There's a moment in every man's life where the shell he's built around himself finally cracks, and everything he thought he knew about strength gets turned upside down. For me, that moment came during my first men's group experience, going from 30 years of being emotionally stuck to sobbing on my back in just 20 minutes. I recently shared this story and more about the transformative power of in-person men's work with Melanie Curtin on her podcast Dear Men, exploring why physical presence and real connection between men creates breakthroughs that simply talking about our problems never can.
We talked a lot about what happens when men actually go away together, how it mirrors the old hero's journey of leaving the ordinary world to face what's really going on inside. There's something about being physically present with other men, feeling their energy, getting real feedback in the moment, that just accelerates growth in ways that talking about it alone never can. The camaraderie that forms is real. I'm still in touch with guys I did a single practice with years ago because we went deep fast.
One thing that kept coming up is how much of our vitality gets locked away, especially around anger and other energies we've learned to suppress. Creating containers where men can safely access and move that stuff is some of the most transformative work I've seen. When a man walks in like a shell and leaves with life force moving through him again, that's what this is about.
We also talked about the nervous system piece, how touch and presence with other men creates safety that lets the dam finally burst. So much of what we carry isn't just ours, it's lineage stuff, patterns handed down that haven't been able to move for generations sometimes.
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Jason Lange: Doing the work with this kind of these kinds of men in person, right? It just opened it up to like a full spectrum experience of wow. I didn't know how much more was possible. I did not know how much more is possible and what a connection with another man could be and what that level of honestly just love that often comes through like the texture of masculine love you can experience in these kind of men's work retreats. That's just like such medicine for the heart.
Jason Lange: Excited to be back.
Melanie Curtin: Today we're talking about in person work, and there's a reason for that, which is that we are going to be doing some in person work and this is a unique opportunity. If you have been wanting to go a whole lot deeper than the podcast and actually jump in, we recommend that you consider this. So, Jason, why don't you tell us a little bit about what's going on and then we'll kind of get into the heart of the episode.
Jason Lange: Yeah. So very excited that, you know, for the first time in a while, despite everything that's been happening globally, we're going to be able to get back in the same place together physically in a room. And that from July 28th through 31st, in near Mendocino county in Northern California, running a powerful men's work retreat that you will be present for and doing some teaching at and interacting. So it's an opportunity to meet both of us and do some work with us in person and to really get to experience the gifts, as I would say, of men's work and men's groups and all these things some of you guys have been listening to us talk about for years now. Together, you'll get to do live in person with us and in a Way that can be really, really potent, which is some of what we'll talk about today.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, I think that's a good segue to in person work. And it's interesting because, you know, I've been thinking about this, and it feels like a mosaic, right, that our journeys to wholeness. You can also call it the healing journey, whatever you want to call it. I find wholeness a little bit more grounding as a term personally than healing, but that it really takes a lot of different kinds of things to get. I have had transformative experiences at in person events. I have also needed to apply what I learned there in real life situations with my friends, you know, having actual hard conversations or whatever it was. But today we are focusing on in person live events and in person work. And I'm wondering if you could kick us off by just sharing a story, a transformational story of your own from an in person event.
Jason Lange: Yeah. So, you know, those that have listened to my stories over the years know that, you know, men's works really probably out of all the things I've done, that which transformed me the most and deepest. And I've done a range of different type of work. But, you know, one of the first thing that really I was like, whoa, okay, this is. This is different. Was one of the first times I did a group with a men's leader. And I had been going to therapy for a couple of years. I was in my 20s. You know, I was still a virgin. I was a late bloomer. I was pretty locked up in my body. I was very uncomfortable just being in life. I had a hard time accessing my emotions, had a hard time just feeling alive, truth be told, and doing some work with a man in a group process. In 20 minutes, literally 20 minutes from circle started, attention was on me. Within 20 minutes, I was on my back crying in a way I'd never cried in my entire life. I didn't even know it was possible. I didn't really understand what was going on. A very young part of me came out, and that's something that I got to in 20 minutes that I had not gotten to in 30 years of therapy. So 20 minutes in this specific container in person of work, which we'll be doing a version of that at the. At the weekend for sure. And that opened me in a way that allowed other things to start moving back in my life. I think that's one of the powerful things of doing this kind of depth in person work is, you know, there's different ways you can put this, but One way, certainly I've put it, is like that crack. It created a crack like in what was a very locked up, stuck system that I didn't know how to access what needed to happen next. It cracked me open and it got things moving. And that first came out is just a tremendous wave of grief, tremendous wave of grief that I partially hadn't been able to get to before. Because there is something really unique about being in a group, right? It's. It's how we spent most of our lives as human beings. Like our ancestry was being held in a group. There's like a group nervous system and there's a level of safety I experienced in that with a container and a facilitator and other people that allowed something to happen for me that I could not have done myself. And I actually wasn't able to do with one specific other person, my therapist, all that time. So that's one story that immediately like shifted me in terms of what's really possible and how quick it can happen in a live person setting.
