What happens when the very emotion we're most afraid to reveal is the exact thing creating the isolation we're desperately trying to avoid? I just got off a call with Melanie Curtin exploring this question through the lens of shame, one of those emotions that sits right at the core of so much of what men struggle with. Luke and I both got pretty raw about our own experiences with this stuff, which is what this work demands.
What struck me most was how shame operates as this paradox. In avoiding it, trying to keep it hidden because we're terrified it'll lead to isolation, we actually create the very disconnection we're afraid of. I shared about a river trip with Luke years back where I was so scared of being asked to do something I didn't know how to do that I started withdrawing from the group. Turns out, I was keeping myself separate because I was afraid they'd make me feel separate. The moment I brought that forward, said "hey, I feel like a 10 year old boy who's terrified you're going to ask me to tie a knot," everything shifted. The guys didn't care. Something in my nervous system got to relax.
Luke went deep on how shame shows up around competency, especially when we're in unfamiliar territory or feel exposed. For men, there's often this hair trigger around "am I enough?" And shame loves to collapse us inward, makes us small, cuts off our agency. We talked about sexual shame too, which is probably the most loaded territory for men. There's nowhere safe to talk about sex without judgment, and we're seeing a whole generation of younger guys paralyzed by fear of being perceived as predatory.
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Jason Lange: In avoiding my shame because there's a fear that if I was ever honest about what I did or where I'm at, that it's going to lead to isolation. It actually causes me to isolate. And so what I was noticing was I wasn't as in that weekend with those men who I love and I trust as I could be. And it was like, wow. Because I'm afraid they might ask me something that would make me feel stupid and feel separate. I. I'm actually keeping myself separate.
Jason Lange: Yay.
Melanie Curtin: Favorite topic of all, coach everywhere. Because there is so much power in it, actually. A lot of energy. A lot of energy. A lot of stored energy ready to be liberated. I wish that you all could see the men nodding their heads, but it's the podcast, so you can't. And I'll just say that they're nodding their heads. Yeah, we're going to be talking about how to transform shame into power, and we're not fucking around. This is really. This is really possible. And there's really a lot of. Yeah, just bound energy is the way that I think of it. Bound energy in shame. And when I was preparing for this episode, one of the things that kept coming to mind for me was the posture of shame. The posture of shame. Right. What does it look like in the body? And I would be curious to hear from each of you about that because you've worked with lots of men. I've also worked with lots of men, but you've worked with lots of men and actually seen that structure of the posture of shame. And then what does the posture of liberation look like and what is possible on the other side? So, yeah, I think the way I'd love to get started is to just hear a little bit from each of you about a place where you used to hold shame that did get liberated through the men's work that you've done and what became possible for you on the other side of that, personally? So what. What was it and how did it move and then what was possible after that? Who wants to start?
Jason Lange: Yeah, I'll jump in on. On that. And I would say that at least my current experience of shame, I. I would. I wouldn't say that. That, like, it's gone right? That it. It's an experience, that it's an emotion. It's a. It's one of the flavors of the rainbow of being, so to speak. And. And I think for men and women, it is the most uncomfortable emotion. It is so uncomfortable, in fact, that before we even feel it, we reflex into aggression. Like, not my fault. I didn't do that. That's not what I meant. Or like there's a quick reflex or reaction to put it on the other or to maybe like over assess responsibility. Like, oh, I take 100% responsibility for that when it may. You know, shame is never 100% anyone's responsibility. It's a social emotion and it arises because we've done something that hurts someone we love or ourselves and there's a breakdown fundamentally in connection. You know, for me, my current iteration to shame, it's really interesting. It manifests around competency, particularly around danger. And it's, it's really intense. Is like, it occurred for me several times in the last week. I was driving in, in a foreign country and I was going into like a, a toll on the, on the freeway and I couldn't read the, the, the, you know, it was all in Italian. And then like, I was like, how do you convert the money? And there's cars coming behind me and there's cars in front of me and people are honking and you know, I didn't have Euros, I had, you know, so it's like I was unprepared to move this 3,000 pound vehicle through, you know, the, the toll. And I'm trying to speak English and the, the