Shadow Work for the Chronically Driven

Jason Lange: All right, and welcome back. I am once again very excited to be joined by Dr. Luke Adler, my kind of man at arms in the heart of Shadow program and excited to be back for another in our series here of covering all the different ways this beautiful work he and I are so passionate about shadow work shows up in men and in the people of guys we work with. And today we want to talk about one we've really been seeing quite a bit of both experientially in our own lives and with a lot of clients we work on. And that's really this paradigm of what happens when you've been going your whole life just foot on the gas, pushing forward no matter what. And how is that related oftentimes to shadow work? And how can that catch up to us and what are our options for really dealing with that?

Luke Adler: The most difficult thing about it, Jason, something that you and I work with within ourselves and with countless men at this point is that the reason why we're pushing so hard to keep things going isn't because we don't want to slow down or we don't want to work on our health or we don't want, we don't want to have a more balanced life. It's that we can't perceive, in other words, we're numb or in a non feeling state, an inability to activate sentience, to even begin to discern that we're exhausted or that we're burning out such that our bodies have to get so loud. You know, the, the health issue has to register at such a high degree that maybe we have a disease or we have subclinical symptoms that are loud enough that they're pushing towards a chronic disorder. And by all measures, you know, men have succeeded, right? You, maybe you have a successful career and you know, you've got the family and the kids or whatever you've, you've taken, ticked all the boxes. Maybe you're a multi millionaire. We've worked with men who are incredibly wealthy, right? And yet on the inside and then, you know, eventually even their family lives are starting to crumble, they're starting to disorient, disintegrate. And then the guys, you know, guys come to us and you know, I was one of these men and um, you know, they're kind of like, I. They don't. We don't. You know, I'll speak for myself. I don't know what to do. I. I'm doing it, right? I'm doing it. I'm doing my life the way I've been taught, you know, and then. But there is a sense of. I wouldn't say I was helpless. I would say I was clueless. Maybe that's a little harsh. I. I just wasn't aware. Absolutely not aware.

Jason Lange: Yeah. I like. I like to. I've been using this kind of metaphor lately with a lot of guys I work with of. I think, particularly for us men, it's like we kind of come into life with a certain amount of chi on our credit card, right? It's like there's a. There's a. There's a balance. The battery's charged. And in our 20s and our 30s, we'll often just go, right? We'll just push, push, push, push, push. Staying up late, working really hard, sometimes drinking, partying. And there's like a. And I can bounce back. And I can bounce back. And it's really, you know, often mid-30s, absolutely 40s and 50s, where suddenly that battery isn't automatically charged anymore, right? Our balance is running low. And if we don't start to tend to that, things can go bad pretty, pretty, pretty quickly, right? And just to kind of contextualize this, you know, it's far more nuanced than this. But part of what I've noticed in some of the men we work with is right in polyvagal theory, right? Which is just how does our nervous system organize itself? One of the basic premises of that, right, is there's the sympathetic part of our nervous system, which is the active go, move forward. We're engaged. Our heart rate's up, our digestion slows down, right? Things we've talked about before. And then there's the parasympathetic, like, slow, shut down, not mobilized, not wanting to take action. And these both have, you know, their healthy versions and unhealthy versions. And we often see there's. You know, both are often. When we're stuck in one or the other, it's an adaptation to some kind of trauma or fear or shadow work, right? Something in the shadow that, wow, I cannot stop. Because if I do XYZ or it's way too risky for me to take action, or I was never quite given the tools, I need to feel confident in that. And, um, they're both incredibly challenging. So some guys need More go energy. Some guys need more pause and slow down energy. What we're talking about today is guys that need that more slow down. So they have been hitting it for a long time. They've been building, they've been creating, maybe they've been traveling. Like, there's so many different ways this shows up, but that if, you know, we remain in that clueless state, which I think is really easy for a lot of us mentally, at some point our body will intensify the signal until it cannot be ignored, that you have to stop. And that can come from depression. Right. One man we worked with who worked insane hours for many years, very successfully one day couldn't get out of bed for three months, right? Just there was. His body was like, nope, you're done. If we keep this up, you are going to die. And so he kind of entered into a forced, parasympathetic. Parasympathetic, more depressive state. And it was extremely confusing for him because he didn't know what was going on. Right. But there was just no gas in the tank. And we did some pretty deep work to uncover, you know, what was going on underneath all of this. That created this whole paradigm to start with.

