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Shadow Work for Anxiety & Worry (with Luke Adler) · Evolutionary Men

• 0:00
  All right, and welcome back everyone.
• 0:02
  Pumped to once again be back for another episode of our Heart of Shadows series, and I'm here with my man at arms, Dr.
• 0:10
  Luke Adler.
• 0:11
  Good morning, Luke.
• 0:12
  Brother, so glad to be here.
• 0:16
  And we're continuing our Shadow Work 4 series.
• 0:20
  And today we wanted to talk about a different angle on things than we've covered so far, which is really about worry.
• 0:28
  Rumination, anxiety, something I think more and more men these days are really battling with
• 0:39
  uh as we get to work with guys carrying a lot of fear inside and a lot of um tension in the body often
• 0:51
  Protecting against things that haven't even necessarily happened yet.
• 0:55
  And there's lots of downstream consequences of that that you know I've certainly felt in my life.
• 1:01
  We certainly seen with our clients.
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  And I imagine you've done quite a bit of treatment with people in terms of your work in the clinic as well.
• 1:10
  Yeah, uh I'm glad we're doing this podcast on on worry and uh overthinking and rumination and kind of the indictment that most of us men uh get from I'd say from women.
• 1:24
  um or or partners, but I hear it a lot from women, which is um, you know, my my man's in his head.
• 1:30
  He's just stuck in his head.
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  He lives from his shoulders up.
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  And, you know, we know that living in your head is uh, you know, your head your headquarters in in general are a little bit safer, tend to be safer than your heart quarters or, you know, living in your body.
• 1:47
  Um, because uh, you know, anything below the neck means y you have to feel.
• 1:54
  You have to feel what's there.
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  So, you know, worrying is this kind of low grade um manifestation of fear.
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  And, you know, if we think about the intensity of of actual fear and its derivatives like terror or shock or, you know, um
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  uh even anxiety is is stronger than worry.
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  Um worry's like a not a bad substitute for all those.
• 2:25
  I'd rather hang out in the a land of worry than than the land of just outright fear.
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  And so it's an interesting uh it's an interesting exchange that men have made for like, you know, not living in their body to to just kind of be sentenced to live in a world of of of uh worry.
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  Worry.
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  And um, you know, the way that that looks like is that uh a man is thinking a lot.
• 2:53
  He's thinking, could be thinking about anything, but there's a tinge of of um
• 3:00
  fear in it.
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  There's a tinge of s there's a tinge of something's wrong, you know, something's off.
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  And uh I was sharing this with you a couple weeks ago, Jason, in our men's group, that I've been having this thought for years.
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  Um
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  That I've always thought is this voice of wisdom.
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  And the thought is, you know, is this thing in my life the best the best path for me?
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  Is this the most
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  Useful way for me to move forward in life.
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  And I would think about that really in the context of business finances for the most part.
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  And it never occurred to me until recently that that that voice actually had a tinge of worry in it.
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  It was a voice that was a afraid that I wasn't making the right decision or that
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  you know, I I'm I'm not on the right path.
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  And uh I think that's the challenge with worry, is it masquerades as sensibility, it masquerades as as logic and and reason and
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  You know, things that we we espouse as men that are useful.
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  You know, we're critical thinkers, we're we're analytical, we're uh systematic, and of course these are great traits.
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  It's wonderful to think deeply about things.
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  But if in the background of uh what's motivating us is not a deeper sense of embodied knowing
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  but rather a reactive, uh habitual questioning, then you know, that's something to look at.
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  And shadow work uh really you you you and I are pretty much all all in on shadow work.
• 4:48
  That's our that's our method of embodiment, really, is a path of embodiment.
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  Yeah, worry is such a sometimes subtle manifestation of this that I know for me is i interesting too in that sometimes when I'm worrying in my mind.
• 5:08
  I label it more as I'm trying to be productive, like I'm trying to figure out the best, like you said, the best thing to do, the right thing to do.
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  And so it feels like this positive movement.
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  But often there's not a lot of action, in my case, taken with it, right?
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  I'm gonna map it all out, I'm gonna figure out, I'm gonna do all the research.
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  And what it actually is is worry.
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  It's like, oh, I want to make sure if I take some kind of action, I'm not gonna fuck it up, or it's gonna be worthwhile, or I'm gonna get something back.
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  And I've had to get uh a lot more conscious around, okay, sometimes what I've labeled as kind of my thinking, planning, productivity is actually just a worry.
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  So what's the what's the worry underneath?
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  that's preventing me from just taking any kind of action in the world, taking any kind of step forward and actually getting some data before I uh I future project in it.
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  And, you know, that's just the the kind of one end of the spectrum that I think
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  All human beings, all men in particular, we carry some of that, right?
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  We're kind of worried about how's this gonna go, how's this gonna go, how's this gonna go, and and we
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  dedicate a uh a certain portion of our mental energy to that and our bodily energy too.
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  But like we said, there there's a spectrum that just keeps going deeper and deeper on these things, that that's really kind of just the toe in the water.
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  Another place I've personally kind of seen this show up that I've had to get a lot more conscious about really over the last three or four years.
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  And I've made some good shifts, but it's like a toe beyond worry, which for me is kind of like a dread.
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  And I noticed it particularly in productivity and procrastination and this sense, you know, you've been in group with me for a long time.
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  My kind of standard bitch and moan is, I've too much to do, I'm so busy, I don't have any time, da-da-da-da.
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  And there's some truth to that.