toll collector doesn't speak English. And all of a sudden I'm getting flooded with shame. Like my face is going red, my throat is closing. And this is interesting thing about shame. Like grief and sadness are heavy and they move down. Shame is also heavy. It moves down, but it moves inward and it has an action against the throat. In particular, it wants to close down agency. It's non agentic, right. It wants to slow down one's ability to have forward motion or competency. Right? So for men, it's a really common one that if we don't feel strong or powerful or directive in our lives, we will feel the, the tinge of shame. And I could give you several more examples that were related to me actually driving. And first of all, I couldn't speak the language and I didn't know the roads. So there was all these degrees of incompetence that I just didn't have mastery over. And you know, I compare it to where I live now and of course I know every, everywhere to, you know, I know how to navigate my city, I know how to navigate money, I know how to speak, speak English. And man, you take all of these things away that we live in and shame's right there. But we can see shame's very related to a sense of Comfort, familiarity and ability to navigate life fundamentally, whether it's going to the store, whether it's going to the doctor, whether it's driving your vehicle. And it was astounding how much shame I felt. And my reaction, My reaction was to get aggressive with my wife. Where's the money? Where's the euros? You have the money. And all of a sudden she's getting anxious and she's getting afraid. Because what I'm really feeling in that moment is I'm afraid. It's not just that I'm incompetent. I'm afraid of getting trapped. I'm afraid of the police coming out. I'm afraid of other drivers coming out and pointing. I'm afraid of being taken from my car. Right. There's incredible visceral fears that are there and, and being harangued, you know, for this, this incompetence. So it was, it was pretty astounding to experience it so viscerally. And when I look at it, you know, because my wife was having her own version of it, hers was based around kind of not having planned everything perfectly, you know, if she, she didn't plan the trip, right. She was very reactive. All of a sudden I was like, what the fuck's going on, honey, it's fine. No big deal. Like, for me, I don't give a. I can roll with all of that kind of stuff. But for her, I could see, wow, a little bit more of a feminine wound around being organized, having it together. And I would say, you know, I'm learning a deeper depth around shame. And that because of this more recent experience, that, that if my competency is called into question, viscerally, around safety, around being able to move my body through space without being trapped, that would have me get really aggressive. And in other words, I, I wouldn't want to feel my shame. And at the depth of it is that there would be a reluctance to metabolize the fear, the fear that I'm feeling. There's more I want to say about it, but I think I'll. I'll pass it to my, my, my brother here, Jason, or. Sorry, Mel, go ahead.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, just quickly, I just want to highlight something that you said, and I appreciate how eloquently you spoke to shame and then what's underneath shame? Because I think I, I just really love how you put that together of shame, aggression and fear. Right. And that often we are not aware of the shame piece, but we are aware of the aggression. And it takes something to excavate and get underneath and around what's actually going on. So I think that, yeah, shame can masquerade as other things or other things come in right away, like you said, to help us not feel that fear because it's so big. It can be so big and so fundamental. Yeah. Like that fear of being trapped or that fear of being caught out is so big that our system kind of comes in with something else to have us not feel that. The immensity of that. And yeah, I just appreciated that clarity of what was going on.
Jason Lange: We've got lots of stories about that. I think that's probably the number one thing that men find relief from. A men's group that has that kind of depth, you know, certainly in your guys program and Heart of Shadow program. I mean, there's nowhere safe. I mean, if you just think for a moment, is there anywhere safe men can go to talk about sex? Okay. They go to the confessional at the Catholic church. Right. And they're like, okay, forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. Oh. So the whole thing is just. Is just loaded in and not being good enough. Right. So a men's group where there's permission to just talk about it without any judgment and just all is welcome. I think that was pretty shocking for me when I first started doing, you know, not men's work, but men's shadow work. Right. Because there was a much deeper welcoming of that and surprised and relieved to hear men and this was a co ed group, but even women be welcoming of that content. You know, of course, these are very highly trained people. So there was A certain permissibility. But one thing I want to highlight that has occurred in Heart of