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Shadow Work to Save Your Relationship (with Luke Adler) · Evolutionary Men

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Jason Lange: All right, and welcome back, everybody.
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Once again, super excited to be joined by Dr.
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Luke Adler, my friend and brother at arms, in the work we're doing here in the
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world.
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And today we're here to talk about shadow work
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to save your relationship.
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Yeah, that's right.
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A lot of times we're coming on here and we're talking about shadow work in terms of
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an inner movement for ourselves and for some kind of healing.
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But the truth is it's impossible to divorce that from the relationships we're in.
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And if I've learned anything in my decade plus of this work now,
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one of the only things that will often get a man's ass off the couch to ask for
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help
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is when it comes to his intimate relationship in terms of
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he doesn't have the one he wants or he's in one that he wants.
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And he can see that if something doesn't change, that relationship is probably going
1:05
to come to an end.
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And
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we're very fervent in our belief that, you know, all this work we do, all this
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deep healing, spiritual growth, all of it,
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it's all spiritual narcissism.
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Unless it's showing up in our relationship, Right?
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Unless we're actually changing how we show up in the relationships we value
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the most.
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And so Luke and I are here to dive in today
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to why we think shadow work is one of the most potent tools you can use
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to save your relationship and completely change
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the way it's playing out between you and your beloved.
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Luke Adler: Yeah, you might be on the verge of actual, actual separating in a relationship or
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breaking up or divorce.
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And there's another
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way that this manifests in that the relationship
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lacks closeness, it lacks intimacy,
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that you're, you're, you've actually already passed that place of
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connection.
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You're not connected anymore.
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There's not a sense of aliveness in your relationship.
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There's not a sense of
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fun and happiness and joy.
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It could be very likely that you're kind of following a set pattern in the
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relationship,
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a set of agreements just to kind of get along,
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going along to get along, as they say,
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but
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you're not satisfied, you're not happy.
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And perhaps your partner isn't either.
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A fear of rocking the boat, a fear of bringing forward
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what you really want.
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Maybe your partner brings forward what she wants a lot,
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and you just agree, maybe kind of a nice guy archetype.
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And
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how can shadow work shift that?
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How can shadow work
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help bring more aliveness back to your relationship?
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This is one of the things that shadow work does, is,
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doesn't just reignite your vitality, it, it unlocks it.
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We use the phrase unkinks like a hose
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unravels a knot in your.
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In your physiology and your energetic system so that you have more vitality.
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And it will do that in your relationship too.
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Because relationship, when we're in a committed relationship, it's just an extension
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of who we are and it becomes a joint, cooperative space of
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being in existence.
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So if there's a kink in me, then there's a kink between Emily and I, and vice versa.
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If there's a block in one, there's a block in both.
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Right?
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This is what relationship is about.
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So
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shadow work is the exploration of what's clogged, what's clogged
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in the pipe of our being.
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And getting that unclogged is really our work to do.
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And
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one of the things we say in our work is that we are body positive.
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We trust the body's wisdom.
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We
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make this great traverse from the head
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to not just the heart, but the entire body.
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And our work is about getting into the body, exploring it
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in terms of our awareness of it, and getting things to move.
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So
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if you're on the verge, if your relationship has got a trickle of energy in it, and
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this is something I hear
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often people are afraid to.
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To change because
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they don't want to lose their circumstances, their financial security.
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And they've really shifted from a relationship to more of an association.
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I'll do this for you, you do this for me.
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And of course that's good.
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It's wonderful in a certain way to just have security.
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And what we all really want is something more.
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And that moreness has to do with
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deep, deep joy and love.
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So,
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yeah, let's keep going on this one, Jason.
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Jason Lange: Yeah, so, you know, we've been doing the Shadow work series for a while now, but
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I'm getting the sense it's a good time to just revisit what, what is shadow work.
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And I think you just named one of the simplest
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descriptions
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in things we've actually seen.
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So this esoteric thing, shadow work.
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What is a shadow?
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What's in my shadow?
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Okay,
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it's great.
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We can go down the list of the different things about bringing what's unconscious
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into the conscious, helping ourselves see our patterning, our wounding, the many
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routines and habits and protections often developed in childhood that are
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still running the show for us now.
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But really what it comes down to is what's blocking the flow of love.
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That's it.
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And yeah, it's kind of woo, woo.
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It's kind of hippie, but it's real.
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Like this actual flow of vitality and love to different parts of ourselves,
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to each other, into the grander
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world we're part of.
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And shadow work is about identifying those kinks, right?
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Those places where energy and love stopped flowing
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in and through us.
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And why this is so important in relationship is
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frequent listeners know.
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You know, I've been on my high horse about two things lately.
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One, like, I love polarity.
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I love teaching polarity.
