How To Face Your Dragons and Unleash Your Life Force with Jason Lange | Mirror Talk: Soulful Conversations

Jason Lange: It was that pain that woke me up to, I gotta find some other way to be like this. Just doesn't feel. I don't feel good. I don't feel good in my life. I don't feel excited to wake up. I don't feel alive. I don't feel fulfilled in a lot of ways. Pause, pause. Take a break, take a break. Reflect on life. Your moment of greatness starts now.

Host: In this conversation, we will face our dragons, unleash our life force, and learn how to discover healthier ways to live in this world as men. Helping us with this conversation is a group facilitator, a podcaster, men's embodiment coach, and evolutionary guide. Welcome to the show. Jason, how are you doing?

Jason Lange: I'm doing so great, Toby. So excited to be here with you, man.

Host: I'm super delighted to be speaking with you on this conversation. I'm looking forward to having this very deep soul conversation with you, especially in regards to men and how to live as men, how to live a much more healthier life as men in this world and in this age and time. And you are no stranger to this. I know you have much experience with this as a coach and with your podcast also. But you started your, your men's work in your 20s after suffering from years of loneliness, discomfort in your body, and a deep struggle to create romantic relationships. So I don't know if you would like to take us on this journey a little bit and tell us what happened in your 20s.

Jason Lange: Yeah. So my journey to becoming a men's guide really started with my own personal journey, right. And so I'm pretty lucky, right? I'm a white man, raised in the Midwest of the United States and a lower middle class family. So I had most of my basic security needs pretty much provided for me growing up. What I quickly discovered I didn't have was my family didn't have a lot of emotional or physical connection in terms of the capacity to actually be present and intimate with each other. And as a kid, you know, I just learned to survive that. But where it becomes important is, right? Suddenly I become a teenager and hormones start changing. I become attracted to women and wanting to have experiences in. What I discovered was I was extraordinarily uncomfortable around girls and in my own body and I'd get really anxious, I'd get really nervous. I had no idea how to talk to them. And that kind of was my first wake up call to, wow, I don't feel very good in my body. Just in my presence. It's, it's Painful. And I see other people like, getting into relationships, and I don't understand why it's so easy for them and not so easy for me. And that continued through my late teenage years, into my twenties. I was a very late bloomer. So I didn't have sex and get into my first relationships until my mid to late 20s because of these kind of struggles I was going through that had their origins in how I was raised. And, you know, I'm not blaming my parents. It was just kind of their. Their experiences, how they were raised, and that led to something and how I was raised. The point was, it was that pain that woke me up to, I gotta find some other way to be. Like, this just doesn't feel. I don't feel good. I don't feel good in my life. I don't feel excited to wake up. I don't feel alive. I don't feel fulfilled in a lot of ways. And it was a journey of understanding. Like, okay, well, what, what caused that? That really first got me kind of woken up to philosophy and learning about different ways to think about the world, which then led me to therapy, which then really got me into men's work and this idea of men's groups, of how to actually grow. And in my 20s, as I think is the case for not all men, but many men, it was the first time I spent time around older men that I was like, wow, that's what I want to be when I grow up, right? Like, it was their presence, their energy, their capacity to hold themselves, how they spoke, how they walked. I was like, these are solid, strong, deep, and trustable men. And that was the first time I really had a vision of what I might grow towards versus, you know, I was kind of just floundering around, so to speak, before that, in my 20s. And so it really all coalesced in. In that time in my mid-20s, when I got on the path of inner work, inner growth, men's work, and learning to connect more deeply, particularly with other men, which paradoxically then helped me learn how to connect more deeply, even with the opposite sex. In my case, the. The women I was attracted to in my life really started to transform once I got into these groups and started doing this work. Whereas the years before, you know, I had wanted to change. I read lots of books, I studied lots of stuff, but I. I couldn't make that switch from understanding to actually living my life differently until I got into men's groups and men's work.