Shadow. Jason and I have worked with some men in their 20s, kind of mid-20s, late 20s. And something I wasn't aware of until about a year ago is that Gen, I think it's Gen Z or maybe the bottom of the millennial generation. Those men have been indoctrinated to have a lot of awareness around feminine safety, safety around women, and to not appear at all like a predator. Whereas in, you know, Gen X, our generation, we didn't get that kind of training. You know, we had a little bit more machismo culture where it's okay to be a little more forward with our sexual desires. Not saying that we're comfortable with it, but Gen Z, millennial generation, these men are really, some of these like men who are like, really conscious and kind hearted, you know, nice guys. They're super scared to bring their sexual desire forward. And I had no idea that, that men in their 20s feel that kind of fear around even speaking to women or like, you know, they're like definitely gonna wait for the woman to bring it up because the, the, their worst nightmare would be to perceive, be perceived as a predator and how much fear they have in their kind of lower centers of their body, fear in their heart to come forward to like, you know, broach the subject of sex or like body parts and putting them together. And, you know, that's something I don't have in my body. I don't, I don't have that fear. I'm not afraid of, of bringing that up. But there's a whole generation of men that are, that are really afraid of it. And it, it's created kind of a lot of dynamism around sexuality and sexual expression. And you know, when a man of that generation can come forward and share, you know, his fears about it, it's a relief for me. I just, I know how to hold men of that age group in a way that I didn't before. I just thought, well, yeah, it's fine. It's totally normal to want to feel that and do that, et cetera and so on. So that's definitely been a revelation for me. And like you said, Mel, the shame around, the shame around sex, sexuality, sexual desire, it's, it's the same mechanism as there is around competency or any other subject matter. It's absolutely relational. There's, there's a X, there's an excommunication from the community. Right? If we look, look at Judeo Christian values, there's rules right from the outset around how to approach women and how women should approach men. And that's all entrenched into our psychology around what's good and bad and right and wrong and whether or not we are consciously practicing one of those religions. We've all been indoctrinated into what's okay to say and do. Thou shall not covet, thou shall not look at another woman in a particular way. Those thoughts are bad, those thoughts are wrong. Those thoughts are dirty, they're sinful. And what you. What should you do with them? You should go tell someone who's a renunciate, who has no sexual relationship, who has no sexual connection, who has suppressed the whole matter, who's not in a. A family, who doesn't have a marriage, right? And, and go get all of your advice around sex and relationship from someone who's not in a relationship and is not. Is not having sex. Right? It's the, it's the biggest stupidity. And, and you know, I'm going to be lambasted by the 1.2 billion Catholics in the world for saying this, but it is stupid, it is truly stupid to be advised by people who are not in families and who are not having sex. Right. And this is the birth of, of our careers, right? We're like kind of talking about the energetic phenomenon of what it is to be a human being without the dogma and the rules attached to it. And the three of us are people who have become quite good at articulating that. Right. We've liberated ourselves from these systems of kind of rules that we should live by and that are completely arbitrary in a certain sense. Completely arbitrary. They're more about crowd control and population control, et cetera and so on. But at the basis of all major religion is this kind of a manipulation around shame. And like you said, Mel, it's this very core thing deeply connected to sexuality and our fundamental fear of its power. And it's so wonderful to have that be freed up. I mean, I. I can go on and on about my own freedom I have around sex and sexuality from shadow work, from shadow work in a men's group where I can openly talk about my sexual desires, my sexual fantasies, my sexual incompetency, you know, where I'm don't feel good at it, where I struggle with it. And it's so freeing. And the more I talk about it, the more I can share it, the freer I get. And of course, then my physiology changes and it becomes more fun and expressive.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. Before we move to Jason, I'm curious if you can share either a story from your own experience or a memorable one from men that you've worked with, particularly with shadow work, around this subject. Right. I. I have some. Maybe I'll share one of my stories from one of the men that we worked with as well. But do you have any memorable ones on this subject, particularly around sex? And I'm really glad that you brought up the religion, because that is true for so many of the men that we work with as well.