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  And I've also had to get conscious that that
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  often manifests in me if I know I have some kind of busy month coming ahead, projects due
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  Something that's going to take a certain amount of time, energy, and resource, right?
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  And I'm already busy with something else, let's just say
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  I've noticed a certain dread would come up in me, like feeling the weight of this future thing.
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  Like, oh my God, I know next month these three weeks are gonna be really intense and it's gonna be really busy.
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  I'm probably not gonna get a lot of sleep
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  And that's often weighed me down and then paradoxically wore me out before the thing even happened because I'm already kind of like contracted and resisting it.
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  And what I've come to learn is a lot of the times when I feel the most overwhelmed, overloaded in a sense, and I'm kind of stressed about getting things done.
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  What's actually happening is I'm thinking about the things I have to do in the future while I'm still trying to get the things done in the present.
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  So it's like I'm I'm actually living in the future in a bad way from the current moment and then it stacks and gets really intense versus well in this moment all I have to do is this.
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  Right?
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  It's like today I have to do this.
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  And I've had to start to subtly kind of decode that and not like
• 8:49
  pre-stress myself out about things.
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  Particularly, you know, there were days where I was doing a lot more kind of technical work on the web, and I would know there'd be these huge deliverables and it would like.
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  pull me down, knowing, oh my God, I'm gonna have these big things coming up.
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  Even though in that moment, all I had to do was focus on what I was really focused on, uh what I had to deliver in that day.
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  And that that that's kind of a spectrum I've had to really work with in my life is just this deeper sense of dread.
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  that certainly goes back earlier in my life is one of my manifestations that then, you know, we did some work at a recent advanced shadow work retreat.
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  that kind of tied in ties in for me of a a a much more alarming version of all this, which is like
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  panic and nightmare material around my God, I fucked something up completely in life's over, essentially
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  So and that's one w we've definitely done some work with uh with some of the guys w we've been in process with over these last um
• 10:01
  Months and years.
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  And you know, again, one of the reasons we're kind of bringing this forward is for most of us guys, we'll just keep fucking packing that fear.
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  anxiety, worry down in the body, and oftentimes the easiest way to do that is to simultaneously push it down by pushing our awareness
• 10:22
  up into those headquarters, like you said.
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  So it's kind of like stomping the garbage down.
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  And every time we stomp it, we go a little bit more up in our head.
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  And it's like, well, up here I'll just keep kind of ping-ponging around.
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  And then there's this deeper, much deeper nervous system-level fear that really starts to accumulate uh in us as men.
• 10:46
  Wow, you bring up such salient points that are related to um, you know, even bigger manifestations of worry that that occur from stronger imprints.
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  And really we could look at things like PTSD, complex PTSD, uh obsessive compulsive tendencies
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  Um, attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, things where the the mind is just c caught in kind of a loop of of worry or obsession or fixation on something.
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  And uh some of the some of the newer research around around worry and heavy trauma is that the the amygdala that
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  you know, kind of the lower brain or the hind brain that is responsible for fight or flight and survival when it's gone through a heavy traumatic experience.
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  And that could just be like
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  Low-grade trauma over a long period of time, like a just kind of a toxic environment, or some events that were very, very intense, is that the back of the brain, the nerve clusters
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  Around around um being hyper responsive and hyper vigilant, they increase in size and they lay down a lot more track.
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  So that the the body mind just is always reacting in a state of worry or state of of of hyper alert.
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  And so someone could be in kind of a a twitchy, reactive um
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  Uh state where they're worried all the time, they have dread, they have kind of a depressive mood, they have anxiety.
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  And so this is kind of the far end of that spectrum.
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  And so we're we're now getting into well, how do you how do you uh you know end that?
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  How do you stop being worried if you can't get into your body to downshift?
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  And so
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  There's different ways to do that along along the kind of different manifestations of the intensity of of that imprint in this extreme instance.
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  Which is more of an experimental therapy.
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  People have been getting uh anesthetics shot into the back of their brain.
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  to to interrupt kind of at the brainstem, so like the occiput, to interrupt that just hyper hair trigger response of of being vigilant
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  It's a newer therapy and it it kind of makes sense in that um I've heard that people have pretty good results with it.
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  Um it's being used with vets uh coming back from war.
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  Um because they just can't stop.
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  When it gets so extreme, you know, the the the worry really manifests as a intense pathology, then you you're literally using a chemical agent to not feel.
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  So that that's the far end of it, right?
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  And we're not necessarily talking about that in this podcast, like, okay, this is this is the therapy we're recommending.
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  What we're talking about is uh how to get embodied, which means how to start living below the brain, you know, how to get out of that.
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  Even even the worry and the and the lower grade dread is is still a a habitual response of the mind obsessing or fixating rather on what's
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  What's tough, what's challenging, what it's not looking forward to?
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  How do we get out of that?
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  And, you know, in mindset approaches, it might be like, well, think positively, or
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  think about uh have a gratitude practice, right?
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  These are kind of the colloquialisms we hear in in and new age is we hear in the marketplace.
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  But shadow work is really where you and I live around how to remediate this process, how to how to make that, you know, what they call in the yogic world that that the great traverse.
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  you know, from from the surface of reality to depth and how that manifests in the body mind is traversing from your head.
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  to your heart, to your guts, to your pelvis, and and feeling what's there, and then not just feeling what what's there, but learning how to
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  Learning how to live, this gets a little esoteric and strange, but learning how to have your awareness be settled.
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  in your in your body and occupy a sense of presence from that place.