Luke Adler: Yeah. And the question here is why? Why shadow work? Why is shadow work helpful? And particularly, why is shadow work helpful in a men's group for men? And so I want to speak to the men's group part of it. When it comes to nurturance, when it comes to receptivity, men put a ton of masculine, put a ton of pressure on feminine. Men put a ton of pressure in general terms, on women to get nourishment. And that could look like porn, it could look like sex, it could look like, you know, fill my cup up quickly, you know, not. Not to, you know, have a double entendre, but, you know, you know, how can I get more bang for my buck? Kind of. Kind of idea, right? So it's like, men want to feel women's bodies, men want to look at women's bodies. And that's actually happening at a deep instinctual level. How can I get as much feminine energy as possible in as short of a period as possible so I can get filled up because I'm so fucking depleted from pushing? In other words, I've been on my Yang style, my. My push nervous system. Masculine, masculine, masculine, Push, push, push. And now I need a ton of feminine. And it's. It's all occurring in a kind of pathological way, meaning it's, it's not. It's not thorough, it's not. The water's not getting deep into our nervous system. The hydration's not getting into our cells. So this is where it gets kind of strange for us as men. Well, then why. Why a men's group? Why, why. Why would I get nourishment from men? Why would that help me to. To discover my burnout and to have more balance? And I think at a. At a visceral level, it can be confusing because we as men learned to push, learned to override our need, learn to override our. Our. Our desire for. For nourishment, for kind of being refueled. We learned that from the masculine, often from our fathers or if we had a masculine mother. We learned it from a masculine presence that was really against anything that could be perceived as weak or needy or, you know, being a right. So we absorbed a whole belief system around how we had to be by culture, by sports, by our parents, likely. And that push came from modeling. We learned it from either watching or explicitly being taught that. Again, you're still wondering, well, then why be with men? Why is men, you know, useful? And the. Our ability to feel and to own that that's a healthy thing can only come from, you know, what you and I have been calling Jason, the masculine vortex. But really that's kind of a fancy word for, you know, healthy masculine presence or masculine love. And so when we get to be in the presence of masculinity, that's healthy, that's loving, that can slow down and not. Not make slowing down a liability or slowing down a trope for weakness, but actually see it as a necess, necessary part of having a balanced, truly healthy, truly successful life. Then men start to heal. Can that happen with women? Yes. Can that happen with the feminine? Absolutely. But the feminine cannot. Cannot transmit the masculine. It just doesn't work that way. And the masculine, Our work, our work as men is to really discover, create, and generate what healthy masculinity feels like. And as you and I talk about all the time, at the core of our work is to shift masculine culture towards this. So this is why shadow work in the context of masculinity and men is so important for men. And I would say the equal is true for, for women. And, and, you know, now, you know, you and I have been working together for seven years. We can see the patterns, you know, we can see the principles, and we now we. There's a deeper understanding of why this works, why it works every time, and why in some ways it's truly the Antidote for our. The times that we all find ourselves in.