Melanie Curtin: We have gathered in groups as human beings for centuries. I mean, thousands and thousands and thousands of years. And a lot of us have lost that. We've lost that group work presence. And I think especially men are really isolated, very isolated socially and emotionally. And to have a space where that is not just welcomed, but that's. This is what we're doing here is. Is sacred. Especially in modern times, that is a sacred thing because it is so rare. And you know, you spoke a little bit to when you showed up. I mean, can you actually, can you share a little bit about why, why did you go to that? You know, you mentioned feeling stuck. You were still a virgin. You were not really having a great time in life, it sounds like. But what were your sort of reasons? Because I think that's an important thing to discuss is motivation. You know, we hear, we hear from a lot of our clients. I knew I want something different in my life, but I don't know what to do. I don't know how to get there. Was that what was going on for you or what was your motivation?
Jason Lange: Totally that a sense that something more was possible and that, you know, honestly just wanted to feel alive, to feel alive and good and open in a body rather than in my body, rather than tense and contract, contracted and closed and not able to access anything. So there, there was like, you know, that I got to a point where I was like, anything, I need something. It was almost like a feeling of desperation. There's got to be something more Than this. There has to be something more to experience life more fully. And I could tell there was a whole part of me that just wasn't online. There was like, right. It was like an intuition of like, yeah, like it doesn't feel good to be in my skin. Like it doesn't feel good to be in my skin. It doesn't feel good to move through the world and I don't know how to move that on my own. Right. Like that was, that was part of it. So what can I do? What can I do? And then, you know, I got blessedly kind of connected in to this teacher who, yeah, was able to facilitate me in a process, in a group process that continued unfolding too because there was my work. But then they were seeing other work, people other guys were going through as well, which has like a collective deepening effect over time as well as one person starts to get raw and real and another person does and there's like a movement and there's like, wow, this is possible and it's okay here. And for me, you know, just as someone who like, I always had my small cliques of men, but there was also just an experience of like through all the men's work I've done, of like, ah, wow. Being in a group of men and feeling safe and good, where it's not about like achievement or bravado or macho ness. It's actually about like being real and vulnerable and open and present with each other. That was totally revolutionary for me in terms of what that experience was like. And one of the things that has continually drawn me back to that over and over and over again of just how deep and fast and potent those experiences can go and how, you know, I, I would certainly argue, like you said, we're wired for like, I really think particularly for the masculine, it's part of the journey. Right. As so many of us came from hunter gatherer tribes of, you know, the men would often get together in a group and literally leave, go away. Go away to discover themselves, go away to become men, so to speak, to learn how to become self reliant, how to connect with each other and then in the wisdom of that, bring that back to their communities and their tribes. And so there's, there is an energy of going away from our, you know, in the hero's journey, they call it the ordinary world, right. The place where there's like a field to your life just day to day. What you think, what you feel, what you do, there's like a gravitational pull to that, that can be really hard to break out of sometimes. So in person work, one of the things I love about it is it, it's literally a journey. Like you have to leave your house, you have to get in a car or an airplane. And the second you do that is actually when it starts, you know, you start meeting up with other men along the way, getting to the place. And that whole experience of going away and having non ordinary states, you know, some of the nervous system training and other things we'll do in coming back is what allows us to return different. And then, you know, we have to do integration on that. And that's something we help men with as well. But that, that experience I think is something a men are missing and craving of like going away and discovering myself, right? Discovering who I really am. That's a feeling a lot of men want to know. Like I know who I am, I know what I'm capable of. And the masculine in particular, it needs a little tension and challenge to experience that. So instead of that