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  Yeah, the it the that traversing you know, I've used this metaphor before
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  when we've talked and uh with a lot of my clients, right, is uh again kind of even going back to the the ways I use productivity or thinking.
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  to kind of avoid fear actually.
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  It feels like I'm doing something, but I'm not doing something.
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  I'm not actually getting to the fear and the feeling underneath is I I I we I I like to use the imagery of you know an old school pinball machine.
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  Like you go to the arcade, right, you launch the ball up, and then the goal is to make sure it doesn't drop through the ball.
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  And so it's like slamming the paddles, pinging it around.
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  As long as it's moving up there, it's not falling down.
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  In my experience of myself and a lot of my clients has been that's how we use our thoughts and worry and anxiety.
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  Because as long as we're kind of ruminating up here in the headspace, we don't have to relax and fall down into our bodies, so to speak.
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  where that deeper feeling actually is.
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  In so many of us men build up so many sophisticated beliefs and strategies to prevent ourselves from going there in our bodies.
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  Right.
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  So one of the main reasons I think we often avoid embodiment as men is because, like you said, in our bodies, that's where we feel.
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  When we're when we're actually in our bodies, that's where we feel.
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  In this case, we're talking about kind of worry, fear, and anxiety.
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  you know, deep inside, ch fear is the really kind of primary one of terror, going even deeper than that.
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  But anger, grief, um, shame, etc.
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  And
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  One of the things we've certainly seen in terms of why shadow work in the way we do it is key, is like we've talked about, we bring it into a relational field.
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  Right, where there's actually a container for these emotions to come up and be held in that's not just us.
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  Right.
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  And
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  You know, Peter Levine who created somatic experiencing was, you know, one of the first people to really kind of notice.
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  And um
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  write about this process in the animal kingdom, right?
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  Where a deer goes and gets, you know, maybe almost mauled by another animal.
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  Or hit by a car or whatever that might be, first thing it does is get away to safety.
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  And then once it's in a safe place,
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  What we see animals do is they shake, right?
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  They actually tremor is the is the word.
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  Which in particular in the work we've seen in in shadow work and I've certainly experienced, tends to be a correlate to fear.
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  It's like how we start to release the fear of my body had to kind of lock up in some kind of situation here to try to mitigate some dangerous thing.
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  And there's a lot of energy in that.
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  And we have to find a way to discharge it, to release it.
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  Animals know how to do that, right?
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  Instinctually.
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  we don't necessarily in our culture.
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  But like I said, what I what we've seen is when we gather together in community with tight container and agreements and safety and trust.
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  Oftentimes what we'll see, particularly once touch gets involved, is men's bodies can start to tremor and release.
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  And there's lots of different ways and modalities for you know coming at this.
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  We we sometimes use breath work, there's TRE, in shadow work in particular with touch, as we guide someone into the fear.
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  Which is very different than what most of us are used to, right?
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  I'll do anything I possibly can to not feel the fear.
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  And and we're showing up saying, hey guys, we're going the other way.
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  Like let's actually the path, the fear is the path.
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  We want to connect back into it to allow it to be felt and start to unwind in your nervous system, which, like we've talked about, then starts to liberate so much more space and relaxation.
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  Because all of that trapped energy starts to get freed up again.
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  And as the body relaxes, oftentimes, having unwound some of that distress.
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  Lo and behold, guess what often relaxes along with it?
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  The mind, the rumination, the thoughts start to just kind of slow down and down-regulate.
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  into a much more peaceful, present, and frankly grounded place where it's not that the fear magically disappears, but now we have a relationship to it.
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  Right?
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  It doesn't overwhelm us and um take over i and commandeer our behavior, but it's like, oh, I can
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  I can see my fear now, I can relate to my fear now.
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  I know how to release fear sometimes after intense experiences.
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  So rather than it accumulating over time.
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  Right?
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  I know how to unwind my my body in these powerful ways that have really profound consequences for our psychospiritual health.
• 21:02
  Yeah, I'm I'm glad you mentioned the the trembling and the and the discharging and and how we um how animals release their fear.
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  Um
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  And I want to say that uh we do that too, but we tend to do it in a a very unconscious way.
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  And in in some ways, a way that actually further entrenches our fear.
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  And so the
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  The way that we um shake and discharge and tremble our fear out as men, ubiquitously, is through masturbation, pornography, sex
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  And if we look at the polarity from your head all the way down to your genitals, right?
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  The top and the bottom, um, both of these processes are mediated by fear.
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  And what's in between that is your guts and your heart.
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  And these are the two uh kind of emotional brains, where we have the the enteric brain of the GI tract, and we have the emotional.
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  feeling brain of the heart, which are innervated by massive amount of nerve clusters that can feel things and they feel them in different ways.
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  And we all know the pathologies of these two systems, the heart.
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  is palpitations and and tension and sleep, you know, sleep issues and the gut are gut issues which are just a myriad and and they're both myriad of issues and they're both incredibly uncomfortable.
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  But
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  The the genitalia, the pelvis, is really where this the seat of fear originates.
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  Of course, it's the seat of creativity, it's where we procreate.
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  and jacking off pornography, masturbation, sex is a way that like literally when uh a man is engaged in that practice, he's trembling, you know, he's shaking, he's quivering.
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  There there's there's there's a releasing of all of that fear, tension, anger, grief.
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  And so this is the practice, you know, it's a practice I learned at uh
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  very young, I don't know, ten, eleven years old, um, to to release uh to release fear that I didn't even I didn't even know.