Jason Lange: Absolutely. And I really just want to highlight here, so. Right. You can think of it as. You might be a man out there who got on the success escalator. Right. Oh, I do this and then I do this and then I do this. And that's what I'm told by my culture is going to lead to success and happiness. Right. And like you said, we often get taught this kind of go ness, whether it's from our immediate family or frankly, our culture. Right. Right here, you and I are both located in the United States, in the west, and there is a hyper drive towards success, achievement. How many hours did you work last week? Oh, my God. Yeah, he works so hard. He works 80 hours a week. He's busting his ass. Right. Like, that is considered good. Right. Versus, oh, you know, in different parts of the world, they have less productivity. They argue, but it's like, yeah, they work, you know, 30 to 40 hours a week. They take off a month or two every year to be with their families. Like, that's just not what we consider valuable here in the States. And what we're pointing to is that has a cost. And so shadow work and what we've created in, you know, the heart of shadow. Really another way to think about shadow work, right. Is to bring to awareness that which we're not aware of that is actually operating some part of our being. And that can happen in a couple different levels. Right. That can happen at the physical level, the heart emotional level. Absolutely. The mental level. And even as we often see, like a spiritual kind of karmic level, that there's these things happening. And part of what we're talking about here is even just at a physical level, how easy it is for us men, and, you know, humans in general, to normalize anything. Literally to normalize anything. And if there's one thing I think a lot of men are notorious for, I know I've really had to work on this. Just neglecting and ignoring bodily problems. I'll just push through. I don't need to go to the doctor for that. It's fine. And we just get used to, there's a little ache there, there's a little pain there. Something feels off, whatever that might be. And what can be so transformative about this work? Like I. Like we said, one way you can kind of proactively start to take care of yourself is by going in with. Before the signal gets so big that your whole life has to be shut down or you get into an Accident or whatever that might be. So even for me, right. I was doing some work with a friend of mine here in Boulder the other day, and you know, we're doing some inner work and I'm sitting and doing some stuff and it's just like, boom, there it is. Wow. My whole lower back is just braced up right now. Like I can just suddenly it's so clear. Like I am just. I embraced there how. No wonder why I hurt my back a couple weeks ago. Right. It's not. I could. It was just such a clear transmission of. It's not braced right now because it got hurt. It's. I was holding so much tension these last months that that bracing actually made it more likely for me to get hurt. Cause it wasn't relaxed. It was using a lot of energy. And as my old men's group buddy and trainer used to say, you know, a tight muscle is a weak muscle. Like, it's actually fatigued. It's compensating for something. And so that was an example of me becoming aware in that moment of like, wow, I thought I'd been doing a good job with my self care and you know, got another baby coming in here anytime. And it's like. But it's not enough. I can actually feel I need to unwind my body more and restore more to take care of myself. And this can happen at so many different levels because, you know, again, so much of what we find with shadow work is what it points to are processes that got frozen. Right. Things that got locked up that we're holding in our bodies. And the masculine vortex, this men's group shadow work we're talking about is a place where. Where that all gets to release. Just literally gets to release and be felt and kind of come up and no longer be held anymore. And that tension can start to dissipate. And while, you know, it's infinitely complex because humans are, you know, we are complex. Yeah. Oftentimes certainly what I've seen in our work and myself is we often see the release in a couple different places. Anger that comes forward, Shame and grief and fear. These are like the kind of pockets that. Oh yeah, there's actually a ton of fear in there that I was holding, or a lot of grief or a lot of shame or wow. I've not been bringing forward my voice in my boundary around this anger. And as that gets unleashed and unleashed and felt, I mean, it's one of my favorite things we get to do in group. Right. When we see a guy really step in, watching his physiology Change in real time, right? The breath deep in the face, like, softens, their voice changes and it's like, whoa, someone else is here right now because something has been released and it's often a lot more relaxed and a lot more vital. I think that's the other thing, right? What we're talking about here is for you guys that have been pushing for so long. You did the family, did the kids, you did the career, and you have not taken care of your body. That credit card depletes and suddenly we're just exhausted. And if you don't start tending that now, something is going to force you to tend that.

Luke Adler: This is where, you know, whether you hit this in your late 30s, 40s, 50s, or 60s, depending on your, you know, what, what kind of credit card balance you started with. Maybe you started with quite a bit. So you've been able to spend a lot and not quite feel it. But this is where western medicine really comes into play because it's built, it's a medicine that's engineered for society that grinds, that pushes to the absolute limit. So you have these, these chemicals, these, this chemistry that can, can literally supplement things in your body that you're no longer making, can shut things down in your immune response that is hyperactive because your, your, your immunity is just screaming no. And we have classes of drugs that can just stop these signals and allow you to keep pushing further, right? And it's pretty genius really. From a molecular level, it's like, wow, we're very smart people. But from, from a level of connection and thriving. It's a, it's a very terrible thing that we actually have the means to keep ignoring ourselves. You know, it can be great and not so great depending on the circumstances and the, the question. I mean, I think, you know, being, being in, in the, in the middle age group now, I can sense even within myself at times like, wow, if I wanted to keep pushing myself, what I would have to take on is basically a martyr, martyrdom, consciousness. I could say, hey, I, I, I am here just to serve my family. I am here, you know, just to make sure there's money when I'm gone. I'm willing to just let my body go. This is a decision you have to make in your 40s and 50s. Do I let my body go? Do I just kind of ride that, that hill downward? Or am I, am I wanting to live, to keep living, to have vitality before 40ish in general? You know, you can keep pushing because you have the energy and you're, you're kind of in a mentality to prove yourself, to show that you can make it, to arrive. But, you know, kind of going over the hill of life. You. We all have to make this decision and, and a lot of men out there, guys, if you're kind of in that place where you're, you've. Maybe, maybe you're thinking of, or you've made the decision, I'm just going to kind of let go and just grind out the time I have left. And, you know, crossing your fingers, you're not going to get that chronic disease. There's a different path. There's a path to vitality and to, to success, financial success, to success in relationships that actually doesn't require you to go, go, go. It doesn't require you to push yourself. It's. It's a life like just men. Imagine a life where, where you feel relaxed, you feel joy, you feel love in your heart, and you have money in your bank account. You know, those, those things are not mutually exclusive. And what we're saying, what we're offering it, it probably scares you if you're out there, because at some level, what we're inviting you to do is feel the fear that started this whole journey in motion. It. It's. Something happened that scared you as a little person. Something happened that scared me as a little person. And like you said, Jason, there's kind of a quadratic structure to stagnation and pain. There's fear, there's shame, grief, anger. Those are the four big ones. And underneath those four things is hurt and, and just raw pain. And those five, four or five things, as they combine and congeal, they create kind of like a adhesion, a scar tissue, a reflex in our, in our guts and our balls, our pelvis. That can be surmised by something like, if I let go, everything will fall apart. Or if I let you know, it could start as if I let go, I'm a piece of. But even underneath that is if I, if I stop, you know, I'm going to die. And so that feeling that I'm pointing to is a. Is a place that we can, we welcome and we can unwind and get to what's underneath that, which is actually this, this vibrant nervous system that, you know, wants to be more fluid and, and to express and play and that has all the wisdom that you men out there have cultivated. You're. You're great business people, you're great providers. You're, you know, working to be good husbands and good and good dads and, you know, probably beat yourself up for half of that stuff. And there's a, there's a, There's a way that you can be free from all of that. It's not, it's not a pill. It's not us holding hands, saying Kumbaya. It's the difficult, painful, and incredibly rewarding work of discovering that you were actually built to face all of this. This, you know, it's not, you know, this, this experience. The fear, the anger, the grief, the shame, the hurt. You, we, we can teach you and train you how to face these things, how to feel them, how to work with them, and in a certain sense, how to become masters of them, to utilize them for a life that you really, really want. And, you know, just weren't. You weren't born into a world that teaches that. But if you're listening to this podcast, you.