being, you know, in the old days, that would be war, hunting, exploring, you know, things that would actually have you go out into the unknown. The big shift we're at, you know, as, as Westerners, particularly here in America, is a lot of that's handled, you know, it's not like just walking out the door is necessarily a dangerous experience. But the shift from that is that that frontier then becomes our interiors, right? Our inner world, our inner work. The parts of us that need to become whole or heal, that we, we go away into an intense container to be with all those parts of ourselves and surface them. And as you and I often have explored in all kinds of work, sometimes it's not just our work we're doing, but we're doing the work of our parents and our lineage and things that have not been able to move or been expressed sometimes for millennia, like through our history. And so it's just such a powerful container to be able to go physically go away and be with men and do that work. Like to actually go on a bit of a hero's journey. You know, the hero's journey and its most simple form is like leave face the dragon in the cave, get the treasure on the other side and bring it back. So the dragon these days is often these parts of ourselves we've lost touch with, we haven't been able to access that have splintered off, that have become pathological or that we just didn't even know was possible because we live in such a man box culture of what a man has to be. And you got to be tough and not show emotions and not cry, and you'll be called all these names. And so sometimes we just don't know. And being in the room with other men can so accelerate. You know, that. That same teacher that cracked me, it was the first time I was like, he was. You know, he's probably 30 years older than me. And that was the first time I saw, literally, a man just moving, breathing. The way he was connecting with other men. I was like, oh, that's how I want to be when I get older. Like, it was just an immediate embodied transmission of I can just feel this man's presence. I can feel his openness. I can feel his clarity. And as I've said, sometimes masculinity is a transmission. And you get it so fast when you're in person with people and you see how we handle and how we transform and how we open with each other. So, yeah, obviously, I'm a huge fan.
Melanie Curtin: Well, there's a couple things I wanted to highlight from what you said. One is being around other men who care and are invested in doing the work is also a transmission. And we've had a number of clients who survived bullying of different, you know, varieties and different intensities. But it's a pretty common experience, and it can be really, really isolating. So I think part of what can happen for those who are bullied is there's a fundamental sense of aloneness in the world. There's a fundamental sense of I have to figure life out by myself and I'm. I'm alone. And then there is all the coping mechanisms that get layered on top of that of how I deal with the feeling of being fundamentally alone. And, of course, that's also involved in someone's family of origin. Right, That's. It's not that bullying is the only thing that happens. But my point is that I have seen in person, work, in person, men's work, be restorative for men who've been bullied or felt alone and isolated in a way, again, that's distinct from therapy, because you can feel really accepted by your therapist. And it's not the same as a group of men, because a lot of times bullying was done by a group of boys or some kind of group, and having that experience of genuinely feeling safe. And part of that feeling of safety, I think, is, to your point, all the men who witnessed your work in the circle probably felt closer to you and saw themselves reflected in you. So there's a way that in person, work In a group, it's like you're getting condensed. Like you said, a condensed. You're getting a ton at the same time because there's your work that's done when you're. When attention is on you. But, man, do you see yourself reflected in other men or other. Other women? For me, in work that I've done, I've done in person, where it's like, oh, I didn't need to do that work myself because I just witnessed her do it, and a part of me shifted or I got emotional, or it's reflected in me. And the truth is, we think of ourselves as incredibly separate beings, but the truth is we have a lot of the same elements in each other, and we are sort of a web, right? A web of humanity. We. We tend to separate ourselves and isolate ourselves. But there is a deep truth to that. I think that's. That is what can get expressed when you're in person with other people who care and a mentor or to. Who is holding the space, who is kind of transmitting that this is how we care about each other here. This is how we put attention on each other here. This is how we. This is how we Human together in this space.