Host: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing that. And I Also believe in the power that comes with community. Power that comes with, you know, a group of like minded people trying to get the same goal. Yeah, well, permit me to, to digress a little bit just from your, your story that you shared right now. You, you said, you know, the way you are raised affected the way you, you appeared in your relationships when you were younger. Can you shine some light on that a little bit? How are you raised and how did it affect you?

Jason Lange: Yeah, like I said, the. My family was very safe in a sense growing up. And you know, like I said, we, we had a stable house, we always had food. I knew my parents loved me, but there was no emotional intimacy and there was little to no physical intimacy. So we weren't like, you know, one of my big like, whoa moments was I had this thing happen. I guess I would have been maybe 15 or 16. It was actually probably more like 15 where it was summertime. So it was in between my school year and I was going on this summer camp to learn about like being an environmental leader or some just something. I was into high school. Right. But we had to drive to another state and it was a group of us and one of the group's dads was going to drive us and so, you know, he went around picking up all the kids. Then we were going to drive across these states to get there. Anyway, point being, they got to my house and my mom walked out with me and just kind of out of like habit and having seen it in movies and stuff, you know, I was going to be gone for like a week and it was one of the first times I was really leaving home alone. Um, like I hugged my mom goodbye and all I remember was feeling that was really weird. Like that, that was weird. That felt really weird. Something about that felt really weird. Right. And I didn't quite understand it at that moment.

Host: Yeah, yeah.

Jason Lange: Later on, as I started, you know, working with a therapist and dug into my story a little bit, I connected the dots. Is that felt really weird because I could not tell you before that moment. The last time I remember physically touching my mom or being touched by her. So like a hug, an embrace. As far back as I could remember, that wasn't there, which was, you know, at that age. That was a number of years. And that really kicked off this, like, wow. There were some ways I was pretty neglected as a kid, meaning I didn't get a lot of touch, I didn't get a lot of attunement, emotional safety. And that had an impact on my nervous system, literally. Just how safe and comfortable I felt in my body and then particularly how safe and comfortable I felt with touch. It was not something my body was used to experiencing, just touch from other people. I had lived kind of alone all those years. And so lo and behold, you know, that age, you know, suddenly I want to be touching girls. Like that was, you know, a natural part of that thing. But my body would freeze up.

Host: Yeah.

Jason Lange: And I'd get really awkward. I get sweaty and it would feel really weird. I wanted it, but then I was like, afraid of it. And that was so confusing for me. And then over the years, you know, I've had to just keep unpacking that, that I really learned to keep all of my internal experience inside. Never shared when I was in pain, Never shared when I was hurting. Never shared when I was uncomfortable. Had no idea how to ask for what I needed in terms of love or support or attention. I just kind of was like locked up in my body. And that had massive impact. Not even just on my, you know, romantic life, but my friendships, how I showed up at work and in professional, and just how comfortable I, as I said, I. I showed up in my body. And that was all part of how I was raised. Right. My nervous system was conditioned to, to be isolated and alone. And so lo and behold, you know, part of my passion now is helping teach men. Like, no, you don't have to do it that way. Like, it's really okay to ask for help, support and be connected with men, with women, with everyone, really. And frankly, it's a lot easier long term. Hey there, podcast enthusiasts. Are you ready to add a little sparkle to your day? If you're loving the insightful conversations and captivating stories on Mirror Talk podcast, here's a friendly nudge to hit that subscribe button. By subscribing, you'll never miss out on the empowering messages and thought provoking discussions we bring to your ears. But wait, there's more. We're all about spreading positivity and inspiration and you can be a part of it too. How? By sharing the love with your friends and family. Share this episode with your loved ones and let's create a ripple effect of empowerment and growth together. And hey, if you've been enjoying what you hear, why not take a moment to leave us a glowing five star review? Your feedback fuels our passion to keep delivering content that resonates with you. So hit that subscribe button, share the love and leave us a review. Let's keep the conversation going and spread the Mirror Talk magic far and Wide. Thanks for tuning in. And remember, your support means the world world to us.