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  It's just this
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  um reflexive response that we discover at a certain age.
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  And yes, it's associated with the opposite sex or or the same sex, whatever your preference is, but it's really a discharging of
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  uh things that we're not feeling through these other centers.
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  And so we're not saying that there's anything um
• 23:34
  Well, we are making a somewhat of a c critique to say that that what that does is just perpetuates the pattern of how we handle fear and worry.
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  And just kind of releasing it uh, you know, we can't release it through our brain.
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  We just have to keep batting it around.
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  So when we get
• 23:51
  Overwhelmed by that, the sense is, wow, I need to I need to release this some other way.
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  So we release it through the bottom part of the body.
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  And meanwhile, we haven't engaged the middle and uh the the kind of middle part and the upper part of of the the the thorax, you know, and and haven't really learned a feel yet.
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  And this gets into the great cultural motif of being a man, which is, you know, being a man is not feeling uh your emotions, locking it up.
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  and being and and that's what strength is.
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  And um if we really look at that mechanistically, we can see pretty clearly that's actually uh
• 24:35
  It's actually a way to be totally cut off from your vitality because you're isolating all your energy down in your pelvis and all the energy up in your head.
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  So um you're you're in Chinese medicine we call this heart kidneys not communicating, which is pretty serious pathology where
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  The middle part of your body gets accumulated with all the shitty food that you eat.
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  And then your ability to really feel what matters to you, what's most important.
• 25:07
  Um
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  You know, from a Taoist perspective, your destiny to feel what consciousness, what God, what love with the capital L
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  really is intending for your life, you can't you can't detect it.
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  Because you only detect that through feeling it
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  Through feeling it in and through your body with your heart.
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  So when you're cut off from that because you're stuck in your brain and you're stuck in your fear, there there's
• 25:42
  There's no access to really knowing.
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  And then and then you have to figure it out on your own by yourself as the lone wolf
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  Or get advice.
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  Or, you know, this is a another thing I see that kind of drives me nuts, but there's a there's a place for it.
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  Or consult your a you know, your astrologer or your get your Vedic reading.
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  And of course, why that bothers me is that
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  If you're dependent on anything externally, entirely, entirely, or you know, majoratively for your sense of of direction in life, then that means you're not attuned in.
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  To your own sense of deep flow around what your path is.
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  And so I think if you're already tuned in and you want to check in with your men's group, you want to check in with an astrologer, you want to check in with a wise person, great.
• 26:38
  I worked with a lot of people who are just they won't do anything unless it's been verified, you know
• 26:47
  By their astrologer.
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  And who and who this is getting a little weird, but who's to say your astrologer is is is totally lined up?
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  You know, that they're doing their work.
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  It's like, okay.
• 26:57
  So enough on the astrology tip.
• 26:59
  But
• 27:01
  Well, yeah, the right astrology often points to, and this all I think relates a lot, um, when we're in fear, often what we're longing for is some kind of certainty.
• 27:14
  Right.
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  And so there's a feeling that, oh, if the astrology says this, okay, great, there's some certainty there, right?
• 27:22
  Which can be, you know, in some sense
• 27:26
  We hope is some kind of stabilizing factor, but it's one in that kind of instance we don't have any control over.
• 27:34
  And certainty itself in a lot of ways, anytime we're relying on it to come from the outside is not a given
• 27:41
  Right?
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  It's it it it creates its own problems.
• 27:45
  And what you're kind of pointing to is this this need to kind of feel that.
• 27:50
  In a sense, a certainty inside of like, okay, I know what I'm feeling and I know what I'm capable of in order to respond to whatever comes at me in the world.
• 28:03
  And
• 28:05
  You know, I think this points back to in some sense what I was talking about of the power in the group and releasing and trembling, where in a lot of ways, you know.
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  What the actual medicine for fear is, is real safety, which is just connection
• 28:23
  Right?
• 28:24
  So it's when we start to actually feel safe in the moment, our fear can come out, we can work with our fear.
• 28:34
  And that kind of overwhelming, you know, fear in a lot of ways does tend to be um and worry and all that future focused, right?
• 28:43
  It's like something hasn't happened yet.
• 28:46
  that uh uh I'm already not feeling safe about.
• 28:50
  So the antidote is often, how safe can I get right now in resourced to start to signal to my body, hey, you're you're actually safe.
• 29:00
  You're safe right now.
• 29:01
  Or if our body's trapped in the past, right, because of previous trauma or um complex trauma like you were talking about.
• 29:10
  Can we start to rewire the body that right now you're safe?
• 29:16
  And that comes.
• 29:19
  Most powerfully, in my experience and from what we've seen, through connection and community and co-regulation.
• 29:27
  Right?
• 29:28
  This sense of, okay, my body is tripping out.
• 29:34
  And I think where sometimes I used to get in trouble, right?
• 29:37
  Is
• 29:38
  If I couldn't get myself out of that state, it would become another Um type of inner critic of, oh, you're not a fucking man, you're da da da da When the truth is, all I often needed
• 29:52
  Was a hug from Luke, and then it's like, oh, okay, actually I'm fucking fine.
• 29:56
  Right?
• 29:56
  My body that cuts through at a bodily level and starts to send these signals.
• 30:03
  You're okay.
• 30:04
  You're okay.
• 30:05
  It's okay right now.
• 30:07
  You don't have to spend all this extra energy bracing against something, because right now you are safe
• 30:17
  And this is where then it all kind of starts to swirl together, right?