Jason Lange: Totally. And, you know, the word that's coming up, it's like the sense of camaraderie that I've experienced going on men's retreats that, I mean, it's wild. There's guys I feel as close to from doing a weekend with them as other men I've known for decades. Because there's, you know, there's something about the masculine experience in particular that. That bonds through a certain. Through doing, like, going through an ordeal together. And then, you know, that's why guys share war stories in a sense. Like, there's. We went through that together, and that, like, creates some kind of bond. And, you know, my first exposure to that wasn't even men's work. I was in college once, and I remember I went on a bachelor party hiking trip with some totally random guys I'd never met, other than my one friend from high school. And, you know, it was. It was like his. You know, when you have different pockets of friends from different life, and anyway, we're all kind of splintered in our group. And then we got to a point where we had to cross a river, and it was actually dangerous. Like, we actually had to, like, be on point, support each other hand by hand, do things. And when we got to the other side of that river, it was so noticeable. It's like the group clicked and we were just best friends forever because we literally got through that ordeal. And that always stuck with me. And then I started to notice I was going on these weekends, and I was having the same experience where suddenly, guys. Some guys, I would only interact with for five or 10 minutes in a deep practice. Other guys I would interact with more in small groups. But by the time I left, there was, like, a feeling of solidness with men that I'm still in touch with. Like, I'm still in touch with some of these guys, and some of them I, you know, I spent 10 minutes with in a practice. But I'm like, that's a guy who really got to know me, like, because we go deep and we go. We go fast in that. And that's been invaluable for me to. To feel that kind of repertoire and camaraderie building up over time and then having those shared experiences that, you know, it's just like looking at another man in the eye, and it's like, we got through that. Wow. We could do that. Like, good work. And there's. There's just something to that that's so appealing. So appealing and feels so good to me every time I do it. And one of the things I'm really excited to create for some men.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to your own experience of this, of, you know, did you feel isolated from other men or what was your social world like before menswear and what was the difference after? Because that can feel a little vague. What's the actual impact? But can you speak to that?
Jason Lange: Yeah, I would say I definitely had connections with other men before men's work, but the bandwidth on it was very narrow. Meaning, like, what we would talk about or how we would hang out was, like, very specific things. We go and see movies, or you play video games, or X, Y, and Z. It wasn't a very full spectrum. Like, oh, I can talk to this man about anything. He understands. I feel very close to him. Like, there were ways, you know, it was just kind of hanging out with guys before I got into men's work. Then as I got into men's work, yeah, it was just like, full. Full vibrance in terms of what was possible in the connection and what we could talk about in the feeling of, like, I. Like, I just kind of spoke to. Of how intimate I feel with men. I've done men's work with now that are, like, I have my Rolodex mostly of guys I've done live in person work with, of who I can call at any time of day, in any moment with any kind of situation and know I'm going to be held and trust them to support me or give me counsel or feedback. And that's literally happened before where I've had to call those men and it's been a lifesaver. And there's also just the ease of knowing those men are there. So for me, it's the doing the work with this kind of. These kinds of men in person. Right. It just opened it up to like a full spectrum experience of wow. I didn't know how much more was possible. I did not know how much more is possible and what a connection with another man could be and what that level of honestly just love that often comes through like the texture of masculine love you can experience. And these kind of men's work retreats, that's just like such medicine for the heart, been such medicine for the heart for me. And so all, most of the men I'm closest to I've been on retreat with, there's just no doubt, like I could, I could pencil out the whole map. Met him at this one, him at this one, him at this one.
Melanie Curtin: And would you say that the impact of having those men in your life available, like you said, is that you're willing to take more risks or what is the actual effect that it has versus how you were before, how life was before? What's the difference?