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It is fun, it is sexy.
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And
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the challenge with polarity is almost never polarity.
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It's this.
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Where is love no longer flowing?
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And where am I so kinked up in my being
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that I'm carrying, particularly us as men, so much tension
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that there's no room for any flow of love or life force or polarity between
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us.
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When we're open and spacious in here and radically present with a partner,
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polarity flows.
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Erotic tension will fill that space.
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But when there's all this fucking relational tension between me and you and the
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resentments, and you do this and I do this, and
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there's no space for that.
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So that's for one.
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Shadow work is the most potent tool you and I have found and experienced in our own
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lives for how do we clear out these kinks, this tension, so my presence and my
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love can just be here?
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So it's a lot of times polarity and erotic tension is just about removing blocks,
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right?
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Just about removing blocks.
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Then the other thing
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specifically for us guys is how this shows up is just, you know, hit me like a
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lightning bolt the other day, and I just did an episode on this, of course, where
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what stuckness is in so many guys we work with,
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and
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I can see it now, even in relationship, is what happens when we do two things.
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When we try to hold it all in inside of us, our feelings,
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holding it all in.
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But then we're also holding and keeping other people out.
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So there's energy going to.
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Holding you out.
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There's energy going to hold me in.
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And then life becomes this unbelievably compressed space in between those two
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things where it's like, ah, I feel totally fucking stuck because there's no
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movement.
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And shadow work, particularly in the men's groups you and I set up,
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they accelerate that movement.
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We're letting what's inside us come up, up and out.
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And in the process of that, we're actually inviting the other men in.
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And then when every man starts doing that, something incredible happens where the
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places inside of us that felt stuck or unlovable or just scary.
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Start to become okay, start to become less of a terror.
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And we get to get really clear
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about
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what stuckness, what holding, what protective patterns am I in
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that almost certainly I'm carrying from my childhood or previous relationships.
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And this is really the work for us men to bring into
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relationship, because if we're not relating to ourselves differently, it's going to
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be really hard to relate to our partners differently.
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And shadow work, what we're talking about here, this process of getting more
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connected to ourselves, and I think you named it beautifully, right?
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We start in the head, we come into the heart, and we go all the way down into the
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body,
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right?
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There's
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some teachers I worked with back in the day, their whole thing was, I think how they
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named that was waking down.
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It's not about just waking up, right?
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What you and I have talked about, shadow work, is about becoming intimate with all
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parts of ourselves.
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What we're talking about here is waking down
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into our bodies fully and connecting to what's there.
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And why that's so important is if we're not connected to that, there's no way in
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hell we're going to be able to speak our truth about what's actually happening.
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And nothing, I have found,
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vitalizes a relationship faster
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than when both partners feel safe enough and courageous enough to speak
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our truth.
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Here's what's actually happening inside me.
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Here's how I'm actually experiencing us.
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That level of vitality and what's real in the moment is the thing that can
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reignite a relationship.
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And it's the thing that often,
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like you said, kind of falls to the wayside over time where
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we're relating to each other as functions for getting our needs met
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and as roles,
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right?
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Where it's actually, I play this role in our relationship, you play this role in our
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relationship.
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And we're not actually relating to each other.
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So in this role, I need to share this.
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In this role, you need to share that.
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And we start relating to these kind of projections of each other.
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And the nice guy, control
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and manipulation starts to come in where I want you to feel a certain way so I can
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feel a certain way.
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So I'm going to share some things and not share other things because the truth is,
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for me to speak my truth fully
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is destabilizing two those crusty rolls, right?
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It means something's going to start moving when we start speaking our truth again.
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And shadow work, in the way you and I lead, it helps us get really clear
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about what truths we need to speak.
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In our relationship.
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Luke Adler: Yeah.
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The thing that's scary about
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speaking your truth, just to highlight what you're saying, Jason, is that it breaks
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up the implicit agreements.
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These are rarely explicit agreements, meaning they're rarely spoken about or
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contracted out.
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They're implicit.
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They're
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these roles, these grooves we settle into in our relationships.
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We're all behave this way, you behave that way.
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And as long as we keep doing that, there's a sense of stability
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when we get in touch with what's real for us.
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And by in touch, I mean feel it in our bodies and then share from that place.
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It's scary, of course, because we challenge the.
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The implicit story that we've been telling ourselves around who I have to be to keep
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my relationship
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safe.
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If my.
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My partner is complaining a lot and criticizing me a lot, and.
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And
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I don't like it, and perhaps I'll distance myself, maybe I'll defend, maybe I'll
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eventually go quiet.
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The thing that's scary about getting embodied is that
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we have to break our agreement.
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We have to break the implicit agreement.
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We have to start to tear down that story that we're telling ourselves about who I
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have to be to make this relationship work.