Host: Well, thank you so much for, for sharing that. I really appreciate it. I mean, I know it's something that's quite relatable and I'm sure there are other people out there listening right now also that I've experienced this in one form or the other. You know, no physical touch while growing up. Yeah, everything's. Everything is every other thing is there. Stable household. But that emotional connection was just basically absent.

Jason Lange: Exactly.

Host: And I think that affects a lot.

Jason Lange: Affects us men and boys particularly heavily. Right. Like, you know, it's different obviously all over the world, but there's still quite a bit of homophobia in certain places. So boys like, you know, you can't hug another boy or touch another boy. So I think we're particularly susceptible to then if we're not getting that anywhere else. So many men I know and work with to this day, you know, particularly with coming out of the pandemic and everything can go days, weeks, months without any physical contact with another human being. And that has huge repercussions on our well being. And you know, we're wired for connection really, as humans.

Host: Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I mean women or we as imam generally are not meant to be cold. We need connection, we need touch, we need affection, we need love. Yeah. And I, I like you to talk about your, your men's group, but before that, like just for people listening out there, how would you describe a men's group? What do you do in a men's group?

Jason Lange: Yeah, totally. So I get this question a lot. And one of the tricks with it is men's group kind of like if you think of the term meditation, people say like, oh, you know, I started meditating or I want to meditate. It can mean a lot of different things. There's lots of ways you can meditate. Just like there's actually lots of different types of men's groups. Some emphasize certain things more than others. But the most universal thing I can kind of share is it's when a group of men get together intentionally with some regularity. And the purpose of sharing that time together is to get real and honest about what's going on in their lives, where they're feeling challenged and, and what they want to move forward, what they're moving towards and what might be in the way. And so it's about kind of going underneath the surface of, you know, how's it going? Oh, I'm good. How are you? I'm good. You know, like we can kind of all play that game when inside, you know, we might actually, particularly as men, be really struggling. Like, no, my marriage is falling apart or I just got fired from my job, or I'm just depressed and I don't know what to do about it. Men hide their feelings so much for so many different reasons. You know, we've started to touch into. But a men's group's a place where we're getting together to slow down, actually get connected to our bodies and our feelings and like I said, get real about what's happening in life. Get very honest about where we're in pain about sometimes. Also where we're celebrating. Right. I did this thing and I'm so proud of myself and I don't even know who to share it with. That's just as a big a part of a men's group as anything else. But my experiences and the groups, you know, I really support men in Toby are. Yeah, they're, they're helping men get deeper into themselves, get more connected to what they want, what they need and what the challenges are along the way. And then you wrap that all and just getting connected to other guys and realizing that sometimes sharing our vulnerabilities actually gives us a tremendous amount of connection and energy. Right. To deal with the stresses of life, in a sense. And that I like to say, you know, a good men's group helps us feel more alive and it helps us move towards the things we want to move towards in our life even faster and more powerfully. So there's again, there's so many ways we can, like I can organize a men's group, but oftentimes, yeah, it's about we get together, we get into our bodies through some kind of embodiment practice. We do some check ins to just kind of drop in with each other. And then anyone who's really struggling with something can bring it forward to the group and then the group can give them feedback, guidance, counsel or support to facilitate moving that forward in whatever way they might need.

Host: Yeah. Oh, that's beautiful. And how do you know what kind of men fit into a group? I believe not everyone could be to get to work any group together to achieve a particular goal or aim. So how do you select the kind of men to be in a group or what can we look out for when trying to build up a men's group?