Jason Lange: I mean, there's an interesting exercise Jason and I do in Heart of Shadow. I don't know if we can share it here, Jason, maybe pass it to you on that. Yeah, we. We hit this head on in our program in a pretty deep, confronting and profoundly healing way that really hits. Goes to the heart of taking the shame thing. We feel the most shame around sexually and liberating it in a sense. So this is definitely something we do. You know, we. It's going to keep it a little mysterious here because that's part of where the power comes through. But we've basically what they're. What this process allows for is a reclamation of the energy. Because why I think sexual shame is such a potent thing is, you know, even in the chakra system, right. It's pretty. It's pretty base. It's pretty down there. It's fundamental to the human experience. And so from an early age, when, whether it's religion or culture or family starts coming in and makes us question the impulses our body is having. Right. Just this natural draw and desire for a connection and expression, which, you know, it really is. It can be deeply unsettling. Right. It creates a whole body layer of doubt we have experienced. And so we. We do help men kind of reclaim this, in a sense. And we've seen guys. Yeah. Who literally were holding things for decades, release them. And again, you know what. What I'm noticing is it's like a vitality and a playfulness can often come back in its stead. Right. Where there's a. There's a way. Oh, that thing I was so scared of. I can now play with that energy and actually express my. Myself through it. And so there's some exercises we lead guys through, and just often in the work itself, it'll happen. You know, I think of moments of, you know, this. You and I talk about this in our program a lot, Mel, that for a lot of men, some of the most memorable moments in their lives are when they froze up around sexual desire. Right. When there was an Opportunity for some kind of connection, and they didn't take it. And so Luke and I have replayed those moments with men of feeling the actual just breeze in the nervous system and the. The strength of the desire to want to cross that chasm, but also just the inability to, because something is telling me no. And then to. Even in an imaginary scenario with other men, to just turn the body or say some words, to feel their nervous systems just totally expand and something starts flowing through them again that, wait, it's okay. I wanted that. It was okay. I wanted that. And we just see, you know, I've just seen in myself and in others such a liberation for guys around this. This, that our. Our sexuality is not something that is dangerous or has to be demonized. Particularly when we do learn to claim it, it actually makes it safer when we come into contact with it, learn how to express it, learn how to handle it. It makes it a lot safer. So it's. It's potent. And you know, some of these stories are so precious. It's like I don't actually feel like I can bring them forward because that, this is the stuff I would say more than anything else goes like, right to the heart. For men of like, the most vulnerable parts of themselves are often deeply wound up in their sexual shame. And having a safe space with other men to unwind that and bring that forward, I mean, it's. It's one of the exercises we do. It is like when we start it, it's like. It's like pins and needles and it's tight and there is like a palpable sense of discomfort in the room.
Melanie Curtin: And.
Jason Lange: And then to feel that just relax in breath and humor and tears sometimes simultaneously all start to come through. There's just a incredible lightning of the load in the room and a reclaiming of this narrative, I think, of what male sexuality can be that is deeply healing to a lot of men.
Melanie Curtin: Luke, do you have anything to add to that?
Jason Lange: You know, I was thinking of a classical example that's more non specific. I've worked with several men who were getting over divorce and then they met someone new and they're excited and they found that they couldn't perform sexually, so they had some erectile dysfunction. And so I've done some work with them. And so what we typically do is we put the ex wife in front of them. The. The imaginary imagine imagining ex wife's there and then just, you know, bring them into body consciousness and say, you know, with what you're feeling in your body, what wants to be said to your ex wife, right? What's incomplete there? And then often there's this, you know, flood of things that the man wants to say. Fears, regrets, worries, right? And so we see particularly around sexuality, that if a man's heart is closed, if a man doesn't feel safe, right, this is, this hearkens immediately back to shame because shame cuts, cuts our heart off from what we care about. And then if our heart's not there, we, we're not liberated back into connection. And so as the man speaks his, his heart to his ex wife, sure enough, you know, that next day could be intimate with this new person. And everything works fantastic, right? All the blood's flowing up and down from the top of the body, from the heart all the way down to the bottom of the body. And so in a, in a safe space, what we can provide for a man, you know, the three of us do for sure, is that ability to bring back online our heart, our desire. And the one thing I want to add about shame is that it's a social emotion. And sometimes if we're not in a safe social space, right, the work we do is all about safety. So we create safety for people to then share what they might be ashamed about. But let's say you're in a social dynamic where that the person holding space for you isn't safe. They're more in a patriarchal structure and so they're going to be needling your shame, triggering it more. Oh, well, you should have known better, right? This kind of mentality for healthy shame, a shame that we transform into power. You know, really the advanced move is something that I think probably the three of us do, we have to self liberate, which means if, if we don't get forgiveness or we don't get safety from the, the person that we've had a breakdown with, sometimes we have to give that to ourselves. We have to say, you know what, I messed up. But fundamentally, at my core, there's nothing wrong with me. Now in, in, in mainstream religion, they would have us believe that something is fundamentally wrong with you in your core, that you are, the essence of you is bad, that you are a sinner, right? And so this is something we reject wholeheartedly. I don't believe that. I don't believe the essence of a human being is sinful. I believe the essence of a human being is liberative and connective and loving. That's my experience and I do believe in that experience. And so sometimes with shame, and particularly sexual shame, we, we have to liberate ourselves out of that oppressive dynamic and kind of resist the urge to stay stuck, particularly if we've really screwed up or if there's any in entrenched. And we probably three of us have seen this in intense, entrenched religious trauma, often built around sexual shame. And this is what can keep someone very, very stuck, is that they truly believe there's something wrong and bad about them. And so our great gift to men is to tell, you know, break that belief apart and you spend enough time in a community like the ones we create, that happens, that belief gets shattered and you, and you start to experience, wow, there's a deeper goodness within me, you know?
