I just got back from leading a men's retreat, and honestly, I'm still kind of buzzing from it. Got to sit down with Aneta Waclaw on her podcast to talk about men's work, men's groups, and what the hell healthy masculinity actually looks like in 2025.
We covered a lot of ground in this conversation. Started with the basics of what a men's group even is, why most men desperately need one, and why so many guys are walking around completely disconnected from their bodies. I shared some of the core challenges men face when they first come to this work, usually because they're in so much pain they can't hide it anymore. Relationship issues, career stuck points, chronic stress that's showing up in their actual physiology.
One thing I got into that felt really important is this idea that for men to show up powerfully in their relationships, they first have to get comfortable with their own emotional landscape. Most of us are trying to fix or problem solve our partners, and in the process, we completely miss them. When a man can be present with his own grief, anger, fear, whatever, he suddenly has the capacity to hold space for his partner's emotions without freaking out and trying to change them.
We also dove into shadow work, what actually happens on these retreats I lead, and why getting in a physical room with other men can be so transformative. There's something about touch, presence, physical challenge that a Zoom call just can't replicate. And I shared what I see happen to men's bodies when they finally let themselves feel what they've been carrying for years, sometimes decades. They come alive. More energy, more color in their face, bigger capacity for life.
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Jason Lange: One simple practice for men is to start just noticing the raw sensations in your body. Ooh, my belly feels really tight right now. My shoulders feel heavy. I have an ache in my forehead. These different things that a lot of us will just blow right by as men, but as we slow down and attune to them in ourselves, can reveal so much information. Because really, in my world, all emotional content starts as physical sensation. So as we start to get aware of the physical sensation, we're actually starting to attune to the emotions inside ourselves.
Host: Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Nourished Inside Out. I am here with Jason today. Jason is a men's embodiment coach, group facilitator, and evolutionary guide. He helps men drop in and wake up to deeper clarity in their life's purpose and relationships. He believes that every man should be an immense group for the growth and support of opportunities they provide. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jason.
Jason Lange: Yeah, really excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Host: Absolutely. Do you mind explaining to us what men's. What men's groups are and what they entail?
Jason Lange: Yeah, men's groups are a big passion of mine, and they're a subset of what we call men's work. The men's group is basically the idea that for most men, they actually grow best, grow fastest together. So in community, I think as humans in general, we tend to thrive in community, and men in particular really need it, because culturally, we're set up to not have a lot of it, to avoid it. In a lot of ways, men's group is a little different than the normal way. Most men are taught to connect and relate, which is through what I call triangulation. Right. Me and you have our attention on some third thing, and we bond through that. Might be tv with a sports game, fishing. Some kind of activity is where our attention is, and through that, we feel hopefully connected. The problem with that is the connection isn't necessarily the deepest. And so men can, by default, often spend a lot of time with other men, but not actually get real and get connected about what's happening inside of them. So one of the most simple definitions of a men's group I talk about is what happens as men when we take our attention and turn it towards each other. Hey, what's happening inside you right now in your life? What's good? What's hard? Where are you hitting the mark? Where do you wish things would be different? And so a men's group is an intentional group that guys get together in to get real about Life. And what this allows for is it helps them get supported when they're down or challenged or stressed or overwhelmed, and also helps us be held accountable when there's something important. We want to move forward in our lives in some capacity.
Host: That's incredible. It's not talked about enough. A lot of times, it's a lot of women focusing on women's groups and creating those communities, but not the men's. So I'm curious, how did you get into this, and how long have you been working with men's groups?
Jason Lange: I got into my first men's group back in 2006. So it's been a, you know, coming on 20 years soon. And I got into it because I needed it. I was a young man. I was lost. I was having a lot of challenges with dating and relationships, with career and purpose, and in general, just feeling isolated and not feeling very good in my body. And like a lot of guys, I didn't really know what to do right to. To feel differently to. To get the action and traction, so to speak, that. That I needed. And I got very lucky where I was living at the time, did get exposed to a men's group and kind of got unramped to a whole path forward that really transformed my life. And after doing that for about 12 years, I just started talking about it all the time because it was really, really valuable in my life. And lo and behold, as I talked about it, men started asking me, hey, can I come to your group? Can I come sit in? Can I come join? And the group I was in at the time, we literally met in my friend's office. He was a therapist out in Los Angeles, and we could only fit eight guys. Like, it just wasn't big enough to have more men come in. And so that kind of got me on the path of, well, what if I start leading a group so other guys can come and experience it? And I started leading groups out of my living room. Did that for a number of years, and then things just kind of took off from there. And so I've been really leading and passionate about groups since about 2017. And now it's my mission to get every man into a group.
