270: What is shadow work, and how does it make you sexier? (ft. Luke Adler & Jason Lange) | Dear Men

Melanie Curtin: As men do their work, their actual eyes open wider. I can't tell you how many men I've worked with where their eyes were sort of like slits, you know, and they get bigger and brighter over time, and same with their physiology. I'm thinking of one of our clients who, when we started working with him, was. Had a little bit of a hunch, like, a lot. Well, a lot more of a hunch. And his shoulders came up and back. His spine is straighter now. Like, he's just. He takes up more space. Sa. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode. I'm excited about this one. This is a topic that we're pretty passionate about, and we have some great guests on today. So welcome to the podcast. Welcome back, Jason. And welcome Luke Adler. He is a doctor of Chinese medicine, a healer, and a men's coach. And today we're talking about shadow work, which is kind of exciting because men who do shadow work are sexy. So that's. That's. That's always a bonus. Yeah. So I would love to hear actually, from each of you just what is shadow work and what has your experience been with it? I know that's quite broad, but we'll start there.

Jason Lange: Yeah. Shadow work, you know, I'd say it's getting more popular as a buzz term these days, but it's many things. Luke and I work in a specific modality of it, but the idea behind shadow work is to make conscious or bring forth any parts of us that are kind of under the surface that we're unaware of or we're unconnected to. These can be parts of ourselves that we've disowned, we've repressed, that we're afraid of connecting to or we've been taught not to connect to. So shadow work, to me is, you know, Mel and I have talked often on this podcast of the importance of doing the work work, and I think shadow work is a huge component of that. So it's a process from, you know, from my experience of. Of. Yeah. Another way to think of that is bringing light and awareness to all of ourselves so we can become intimate with every aspect of ourselves that, for a lot of reasons, particularly as mentioned, we aren't. And so it's a process of, I think, becoming closer to ourselves, to becoming more open, certainly for me, to become more emotionally literate in understanding everything that was happening inside. And so what's great about it is the idea of the shadow is it's often what we can't see on our own. Right. It's our shadow. So it's really hard to catch it. And it's why I think it's particularly a powerful modality for coaching, for therapy, and for group work like Luke and I lead, because other people can often help us see it faster than we can see it ourselves.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. Is there anything that you would add to that, Luke?

Jason Lange: Yeah. Thank you. I think, you know, you gave a good overview, Jason. Just that if you have a sense of what your shadow is, it's not your shadow. Implicit in shadow work is you. You just don't know what's there. And it's. It's, you know, in kind of the pop culture of shadow. You think, I'm working on my shadow. I'm working on this piece from my childhood and my wounding. But inevitably, when we get in circle, Jason, you and I doing personal work or. Or facilitating, we literally have no clue what's going to happen, whether we're facilitating with men or in our personal men's group. I mean, Jason, you and I both said this, like, I couldn't believe that was there. And we might have had, like, an intellectual sense, but that felt deep gestalt awakening into what in. For all intents and purposes, we were literally asleep to. There was no awareness. It's a striking conversation. Like, can you imagine being aware of something you're not aware of? It just doesn't compute with the mind. And underneath that is this idea that you have to be willing to take this risk to discover something about yourself for that to really occur. And I think one of the distinctions that we draw, Jason, in our work is we established an incredibly safe container, because if something's going to be revealed and you don't know what it is, you want to be sure it's handled really well, with a lot of respect, a lot of care and a lot of focus that the facilitators really know what they're doing, and they're not just kind of winging it or they just take a nice workshop and they're going to try it out on you, that there's years of work behind it. And, I mean, we can kind of dive into our personal stuff there. But maybe I'll pass that back to you, Melanie.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah, yeah, I would. I would love to bring it into the concrete. What has your personal experience been each of you with. With shadow work? And what is a concrete example of something that has come to the surface that you didn't know was there? And it feels to me like a reclaiming. And you get a lot of energy and power from that. That's been my experience with. Which is why I said it's very sexy. I find it very sexy when a man has done shadow work or is doing shadow work because it feels like he's going to be a more complete, powerful, integrated man. And so I'm just, yeah. Curious to hear what each of your personal experiences has been.