• 30:20
  Where a lot of times worry, fear, anxiety, they're an attempt to control the future.
• 30:28
  So we can feel certain about some kind of outcome so that there's something we don't have to feel
• 30:36
  Emotionally, right?
• 30:37
  The fear is: oh my god, if I approach this woman and she doesn't like it and calls me a pervert, I'm gonna have to feel shame.
• 30:48
  Right, or whatever that might be.
• 30:50
  So there's fear there and then a whole thing springs up.
• 30:53
  And again, our strategies, well then it's like
• 30:57
  Let's go fucking feel the shame right now.
• 31:00
  Like let's just let's just get in there, jump in the water, get really familiar with it right now
• 31:07
  Because if you become comfortable feeling that right now, guess what?
• 31:13
  This whole fear decision-making avoidance process.
• 31:18
  isn't gonna lead the way.
• 31:19
  Because if its main thing is I don't want to feel X, and you're just like, fuck it, no, I'm just gonna feel X now.
• 31:27
  Lo and behold, that whole strategy starts to kind of fall apart, right?
• 31:32
  And I mean this is one of my favorite fucking platitudes of one of those little um I think I maybe told you
• 31:40
  Totally cheesy social media memes I came across, I don't know, six months ago.
• 31:46
  And it it was a a bit of a mindset shift, but it was like, oh yeah.
• 31:50
  It was just the move from.
• 31:53
  Fear-based, what if?
• 31:55
  To resource-based, even if.
• 31:59
  Right?
• 32:00
  Just the sh even if that thing happened
• 32:05
  I can do X, Y, or Z.
• 32:07
  I can call Luke.
• 32:08
  I can talk to my wife.
• 32:10
  I can whatever.
• 32:12
  And um
• 32:13
  It's that move away from, okay, well, even if I did have to feel shame.
• 32:19
  Okay, great.
• 32:20
  Uh I'm working on that.
• 32:21
  I'm getting more comfortable and more intimate with it right now.
• 32:23
  It's not that it's fun.
• 32:25
  It's not like, hey, let's go have a
• 32:27
  Luke and I are gonna go out and have a shame party and just yeah, let's do this, man.
• 32:30
  We're gonna go so deep.
• 32:32
  Um but we can get more comfortable with it, or we don't avoid it in the same ways, which then allow us to change our behavior and not be acting.
• 32:40
  from a fear and avoidance of a certain state.
• 32:44
  You know, the the whole point to shadow work in in a lot of ways is to surface these kind of hidden beliefs and patterns and strategies we have.
• 32:56
  Bring them up so then we can go right to, you know, the name of our program is the heart of the shadow.
• 33:01
  Okay, what's the actual thing that I've not wanted to allow myself to experience in my nervous system?
• 33:09
  what and fear kind of often powers all of them, right?
• 33:12
  I'm afraid of fully feeling my anger, I'm afraid of fully feeling my shame.
• 33:17
  I'm afraid of fully feeling my fe
• 33:19
  Fear or disgust or you know, what you name it my grief
• 33:24
  And once we get comfortable with those things, fear doesn't necessarily have to lead the way anymore.
• 33:31
  Yeah.
• 33:33
  Yeah, so well said.
• 33:35
  The there's there's there's two things that are really occurring here and
• 33:40
  One is there's the traditional just I didn't fully make this point, but the traditional masculinity of, you know, feel nothing and be impermeable and lock your fear away.
• 33:52
  And if we really look at the anatomy of
• 33:55
  Of um what this statement is pointing to is that if you if you isolate awareness in the two opposing parts of your body
• 34:05
  Then that's what strength is.
• 34:06
  And what we're saying is, no, what's strength is if if you can occupy all aspects of your being.
• 34:13
  You're the master of consciousness.
• 34:16
  You have mastery over the entire domain of life.
• 34:20
  And so what we're really pointing to
• 34:22
  for men out there that are just like, well, no, this this other way.
• 34:26
  Th the old way is what strength is.
• 34:28
  And what we're saying unequivocally is it's not.
• 34:32
  It's totally incomplete.
• 34:35
  It's not the full manifestation of your power and strength.
• 34:39
  The full manifestation of your power and strength is that there's nothing you're unwilling to face.
• 34:46
  And feel and integrate.
• 34:49
  And here's the thing about that: you can't just do that because you decide to all by yourself.
• 34:59
  And this points to the other fact that you've been emphasizing in this podcast, which is the only way to learn these skills of
• 35:07
  feeling these uncomfortable experiences in your nervous system, which all they fundamentally are, we call them shame or worry.
• 35:16
  Dread, uh, grief, all they fundamentally are are sensations.
• 35:22
  They're sensations, they're reverberations of of energy inside your body
• 35:28
  And yes, sometimes they make you cry.
• 35:31
  Sometimes they they require that you scream.
• 35:34
  Sometimes they require that you tremble and and uh or or that you sink your head down and in shame.
• 35:42
  You know, but but all that they are are just physical responses that you can learn to do and they require something.
• 35:52
  They require a loving uh presence.
• 35:56
  And when we can't give that to ourselves, which um
• 36:00
  Usually we can't because we've been taught to not feel all these things, and men have been taught to not feel a whole set of things that are different than women.
• 36:12
  Women have been taught to not feel another set of
• 36:15
  Kind of the flavors of emotion.
• 36:18
  When men can get together with other men especially, um, but at the very least with just one other person.
