All right, so I had a great conversation on the Learn or Be Learned podcast recently that I want to share with you. We covered a lot of ground, but a few key themes really stood out.
First, we dove deep into the difference between isolation and loneliness. You can be totally alone and feel connected to your community, to the natural world, to something larger than yourself. But what so many men are experiencing right now is actual loneliness, surrounded by people all day and still feeling fundamentally alone. That existential grief is real, and it's catching up with us in our bodies.
We also talked about why somatic work, body-based healing, is so crucial for men. I shared the story of one of my first deep men's group experiences, how within five minutes of dropping into my body I was on my back sobbing, this wounded little boy part of me coming to the surface that I had no idea was there. Years of therapy hadn't touched it, but suddenly I made contact with this part of my nervous system that had been running the show in all my interactions with women. That shift from understanding something mentally to actually feeling it in your body, that's where real transformation happens.
And we talked about community, rejecting this myth of the lone wolf that we're fed as men. Life doesn't get easier in community, but it gets a lot better. There's a resiliency that comes when you're not carrying everything alone, when you have men you can be real with, vulnerable with, and still feel strong.
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Host: Wow.
Jason Lange: There is so much information and energy stored in our bodies and our tissues that, whether we're conscious of it or not, often mandate our behavior. I sometimes say, like, there's a difference between isolation and loneliness. So, like, right. Isolation means we can literally be by ourselves but feel connected to our community, to the world around us. I think what a lot of people are feeling now is actual loneliness. So I'm around people all day, but I feel alone. Right. And that's like an existential grief and sadness that I think is often true.
Host: For people in Always not guaranteed tomorrow. And the only thing you can truly embrace is. Is the now. Hey, friends, you're tuned in to the Learn or Be Learned podcast, a show where wisdom meets curiosity in order to discover the human experience. I'm your host, Shiva D. And remember, you either learn from or you're learned from. Now let's get back to the show. All right, welcome back, friends, to another great episode here on Learn or Be Learned. Today's guest is Jason Lange, and he is interested in men's health, mental health, and just discussing about, you know, mindset today's day and age, and how to, you know, better yourself, better your mind, and, you know, overcome this sense of loneliness and things of that nature. So, Jason, thank you for being here. I appreciate it.
Jason Lange: Yeah, I'm stoked to be here. Thanks for having me.
Host: Yeah, no problem. And you, before we dive right in, I think it would be good for the audience to kind of get a background of what's been going on and how you got here. So before we do that, I think if you don't mind, that'd be great.
Jason Lange: Yeah, absolutely. So my. My journey and the work I now offer in the world are deeply entwined in that. It really all sprang from my own path of, you know, how to grow and heal and try to become the most whole present, you know, vital and alive, connected version of myself. I could. And, you know, I grew up with a lot of privilege here in the States and, you know, kind of lower middle class in the Midwest. White man in had most of my basic needs met growing up, but my family did not have any real skill or sense of interiority. So, like, emotional connection or presence with each other. It wasn't that it was unloving. It was just not something that my family knew how to do. And in particular, I didn't have a very strong connection with my mother growing up. And, you know, lo and behold, as a kid, you just deal with it and then became a teenager and hormones start changing and start Getting interested in women and start to have this experience of, wow, I'm really uncomfortable around women. Like, my body gets anxious, I don't know how to talk, I don't feel comfortable. And that pain really kind of took me on a journey of, okay, there's got to be a better way. Whatever I'm feeling doesn't feel very good. I don't actually feel good in my body. And that eventually got me into personal growth and transformation and studying consciousness, which all really culminated when I, I first started experiencing men's work in men's groups in my mid-20s and embodiment work, in a sense, somatic work. And things really started to shift for me. And that began, you know, a 20 year journey I'm still on today, of growing and trying to change, but in the process of that fell so in love with the work that other men started to ask me, you know, about some of the stuff I was doing in that kind of pivoted naturally into, wow, there's a lot of men in pain these days that don't know what steps to take to, to just be more fulfilled, frankly, and to feel alive. And so my work started pivoting more and more towards supporting other men, which is mostly what I do these days.
Host: Right. You know, a few things here. I strongly agree that, you know, after basic necessities are met, emotional connection and connectivity, so important. And unfortunately, oftentimes it's not even the fault of the people before you, parents, grandparents, it's just generationally passed to the point where, yeah, someone has to break it. Right. Which is why I found it so interesting when you said, you mentioned talking about consciousness, which is essentially just a state of awareness. Right. Becoming aware, really everything that's been going on. So, you know, I love that, I love that you said that this is still a journey because partially, you know, this show, we talk about the human experience and everything and that partially is the human experiences. It's just a never ending journey. There's no really no destination. It's really just a dance of learning, uncovering more and more. Right. So I love that. Exactly. Yeah. And you know, before we dive right into the, you know, men's mental health and stuff, because I know that's today that's really important. I'd love to take, you know, the foundational blocks of that about how you learn more about consciousness, becoming aware of yourself and, you know, your, you know, feelings when you were around women and you know, social settings, maybe even public speaking, things of that nature. Right. Getting out of your comfort zone. What was that like?