Jason Lange: You're.

Luke Adler: You're beginning to maybe, maybe consider that there is another way.

Jason Lange: Yeah.

Luke Adler: Yeah.

Jason Lange: All right. This term gets so loaded, but I'll just name it here. You know, part of what I was talking about with the cultural pressure, you know, it's one of the real manifestations of the patriarchy, that masculine bodies are disposable. Right. When you really think about that, and there's, you know, biological reasons for that, that, right. One man and ten women can repopulate a culture. But this has real manifestations and ways we internalize. And part of what we're saying here is, yeah, you know, maybe you've been building that business successfully and you might actually be at a place where you could take your foot off the gas, but something isn't letting you, right. You keep pushing and you got to get ahead of that. It, you know, I imagine this is something you see clinically in terms of what shows up in people's bodies when they haven't been taking care of themselves, whether it's energy, depression, physical ailments, like, we're not just talking about woo woo stuff here. I mean, heart disease, you know, these things are all related to our stress, go, go, go, go levels. And if you don't get to the root of that, which, you know, the other mind blowing thing we've seen sometimes sources to stuff in our experience, sometimes it actually goes back pretty far in our lineage. Right. And we've talked a little bit about epigenetics before and, you know, they can do these studies now. They tend to use mice because they're very close to us and they reproduce so fast. They can study generational things in a short amount of time that you can't do in humans. And. Right. These things are real in that if we get exposed to a certain stressor or hardship, the markers of that get passed along the outside of our DNA, you know, a couple generations down. And so there can be this. This drive to protect or out of fear or out of scarcity, around money or food or all kinds of stuff that we might not even be conscious of till we start to do this work. And oftentimes can connect it back through the generations of like, wow, I never experienced that. And then we do a little research right. In our lineage, and it's like, oh, yeah, my family lived through this famine or through this travesty or something, and it's showing up in my body now. Shadow work is one of the ways we've found to hit that. Hit that work and release it and again, to make it conscious. And once it's conscious, we start to have a lot more choice about how we're gonna work with that and decide, you know, do I want that to be the driver behind my success, to be the driver behind my relationships, my health, et cetera. Because all of these things will be impacted, right? Our family life, our relationship to our kids, our relationship to our spouse, if we have our relationship to our body, our physical health, oftentimes even our relationship to money itself. And we have to start to become aware of, okay, yeah, I have this idea that I have to, you know, you and I have both wrestled it in a way. Like, we always got to keep growing, get like, boom. And we see guys, you know, who are on that train, and then suddenly that train has a lot of moment, and it's like, wow, I don't even know how to begin to slow this down right now. Step one, start to become aware and reconnect to our bodies, to our hearts, so we can really feel the impact of how we're living our lives before. Again, keep hammering this home, something really nasty happens that's going to force us to confront that. Yeah.