Jason Lange: Yeah, I think I love what you said there about being an integrated man. And that's another way to just quickly think about this is if we're not aware of something, it can't be part of our experience. So part of shadow work is becoming aware of more of ourselves so that we can then integrate it. And it does, in my, in, in my very lived experience, increase the space I feel in my body, the amount of energy and vitality I have, and often just even a sense of like, hopefulness and optimism kind of coming out the other side of it. And for me, I've maybe shared part of this story before, certainly on our calls, if not here. Mel. But there's two instances of where shadow work really kind of sprang to life for me. So guys who listen to this show know I struggled deeply connecting to women, feeling good in my body, was a virgin until my mid to late twenties. And shadow work was one of the first things I did in the context of men's work. That really started to move the ball for me. And what I mean by that is I actually was seeing a therapist. I was seeing a therapist. She was amazing. She was great. And it still tended to stay kind of heady. It was more of like a talk type thing. And I was pretty good at, you know, in retrospect, it's maybe a strong word, but like, kind of manipulating, like allowing myself to show her or share with her what I wanted to share and kind of control the situation. And I got exposed to one of Luke and I's teachers who we, we've studied deeply with around this in, in a men's group. And I end up going to one of his weekends and it gets to be my turn in the circle, which means the kind of attentions put on me. And he's facilitating me a little bit. And I, I, you not. It was within five minutes I was laying on my back, bawling in a way I'd never bawled before, kind of crying out, hold me, hold me, I need you. Where are you? And my voice actually sounded like a young, young, young boy. And it was the first time I had actually come into contact at an emotional felt body experience with a lot of the neglect I'd experienced as a. As a young kid. And I was like, what the hell is going on? I. Right, 10 minutes. And I had been in a year of therapy, and something started to move in me and my body actually started to release. So much grieving and tears and just a realization of, like, wow. I knew I was lonely, but, like, man, I have been starved for connection, in touch. And that really kicked off, you know, it was. I don't know, probably. You know, unsurprisingly, it was probably three to six months later, I lost my virginity and things really started to move because I just had a different experience of myself. So that. That's one and then another just personal experience I want to share. That was another one I've maybe talked about on here. But this was a couple years ago. It was a really intense time when I was becoming a men's coach. I was deep in training with Luke. Thank God we were in. In this shadow men's group we're in, and my wife and I were had. We were a year and a half out, I think, from being married. So it was crunch time in the sense of all of our stuff was coming up. I had made some pretty bad financial decisions around my career trajectory, and it was just super stressful. There was a lot going on. And I came back from retreat one night all excited, and we were just at, in, at odds with each other from the moment I walked in the door and we were sitting on the couch, and she was kind of poking into me. You know, she wasn't feeling safe. She wasn't trusting me. And it was the first time in my life I exploded and I slammed the wall to my right, which was, I don't know, you know, three inches away from her face, just bashed a hole in it. And my wife's a trauma survivor, so she immediately went into freeze. I kind of went into my own version of freeze of like, whoa, what the fuck just happened? And then she kind of got up, took some space, and, you know, it started to unravel from there in the moment. I later did some integration work with that around guys. But the moment that crystallized the shadow part for me was I said to her, like, she's like, how would I ever be able to trust you with kids? And how do I know you'll never do that again? And I just flat out said, I would never hit you. I would never hit our kids. And the moment I said it, I realized, that's fucking bullshit. That is a lie. I just had an experience in my nervous system that I couldn't have predicted. And for me to pretend like that could never happen is totally disingenuous here. And there's something inside of me that I need to go take a look at. There's some rage, there's some anger that I had to go do some pretty deep work around that was absolutely connected to my lineage and in my family parentage. And it changed my life, you know, to become aware of that part of me and to now to be able to consciously kind of access that when it's appropriate. Not the rage part, but the. The fierce caring and anger behind it. And without this work, that stuff would still be buried inside of me. And I can tell you I would still be a locked up, fairly numb human being who in some sense could be very dangerous because that stuff was inside of me.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah, thank you for pointing to that. There's a couple of things I want to go. Go back to briefly before we move to you, Luke. One is when I loved what you said about having been in talk therapy for a year and being able to kind of talk your way around. I am a big fan of talk therapy. I think it can be very helpful. And it's not the only way that we access material, and it's not always the best way to access deep, unconscious, repressed material that needs to move and be witnessed and come to life, come to light. And I really appreciate the two themes that you touched on, because these feel like very relevant. And we see in a lot of our clients, which is one, loneliness, deep loneliness, which you can talk about, right? You can talk about it in. In, let's say, talk therapy. Totally different than a master facilitator working with you and you being on the mat within 10 minutes and actually feeling through the cells of your body the longing or the need that was present when you were little that didn't get to move, it just got stuck. And we see that in countless clients of ours. We have a lot of clients that are survivors of emotional neglect, sometimes physical neglect, sometimes parents that had addiction issues, alcoholism, things like that. There was a lot of freeze and protect and secrets in the home. And so the children sort of shut down. They weren't expressive. And I think we see that in a lot of our clients that freeze and that sense of just nothingness, like blankness. So if you are someone who tends to feel numb, for example, this could be something that's there. And I really appreciated what you said about the rage and anger and that, you know, that sense of, oh, yeah, I could say I would never hit Someone. But the truth in my body is, actually, I've got a lot of rage. And that feels like a very common shadow aspect of a lot of the men that we work with. And frankly, a lot of the men I know in the world, they do not want to own that. Like, oh, no, I'm not an angry person. I'm not a. I'm not a. They associate rage and anger with bad and destruction and harm, which is logical. That makes sense. But let me tell you, as a woman, I feel safer with you, Jason, that you own that part of you. I feel safer as a woman with you, with a man who says, this is a part of me. Not that this part runs me, but this is a part of me. And I can't tell you how many, quote, nice guys I've worked with where I can feel their rage. I can feel their rage. And they don't want to look at it. They're not aware of it. They, like. They don't. It's just not. It's just their shadow. And so I'm trying to help them, and I can feel this. But when I bring up anything around it, they just totally deny it. They can't see it. It's just not in their awareness. And I'm like, this is a problem. Like, this is why you're not going to attract a conscious woman. Because we can. I can feel it. I can feel it in you. And that is something that I think is very common for men that want to be good men. Right? Men that want to be good men and don't want to be destructive and don't want to be that guy that the rage or the anger part of them gets put in this shadow zone or box. Like, no, I'm a nice guy. I'm a nice guy. I'm not. You know, I would never fill in the blank when really it is part of. It is part. It's part of me, too. It's part of all of us. Those deeper, darker, primal energies are part of us. And when they're not acknowledged and brought into the fold, then they tend to take up a lot of space and sometimes can even take over. So thanks for speaking to those. Those feel like big, common ones. How about you, Luke?