Host: You know, I had a friend, I was chatting with a friend the other day and she said, this world isn't for the faint of heart. And you might think, oh, wow, back in those day when people were hunter and gatherers, life must have been so tough. It's difficult, but. But, you know, I would argue that it's all difficult. I mean, it's just different challenges right today. I mean, if you gave the hunter and gatherers unlimited sugar and Hershey chocolates, like, of course they would probably succumb to their own, you know, addictions too. So today it's interesting because we face so many easy avenues to addiction escapism channels to avoid our, you know, subconsciously developed, you know, things that we've kind of suppressed. And I just find that so fascinating when you're chatting about the idea of subconscious to conscious release via the body, right. And how the body stores things of that nature, especially trauma problems. Even like, for example, if you go through a stressful event, sometimes your body will tense up. And I'd be even locked in that position for so long that you forget that you're so tensed all the time that you just slowly become a different person because of this lack of conscious awareness of it, which I find so interesting. But all this is to lead me to ask, you know, maybe some people don't have access to bodywork or somebody that can help them with the shadow work, or maybe they feel uncomfortable or nervous to go in a group or can't afford it. What are some of these solutions or suggestions do you have for people to do what you got to experience or maybe bring about more awareness?
Jason Lange: Yeah, well, it takes. Takes an intention and a desire, you know, in a sense of like, okay, yeah, I wanna. I wanna look at the parts of me that I'm not aware of or have been neglecting or dissociated from in. I mean, maybe the. The root of it in so many ways is with all those distractions and medications we're offered these days, oftentimes our first impulse is to get away from feeling in kind of the, you know, if there was a golden rule, so to speak, of this work I found is the most powerful path of transformation is to always turn towards our actual felt body experience. Whether, whether that's grief or anger or sadness, disgust or self loathing, these different things that come up in our nervous system. And then you're like, you're right for whatever reason. Sometimes it's cultural programming, family, just capacity. We, we don't have the capacity to fully be with it in the moment, so we have to like stop it and hold it. And then that stuff stores up in our body. Like there's more and more research coming out in particular, right? That the fascia, the kind of thing that connects all of our tissues, that's where a lot of this tension gets stored. You know, I work pretty closely with a doctor of Chinese medicine and you know, he started doing some of this work with me, shadow work, because what he found was he was helping patients with autoimmune disorders and all kinds of bodily problems. But it, it wasn't really shifting them because they weren't getting to the material underneath. And this stuff particularly, I would argue for us men, as we hit mid-30s on, it catches up to us, our bodies, like it really manifests in our bodies as chronic illnesses or pains or all kinds of different things.
Host: And so when they say someone's hard shelled, it's almost as if it's true.
Jason Lange: Yeah, no, totally. Yeah. And you know, we, we learn to do all that for all kinds of reasons culturally that we can, you know, kind of peel apart later. But it's true. We got to like, you know, that first experience I had on the floor crying, you know, the, the felt body experience was my heart actually cracked open. I was like, whoa, I'm having access to something in my body mind that was sealed off to protect me for so long. But so the, the turning towards emotions is really big as it's just.
Host: In.
Jason Lange: A sense, relentlessly practicing to get into our bodies. Right. Whether that's working out different types of somatic meditations, I mean, you can, whatever it is, when we're in our bodies, we tend to feel more and so different types of breath work. There's so much available to us these days that we have access to. That's the cool thing about right now, right, is you can go on YouTube, I agree. Literally have access to more, more knowledge than the most wealthy learned person, you know, 500 years ago. Like, it's all, it's all there and, and across cultures, right. Like the global knowledge pile is all accessible to us. So that's really key is getting into Your body turning towards feelings and then, you know, over time, yeah, building some kind of community where that is a shared destination, so to speak. Because we are just socially wired creatures. We are meant to grow and thrive and grieve and feel in community. It's, you know, we're just kind of coming out of what I think is going to be this really interesting kind of barbaric blip in time where, you know, here in the west at least modernization, industrialization allowed this level of.
Host: Like.