Luke Adler: And what you're saying is not a. It's not a scare tactic. We're not. We're not trying to rile anyone up out there. It's just reality. Because we've worked with so many men and been on the verge of health crises ourselves. I mean, definitely me and have been blessed. Like, Jason had, you know, our group six years ago not reflected that to me, I wouldn't have seen it until it got much louder. And when it was reflected to me that I was utterly burned out, it was shocking. If someone would have walked up and said, luke, you're burned out. I would have said, fuck you. I'm not burned out. But the thing about shadow work is that this is really fascinating about shadow work and what we're talking about here on a podcast is, you know, we're saying, you know, look at yourself, engage in self inquiry. You might think, oh, maybe I'll journal about myself. No, that's not what we're talking about. This isn't something you can think your way into and understand. Help me explain this, Jason, if I get too esoteric, but embodiment work, which we've talked about before, which is a certain sense, a certain description of what we're doing, it occurs by, by flexing several areas of, of being, movement, moving your body, breath, activating your breath and sound, moving sound through your, your, your, your body instrument. What do all of these things do? Well, they start to vibrate. They start to vibrate the body. They upregulate the metabolic rate, they increase blood flow to the periphery, they increase blood flow to the brain, and they start to shake what is stiff, they start to move what is stuck. And when the body starts moving in that way with a lot of intention and you get some emotion moving through there, and you're working with people who are very skilled at navigating emotion, you start to be able to feel and perceive things that are imperceivable with thought and observation. I think I'm doing an okay job here. So you start to have this whole other, other perceptive awareness that comes online. And as that occurs, here's what's amazing about our program. You have 30 in person hours on a retreat, 30 hours with us. You have 18 digital hours where we're coaching you on Zoom. You have 15 instructional, 15 hours of instructional video and tasks. So this program is loaded with enough time and experience for you to start to engage in this different way of learning and experiencing yourself. And this is really the distinction of shadow work from even therapy, which I think is incredibly valuable, and self inquiry or contemplation or kind of even a meditative technique, it begins to pull back layers of, of ad adhesions in the body density. And you start to be able to sense into what's really running the show. And I want you to pay attention out there to the way I'm talking because you can hear in how I talk right now what's been driving me my whole life to go, go, go. You can hear it in my intonation. You can hear it in the kind of intensity, that intensity that you're hearing from me, that is what has driven me, driven me to exhaustion. And now I get to utilize that intensity for good things that I want to use it for. I can bring it, you know, head and heart and guts in alignment and bring my power with my love. And it feels, it feels great. But before I became aware of it, this intensity that you're hearing in my voice was running me. And what I want you to know is the thing that, that you think is your greatest asset around your success. There's a shadow to it.

Jason Lange: There's a.

Luke Adler: It casts a shadow, meaning there's a part of it that is running you. It's running you ragged. It might be running your family ragged, it might be causing a lot of havoc. And it in a certain sense refuses to stop. Because like you said, Jason, there's deep fears. Epigen, epigenetically, when it comes to going it's success is a weird thing because if we have everything we need financially, that part of us goes well. Now I need to make sure my kids have it. Now I need to make sure my grandkids have it. And this is the dark side of success and wealth that says I can never be satiated, there will never be enough. It's also a very disempowering perspective. Like our children can't figure this out for themselves too, right? So there's, there's, there's, there's so much within our, our drive that actually keeps us bound to a life where we actually, in a certain sense, we never, we never get to really live. At least not fully, you know, it, it's a 3/4 existence. And there is sadness to that. I'm so grateful that I've been liberated from that, that life, you know.

