There was a stretch of my life, decades actually, where I knew exactly what I needed to change and still went to bed every night having done nothing about it. That gap between knowing and doing is what I dig into with Melanie Curtin on this episode of Dear Men, and it's a pattern I see in almost every guy who eventually reaches out to us after years of listening to podcasts just like this one.
We get into why awareness always comes first, whether it's from a book, a conversation, or an episode like this, and why embodiment, actually bringing that awareness into your body so it changes your behavior, comes second and can take a lifetime to arrive if you're doing it alone. I talk about the shame spiral that builds when you know better and still don't act, and why that shame is often the exact thing keeping men isolated instead of reaching for support.
Melanie and I also get into state training, the difference between understanding something cognitively and actually training your nervous system to hold a new experience, why retreats and in-person work create a kind of safe stress that talk therapy alone rarely reaches, and the role of masculine bonding, doing hard things together, in building the kind of friendships where men actually feel known, not just seen.
I share a story from my twenties crossing a dangerous river with a group of near strangers on a bachelor camping trip, and what that day taught me about how quickly walls between men fall away when there's real stakes involved. We also talk about containment and expression, the two levers most men are actually working whether they realize it or not, and why some of us need to open up while others need to learn to hold back so something truer can come through.
Where in your life are you most aware of the gap between what you know you need to do and what you're actually doing about it?
Join Melanie and me on retreat over Labor Day in Northern California
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Jason Lange: And again, what's so key about doing this in a group is for many of us, right, we talk about this stuff all the time on the podcast. You know, you gotta be able to speak from your balls, live, from the neck down. That's all words until you've experienced something else. So when I say state training, that's what we mean. To actually have the experience in your body of, oh my God, this is my desire, this is my power, this is my grief or my heart or my caring or attunement. And to know it not because we told you what it is, because you have now experienced it. You have a map of it in your lived body.
Melanie Curtin: Hi guys. I have a few fun announcements before we start this episode. The first is that we are going to do a another master class. They've been a lot of fun. We're going to do another free master class on July 20th at Pacific on flirting. If you are in a relationship or you're single or anywhere in between, you are welcome. You are welcome. However you identify man, woman, non, binary, anything in between, please come and join us. You can find out more [email protected] flirting that's melaniecurtain.com flirting remember, there's no A in my last name. It's just C C U R T I N. You can hear those choppers behind me in Los Angeles. And then the second thing I wanted to share was a really beautiful celebration that I got this week. This is really special to me. This is from a client and he says, hi Mel. As I discussed with you, I was in a very dark place in 2025. Not sure what I was doing in life, not sure of my relationship and not sure of my future. I spent a lot of time in my head persevering but not really taking any action. I read and listened to a lot about relationships, but most of it made me feel worse about myself and my situation. I first listened to your podcast while walking my dog in the evenings and I felt different. So I listened to some more and then would just feel good about myself, even though absolutely nothing had changed in my life. In fact, your podcast was the only source of information that gave me a positive impression of my life. I did this on and off for about six months until the late summer of 2025 when I reached out to Jason. Ultimately, I joined Pillars and my life changed. Although still imperfect, I am more grounded and positive about my future, even though I have faced far greater challenges than those that initially brought me into the program. You have a special talent in seeing the world through both worlds, masculine and feminine, and have decided to share this both in pillars and on your podcast. This is a noble endeavor, and I am very grateful for what you have done for many others as well as myself. I am very touched by this. You know who you are. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for seeing me and for believing in yourself and for holding up a mirror to what I do. I think part of the reason that this is so meaningful to me is because I really love men. I really love men. I'm really rooting for men. I want men to get what they want and to become the divine masculine in the world, to become their full potential and to know that there's nothing wrong with them. There is nothing wrong with you, whoever you are out there. There is nothing wrong with you. There might be ways that it will help you in order to grow, that it will help your life, that by you growing, it will help your life and you will get more of what you want, but there is nothing wrong with you. And I think there's a lot of messaging out there right now about what. Yeah, what men are doing wrong or what they're not doing enough of or what they're doing too much of or just there's a lot of negativity and a lot of polarization around it. So if I keep talking about it, I will cry again. You know who you are. Thank you, thank you, thank you. And thank you to all of you who listen and support the podcast. I really, really love what I do, and it's because of you. Hi, everyone. Welcome back to another episode with Jason Lange. Jason Lange, everyone. So happy to have you with us. And today we are talking about a pattern that we've noticed in a lot of the men that we've worked with, and especially towards the beginning of the work, not so much as they've gotten into it, but I know what I need to do. I just don't do it. Can you say a little bit about this and how it's kind of shown up in your life and then the lives of the clients with whom we've worked?