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What we've discovered in the work of embodiment, the work of actually trusting your
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body, is that, yes, initially it's.
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It's scary to
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feel and then communicate from that space because
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you're breaking the agreement.
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But there is a safety.
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There's a safety that arises when we land in the body.
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And
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here's the big distinction.
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There are several forms of intelligence
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in our being, but the two that operate
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primarily around conflict are your.
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What we call your corporeal sense of being, which is your.
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Your physical sense of being in your body, in space and in
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time.
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And let's make it relational.
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My physical sense of being in my body
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and my sensing of my wife and her body,
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the space between us
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and her mood
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and my mood.
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And that's just something I'm sensing.
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I'm not thinking about it per se yet, but I'm sensing it.
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When I get into conflict or conflictual pattern, what tends to happen is I go into
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strategy.
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How can I fix this?
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Which shifts my awareness into my.
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My cognitive being.
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So at that point, I'm not.
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I'm not in my corporeal sense.
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I'm not in my embodied.
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There's a kind of embodied intuition.
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When someone's in pain, I know how to move towards them with sensitivity, meaning
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physically move my body towards them and create
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attunement and safety.
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When we land in our body and speak from the place of what our body knows.
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We also
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land.
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We land in a place of stability.
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And if there's a sense of fear, of rocking the boat, that fear can dissipate because
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I can actually start to invite, like you talked about, polarity, Jason.
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If I'm strategizing on a polarity with my partner to ignite some feeling in her,
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and I'm not in my body,
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I'm not actually here,
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then there's not going to be the safety to invite her into this experience.
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The shadow work is body positive.
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Shadow work is corporeal.
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It invites you to land in your body and start to feel your
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embodied knowing or your embodied intuitive knowing around how to be, how to be
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in relationship, how to be attuned in relationship, how to be sensitive in
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relationship.
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And this is what's missing around navigating real connection
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with our partners.
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Of course,
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to get there,
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we have to work with the kinks.
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And that's all of the traumatic imprints that are there from, yes, our conditioning
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in childhood.
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And this is where
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you can be on the brink of relationship collapsing because
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you're in your, you're in your fight or flight response, your defense pattern.
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You're one up, one down,
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walled off, love, addicted,
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polarity around survival.
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And there might feel a certain kind of agentic nature in it, but you're not fully
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integrated into the space of, of actually being relational.
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Where the space for her, there's space for me.
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And when we're in that defensive pattern, then we're either, we're either the
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predator or the prey
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in the, in the, in the relationship.
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And you know, you, you just think about that primal example of predator and prey.
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That's what we default to when there's dysfunction, even if there's functional.
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This is strange, functional dysfunction.
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Like we've agreed to roles and we've agreed to tasks,
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and it's functional
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in that the tasks and the roles move our life along.
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But it's dysfunctional and that there's no love and there's limited love and
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connection.
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And truly it's more of a predator, prey dynamic.
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And it might be that we are the prey and the world is the predator.
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Vice versa, of course, that eventually spins upon the relationship
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predator, prey dynamics.
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And so shadow work is about, is about
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shifting into something that's spacious and relational and embodied.
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And it's practice, it's training.
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It's not magic.
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It's not, yes,
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there, there are spiritual attributes to it because when you're in tune with your
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body you're in tune with your environment and you're paying attention and you're in
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the flow of what, what, what's workable.
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Because you're there, you're looking at it, you're hearing it, you're present.
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And this is what we teach.
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We train people how to do this.
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It's totally trainable.
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It's really our.
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It's really our intrinsic nature to be this way.
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Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean, I think you just
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hit the nail on the head and, you know, part of what we're teaching and growing into
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when we do this work, particularly with an emphasis on relationship, is that shift
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from controlling to relating.
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So controlling is what we do
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when we think
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there's something that might happen that will cause us to feel something
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we're afraid to feel.
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That's it, right?
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There's an action I could take and my partner will react in a certain way.
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And then I'm going to have to feel something that feels so overwhelming to my
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system.
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I am going to do whatever it takes to control the outcome, to try to protect myself
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from that feeling.
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And that often shows up like you've been teaching so beautifully lately in either
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I'm going to take the dominant one up position
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or I'm going to take the submissive one down position, which is still a form of
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control.
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Right?
20:30
Just whatever you want, babe.
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Just whatever you want, babe.
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I'm controlling her reaction in hopes I don't have to feel something.
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So what we're doing in shadow work, and this is so key,
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is we're building the capacity to stay present
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with whatever we're feeling
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inside or that's coming from us on the outside.
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So shadow work.
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One of the ways I've gotten more free in this work is
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learning to actually come into contact and stay present with all the emotions
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inside me.
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Grief, shame, fear, disgust, rage, anger.