Jason Lange: Yeah. Your. Your share. Melanie was so articulate, and I was just kind of writing each word. You were taking me on a journey. It made me think of, you know, a nice guy. I was just working with one of the nicest guys recently. And you talk about, like, where is their violence? Like, where is their rage? Where Is it going? And of course, the, the answer is pretty straightforward. They're inflicting it upon themselves, right. And it's, it's so sad, you know, like when you really get with a nice guy, like how much they're hurting inside because that knife is. Because it's not safe to point it this way, right. They take it and point it this way. And so the inner critic is just got them by the throat and literally by the throat. They're really nice and they, they talk in a sweet voice, but they're not being sweet, right. They're being str world. And it's, it's so heartbreaking to like really feel that in a man and in a woman really, for that matter, like a woman who's in the high. They're in the high rafters and hey, how are you? Like, what the. Like, let me hear your voice speak from your ovaries, God damn it. And, and it's, it's sad like when you see someone who's like aging, right, they're like in their 30s, they're in their 40s, and that archetype is, still, has still grabbed a hold of them as a medical provider, that's when I see major medical issues. They start to show up. In your 40s and 50s, if you've constricted the system physiologically that much, you're going to see prostate digestion, cardiac issues, just name it. Systemic failure wherever you're weakened. Here's the truth. It's actually harder to intercept. It's not impossible, but harder to intercept when the physiology has, has lost vitality, it, no matter what age, at a certain level, when vitality is reduced, like, of course there's always hope. I've seen people break through on their deathbed, but it's harder, it's harder when the body wanes. And that was just so striking when you're sharing. I was, I was, I was kind of touched. What's behind a nice guy or nice person, you know, is, is, is self violence and it's painful.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And I'm curious if. Was that one of your personal experiences or what were your personal experience? What have your personal experiences? It's not like it's over, but.

Jason Lange: Yeah, yeah, I had, I had some of that. My dad. My dad's like an alpha male, but in the business world, so not like, not like hunting and that kind of thing, but around entrepreneurship. And so he, he rode me hard from when I was like a late teenager until my late 20s. And it was really more of an initiatory. Process of me being able to meet him at some point with his intensity. And in my later 20s, I eventually did. I mean, that's a great. That was a great shadow work experience. We were on a vacation together. I had led my first two major workshops. There were 10 day retreats in Oaxaca, Mexico. I was 25, and, you know, I was doing crazy down there that I had no business doing, but I was going for it. And he started. We were. We were having lunch outside on vacation at like a, you know, a food truck. And he starts in on me and he's like, luke, what are you doing on these retreats in Mexico? Like, you. You think you're helping people with this spiritual that you're doing. And I was. My blood started boiling, and I grabbed the table we were sitting at. It was like a restaurant. I grabbed it and I fucking threw it across the restaurant. And I said, you've been picking on me my whole life, you know, and we stood up. We were going face to face. I actually flipped the table. Yeah. And I. And I pushed him, and then he pushed me. And, you know, we were. It was basically like, fuck you. You've been pushing me. You've been pushing mom and a brother and sister, and I'm sick of it and stop it. So it was kind of amazing. Cathartic confrontation with my actual critic. What was amazing is after that, I cried for like, four hours straight. The little boy in me, the young man that could never step up to my father, finally did. And there was so much grief behind that, you know, and what was so cool is my. My dad has done inner work his whole life. So, like, that wasn't the end of our relationship. That was the beginning of a new one where we were, like, kind of mutually facing each other. So he wasn't like, fuck you, you, Luke. You're not my son. He was. He was just like, there with his heart open, like, oh, you've arrived. You know, like, I can't fuck with you anymore. And so I was very blessed to have a father who surrounding me in love after that moment and not, like, rejecting me. And I had to become hardened. I got to be soft with all of that power. So it was kind of a really odd experience compared to most people, but really beautiful. And then, you know, I've been working that edge in different ways, you know, for a long time because that inner critic, which I at one point had called the slave driver, just driving me incessantly. So I've dealt with burnout and exhaustion and just, you know, being the wounded healer. And I've ran through all those archetypes and I could go on. There's. There's some other ones, but I'll just kind of pause there.