Jason Lange: Yeah, I would, paradoxically, I would say actually men choose themselves. So a man has to be ready. Oh, a man has to be ready. He has to say, you know, What I want more. I want more for my life, and I'm tired of doing it alone. It's really hard. It's really depressing. So first and foremost, it's. Men have to be committed. You know, to really succeed in a men's group, you have to buy in to the belief or to the growth orientation of life. That life is a process of growing, right? We try something, we get feedback, we use that feedback to try something else. Sometimes that means we succeed, sometimes that means we fail. We don't get what we want. But there's this. There's this belief that part of how we can make the most of our life is to grow, right? It's just to grow, to become even more whole and healed and powerful versions of ourselves. And so most men I work with, right, it takes something happening in their lives to wake them up to, I gotta try something else. Another way to put that, Toby, is often men come to men's group or men's work when they're in some kind of pain, right? They just. They got dumped, they got divorced, they lost a job, their physical health is failing, right? Something in their life is causing them pain, so much pain that they're willing to try something new. Like to. To be honest about it, they're like, I can't just pretend that I can just power my way through this or brute force my way through this like I maybe did before. But some kind of pain has woken me up to, I need help. And so, you know, maybe that's another trait too, is you got to be a man who's committed to growth and that vulnerable edge of be willing to ask for help. Something that a lot of men really struggle with because they see asking for help is some kind of weakness or vulnerability, right? Of the bad kind, when actually, you know, the most effective men I know on the planet are very good at asking for help. Hey, I don't know how to do this. You know how to do it better. Could you do it for me? Or could you teach me? Or whatever that might be? And that's actually, you know, in the work I do, that's a sign of strength when we're like, yeah, no, I want to do this better, so teach me, or I need some help here. So, you know, any man can. Can get into a men's group, but you just have to be willing to look at your life as a process of growth to be able to ask for help and also be willing to get feedback, right? So to get reflections from other men, honest reflections of how they're experiencing you and how you're showing up in the world. And not every man's up for that. Right. Some men, if they get feedback, they're like, oh, I want to defend, or you're wrong, or whatever. But. So there has to be a commitment to honesty, openness, transparency, vulnerability for a man to really thrive in a group. And that willingness to have people tell them what they see and to, even if you don't agree with it, to at least consider it, that it might be true.

Host: That's very true. I mean, you made mention of two things that right now that are like ringing alarms or bills in my head, and that's help. Asking for help and, you know, feedback. Yeah, like, that's something that I've also been. I'm still working on asking for help, getting help that I need. I mean, not just only in my personal life, also in business, in career and all of that. And I had to learn it some way or the other, that it's very important, very vital for my progress, for my peace of mind to ask for help. Because, you know, if I don't ask for help, I'll be able to make the progress that I make as I. As I do, basically, because sometimes you find yourself stuck and because I feel like, oh, I'm a man, I should know this thing, or I'm in this position, I should be able to figure it out myself. Then I remain in that position for other points and with that task or with that challenge for a long period of time. And, you know, over the time, you know, opening up and asking for help has helped me to get solutions quicker. Because you just ask someone a question and basically like, oh, just do it this way, do it that way. And you're like, oh, my God, I wasted two months working on this particular task. I should have asked you two months ago.

Jason Lange: Yeah, no, that's so true right there.

Host: Yeah, it's really, it's really vital.

Jason Lange: If there's one thing us men can be, it's stubborn. Right. I'm not going to ask for directions. I'm not going to ask for help. I'm going to figure this out on my own because that's what a, you know, a tough, smart man does. And then, yeah, I'm right with you. No joke. I've wasted months sometimes trying to figure things out, and then I, you know, ask the right person and they're like, oh, have you tried this? And you're like, wow, that took two minutes. And I just tried to figure that out on my own for hundreds of hours. And so it's more efficient. It actually helps us create more of what we want to create in the world when we are willing to ask for that kind of mentorship and help and guidance from other people. Because the truth is, we learn faster. You know, that's another thing why I promote groups is we grow and learn faster in community and in relationship. Right. Even the. The word that a lot of people in my profession use. Right. A coach, like a men's coach or a life coach. Right. Really, the idea is someone's observing you and giving you feedback. Just like if you were learning a sport, you get out there and you take a swing and your coach is like, hey, did you notice you drop your shoulder every time, you know, you, you, you swing the bat or something? You're like, wow, I didn't notice that. Next time I won't drop my shoulder and boom, I hit the ball even further. Right. Because their feedback helped me grow faster. The same thing happens in these type of inner growth, you know, places that I'm talking about with men and men's groups and men's work and whatnot. Is it helps us get dialed in so we can get feedback and grow faster.