Host: What are some common challenges that you see men face when they come to these groups that you hold most.
Jason Lange: Yeah, some. Some big ones are men by default, I would say, aren't as good at connecting. And so the MO For a lot of men, what we're taught, what a lot of us are actually taught. Masculinity is. Is invulnerability. Be tough, hold it all inside, don't show any weakness, don't show any emotion, and definitely don't ever ask for help. And so a lot of men are moving through the world, literally tense, holding all kinds of stress inside their body, and they have no one to talk to about it. And so a lot of guys come to me feeling isolated, feeling lonely, feeling completely burnt out or stressed, just like my body is, is breaking down. Oftentimes having autoimmune disorders, different physical ailments, it shows up in our actual physiology. Sometimes men have lost a job or have been stuck looking for a job for a long time. And for many men, and one of the reasons I focus on it, they're in pain around intimacy and relationships. Either their partner has just left them, is threatening to leave them, or they've never been able to magnetize that partner that they've really been looking for their whole lives. And so it's a huge range that'll get men in. But oftentimes, maybe to summarize this for better or worse, oftentimes what it ends up being is men are just in a lot of pain and so much pain that they can't hide it anymore.
Host: Can you give us an example of what a healthy masculine man would like the traits and qualities that he would have versus because you just talked about, if they're not, if they're not being open and vulnerable about who they are and their emotions, it can definitely spiral backwards. But what are some healthy traits of masculinity?
Jason Lange: Way to think of it is the templating a lot of us men are given are usually kind of what I call three archetypes, none of which are very good. One, there's the kind of traditional macho man, right? This is the guy who kind of goes for what he wants, takes what he wants, has a certain type of leadership in him, can often be aggressive, domineering, and shows no vulnerability, right? This is the so called tough guy. And we have a long history on our planet of seeing what happens when those men are left to their own devices and given all the power, right? They take what they need from, from women, from children, from others, economically, environmentally, without any consequences, without any thinking about the impact, right? They're just not thinking about impact on others. And so there's that kind of just taking only showing no weakness thing. That started to become very clear that there were some problems with that, right, in the last couple hundred years and particularly about 40, 50 years ago, and the pendulum started to swing towards one of the other things that Is modeled for men these days, which is a lot of. Lot of guys I work with classify themselves as this, and so do I. Is the nice guy. So the nice guy actually emphasizes other people over himself. So he wants to be a safe presence in the world. He doesn't want to seem aggressive. He's very accommodating, very often emotionally attuned. But in the process, he often loses touch with his own sense of power, sexuality, and even capacity to set boundaries, right? To say no to things like, hey, how you're treating me. That's not okay. Or, hey, I can't work overnight tonight. I have to go be with my kid, whatever that might be. And that hasn't worked for a lot of men. And then kind of swirled into this mix is what I call the stoic. The grandfatherly stoic is often the image we get of kind of, you know, a boomer who maybe came back from one of the gnarly world wars, but never once talked about it, right? Just shows up, is present in life, does their work, fulfills their roles and obligations, but doesn't share anything about what's happening inside them. So, you know, a good man in a lot of ways, but oftentimes deeply, deeply suffering inside, but just unable to call in anyone to help them. Now, the problem with all those is they don't really work, right? They don't lead to happy, healthy, thriving, vibrant men. And so a big part of what we do in men's group is we start to create the model for, well, then, what's the healthy version? And as I say, it can really kind of be simplified to, It's a man who does have touch with his body, his power, his desires, his wants, and, yes, his sexuality. So he's rooted, knows what he wants, is able to say no. But he's also open in his heart, sensitive, attuned, able to feel other people, and very importantly, able to feel himself to know what's going on inside of himself, and knows that revealing that to the right people, even when it's scary, so even when it feels vulnerable, is often what actually creates the deepest level of connection in life. And connection is a medicine for pretty much anything these days. It's a tonic that cures almost all ills. When we're feeling connected, we feel a lot more powerful and able to handle the stresses of life. And then last piece, I'll say, is integrated. Man, as we say, is also deeply aware. So he's developed his capacity of awareness, to be conscious in the moment of himself, the relationships he's in and who he's relating to and the environment around him. And taking all three of those things into account, he's able to consciously choose where to put his attention to create the most depth in the world. It's pretty simple. And though it's complex to do, sounds simple, but it's a big thing to do. When we have a deeply aware man with an open and vulnerable heart who's also connected to his power, something really magical happens for men. And you know, I was just telling you before we jumped on, I was just leading your retreat and got to see it. What happens when men step into that fullness of their experience and stop hiding it, stop thinking, oh my gosh, I'm the only one who has this problem and there's something wrong with me. But they bring it forward. They're willing to feel themselves in a group context. They come back alive, they get feel deeply connected to the group. It's pretty wild seeing men's bodies transform, relax, open, soften. More energy and color comes to their skin, their face. They're just more alive.