Melanie Curtin: Well, I love what you said about, you know, this big activating experience and then the purge, right? The crying, the crying for four hours. I just want everyone listening to actually pause and internalize that. Four hours is a long time. That's a big purge. And if you think about it as energy, stuck energy, like a log jam inside. It's like the log jam gets undone and then there's this freeing river. There's just a torrent. There's a poor outpouring of stuckness that's been held in the cells of your body. And I was really impacted by what you said, Luke, about. As a healthcare provider, you are seeing the effects of not doing shadow work, essentially, right? Of holding. All of that stuff that we hold inside, it doesn't just go away. It is held. Our issues are in our tissues. So that holding is toxic, essentially. I mean, it's really bad for the body. And I just wanted to double click on that from the woman's side. I. One of my teachers is Mama Gina. I love Mama Gina's work. I've been to several of her workshops, and she has her graduates of her program talk about their experience. And I cannot tell you the number of women who got up and said, I used to have, you know, rheumatoid fibrosis, or I used to have ovarian cancer. I used to have. They. It was a lot of issues around breasts and womb. And it was that critic that you were talking about of essentially, I'm not womaning. Right, Right. I'm not womaning. Right. Or why aren't you doing it right? Or just all of that self hatred and that, you know, and then you add the patriarchy on top of that. It's a lot. It's a lot for the body to take. But as these women went through the program and reclaimed their femininity, and I'm not just talking about makeup and all of that. I'm talking about power. I'm talking about feminine power, including rage, including grief, including love, including the whole spectrum. All of the expression, expressiveness of true embodied womanhood or feminine beingness, health issues went away drastic. I mean, it was big deal. And it was woman after woman after woman after woman on the stage talked about it. So I think it's so fascinating that you have the perspective you do, Luke, as a. As an individual, as a men's coach and as a healthcare practitioner that you can actually see what happens. And I would say that in our men as well. Jason, one of the interesting things that we've witnessed over time is as men do their work, their actual eyes open wider. I can't tell you how many men I've worked with where their eyes were slits and they get bigger and brighter over time. Same with their physiology. I'm thinking of one of our clients who, when we started working with him, had a little bit of a hunch, like a lot. Well, a lot more of a hunch. And his shoulders came up and back, his spine is straighter now. Like, he's just. He takes up more space. So if you think of it like ram, I'm going to get this wrong, because I'm just going to get it wrong. But a lot of bandwidth is taken up by holding. Holding. The holding that we're talking about. Right. That holding. Whatever Luke, you were holding in the four hours of crying, all that energy was held somewhere and it was using up space in your nervous system. And when it was freed, I imagine there was just a lot more space and energy and vitality that came to you. So I think that, again, what makes a man sexy in large part, is his presence and his vitality. And if you're not doing something like shadow work, you're not as vital. You just don't have that vitality. You're not as bright, you're not as big, you're not taking up that space. Right. When someone comes in the room and you notice them, it's that vitality. So I think that's another reason why shadow work makes men sexier, because there's actually more of them available. They're more here with me and I can feel more of them. I can feel more of their power and more of their. Yeah, just vitality is the word that keeps coming to me.

Jason Lange: Yeah.

Melanie Curtin: So, yeah. Any comments on that before we move on?

Melanie Curtin: Something I wanted to point out too, which I think is interesting, is that, and I think people know this, but it's worth reiterating. Luke, you had your experience with the actual person in question. That's actually rare, I would say most of the time in my experience, shadow work doesn't involve the person. If there's a person, which often there is, with whom you have the. The thing Jason worked that parent stuff with someone else, it wasn't there wasn't his parent wasn't in the room. You don't have to have the person or people in the room to work something. And I think that's just something to note because it can be just as powerful for the nervous system to un. To undo itself, to unwind with someone who's a stand in or with saying the words out loud. It doesn't need to be the person that the original thing happened with. So just for all of you out there, if there's someone who, you know, a lot of this stuff originated with that you know, has passed on, for example. It doesn't mean you can't do the work. You can always do the work because it lives in you. And we are all connected so we can play different roles for different people. And the other thing I wanted to say was in terms of strategies that I have witnessed, our clients and just men I love in my life, strategies they use to not feel the things that they don't want to feel. So particularly rage, grief, shame. I'm like, I'm thinking of the nice guy I was thinking about earlier. This client that I've worked with for years and just he doesn't want to look at his anger. He doesn't want to admit that he's angry. I mean, he just doesn't want to do it. He uses a lot of cannabis. He uses a lot of cannabis. It takes actually a lot to numb these big, big energies living inside us, which sometimes aren't even just from us. To your point, Jason, sometimes these are lineage things. These have been around for hundreds of years in our lineage or more. They're big energies and they are trying to move and keeping them in it takes a lot. So substances, I think are a pretty common one as well as almost sometimes porn porn use. Anything that, that you can use to kind of numb can sometimes be to, to sort of contain this energy. And Jason, I really loved what you said about having or Luke, you were the one who talked about a safe space, having a safe space, having safe containers where you can go into this stuff and where you can move this. And I'm thinking of an ex boyfriend of mine who he had a lot of unprocessed trauma from childhood, didn't do personal growth work. And that was the main reason I left him was I don't feel safe with you because you're not doing the work and I don't trust you because you're not doing the work. You are very well intentioned. You want to take care of me, you want to be there for me. But at one point he got angry about something and he threw a lamp across the room. And unlike you, Jason, one of his responses was not, wow, I need to look at this, this is obviously a part of me. He had a fear of turning into the Hulk. The Incredible Hulk was like the archetype that he identified with the most was shit. If I really go into this. And he was a powerful guy. He was a strong. He was a strong dude. He could hurt people, he could destroy things. And I could feel so much empathy because I could just feel how he didn't have a safe container. He didn't have the men of the tribe holding him. He didn't know where to go to really go into it and really go there and get to the grief place because I could feel the grief underneath. I knew that a helpless child, a little boy was in there begging for attention and it wasn't happening and it was being acted out in all these other ways. So I really appreciate what you two are up to with what we're going to talk about in terms of working with men. And I think the work that we do in Our program, Jason. And there are lots of ways to work with Shadow, but there is something sacred about gathering in person and having that safe container, safe place to really go in and express it all the way through the body rather than talking about it or like, I love journaling, but it's not always going to get you to the places that you need to go to. When we're talking about this kind of deep stuff.

