Breaking the Cycle: Overcoming Generational Trauma with Jason Lange | The Rich Mind Podcast

Host: All right, everyone, welcome back to the Rich Mind podcast. And today got another fantastic guest. I'm super excited about the conversation we're getting ready to get into with Jason Lange. Jason is a men's embodiment coach, group facilitator, and evolutionary guide. He helps men drop in and wake up to deeper clarity in their life's purpose and relationships. He believes every man should be in a men's group for the growth and support opportunities they provide. Jason is a Certified no More Mr. Nice Guy Coach and has trained and studied with leaders such as John Wineland, Dr. Robert Glover, Jun Po, Roshi Tripp Lanier, and Ken Wilbur. He's also the founder and creator of the Evolutionary Min. We'll get into what that is exactly. But he also is a podcast host. I always love having podcast host hosts on the podcast because they kind of get how things work, they understand how the process works, but then it also allows us to have a fantastic conversation. His podcast is also under the title Evolutionary Men. So I recommend you go out there and follow Jason and his podcast as well. We'll get into all the details where you can find more about him towards the end of the podcast. But without further ado, Jason, man, let's jump on. Let's. Let's have this fun conversation. We're looking forward to this one. I'm. Ever since we had our little chat right at the beginning, right. To get to know each other. Yeah, this is gonna be a lot of fun. I appreciate you taking your time this morning.

Jason Lange: Yeah, I'm so excited to be here, Randy. I love, love having these conversations. I love the spirit and energy I'm already feeling from you. And I love, love, love supporting men in their growth and transformation. And you know, there's an endless amount we could dive into on that front that pretty pumped to do.

Host: Well, good. And that's where when I first read about you, the, the idea of having a conversation about men, about being men, as I mentioned to you in our little connection call that I also have a son and I also have a grandson that I'm also passionate about that part as well. And maybe we'll dive into helping those folks also in the process of the conversation today. But first off, take a few minutes and go as deep and as wide as you'd like. I really take. Take some time, right? Kind of give everybody kind of your backstory of I gave everybody the 30,000 foot view of kind of who you are and where you're at, but take everybody through where you've been, where you're at now and obviously the evolution that you've done for yourself.

Jason Lange: Yeah, absolutely. Like I think many people in this space, you know, I got into the work because of my own journey first and foremost. So it really started for me in when I was younger, I was raised in the Midwest of the US in a kind of lower middle class family, no like acute volatility or anything in my household. And this wasn't stuff I realized till much later. But now knowing that it was a place my family just did not know how to connect emotionally and honestly physically, there wasn't much touch. There was a lot of, kind of just us being left to our own devices, so to speak, before there were devices. But point of this all being, you know, I had a pretty good childhood, something I hear a lot of guys I work with say. And then as we dig in under the surface, there's always often a lot more there than we realize. Even in the best of circumstances. As I like to say, you know, great parents who are trying their best, they can't get everything right. It's just impossible. There's always going to be a few nutrients we maybe didn't get. And for me this really started to manifest. Randy in my teens, right. Suddenly, boy going through puberty have all these feelings coming through me, all this attraction, all this energy. And could not figure out how to connect with women, just girls. I was interested at the time and started to notice that I would actually get like very anxious. My body would kind of get anxious, I would kind of clam up a little bit. I didn't really know how to express what I was feeling. Oftentimes I didn't even really know what I was feeling. And this continued and became a bigger and bigger deal as I aged. And it was that the pain around that of wow, I want to be having relationships like I'm longing for this. And I see my friends doing it. See seems so easy for them and it's not for me. That really kick started my journey into inner growth and transformation, which initially started kind of in more the philosophical realm. I was reading about different philosophies and just trying to learn about how the mind works and how I work. And through some of that work I got exposed to Ken Wilber who eventually kind of his work guided me on a path of discovering men's work, somatic therapy and really beginning my genuine transformation of what's going on in my nervous system and how can I start to shift that. And you know, there are probably two key things like I just mentioned there that took until my mid-20s, you know, truth be told, even. Cause I was mostly reading stuff like philosophically, right. Which I think is a trap a lot of men fall into. If I just learn more, if I just learn more, my life's going to change. And it's often not the case. It was when I got into therapy with a body based therapist. And as I got into men's groups, into men's work, and actually started spending time with other men, particularly some older men who I was exposed to, that I think we chatted about on our first talk was revelatory for me because it was the first time I was in the room with these men in, in my body. I felt, oh, that's what I want to be when I grow up. Like not, not an occupation, but that's how I want to be. Seeing how these other men held themselves, literally how they breathed, how they spoke, how they dealt with conflict, how they shared about their lives. I got exposed to something I had never really experienced before and I got hooked. And my growth trajectory really just kind of slingshotted from there. And I've done just about everything under the sun and it's all useful. And the thing I keep coming back to is the power of men's groups and community. That even compared to When I started 20 years ago, I think it's just becoming even more and more important the way culture and society are kind of shaping up and in a lot of ways isolating men in particular, I think men are particularly vulnerable to isolation and loneliness in a way a lot of women aren't there that, you know, call this a generalization, but they tend to be more relationally wired and have connections going with multiple friends and text threads. Men, if we're not conscious about it, you know, I worked with a lot of guys during COVID If they weren't on a call with me or my community, that was it. They didn't have anyone to talk to, to chat with. It's not all men, but it's a shockingly high number of men that's only going up every year right now. And so it was in this journey of finding community, finding transformation, literally learning how to be in my body and identify what I was feeling and being able to express that. And then just getting so pumped about men's groups that I was doing it for so long, it just kind of came this natural evolution to guys would start asking me, you know, about my group and what I'm in. And eventually I was like, oh, well, maybe I'll start offering this to other men because it really helped me. And now it really is part of my, you know, purpose and mission that I think every man should be in a men's group. And I'm fairly convinced that if that was the case, a lot of the stuff that's really troubling in the world would right now wouldn't magically go away, but could improve considerably.