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Right.
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All of that.
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If I'm afraid of feeling that, I am going to be trying to control any situation.
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And here's the kicker.
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If I am afraid of feeling that myself, I sure as shit don't want to feel it in my
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partner.
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Because if she starts going into her fear and I'm not comfortable with fear, I am
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going to go as fast as I can to try to get her out of that or her disgust or her
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anger.
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So in shadow work and in the way we work with guys, part of what we say
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is, well, let's go right towards that inside of ourselves.
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And so you can actually have the embodied experience
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of what it means to stay present without getting overwhelmed and collapsing into it
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or without trying to stuff it, shove it, and posture your way over it to dominate
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the feeling.
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But just, wow, this part of me, this emotion, this can be present, and I can learn
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to stay with it.
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And that capacity to stay within in ourselves
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helps us stay with it in someone else.
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And as we don't fear those feeling states, we don't have to try to
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control things anymore.
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And thus, what does it become easier to do to speak our truth?
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Hey, here's.
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Here's.
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Here's what's alive and true for me right now.
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Here's what I need.
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Here's my boundary.
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Here's where I'm hurting, whatever that is.
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And that, like I said, tends to vitalize relationships.
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And, you know, if you're out there and you're like, I don't know about that,
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speaking the truth, that's gonna.
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That seems like it's gonna fuck up my relationship.
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Where I've.
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Where a lot of people I know have seen.
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This is what happens when a relationship ends,
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right?
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And often, once a couple has decided our relationship is over.
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Many men I have spoken with and worked with get very confused in this
23:11
moment because the relationship's over.
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And suddenly, without having to, oh, my God, we got to protect that.
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Both partners start speaking their truth.
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You know, the whole time I was really this or this or honestly this.
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And the honesty starts to flow because there's nothing you're trying to protect
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anymore.
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And oftentimes you'll start to feel really close to the partner again.
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They'll be like this holy.
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Like, oh, my God.
23:37
Like, wow.
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We're like, da, da, da, da, da.
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And it can be very confusing for men because on the way out, there's often this
23:44
opening towards the end and how I have experienced that, and what I'm really
23:49
mapping that to is it's because truth is being spoken.
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You're actually relating to each other in that corporeal sense again that you were
23:59
talking about and not the concepts of each other, but you're getting real with
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authenticity.
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And when we get real with authenticity, connection tends to flow.
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And this is really so much of the work where we're like, okay, I'm in this
24:17
relationship.
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I'm oftentimes what
24:20
kind of brings a relationship to a head or brings up these discussions of it might
24:25
end is we feel stuck,
24:30
right?
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Maybe we've gone to talk therapy.
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We've seen the couple's therapist, We've addressed.
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We know all of the things, and yet here we are.
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She does this, I do this, and then I do this.
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And she does it.
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And we just get right into that fucking dance over and over and over again.
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Shadow work
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is the process of taking that awareness and bringing it into a bodily knowing
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where we have choice as to how we're going to respond, where we can actually
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interrupt
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the pattern and say, oh my God, here's that part of me that gets so
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scared.
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I feel like I'm 2 years old.
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And that is so unacceptable to me that the only way I know how to protect myself is
25:18
to attack you.
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And I don't want to attack you right now.
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And this is the work we can do as men
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to come more into relationship and for so many guys.
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I mostly work with heterosexual couples and men, so I'm going to speak in that
25:35
language here, but this really applies to anywhere.
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For so many guys, their woman, often what she wants
25:42
is to feel us, the men, more and to be felt more.
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She's longing for a heart connection.
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But us guys, we're never trained in how to do that, how to wake down, how to come
25:56
into our bodies.
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And so we
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can really start to change things when we're willing to go first,
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right?
26:05
This is, I think, the great work of masculine leadership these days is don't wait,
26:10
go first, be the one to go vulnerable first.
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That is the new leadership.
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And the truth is
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that can really change things fast.
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Because here's the deal.
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Not every guy out there is going to want to hear this,
26:25
but
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relationship is almost never 100% someone's fault.
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When it's not working.
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We all, we both have pieces of it, right?
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It's never just her, it's never just me.
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And anytime it's just you, there's shadow there.
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I guarantee it.
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Now, let me just caveat and say this equation only works with
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partners who aren't borderline.
26:50
If a partner's borderline, it's just a different equation you're working with here.
26:54
But a men's group, a shadow work group, can still actually help you see what's
26:58
really happening.
26:59
That, wow, no matter how I show up here,
27:02
I'm not going to be able to come into right relationship unless my partner can do
27:06
some work.