Host: Yes, yes. I mean, feedback is very important. Yeah. I mean, but I think one other point that I find very vital from our own personal experience is also to be able to be open enough to accept any feedback that we get. Like, if we good, it could be bad. Being able to accept it as it is, process it, don't judge it. And like you said earlier, don't, like, resist it or don't, you know, try to defend yourself. Just take it in, process it, Take the useful part of it out of it and use that to improve yourself. Yeah. That really goes.

Host: Yeah.

Jason Lange: Versus part of the practice of becoming a healthy embodied man is no, my Worth is not solely determined by how successful I am in certain things. And, you know, this kind of mantra I work with a lot of men on is there is no failure. There's just feedback. It's just learning. You got information back about what didn't work that time. It doesn't mean you're bad or you're not good. It's, here's somewhere you can learn, try again. And when our capacity to receive that in an undefended way, you know, not attacking or blaming or criticizing or numbing, which so many of us men do, when we have that capacity, it actually makes us both deeply trustable to other people because they're. They're not afraid to give us that feedback and be honest with us. And like we said, it helps us grow faster, it accelerates our growth because other people can often see things.

Host: Yeah.

Jason Lange: About us and our behavior faster than we can even see those things in ourselves.

Host: Very true. Very true, Jason. Yeah, and you mentioned. You just mentioned, you know, numbing. I mean, we. We numb our pains a lot of times, and I. I believe. I also believe that, you know, we don't ask for help a lot of times because we are afraid to face our dragons. We are afraid to face those things that we need to work on in our lives. So we end up just numbing, moving forward, trying to suppress the feelings, suppress the pains, the emotions, so that we could just show up as strong men basically, in the world. So what can we do to face these dragons and unleash our life force?