Host: Fascinating. Which is why I'm excited about this conversation. I have so many questions already. Let me. Let me try to. Let me try to rewind and unpack a little bit of what you shared there, because I think I've shared this with you when we had our little chat. But if not, let me just kind of even preface this for the people that are listening to us today. You mentioned about being in the Midwest. Actually, I'm in the Midwest also. Right. So that is a connection right off the bat. Number two is that my relationship with my father was very interesting. Wasn't bad. So that's where you said that. Right? You said that it wasn't. It wasn't bad. He wasn't abusive. He was probably more. I don't even know how to almost not verbally abusive. He didn't necessarily even yell at me. He was just emotionally abusive, I guess. Right. He wasn't connected. He was tough for me to connect with my father. But what is. I've discovered. I'm 50 now, as I mentioned. I've got a son that's 26, about to be 27, and I have a grandson now, too. So I'm trying to break these evolutionary binds of, yeah, the connection with men. But what I noticed, as I look back on it now is my. My father with his father was even worse of a relationship than it was for me and my father. My son and I, unfortunately, and I'm going to be completely transparent, isn't as great as I would like it to be. And I have a feeling it has to do with a lot of it, with my past as I'm trying to figure things out on my own versus seeking out outside help for that. I'm trying to break that bound or that bind. Right. For me and my son, but then also for him now he has a son. Anyways. The question I have then is how much is that passed on generationally, as you know, through your discovery phase? Is that a lot. Does that have a lot to do with it?

Jason Lange: Totally massively impacted by the generational. Generationally, in terms of culture. And then I don't know if you've heard of this term, but there's a lot of research now for this idea of epigenetics. So there's, you know, there's. Most people have heard of our DNA, right? You get half from your mom, half from your dad, and then boom, that's your genetic code. Right. But there's this whole other layer they've discovered of what's on the outside of our DNA are a bunch of on off switches, basically. And those on off switches are impacted by our environment. And they're away from. To translate what's happening in our environment and kind of pass it on to the next generation. So they've done this research. I believe it was mice because mice are fairly similar to us genetically, but they reproduce quite fast. So you can have a couple generations, I think, within a year. It's pretty wild. But they did, if I'm remembering it exactly right, it was something like they would expose a mouse to. To a certain smell and then they would, you know, shock them a little bit, so they would start to associate that smell with a negative response. They found the mice two generations later, if they got exposed to that smell, they would go into the fight or flight. So their epigenetics remembered. And there's all kinds of reasons this is useful, right. For. For how we deal with life. But point being, we are transmitted all kinds of stuff from our parents. And, you know, it always blows my mind to, you know, when you really feel into this, of particularly, you know, particularly in our feminine line, in our mother matriarchal line, because. Right. The. The way babies are born, when a female embryo develops, her eggs develop pretty much right away. And so you as an egg were in your mother while she was in your grandmother's uterus. So you were actually. That's kind of the main chain, they feel. So the state of your grandmother's nervous system epigenetically expressed into your mother, which expressed into you, which always blows my mind that you were actually thinking about that right now. Yeah. In your grandmother's womb. Right. It's like, it's so wild. So. So that's kind of the, the physiological layer. And then there's cultural stuff. Right. Just of what emotions were allowed in our house, how did we deal with them, what religion, what culture, all these things we were raised in that impact us as well. And as men, particularly, you know, here in the west, we have all been raised in a certain cultural context. You know, you and I are in the States here, so I'm going to speak towards that of one. This idea we'll talk about of the man box like this checklist, literally a checklist that you have to mark off to be considered a man. And if you don't check those boxes, you're not a man. And, you know, I think there's some. A certain energy to the mythos of America as well. The rugged, individual, lone cowboy. These things kind of merge with the man box. And so a lot of men, you know, from a young age, particularly here in the States, we are taught and rewarded, literally rewarded for being out of our bodies, for disconnecting from our bodies. So this idea of, stop crying, don't be vulnerable, don't show weakness, always be tough, pick yourself up by the bootstraps. You know, there's some positive qualities to all these things, but there's also some legitimate limitations that all of us men are raised in this cultural context of never show weakness to another man, don't be vulnerable, right? These are big messages we get from a pretty young age. A lot of us, you know, and everybody's family is a little different, but there's a cultural context around it. And then as we look at the jobs that, you know, mentored tend to be pushed or gravitate towards in our culture as well. They are ones that are particularly physically dangerous. Men occupy most of the most physically dangerous jobs, whether that's toxic jobs with chemicals, physically dangerous jobs in manufacturing. You know, it's changing a lot now, but the military and even extreme athletic sports, you know, we all love football, but the research is pretty clear. Like, it causes brain damage. Like, men literally sacrifice their bodies, and we're kind of expect. It's expected, right? And, you know, there's all kinds of biological reasons that, you know, orient some of that. But point being, we are raised in a culture in context where we're often rewarded for disconnecting from our bodies. Just work harder, push harder, man. Toughen up, get up, brush it off, right? And like I said, there's a positive trait to that. But the challenge with that is disconnecting from our bodies also disconnects us from our hearts. So in the work I do, Randy, emotions start as actual physical sensations in our body. They're a biochemical response, right, that's meant to have us react in our environment. But when we're disconnected from our bodies, we become disconnected from our emotions. And we tend to then gravitate up here into this mental space that so many men get trapped in and hang out in. Right. Stuck up in their heads. Most people in relationship, that's some of the main feedback men will get is like, you're Always up in your head. I can feel you in your head. And it's not that embodied presence that I'm here, I'm connected to myself, I'm connected to my body, I'm connected to my feelings and I. All of this then gets passed down, including, you know, and I'll take a pause here because we are not taught to be in our bodies or to be with our emotions when they are really strong and come through. Most men have no idea what to do with them and are in fact terrified of their feelings. And so we will turn to all kinds of strategies to eject and get away from them. So that could be, you know, probably. I don't know if it's the most popular anymore. I was just reading some stats, it's about to change. But traditionally alcohol, marijuana is now second and close. For some guys it's sex, porn, masturbation, food, social media. You know, there's all kinds of ways we, we numb out. But one of the reasons I think a lot of men get trapped in that is because we don't know what to do with the feelings in our body because nobody taught us to be in it and identify them and express them. And that gets passed down for generations. You know, I was just working with a guy yesterday. We were doing some pretty deep work and it became very clear to me that he had never experienced co regulation with another human being. So the process of another person sitting down, making eye contact with him, breathing with him and just being fully present, this thing our nervous systems desperately need in one of the things we'll talk about that I argue is one of probably the most important thing parents can pass along to their kids. He had never experienced it because his parents had never experienced it. Their parents had likely never experienced it or something. You know, maybe generations back it did, but then something went awry. So point being, this stuff really, I feel like I just went on a huge tour there for you. But yes, it absolutely gets passed down. And it is so crucial that men like you are having this awareness. This is, I think such a powerful point of responsibility we can take as men is, you know what I'm. That's going to stop in my lineage. Like I can take responsibility to start shifting that you won't be able to completely fix it. There's always going to be something. But like you intuited, you know, it's in the name of my organization. Evolutionary men. Every generation we can becoming a little bit more whole, a little bit more healthy, rounding the edges of some of those problems a Little bit more. And then our children get to raise. Get to be raised with a different set of problems that are sometimes more subtle. Right. And people think like, oh, you know, they're so soft. And I'm like, the goal in the world I want to create is that everybody gets to experience soft problems. Right. More subtle problems. To me, that's a sign of a very successful society and world that we even have the resources to consider our internal life and what's going on, like, in our generation, you know, particularly those of us lucky enough to be in the States, we have that. And I think that comes with some responsibility to then do something about it.