Jason Lange: Sure, yeah. This is. I'll just start personal. You know, there was, frankly, decades of my life where I would have this experience where my life wasn't going the way I wanted, be it women, work, health. And I would be aware of the types of changes I wanted to make. And, you know, in a lot of ways, my body, my soul told me where changes I needed to make, and it would be right before bed you know, I'd be about to fall asleep and I'd have this spark of energy. Fuck. Okay, tomorrow, tomorrow's the day I'm gonna, I'm start. I'm gonna do it differently, right? I'm gonna eat differently or work out differently or write some emails about work I need or put my voice out there, you know, so many different things. And then the next day would come and I wouldn't do anything differently. I would just move through my day exactly the same. And then I get to the evening, this anxiety would build up like, ah, I didn't do it again. Okay, tomorrow's the day. And this cycle would play out over and over and over again. And then I would keep accumulating different types of learnings. Oh, if I just understand this more, read this more, listen to this book or do this course, then, right? I'll have everything I need to make the change. And that pattern is one I'm not alone in. I think a lot of men we work with, actually a lot of men that I've talked to that are longtime listeners of the show, sometimes it's years before they reach out and say, hey, actually I do need help to make this happen. I've been listening, I've tried it all on my own and it just hasn't worked. And the deeper frame, you know, I'll just name here is change. In a lot of ways, it's a two step process. There's awareness of the gap between how we're being and how we ideally want to be. And the awareness can always come first, right? Listening to a podcast, I can get awareness. Buying an audible book, reading a book, having a conversation. The awareness can be instantaneous. The embodiment, the, okay, now I'm going to bring that awareness into my body so it drives different behavior and choices. That comes second. And the gap between step one and step two can last lifetimes, frankly, and for me certainly lasted, like I said, decades. And this is a place where so many men get stuck. And then the real kicker, I certainly experienced this. Many of our men experience this is because we have the awareness. When we don't take the action, it then becomes a source of shame. We beat ourselves up for it. I used to beat myself up for it, right? Why didn't you? You know that. Da, da, da. And this gets into, you know, part of what drives all of the change we really promote for men around the, the importance of community in that process that oftentimes we can't implement all these behavior changes alone unless we have a container around us that help us do it. And so that pattern, so many men I talk to, they just feel stuck. Right? It's like I've got more podcasts than I could ever listen to. Books, courses, Instagram feeds, quick tips, hacks. And yet my life's not any different. And that's what this episode is really about. What does it take to actually step into something different?
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, thanks for naming that part about what does it actually take, because I do think that one of the issues that we can face in personal growth is the role and place of something like talk therapy. So talk therapy can be valuable and helpful and transformational. It can be. It can also be a place where people get stuck. And I've spoken to multiple men who said things like, I got more out of this retreat than I did out of three or four years of talk therapy. Some people have said 10 years, honestly. And I think that part of that is part of that. Not all of it, but part of it is that talk therapy is a one on one container. And so, first of all, it's a one on one container. And it can sometimes be sort of to what you're speaking to, of, wow. I really, really, really understand my trauma. I really, really get why my family system was dysfunctional and why I became the way that I am. I grasp it, I can describe it, I could write a PhD thesis on it. But it's not changing my life. My life isn't changing. And that's really the goal for a lot of people, is I want my life to change. I want a better career. I want a love relationship that feels really good. I want strong friendships. I want fill in the blank. And I remember years ago talking to someone who said, they said something like, honestly, my talk therapist saved my life. I would have taken my life if I hadn't had her. And I reached a plateau. And at that point, she couldn't take me further than where I needed to go. I needed to do this work, I needed to do men's work, I needed to do group work in order to further the cause. I needed to do plant medicine. I needed to do other things, particularly embodiment and shadow work, types of things in order to advance in my life. And I. That's always stayed with me. That man was a very experienced, practiced man at the time that we were talking. And I remember thinking, yeah, there's a time and a place for different modalities. But I really think that what you're taught, what you're talking about is if you're only learning about things. And you're not actually doing things in your body. You're only going to get so far. And I was curious to go back to, you know, you talked about there were changes I wanted to make. I have a story about what some of those changes were. But can you go into, for example, I wanted to have a meditation practice. I wanted to have a workout practice. I wanted to, you know, what are some of the things I wanted to eat better. What are some of the changes that you wanted to make that you just weren't making?