27:08
But if we're willing to acknowledge, as painful as it is, that, wow, part of what
27:13
might not be working in our relationship,
27:16
I am contributing to in how I am programmed, how I am,
27:22
when really willing to bite that off
27:25
and go right towards it and say, I gotta work this,
27:29
something else becomes possible
27:32
and it can completely start to change your relationship, which
27:37
best case and worst case is best case, you really do your part in change as a man
27:43
and your partner reciprocates that
27:46
and the relationship is saved.
27:49
Worst case.
27:50
But you know, in some ways still a best case, you do that,
27:54
you really show up, you give it your all, you finally bring yourself forward in the
27:58
way you've had an intuition, maybe you needed to, maybe she's even told you all
28:03
these years
28:05
and she doesn't open to that.
28:09
You can then leave the relationship in a very different way where it's not I
28:14
should have or only if I, or I wonder, but wow, I really brought it.
28:19
I brought myself.
28:21
I played full out.
28:22
I brought my whole game here.
28:24
And turns out we're not aligned.
28:27
That becomes possible when you're willing to take a look at and face
28:32
those parts of yourself where you've been clogged up, where you've been kinked up,
28:37
where love has not been flowing, and where you can really get in touch with your
28:42
truth and feel resourced enough
28:45
to be able to speak it into the relationship.
28:48
Because you're also being held in something larger, which for us is the men's group.
28:54
We help men create.
28:58
Luke Adler: Yeah, that's the real genius of the way that we work, is it's not just.
29:01
You're not just unkinking your being.
29:04
I'll highlight in a moment, that's being witnessed and held by a group of other men.
29:09
And that part is, is the
29:14
key ingredient to not just sustaining the breakthrough and the healing, but shifting
29:19
the circumstances in our lives.
29:21
So that, that becomes.
29:23
Goes from, you know, what we say is, goes from kind of a state experience of
29:27
expansion to a stage
29:29
you're now moving into a kind of permanent stage of being because you have your
29:35
accountability, love and support.
29:37
That's relational.
29:39
Jason Lange: Right.
29:39
Luke Adler: This is why we've designed our work to be the way it is.
29:42
It's, it's.
29:42
You're practicing, you're practicing that relational
29:47
freedom
29:50
with a group of people.
29:51
And then it's much easier with that scaffolding than to then apply it
29:57
and in many cases
29:59
sustain it.
30:00
This is the difficulty sometimes in relationship.
30:03
And we commend ourselves and many men who, they do it, they feel it, they speak it,
30:08
and then
30:09
their wives ignore them or their wives railroad them, or
30:13
it just doesn't change because
30:16
sometimes that realization that embodied freedom,
30:21
there's freedom inside of us, but the system externally is still stuck.
30:25
And so it takes more than just speaking it.
30:29
It takes speaking it over
30:32
and over and over, several iterations, hopefully not, you know, not interminably,
30:37
but many times for the system to change.
30:40
And for systems to change
30:43
requires great support.
30:44
So you need, you need the support of a group of
30:49
people that understand
30:51
what you're doing and can say, no, Luke, you got this.
30:54
You know, keep, keep going.
30:57
Talk to your people about this, get a therapist, et cetera.
31:01
Build the scaffolding around
31:03
what's needed for the system to change so we see that occur.
31:09
Shadow work works
31:11
every time, and
31:15
I'd love to have a better phrase for it, but it, it works every time, all the time,
31:19
because it operates out of the principles of consciousness.
31:22
And we've been describing this in different ways.
31:25
Ways we talk about
31:27
telling the truth.
31:29
Jason.
31:31
Jason and I talk about the success of the organization AA often.
31:35
It is probably the most robust organization on the planet for lots of different
31:40
reasons.
31:40
But the main reason why it works is that they create a space for people to come in
31:46
and tell the truth.
31:48
No judgment.
31:49
Well, maybe there is, but there's a spirit of acceptance and safety there.
31:54
The Catholic Church also has their
31:58
structure of confessionals where people go in and they tell the truth and then they
32:02
say, okay, do these prayers, and you know, you are relieved from that burden.
32:07
You know,
32:08
our work takes that to another level.
32:11
And this is why we talk about being body positive.
32:14
Our work isn't so much about telling the truth
32:18
as it's about feeling the truth.
32:20
There's, of course, a massive difference because one could just be cognitive or
32:26
performative,
32:27
and the other is
32:30
fully embodied.
32:32
What we know about when you feel the truth and then of course, speak it from a space
32:38
of embodiment is that consciousness or energy increases
32:44
in the system.
32:45
And that's that unkinking of, of the, the confession,
32:50
you know, the, the somatic confession.
32:53
It's like, I don't know, I've been, I've been telling myself this story, and then my
32:57
body goes,
32:58
you know, and the, the truth is felt and along with it comes energy.
33:04
And then something else arises in that which you also described.