Jason Lange: Yep. Yeah, I love that safety piece. I just want to highlight there that one of the powerful things that can happen when we congregate as a group like this, and Luke and I have seen it with men. We've worked with guys who have had some kind of rage inside of them, but they never felt safe to bring it because the only demonstrations of it they ever had were totally destructive, Totally destructive. And they were afraid that their, their spouse, their wife, their family, other people couldn't, couldn't hold it. And we can hold it and we will hold it. And what's powerful about that is. And what can be so transformative about this work is when you allow yourself to go there and you're actually in the embodied experience. Then we can start to work with how to titrate that and to not lose contact with yourself so that you won't be overwhelmed by it. Right there's. Okay, now you're feeling it now you're feeling it now come into connection with this man. Okay, now you lost it. Now see if you. Right. And there's a way we can play with that in real time. So you have an embodied experience of being able to contact these, these energies and not lose yourself because you've actually moved through it. So it's not a theoretical scary thing anymore. It's something, oh, my body, mind has actually moved through this. And every time we do that, that's where that trust and relaxation I find starts to come online. That it's, oh, I can trust myself to get angry because I have been super angry before. And there was a place where, you know, if, if you hit the line, we're right there with you. We got boundaries and we, we can help you figure out where that line is. Not that every guy's work is going to look like that, but that's the, the, the awesome thing I find here. And then the group interactivity piece is such a key one too, because like you said, for a lot of men have the chance to do this work with someone in their family or whoever some of this energy is with either the person. Those people don't have the capacity to meet them in that they've passed on, they're no longer in contact with them, whatever that might be. But in a group, it is just incredible how what we'll often find is there'll be a man or two who just has some of the energetic resonance and then can step into that and can hold that space. And it is wild not only how transformative that often is for the man who's doing the work, but the man who's holding the space as the father figure or the friend or the other person that when we start to co. Relate in those ways, the. The work just deepens so fast. And that's the other thing, you know, I've come to just love about the group work in person in particular, is the, you know, it's not. It's kind of the domino effect. There's just something that happens when we see one man open to himself in total vulnerability, whatever that looks like. And then suddenly another man's like, well, if he can do it, I can do it. And then each man just starts stepping in and the group just keeps deepening and deepening and deepening. And suddenly there's this sense of while there's nowhere here, we couldn't go and hold with each other. And that is an incredibly sacred space that very few men, I think, have ever had the experience of being able to show up in of here. I don't need to be anything particular. I can just. Whatever needs to be in me can come through. And these men have my back. It makes me. It makes me think about. I was. I was hanging with someone just the other day, Jason, and we were rafting down a river, and so I was facing. We were facing away from each other. So we were making eye contact, but we were hanging out. We started talking about our lives and our childhood, and I don't think we made eye contact one time in this three, four hour stretch of hanging, but we talked about some very deep things and it was like, I'm not saying that this is the work that we do, right? But this is how most people bond is they. They have side by side play, right? And they're not looking at each other. They're not really connecting fully, but they're connecting more energetically. What we do, and I know you do as well, Melanie, is. You're sitting in a circle, you're making eye contact, you're slowing the moment down to let what wants to burst through the system energetically and emotionally occur. And one of the metaphors I like is kind of ashram culture. I grew up in meditative ashrams and in a highly charged spiritual environment. You have all the tools you need to create awakening. You have a structure of practices, your meals are taken care of. And then maybe you have this teacher that's kind of offering these teachings to create this very charged environment. What we're doing, in a certain sense is not that per se, but we're creating an awakened culture that's totally secular. It's normal. We don't put any ritual in it per se, other than the ritual of your own heart moving forward into the foreground. When that occurs, you can't help but wake up. Your virtues of compassion and empathy, they cannot be restrained. And like the result of groups, you and I are part of the groups. We've trained. Once we've done our job, I'd say for the three of us, the group is now alive. It's surcharged with living energy. And that's probably the biggest thing, Jason, that you and I are after, is we're not only like, wanting to do shadow work with men. We want to create a men's group for you that has the living energy of, of consciousness that seeks to heal and awaken and soothe. This way, more than a safe space, it's a. It's a space of championing everything in you that's good and whole and benevolent and wants to make this world more beautiful. I mean, that's the core. What's in the shadow of our work is that it's this core level intention to make a more beautiful world. And, and we do that by basically teaching men and women to, to have a culture that reflects that rather than the culture of, you know, we have a beautiful culture, kind of side by side play. It's connective, it's nice. But this is kind of using the full potential of what we can do. And it's very doable, it's learnable. It's. You know, you don't have to have done 10, 15 years of deep work to be able to do this. You just have to be ready. Something in you needs to be ready. Either you're in a lot of pain and you're sick of it, or you're, you're a kind of a serial, like, seeker of growth like the three of us. And you just love to grow and you, you just, you just want to continue that. But that's kind of the profile of, of folks that I, that I see. And the other profile I see is like, people that have followed the script of society, right? They're like, they've tried to do well in school or whatever they were taught to do, and they. Maybe they went to college, maybe they got the job they were supposed to, maybe they had hard times, but they kept trying to be a good person. And a good person was good enough to put a roof over their head and pay a. Have a car payment, but it wasn't enough training for vitality and to truly live an inspired life that just wasn't part of the promise of the west or America or whatever you want to think of it. And we're saying is, hey, there's this whole other life that's waiting for you. It's right here. And if you want it, here's the education that's needed to have it. And there's folks like us, the three of us, that are saying, yeah, come, come learn. And it's not a weekend workshop. This is something that's going to transform your relationship to life forever.