Jason Lange: Yeah, sure. I mean, all of those. Yeah. I want to eat better. I want to work out more consistently. Absolutely. I want to do a daily meditation practice. I want to be more bold talking to women out in the world. I want to understand my finances and actually look at them more regularly. Right. There are a lot of these different areas that were always kind of just across the river for me, right? Like, okay, yeah, tomorrow I'll do it, I'll do it. And I just wasn't doing it right. And that was the real key. Or I want to find and be able to use my voice, right. To be able to speak up more about what I want, what I see when I'm not okay with something. You know, that was a deep, deep one for me. And it's one that only changed by actually doing it. Right. That's part of what I'm talking about here. What we're talking about here. When I say, you know, that gap between awareness and embodiment or action, you could also call it. Right. It's the difference between information and transformation. Right. So I could. You and I could sit here and we could read about or talk about qigong or a martial art or breath work, and you could understand it cognitively, head to tail. But that's very different from having experienced it. Right. And actually be in the process of embodying it and trying it. And that's really what we're talking about here is the importance of state training. Actually training the state of your nervous system, which talk therapy can sometimes go there, but often is more about kind of understanding, mapping. But it doesn't necessarily plunge you into some of the states you're most wanting to take different, make different choices and behaviors in. And that's something that you can do particularly, and I think why a lot of men are now attracted to men's work and in person kind of experiences, because we can actually generate a safe and real type of stress, frankly, for your nervous system that you then have to practice within of. Oh, wow, this is actually what I feel like sometimes when I X, Y or Z or this is the type of time where my body says, nope, I can't do it, can't do it, can't do it. What does it mean for me to figure out what would I need to, to, to touch, to embody right now for me to be able to do it? And that state training is the thing a lot of guys like me who are so easily live up in our heads often miss and that there's no substitution for. Right. The actual practice of, of the things we want to embody differently in our lives.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah. As we're recording this, the World cup is still going on. I don't know when people are going to listen to it, but it occurs to me that it's a little bit like the difference between reading a book about soccer and knowing everything about soccer or football, depending on where you live and versus actually doing drills, actually scrimmaging, actually playing soccer, being on the field, being in the game, getting it into your body, knowing how you can read everything about kicking the ball, but actually kicking the ball or passing the ball or trapping the ball is totally different. And one thing that, that also occurs to me is I really. One thing that's really loud for me in terms of what's possible at the retreat, which is part of why we're recording this episode because we have some spaces still available at our live retreat at the end of August this year. 20. Or sorry, is it beginning of September?
Jason Lange: Yeah, this year Labor Day's a little later. So September 3rd through the 7th.