Jason Lange: Yeah. This is a big one, right. Another way to think about this, even if you're not in the acute problem phase, is, you know, tied into all this. It's just the horrible, when you really think about it, narrative. We're fed about what retirement is gonna work my ass off the prime years of my life so that eventually I can relax and enjoy my life when my body itself is actually on the down road to not be able to enjoy it fully to begin with. Right. It's like this whole thing of we spend our most vital years grinding and then when we finally have some capacity, we're having to just take care of our health. Right. And we can't always do the things we want to do. I think, particularly as men, Right. We do not have the longevity that most women have. Men tend to Die sooner, right. It's pretty, pretty, pretty known at this point. And so this idea that even if you are successful right now, like, what's behind the drive, right? Like, oh, I want to be successful so I can have enough money so I can finally spend some time with my kids. Oh. And by the time I do that, my kids are going to be 14. So did I get to spend the most precious. No. Right. You could start to see what we're asking for is an awareness of what if you're a very driven man who's starting to feel the cracks at the edge, to really get clear about what's behind this. And shadow work in a men's group like ours is one path towards that. So you can get really clear on what's actually valuable in your life. And there are a subset of men, right, who are terrified to do this, terrified to actually get in touch with the cost their lifestyle is having on their body, their heart, their relationships, etc. Because right when, certainly for me, what I found is when I do slow down and I'm in a safe environment, these are two very important things. Feeling and safety are often correlated. Then I actually have to come terms with the truth. And when I actually get in touch with the truth, life has to change, right? There's, instead there's kind of I'm just going to look away, ignore it, barrel through. But it's like, wow, now this is actually costing me. This is not sustainable for my health or my body, my relationships. And now that I've actually felt that in my body, like you talked about, it's not a cognitive thing, it's an experiential nervous system thing. It's really hard to go back. And then change often has to come forward and that can be really difficult, renegotiating our occupation, our job, our work, relationships. But that's again where the group power comes in. Because you don't have to do that alone, right? We can give you a framework, a structure, scaffolding for, okay, like, you didn't change your life overnight, right? When we first brought forward the, the burnout, you took some immediate steps, immediate steps to at least give yourself a breath. And then it's taken time and intention, right, to reorganize your schedule, your patient load, what your priorities are on. But none of that would have been possible had you not had that acute, acute realization and kind of stop the bleeding on a couple of key things early on. And so this stuff can be scary. But know that, you know, so much can change and it doesn't mean you have to stop being successful. You know, I think what we're discovering is a big part of what we're talking about here is what's the path towards sustainability? You know, we talk about that so much in the ecological sense right now as a culture. I think what we're pointing to is what's that like for nervous systems as well? Right. You might be a guy who's leading a sustainability company, but working 90 hours a week to try to save the planet, that doesn't work. Right? That's. That, that is part of the whole problem. If it's requiring that, that's not sustainable because you are not sustainable in that. So what we're pointing to is, well, how do we start to discover another way? And you know, another way to think about this is like terms of dosage of what can create space and regulation in our nervous system. Shadow work men's groups can be profound because we can hit these deep pockets of nourishment that really start to reformat us. I've seen and allow us to approach and engage the world in a different way. And it can be scary. Right. If you're a guy who's mostly focused on the outer world your whole life, this idea of coming into the inner world can be terrifying. That's, you know, a big part of shadow work is bringing the inner world out, so to speak, into the light. And most of us men are just not given the tools to do this, let alone the community in which to process it in. And what we've just seen is this particular style of work we do in groups creates the, like, momentum to just step into that for each individual man in their own way. That can be life saving, you know. In a sense. Yeah, Yeah.

Luke Adler: I mean, do I think what the, the, the archetypal picture we will see is, is the external, you know, one's external life becomes so uncomfortable that it's, it becomes a choice between, wow, my external life is so uncomfortable. I think now I'll face my internal life because it's scary, but I'm actually more, more scared of the consequences of losing my wife or my estrangement from children or losing my job or whatever it might be. And, you know, we, we hope and pray that you're not at that level. You know, what we're wanting is, you know, we welcome you if you are, but if you're just sensing the, you know, the, the kind of interim space around. Yeah, you know, I'm, I am kind of burnt out, I'm tired, I'm drinking the coffee I'm maybe having, the alcohol. I'm, you know, just trying to prop myself up on both ends of my nervous system. You know, there's, There's a way out of that. And here's. I, I don't want men to be scared out there. Like, you know, that we're going to ask you to, like, quit your job. I mean, but like, for my, my life, right? Like, I think the change, the, the initial change I made, like you guys asked me, like, luke, what can you do? And I was like, I knew exactly what I could do. I had been wanting to do it, but I was totally scared to do it. And when I say this, you're gonna be like, what the. The change that was, that felt monumental to me was to see two less patients a week on Tuesdays. That was it. I was already seeing like 70 patients. But just to like, cut my and clock appointment, just that little change, right, was, Was groundbreaking for me. Like, just, just even thinking about it, just my body, like, washed. I had like a wash of relief. And, you know, the. If I, If I were to tell you, like, why was that so scary? Well, two patients a week, that's $300 of income times four weeks, right? That's twelve hundred dollars times twelve months. You see where I'm going here, right? That was what was running me. Did I, did I need that, you know, $12,000, whatever that is? 14 grand. No, I didn't, I didn't need it. I, I was fine. Had enough money. But tell that to my conditioning and that driver in me. And it was just. It's just a reflex of tension and tightness in my guts and my abdomen. Good God, I'm so happy to be free from that. And that little change led to more little changes for me, which led to bigger changes. And it, it actually has occurred over the course of many years and I'm still making changes.