• 36:25
  that can hold, that can be the space of loving presence that a man can't give to himself
• 36:35
  And even better, someone who's trained in deep shadow work, which means that they know how to guide a man.
• 36:42
  We we use the metaphor of mountain climbing.
• 36:45
  Guide a man through the mountain of his emotion psycho-emotional being, then then you gain the capacity to navigate these different
• 36:57
  these different topographies of your emotional life um and your your your psycho energetic life as it manifests through your body
• 37:09
  And then you just walk, you start to not mind living with the feelings in your body.
• 37:20
  And you gain the capacity yourself to hold spaciousness, to hold a loving presence for yourself
• 37:30
  To feel when life presents circumstances that are painful, that are shameful, that are griefful
• 37:39
  Um, and you start to have true embodied freedom where you get to be here and now in your body.
• 37:48
  You don't have to escape through meditation.
• 37:52
  Through sacred medicines, through sexual stuff, through food, you get to be here.
• 38:00
  You don't have to kind of pursue the the the nefario not nefarious, but the the nether realms of enlightenment, chasing mantras and and
• 38:09
  And, you know, seven-day meditation retreats to, you know, in another sense, go beyond your head to a place of freedom that's disembodied.
• 38:19
  This is embodied freedom and it's attainable.
• 38:23
  And it it the really the only pathway for it is through relationship
• 38:30
  Because it's relationship that is the cause of so much of this pain.
• 38:35
  And relationship is the to me, it's the ultimate frontier of freedom.
• 38:41
  Because it does require the hard work of building trust and finding quality relationship and investing in it.
• 38:49
  And that such relationships don't have to be perfect and don't have to
• 38:55
  Be lived by a set of prescriptive rules on how to behave, that there's enough freedom to make mistakes and to apologize and to move through the spectrum of.
• 39:08
  Emotion, which is required.
• 39:10
  And you know, for those of you out there like, oh, okay, how do I, you know, how how do I do that?
• 39:16
  And it's like, well, maybe a therapist, maybe
• 39:20
  contacting Jason or I ultimately Heart of Shadow we think is the more and more I look at Heart of Shadow, the more I think, wow, this is a vehicle.
• 39:29
  Not just for masculine freedom or human freedom.
• 39:34
  You know, it's a vehicle for peace.
• 39:37
  It's a vehicle, it's a vehicle for peace.
• 39:42
  Earth.
• 39:43
  I know that sounds kind of uh, you know, a la Beatles nineteen seventy.
• 39:50
  But when you have peace in your body
• 39:54
  You know, peace in your nervous system, the possibilities for peaceful relationship really open up.
• 40:04
  Learning these learning learning how to to do that is really incredible.
• 40:09
  And one other thing I want to say is that, you know, our men's group has been together going on eight and a half, nine years.
• 40:17
  the men's group you and I are part of, Jason.
• 40:20
  And in some ways I've become less dependent on the men's group.
• 40:27
  But two things have happened.
• 40:28
  One is the men's groups just become a part of my consciousness.
• 40:32
  So I don't worry.
• 40:34
  I don't worry about having a space that I feel safe in.
• 40:37
  I don't worry about being alone because I'm not alone, you know, and I've invested in in that
• 40:47
  And I've built enough skills to where I can I have enough space inside myself, you know, to
• 40:57
  Um work with some of these worries and fears.
• 41:02
  And they still come up, of course.
• 41:04
  But my reflex isn't to run away.
• 41:07
  You know, it's to make room.
• 41:10
  And to feel.
• 41:13
  And uh the uh you know, my experience has been the same and you know but part of the paradox there you said of, you know, in some ways I'm even less reliant on the group.
• 41:24
  Is the group becomes the bedrock, the foundation, the the background container holding?
• 41:31
  So even if I'm not physically with you guys in a moment.
• 41:37
  I feel much more comfortable plunging into my life because guess what?
• 41:42
  I know I have somewhere to come back to if I do get overwhelmed or can't handle it or whatever that might be.
• 41:48
  So even though in day-to-day, right, our group is mostly virtual, other than a couple of retreats a year, um, it gives gives us something to work with because
• 41:58
  This is one of the key, I think, psychological things I've discovered and I think we're seeing really play out now, you know, three years into the heart of shadow.
• 42:06
  uh that I've talked about before is just knowing I have somewhere to bring my shit if it does go off course, that in itself is a stabilizing factor.
• 42:19
  And
• 42:20
  You know, we were talking about kind of the depths of fear and panic and trauma and tremoring and whatnot.
• 42:26
  Even before that, you know, I just want to mention it it doesn't always have to be that intense.
• 42:31
  And what I mean by that
• 42:33
  is we'll often see it in our virtual Zooms with guys.
• 42:37
  We'll see it in the chat threads we create through services where guys are posting videos.
• 42:43
  Sometimes
• 42:45
  Just something as simple as being able to name my fear, literally speak the words out loud, and then it's received and held in a group.
• 42:57
  That alone starts to change it.
• 43:00
  Because instead of it being this kind of trapped inside pinball machine, it's like, oh, it's now out with the group?
• 43:08
  And that's that's what the fear is, right?
• 43:10
  It's like we've we've kind of named the demon, so to speak, and then boom, we can work with it.
• 43:15
  Um
• 43:17
  And that in itself is incredibly useful just to have somewhere to speak the fear.
• 43:23
  I'm really afraid if I have this conversation with my wife, X, Y, or Z is going to happen.