Host: So let me just say don't ever feel like you're running on, because I appreciate the wisdom that you're sharing. And so please continue. When you. When you have a thought, let it run. I appreciate that. I just want to put that out there real quick. Absolutely. So the thoughts that are going through my mind. You mentioned the word awareness. That was the word that was going off in my mind as you were speaking, that. Because that's what I'm trying to do for myself, as you mentioned, I'm. I'm actively trying to break the lineage in my. In the Wilson men, period. That's.

Jason Lange: Yeah.

Host: I can't say I'm perfect at it because my son will attest I'm not. But I'm trying and I'm actively trying. I'm looking forward to him listening to this, and then maybe we can have some more dialogue about it. Right. But the question that I have is the awareness piece you mentioned about emotions. And you have a physical response to those emotions that if you're not aware of them, it's hard to even know what to even do with them. So it's like your temperature will rise your can even feel your blood pressure. You know what I mean? Just different things. Those are the experiences that I've had a little bit of anxiety, maybe, as far as, like, maybe a faster heartbeat. Talk about the awareness piece. Talk about how important that is, because that's been important for me to be able to have a situation where I become triggered or I become emotional. But then when I become aware of that moment, I'm able to respond differently based on that awareness piece. I would just love for you to kind of dig a little bit deeper into that, if you would.

Jason Lange: 100%. And so the first place I'll start is with the importance of this word, you know, used in my intro of embodiment. So the process of being in our bodies and Connecting to them. Again, we are not taught as men to do that from a young age. And for many men, depending on their context as well, particularly in those kind of middle school years, you know, you. You share a feeling. You get bullied for it, you get mocked for it. So, you know, that's another layer we learn to kind of batten down the hatches. But this process that takes, it's an actual practice, right? So just, like, we go into the gym to work out, and we're like, okay, I got to work out my bicep today. You know, all the research shows that if you actually focus on feeling the bicep contracting, doing the exact same exercise, you bring your awareness to it, the muscle grows faster. Right. If you're just on your phone, it's not as effective, but it's a process where we can train ourselves to actually feel what's happening in our body. Right. And so embodiment work is a lot of that. It's the practice of doing often intense things in our body and learning to stay connected from it and not eject. And so men's work, actually, particularly in a lot of indigenous societies, has a long history of, you know, part of the road from becoming a boy to a man is doing uncomfortable things in your body and learning to stay present. Right. I think there's the one tribe in South America where, you know, you get covered in, like, ants, and you just have to stay present while your whole body is crawling with ants. Right. It's a practice to learn to stay connected in my body. Right now, super popular. Cold plunges are beautiful cold showers. Okay. This intense outer stimulation comes in. Can I stay grounded, connected in my body? So embodiment is the practice of just learning to feel and stay connected to our body. Okay. Yeah. I'm starting to feel a little bit of heat or tension in my shoulders. Ooh, my belly just kind of dropped right there. This is important stuff that we're often just not conscious of as men. And whether it's in therapy, coaching, or men's groups are the kind of. The main places I see men really thriving and learning this. How we learn that is often being guided by someone who can really slow us down, really slow us down to start to notice. You know, I kind of call it like bullet time. Remember the old Matrix movie when things would really slow down? That's men's group. And this kind of work can often be that where we get to slow down and actually see the subtlety of these reactions we're having. And as we do that this awareness starts to form. Oh yeah. When my shoulders do that, I'm often feeling X. Or when I get that flush feeling, it's often associated with why. And we train in these so called safe environments. So then that awareness that neurology is online in the intense moments in our life. Oh, wow. I can feel that part of me, that thing I do when I get angry. It's happening right now. Oh, right now I'm angry. Right. Like simple but profound shift for men in particular when we can, at the, you know, at the very minimal, just name when we're feeling reactive. My nervous system is feeling reactive right now to all the way up to the subtleties of being able to name the actual experiences or emotions and this process, Randy, they call interoception. So it's this, the ability to know what's happening inside your body, which includes your emotions and name it. And it's a capacity that most men are drastically underdeveloped in, but has so many positives when you learn it. And so we train to get more in our bodies. We get feedback, particularly in a men's group where people, right, that what I love about the relational experience of a men's group, right. Is you know, we can all basically probably have examples of this. We can almost instantaneously see someone else's reactivity, even when they can. Right. Well, you seem really upset right now, right. And they're like, what do you mean? And you're like, you know, I could tell. So relationally in a group, other men can start reflecting to us how they're experiencing us. And again, what it helps to do is connect the state of our body in the moment with the awareness of what's happening. So when another man says, yeah, you know, I noticed you said you were really mad about that, but you're actually smiling and laughing a little bit. What's that about? And that, that's when I get, you know, I see so many men, particularly kind of nice guys, you know, they laugh about something that's really serious or that they're actually genuinely upset about because of, you know, often stuff they learned in their family. And suddenly other men can reflect it and they're like, wow, I do that. And there's this deepening awareness then. And then the last piece. So we have the embodiment, the kind of relational piece. I would say last piece is, you know, just meditation in general. So the real practice of meditation is to become aware of what's happening. And the, the kind of deeper theory behind this is called, you know, subject Object relations. So how the brain kind of works developmentally. And you probably can see it in your kids. You know, they can actually run experiments and, like, they can map it down to, like, the month it happens. You know, I think it's like maybe two years old if I had a piece of paper, and on one side, you know, was an apple, and on this side was an orange. And I show the kid, hey, what do you see? An orange. And then I flip it over and I'm like, what is Daddy seeing? They'll say, apple, because they can't yet take the perspective of what I'm seeing. What happens over time is our brain can take larger and larger perspectives. So things that were once the subject of our awareness can become objects of our awareness. So we can start to see the thing. And, you know, in our culture, we have all kinds of, kind of narrative explanations for this, of the red pill, the matrix, waking up. Suddenly you see a reality you couldn't see before. Or, you know, very simple. The fish becoming aware of the water it's swimming in. You know, if you. If all you've ever known is the water, you're not aware you're in it. And then suddenly someone pulls you out and you're like, whoa, I was in water. Because now the water is an object of your awareness. So meditative practice is that practice of starting to see the objects of our mind, our inner critic, stories, patterns, emotions to an extent. And we can practice that as well. And when you kind of have all three going, this awareness becomes more. Much more powerful. And then the key, like you said, is once we're aware of becomes conscious. And even if we do the exact same thing, we now have choice. And that's the big, big difference. And, you know, I work with men a lot about relationships, and my wife works with women. And I can tell you, almost every woman I've ever talked to, the. The men they feel the least safe around are the men who aren't aware of what they're feeling in their body. So a woman's like, you see, you seem pretty angry. And he's like, no, I'm not. Those are the men that red alert for a lot of women, because they're like, wow, if he's not even aware of what he's feeling, how can I trust him? Because what if he just explodes? But the man who's like, I'm furious. My blood is boiling. Part of me wants to punch a wall right now. That's actually 200% safer, because that's a man who's aware of what's happening inside of himself. And what I found in this work is the more we become aware in that sense as men, more connected to our body, aware of what's happening in it, the safer a presence we become and the more people trust us and the more they want to be around us. It's quite profound.