Jason Lange: I have places to bring myself, my emotions, my insecurities, my need for support. That is a total game changer in that, yeah, I've definitely taken more risks since I've gotten on the men's work track. I mean, like I said, my life has accelerated really since I started doing that work. So I feel more comfortable trying new things on and sometimes in a gentle but encouraged way, being encouraged to try new things on by other men who see what I'm capable of. One of the cool things about doing menswear and how deep you can go with these powerful in person experiences is it's not only you getting a deeper experience of yourself, but other men are and they will remember. I can remember other men. Like I have felt how solid and powerful and aligned you can be. Like I know what you're capable of and so I'm going to help hold that for you back in life. And other men hold me in that as well. And even just remembering that connection, sometimes of the experiences we've gone through remind me of like, oh yeah, that's actually, that's actually Who I really am, all this other crap most of the days is just everything layered on top. And so these connections with other men help remind me of that. I remind them of that. They help hold me accountable and they've helped me through some of the most significant traumas and challenges of the last, you know, particularly three or four years for me that I've ever experienced. And I'm like, oh, okay. And I got through them. Like I have resources and they've made all the difference because instead of holding and gripping all that inside, I had places and men to connect with around it and places to move that energy. Right. That's the other thing that we can really do in person, that can be kind of hard to do virtual or in other things is we can have environments to often move a tremendous amount of stuck energy from our bodies in ways that we can't always do in the day to day world. And having guys like this that I can go to with stuff like that, particularly in a retreat setting. Yeah, it's like priceless. Literally priceless.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, you've mentioned stuck energy a few times and the holding and gripping and I think I just want to touch on that a little bit as, as a woman who relates with men, as a woman who has sex with men, I think the holding, the gripping, the tightness, the. That whole spectrum of things is how I experience most men. Most men I encounter in the world feel tight or gripped or somehow. Yeah, contracted. And they don't realize it. So I think that the vast majority of men don't really know how gripped they are. I would say, you know, a lot of them maybe are aware things aren't going the way I want. I'm not getting the kind of attention from women that I want. I'm not advancing in my career the way that I want. I feel kind of down a lot of the time. Maybe they're aware of anxiety and depression, things like that. But I guess I have seen a lot of what I've done in person work when I've been a facilitator or I'm thinking mostly of work I've done with men in retreats. So mostly in that capacity, not necessarily my own work. But I have been surprised at the amount, like you said, the amount of energy that can move. I'm thinking of, for example, a man who was sort of, yeah. Stuck in his interactions with women. He just felt like I freeze up. I just freeze when there's a woman I like. I can't figure it out. It's incredibly frustrating, you know, if it's a woman I'm not interested in, I can, you know, I can chat. I'm fine. Everything's great. As soon as there's a woman that I'm at all interested in, it's like I become a different person. I'm tongue tied. It's just. Anyway, we did a piece of work with him, and one of the facilitators put his hand on the man's chest, and he just totally lost his shit. You know, he just broke down and he was grieving, like you said, and the whole group came around and was just with him and held him physically, but also energetically of, we're here and we're listening to you, and you're important and you matter. And what kind of came out of that was, he didn't grow up feeling like any of those things. He didn't grow up feeling like he mattered or he was actually being listened to at home. You know, I think his parents did the best they could, but there wasn't that deep level of attunement and emotional intimacy, emotional closeness that really children need in order to grow up to be emotionally attuned people. And that piece of work, you know, the difference in his physical body after that was. Was striking to me. One of the things that we would say as women facilitators is we would have a man stand in front of us and we would let him know, this is around where I feel you. And for most men, I can feel them from their chest up. Some men, I can only feel them from their head up, really. But a lot of the energy is really chest up. And. And, you know, chest up is not where a lot of life happens, and it's definitely not where sex happens. And so this man, after that work, deep emotional release, a lot moved. I could feel him down through his stomach. I could feel more of him there in the room. And we talk about presence a lot on this podcast and in our work. And. And part of the reason for that is that presence is sexy. Presence is catnip to the feminine. Presence is what we crave from the masculine. And when I say crave, I mean we will do crazy shit to get it. We crave it more than anything else. And I remember feeling like, oh, this guy is going to get laid. Like, this guy is more here in the world. He's now more able to track what's going on in a room to go after. Because one of the things that I've heard from a lot of men, men who. Men who have sex with women is that they learned to go. Go towards what they wanted. Like, a lot of men felt so stuck that they couldn't even go after what they wanted. They would sort of register it was there, but there was no movement, there was no action. There was no ability to go towards it. And I knew that this man, after that work was now unfrozen. It was like, okay, you're unstuck doesn't mean you're going to get everyone you go after, but you're at least going to be able to make the movement, to take the action, to cross the room, to go for it and. And to track the open doors. Right. Like which, you know, who's open and who's not and not spend so much time on the closed doors. So, yeah. I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to your own experience after doing in person work specifically relating with the feminine. You know, you've told stories on this podcast before that men have probably heard about your super crushes, but if you could just speak a little bit to like your experience with the feminine before and then after, what was the difference?