Jason Lange: Yeah, totally. So this is such a big important topic because I think, again, this is an area that's particularly challenging for us men because, you know, obviously it. It's a little different in different cultures around the world, but in general, there is this thing where men are often raised to not show weakness, to always be tough, to not have emotions or not get overwhelmed by emotions. And often, professionally and culturally and societally, many men are actually rewarded, as I say, for being disembodied. So actually, we get rewarded for being disconnected from our bodies because it allows us to work really long, crazy hours. We can do extreme or professional sports, you know, that oftentimes will actually hurt a man's body over time. Going to war, like all these different things, dangerous jobs, toxic jobs. There's so many ways us men are trained to not be in our bodies and in fact, are rewarded for it. And then the problem with that, though, is then we carry that through the rest of our lives. And so many men from a young age are, you know, Taught by their families or culture. Stop crying. Don't be a crybaby. Don't be weak. Pick yourself up by your bootstraps. You know, be tough, because that's what a man is. A man is tough. He never shows vulnerability. He never shows weakness. Which again, is just more messaging that teaches us men, whatever hap is happening in your body, ignore, doesn't matter, it's not true, right? So don't trust your body and what you're feeling, override it with your head. And so we get fed this in all kinds of ways growing up as men. And then, you know, we start to have experiences that are challenging for us. Emotional hardship, physical hardship, or whatever that might be. And we don't know what to do with those feelings. So, you know, in the work I do, Toby, I actually talk about, you know, emotions. They actually start as physical sensations in our body. Every emotion has, like, a physical root in our body. And so when we're disembodied as men, we're not only just not feeling our body, but we're not feeling our emotions, right? And nobody teaches us as guys how to identify what we're feeling, how to name it, how to let alone what to do with it. So what that the consequence of that is us men will have these feelings. We don't know what to do with them. They're uncomfortable. And so the first thing we want to do is numb out from them or eject them from our body. So men, I think, in particular are very susceptible and drawn off into alcohol, drugs, weed, porn, and masturbation, ejaculation. It could be video games, it could be food. There are so many things we'll do to get away from feeling, right? I'm feeling something. I don't like how it's feeling, so I'm going to smoke a cigarette and that's gonna. I'm gonna feel different or I'm feeling something. This is overwhelming. I don't know what this is. I'm gonna go out and get laid. Like, this is how most men deal with the intense feelings in their bodies. The trouble with all of that is while it provides temporary relief and never actually gets to what's going on underneath. And every time we're not feeling something emotionally in particular in our bodies, Toby. The way we stop feeling, if you. When you really think about it, is we tighten our body. So if you imagine you see a young boy, you know, just wailing in tears or crying, and a dad came up and he's like, stop crying. What you'll see that boy do is he'll stop breathing, his body will tighten up to stop the tears. And we do that all the time. So anytime we're not feeling an emotion, it takes physical energy in our bodies to hold it, to hold it at bay and then, you know, even to numb out to it or dissociate from it. So, point being, us men, we're walking around oftentimes with so much tension, physical tension in our bodies, stiff bodies, achy bodies, stuff in our gut, stuff in our shoulders. And this stuff will accumulate over time, and for many, many men, it will eventually catch up to us. You know, when we're young and vibrant like you, you know, you got a lot of chi, got a lot of energy. You can deal with a lot in life, you know, when I don't exactly know how old you are, but, you know, particularly once your 40s hit, stuff starts to catch up, there's not as much energy there. You start to notice your body aching and hurting. Many men start to have autoimmune disorders, things that show up. And while they're not all just driven by emotional content, a lot of them are intensified by whatever we've not felt in our lives. So we walk around pretty wound up and gripped and tight and sometimes numb is men. And mostly, I argue, it's because we don't. Nobody's ever trained us how to be with our feelings and what to do with them. And so a big part of the work I do with men is what I call shadow work, which is the process of kind of bringing our unfelt feelings out of the shadow so we can directly feel them, become more intimate with them, and frankly, kind of free ourselves of having to hold them, which then, like. Like you said, tends to unleash a whole bunch of vitality for us. Whole bunch of life force. When I do this work with guys in person, like, you know, we'll do some deep emotional work, and it's actually like seeing a human being come back alive. Their faces will soften, their eyes will soften, their chests will relax, their breath will get deeper, their voice will get deeper. They'll have more energy and aliveness in space, in their bodies, and suddenly they can do more. They're more engaged, they're more happy, they're more joyful. You know, that's last thing I'll share here is the. One of my first men's coaches gave me this metaphor of, you know, if we imagine feeling emotional or physical or whatever it might be, it's actually just one pathway. It's one pipe it's one highway, right. And so anytime we're trying to not feel the negative stuff, depression, anxiety, fear, anger, we try to hold that in. We're actually also blocking the good stuff because it's just one pathway. So if you're trying to avoid the negative stuff, you're also blocking your capacity to feel deep joy, deep happiness, deep aliveness, deep creativity, deep love. And so, paradoxically, the more willing we are to go into the hard stuff in our lives, the more readily available we are to feel the really good stuff, too. Of, wow, I'm so grateful to be here, so alive. Because we open up that, that channel and then we get to feel. The trade off is we have to feel more of everything, but the good stuff feels even better. And then we become less afraid of feeling the harder stuff.

Host: Yeah, we get connected to our emotions and we. I won't say we become more vulnerable, but, you know, we are more in touch with our feelings.