Melanie Curtin: Yes. And if you're a man listening and you resonate with that section, I do encourage you to listen to our other episode called Overcoming Religious Trauma, which is a guy talk panel. It's fascinating men from different, different backgrounds and I think that's a great, also another great example of men that have liberated themselves through, through our work. And I loved what you said, Jason, about just play coming back. Right, play. Vitality, curiosity, innocence, love, trust, experimentation, all of those have been liberated for those men. So if you resonate with this religion conversation, definitely listen to that episode because I think there's a lot of inspiration there. And you don't have to stay stuck. I think that's really the whole idea here, is that you, you don't have to stay stuck. And even if it, even if you've been stuck for 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years, I mean, we memorably had a client in his 70s, we've had a few clients in their 70s. And the number one thing I would say that those men said is, wow, I wish I had done this sooner. I wish I had done this sooner. I didn't realize how much could be transformed in a pretty short amount of time and how much fun there was on the other side. Because I think things like sexuality, it's supposed to be fun, there's supposed to be play, it's supposed to be, there's supposed to be some light heartedness there. And when all that heaviness is sitting on top, there's not a lot of space for that. So, Jason, I'm wondering if you can, you know, speak a little bit to, to your experience of, of how this has, what it has looked like when it has been transformed in men, particularly this piece around sex and sexuality.
Jason Lange: Yeah, there's just like desire is allowed again. I know it sounds so simple, but it's like, oh, my desire is Allowed. I'm allowed to feel it, and I don't have to hide it. And there's so much more energy that comes through. Again, I think that's just a big part of it. And we see men come deeper into relationship with themselves and with each other. And overall, you know, whether it's sexual shame, you know, shame around performance, definitely body shame. Something that comes up for a lot of men that I don't think is talked about in a lot of spaces. I mean, it's stuff I've had to engage with in the men's work movement, right? Go to a menswork website. It's like everybody's got cut abs and is like this hairless, golden God. I'm like, my body doesn't look like that, right? Like, so when we're practicing together, if I had to get comfortable with what my body looks like. And that can be very liberating for men. Shame around money, our ability to protect those we love about, to speak our truth. There's lots of different ways this shame. Shame sticks with men. And what it tends to do is make us smaller, right? So we actually withdraw, take up less space in whether it's that sexual shame being liberated, or any of those other different pieces. What like, we actually see in men who we work with is it's not that their bodies get bigger, but they energetically start to take up more space. They're actually. Their presence takes up more space in the world with this sense of, oh, I have a right to be here. I have a right to have wants and needs and to be able to say no and to just speak. Whatever's inside of me in that actually ends up creating a lot more of often what they want, right in life, paradoxically, that as we take up more space, we're actually more available for connection because there's more of us to connect to. If we're withdrawn in shame and small and withdrawn is as I have experienced many times in my relationship, there's less opportunity for connection there. And when men are connected, you know, things start to change. And probably more than anything else, if there's anything that this engine of shadow work that Luke and I have created, it's a safe space for connection or whatever it is is happening for you can be brought into this field of love and connection, and something is always liberated.
Melanie Curtin: Anything you want to add to that, Luke?