Melanie Curtin: I love that you phrased it like that because it does feel like, you know, you mentioned kind of being different. A different relationship was possible with your father after that moment. After that. And not just that moment, but also the Purge, also the crying. The Purge is important. It's an important part of what's possible, of the. The initiating event or whatever it is. And Jason, I think you and I see this with our men all the time, of. There will be a big breakthrough moment, let's say, on one of the group calls. And then for at least a day or two after there's the purge, there's the after effects of it. There's the nervous system unwinding, a lot of that tension that was there. And there are physical symptoms sometimes, definitely lots of emotional things coming up. But that's to be celebrated, right? All of that release. And Luke, I love what you said about the kind of greater field that's holding everything. It's not just about you or me or Jason or this man or that man. It's all of us together. And it's what's possible when all of those connections are happening and all of those mirror neurons are there, and something emerges out of that, which reminds me a lot of chaos, right of the way that birds flock or the way that ants create their home. It's not that any one ant has the whole blueprint in its head. It's each ant is doing its part. And from that a greater pattern emerges. I think that's the sacred part of the work and something that we see and the synchronicities between different people. You can't predict it's unbelievable when you're in the room to see how it all aligns. It's one of the most extraordinary things. I did want to go through a couple of the common themes that you. You two see in your work, in your shadow, work with men, because you work with lots of men, so you get to see the patterns. I just wanted to quickly talk about two that I've witnessed in men. I think it was last episode or the episode before, we talked about the heart cock matrix and the kind of two primary energies in a lot of men. Heart, energy and energy, and the archetype of the nice guy. A lot of the time the shadow is around. Yeah, anger, rage, unfelt grief, things like that. And for the other type, which we labeled basic bro, we're still working on finding the right archetype name for that. What I see a lot is that there's a certain hardness and a shell. There's a certain level of hardness with that archetype. And so a lot of times the shadow is his innocence. His innocence, his joy that's kind of been put in this box or just tucked away. Like, that's not. I'm. I'm. I'm strong, I'm tough, I'm prepared. I'm perfectionist. Like, I've got it handled. And so that. That lightness, that joy, that. That sweetness, that sweet young boy, or just his sweetness, his joy, his innocence, I find is often in the shadow. So shadow work isn't always the dark parts of us. Often it is, for sure, especially in cultures we have. I think we live in a pretty weird culture. But, you know, a lot of cultures, there's sort of like, that's not appropriate, or you can't. You can't do that. But you can also have shadow elements that are sweetness and brightness and love and light. If that was unacceptable in your home or if you were bullied or shamed or put down, and that became this thing. You just. You don't go there. You don't show that part of yourself. It's not safe. Then sometimes reclaiming that can be important. I have dated men like this where it was hard for me to connect to their heart, and I didn't stay with them. I was like, I want that in my. I want to be able to feel my man's heart. I need to be able to feel my man's heart. And that is part of that heart connection is the innocence and the laughter and the joy and spontaneously willing to look silly, willing to not have it all together. Right. That's all kind of in that. In that place versus the heart connected guy who's not had access to his power. I can't really feel his balls. Right. I want to be able to feel your balls. And it feels like that part of, you know, standing up and that story that you told Luke, of kind of coming into that part of yourself and. And Jason, arguably in yours too, there was. There's a lot of power. There was a lot of power in the outburst. And then it's your job to integrate it. Right? That's the whole idea is it's not like that's the end of the. You know, that's the end, but it's like, wow, yeah, this is part of me. I have a violent part. I have this inside me. I'm gonna go work it with trustable people. But, I mean, it was pretty transformational. I'm imagining. I mean, working that, reclaiming that. And I'm wondering if you can maybe briefly speak to that, because I do think that's. That's common among the guys that we work with, and I'm betting it's something common that both of you have seen around, like, not wanting to look at my primal. Yeah, violent part like that. Just, like, part.