• 43:28
  And it's wild how sometimes just saying that you can already start to see a man's nervous system start to to downregulate of, oh yeah, okay, that's just what it is.
• 43:38
  Um, and then the support of a group that surrounds that really will just accelerate it.
• 43:43
  So, you know, there's an incredible amount of value in doing these deeper somatic practices.
• 43:48
  We definitely support men in and show them how to do and
• 43:51
  especially on retreat, like we fucking go there.
• 43:54
  But just to know that um again it's this process, it's this pushing back against masculine culture of
• 44:03
  To name it clearly and directly is one way we can start to work with it, which is very different than kind of unconsciously rambling, complaining.
• 44:16
  bitching and moaning where the fear kinda is leaking out sideways.
• 44:21
  But again it's this idea of turning towards it directly, whether we s speak it to a group with intention and
• 44:28
  in a succinct way, or we work at the bodily level with it, where we create a real container so the body can start to to release a lot of this pent-up worry, tension, fear, etc.
• 44:41
  Yeah, and and one of the nuances there that that my mind, and I think it's very common with men, um, goes into when we have a worry, when we have a concern, is that
• 44:52
  Um, you know, that's just like the very that's like the very top of the soup.
• 44:57
  And you're you're all you can see is that little worry wort, you know, the wart of worry.
• 45:03
  And what happens when we start to name it and just share what's there is that um we take that first layer off and there's some insight that's given as we allow that vibration to move into a field of
• 45:17
  a trusted therapist, a men's group that's steeped in this style of work.
• 45:22
  And then we can start to just just feel the worry underneath that.
• 45:28
  And and then we share that.
• 45:30
  And then and then we start to gain some insight on, you know, what's what's underneath that.
• 45:35
  And so that surface worry when it's spoken.
• 45:39
  um into a group that can hold it.
• 45:42
  Some some group or a person that's trained.
• 45:45
  It's so therapeutic.
• 45:47
  And
• 45:48
  You know, for men out there that are are lone wolf in it, that are used to just putting it on their back and and going it alone and and feeling how that just fundamentally doesn't work.
• 45:59
  and, you know, learned that that's how to be strong in life.
• 46:04
  Um, you know, pulling the full David Goggins on it, which, you know, David's famous for running uh ultra marathons.
• 46:12
  I think he ran like
• 46:14
  I'm gonna get this wrong, but he ran like uh an old uh a hundred mile race every week for like
• 46:22
  a half a year, maybe a entire year, just he was former Navy SEAL.
• 46:26
  But he to me, David really embodies like, just stuff it, push it down.
• 46:31
  Uh, don't be a pussy.
• 46:33
  And, you know, like, thank you, David.
• 46:35
  Not everyone's a Navy SEAL.
• 46:36
  And like, stop, you know, just stop it.
• 46:38
  Like.
• 46:40
  Well that's a really key, you know, part.
• 46:43
  I think it's I think you just highlighted something really important here, which is sometimes pretty tricky about fear, is sometimes fear shows up.
• 46:52
  is counterfear, counterphobia.
• 46:55
  And so there's this thing that, oh my God, I have this fear inside
• 47:01
  And my reaction to it is actually going to be to charge forward into the thing, to bulldoze over the fear.
• 47:12
  And again, sure, there's a great time and place for that, right?
• 47:16
  But there's a dangerous component to that in that that can really override
• 47:23
  The gift of fear sometimes, which is trying to protect us, and guys can get into extremely dangerous situations or really start to harm their body.
• 47:35
  I can't imagine any physician in the world would sit down with him and say running a hundred mile or every week for six months is doing good things for your body.
• 47:44
  Right.
• 47:45
  So that fear was pushing him past what's probably a very natural limit.
• 47:51
  And I imagine, you know
• 47:54
  uh has to be unwound in some ways.
• 47:56
  So this is the trick where sometimes, you know, um
• 48:01
  Again, when we think of the spectrum of being in men, we uh I often talk about, right, this posture and collapse.
• 48:07
  We don't want to collapse and be totally frozen by the fear.
• 48:13
  and unable to engage or move forward.
• 48:16
  But the counterphobia can create this fake posture where we keep pushing forward even though we're actually causing harm.
• 48:25
  to ourselves or to others.
• 48:27
  And you know, this is very tied into one of our principles of the program, you know, we don't push guys past where they're ready to go.
• 48:38
  Because, you know, this is the the the old model of the crazy wisdom and the fifties and sixties and seventies when all this shit was coming over for the east of
• 48:47
  um kind of sometimes more the the landmarky I'm going to purposefully trigger the fuck out of you and get all the shadow work material going because you gotta wake up and liberate.
• 49:01
  The challenge with that kind of more counterphobic just bulldoze past it is it can very easily double down the very trauma
• 49:10
  Right, create more of the very problem because we're not listening to our bodies, right?
• 49:17
  We're not listening to our system and we're pushing ourselves past somewhere we need to go.
• 49:23
  Fear in itself can sometimes be just a very heightened awareness of fucking pay attention right now, because it matters, right?
• 49:32
  How you're about to move your body, what you're about to say, matters.
• 49:37
  And again, we don't want to be frozen in that, but we also don't want to just ignore and trailblaze, you know, push through that, which a certain type of man, you know,
• 49:49
  does, uh, you know, and and it can be kind of that more overachiever mentality or the um
• 49:57
  Extreme sports kind of thing.
• 49:59
  Like it really happens there.
• 50:01
  I'm just I'm gonna push through the fear, push through the fear, push through the fear.
• 50:05
  You do that long enough.