Jason Lange: I mean, we've touched on it, but just to make it explicit, Shame. Shame is a result of disconnect, right? And the liberative power of shame is it reestablishes connection. Also does this amazing thing that nothing else can do because it leads to reconnection. And in order to reconnect, you have to take the risk to be vulnerable about what you don't want to share. It establishes trust at a deeper level, and it provides a playbook to the other. Now, this is assuming the other wants connection, too. A playbook to the other for how to navigate their heart. And this is the gift of shame relationally, is that Jason has a clearer idea now of how to navigate my heart. When we share a breakdown between us, it's not codependent in the measurement. It's a deeper understanding of my wounds and pain that I've taken the risk to share with my friend. And now he knows, oh, wow, that's. That's what has triggered you into shut down and disconnection. Now Jason has awareness of that, vice versa. And now we have something even beyond connection. We have intimacy, we have deep connection. We have brotherhood. We have. Which is really our goal in Heart of Shadow is a deep sense of tribe and community. That can only occur, you know, usually, and it does occur in our group after the 10 week program closes. It occurs because now the group has life lessons together. They can deal with breakdowns, they can deal with miscommunications, they can deal with shame. And then the men that really want that, they stick around, they pursue the relationship, they pursue a deeper sense of connection and trust. And. And the men who aren't quite ready for that, you know, they're like, that 10 weeks was awesome, super great. But this is too much connection for me. I'm not. I don't want this much. Just give me, give me, you know, just that first taste. First taste. Beautiful first taste. We love the first taste. Get connected is wonderful. And if, you know, if you're hungry for something really sustaining, you know, we offer that. We offer that kind of deep, deep friendship, right? That's. That's the gift of shame. It really is a deep sense of connecting to each other's hearts and caring for one another.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, that was well said. And I. I would echo that. We've definitely seen that kind of trust built in our community, I would say, in. In Pillars as well as, you know, particularly the retreat that we just had and the group that formed after that. And one of the most vivid examples for me was a man who left a video note in the group and said, my inclination right now is to withdraw and avoid this group. And I'm choosing not to do that. I'm Choosing something new. And I thought to myself, this man's life is changing. He is changing his life. That, that pattern, interrupting that pattern and leaning into the group when you want to isolate that is a big pattern interrupt. And he has leaned into the group further and I think is experiencing much more open hearted connection. And I really appreciated what you said, Luke, about titrating that. So be going at your own pace around that and being patient with the process. Because sometimes a man isn't ready. He's like, this is all the connection I can take right now. My body, mind is like, ugh, I can't do more. Like, we gotta honor that. You know, you gotta go at the pace that you can go. But that is, I believe, one of the most courageous acts that a man can do is choosing to lean in with safe people when you want to lean out. That is fucking hard work. It is hard. It's hard for me too. It's hard for everyone. But I think especially men, particularly because of the ways that you all are trained out of connecting with each other. There's just so many layers to that, that, that is such a brave act to choose to move towards or choose to reveal instead of, I want to shut down, I want to withdraw, I want to go away. It's just so seductive to do that and then you stay stuck. Jason, I'm curious if you have any memorable stories of clients and results that they've gotten either in our program or from Heart of Shadow or wherever it is?
Jason Lange: Yeah, you know, I would just say the ones that often stick with me are the men who have the courage and step in and we've had this experience with, I've never shared this with anyone and sometimes they're 40, 50, 60 years old and it's something that happened when they were kids or sometimes even as adults that they hold, they hold inside all alone. And I mean again, it's just like seeing the transformation when the thing we've been most fearful about ever being discovered around is brought forward and held in love. Right? Just loving presence and received and we're not excommunicated from it, you know, oh, we got to experience this earlier this year with one man, it's just like another person walks out the door. It's like literally a different person is there because some part of his body, mind has always been around concealing this thing. It's, you know, shame like this, it's, it, it, there's an active energy to it, you know, that's, that's part like it. It's actually Taking metabolic resource to hide ourselves in a way that sometimes we're shocked about. And to see, again, just the play and the level of like, oh, I can be in the group now that comes forward is really quite profound. And we've seen that in our program too, Mel and I, in some of the ways we have men share about some of their past of just what changes. Just like, literally a lightning of the load and burden that completely rolls off men, and there's like a much more openness, relaxation in the body. And I mean, it's worth the price of admission alone to me, just to be. Get to witness those moments of courageous men bringing that forward. And then the impact that Luke and I call this the masculine vortex of. When that happens, other men suddenly get inspired to bring theirs forward, and it becomes this actual, like, kind of coopetition of, oh, yeah, now I can bring something forward deep, and then that inspires someone else to bring something forward deep. And then that group bonds in ways that I think are pretty radical compared to the standard default world.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. I'm curious, Luke, if you can touch, just briefly, if you can touch physiologically on what is going on, because you work with the body in your work, that liberation of energy and bringing that vitality back. What. What is actually going on in the body around that?