Jason Lange: Right? Yeah.

Luke Adler: So it's, it's all very doable. It's, it's. And, you know, it can refill you with, with wonder and energy and delight and creativity. And now I'm creating the, the. I'm doing the funnest work of my life. There's plenty of money, and I'm present to my children who are young, you know, 7 and 10. And I'm so thankful that I'm not missing their childhood. I'm so thankful that I can feel and see the impact of my love on my children. And I can see and feel the impact of my love of My wife. And hey, I don't have a trust fund. Wasn't handed to me. You know, I started, I started with zero. And I'm not Grant Cardone talking about millions and millions of dollars. You know, it's just, it's a good life, it's a healthy life.

Jason Lange: Right.

Luke Adler: And Jason, you and I have made decisions to not, to not grow this business with velocity and to be a big company because we know that for it to truly embody what we're teaching, we have to live it. So we've taken this slow growth, lifestyle centered approach to how we grow harder shadow. And you know, it's brilliant not to say we don't, we don't have hard times and we don't have shadow ourselves. We, of course we do. There all. There's always more to learn. There's always, you know, the more you relax, the more you can see. Yeah. The more you chill out.

Jason Lange: Absolutely.

Luke Adler: The deeper you can see into yourself. And that's part of the gift of shadow work, is then you get to discover these amazing nuances about yourself. You know, that, that bring even more energy. It's just I, the, the adage that, you know, you can ask the universe for anything and it'll give it to you and there's an infinite amount of energy to flow into. You know, it's a really premature teaching to, to say to anyone. It's actually very shaming. It's kind of stupid. It's a. But it is a principle that it's, that's workable, that you can open to a life that's very integrated where you can get energy from other men, you can get energy from women, you can get energy from God, you can get energy from the earth. There's a way to get energy and give energy that is totally different than how you've been taught. It's true. And it's not a bunch of spiritual. It's just life. It's relationships. It's relationship to my body, to my friend Jason, to my wife, etc and so on. And it just builds in a real.

Jason Lange: Generative way and you know, it's so beautiful. I mean, it just strikes me that you know, what we're talking about here, this kind of go push extractive, it's more of an extractive energy. Right? Yeah. We're gonna, we're gonna take these western chemicals that are these extracted compounds down into, you know, specific things that can turn off or turn on certain of us so we can just keep going. Is very different than what I hear you speaking to of like when we're coming from a place of wholeness, it's, it's, it is like a generative energy. We're not extracting it from somewhere else. We are actually the source of it. Like, yeah, I feel, I feel rested, I feel whole. So I have something to give, right? I have something to give. There's gas in my tank right now versus I need to take energy from something right now to keep pushing this forward. Because underneath there's, yeah, you know, all this unfelt stuff or fear or grief or whatever that might be. So ultimately, you know, I think when we can make these shifts and when you can do that shadow work to get really clear about what has been driving me all these years, it doesn't mean you have to give away, get, get rid of your aspirations, your desire to serve, to do something meaningful. It just means it can be sourced from something very different. And you know, certainly in my experience, what I've seen is paradoxically when we start to source in that it actually makes us more successful in the very thing we're trying to push forward anyway. Because then people get to experience that generative rather than that extractive energy. So, right. This is something I had to, to, to work, you know, as I was growing as a coach and there would be times like I need this person to sign up or enrollment because da da da. Because I'm not going to feel safe or da da. And it comes through, right? It comes through the transmission versus yeah, this is what I'm doing. If you want to be part of it, like, great, you know, because I know exactly where it's going to go. That comes through as well. Right. And people are more attracted to the latter one. Right. What do people hate about America? Pushy salesmen. Right. What is less attractive than the used car dealership? The person like coming at you because they need that thing from you. And so whatever your endeavor is, the more you're already sourced in wholeness and rest and nourishment, the more you're going to be able to give from and create from an abundant place. And I know this sounds super woo woo, but it's real, like it's an actual thing. Because then I'm not being driven by a deep need. I'm being driven by a great care in a sense that, yeah, this is, this is what I have to give. If you're ready, great. If not. And you know, I just really want to highlight, guys, that it is not weakness to slow down in these ways. We're talking about taking care of yourself. Going under the hood, so to speak, to get in, turn into these old wounds or traumas or whatever is sometimes pushing that go. That make it all happen. Or else addressing that is going to allow you to be even more successful in a whole different way. Where, you know, in a sense, you can have the capacity, as I think you and I have both had to develop, of knowing there's a time and a place to be. Like, oh, that's enough for now. I can just rest and enjoy what I have. Doesn't mean I'm going to get lazy. Doesn't mean I'm going to stop growing. Just means right now, in this season, you know, you and I recording this in fall, autumn, it's time to harvest. It's time to enjoy. It's time to reap the rewards. And there will be a time again to come back out and to grow and to push and to plant and to execute and all that, but that we need these seasons. And it is not something most men in the world that we know and have come across have any capacity to do. And it has a cost to your body, to your relationships, to your health. And you can address it head on. You know, I'm thinking of this metaphor one of our teachers often used of, you know, facing the dragon. And, you know, it's interesting, I hadn't thought of it before, but in a lot of, you know, some of the literature around dragons, they're, you know, they're kind of greedy. They, like, hoard the gold and they demand penance. Like, you got to pay, you got to pay, you got to pay. And part of what we're talking about here is, well, what's your dragon that keeps demanding, demanding all that output from you, and what happens if you shine a light on it? You know, what's really there? What's that monster really about that's pushing you so hard and what might be possible if you weren't having to constantly be driven by that. And that's really what we're talking about here, is, you know, if you're ready to face your dragons, the Heart of Shadow is a communal experience. You can do it in towards that.