Jason Lange: Individualism and agency that had never really existed before. Like, you know, to survive for most of human history, you had to be connected to people in relating to them. And these days, you know, part of again, what's causing a lot of issues with men is you don't can order everything online, connect online. And so many men I know are deeply isolated, so they don't have other nervous systems, other people to co regulate with. And that has a pretty big significant impact on us. And you know, we're, I think that the, we're like at a threshold moment where we're turning the tides of that. But you know, like when I was growing up, my parents were raised in the like Dr. Spock generation of like, the prevailing wisdom was, oh, your baby's crying, leave it in the crib and let it cry itself out. And that's going to build resiliency. And that is never how it was done before. Right. Even when you just think of how infants were cared for in most human history, families lived together. There was tribal connections. The baby was always being held by someone. So if it wasn't mom and dad, it was auntie or uncle or cousin or friend or family or whoever. And there was a level of connection there that the whole kind of nuclear family bullshit that was invented in the 50s, like decimated. And suddenly it's like, no, mom needs to take a shower, so baby, you're going to sit alone and not be held. And I think we're just reckoning, you know, this is just big conjecture on my part, but we're reckoning culturally with this massive shift that happened in that sense. And then we're all growing up into adults wondering why, why am I so anxious all the time and I don't feel good and connected and relaxed in my body? Some of that's there. All the intense stimulation we're getting is there. So maybe a long winded answer to your question, but yeah, turn towards your feelings, get into your body and try to develop community where that's a priority.
Host: I'd also, I'd Also say that being comfortable in loneliness can also be a strength as well. Do you agree?
Jason Lange: Yeah, I think there's a. I sometimes say, like, there's a difference between isolation and loneliness. So, like. Right. Isolation means we can literally be by ourselves but feel connected.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: To our community, to the world around us. I think what a lot of people are feeling now is actual loneliness. So I'm around people all day, but I feel alone. Right. And that's like an existential grief and sadness that I think is often true for people in. You know, I. I could certainly there's. We could spend a whole podcast on why that is, in a sense. But, you know, again, some of our development, I think, puts that to blame in that when you're. When we're as disc. For many people, when we're as disconnected from the natural world as we are, it gets lonely.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: Right. Like, we actually don't feel part of the whole system around us. And, you know, one of the most popular things in men's work these days is to get connected to other men in nature. And it's like the double whammy of when you actually start to plug back into that natural world. It's hard to feel lonely because you realize, oh, I'm not alone. I'm part of a whole system of weather and animals and bees and trees that has been, you know, perpetuating itself for eons and will continue to. And that kind of brings something back online in. You know, it's also, I would say one of the struggles right now is, you know, there's so much great about technology and that you and I can connect over something like this, which was not, you know, really possible 30 years ago. But the downside is it's. I think it's confusing a lot of people because we get like the sugar version of connection. Oh, I'll hop on Instagram and I get to see what's up with my people. And it kind of feels like connection, but it's not actually connection. There's not a reciprocal real time co regulation really happening there. And again, another example of, I think, how people can, you know, they're lonely in a sense of not feeling connected, which I think is different from many men I do work with. It's really important to not fear isolation, but that's actually much easier to do when you feel connected to the world around you, if that makes sense.
Host: Right, right. So what do you suggest from people, and I guess particularly even men that feel this sense of loneliness? Is it all about community at that point? Is that the main focus here.
Jason Lange: That's. That's my kind of the major medicine I prescribe to men these days, is it? We got. We gotta reject, particularly here in the US this kind of myth of the lone wolf, cow, rugged, individual cowboy. You do it all alone. You're tough. You're the Marlboro Man. You don't show weakness. You figure it out. And it's. I mean, it's total that we're fed, and instead we end up dying and suffering inside or becoming addicted to things. So one of the big shifts I try to guide men on is getting connected to other men or women, you know, human beings. But I specialize in. In men working with men. They're your allies, right. And the more you reveal yourself to them, the more you're going to feel seen. And the more you feel seen, often the more connected we feel. And it's not that life gets easier in community, in my experience, but it does get a lot better. Meaning that stressful stuff is still going to come your way no matter what. But there's an increased resiliency when we're connected, when we're in community, when we're not feeling that loneliness per se. There's, oh, wow, I have someone to talk to about this tragedy in my life or this thing that happened. And that is so transformative for men. I mean, so transformative because so many men don't even know what type of connection is possible until I get them in a room with some other men and they're like, wow, I, I didn't even know this was a choice that I could, you know, bring my full self forward and be vulnerable and still be strong and get support along the way?
Host: Right. So what would you suggest for the men out there that are on board with what you're saying, but don't know where to go from there because they've never been vulnerable before, so they don't know who to trust or how vulnerable they can be. Do you suggest a therapist? Where do they go from here?
