  SPEAKER_01: They're doing it because they think it's cool, they're doing it because they want to make some money.
• 1:55:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they're doing it because of the ego boost they get when someone has a big trip, you know, and they, you know, they they uh they say, Oh, that was so amazing.
• 1:56:07
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks for giving me all this medicine.
• 1:56:10
  SPEAKER_01: If if their integrity is really around healing, then they need to know how to hold that healing space, how to work in that energetic space.
• 1:56:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because these these plants, they, they have a spirit, you know, it's not just chemicals.
• 1:56:24
  SPEAKER_01: It it they have a spirit.
• 1:56:26
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're living that path, when you're living that life, I mean, we live our shamanism every single day.
• 1:56:32
  SPEAKER_01: And when you live that, you start to connect with the medicine in a very deep way.
• 1:56:37
  SPEAKER_01: You start to connect with the energy and the spirit of the medicine.
• 1:56:40
  SPEAKER_01: So when we're working with people in ceremony, we are also getting messages from the medicine on how to work with that person, how to heal that person, or how to help them heal themselves.
• 1:56:51
  SPEAKER_01: We're not the one healing them, we're we're enabling the health within them, right?
• 1:56:56
  SPEAKER_01: So I may use certain tools to help that process, but it's not me healing, you know?
• 1:57:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's the medicine that is opening the doors because our healing is within us.
• 1:57:05
  SPEAKER_01: Even the medicine is not healing the person.
• 1:57:08
  SPEAKER_01: The medicine is opening those doors for self-healing.
• 1:57:12
  SPEAKER_01: But you need a guide to help help direct that energy and help the person to get to those places.
• 1:57:19
  SPEAKER_01: So in an ayahuasca ceremony, it's, for example, it's much different than mushrooms.
• 1:57:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, when we're in in ceremony with ayahuasca, uh, which is a very deep, very personal experience of going into the depths of the darkness very often within us, it's very good at going into the trauma side of things.
• 1:57:39
  SPEAKER_01: And um, whereas mushrooms are a bit more, it works on a lot of the collective, it works on connection, feeling connected with yourself, connected with other people.
• 1:57:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so they're two very different things.
• 1:57:51
  SPEAKER_01: And the spirits of ayahuasca and mushroom is very different, for example.
• 1:57:55
  SPEAKER_01: In ayahuasca, uh, the medicine is activated by ikeros, which are the songs that the shamans sing to the medicine.
• 1:58:03
  SPEAKER_01: And that those songs can be used to direct the energy in a particular way.
• 1:58:08
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe if I feel like, wow, the energy in here is really heavy right now, I can tell people are kind of suffering.
• 1:58:14
  SPEAKER_01: We can sing an ikero that will induce purging.
• 1:58:17
  SPEAKER_01: You know, many people have heard about the purging that happens during ayahuasca, the physical release in the body.
• 1:58:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um in psilocybin or in mushrooms, the process is much different.
• 1:58:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we're working with pre-recorded music, but that music can also be used to direct the energy into deep, the depth of sadness, and then coming out of that into joy, opening the heart, these kinds of things.
• 1:58:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it takes it, it is an art to learn how to move within that space to address the individual needs of each person who is in there.
• 1:58:52
  SPEAKER_01: And we do one-on-one ceremonies and we also do group ceremonies.
• 1:58:55
  SPEAKER_01: So, and those are two very different things.
• 1:58:57
  SPEAKER_01: So the individuals that are in there to know how to help them individually, but then also the collective, feeling into the collective energy that's happening there.
• 1:59:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that just takes practice, it takes skill, it takes a deep connection and reverence and respect for the medicine and honoring it for what it is.
• 1:59:19
  SPEAKER_00: So, what you're saying there uh it brings to mind uh like the question what is a combination of a composer and a healer?
• 1:59:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it would be something like a shaman, you know, like a rock star, like an ancient kind of rock star, a creator, someone who loves to create, but also their creation, their artistry is healing or flourishing.
• 1:59:46
  SPEAKER_00: That is what you're talking about.
• 1:59:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like feeling the energy and moving it like a composer would move music.
• 1:59:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and yes, yeah.
• 1:59:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good way of of describing it.
• 1:59:57
  SPEAKER_01: And just like a good composer, he's not writing music based on his mind or his logic.
• 2:00:07
  SPEAKER_01: He's writing music based on the feeling and the connection to whatever that greater power is that's out there that flows through him and out of his hand and onto the paper.
• 2:00:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you've ever watched Amadeus, the you ever watched the movie Amadeus about yeah, you could see when he would get into his states of writing and it would just kind of come out, it was like a stream of consciousness, right?