Jason Lange: Yeah, you know, it's been quite a journey. But again, like accelerant is the word that really comes up, is how much it accelerated things for me and is, you know, because there are versions of this work where the feminine can actually be involved. You know, we're going to. You, you and my wife Violet will be doing some of that for the guys. And I think this ties into a key thing that can come from the feminine and from the masculine in, in person work, which is part of what has transformed me, which is the, which is feedback and tuning up. So it's like my whole life I knew I wanted something different. I didn't necessarily know how to get there. And particularly in the beginning, I didn't even have the awareness to know what there was and where I was. There was just that kind of mushy feeling of like. Right. And the feedback you can give and get from other men and women, even in men's work, when that's part of it in person, is what helps anchor that so suddenly. Sometimes we have a hard time, but when someone is guiding us and giving us feedback of like, you feel really solid right now, I trust you, or you know, part of me is having a hard time just standing here with you. Like, Right. I've had to give that kind of feedback to men before and then help them shift in their bodies, which often involves physiology, structure, breath, different things for them to start opening in that. That Energy to start coming down and then there it is, right? And then I can, I can like, yes, right there. You feel really good right now. And when I've gotten that feedback from someone, it creates like a reference point in my body that I had not had before. Just hadn't had before. And so as I started doing this work and getting feedback from other men and from other women, suddenly I was like, oh, this is what it is, okay. This is what it feels like in my body. So now when I'm out in the world, am I feeling that? Am I not? Like, what do I need to do to shift that? And you know, one of the, I guess shocking things to me was once I knew what it was, it was actually way easier than I ever imagined. It was just like if you've never been given the instruction booklet, it felt like a mystery, right? But then as, as I started getting the experience from women of like, oh, yeah, I know, like you feel like I'm turned on right now. Like I feel pulled to you, I feel attracted to you. And it's like, oh, okay, this is it. Oh, I just have to like be breathing, be here. Got a little tune up from my men. It gave me a lot of confidence actually going out in the world that, oh, I actually can do this. And other men who, you know, would give me feedback around my trustability or my leadership or different things as we were participating completely, completely accelerated that for me. And again, you know, I think the important point with a lot of this work is the benefit to the in person depth work is the state you can get into is often deeper than what you can do at home alone, right? And that doesn't magically then just stay with you after their treat. But what it creates is an opening for you to have had the experience in your body and know what it feels like to be present, to be alive, to be breathing, to feel connected, to have other people around you, feel connected, to feel solid in yourself from head to toes, that, okay, this is possible, right? And then once we know it's possible, it's like, okay, I can go work with life now, but so many like myself and so many of the men I've worked with, right? It's like we're just starving and in this like chronically shut down thing position, and we just don't even know. So it gets harder and harder and harder until we have this experience of like, oh, this is what it feels like to be alive. That's what I want. I want to feel alive. I want to feel alive. In my life and feedback from other men and men's works and the types of practices we do around nervous system training and just camaraderie and physical touch and all the different things we're going to be weaving in greatly accelerate that to give you an experience of what's possible that you can then bring back to your life.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. One of my favorite. One of my favorite stories from one of the in person workshops that I did where I was a woman facilitator was we were doing an exercise and we'll probably do something similar in late July at ours, but we had the women facilitators were there and then we also had the male facilitators. We were all working as a team. We were working with this guy and the male facilitator was my friend and he knew this guy that had come, you know, a lot of us already knew each other in some way, part of the same community. And he came up to me and he was like, listen, I want you to get in his face. I want you to get in his face. And this was a big strong guy, like big powerful guy, but pretty shut down. Like a big, big strong guy. Very shut down. A lot of what we were talking about, I think he. My guess is he felt pretty numb a lot in his life that he wasn't really didn't feel that aliveness you're talking about. Definitely not successful with women. Really felt very shut down in that area. He was like, I want you to kind of provoke him. Like, I want you to get in his face. Don't be afraid to get in his face is what he said. And I'm like the perfect facilitator for this, right? Because I love the shit out of people. I really love people. I love what I do. I am a huge stand and I can bring some fire. I can bring some of that fire. So he comes up and this is one of the ones where the man walks up and long story short, I do. I get in his face. I get in his face and I'm kind of like pushing his shoulders a little bit and I'm like, I can't feel you at all. I can't feel you. Like, I register that you're