Host: Thank you for sharing that. I know you were talking a little bit about how men will open up and be vulnerable with themselves and the people around them. How can men start to learn to be more vulnerable? What are some tips that they can do in their day to day life to be more vulnerable?
Jason Lange: Yeah. First, most obvious thing I'll say is get into a men's group because one of the fastest ways to learn it is to actually see it. So when it's modeled for us, we realize, oh, I can do that even if it feels scary. Most men never had any kind of vulnerability modeled for them, just not something they've ever seen. But on a day to day. Yeah, it comes down to really step one for a lot of guys is increasing their capacity to understand what's happening inside themselves. So this can be tough for a lot of men because social media, technology, we have all these things now that want to take us out of the present moment and help us feel better. Right. There's constantly a distraction. There's another thing to get on Instagram. There's endless food and porn and alcohol, all these things that men reach to when whatever's happening inside themselves doesn't feel good, we turn to something outside ourselves to try to make ourselves feel better. So a big step for a lot of men is to just start to notice that and pause, right? To actually pause and feel what is happening in my body. And again, a lot of us men don't have any modeling. We Actually often don't even have a whole lot of languaging for the emotional component. One simple practice for men is to start just noticing the raw sensations in your body. Ooh, my belly feels really tight right now. My shoulders feel heavy. I have an ache in my forehead. These different things that a lot of us will just blow right by as men, but as we slow down and attune to them in ourselves, can reveal so much information. Because really, in my world, all emotional content starts as physical sensation. So as we start to get aware of the physical sensation, we're actually starting to attune to the emotions inside ourselves. So for a lot of men, it's slowing down, checking in and actually feeling what's happening inside your body. Again, sounds really simple for me to say, but the practice is learning to actually do it as men. I'll share one more piece too. For skeptical. Any skeptical men listening right now, they're like, why would I ever do that? Right. You're probably aware of, right, the vagal nerve, this bundle of nerve, the nerves that go from, you know, can basically connect our brain to our body. And what's interesting about that is they done research studies now, and you can consider that bundle of nerves. What they found is 80%. 80% of, let's say, let's call it that information superhighway goes from body to brain. Only 20% of that goes from brain to body. So point being, for men, if we're not connecting to our bodies, we are missing out on 80% of the given information available in any moment. If you want to become a more effective leader in your life, in your family, in your relationship, in your career, guess what? We make better choices the more information we have. So if you are not in your body, you are actually limiting the amount of information you're getting, Right. There's tons of research around this. You know, they call it our gut instinct. Right. And that they have found there's actually neurons around our heart and in our guts. So when we talk about we kind of have three, three brains, actually. We have our head, our heart and our guts. And when men are disembodied, we're losing out on the wisdom of two of those other brains.
Host: Wow, that's incredible. Thank you for sharing that. Something that you were talking about previously was men also not feeling comfortable or vulnerable in intimacy. How can they be more confident when it comes to intimacy? And what does the feminine actually require from the masculinity and intimacy?