Host: It's almost like you said, it's opposite of what we've been taught to believe as children. As a young man, I can just grow up as you. You've described those things. It's like. Yes, I mean how we've been taught to be. How we've been taught to. Like you said, just. It's interesting how it's almost completely opposite. I am really 100 self taught. I've kind of discovered this types of things on my own and I'm trying to actively do things for myself. To say that I've. I've changed so much in a relatively short period of time based on the work that I've done. But I appreciate this conversation as well because it's obviously it's digging in even deeper into some of those things that I've worked on for myself. I would love for you to go into the. The distraction piece. You mentioned that guy's will medicate basically. Right. Whether it's drugs and alcohol, it can even be sex. It can be just like they're like I said, they check out from the emotion but they do it through medications in the distractions. Right. I would love to go into. Maybe there's a gentleman listening to us today or even, you know, if ladies are listening to this. This is just as important for the ladies to be hearing this about their men as well. Maybe they have someone that is experiencing these types of. I don't know if symptoms is the right word. Maybe you can correct me if that's not correct. But I think of them as a symptom of a deeper issue with these emotional triggers things going on within them. Anyways, talk about that, that distraction piece and how important it is to number one recognize it. But then what can we do with it?

Jason Lange: Yeah, this is such a huge topic and it's part of my journey. I was addicted to porn in my 20s and was a huge part of how I just really regulated myself. And I think that's a really important word to name here that you know, there's again mounds of research that are amassing around. A lot of addictions are regulation problems. So like I was addicted to porn. My problem wasn't actually porn. My problem porn was an attempt to solve the fact that my nervous system was dysregulated and it felt really uncomfortable and I wanted to feel something else. So a lot of men, you know, just want to feel something else than what they're feeling because they don't know what to do with it. Many men I work with, you know, because of how they were raised, they're afraid if they ever do feel grief or anger, that it will overwhelm them, right. That they might become the raging version of their father they saw when they were young. Or the grief may just take them so deep that they'll never recover and that fear will then also have them avoid it. Right. And then for a lot of guys, it was just, you know, showing any motion, right. Was something that was often weaponized against them. So there's just a protective layer. And then a third piece I'll kind of name here which connects to this is that, you know, I use these terms lightly and you don't have to use these exact terms, but in the work I do, you know, you can call it masculine and feminine energy. You can call it. Some people call it alpha and omega, yin and yang go and flow, structure and content. You know, there's so many different ways, but there's this inherent polarity in the universe where there's. There's that which is watching and there's this, that which is experiencing, right. It's kind of the, the two and we all have both inside of us. So even as I'm a pretty masculine oriented dude and I have a huge feminine side to me, we all do and vice versa. But point of that being is the masculine part of all of us wants to feel peace, empty, no tension, like literally wants to feel free. And so a lot of men also unconsciously don't understand that. And so they drive to that through more destructive means. So when you think about particularly alcohol, men will literally drink themselves to oblivion. And the piece there is, I don't have to feel anything. I'm just gone. Don't have to feel my body, don't have to feel the stress of life. I just get to be free for this period of time. So all those things interact in that we're just, you know, and this isn't even just men. Like, you know, the way our educational system is set up is nobody's, you know, maybe a little bit changing now, but certainly our generations, nobody taught us about emotions or how to handle them or what they were feeling or to deal with the energy in our body. Again, another place that men kind of particularly, I think get hit hard is we often have a little bit more kinetic energy in our bodies. When we're boys, we need to be moving our bodies and we think about the school system, it's sit still and don't move.

Host: That's exactly what I came to sit still. Sit still and don't, don't, don't touch anybody. Just. Yeah.