Jason Lange: Yeah, there's so many paths. I. I am definitely on the bandwagon of just like we go to the gym to work out our bodies and keep them healthy. Going to a therapist is just a way to keep yourself healthy. There's a huge judgment, I think, from a lot of men in particular, that therapy is only. You only go to therapy if you're broken or messed up. Right. Which is just not true. It's hygiene. Right. It's mental, emotional hygiene. So that's one really powerful thing. And I generally Recommend working with a somatic therapist. So someone who is going to connect you to your bodily body and bodily sensations in that very real and visceral way. That's super key. Building community, particularly for men, can start as simply as finding another guy or two. You just have a sense that, oh yeah, these might, these two might be open to something, a deeper connection here. And you kind of plant the flag and you're like, hey, I would love to meet up sometime where we just spend a little time, 10, 15 minutes each, like sharing about what's actually happening in our lives. Like just cutting, cutting beneath the surface, right? So many of us men are taught to relate via triangulation, you know, so it's me and you, and our attention is on a third thing. Whether that's sports or an activity, or fixing cars or you name it, but our attention, it's us looking at this third thing. And there's a time and place for that. But the type of connection I'm talking about is we get together and we put our attention on each other. Hey, what's happening for you in your life? Where are you thriving? Where are you in pain? Right? What's not working? And it's amazing how once men get into a space like that, sometimes I can't shut them up. Like there's so much to be shared because they've never had a space to share it before in. Just as simple as that, right? Take. Guiding a friend or two to a deeper conversation can be so healing. And then again, the nice thing about where we're at right now is, you know, you used to have to try to find men's groups or men's community local, but there's so much available online these days too. So even if you can't find something near you, you can join groups over, zoom in. While, you know, I think the deepest dose is always in person. It's amazing how much medicine you can get just from sitting in a virtual room with people and sharing and being, being real and honest. And I think the important thing about that is something that was so key to me on my journey, like I said, was when I got exposed to men who were deeper and farther along their journey than I was and got to see in a firsthand and experience in my body how they were showing up in the world. And it was like light bulbs of, you know, I was around some, some, some older men and just like they walked in the room and seeing them talk, I was like, that's it. That's what I want to be when I Get old. Like, however you're holding yourself, your presence, how you're dealing with conflict, like, that's. That's the map, that's the model. And so just by spending time with them, I started to deepen as a man to get to know myself better, to get to know how to handle my nerves better. All of that different stuff, there's a. There's an actual transmission, you know, of wisdom, in a sense, doesn't have to just be from people older than us. There's all kinds of different ways this can come. But that's one of the great, I think, things that got decimated in the last decades is the, you know, these kind of different types of connections that we used to get from elders or people cross country across our community, or aunts and uncles. Like, there's just something so important about spending time with other people who in some ways are, shape or form, are a little deeper than us. Because, you know, for. I see this all the time for guys, they're. They're in a space with a man in that man gets very vulnerable, maybe share something that's just tearing them up inside. And tears come. Or that man gets really angry and expresses a strong boundary or moves some energy. But in both instances, they're fully connected to themselves. They're fully connected to the space around them and then are like, wow, I've never seen a man cry like that. That felt so strong. Or I've never seen a man emote that much anger and yet still feel totally safe to be around. Right. Not some reactive, explosive, destructive anger, but like full fire and totally. They're totally trustable. That's the kind of stuff that you get when you start to spend time in these spaces and get that embodied firsthand kind of transmission. So it's great to lead stuff, you know, with people, you know, but at some point, I'm also just going to strongly suggest seek out people who are further along than journey than you, whether that's through workshops or men's groups or, you know, in some sense, it's, I think, why a lot of people get attracted to podcasts like this, because we get to get these incredible deep transmissions of wisdom from people we might not ever meet otherwise. Right.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: And it can be transformative.
Host: Yeah, I agree. I mean, when you were talking about earlier about this notion that we've created about having the macho man, the man that keeps everything to himself, the emotions to himself, himself. He's the anchor to everybody's, you know, to everybody's sail. Right? That's Blowing in the wind. I've seen it firsthand myself when observing others of. You can see it on their face, them holding like, you know, especially as, as the years go on, you can see that pain being held. You can see the body tense harden almost. You can almost physically see it compared to somebody else. Right. That's very free flowing. And I think you mentioned energies earlier and I think part of that ends up becoming this vibrational state where people, as you get older and older people don't want to be around somebody that's hardened and you know, kind of holds all this anger because they don't know how to release it and they don't want it to be. To be the target of where it's, you know, released. So it's. You start to see that and I think that's really important. Also you mentioned this idea of earlier about community and being surrounded by people and even nature and animals. And it really reminded me of. I spent six months in India and you know, time to time I was with my parents. But there was a lot of moments I was, you know, by myself, I was alone. But I'd never felt lonely. Even though I didn't really know anybody there, I had this sense of community. There was animals everywhere. I mean, we in India especially, they just let animals roam. So it's. It was very. It felt like I was in tune with nature almost, if that makes sense. I was very. I felt I belonged to and you know, beyond the cultural aspect, more of just a nature aspect and a community aspect, I felt that I was there, I didn't feel lonely, which was very interesting. It was very peaceful. Right. And then coming back to the U.S. it was very night and day eye opening about how isolated people are here, how, you know, in a different podcast with another guest, we talked about this idea of being surrounded by dead things. Right. Technology, you know, four corners of a house, all the walls, it's. You're just surrounded by dead material. I mean, how many people have houseplants that they take care of or, you know, I guess people today it's very popular to have pets, but even then, you know, it's. You're very limited on your surrounding of living things to the point where, you know, you almost lose touch with that serenity. And have you experienced that with the people you've worked with?