Host: That's so valuable. It really does start with a calm nervousness system and just really embracing what you're feeling and the situations that you're going through. I remember in our previous conversation that we had, you were talking a little bit about shadow work. Can you explain what that's like and how that can improve a man's masculinity and be more open and vulnerable with themselves?
Jason Lange: Yeah, this was just the retreat I got back from. And so shadow work is just the process of bringing into the light anything that's unconscious inside of our nervous systems, inside of our hearts, inside of our minds. And what this tends to look like is what's actually running the show for me that I not might not be conscious of. And this is where a lot of men want to do this work. When oftentimes men will have this experience of, I don't understand why I keep doing this thing. I don't want to be doing this thing, getting angry in my relationship or using substances in certain way or sabotaging my career. Like, there's these things that will start, these patterns that show up, and we're like, I don't want to do that, but why am I doing that? And then it feels like this inevitable train wreck sometimes. Like, oh my God, it's happening again. And here we go. Shadow work is the process of illuminating, okay, what's really underneath that, right. What is in our unconscious beliefs and behaviors and wounding that has us trying to avoid some kind of experience. And for a lot of guys, some of the biggest shadow content is just unfelt emotions from earlier in life, often going all the way back to childhood and sometimes infancy. It's pretty wild. This stuff really does show up in our nervous system, in our tissues. And so the capacity for men to have a safe space to get to the feelings that are often underneath a lot of their behavior, right? So there's something that they don't want to feel that drives their behavior. Shadow work is the process of illuminating that. And when we actually go towards the feeling, it no longer has a grip over us. And we get to move from that place that is so common of unconscious reactivity to conscious response. Oh, hey, here's what's happening right now. And this is what I'm gonna do versus pure reaction. Whether that's an anger or shame or grief or a lot of the different things that men do kind of hold tightly inside. Put an even finer grain on that. For a lot of guys, it ends up being just unfelt pain, pain they've been carrying. You know, some guys I've worked with, we've literally carried stuff for decades, decades, things they've never shared with anyone. Emotional hurt inside, sometimes physical hurt inside. And so shadow works the process of bringing that out and why that's important then is particularly around emotional content. One way to think about emotions is anytime we don't want to feel an emotion, there's an actual physical musculature to it in our bodies. So if you imagine I was, I came up to a young, you know, four year old boy who was grieving and crying and deeply hurting. And I just walked up to him and was like, stop crying. How he would do that is he would hold his breath and his whole body would tighten up. And that tension accumulates over time. And so men start to walk through the world holding an incredible amount of emotional tension. It takes energy to not feel. This is the really kind of paradoxical thing. So anytime we're not feeling an emotion, we're holding it in our nervous system and it's actually kinking off our life force prevents our full vitality from coming through. Because now it's being used to keep this feeling in place. As we liberate that with shadow work, like I said, what I see is men become more alive there's more energy in their face, blood flowing through their system, bigger smiles, deeper feelings. They just come alive. And lo and behold, it's better to feel alive generally than not. And as men come alive, they feel like they can engage more with life again and they have energy to once again direct towards the things that matter to them the most. Their kids, their intimate partners, the work they really want to do in the world, their own health, et cetera.
Host: That is so true. I, I like that example that you gave of the four year old who's crying. That's more common than it should be in my opinion. You know, we've all experienced that at some point or witnessed a four year old getting told to stop crying. And that doesn't do anything. It really holds in that trauma and it really does get stored into our body and it does push us to move differently and not in a positive way. We're holding so much tension, whether it's in our minds and our muscles. Kind of like what you were saying earlier too, like in the shoulder or in the arm. Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's one sword in there. You're not yourself and you can't fully be yourself. So I completely agree with you on that. And you were talking a little bit about your retreats. Can you talk a little bit about those? And are they in person, Are they virtual?