Jason Lange: And the, you know that when you really feel into that, what it's teaching boys is ignore the impulses in your body. They're wrong. Override them. Take your mind, come in and override that. You need to be still, don't move. And then. Yeah, so we just get hit with this all kinds as men. But this stuff is coming at us and then we don't know what to do with it. So we'll turn to any substance we can or activity that will change our state. So we're feeling something in our body and when we do this other thing, we feel something else. The problem with most of these techniques is they're just temporary relief. They never address the underlying issue or emotionality. And there's so many men I've worked with that, you know, particularly in their older years, there are things that they have been avoiding or just not had the capacity to feel for decades, legitimately. Decades. When you consider how much energy it takes to avoid or not feel, it does not surprise me at all that one of the central things men tend to battle as they get older is fatigue, energy management. And for many men, a sense of kind of depression. Right. Just like more men are on antidepressants now than ever before. And I think these things are all related. They're all, all related. And so the willingness to start to turn towards our emotions and what we're feeling in our body and to learn the tools and get into the environments where we can safely process and be with that is an utter game changer in terms of what we can take responsibility to do as men. And what I would argue is one of, you know, as a grandfather and father and as a father myself, one of the most important things we can do for our kids is getting more connected to ourselves. It's the great, it's the wild thing. So we do our work and it starts to impact our family system. Because when we're relating to ourself differently, suddenly we're relating to the people in our family differently. And just the way I stepped into that first men's group and got a transmission from men of wow, how they feel in their body right now feels really good. I feel better in my body being around that man right now. And so as men, that's one of the great gifts we can give our families, is to do our work as we say and learn to regulate our nervous systems and get grounded and feel deeply when we need to feel and not be overwhelmed by it, not collapse, not run away from it or numb, but learn how to be with these things. And what a gift to our children when they start to see us doing that and learn, oh, wow, this is something I can do because I see, I see dad doing it or I see mom doing it. So these things really all start to connect. But for, for, for many men who feel stuck in the world, if you're stuck and there's something you keep doing over and over that you don't want to be, right, some kind of addiction or some kind of self medication strategy, often when you really start to slow it down, you can start to ask yourself, what's underneath that I'm afraid or avoiding feeling right now? And you'll start to notice pretty fast. It's like, ooh, you know, for me, if I was stressed out, not sleeping well, whether it was money or relationship, suddenly I would get nervous and anxious in my body and then the urge to pour, you know, watch porn or self medicate through masturbation would come online. And as I really started to slow that down, I start to see the correlations of, oh, this doesn't just come out of nowhere. It's actually based on experiences I'm having in my life. And so as I better learn to handle those experiences, that whole kind of, as I call it, subroutine doesn't even come online. My body just doesn't go there in the same way.

Host: So the thought that I'm having is that if, if gentlemen or guys are out there listening to us today and they're recognizing maybe even for the very first time that they might be suffering through some of the things that we've been discussing so far today. But you, you've mentioned that your work is working through men's groups. Whether they've heard of that or even know what that even means, I would love for you to kind of just unpack that is know as deep as you can, let us know kind of what that even means. Is it. I'm trying to picture it in my mind, right. And I have a, a little bit of an awareness based on the conversation you and I have had. But let's think of somebody that doesn't, isn't even aware that that's even A thing. But they understand that, yes, I need to do something, but I'm not sure exactly what to do. That's where you come in with the work that you're doing. Can you unpack that a little bit as far as like the men's group and kind of what to expect? Sure. So some of the anxiety that the men might be having when they're even thinking about the potential of looking for something like this.

Jason Lange: Totally. A couple things first come to mind that not all men, but many men I work with actually do get anxiety around the idea of being in a group with other men because either they were bullied or raised in hyper competitive environments. Again, part of this kind of idea, the man box, is a lot of us are trained and sometimes have the experience of other men. Our competition in threats and not allies. So a lot of men have guard us up against sharing about other men. And that's real. So I just want to name that. That's okay. If you're a man out there and you're like, I don't know, I feel a little skittish around that. We can work with that. And then the other thing I just want to outline real quick is this idea of how men tend to relate by default. So there's this concept of triangulation, Randy, which is me, you, and then a third thing. And so you and I bond by having our attention on this third thing, whether that's a sports game, an activity, hunting, fishing, racing. So our connection comes from having our attention on this third thing. What's important about that? And that's fun and there's great. You know, I'm not here to discount that, but that when that's the only thing it can contribute to the sense of isolation a lot of men have. Because what's not happening there is our attention is not actually on each other. And so a simple frame for starting to consider what a men's group is. It's. We're gathering with the intention of having our attention on each other. Hey, what's happening for you right now? What's going on in your life? What's going really well? What's going really bad? What are you scared of? What are you excited about? Right. You can start to shift and literally there's a physical posture shift of we're facing each other. Right. Our attention is on each other, even if it's kind of in a circle like a men's group. And so what we're really doing and you know, just like when we say the word meditation, there's Actually, so many different forms of meditation. Men's groups are the same way that there's different flavors of them. Some are based on, like, goals and accountability. Some are based on support and mutuality and connection. Some are based on embodiment and getting more into our physical bodies and doing practices together. The ones I tend to lead are a little bit of mix of all of those. Um, but the, the kind of most simplified explanation is putting our attention on each other and then slowing each other down. This is. It sounds so simple, but slowing each other down to actually become more connected and present to what we're already feeling in our bodies from our life. That's it. So there's all this stuff happening to us out in the world and. And as men, we tend to just go, go, go, push through it, push through it, push through it. So men's group, we actually slow things down and guide each other deeper into our bodies to feel in what, you know. Some men's groups tend to be more goal oriented and coaching and action and problem solving, and there's a place for that. But the most profound shifts I ever see for men are when we slow down and feel what actually is an impulse to move or take action will often come naturally from that. So it's a very different paradigm for how to exist really of slow down and feel. And then often some kind of deeper truth about, wow, I can't do this anymore. I can't be in this job or in this relationship or whatever this paradigm I'm struggling with or my God, I feel so miserable in my body. I have to make a change. And it's a total game changer for men. Do it. But yeah, just in simple, you know, again, it's. We're going to gather, put our attention on each other and deepen into what we're actually feeling in service of becoming more whole, healed, present effective leaders in our lives to actually create what we want. And you know, a last piece I'll tack on there is men's groups are a great place to kind of get feedback, to even get clear about what we want to need in our lives. So many of us, if we're not careful, will step onto the escalator of life. You're supposed to do this and this and this and this because either our parents told us that, our culture taught us that, or ideas we know, we pursued and, and we won't actually take the time to think about such a central question in men's work that I ask, guys, is what do you want? What do you want? Where is it you're going? I have an episode of my podcast that I kind of summarize this as three questions every man needs to be able to answer independently of his intimate relationship. Who am I, what do I want, and where am I going? Where am I going? Just basically means, how am I going to get there? You know, in a sense, it's shocking how many men never take the time to feel into the outcome they actually want. It's like, oh, I'm supposed to make more money. I'm supposed to do this. Okay. I'm working 80 hours a week for 15 years. I'm making all this money, but I'm actually miserable. I don't have time to be with my kids. My physical health is in the dumps. I have no community. So why am I making this money? Oh, because if I make enough money, eventually I'll be able to retire and have a nice house and spend time with my family and do things I enjoy. Right. It's like the great fallacy. So many men fall prey to of, oh, I'll get to feel X once I've accomplished I'll get to feel Y once I've accomplished X. And the truth is, there's no guarantee to any of that. So a big shift becomes, okay, where are you going? Where do you want to go? Even if it's a sense of direction and men can help tune us up around that, where we can start to have some more agency in our lives and feel more control over, yeah, like, I don't want to do this anymore or I don't want to do that, or I want to go travel or I want to learn this new sport. Simple things that it's so easy to just get swept along into life. And a. Men's groups are really profound place to get clear, what do I want, what do I want? And what do I need in my life to get there?