Jason Lange: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And there's a. A fluidity towards. We can feel emotions faster and they don't get stuck in us. So it's more like a. A set of waves coming in from the ocean. Right. It's like, okay, here comes the big one, and I'm just gonna let it come through me, right. I might grieve for a day, or I might get angry, or I might feel really sad or scared. And in, you know, the, the wild thing about this work is the, the best way to dissolve a feeling is to touch it completely. So the. This is counter to everything we're taught. The more you just go right towards it, the faster it actually passes through your system. And that's not how most of us are trained. Right. So many guys I work with, you know, in their 50s, 60s, 70s, they'll come in having avoided feeling certain things that they've been carrying since, you know, they were kids or teenagers or in their 20s. A moment. They never cried or some heartbreak or some anger or some disgust or whatever. And they've carried that their whole lives. And that has a cost. And then we finally go there and suddenly that part of them is liberated. They don't have to carry that anymore. It's amazing to witness.

Host: Yeah, it's just in my mindset right now, or the way I'm, I think, no, up to until now, like you said, or also when you see a problem approaching, you just take the other way and then avoid it totally. But the truth of the matter is, you know, that that problem, you cannot avoid it. It's going to. Yeah, you Dodge it at that point in time, but it's going to come back on your path again. What we do, we keep on looking for new parts. We keep on, you know, hiding in the bush till the problem passes by and becomes stagnant in life. Or like you just said, just face it. Face it and yeah, solve it. Yeah, it's on and you can get in touch with your feelings, emotions, and it's going to pass by and you become a better person.

Jason Lange: Yeah. And it creates a real strength and resilience. That's the other thing. You know, this is where I kind of sometimes have to push back against the narrative so many men have got where I'm like, well, you know, here we go. If we want to talk about bravery and courage and whatnot, tell me who's more afraid. The man who refuses to be vulnerable and feel the hard stuff, to feel weakness, to feel vulnerability, to feel shame, or the man who's just willing to go right into it. And the men who often mock or make fun of feeling, they're doing it often because they're terrified, terrified of feeling that. So they have to like, create a whole system as to why that's less manly. And so what I say is the most, you know, not that I love this term, but like the most badass men I know, they go right to their feelings. They don't get overwhelmed by them. They don't get overly reactive. They go right towards it and they know how to contain it and hold it and be with it. And that to me is a sign, so to speak, of a very high quality, deep, strong and powerful man. Yes.

Host: And that's ld masculinity in. Yeah. In its true form. Yes. Yeah. You see the problem approaching, face it head on, learn from it and become better from that.

Jason Lange: Beautiful summary. Totally.

Host: Yeah. I've heard a lot about shadow work and you talked about it also. Yeah. So I'm very curious to know, know, like, can you briefly describe what it's all about? How do you do shadow work? How does it work? Yeah.

Jason Lange: So the style of shadow work I lead, there's many different kind of modalities and methods. The style I do is, is very body based and it's very intuitive. And really what it often comes down to is, as I was speaking before, of putting attention on a man, helping him slow down, so really slow down to start to connect to the feelings and sensations in his body. And then as we be, as we actually turn towards those feelings and sensations, we get to start to connect them back to whatever created them. Oftentimes. So another way to think about shadow work, Toby, is, you know, we're just human beings, so this is natural for everyone. It's not like there's anything wrong with you if. If you ever built up shadow material or didn't feel a feeling. But, you know, particularly when we're very young or in our formative years, anytime an experience is happening to us and it's too overwhelming for our nervous system, could be trauma, could be tragedy, could be grief. What our body will do is help us not feel it in that moment so we can survive. Right? And that's kind of.

Host: Yeah.