• 50:07
  And you're really setting yourself up for some kind of tragedy, in my opinion, because sometimes that fear is giving you a very important signal.
• 50:17
  And if you're not listening to it, it's a different way you're not listening to your body.
• 50:22
  So what we're talking about here is the sweet spot of being able to feel it.
• 50:26
  be in relationship with it, not be overwhelmed with it, and use it in a sense as one guidance point of many.
• 50:36
  Right?
• 50:37
  It's not that it's navigating our whole system, but it's it's an important piece of data for us that we want to be able to contextualize in the moment.
• 50:47
  So we don't go over the top in kind of the counterphobic thing, but so we also don't let it totally paralyze us and oh my god, there's this slight chance this one thing could happen.
• 50:58
  And here I I'm not going to do anything now, which freezes our life.
• 51:02
  It's we want to take that data in, learn to work with the fear so we can keep moving at a organic and um
• 51:13
  Appropriate pace in the risks and challenges and life we're living.
• 51:20
  Yeah, and if you're looking for if if this is resonating with you, you're feeling you're resonating with what we're talking about, the the pathway in to particularly with with worry, with rumination.
• 51:33
  um is to step by step come into your body and learn to navigate and feel
• 51:42
  you know, one of the more challenging visceral experiences, which is fear.
• 51:47
  Um to do that, you know, you again back to them the uh mountain climbing metaphor.
• 51:53
  beginning of climbing a mountain is the approach, and that's usually on flat land or rolling land.
• 51:59
  But as you start to get to the incline
• 52:01
  And you can see the peak, you start to hit your first obstacles.
• 52:04
  And sometimes one of those obstacles is a big crevasse, you know, a big drop, and you have to climb you have to you have to figure a w a way around it.
• 52:12
  You have to use an ice ladder or something.
• 52:15
  Which is is terrifying, you know.
• 52:18
  And you need people, you need a crew you feel safe with.
• 52:22
  You know, you have the right the right uh carabiners, the rope that's that's uh
• 52:28
  That's new, you have someone who's skilled who knows how to say, no, take a step here.
• 52:34
  Here's what you're gonna do first, here's what you can do second, here's what you're gonna do at the end.
• 52:38
  And then we're going to check everyone, make sure everyone's safe.
• 52:41
  And that's really the role of Jason and I.
• 52:44
  We are expert uh climbers.
• 52:47
  Um we haven't necessarily worked with you.
• 52:51
  But we know how to navigate every kind of topography.
• 52:55
  Um, and so we can get we can get to the top of almost uh, you know, at this point, every mountain.
• 53:02
  uh because we've done it so much.
• 53:04
  And um Heart of Shadow is our is our flagship program that
• 53:09
  Gives men the opportunity to make that climb.
• 53:12
  And the most exciting part about it is it teaches a group of men how to be that for each other.
• 53:19
  And that's our ultimate goal, is that you have a structure in your life.
• 53:24
  That exists to the end of your life.
• 53:27
  This is a radical thing we've created.
• 53:30
  It's a non-centralized men's shadow work group.
• 53:34
  That Jason and I, after the 10 weeks together, do not own.
• 53:38
  We're not, we are not, it is not ours.
• 53:41
  It's yours.
• 53:42
  And it's doing something very difficult together that bonds you.
• 53:48
  And if you choose, entwines you in the most positive, uplifting way.
• 53:55
  For a lifetime and allows you the vehicle, like I said, to approach anything.
• 54:03
  And
• 54:04
  you know, something to the degree that it it that's so powerful.
• 54:08
  It just falls to the background of your life as a inborn structure, just like your family or just like
• 54:15
  You know, something that is always there supporting you, that you don't have to think about.
• 54:20
  That's what the group can become
• 54:22
  Um, and it has utterly transformed my life and is still one of the core engines for my success and support.
• 54:31
  And um, you know, the investment in the program honestly is uh it's it's you know
• 54:41
  I I c I can't say enough about how worthwhile it is and how much you'll reap from it.
• 54:49
  Um hearto shadow.
• 54:51
  com.
• 54:51
  You'll learn all about it.
• 54:52
  We're in the middle of our our uh sixth cohort and we start again in in uh February
• 54:59
  2026, we have um our first women's heart shadow starting in uh a little bit after that.
• 55:06
  And then we're gonna be in Portugal for the men of Europe.
• 55:10
  uh in June.
• 55:11
  So we're we're up to we're we're up to a lot.
• 55:14
  We're putting a lot of our time and energy.
• 55:16
  We both have little kids.
• 55:17
  And so this is, you know, a sacrifice that's worth
• 55:21
  Making for us to make sure that there's a place for men who are ready to learn these skills and to train up and to really become embodied, powerful, strong men.
• 55:33
  Um, you know, this this is the training program uh that can take you there.
• 55:38
  So we we'd love you to come check us out.
• 55:44
  There we go, gentlemen.
• 55:46
  So heartofow.
• 55:47
  com.
• 55:48
  Get yourself into one of our next cohorts next year.
• 55:51
  It is well worth it.
• 55:52
  The journey is amazing.
• 55:55
  And it is an investment in yourself that will keep paying dividends for a long time.
• 56:00
  And you can shift from having to walk around.
• 56:05
  At the whim of your fear and worry to having a place to directly work with it and confront it.
• 56:12
  So you just have more choice in your life
• 56:15
  And so we'll be coming at you again with some more in our Heart of Shadow series.
• 56:21
  But uh until next time