Melanie Curtin: Okay, so early September is that there really aren't that many spaces in modern life to connect with other men at depth and to do shadow work at depth with other men. And that is also totally not possible in a one on one setting. So. And one on one setting. I mean, you know, something like talk therapy. And I'm thinking about one of our clients who was, who came in and he was in a complicated situation with his ex wife. They had not gotten divorced yet. They were technically separated, but they had a lot of complicating factors. There were things going on that were complicated and he was pretty stressed when he, when he showed up. I would say he was definitely not in his power, didn't know what to do and had been trying to figure it out on his own for a long time. He had been trying to figure it out. He had kids, there were kids involved. There was some betrayal that had happened and he was pretty dysregulated. And I remember he would, he would speak pretty fast. He was, he would kind of move around a lot. You know, there was a lot of dysregulation. And over the course of the retreat, you know, we do a lot of things at the retreat around embodiment, including breathwork, including holotropic breathwork, holotropic style breathwork. And these are deep state experiences that, that men get into. And they have all of these experiences alongside other men. They have all of these experiences alongside other men. So they're building relationships, they're building friendships, they're building brotherhood, they're going through with other. And by the end of the retreat, he was a lot more relaxed in his body. And what happened is he parlayed that. He, he took that energy and he joined pillars, he joined our, more, our longer term program. And then I witnessed a total transformation over the next, I would say probably six months. And he is a good example of someone who really stepped into his power. Meaning, you know, you were talking about using your voice, knowing what you want and what you. I don't want being able to say, this is my boundary, this is what I'm okay with. And this is what I'm not okay with. Being able to negotiate with his sort of ex wife, you know, wife, ex wife person, you know, mother of his children, co parent, you know, that, that complicated relationship. And I sort of got his spine straightened up like I, I, he was like kind of a different dude in less than a year. And the kind of transformation that's possible when you are on the field, when you are doing the embodiment work, when, when you're doing the kinds of things we're saying, particularly at a, at a retreat, like what we're talking about a state experience. Having a state experience and then backing that up with work after that. It's, it's absolutely extraordinary. And I, it's, you know, what's funny is it's interesting to, to witness the men that come in to the program that have talk therapists. And one thing I've noticed is that several of them, they'll tell their talk therapist about what they're doing and then their talk therapist will witness the transformation that's happening over the course of weeks or months. And they'll be really surprised. So I remember this one guy saying his therapist said, what are you doing? What, what is different? How, what's happening? Because he hadn't told that he joined the program and all this stuff. And so they're seeing the results of it, but they don't know what the origin of it is, and I think what I want to say there is that there is no replacement for the group. And part of the reason for that is that we are social animals. We are social animals. We are meant to be in groups and much of our modern culture has stripped that away from us. So we don't have those small tight knit groups. We, some of us don't even live with or near bio family anymore. There's a lot of isolation and these kinds of spaces. There is a kind of restoration that happens just by being around other men that are doing the work. You know, because a lot of the guys that come to us, they don't have a lot of guys doing the work around them. They have guys around them but their colleagues, their coworkers, sometimes they're, they're bio family, but they can't really drop in with those guys. They can't really get vulnerable with them, they can't be real with them. So there's only so far you can go in terms of growth or what is the word I'm looking for a sense of camaraderie, a sense of solidarity, a sense, you see me, you get me and I get you. And there's just something about that moment that's irreplaceable. You can't replace it with anything else. It is its own thing. Can you say a little bit about that or what you've seen in terms of men experiencing that for the past?
Jason Lange: I mean, a couple things. One, just referring back to the client you were just talking about, you know, that first year he came in. Another thing I would note is he was just holding so much, his body was overwhelmed. And so we'd get into certain practices and he would kind of burst open like there was just so much emotion. He had never had a place to process before. And he came back the year after, right. Like you said. And he worked with us in between and it was such a notable shift. He still had the capacity to open, but he wasn't, he was able to ground himself so much more in the experiences and you know, the shift, I, I honestly, how I would say it is like when he came to us, he was, you know, he told me this, like he was pretty collapsed. He did not know what to do. And by the time we saw him a year later, again in person, it was the metaphor I'm kind of going to reach for here is he was like conducting his own life. He knew what he wanted to bring forward and he had to work with other people in a pretty complicated situation. But he was doing it. He was actually conducting this new family system that was so different than anything before. And it was because of the work he had done. In part of what you're speaking about, I think this is right. There's a couple key things here that are so fundamental to men's work. And one is this idea. You know, it's a platitude, but it's this kind of iron sharpens iron thing. And what's really underneath that is the masculine, the alpha part of all of us. How we grow is by coming up to our limits and then growing past them. So challenge is actually what causes us to grow. I can't do this. How do I do this? I can do it now. I've grown. That is so enlivening for the masculine. And now the key is there's a difference between, like, a healthy version of that in a shameful, overwhelming version of that. In the thing, like a retreat is we can create the