here, but where are you? Where are you? Where are you? And it was so interesting because he couldn't really engage with me. Like, he couldn't even really look at me. He was kind of looking at other places in the room and didn't really know what to do with this. And. But then the male facilitator was right there. He was right. He was right there. And he was sort of like, listen, how is this for you? What's going on? And the guy turned to him, and then he could move some of that anger, and he was like, I don't. I don't. I don't remember the words. I don't remember the content of what he said, But I remember being like, as soon as he turned and he started getting angry, he started sort of, like, venting his frustration even a little bit. I spoke up and I was like, now I can feel you now. I can feel you now. I can feel your cock. I can feel your body. I feel you here now. And he looked back and he was so surprised. He was just like, his mind, his little mind was blown because he'd been taught for a long time, and I think a lot of men are taught this, that your rage is dangerous, your anger is dangerous. And of course, yes, the expression of rage and anger can be very dangerous, but the energies themselves don't have to be dangerous. And there are ways that we can channel them. And so the. The work moved on from there, and. And a lot of it did have to do with, you know, like, moving that, being with that, being right with it, being okay with it, being staying in your body with it and all of that. And holy shit. He was. Yeah, he felt like a different person by the end of that retreat. And interestingly, because we were in the same community, I could sort of track his progress over time. And over the next few weeks, a couple of things happened. One, he got a haircut. He got a buzz cut, and it changed his look quite a bit. But it also felt like him shedding. Shedding something that he'd been holding on to for a long time. And then when, within a couple months, he got his first girlfriend, and this was. I think he was late 20s, early 30s. He was not, you know, not a very young man. And one of my other friends ended up being his housemate and was like, they have sex all the time. They have sex on the stairs. They have sex in the kitchen. It's obnoxious. But I remember feeling secretly proud because I was like, I think I'm part of why that man's sex life is good. Like, tangentially, I think I was instrumental in there because I think he had not put together the connection between that part of him and power. And I think that's true for a lot of our men. A lot of our men have seen, you know, masculine anger or rage used poorly and Expressed poorly. Whether that's passive aggression or just aggression. Aggression. And I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to that pattern, because I know that comes up a lot is a man's relationship with anger. And how the fuck do I move that? Well, how do I do that? And. And I think a lot of men are just sort of lost when it comes to that. Or totally disconnected.
Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean, it's one of the great. One of the singular best things about being able to do the work in person in a strong container where we can actually create safe environments to explore that energy, particularly with other men in that, you know, for me, for sure, and many men I've worked with, that's one of the most vulnerable energies actually to go to because we've seen how destructive it is. It's actually a vulnerable, like, hard experience. And creating a lot of safety allows men to go there. And that is often the valve that has a lot of vitality in it. That when we've cut off from that, that suddenly life, literally life. I've seen life come back to men's bodies. It's like walked in like a shell and wow, there's life force moving through this man again. By being able to move some of this anger with other men in safe ways and express it through physicality, through role play. Different things, lots of different ways we could, we'll be working with that. But that, it, it. It does shift. It shifts us. It shifts us and it makes us more trustable. Because when we have access to that and we can be present with it, that's what makes us trustable out there. When we've totally shut it down, where it's coming out sideways and passive aggressive, that's where it's the most dangerous. And that in person work we get to do really can open the doors on all that in ways that there's just something about the group aspect of more than one set of eyes connected with you present in the same room, all tuning in to what we're experiencing in the moment, that just accelerates this stuff. And then when you add touch on there, which is often something that so many of us men are malnourished by, sometimes having never been touched by other men. Just a hug or an embrace or, you know, things I've seen with, yeah, hand on the heart, hand on the back holding men, like nervous systems just collapse in a good way of like, everything that's been stuck. Finally the dam bursts and all these feelings get to start moving through. And in some sense, oftentimes yeah, it's anger, it's grief, it's rage or upset or jealousy. There's so many different things that don't necessarily sound pleasant, but the way men's faces transform, you can see it's better. It's better than what we were experiencing before because there's movement and there's life force and there's vitality again. And the training we can just do in person. You know, we'll be doing a lot of masculine practice to get guys more connected to themselves, more into their bodies, out of their heads, and to kind of know what we're made of, so to speak, so we can bring all this back into the world in an open place. Right. When we're open, we're open, we're in our bodies. And we've built