Host: So I just. In full transparency, you asking that question multiple times, I'm having a. A reaction even within my body right now. Right. I can feel my temperature rising because I struggle with that question daily. Yeah, I've been working on that question for myself, within myself, right through journaling and the things that I do for myself. And I still to this day struggle with coming up with the. With what I feel is the right answer for me based on past programming based. So you. You're nailing so many things that. That I talk about within my podcast. And so, folks, you're probably hearing some. Some repetition, even some. And this wasn't prompted, which is super cool. But as far as the go, go, go do do do. I was brought up in that mentality that I was miserable, I was unhealthy, I wasn't necessarily present. I know I wasn't for my family to the point where it was. I had to make a change period. And like you said, there's no guarantee at the very end. I've lost both of my parents at a very young age for themselves due to cancer and just due to illness. That, that was my wake up call that this whole retirement thing. And though. And the, and the what we've been fed to believe to go, go, go do do do to force your way through to an event that you think that's some mysterious thing out in the future that's going to be this perfect day or perfect life, it may or may not come. And so that's where I, I guess I just wanted to just in full transparency, just everything you just said resonated with me. 100. How do you help folks? Because then you're going to be, you're going to be helping me. How do you help people, men get through to this, allowing themselves to feel what it is they truly want. Because I need that more than anything. Because I want it right? But I just can't. I struggle with that question. Can you help me with that at all?

Jason Lange: Yeah, it's, you know, it's a process. Sometimes it involves one on one. Sometimes it involves in a group of again slowing down, connecting to our body, learning to identify often internalized drives and voices that we kind of got programmed with as kids and learning to feel underneath that. What I often notice with men, Randy, is again, the more embodied we get. So as we get into our bodies, literally as there's life force moving through us, we start to get clearer, right? We start to feel more. And so doing embodiment work, often in a group with other men, like as I say, kind of coming alive inside ourselves, starts to shift, shake the system open and energy starts moving. And then when we're mirroring or matching that with the kind of deep inner work I talk about, of honestly becoming more intimate with our pain, becoming more intimate with the pain we've experienced in our lives. This isn't the case for everyone, but I often see in some of the work I do with men in one of my programs, we really focus on this, a strong correlation between our deepest pain and our deepest purpose. And what I mean by that is as we become intimate with ourselves and honest about the journey we've been through, what's been hard in our lives. What have we had to learn to figure out to live? Like, honestly, there's almost a natural developing passion for helping other people along that path. Right. And this is where, you know, a lot of coaches that. It's kind of how they work. Of people want to work with a coach who's made the transformation they've made, right? Because they're like, you get it, you did it. And the coach can intimately guide the person because they're like, here's kind of where I went. So I often see in my own journey. Right. Like I said, being raised in a place of a lot of disconnection, emotionally and physically, I love creating spaces where men get to connect and feel like they belong. It's just like, I could do that all day long. It's just a joy for me. I love helping men get a handle on dating and relationships and feeling more empowered to go out there and create the experiences they want to have with men or women, you know, whatever orientation they are. That was a huge struggle for me. I spent a lot of money and a lot of time to figure that out. So I want to make it easier for other men to figure that out. It's a natural thing for me. So as we become more intimate with our pain, some purpose often starts to form. And, you know, purpose is such a huge thing for the masculine inside of all of us, and particularly men. And it's way more complex and nuanced than we often think. You know, the dream fantasy is always, oh, my day job, my job that pays the bills is going to be aligned with my deepest purpose. And it can happen. It really can. But it's not the case with everyone. You know, I have many men I work with that, when they really get down to it, their deepest purpose is to raise their children well. Right. They're like, yeah, you know, like, I'm aware of all this stuff in my family, and I feel like that's the thing that I want to do. So their work, their job starts to. What's. What's so important about knowing this is they start to choose work and a job that aligns and fuels that passion. Well, if I'm working 80 hours a week and traveling across the country, that's going to be pretty hard to do. Huh? There's this other job. I can work from home. I make a little bit less money, but, wow, I'm going to actually be able to be present with my kids. I'm going to do that job. Right. Like, this is often the kind of less glamorous work. But when we have our purpose in mind, money just becomes a source of fuel for that. And so in a pretty profound way, it doesn't matter where the money's coming from. Again, it's great when they get to be aligned. Like, you know, that is special. But it's not always the case. I have a lot of men who are like, yeah, I have a sweet corporate job where I clock in at 9 and I clock out at 5, and it pays the bill and I get to go on retreats, take my kids on vacations. It's fantastic. Like, that's a great source of fuel for the life I want to build right now. And I spend a lot of time with men around this because there, I think it's, it's. It's significant enough that when we don't feel connected to a sense of direction and meaning and purpose in our life or service is another way of thinking of it, we often experience it as depression. As men, Like, I just. I don't know where I'm going. I don't know what I'm doing. Like, we feel depressed. We don't feel in control when we are connected to something. And the way I work with men is it's not about the outcome, but it's about the feeling of being on a path. Oh, I'm. I'm headed that way. And as I walk that way, there's going to be zigs, there's going to be zags, there's going to be backtracks, but I can feel I'm moving in that direction. When we at least have that sense, we are so much more able to handle life and like, be, be equipped for it. Because there's this feeling of moving towards something which, which again, not always often has roots in our pain because we've experienced something firsthand that we intimately get that other people might be suffering in. And so there's often a natural impulse to reduce suffering. Right? That's, I think, a pretty common human thing of, we see suffering and we want to reduce it. And so men's purpose. And what do I want? I know it's a paradox, but I'll often guide men on, well, let's get more intimate with your pain. Where have you been hurt? What's been challenging in your life? What haven't you felt? And as you start to feel that, it becomes like, wow, yeah, I want to, you know, one of my guys, I want to bring emotional education into the classroom in, like, K through 6, like, because I never had that. And you know, he was a teacher and he saw kids suffering in a lot of ways or, you know, a guy that just wanted to, through cooking, connect people. Just being able to make good food that brings people together in community. There's so many different ways that can manifest right from starting a restaurant to literally just hosting a dinner party. It's the beautiful thing when we start to get deeper, connected to our purpose in this sense. So, you know, it takes work. And again, other men in a men's group can often help us sharpen this and get clear about where we're actually spending our time in life and what lights us up. Because the other thing we'll see again relationally is when we start to talk about certain things, we literally light up. There is more energy in our nervous system that we're not always aware of. But other people are like, you know, this is a stem. I use all the time in work I do of when I felt you the most. It's just another person being able to reflect to you. Like when you were talking that I felt you the most when, you know, you're talking about your grandson, you know, would be an example of one of the times I felt you the most. Just like total lit up nervous system and you're like, oh, wow, there's energy for me there. I give, I care about that. Right. And so again, the, the group component allows us to kind of dial in our awareness sometimes in ways we can't do alone.