Jason Lange: Yeah, I do a lot of work with men, some of which is virtual, but also a lot of which is in person. Right. Actually getting in the physical room with other men, which in itself can be a really big deal and very vulnerable for some men. Way more men than I think people realize have suffered bullying, abuse, taunting from other men, whether it's in their family or their peers. And for some guys, literally just stepping into a room with other men feels like a big challenge because they have very few reasons to trust that they're not going to get hurt. So the beauty of this though is a good men's group live, retreat kind of experience where you're actually getting in the room gives your nervous system a place to install a new possibility and template of oh, men can be safe too. I see that a lot on my retreats and on retreats. You know, in shadow work retreats, we go really deep trying to get into the kind of the root of what, you know, needs to be felt inside a man to become conscious in their patterning so they have more possibility in their lives. Other retreats I run are a lot about just embodiment. How do we get into our bodies as Men. So there's a lot, A lot of physical practice, often meditative practice, breath work, different yogic moves that are generally hard. Right. They're physically uncomfortable, but they're often what bring us alive. So for men, the challenge of it often brings us into our bodies and we get connected to ourselves again. We start to feel that energy and really just start to feel more. And so I've been incredibly impressed over the last five years of how much transformation can happen just in a virtual container like you and I are in right now over zoom or in a virtual program. And there is just something really special that happens in a physical retreat when you're. When you're actually around other people. And touch can become involved, which is, again, something that most men I work with are chronically malnourished in. Chronically just have very little touch or connection in their lives outside of maybe only sexual intimacy and maybe their kids. And for, again, many reasons that gets kind of drilled into us as men. You know, never touch another man, otherwise you might be considered gay. These awful things that get drilled into men and unwinding, that is one of the great joys of this work of seeing men be able to connect and support each other and learn to actually hug each other. And again, how much more alive men become on the other side of that as they get nourished and they realize, wow, there's this whole potential place for nourishment. Touching connection here I never knew about before in what I've seen time and time again is, as mentioned, get nourished in that way. It takes away some of the neediness and pressure that they often put on themselves to get it from an intimate relationship. And lo and behold, that often leads to much deeper and better connections.
Host: Wow, that's incredible. Thank you so much for sharing that. Before we go ahead and wrap things up, is there any last piece of advice that you would like to share with the audience that. That it's on your mind or that we haven't. You haven't gone over yet?
Jason Lange: Yeah, I. I talk about it as the myth of the lone wolf. So particularly I'm here in the States. Right. But generally in the west, men are fed this myth of the. The best man, the toughest man, is the lone wolf, the one who figures it out all by himself and never asks for help. And the truth is, it's just a myth. Even in the natural world, the lone wolf is actually the wolf that was kicked out of the pack. And that wolf will die sooner. It won't make it as long as the wolf that's in community. And so we're fed this as men, but it doesn't work. Right. I was just reading a research study that men that tend to heavily identify with stoic principles, right? Not feeling, not sharing, just kind of staying in their head, tend to be more isolated, and they commit suicide at a much higher rate. Feeling lonely or isolated, which more and more men are reporting every year they have shown is just as damaging as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day or being morbidly obese. So these aren't things that are just like, hey, they're going to make me feel better. Your life is literally on the line as a man. If you are in too much isolation and falling for this myth of the lone wolf. And what I'm here to say is, I can tell you it is much, much easier in community. Right? Life gets so much better when we're in connection and when we realize, a, I don't have to do it all alone, it's okay to ask for help, and B, there's nothing wrong with me. All the things I think make me uniquely unsuitable for connection or unworthy of love. I put me in a room with a dozen men. I can point out a thing, something a dozen of those men share that they're ashamed of. It turns out there's way more connecting guys, and you're not alone. You don't have to be alone, but you do have to take that vulnerable step of reaching out.
Host: That's incredible. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. I know this is gonna help a lot of men and a lot of people. So can you please tell us where can people support you and find you and stay in touch with you?
Jason Lange: Yeah, best way to keep up with me and my work is at my website, Evolutionary Men. I have my own podcast, just all about kind of men's stuff on there. And I have a lot of programs. I have a program if you want to join a men's group. I have a program for dating and relationship. I have a shadow work program. Um, if you're not sure what you want to do, you know, just hop on there, shoot me an email, and we'll get in touch. And, you know, even if you don't work with me, I'm very passionate about helping men find men's groups. So I can at least point you to some resources to start to get involved in your local area as well.
Host: That's incredible. I'll have all of that linked down in the show notes below so people can stay in touch. Thank you so much for being here, Jason.
Jason Lange: Yeah, thanks so much for having me, Anita.