Jason Lange: When we look at shame, we're really looking at an energetic phenomenon that cuts us off from, I would say, a cosmological source or a cosmological engine, and it literally maroons us. That's the word. Maroons us to our headquarters. So what? The birth of story, the birth of narrative is a mishandling of shame. And then the only place we can reside is in our head. And we have to create a story, a narrative that allows us to feel safe. Well, she said this, and that means that. And, well, she's actually not a great person. It turns out she's got a. She's got a, you know, behavioral disorder. So that's why she said that. So it's really not my responsibility. So, you know, these are kind of common narratives in pop culture, but ultimately what that leaves us with is it's hard to think about this in terms of, like, Western anatomy. It's. It makes much more sense in terms of, like, energetic anatomy. But there's just. There's just less chi in the system. There's less prana in the system. We are disconnected from our inspiration. We're disconnected from kind of an inner guide. An inner guide post that is not connected to belief. That's connected basically to Presence, like your guys program pillars. Pillars of presence is all about how do I get present? And your map is about, well you get present by feeling what's in your body. And when you feel your shame or feel your grief or whatever, it reconnects you to your vitality. Because whatever you're not feeling is where all your vitality is stuck. And we could certainly look at like when you're not feeling shame or not feeling grief, it's literally stagnates particular organ systems. In particular, shame will stagnant, stagnate the gut, the upper GI tract. So it stagnates your, your assimilative sense of digesting who you are in the moment. So you can't quite, you know, masticate, chew on or, or squeeze the food in your stomach, which is an emotional food. And you start to get a stomachache or you start to get a headache or you start to get phlegm, or you start to get constipation, right? These are things that start to occur if you stay stuck in shape. Oh, I've got a stomach ache. You know, the little kid doesn't want to go to school because he's uncomfortable about the bullies in the, on the playground. So I was like, oh, I got a stomachache, mom, I got a headache, et cetera and so on. So it will lead to this physiological kind of disintegrity. And it's amazing how all of a sudden your digestion improves, improves your thyroid function, improves your autoimmune disease is alleviated when connection is re established all of a sudden like we look at these things as miracles in religious culture, right? Like all of my pain was gone when I took Jesus into my heart. It's like, well, in a certain sense, you know what, what you've done is you, you've, you've relieved yourself from all of the blame and self hatred that has caused this massive amount of inflammation and, and stagnation to your GI tract, to your vascular system, to your respiratory system. I mean my view really is most. Most. When I say Most, I mean 98% of physical disease is all driven by lack of feeling your feelings. And you could say the work we're doing is the deepest kind of doctoring one can do, right? It's this very deep, deep healing, this very deep presencing for people's bodies to work better. And so when we feel our feelings fundamentally, you know, the prana, the life force, those are romantic words, but the blood flow, that literally blood flow increases and you feel better, you know, it can be Said as simply as that, really.