Host: Love that. Thank you for going there. That was, that was good. I'm going to replay and listen to that often for myself because it's something I'm actively working on. Right. And I. So it's like you talked about my grandson and you're right, he is absolutely right now the light of my life. I am so aware of what's going on in his environment. He's little, he's eight months old. He's not, he can't do much. He can barely crawl at this point. But I'm like, I'm like, I'm so consciously aware of what's going on in his environment that I want to make sure that I'm showing up at the. As the best version of myself for him. And then obviously to have that, you know, replay going down forward throughout his life. I. I'm trying to fast forward years, which I know that's tough to do, but at the same time I'm actively trying to do that. So I appreciate you sharing that. I would love for you to maybe once again. So guys, maybe you're a little bit unaware, unsure if this is something for them. You mentioned a couple of people that you've worked with, kind of the transformation that they've made. I was just curious if you have a, just a transformation or even a story of a person or two that really dove in, right. And really embraced the change with the emotions and the understandings and the teaching that you have to offer and kind of the evolution that they made right from when you first met them to kind of where they are now and assuming that they're thriving and doing so much better in their life. I was just curious if you had a story like that that would be impactful for people at this point in the conversation.

Host: Continuous improvement and growth. Right. It never, ever stops. That's been my experience. And so, yeah, for you to say that, that, that's good because I know that I'm on the right path as I continue to grow for myself, that it, it's going to be challenging. It's going to continue to be challenging. But at the same time, the effort that you put in, the rewards that you'll get to back. Back in the. In the. In return, you can't put a price on it. You can't put, you know, it's, it's so much greater than things or money or stuff.

Jason Lange: It's.

Host: It's all the things you just shared about the transformations you've had with a lot of the people that you're working with. So man, this has been a lot of fun and unfortunately we're going to probably have to start bringing this one in for a close. We'll have to. I'm have to get you back on because I've got so many other questions. Yeah, I've got so many other questions that I want to hit you with. But same time, for the sake of time, this episode, I would love for you to take a moment. I didn't even prep you with this as far as what I wanted to leave this with. But I just feel inspired to have you speak into the men that are listening to us today for some inspiration, for some encouragement to own a lot of the things that we've been talking about today to understand that it's. There's nothing wrong. It's. It. I'm not going to put words on it. I would like for you to kind of take. Hopefully you're catching what I'm passing to you. Just help the guys out there today that are struggling, maybe they do have some addiction, maybe they don't even aren't aware of, of the emotions that are going on in themselves. Try to help some guys out there today, maybe see some things within themselves that I, um, you know, today could be the very first day of the new life that who knows where it's going to take us or take them. Right. Which is super exciting. So I just want to turn that over to you and see what, see what comes to you. Yeah.