this camaraderie with other men around us that allows us to approach life differently, whether that's women, whether that's going for jobs, whatever it might be. And you know, the other big piece, a weekend like this, I just, I just have to mention is it's an opportunity to slow down and basically get offline. Right. Something that's very hard for a lot of men these days. But we'll be in a beautiful place and there will be moments of contemplation and we will be spending some time in nature and we will be doing things that slow us down actually into our bodies in life and to sometimes relearn how to open ourselves, to receive the nourishment we're getting from the world, from the great feminine that's possible for us, that so many of us are just not even tuned into in the moment that can make such a huge deal. You know, I like to think of these as, yeah, like I call them retreats. It's work, but it's like a juicing up that then that battery lasts me for months, like actual months. I can feel it and I can feel it when it's diminished. And I need to kind of go back and top myself up, so to speak, in this kind of live, in person work.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. I recently went on retreat and did an in person workshop and I noticed that the space and ability to integrate was much greater there than other work that's incorporated into my life more. So I would do a piece of work and then I would be able to go and sit by a tree and just be for a while. And again, to your point, I wasn't at home where it's like, oh, there's that thing I need to do in the corner, or there's that person that needs my attention in my house. It was just about my process. And so the work, I think in a way can get solidified even more when you are in that environment, away from home and you have that time, you just have some time to let it settle and to let it ground in your body. And of course that depends on you. You can choose to take that break and go be on your phone, or you can choose to go sit by the tree. It's your choice. But the option is there, the availability is there, it's possible. And there is something about that. And you know, to your point, the hero's journey and the going away is, is a big part of the human experience. And a lot of it has been lost, but that has been a part of the human experience for a very long time. And there is something about it. There is just something about going away to a separate place, having an experience, especially in a group, and then coming back that is powerful in and of itself. And then you add all these other things on top of it and it can kind of supercharge things to your point. And you know, in terms of integration and everything, I think that it's, it's not that in person work replaces anything else. It's more of an additive. It's like it takes all of these different things to truly transform and to actually uplevel your whole life. And it's interesting because I watch the people that are what I call on the path, right, consciousness minded people who are growing in an ongoing manner and yeah, their lives are better and it's not necessarily, they're not perfect, but they are growing, they are thriving. There is a sense of possibility versus stagnation. And I think that's an important thing to note because a lot of us in our family systems, you can even identify folks that are kind of stagnating. They're not really growing, they're not really expanding. They're kind of doing the same things and they kind of have a closed perspective. And then there are people that you can identify that are more open. And I think one of the important things about our community and what I've seen, you know, the men coming into our community is that some of them don't have any of those kinds of men in their life or people, but specifically men. And so. Or they have a few, but they're kind of scattered. And having a group and being able to bond with that group, say in person, is actually a big fucking deal. Because knowing that those men are out there and feeling finally Connected to other, quote, unquote, other men like me. Right. Other men like me. Men that are sensitive and do care and are powerful. That it doesn't have to be one or the other is a huge deal because then you don't feel so alone or like, I should be this other way. And we don't have great role models in our culture. So I think it is critical that the healthy masculine is able to gather with other healthy masculine men and feel what that is and know that you truly are not alone. You are part of this group.
Jason Lange: Yeah. It's such a powerful experience that, I mean, I'm grateful for every single day. And every time I've gone on retreat, I've come back more, just more in touch with myself, more alive, more aware. And you know, you can, in that hero's journey sense, they're a demarcation point. Right. It's like, okay, this is a moment in my life. I'm making a different choice to go try something different. And then when I come back, something will be different. Right. There's just an experience to. That I've seen over and over and over again. And it's, I think, one of the missing things. That's one of the reasons so many of us men are suffering. So we don't have this experience of going out and discovering ourselves with other men away from home and feeling connected to other men. And it's just one of the things that, yeah, has changed me more than anything. So I'm very excited to create an opportunity for other men to come have this experience and get to know us in person and get to know some other really amazing men to really accelerate your journey, whether it's just starting or whether you're just wanting to take it to a new place. This is going to be that kind of experience and opportunity is the type of work that really has changed my life.