Jason Lange: Yeah. You know, again, that's such a beautiful story. Right. It's that feeling a part of. Right. When I'm a part of something larger, it's hard to feel as lonely. Right. When it's like, wow, there's life everywhere around me and I'm connected to that. And it's connected to me in. Yeah, I mean, here in the US and, you know, and I think a lot of western cultures. Right things, but particularly in the U.S. there's this just massive, like, prioritization of private, private, private, private. Right. Success is having the big mansion all to yourself or having a really fancy car you drive in alone or. Right. There's just this emphasis on being, you know, in a bubble of your own and privatization, in a sense. And I think that's really catching up with our mental health here. And, you know, at least in the worlds I swim in, people are really getting curious about alternative ways to cohabit and live again, of like, I. I think Covid really for a lot of people kind of woke us up to, wow, we do live pretty disconnected lives. And that just intensified it. You know, there were men I were working, I was working with during that time that if they weren't on a zoom call with me or my community, it was like there was no connection in their lives. They were working remotely. Just. It's pretty intense, and it has an impact on our nervous systems. So doing the work I do, particularly in groups, on retreat or in nature, and seeing that come back alive, like, you're totally right. Like men's bodies softening, like, it's the craziest thing there. I often see it around their eyes and their jaw and their face. And this is like life force. Chi comes back, the breath is deeper. There's just like more of a regulation, a connection to the. To the earth, into the space around them. And there's this realization of, oh, this is actually normal. What we're being fed out there is the abnormal. Right. And so that, yeah, that being a part of, like you said, I think some people definitely experience it traveling in nature where there's just. There's different ways that different cultures and societies still prioritize the collective or the communal in ways that we just really don't here in the States right now that cause a lot of pain for men. And then they wonder why they're depressed or anxious or, you know, all these different things men sometimes come to me with, and it's like, well, who are you connected to in your life? What do you feel part of? And they're like, nothing. And that's. That's often just the. The starting point for so much heartbreak.
Host: Right. Have you read. You know. You know, you're very deep into this topics, so I'm curious. Have you read the Superior man or books of that nature?
Jason Lange: Yeah, yeah. David Data was actually my teacher's teacher, so I've studied in his lineage for many, many years. Yeah, I was. Doing the work, so to speak, in my 30s. But, yeah, I'm very familiar.
Host: Yeah, that book was incredible. It. And then, you know, we can get into this for sure in a minute. I. I read that book and, you know, it really definitely have to reread it a few times. It's so dense. But there were so many great ideas, and one that really stuck with me was, and I was telling this to a friend was, growing up, I was, you know, I came from India to the us Very strict parents. So, you know, idea of dating was not in our culture. The idea of talking to girls and things like that is just forbidden almost. Right. So for me, going through the U.S. western Public School, I was very comfortable just chatting with guys and girls alike. And, you know, as I got older and older, it still was a very easy process. But I always wondered as to why there was this difficulty at times for me or for other men talking to women in particular. And something that book highlighted that made a lot of sense to me, which I was telling my friend, was this idea of just embracing, like, feminine energy without expectation. Right. I think part of that tense, intense anxiety is expectation, right? It's. Is. Is she gonna like me back? Am I. Am I supposed to ask her out on a date? I. You know, what. What if she laughs? Just zero expectations. And I think that's part of reflecting on my, you know, experiences growing up. It was. I had no expectations because I was raised in such a strict household. It was like, you guys are just all my friends. It doesn't matter. So it was very easy for me, right? So. And I think. And I told my friend that, and I think that holds very true. I don't know what your thoughts are, but it seems to make a lot of sense when you just go into interactions with zero expectations based on, you know. You know, you probably totally know a lot more about this than me, but what do you think?
Host: And I truly believe that, like you mentioned at the beginning of this episode about how it all Starts at the philosophical and mental is how we, our internal projection is, is what we project outwards. Right. So if you don't feel confident, people will see that. And I say all the time, if you, you know, you have a big goal, big aspirations, you want to do something, but you don't fully believe in yourself and you're searching for somebody else to believe, believe in you, it's not going to happen because it happens the other way around. The projection of internal belief shows to everybody else that you have a strong enough conviction for them to want to believe back into your dreams. Right? So it's almost. You project what you want into this reality and reality reciprocates or reflects it back so totally, you know, same thing, right? So it's like the same thing with what you're talking about having, you know, no, no, no desire, no expectation is. You feel so whole that people see that. And men and women alike are more attracted to you to want to become your friend or want to get to know you or do business with you because they can feel that energy, vibration or whatever you're projecting out there. I mean, that's kind of a takeaway.