Jason Lange: The first thing that comes to mind, Randy, is, you know, related to the story I was talking about one of my clients early on of having never been co regulated and the first thing I want to say to men is this stuff is, is for some of us almost impossible to do alone. Right. We set a goal for ourself. I'm going to show up differently in my relationship or not turn to the porn or the booze and it's really hard to transform alone. We are socially wired creatures. We need each other and we need co regulation. And this thing I've seen more and more with men is when our nervous systems feel safe and co Regulated, which really means the state of feeling relaxed and alert. I can upshift if I need more energy, I can downshift if I need to relax. And I'm here connected to my body. When we're in that state, there is a natural impulse often to create or serve or move. It just, it comes almost effortlessly. And the struggle I see for a lot of men is they, they try to skip that part of knowing what it means to feel good in their nervous system just to feel safe. I mean, you could be feeling grief, you could be feeling depressed. You know, there's a lot you can feel. But when your nervous system is co regulated, it's totally different. And so they'll set goals and try to want to do things, and then they. Those things don't happen. And then what they, what ends up happening is that goal becomes further evidence of I'm no good. You know, the way some men talk to ourselves is pretty violent, pretty disparaging. And, you know, it's one of the things I see in men's group is guys will talk to themselves in ways they would never talk to another man, like, like fully demeaning themselves. And so part of what I want to share here is if you, if you've ever felt stuck or like you can't move towards something, it's quite possible you've just never felt fully safe in your body in the moment, in a co regulated way where, oh, okay, I'm safe, I'm okay. There's nothing I have to do. There's no way I have to be. It's a pretty shocking amount of men experience that. You know, I'm on the tail end, you're a little closer, and our parents maybe even more. I mean, it's shocking, you know, when you think about it barbarically, like the Dr. Spock generation was kids crying, leave them in the crib alone to cry it out. Never in human history was that done. That was just made up by doctors. And there is no evidence, actually lots of contrary evidence, that that is extraordinarily damaging to children and their nervous systems if we're dysregulated. The fastest way to get regulated is to come into presence with someone else who's regulated. They breathe with us, they're just here with us. They make eye contact with us. We start to feel safe. And so for a lot of men, they've just never experienced that. They've never really experienced. I don't have to do anything or be any way right now to be loved and accepted by this person I'm with, I just get to be here, feel whatever I'm feeling. And in fact, when I'm in Community in connection, it's so much more possible to feel some of these intense emotions we are meant to feel and grieve in community. It's how it was done for a very long time. And we're living in this strange blip of time where all that was kind of smashed to smithereens, and we wonder why we're walking around stressed, depressed, anxious, disconnected, isolated. And so coming back into Community, um, although it can be scary when we've never experienced it, it's so transformational. It's just so transformational. You know, connection, genuine connection, I would say, is probably the antidote, one of the most powerful antidotes to everything challenging in a person's life. When we come into connection, we come into connection, which is another way to say that co regulation. Your life can change so much faster than you might even realize. It won't, as I say, it won't necessarily get easier, but it'll get better and you will be more resilient and equipped to handle the turbulences and stresses of lives when you're in connection and community. So that can start with you just reaching out, you know, for. Particularly for men listening right now. Reach out to another man. Hey, you want to get together for 20 or 30 minutes, and I'd love it if we actually just talked about what's happening in our lives. And that can start to transform things really quickly. Or you can hire a coach, get a therapist, come into a men's group, and that'll just accelerate things, often even more.

Host: Love it. Thank you for sharing that with wisdom. Folks, you're going to want to replay this episode over if you're a man, if you're struggling with any portion of your physical world, really, it really stems to your emotional internal world. I firmly believe that I've had to discover that on my own. As I said, I'm working on a lot of that for myself. And this conversation today has been enlightening for me. I can't wait to go back and re listen to it and dive deeper into Jason's teachings as well. So I. With that said, if guys are out there listening to us today, Jason, they're like, okay, I need to figure out how to get find community, find these groups, get closer proximity to Jason and the teachings that he's doing. Where's the best place to even get started? I would love for you to share. You know, where can people find you, your Programs you mentioned several times you've got different. Different port or different things you do. Right. Depending on what the outcome that you're trying to get. Yeah. Please share with people, with everybody listening, you know, where can they get in contact with you?

Jason Lange: Yeah. Thanks, Randy. Best place to do that is to visit me at my website, Evolutionary Men. I'm also Evolutionary men on Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and all the things. But the website's really the best place to find me. And there's contact forum out there. You can on there. You can book a call with me if you just want to talk and explore. Like, hey, what can I do? I do that for free. And then I have all my events listed on there and programs as well. So I do big in person retreat over Labor Day weekend in California, which is pretty profound for a lot of men. I do two shadow work groups a year for men, which are kind of men's groups specifically focused on getting in touch with this emotional content that we've often never felt or has been in the shadow of our lives or our lineage for many years. And those are pretty transformational. And have a retreat and then I have a virtual online program as well for men who want to experience men's groups and really get equipped to deepen their presence to show up and become relational leaders and their families and particularly their intimate relationships. So. And you can always just reach out to me on my website. I'm a huge proponent of helping men find groups, create groups, and doesn't even matter if they're mine or not. I can, you know, if you're like, I'm going to find something local, I can point you towards some things or give you some guidelines for. Yeah, how to just have a conversation with a friend and start things up. Because I, like I said, part of my mission is I think every man should be in a group in a men's group. And I can't lead them all. So I want to help create them and empower other men to do the same. Because that's the only way I think things are going to change in the ways that will just make life a lot better for everyone.

Host: Love it. So, folks, get in contact with, with Jason, go to Evolutionary Men. We'll have all the links in the show notes that he mentioned his podcast. That would be another great way to get in proximity to Jason and the content that he offers. And that's also with the same name, Evolutionary Men. Search for that, any podcast platform. You should be able to find that as well. Since I've been introduced to Jason, I've been binging on his content, and I would. It's. It's great, right? So if any of this story and any of this episode resonated with you, with where you are, with your growth and where you're trying to get to in your own life, I highly recommend you do that as well. So reach out, see if you can't get connection with the. The men's groups. You mentioned a few options that are going on even this year, 20, 24 and beyond. So just. Jason, I want to express a ton of gratitude, man, for your time, for your energy, for everything you shared with us. This has been so much fun. I just. I look forward to possibly getting you back on if you're willing to do that. And maybe we can go even a little bit deeper and help folks as we continue on in this journey. Right, of just discovery, figuring out how to navigate these challenges that we're dealing with that we might not even be aware, which is kind of what we talked about in the beginning, where to even begin. And I just hope this conversation today will be helpful for some of those folks as we move forward. So just thanks so much for joining us today here today.

Jason Lange: Yeah, such a pleasure, Randy. I'll be back anytime, man. And thanks for doing what you do and helping get the word out there.

Host: Fantastic, folks. Go out there, have a fantastic day. Focus on being great. As you hear in my intro, I talk, I call it winning within. You. You've got to go within in order to win without meaning in your outside exterior, 3D world. As I've mentioned several times in this episode, and you'll hear me talk about in other episodes, that's been my cheat code to any success that I've had in my life is as I focused on my internal world, my exterior world seems to be getting better and better and better. And I still have so much work to do that I'm trying to break that lineage with my son and that then obviously with my grandson. And hopefully this episode today will help you in your journey of gaining some of that awareness, gaining some of that wisdom for yourself. So as we bring this in for a close, have a fantastic day. I look forward to bringing back Jason in the next episode, potentially in the future. But then obviously, the next guest to you again very soon. I appreciate your time. Have a fantastic day. Until the next time. We'll talk soon. Bye now.