33:09
You get,
33:10
you feel the truth, you feel more energy, and then you feel
33:16
good.
33:16
Like you talked about the relationship breaking up.
33:19
And then like, oh, I feel closer.
33:21
What is that closeness that we're describing?
33:24
Well, it's a phenomenon of consciousness itself.
33:27
And that phenomenon is talked about at different words, but one of them is
33:32
love,
33:33
one of them is joy.
33:36
The Vedic scriptures use the word bliss, which is kind of a little bit more of a
33:40
spiritual connotation that there's something uplifting and connective that occurs
33:45
when we feel the truth
33:48
unkink the hose of our being.
33:50
And then this quality,
33:53
not just of energy, but of
33:56
upliftment arises.
33:57
It's the characteristics of consciousness increasing.
34:03
Our work is centered around that phenomenon,
34:06
and so it works every time.
34:08
And it's not a strategy, it's not a technique.
34:12
It's what happens when you feel the truth
34:16
and what.
34:17
What you're held in when that.
34:20
When you're willing to take that risk, to drop from the headquarters to the.
34:24
The heart, the core quarters of your being, is you're held in that.
34:31
In that love, in that joy, in that upliftment.
34:34
The spirit of life moves through the system,
34:38
and
34:39
we call that healing in certain ways.
34:43
But really, the word for that is relationship.
34:46
That's what intimacy is.
34:48
It's getting intimate with the intrinsic nature of life, which is something that
34:53
feels really good.
34:55
And it's there, and it's available to all of us.
34:58
It's who we are.
34:59
It's our essence.
35:00
It's how this whole thing works.
35:03
Our style of work is about increasing the flow of that,
35:09
and
35:11
it's automated in a certain sense.
35:13
And if you're willing to take that risk,
35:17
to leap into that process, you will experience that.
35:21
That's not something where I'm like, I hope you'll try this.
35:24
It's like, no, no.
35:25
Jason and I have been doing this
35:28
kind of work, specifically together for over 10 years.
35:31
So
35:33
we're well practiced as individuals and as a team.
35:36
Of course, we.
35:37
We're.
35:37
We're teaching partners around this.
35:39
So this isn't something we have faith in or we need to convince people of.
35:43
It's just, we live it.
35:44
This is our life, and we're passionate about it.
35:47
It's like, hey, you don't have to be on the verge of it.
35:50
You don't have to be in.
35:51
In a sexless, loveless,
35:53
connectiveless relationship.
35:55
It's that you don't have to do that.
35:58
In fact, if you are in that dynamic, like you mentioned Jason,
36:02
and there's this sense of like, oh, I don't want to rock the boat.
36:06
I'll stay in my role.
36:07
You're both doing that.
36:08
If you think you're the only one doing that.
36:11
She's doing that too.
36:13
And
36:15
there's a fear in the system that says,
36:19
this is common.
36:19
If I don't share, you know, maybe this is as good as it can get.
36:24
Maybe I should just hold on to these crumbs and not.
36:28
This is all I'm used to.
36:29
This is all I got accustomed to as a child.
36:31
My response to that is, no,
36:34
that's actually not your destiny.
36:37
And that's not what's true?
36:42
If you really love this person, if you really love this person,
36:48
consider taking the risk to set you both free.
36:51
Really.
36:53
And
36:55
I know I'm asking a lot, but trusting that more is available,
37:00
there's a certain leap, not a faith of trust, you know, and not saying it's easy,
37:05
it's not.
37:07
It's not easy, but
37:09
it's doable.
37:11
Jason Lange: And frankly, I mean,
37:14
long term, it is easier
37:16
than staying in a stuck place and having the relationship fall apart.
37:21
It's also more
37:23
empowering
37:26
to step into a place of, wow, I really can change things.
37:30
Rather than, there's nothing I can do, there's nothing I can do.
37:34
I'm stuck in a sexless marriage, there's nothing I can do.
37:36
We're too financially entwined.
37:38
There's nothing I can do.
37:39
She's too traumatized.
37:40
You know, whatever it is, all those stories are disempowered stories.
37:45
And what we're saying is you can step in and you can actually impact things by your
37:51
willingness to engage with your shadow as a man.
37:54
And the frame we create in shadow work, and specifically in our shadow work men's
38:00
groups,
38:01
is this is where you can come
38:04
to actually practice
38:07
relationship,
38:09
right?
38:09
So this is it.
38:10
This is where you can practice being more transparent, being more vulnerable, being
38:15
more firm, speaking your truth.
38:17
We do that in this incredibly safe
38:21
structure of support with other men, where we have agreements and we have practices
38:26
and we have ways of clearing up things that most people do not have out in the
38:31
world.
38:32
So what it allows us to do is step into a space and try something new that our
38:38
nervous system has never tried before.