container of safety so you can come right up to your edge, wherever it is, is, and really get to know it. So when you're ready to step across it, you can. And there's a way that what I mean by challenge and edge and all these kind of fancy terms is we grow in a kind of stress. So when I say state training, that's what we're talking about. We take. We challenge our nervous systems with intention so that we can grow our capacity to be present in the ways we want. And then where this ties into the community, right, Is this experience. I think I've probably told this story before. I'll tell it again here and then link it to what I've now seen. Having led dozens of retreats is right in. In my 20s, I had a good friend from high school who went on to a different college and then a different master's program. So it had been, you know, probably seven years, really, since we were deep in community with each other. And he got married and invited a bunch of us out to a bachelor party out in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee for a backpacking trip. And, you know, I got there with one other close friend of mine from high school I had stayed in touch with. And the first thing that happened as soon as we got there, where there were three, basically generations of men from my buddy's life. There were his high school friends, his undergraduate friends, and his graduate friends. And everybody immediately just potted off with who they knew for. For basically the first day. And then this thing happened. It was springtime when we went on this Trip and we got to a river we had to cross to get where we were going. And because it was spring, the. The rapids were flowing like pretty significantly and it was actually dangerous in terms of wow. To get across here to slip means someone's life could be in danger. So. Okay, let's fucking do this. And the group had to self organize. You know, people getting into anchored spots, grabbing other people, making a chain, making sure everyone got across safely. And I shit you not, we got to the other side and everybody was best friends. Suddenly everybody was talking to everyone. That was so fucking cool. Oh my God, thank you for helping me here. And all the be barriers between these two, these three cohorts just fell apart. And it wasn't until years later that I really understood like, why in a big part of masculine bonding comes from moving through difficult things together. And there is, you know, real research about this attachment. Adam, who some people know on social media, he's. He teaches this big. But male bodies have slightly more receptors for vasopressin, a different connection hormone than oxytocin. And vasopressin gets activated when you do hard shit together. It's kind of it. And now I'm using a pretty explicit example of like a physically challenging life ordeal. But what I've seen in retreat is the doing hard things together is opening up, getting embodied, doing the state change, training and challenging practices, doing shadow work together. And what it results in, my buddy Keith recently said this in interview I did with him was the difference between even just being seen as a man. And I think the thing we all really crave, which is being known, right? Wow. This person knows me. They have seen me at my most challenged and they have seen what I'm capable of. And that happens on retreat. We see it every year, right? Guys are standing in front of each other doing something they never thought they could have done before. And they come out of that with a closeness and a connection that I shit you not. I am still friends with guys who I just met in a single weekend workshop when I first started doing men's work. And these are guys that know me in ways men that I've known just physically been in contact with for decades don't. Because of the depth we went through together, they really got to see me at my best, at my most challenged, et cetera. And that's one of the really unique things that happens in retreat. Like we, like we explicitly we talk about on retreat. That then is so important because those men who have seen you step into the parts of yourselves you Never thought, could have. They get to be the ones who can remind you when you inevitably forget two weeks from then, when you wake up back in your life and you're like, fuck, was any of that real? And they're like, yes, I was there with you. That was real. You have that in you. That's who you are. And that is such a transformational thing that can kind of happen on Zoom, but it just happens in a completely different way on retreat.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, there's. There's definitely a. I would say a symbiotic relationship or there's some kind of. There are these state experiences that we can reach in places like this. And. And then there's the practice, the everyday practice. So it's kind of like going to a football camp, going to a soccer camp, and having mentors and training and doing a bunch of drills and a bunch of scrimmages and playing with other people that are really, really excited about it. And then there's. Yeah, you go back. You have to. You have to be consistent. You have. You have to be able to keep going. But I think what's different is, you know, you were talking about habit change. Essentially, I want to eat better, I want to work out more consistently, I want to have a daily meditation practice, I want to be more bold, talking to women, et cetera. And I do think that a lot of people are trying to do habit change alone, by themselves, on their own. And sometimes they're not addressing the underlying blockades or the underlying blocks to those practices. And sometimes the. It's sort of an art, the art of opening up or the art of moving into a new way of being. To your point, Jason, for example, you know, some of the shadow work and, let's say, the holotropic breath work, things that we're doing on retreats like this, they're putting us into a new consciousness state, a new state of consciousness. And often that's unblocking, uncorking, allowing for emotional release and the release of tension in the tissues. So, for example, when you have a huge cry, when you cry and you actually release, I'm thinking of one of the guys on our retreat who hadn't cried, I think, in a decade, something like a decade, and he cried during and after holotropic breathwork, the kind of release that. That provides your body, your physical body, the tissues that have been holding that tension for a long time, that allows for new neural pathways to be built, for new neurology to be built in your brain, which makes you more available for habit Change