Melanie Curtin: Thank you for speaking to that, because I think it's. It's hard in the west. We have such a mind, body. We have such a narrative around the mind and the body being separate and who we are and how we think about ourselves or our emotions. It's. I think it's. It. I think it's challenging in our culture to genuinely internalize that we are one system, we are one being, and it includes our feelings. That's hard for us to conceptualize. So thank you for speaking to it in such a grounded way. I also want to add a few stories that I. That have struck me. I remember one of our men shared in. In our program, shared about his past. And there was a. There was a moment where he was holding a lot of shame about something that happened to him as a kid with. With. With an erection at school situation around that. And he liberated that. And, you know, it was so amazing. He started getting the feedback that people were like, are you working out? Are you working out? More like he started hearing from people that thought he'd lost weight or was working out lifting more. And he was like, no, but to your point, Jason, he was just. His shoulders were up and back more. He was moving through the world in a different way. And lo and behold, this was someone who had been in pretty bad relationship, right? Like, really kind of emotionally abusive relationship with a woman for several years. And he had gotten out of that. And when he joined our program, he was single and within. I don't think it was even that many weeks. It was weeks to months later. He met this really lovely woman and they are in a healthy relationship and it's probably the first one he's ever really had in his adult life. And he's able to speak to her much more openly about his own reality and his own truth, including shame. And that has liberated a lot within their connection. So it's a much more authentic, genuine connection with actual love and actual truth and authenticity. And that is a much deeper level of intimacy. To your point, Luke, it's. There's just a lot more available in that connection. It's going to be deeper and richer and more fulfilling and more relaxing. It is not relaxing to relate with. With someone when we're hiding parts of ourselves or when we feel like they're going to shame us because they act. You know, his ex actually did shame him for a lot of things, right? That wasn't made up in his head. That was really happening in reality. And then there's another man who I can think of who, you know, I thought was incredibly brave and at. When we were in person, I was in person with him, and he shared with me. He. He said something like, you know, I've been holding this, and I'm scared to talk to you about it. And, you know, there's this whole preamble. And then basically it was like, I feel attract to you, and I'm really afraid that you're gonna hate me, basically. And this man was also, you know, in a relationship. So he was like, also, I'm a bad person because I'm in a relationship. And I was like, listen, I am not afraid of your attraction. It is okay that you feel attracted. I trust you to be able to contain that and not just, you know, have it run amok, right? It's yours. You get to have attraction. You get to have attraction to me. You have attraction to other women or whoever you want. Doesn't mean you're gonna act. And it doesn't make you a bad person. And it's normal. It's a natural human thing. It would be weird if you weren't attracted to people. You find attracted. That would be a problem, right? So I think that that natural flow of, I'm okay here, it's okay for me to have these desires. It's okay for me to have these wants. It doesn't mean that I act on all of them, but I am okay having them. I am. I am a good person. I am okay. And I just thought to myself, what a brave thing for him to do that was such a brave thing for him to do, because there are a lot of women that wouldn't be able to hold that, that have been violated or have felt like they can't trust men to contain themselves. And I just wanted to highlight that because that was such a brave act, a courageous act. And I. You know, this was relatively recent, so the results aren't in, but I would assume that that was that liberated something for him that he was able to name it and share it with a trusted person. I mean, that was such a risk that he took. And I have such admiration for him and respect. And just like, wow, you are. You are a strong man. To be able to do that, that was a big risk to take and to be met and to be loved in that moment and say, you're okay, and I'm okay. We're okay. There's nothing wrong with you. That's a natural, normal human impulse. The same way you get hungry, you don't judge yourself for being hungry. And wanting to eat food, this is the same thing. It's just we put a lot of crap on top of it. So, yeah, the results aren't in yet. But I would just say that that part about being healthier, being stronger, being, you know, just more open and available, that comes. It pays dividends across your life. You know, liberating shame is one of the most healthy choices you can make for on all levels. So let's talk about your program. You guys are doing Heart of Shadow and our program and all of that. Jason, do you want to bring us in? And I'll also drop these in the show notes.
Jason Lange: Yeah, totally. So Luke and I run a program for men called the Heart of Shadow, which we did another episode previously on. But it's basically a 10 week container that's a blend of a virtual program and a live retreat where we go right into the depth of Shadow work. So whatever it is that's under the surface, stuck in your body, unfelt, unprocessed, your deepest fear, your deepest shames, we create an engine for healing that in a safe, communal space with other men that in a way that can be shocking to a lot of men because it's so deep, so raw, so vulnerable, going through that experience together creates bonds that can quite literally last a lifetime. And we've done a number of cohorts so far. And every time, at least 70% of the men continue on meeting with each other, meaning that they're dedicated to keeping that tribe, that group going because of how deep they go in the shadow work. And so for a man that feels stuck or a man that feels like I keep doing these things over and over and I don't know why. Shadow work is also often the place out. Whether it's wanting to find your power or express your grief or deal with some sexual shame, the Heart of Shadow is a powerful way to do that. And we have a cohort starting in less than a month, October 7th, that you can find everything out about it artofshadow.com and if you put in the coupon Dear Men, you can get 10% off, which will support Mel and her listenership as well.
Melanie Curtin: And if you're interested in our work, in Jason's work with me, you can just go to Evolutionary Men and you'll find everything there at our program. D.