Jason Lange: I got totally. I am. It's a big part of the work I, I will do with men in that. Yeah, our, our relationship to ourself evokes how other people relate to us.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: Like there's. So if we have a certain view of ourselves, we're carrying that into every interaction we have and people are feeling that in us. Oh, he relates to himself in that way and that completely changes how they interact with us in. Again, I'll kind of tie this just because everything I do, I always bring back to men's groups. One of the great things about community like this is sometimes it takes a little while or for many of us men and humans, our self image is the last thing to update. So maybe we've actually been working hard, we've been losing weight, or showing up differently in our jobs, in our relationships, but we'll still be connected to this story of ourselves from when we were most in our deepest in our pain. And we won't see it. But other community people around us that give that care about us and know us intimately, they can often see it like, no, man, you're showing up totally differently. Like, that's not you at all. Or wow, no, I see you as very alive and very confident moving towards what you want. In one of the big shifts again, many men make in the work they do with me is learning to trust how Other people in these tight communities see them more than they see themselves. It's kind of like a little leap of faith of like, okay, eight of you are telling me, you know, I'm not a piece of shit, literally, or something. So the, the choice point becomes either eight of you are wrong or my self identity is a little wonky here. I'm gonna trust you. You, I'm gonna trust how you see me. Because, you know, and these aren't just, you know, these are cultivated relationships of intention in that starts to change things where it's like, wow, no, okay, you're right, I, I am showing up differently. And then our self image slowly starts to update and then we get even more of what we want, you know, in a sense, like, because we're showing up in this different way which attracts even more of that in a sense.
Host: And I think the funny part is we. What I'm sure you probably have to focus on breaking is this confirmation bias. Right? Because we want 10 out of 10 people to say, no, you're not a piece of. But we, yeah, our confirmation bias looks at the two and we might hyper fixate and be like, see, see I told you. And forget that 80. You're not going to have everybody like you in this world world. But having those eight people tell you that, you know, maybe you're wrong. Maybe you're projecting yourself in the wrong way. Right?
Jason Lange: Yeah. Yeah. It's another thing I, I've had to do myself and with, with a lot of men I work with is starting to really be discerning about whose opinions and judgments we care about. Right. Do I care about the one random person commenting on my social media feedback? Or do I comment? Or do I care about, you know, the man in my life who knows me, my history, my journey, what I want, what I've been working towards and what I orient guys to is. Well, the latter because that's a man who actually knows you. So if he tells me, hey man, what you're doing there feels pretty off. Like what's going on with you? You know, calls me, calls me forward or something or um, I trust that because he actually knows me. Versus, right. Some of that confirmation bias, that negativity bias. Like these are people who don't actually know us, they've maybe seen us online or you know, a woman who we just met at the store. You know, it's, it's all kinds of stuff. And again, like as we kind of get those people in our lives who we trust at this deeper level because we've Revealed kind of the depths of ourselves to. And they've earned the right to hold us, hold our stories and know our interiors, warts and all. As we learn to prioritize those people, it starts to kind of provide us a level of immunity out in the world. Right. Like one man I work with recently, I loved his phrase, it's so simple. He's like, community is immunity. When you have the right community, it builds resilience in your life of like, okay, well I don't have to worry about them because what I do care about is, you know, these people close to me in my life and what they think because they actually know me. They know, you know, what I'm striving for. And so I'm just going to focus on them and you know, yeah, I can pay attention to this stuff out there, but I don't have to let it tank me because the people that really know me, they're like, no man, you're growing, you're changing, you're showing up, you're doing good work, whatever that might be.
Host: Yeah, you know, just not too long ago, I mean, just to preface this, you know, in today's day and age, sometimes I think the topics of masculinity, masculine, feminine energy, these things have become so taboo or uncomfortable to even discuss, you know, today because there's just so much backlash when you immediately discuss, discuss it. And I experienced this myself just even, you know, not too long ago, maybe a month or two ago, talking about these ideas of masculine and feminine energy and this yin and yang nature of two people that, you know, of connectivity. And I experienced so much backlash for having this philosophy or thinking this way. And you know, I would, you know, to put it lightly, I guess I would say these people that were giving me the backlash weren't always the most consciously aware of what's going on. Right. With themselves, with society of that nature. But you know, I'd say that's a lot of people today is they're so programmed into whatever, you know, whatever you want to call it, the matrix society, you know, generational fixations, whatever you want to call it. But there's so many people that are programmed to the point where open mindedness is no longer an option when it comes to communicating. It's, it's agree with me or don't talk about it. And I don't know, have you experienced this and in your line of work? Because you know, you've read a lot of these books and this idea of yin yang energies and yeah, it's deeply.
Jason Lange: Uncomfortable for some people. And, you know, since David wrote Way the Superior man, you know, a lot of the people that have kind of carried the torch forward with his work are. Are actually moving away from masculine and feminine just because those words are so loaded culturally for us.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: In terms of expectations in roles. But the truth is they're not. They're not the expectations and the roles. Right. These are just. You can call it yin and yang, you can call it, you know, go and flow, feeling and perspective, stillness and movement, consciousness and light, you know, would be the most pure version from the David's lineage. But. Right. Like sometimes when I'm working with people around this, it's like, so think of something like the deep desert, say Death Valley, or, you know, the peak of a very tall mountain.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: You just. You can just start with one of those and you just like, you feel into it and what it evokes energetically. And then if I say something like, all right, now feel into Kawaii in Hawaii or the rainforest, it evokes a different kind of energy.