in your life. The same thing happens when you do psychedelics. You have a window of opportunity because the brain is plastic, that you can make different choices after that. So you. You kind of need these peak experiences in order to then make habit change. And there's a lot of research around this, as well as accountability, having people that you're accountable to when it comes to habit change. That's not exactly what we're talking about here, but I wanted to make that point because emotional release is one of the things that we see consistently in a lot of the men that come to the retreat. That would be one of the primary change makers, right? It's a driver of change. It's a big emotional release. The other one, like you said, is just the feeling of bonding, of not being alone, of having other men that have had a similar experience. Experience to you in the room, actually talking about it. For example, men talking about, sometimes I have trouble getting it up, or I have trouble keeping it up, or I have premature ejaculation, and it's so bad that I don't really want to date because I'm ashamed, and I'm scared of getting into a relationship and then being humiliated. If you've never heard another man say that and you have a similar experience, it is transformational. It's just, wow, I'm actually not alone. I'm sitting right in the room with this man. And that was really brave of him to say that. If he can say it, maybe I can say it. And now we're talking about something. And to your point, Jason, being able to move from just thinking about it to actually doing something about it, it does start with awareness, and then it moves into action. And one of the things that I. I think is interesting is there are sort of two types of men that we work with. One is the nice guy, which that man is sort of working on, stepping into his power. He hasn't had a lot of access to his voice, like you said, Jason. And this is the category that you would put yourself into based on other episodes that you've done. And that guy needs to find his balls, right? He needs to be able to access his power and step into his power. And that is one way of being. And that is a lot of the men that we work with. But there's another category of guys that we've seen where they can access their power, but often it comes out as anger. So especially if they're in love relationships, they can get mad, they can be scary, and that is especially true for their women. For the women in their life and some of those guys that we've worked with, they don't always feel in control of that and they don't always know where it's coming from. So it's just sort of a reaction, it's a response, it's an unconscious experience that they're having when someone pisses them off or when they feel. Well, often what happens is they feel hurt and then they feel angry and they don't even realize that they feel hurt. They just jump right to anger. And so at the retreat, part of what can happen is those guys will have emotional release. Those guys will have experiences of feeling their heart in a new way, in a way that they've never done before. And that can carry over into their relationship lives. We have several examples of that that we can share. But I think it's interesting because we talk a lot about the head, the heart and the guts, or the head, the heart and the cock, and balancing the fire, balancing the water, balancing the two energies of the heart and the sexuality, or the fire, the passion is a lot of what we're talking about. And what we find is that a lot of men are out of balance in one way or the other. They have too much fire and not enough heart, or they have too much heart and not enough fire. And either way they're not getting what they want in relationship. And like we've been saying, a lot of them are just. They're not talking to anyone about it, or if they're talking to someone about it, it's a one on one container and it's not actually moving the needle on what needs to happen for it to be different. Any comments on that part?
Jason Lange: It's so true. And another way to kind of thread the needle on this, that often we're working two levers. Containment and expression. So for there's a. There's a lot of men that come to us and what they actually need to do is to be able to express more literally with their voice, with their power, even literally how their body moves. The range of movement available to their body is. For some guys, they are so contained, it's like they're living in a two by two box. And what we see can really open is the range of expression in their bodies, in their hearts, in their voice. And then like you said, there's some other guys who actually need to practice some containment of some parts and expression of other parts. So containment of my explosive anger or containment around the part of me that normally just says fuck it, I'm out and ejects and shuts down or goes away or leaves the moment. And by learning to contain some of those impulses, they can be present for something else that they get to feel and express. And again, what's so key about doing this in a group is for many of us, right, we talk about this stuff all the time on the podcast. You know, you gotta be able to speak from your balls, live, from the neck down. That's all words until you've experienced something else. So when I say state training, that's what we mean. To actually have the experience in your body of, oh my God, this is my desire, this is my power, this is my grief or my heart or my caring or attunement. And to know it not because we told you what it is, because you have now experienced it. You have a map of it in your body, in reality. And for me, I didn't know and couldn't do that on my own. That is where groups became so key because I started to get feedback, A, about how people were experiencing me, which helped me sharpen up my awareness and then step more into the action, the expression, the embodiment. And B, I actually got to feel it in my body even before I could do it. And what I mean by that is when I would be around men who were embodying something that I didn't know how to do, my nervous system would start to get a sense for it. Holy shit. The way he just handled that or said that, or his courage in expressing that extremely vulnerable thing, or wow, that guy's got fucking balls and fire and he feels so safe to be around. I never knew that was possible. Now I have a sense that I can start to dial into in my body. And sometimes even while another man is stepping in there, it helps me step into that in the moment. Right? We do a lot of face to face practice in the retreat. One of the great joys is always some of the stuff we lead guys into where they start to get a little fatigued. And what they discover is, wow, I can actually get energy from my partner. And when he starts to get energy, I get energy. Where the fuck did that energy come from? And this is kind of some of the fun we get to see. But the importance of doing this work in a group and trusting that the people around us are going to help us dial in these expressions so we actually trust ourselves to bring our anger forward, let's say, because we know where the line is now, because we've had loving people who can give us Feedback about it.