38:40
And in getting these reps in with each other, guess what?
38:45
It becomes a lot fucking easier to bring it back into the relationships that matter
38:51
most to you.
38:52
And particularly, most likely that intimate one where there's so much at stake,
38:58
there's so much baggage, there's so much charge, there's so much wounding.
39:02
So it can be really hard to just step into a space like that and practice something
39:05
new.
39:06
But when we get our reps in in a place of safety, containment and love with other
39:10
men,
39:11
it makes it easier to bring it into relationship and
39:16
it gives us a space to go to, to deal with what happens after.
39:21
Fuck.
39:21
I tried something new and oh my God, it really did rattle us or I tried to share it
39:27
and oh my God, it came out totally wrong and I think I actually made things worse.
39:32
I have a place to come back to, to be held and supported and find your center again
39:38
as a man.
39:40
And that's really the power of an ongoing group as well that can
39:46
hold you and your relationship in love and give you clear feedback over time as to,
39:52
wow, we've seen you really show up.
39:54
Like, you told us what was going on, what your edge was.
39:58
And we've seen you show up, man.
40:00
And it's not changing.
40:03
So
40:04
it might be time to make a different kind of change or
40:08
we might hear the, yeah, man, you know, I don't know.
40:11
You keep coming back with the same things, and I still don't feel like you've ever
40:15
really,
40:17
really stepped in in a different way with your partner.
40:21
And I think you would regret it if you just bowed out right now.
40:25
This is the kind of wisdom that can come toward us when we're held
40:30
by a group that loves us and loves our relationship.
40:34
And shadow work is that process of getting clearer and clearer about who we are,
40:39
what we want, and being able to speak that forward in a direct way
40:44
while, you know, wrapped in love for self, for our partner,
40:50
for everyone around us.
40:52
And we have seen it change men's relationships, right?
40:55
Because
40:57
when those kinks start getting unblocked,
41:01
that is where the energy, the love, the vitality, the life force starts to flow
41:05
again.
41:06
And that's often the very thing that had a partner fall in love with us in the first
41:12
place.
41:13
When we were inside of ourselves and we weren't containing it all and trying to
41:17
control it, all our passion flowed, or whatever that might be in
41:23
energy, in the system, aliveness.
41:25
It is attractive.
41:28
It's something we want to be around people who are alive and open and
41:34
not turning away from their pain or their feeling or their joy.
41:38
And shadow work is a pathway to doing that.
41:41
And you will come out of a program like this
41:44
more resilient and able
41:48
to be with all of the intensity in your life.
41:51
And when you're not afraid of it, when you're not afraid of feeling,
41:56
then you can really lead your partner,
42:00
right?
42:01
So if she comes at you in a dysregulated way, this was, you know, big movement I had
42:05
to make a few years ago, and then that would trigger my dysregulation.
42:10
Oh, my God.
42:10
My partner's not okay.
42:11
Oh, my God, now I'm not feeling okay.
42:13
Luke Adler: Ah.
42:15
Jason Lange: I can't do shit for her in that space.
42:17
But when I've built enough resource and boundary in myself to feel, wow.
42:23
My habit is to make this about me.
42:28
It doesn't always have to be.
42:29
My partner is in pain right now and dysregulated.
42:35
I can be with that so now I can come in and I can really love her because I'm
42:39
actually okay.
42:40
I got Luke, I got my brothers at my back.
42:43
I'm okay.
42:44
And I can love my partner exactly where she's at.
42:46
And that will change your relationship.
42:51
Luke Adler: Well said.
42:51
Jason, I want to say one thing.
42:53
I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.
42:54
I'll keep it brief.
42:57
There's a.
42:57
There's a mood out there.
42:59
There's a mood out there.
43:00
I've been.
43:01
Weird things have been happening around me.
43:02
I was like working in my yard the other day and I have this deep alley and someone
43:06
walked into the alley, just started talking me up
43:10
about how lonely they were.
43:11
I never met this person in my life.
43:14
And I could.
43:16
Several examples that
43:18
I won't
43:20
get into.
43:20
But there's a mood out there.
43:22
There's a mood out there in the, in the, in the environment of like,
43:26
I don't know, it's just.
43:28
I think I might just go to sleep.
43:29
You know, I just.
43:30
Maybe this is as good as it's gonna get.
43:32
You know, I
43:34
shadow work.
43:35
Why would I do that?
43:36
I just, I.
43:37
I found this kind of comfortable place with my, with my garden with Netflix and with
43:43
porn or, or just not even any of those.
43:46
Maybe just,
43:47
just my routine and, and
43:50
you know, the political scenes too loud and obnoxious and there's instability
43:54
everywhere.
43:55
I don't,
43:56
I don't want to look at any of.