Host: Right, Right.
Jason Lange: So these energies exist outside of human beings. So somewhere like the deep desert is very sparse, vast. There's not a lot of movement. There's not a. There's life there, but it. It's much more small scale. It's more delicate, it's more slow moving. There's not as much abundance or the, you know, peak of mountains. It's cold, there's a lot of rock. Yeah. It's kind of barren in some sense. And then you go to like Hawaii or the rainforest, and it is just overflowing with sights and smells and sounds and life and green. And the, you know, one plot of land might look completely different four weeks from now, for whatever reason. And that's kind of just what we're talking about here of these energies. And they exist.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: You know, the other, the other way to think about this is just there's the part of us that sees and then there's whatever can be seen.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: Just two natural perspectives. Right. Like that are just in the world, whatever you call them, they're there. It just so happens that these then kind of those energies manifest in certain ways in human dynamics. And what's exciting about right now, actually, is those energies are being liberated from their physical forms. So for a long time, right, feminine energy mostly came through female bodies and masculine energy mostly came through male bodies. That's not the case anymore. It's all getting shaken up. And there's so much more fluidity, particularly in younger generations. We're seeing being able to move back and forth or being balanced or whatever it might be. And that's all awesome. But it still is important to acknowledge there's. There's these two poles of energy that we can bring in any given moment. Right. For some men I work with, what do they need? They need to get still for the first time in their lives. They need to sit on a cushion and still their body and just get quiet. For other men I work with, they need to open and get into their bodies and dance and get massage and get some life force and loosen things up and make some noise and feel that energetic movement, right, coming through them. One is not better than the other. But there's. At different moments, each medicine is more effective than the other. And so what we're being asked to do culturally now is navigate these things with more fluidity. Right. I. I also find for a lot of people, it really works. Just to use the metaphor of partner dance, something like tango. For it to work, like, for to really work, there has to be a lead and a follow. If both people try to follow, it does not work. If both people try to lead, it does not work. One is not better than the other. You can see it's very challenging to lead, and you have to be really strong to just follow.
Host: Right?
Jason Lange: Just. Okay, I'm just gonna surrender here. One is not, you know what I would say, better than the other. But they're both incredibly important capacities. So I get that there's a lot of charge around these things. And even in the work I do, people get a little upset. Does that mean I always have to be this way? And it's like, no. But you have to understand kind of the energies, because they're kind of the. The materials for art, the art of our lives. Right. You can paint with one of these two brushes and the whole spectrum in between. But if you don't understand them, it's hard to paint with them. And at different times, we need different things. So in men's group, paradoxically, a lot. I do a lot of masculine practice for guys. The kind of stillness, calming down, connecting to the infinite. But one of the primary, I guess, benefits I often see for men is in men's group, they get to drop in to the more feminine side of just being seen, of expressing their emotions, of being messy, of being vulnerable, of not having to hold it all together, which so many men feel like they have to do. And that is transformative for them. So men's group actually allows a lot of men to deeply connect to Their inner feeling, their inner emotions, their inner, we could call it the feminine, but you call it whatever you want that's so important for being alive and for being vital. So, yeah, it's delicate because the words can trigger things for people. But I think when, you know, through all kinds of experiential exercises or even guided things, sometimes you can just show people that, you know, I mean, or just very simply, right. There's life and there's death. Yeah, right. There is life and there's death. And they have very different. When you feel each one, they feel very different.
Host: Right. And even in the Superior man book, I think he, the author does a very good job expressing that it's not always masculinity is man, femininity is women or female. And how there is this sense of duality in each individual. And, you know, if you look at the genotype of any human to be born, DNA from a, you know, father and a mother, which gives you this duality of energy. So each of us would have a sense of feminine and masculine energies. And I, what I, you know, connected just from what you were talking about that I think is interesting is perhaps when we were talking about earlier about a man that's a hardened shell, is that feminine energy never got its outlet. Right. Is so, so strong on the yin that the yang never got to flow and it, the channel was blocked. Therefore, you see that build up totally of, you know, energy never released. And I think that's incredibly interesting.