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, I want to go back to that part about. Well, maybe it's not going back, but I want to make a point here about bullying and safety. So one of the. One of the feedbacks. I don't know how you say piece of feedback. One of the pieces of feedback we've gotten is that this is a very safe space, that we create a safe environment. And a lot of men have never been in a safe environment with other men in their lives. We have guys in the opening circle who say, I'm feeling stressed right now. You know, it's been a long time since I've been in a group of guys and I'm scared. And as soon as he says that, other men are, you know, basically raise their hand and say, me too. I same. And I. I want to emphasize that because we say this in a lot of our podcasts, and I want to emphasize it again. Healing your relationship with other men sets you up for success with women. Healing your relationship with other men sets you up for success with women because it gives you your power back. There's a part of you that's been playing small and is scared and has been shrinking because you've experienced unsafety with men, whether it was your family members or your siblings or colleagues or people at school, other boys at school. There's a lot of pain and a lot of damage and a lot of harm that is caused by men and boys and young men on other young men and boys. It's a lot. It's a tremendous amount. And spaces like this can be a place of healing and restoration. And I just want to emphasize that because I really want to say, if you're considering doing something like this, we've got you. We've got you. You are going to be safe. We are going to take care of you. You are not going to be alone. It's not going to be a reenactment of that. It's a different experience. And the bravery, the courage that it takes to show up in those spaces, quite extraordinary. I'm honestly humbled every retreat by the men that are coming and are ready to have a different experience and are scared. They're showing up and they're intimidated. A part of them doesn't know what to expect. A part of them isn't sure what's going to happen. And that is courage. Courage is not. I know everything's going to be fine. Courage is, I'm scared, and I'm doing it anyway. I'm scared and I'm showing up. And I think that's of the deeply masculine practice. Whether you're in a woman body or a man body or whatever body you're in. That is, that is the, that is healthy. Alpha, essentially is I'm choosing to take this risk because I want to grow. And the carrot on the other side for a lot of men is a great relationship. You know, I'm thinking about one of our guys that, that came and had one of these profound experiences in breathwork and just feeling held by another man and saying, I don't think I've ever experienced safe love before this moment. This is the first time I've ever had this experience of I really needed someone and they were right there, they were right there, they were available, they were paying attention to me, they were attuned to my experience, I was held. And now that man is in a fucking mind blowing relationship, having great sex, incredible connection. And this guy was in a pretty empty, dead marriage for at least a decade. At least a decade. Like, one of the things I also kind of want to emphasize is it's never too late to do this work. You know, we had a guy in his, I think he was in his 60s when he showed up. And part of why he was there was essentially to improve his marriage because he really wanted to, he really wanted to experience a better, closer love relationship. And I think a lot of the guys that come in, let's say the LATTER Half right, 50s, 60s, 70s, they're kind of like, you know, is it worth it? Is it going to be worth it? Am I making a mistake? What am I doing here? And to a man, I would say that all of them have said, I wish I'd done this sooner. And similarly, I'm in the best place I've been in my whole life. I'm closer with my wife now than we've ever been. I feel genuine fulfillment. Genuine fulfillment meaning yes, I'm having the sex that I've always wanted to have. But it's not just about the sex. It's about the closeness, it's about the intimacy, it's about the little moments, it's about holding hands, you know, it's about feeling essentially securely attached, secure attachment after years, decades, a long time of not, not feeling that. And I just want to kind of tie those together, right? It requires courage to show up in spaces like these and to actually do, do the real work. It requires courage. But the payoff is so grand. The payoff is so great. The payoff is so big compared to just staying where you are and staying in the Learning loop. I like to call it the learning loop. Oh, well, if I just watch one more YouTube video, I just. If I just listen to the right thing or read the right thing, then I will make the habit changes and things will shift for me. It doesn't really work like that. You gotta take some risks. You gotta take some risks along the way. You gotta get the right mentorship, you gotta get into the right spaces and you gotta do the damn thing. And I think there's something about these kinds of experiences, whether it's our retreat or some other in person experience that you can then, like I said, parlay. You can then take that and what is the word, you can make the shifts that you've always wanted to make because you have the energy and the power and you've actually changed the neurology that's required to set up those habit changes. If you're just trying to do it from the same place you've been in, it's not going to work. But if you have this big state experience, if you do this big shift, and particularly if you have the emotional releases that could also happen through plant medicine, it doesn't have to be on a retreat like this, but something that helps you have a big release of the stuck tension that's been in your body for a long time now. You're actually set up for success now. You can make those shifts and they'll stick.