43:58
I don't want to.
43:58
Why would I feel any of that?
43:59
I, I found some comfortable place to live
44:03
in my relationship, in my life.
44:05
And
44:06
Luke and Jason,
44:08
even guys who have done our, done our program that are just like, maybe they're not
44:11
showing up to groups as much.
44:13
And it's like,
44:16
I don't want to face it.
44:17
It's scary out there.
44:19
I don't.
44:21
I don't want to deal with all that instability.
44:25
I hear you.
44:26
I hear you and I feel your pain.
44:28
I feel it.
44:29
I can sense it.
44:31
But I'm offering a full throated rejection of that stance
44:37
because here's what the nature of intimacy is about in the nature of life.
44:42
The nature of life is about love
44:45
and it's about joy and it's about happiness.
44:49
And that runs independent of the bullshit we're seeing
44:53
with leaders in the world.
44:54
It runs independent of the instability politically.
45:00
It runs independent
45:02
of
45:03
drug addiction and
45:06
addiction.
45:07
Addiction in general.
45:09
This is free from that.
45:11
And it's yours for the taking if you want it.
45:14
And yes, you have to orient yourself in your body towards it, to onboard it, to get
45:19
it to come into your body, your cells, your skin, to feel it.
45:24
There's a.
45:25
There's a bit of work to do, but it's.
45:27
It's far less work than the work it takes, like you said, Jason, to withstand the
45:32
bombardment and the barrage of the stupidity and ignorance that's there at the
45:38
surface.
45:40
That.
45:41
That play
45:43
of.
45:43
Of confusion.
45:45
That's not.
45:46
That's not for us.
45:49
What's for us is connection, love and upliftment and, yes, contributing to a better
45:54
world with better outcomes for everyone.
45:56
You know, and so I just want to touch that, and I'll.
46:00
I'll stop.
46:01
Jason Lange: I think it's beautifully said.
46:03
You know, the choice I think
46:05
so many of us face is
46:08
connection or comfort.
46:10
Connection is not always comfortable, but it is alive,
46:15
right?
46:15
We actually feel alive in our life, in our experience.
46:19
We're engaged with it all.
46:22
And
46:23
that kind of connection, that kind of aliveness, I know for me, that's what makes
46:29
me feel fulfilled,
46:31
right?
46:32
Like, oh, I'm in it.
46:34
I'm here, I'm engaged.
46:35
It hurts.
46:36
Sometimes it feels great.
46:37
Sometimes it feels bad,
46:40
but I feel alive.
46:41
You know, it's the feeling of, like, after a good workout, it's like, wow, okay, I'm
46:46
here.
46:46
Like, I feel my body.
46:48
I'm alive.
46:49
Was the workout fun?
46:50
Not always.
46:51
Sometimes it sucks, right?
46:53
But it's about that engagement, and that's where we can be the most free as men,
46:59
where we're not no longer living in the what ifs, and we're not just living in that
47:04
narrow spectrum of being what we're asking men to do right now.
47:09
Stepping into something like shadow work is to come into full contact with your
47:14
relationship and yourself as life is to look at it, to actually look at it in
47:20
a sober way and not pretend it's just going to fix itself, right?
47:24
Or get lulled into that comfort.
47:26
And then once we've made full
47:28
contact, as my wife says, then we open ourselves up to feel the full spectrum, okay?
47:34
If I want more passion and joy, and in good times with my wife, I got to be willing
47:40
to get into the dark, the muck, the mire, the pain.
47:44
And when we can expand into one, we're going to expand to the other.
47:48
And suddenly, life, there's so much more to life.
47:53
Instead of that compressed little place I talked about of when we hold it in and we
47:58
keep them out,
47:59
here's my little spot of comfort, okay?
48:02
I know exactly how this goes.
48:04
You guys in these relationships, you're ready to save.
48:07
You know how your way of being you know exactly where it's going to take you in your
48:11
relationship.
48:12
It's not rocket science.
48:14
It's this is how this script plays out.
48:18
And you cannot control your partner.
48:21
You cannot make a partner change.
48:22
What you have control over is how am I showing up, what script am I playing?
48:27
And shadow work is going to illuminate that script, put it right in your face and
48:32
then wrap you in a ton of love and resource and support so you
48:38
can start playing a new role.
48:40
We've got just a couple of spots left here for our fall 2026 cohort.
48:45
We got an amazing venue lined up down in Austin, Texas.
48:49
Some incredible men coming in.
48:51
And if you're done waiting and you don't want to leave it to chance, you don't want
48:55
to leave your relationship to chance, join us.
48:59
Something will move.
49:00
Just head over to heartofshadow.com
49:04
awesome, brother.
49:05
Good to be with you as always.
49:07
And
49:09
until next time.