Jason Lange: Yeah, it's real. And so all human beings have both. We both have the masculine, we both have feminine. Right. The part of you that witnesses, I mean in kind of more the eastern traditions, the part of you that witnesses, that's the eternal masculine.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: It's the, the one thing in your body, mind that has never changed.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: Is the part of you that's been aware of everything that is the master. Everything you can see, everything you can feel, that's the feminine. So we all have tons of feminine inside of us. And again, it's just about learning these two tools so we can kind of use them as instruments. And where this work is most, you know, applicable in a sense is then in intimate relationships. Right. These are tools we can use when we want to erotically charge a relationship. It does not mean you have to use these things all day long in every part of your relationship. 24, 7. And a lot of men I know read, you know, something like way the superior man and like, oh my God, I always have to be the tree. I always have to hold Space for the storm in my life. And it's like, no, in moments and times, if what you're desiring is a highly feminine partner, yes, but not all the time. These are tools we can use in a moment and they're tools we can use, I think sometimes to diagnose and support ourselves in our life and our growth. Like we said of oh my God, I might, I, I have not been feeling my whole life. Right. Or there's other men, you know, who are too much on the just flow feeling spectrum and are having a hard time getting that sense of direction in moving towards something in their life and do need a little bit more masculine oriented practice. Again, one is not better than the other, but it's just important to understand them. So then we can create what we want to create in life. I guess maybe that's another way to point it is these are two of the primal energies of creation. I mean literally how things are created. Right. That's how life gets created. As, as things are evolved. Are these two different forces?
Host: I like how you're saying it. Right. This idea of bringing it all back is having this conscious awareness of figuring out who you are and balancing both those energies within. Right. Maybe. And this isn't to say It's a perfect 50. 50, your masculine feminine energy. Maybe you're 60, 40 or whatever it is, figuring out your balance to become whole, which is the important part is the 100% right, is figuring out that. And you know, I think that's incredible. But Jason, I do have one more question for you. You know, this show is called Learner Be Learned. So I asked my guests this closing question of what is one thing that either you learn from someone or you want the audience to learn from your own life experience that you would like to share?
Jason Lange: Yeah, let me feel into what wants to come through here around that. And yeah, I would say again, I'm going to tie it back into the first part of what I said earlier. The cheat code, if there is one, I have found to increasing wholeness in my life is to turn towards my experience, whatever it is in the moment. So you know, one, one meditation teacher I know, Shinzen Young, he has this great formula, right, that suffering is equal to pain times resistance. And so, so much of our lives, we, we resist feeling whatever it is we're feeling. And that resistance is the big multiplier. Yeah, there's always going to be pain in life. Right. Hard things are always going to happen. And for men in particular, we are not taught the tools for how to Be with the hard stuff in our body, minds that we want to feel. And so learning and consciously making this shift of wait. The best thing I can do in this moment is to actually turn right towards the sensation I'm having in my body and be with it. Maybe the rage I'm feeling or anger or heartbreak or loneliness or whatever it might be. We think, oh, I can't do that because that's going to feel so awful. But that's. That's the magic moment that often metabolizes and starts to transmute our bodily experience and help us move forward in some ways. But it's a. It's so counterintuitive. And the more we try to resist feeling something like. Like you were talking about, you know, that the magic ingredient to the world, the more we actually tend to perpetuate it. Right. The more it keeps showing up in our lives. And so there is this kind of deep willingness to turn towards our experience. And I'm learning this lesson still, you know, at 43 years old, having teach this work and have been in it for a long time, and there'll still be things that, you know, will start to creep up in my body and I'll notice some tightening or discomfort and I'll kind of be, I don't know, for weeks or sometimes months or whatever. And then oftentimes for me, it's like in a men's group or with my therapist or something. Finally they'll guide me. Or I'll. Usually takes maybe three minutes to actually be with the emotional experience, as painful as it is or scary as it is, usually only takes a few minutes. And then I feel completely differently. And there's more space inside myself on the other end. And I always end up thinking, oh my God, why did I just waste five weeks trying to avoid that? Like, I just spent so much energy holding that versus just turning towards and being with it and then allowing that to inform, you know, my next decision or action. So, yeah, in an episode I did with one guy I work with, maybe I'll sum this up, is one of the great shifts to think about is to. Is to move away from enlightenment towards intimacy. So enlightenment, part of what we're sold. And again, it's kind of the masculine side of spiritual practice, is to get away from our experience. Literally, I'm gonna transcend my bodily experience. And there's a time and place for that. But for many people I know, the hack to getting there actually is to go the other direction is to become deeply intimate with our experience in the moment. And to touch it completely right. Whatever's going on inside of us and then it's like through sheer magic like transcendence happens once we're fully with first. So maybe it's that to one of the great hacks in life is to emphasize intimacy and then enlightenment will often come.
Host: I love that being present in the moment, taking the full experience of today because yesterday is already gone. You're always not guaranteed tomorrow and the only thing you can truly embrace is the now. And I honestly your wisdom was incredible. Jason, I appreciate you being on the show. I'm really looking forward to the audience hearing you out and hearing what we had to say. I'm very grateful for you being here today.
Jason Lange: Yeah. So honored to be here. Fantastic dropping in with you. You clearly are a deep man so it's always a pleasure for me and look forward to connecting more in the future for sure.
Host: Thank you.