Jason Lange: Yeah. I mean, what goes hand in hand with that, Melanie, that. That violent part is. Is just raw hurt. Just that. That wounded softness that's like. It's so you touched it. The sweetness, the vulnerability, kindness. Like, at some point. Oh, man, it hurts my heart just to think about this. At some point, that little boy was not allowed to be soft anymore. And I work with parents. I mean, to this day, I work with parents. They're coaching their baby, like, one year old, and they're like, the baby is this word for word. The baby falls down, and the mom says, you're tough. You're tough. And the baby goes, I tough. I tough. And he's crying. He's like, I'm so tough. And I'm not exaggerating. This was a story I heard somewhat recently. And I'm just like, you know, they were kind of sweet and being sweet about it. It's like a little baby. But I'm like, dude, you're teaching the neuroplasticity of the brain right at the beginning. Little boys and. And like, I have two girls, and I'm so sweet with them, and I'm loving. And when they get hurt, I'm like, oh, sweetie, I'm not like that. But with a little boy, like, I actually had this realization recently. Like, I think if I would have had a boy, I'd have been really tough on that, given how my relationship with my father was. And I'm so glad I didn't, because I got to have, like, this practice of softness with my daughters. And when my anger comes forward with them, like, I have to catch it because it can. It can go, you know, and fuego with what was impressed upon me. And when I work with a man who's got, like, who had an alpha male father who really pushed him hard, a lot of my friends are like that. These guys are terrified to touch their rage, but they can be nasty in their aggression and passive aggression, and they don't want to get anywhere near me because I can play that consciously. Like, I can play in that. That really hard edge. But. But I can. I can shift into softness really easily. It's. It's so scary for a man that has a lot of that hardness to go soft because there's a broken little boy in there. And I got some guys, like, I would love for them to do this work and like, man, we're in our 40s now. They're still not up for it. You know, they're just like, let me do some kind of journey work, Let me do some breath work. Let me do some purgative work. But to sit there and wake up with my pain and my anger, like, to what's underneath my rage, like, I don't know what it's going to take for some of those guys, but maybe an older man, maybe like a. An old. Not someone older than Jason and I, maybe like someone kind of has that old, older looking archetype, perhaps grandfather figure. But for me, that, like, underneath most work is just raw hurt, just aching hurt. And again, that's why that safe container is crucial, because if you're rough with that, if you're rough with someone who's got that, which is all of us, you won't touch that deep, soft space. You just won't get there. You'll get to some grief, you'll get to some. Some rage. But the hurt has to be handled with, like, almost like a goddess, like, reverence.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah. And can you take us in personally? Because I'm imagining some of that hurt was underneath what you were working with Jason around, the punching the wall situation and all the integration after that.

Jason Lange: Yeah, for me, you know, I've integrated. I mean, I'm still integrating. It's not that I'm done this. Luke and I work together a couple times a year on our own stuff, and he can tell you I'M definitely not done. I'm still on this journ journey. And that for me, yeah, there's been rage against my family, my father, my mother. There was so much hurt in there as well, and just a sense of fatigue that I often carry and have carried around all that. Like, we have held as a family in a lineage in that. As I've started to release that and get to that soft hurt. I mean, you know, I remember one piece of work I did with Luke a couple years ago was a really dark, hard time for me. And the thing I wanted from the group was just touch. And I just laid down on the floor, and six other men just loved on me for, like, 30 minutes. Massaging me, grope, you know, pulling my hair, pulling my arms. It was just putting pressure on me, and that's what my body needed. And if I didn't have that group, I don't know where I would have gotten that. Like, I can get some of that from my wife, but I can't get all of that from. From her. And it's. It's not fair to her. But there was something about the other men just offering that to me and the. The ways I've just been able to. Yeah, you know, the thing about stepping into these groups is just release. It's just allow everything in to come through. And, you know, Luke and I have talked about is this, like, process of cracking open. And for me, I continually. The thing I'm cracking open to the most, even more than rage or grief, is just feeling. I mean, it's just really just opening to feeling. Because it's so easy for me. You know, my default is to be buffered and a little detached. And this work over and over just leads me into feeling deeper and deeper and deeper. And I always come out of that feeling renewed, like, actually feeling renewed. It's like taking a dip in an ocean. And I come out, it's just like, whoa, where was I? Like, I'm here again. And to witness that in other men has also been so transformative. And this is the part that we love is we never know how it's going to look. You know, the. The. The scenes, so to speak, that play out, like, it's. It's stuff that I. I couldn't imagine in our wildest dreams. And sometimes it's dark stuff. Oftentimes it's not. Sometimes it can be just as light. You're. You're right. Shadow isn't always dark material, but we've gotten to see men have reflected to them the very Qualities they only saw in other people, right? And then suddenly they're receiving it and they're hearing it from this man and this man and this man. And this is part of what I love about this work is suddenly it's like, well, either all these people are wrong or something about my self image has been distorted. And then there's this opening to what if they're right? Oh, my God. Something comes in a type of love, comes in a type of self acceptance. You know, we've seen really come in and it's. There's just something powerful about. You know, this work's so powerful. I. I still devote, you know, once, even twice a year. I'm going on retreat. You know, Luke and I are in this kind of work with each other. It's how we met, it's how we trained. We've been in it for six or seven years now. And I can tell you I've had a lot of devastating things over the last years. And without this group, I would have been pretty lost, honestly, just having. Having a place to be fully held and received. You know, it may sound like a small thing, but it's been something that's really stood with me as we've created our own groups. And in our groups is a lot of men just don't know, don't feel safe, don't have anywhere to go where they can feel held and not judged and not shamed and not that they're doing anything wrong or it's just like they're held like, man, I see you. I'm with you in your pain and we got you. You don't have to be alone in that anymore. And the last thing I'll just share is the other powerful thing about this is there's just something about going through this work with other men that is instantly bonding for life. I don't know, it's just like the. It's. It's the hero's journey in so many ways of just, wow, how are we ever going to explain what happened here to other people? Well, we're not, right? So it becomes this shared universe just us in that group have. And that's deeply bonding. And that is a new kind of culture like Luke was talking about, of. We don't just get together to sit next to each other. We get together to dive into each other. And there's something about that process that creates such depth of bonding and connection. And I mean, it's inspiring. It's been inspired in my life and it's inspiring to see other men We've trained now, taking it in and really running with the idea that their group is going to outlive us in our connection to us, should something ever happen to us, whatever that might be. But they are launched and they have that space of sacredness now with each other.