• 2:00:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because he was feeling it.
• 2:00:32
  SPEAKER_01: Something was being downloaded into him and coming out through him in his pen.
• 2:00:36
  SPEAKER_01: He was simply the vehicle for that energy, he was the conduit for that energy.
• 2:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: And guiding a ceremony is very similar to that.
• 2:00:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we open ourselves up to the healing energy of that power that's beyond using it.
• 2:00:50
  SPEAKER_01: Beyond understanding, beyond knowing is a good case to do it.
• 2:00:52
  SPEAKER_01: So they can move through us and into the people who are in that room.
• 2:00:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:00:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I could talk to you all day.
• 2:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like we're still we've barely scratched the surface.
• 2:01:08
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like we've we could talk so much more about so many things, and I hope we do.
• 2:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh I just want to say that I've I've spoken to you, Adam, and I'm gonna be adding some something to about you about stoicism and the ancient philosophical techniques to your uh program.
• 2:01:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna talk about that.
• 2:01:32
  SPEAKER_00: Really happy to offer something there.
• 2:01:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um Do you have a kind of a rough start date for for this uh for the men's program or is it the real men's under development?
• 2:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's under development.
• 2:01:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we have the modules up, but we are filling in the content right now.
• 2:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:01:52
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm my goal is by the end of March, I would say.
• 2:01:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 2:01:57
  SPEAKER_01: But what we're gonna do is we're gonna try to put up a landing page that people can already pre-register for it.
• 2:02:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be a monthly subscription kind of thing, and it's the realmen.co.co.
• 2:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: The realmen.co website.
• 2:02:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it will, like I said, encompass these weekly or bi-weekly meetings, uh live sessions with all of the video content that we'll have.
• 2:02:20
  SPEAKER_01: So we're shooting for the end of March, but uh men can can go on to the realmen.co and submit their email addresses to be some of the first to be able to sign up for this.
• 2:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: And we're gonna have kind of a special thing for the first 10 who want to participate in this.
• 2:02:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be a very low price.
• 2:02:36
  SPEAKER_01: And the month is not gonna be exorbitant.
• 2:02:40
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be under a hundred bucks a month.
• 2:02:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and the first 10 men who want to sign up to give us kind of some feedback and things like that is gonna be a much uh a pretty low price.
• 2:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 2:02:50
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 2:02:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, I'll I'll add links to the show notes wherever you're listening to this.
• 2:02:56
  SPEAKER_00: There should be a description box somewhere where all of the links are gonna be neatly organized with bullet points.
• 2:03:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um so you can stay up to date with that.
• 2:03:04
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, when you do finally launch, I'll also share it um an announcement as well with my email list.
• 2:03:11
  SPEAKER_00: So you won't miss it.
• 2:03:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm hoping to get you to get you to do a little module for us too.
• 2:03:15
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you can do a module on stoicism.
• 2:03:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love that.
• 2:03:18
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to, yeah, absolutely.
• 2:03:21
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I would be honored.
• 2:03:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um I think yeah, I'm excited by I like to work with men a lot as well.
• 2:03:29
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah, I'm I'm I can feel the struggles uh of being a sort of a complicated creative guy, you know, um, who is sensitive, but also isn't only sensitive, you know, and also has masculine traits as well, and trying to figure that out and balance it and find my place um in the hierarchies, uh you know, school and you know, yeah, it's been a it's been a journey.
• 2:03:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's been quite it's been painful, you know.
• 2:04:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've had a lot of difficult times relating to other men, you know, as I was growing up and different types of uh figures.
• 2:04:09
  SPEAKER_00: And at the moment I'm I'm I'm really happy with where I'm at, but you know, it it is a it's a journey and I'm passionate about it, and I actually love helping other guys on their journey too.
• 2:04:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's really fulfilling to have that opportunity.
• 2:04:24
  SPEAKER_01: Because men, uh, it's gonna be a very lonely, lonely path to be a man, you know, because you know women tend to have their tribes, they have their women's circles, and men are often the rebel, they're the loner because they don't feel like they can talk about things with other men.
• 2:04:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why we want to welcome those guys into this program uh to give them that space to do it.
• 2:04:46
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 2:04:48
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you for the great talk, Adam, and uh the wisdom and the reflections and your company.
• 2:04:55
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate you.
• 2:04:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:04:57
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, John.
• 2:04:58
  SPEAKER_01: I really appreciate you the invitation and I look forward to talking to you again.
• 2:05:02
  SPEAKER_01: Great.