Luke Adler: I just want to make one point before we close, Jason. When you said that dragon comment and the. The hungry, greedy dragon, that. That activated something in me, made me, you know, like, Gabor Mate talks about hungry ghosts and Chinese medicine. We talk about ghosts and. But it's this kind of mythological way of, or symbolic way to talk about the insatiable, the insatiability of something that we can't see or name that scares us. So I'm wanting to ground this into something that's, that's actually very real and that's the emotion of fear. And fear itself has a freezing quality to it. In Chinese medicine, fear is related to water. So we think of water freezing. We think of water as being fluid. We also think of water as casting mist or clouds. And part of what happens when we're afraid is we're numb and we can't see clearly what's happening. You, we. You and I talk about counterphobia sometimes, which is like, for men like this, which, you know, I'd say you and I fall into this category. If we're afraid, we just do it anyway. Which still isn't facing fear, it's just overriding fear.

Jason Lange: Yep.

Luke Adler: Because fear is so uncomfortable, it casts this mist. And we, inside of that mist, we create a mythology, we create a story, we create a dragon, we create. We create paranoia, we create conspiracy theories because it's so. It's so uncomfortable to just sit and allow that mist to settle, to allow that fog to clear, to allow that ice to melt. And to feel that fear is just a doorway to a fluid flowing, creative experience of life, to a flowing river, to a surging ocean. And that that ocean and that river is the very source of all of our physiological power. When that power aligns with the light and the warmth of the sun, or the light and warmth of a beating heart that pumps blood into water, you get passion, you get direction, you get ease, you get rest, you get a fluid experience of masculinity and femininity.

Jason Lange: That move.

Luke Adler: And that's ultimately what we're training men to do, is to regain the fluidity between their fire and their fluid. And heart of Shadow is the dojo. It's the domain, it's the kind of training grounds. And we know for sure the 10 week experience is actually worth a lot more than we're charging. It's got incredible value to it. And so if you just come and do the 10 weeks, you'll be stoked. But what we're doing also offering is a lifetime experience where you get to have a men's group, if you choose, that exists in perpetuity. Meaning after the 10 weeks, Jason and I hand over the keys to you men and you run the group. We teach you how to run it, and then we're on board to support you for a six month and a nine month. Three. Three months, Six months tune ups. And then we're also, we're always offering kind of Alumni work to support the groups, and then we have alumni courses as well. But, you know, I would just say, like, if you're looking at the cost, you're looking at money and thinking, oh, that's very expensive. Look, it, it's. If you think about it as a lifetime investment that will yield so much wealth, you know, financial wealth, relational wealth, physiological wealth, health, vitality. And yeah, we have this cohort coming up in, in Feb. And yeah, it's, you know, it's everything we say it is, and it's so much more. Luke Adler: Thanks, Jason.

Jason Lange: You're interested in working with me around dating relationships or your masculine presence in the world. Just go to evolutionary men, apply.