Melanie Curtin: I just want to reiterate, it's so hot. It's so hot. Like, as a woman who has sex with men, I'm like, these are the. I want to be with. I want to be with these guys. That is brave. Like, this is the new. This is the warrior. This is the modern warrior. No fucking around because it's scary. It's intense. There's a lot of brotherhood or person humanity in it, right? That deep bonding. I will never forget being at your wedding, Jason, and you standing next to Violet and your best man standing behind you with his hand on your back and his feet on the earth, saying, while you've got her, we've got you. And I was like, oh, shit. I think this marriage is gonna work because they're not alone. Like, you know, I've got her, right? And, you know, you're gotten. Like, there's. There's community. There is real, real support behind this couple because couplehood is hard. There's going to be a lot of stuff that comes up. It's complicated. It's messy. There's a lot. But if you have that support behind you, that includes all of you, right? That support that can hold all of you, not just some parts of you, but all of you, then you really can do it. You really can go to the depths. So I just wanted to reiterate that, like, we didn't name this episode this because I'm bullshitting you. It's. It is what we are craving. Women are craving the integrated man. I want to feel your heart, and I want to feel your balls. I want your power. I want you to come towards me. I want you to claim me, and I want you to be tracking my heart, too. I don't want to have to choose. I don't want to have to choose between being safe and being wanted. I want both. I'm craving both. And frankly, our culture is so kind of weird that, like, it takes something to get there, you know, you got to do this stuff. You gotta. You gotta take action to do it, because you're not. People aren't just popping out. Integrated men. Like, you gotta do some work to get there. It takes something. So speaking of it taking something, there's a couple opportunities coming up for this to actually do Shadow Work. If you are inspired by this to take action, then we have two things coming up. How do you guys want to talk about this part?

Jason Lange: Yeah. So, I mean, if you really want to dive into this works, but explicitly with Luke and I, the next cohort of our Shadow Work Men's group, which we call the Heart of Shadow, it actually starts next month, September 19th. And you can find information on that by going to melaniecurtain.com shadow and. And that'll kind of direct you to all the information. And what's powerful about this group is Luke and I have taken from everything we've learned in our journey of doing this and tried to tee it up to really create an amazing experience. So it's actually a combination of a virtual program and a live retreat. And why we do that is it gives you some time, the weeks beforehand, to start to get to know the other men, to create a little bit of trust and safety. So by the time we get together physically in the room, it is very much game on, and we know each other, and we're just. We're ready to dive in. And then we follow it up with additional sessions, because, like you said, we go do the work in person, and, oh, my God, things go crunchy, go crazy. We get back to life, and we're like, ah, what's going on? And that group reconnection on the other side is so important to remind each other of what we experienced, who we really saw each other are, and that this support continues. And then in that we're helping the guys build the habit and strategy of how to run their own group, how to keep it going past us. And if you use that link, you can also put in the coupon code Dear Men, and you'll get 10% off if you want to join that cohort. And we'll be doing this once or twice a year. This is something Luke and I are very passionate about. It's a very specific kind of men's group, but it's really some of the deepest work, you know, we offer.

Melanie Curtin: And then we will also be doing a little bit of shadow work at the retreat that we have coming up together. So Jason and I are doing our retreat at the end of August, which is. I think it starts August 29th. And you can find more about that at Evolutionary Men.

Jason Lange: Yeah, that's one spot left.

Melanie Curtin: One spot left.

Jason Lange: There's only one spot left, so it'll probably be.

Melanie Curtin: Yeah, come and get it.

Jason Lange: Yeah, exactly.

Melanie Curtin: Luke, is there anything you want to add?

Jason Lange: Just. Thanks for having me on, Melanie. It's great to meet you and hang with both of you. It was really fun, and I really love the way you flow through this experience. It felt very. Just wonderful to have the feminine energy between Jason and I because it created this amazing organization that had its own kind of river. It felt very different. I love doing podcasts with Jason. He's my brother. But having a sister in here was like, whoa, I like this. It's got a nice groove to it. So thank you for that.

Melanie Curtin: Oh, that's a nice reflection. Thanks.

Jason Lange: Yeah.

Melanie Curtin: Do the work, the work, work. D.