Jason Lange: Yeah, this is so key, right? All systems want to come to homeostasis. So one of the hardest things to do is be completely embedded in your normal day to day life and make deep change because everything around you expects you to be the same and it's going to kind of pull you there. So the beauty of what we're talking about, I mean, this is the hero's journey for men to a T, right? Is you have to leave the ordinary world. You actually have to leave. You have to hear the call, right? You have to be Luke Skywalker in Tatooine. And you have to go away. You have to go away to have a different experience where you can experience yourself outside of the context and all the expectations and the gravity and the momentum of your life. And this is so key because then once you have that deeper state of experience of yourself, it's so much easier to bring it back into your life. It still takes work. We're gonna be real about that. But if you've never experienced it, if you don't know how deep the pond is, you don't know till you get in there, right? You can look at it. Oh my God. I think it's like this or this, but I gotta get in there. And that's what these state training experiences like a retreat will do for you in, in terms of polarity. It's so key. I mean, one of my favorite things post retreat, this isn't why guys do it, but post retreat there's always a journey home, airplane rides, going through airports, lifts, all this stuff. It's so many guys will come out and they tell these crazy experiences of oh my God, all these women just started talking to me like I had conversations and felt so open. It's because the men are extremely polarized in that moment. You go spend time offline with a group of men in nature, you are going to get juiced into your masculine. It's, it's true. And you're going to bring that back into your relationship and life. Because part of what you're going to bring back long term then is also relationships. They're going to help keep you there. But that importance of courage, like you said, that's what we mean by state training, you know, for men listening. When was the last time in your life you legitimately plunged into the unknown? I don't know what the fuck's about to happen here. I'm kind of scared. Here I go. The first time guys come to our retreat, that's what they're walking into now. It sounds intimidating, but we give you the breadcrumbs, the on ramp, the safety, the container. You're not alone in walking into that unknown. You're with other people who have walked that journey and are walking that journey and that makes it so much easier in a sense. And the thing I think that shocks a lot of men is not only how deep and challenging the work is, but how much fucking fun they have in the process.
Melanie Curtin: Yeah, it's one of my favorite things to witness is the laughter and the bonding and the sense of ease. That's really the word that comes to mind is just, ah, I'm just here, I'm just here. I'm just relaxed, I'm just in my body. And it's, it's sort of the same feeling you get after a really good workout when you're tired. But you're good tired. You know, you really did the thing. You really did the thing and you're feeling relaxed and spent and spent in a good way. So if you are interested in coming to the retreat, we would love to have you. You can find out more at.
Jason Lange: Just head over to Evolutionary Men Retreat as of now, there's nine spaces left for you to come hang out and break bread, sit with some meals with Melanai and some other just absolutely incredible, incredible men, including the best man in my wedding who's been mentioned on this podcast many times.
Melanie Curtin: Yes. And I really do want to encourage those of you that are considering it to take the plunge. You know, what is it worth to you to have the life you actually want and to get unstuck and to make those shifts and to be able to say I'm doing what I know I need to do, not I know what I need to do. I just don't do it. But I'm actually doing it. I've made the shifts. I'm on the other side. I have the relationship of my dreams. I have the relationship with my kids that I want. I have the closeness with my wife that I want. It is worth it. It's worth it. So if you're ready, come join.