Jason Lange: And so it gets locked in to part of our nervous system. And as I describe this, it's almost like that energy gets kinked up, gets stuck in these different pockets in our body, and then we forget about it sometimes. But suddenly there's these different pockets of unfelt emotion. Let's say maybe there's some unexpressed rage or anger towards someone who wronged us, right. That we've never been willing to feel, or it was not safe for us to feel for many people in that moment. So we couldn't then. But then we're going through our lives 10, 20 years later. You know, maybe we're walking down the street, we're. We're getting in line for something. Someone cuts us off, and suddenly our anger for that little person, that anger comes in and it connects with that pocket of unfelt anger in our bodies. So it's almost like there's a bundle of firewood just sitting there, ready to be lit. That's all this unfelt anger. So what would normally be this just. Nor like something small like. Oh, that. That was. That wasn't cool, man. I'm pissed at this guy for cutting in line. That's not fair. That normal kind of just little anger, that spark connects to all this unfelt anger, and we explode in rage, right? Maybe we start screaming at the guy. We've probably all witnessed people who were in a highly reactive state that didn't seem to correlate to what was actually happening around them, let's say. Right. That's kind of the essence of trauma or shadow. Our previous experiences are being played out in the current moment, right? So our body doesn't know the difference between then and now. So shadow work is the process of slowing men down, connecting them to their bodies and their feelings and starting to uncover and surface literally this material that's been in the shadow. So it's been impacting our behavior, our choices, our. Our reactions without us Even realizing it, Wow, I didn't realize. The fact that I'm afraid to stand up to my boss is because dad shamed me when I was 4 years old. And I never grieved that. I never felt that. But, like, my body was terrified that I did something wrong. And that little boy has been showing up at work every day afraid to get shamed by dad again. You know, it's not always quite so simple, but sometimes it is. And when a man sees it, it's. It's. It's like a light bulb goes off of, wow, I had no idea. And that's the. The process of bringing the shadow into the light. Now we see this thing we weren't conscious of before, so suddenly we have more choice about how we want to respond rather than just unconsciously reacting. So shadow. Shadow work is this kind of, you know, it's so hard to describe, but it's this intuitive process of guiding men into their experience and helping them uncover often what's not been felt or what they've not been aware of that's been driving their life and using a lot of their life force and energy and liberating that. So we have more choice, more consciousness about how we want to respond in the current day and giving us in, you know, the other thing I'll tie this into is then tying that into very safe, connected spaces with other human beings around us where we actually feel safe to feel these things. Because some emotions are so intense, we are not actually meant to feel them alone. As I say, there's certain types of grief or hurt or sometimes even anger that we're meant to feel in community. And for a large part of human history, most cultures had rituals, right? Community feeling rituals or healing rituals or ways to connect, because we realized you can't just do this stuff alone. And as the west has kind of taken over so much of the world, a lot of that's been just destroyed. And people are just left on their own and have no sense as to how to feel and are scared by that. But one of the things I see with men over and over and over, Toby, is just a concrete example here is, you know, men will come to me and they're like, I can't cry. I wish I could cry. I can't cry. I've. Like, I've tried. I cannot cry about these things, you know, from my life. And we'll get them into a. Into a group. Particularly if we're meeting in person, where we're circled up, there might be some attention on them and Then almost inevitably, particularly once we add touch. So a man might just put his hand on his shoulder, grab his arm. That touch will send a signal to the nervous system, you're safe. Like, literally, you're safe. Someone's here with you, and suddenly their bodies will just. And the tears will come, the grief will just pour through in a way that they had never felt safe to feel before, because there's that relational presence as well. So shadow work kind of involves all of that.

Host: That's so beautiful. I mean, I encourage everyone out there who wants to work on it ourselves. I think for ladies also, it could be very useful if you're looking towards, you know, find out those things that are working and making you act in some way subconsciously to bring them to light. I think shadow work could help. And maybe going for coaching and therapists could be those therapeutic sessions will be very helpful. Or just finding a group, a men's group, for example, that could, you know, you could sit together, you could talk together and process all of these feelings together. That could go a very long way.

Jason Lange: Yeah, totally agree.

Host: That's very wonderful.

Jason Lange: Big fan of therapy, big fan of coaching. Big fan of groups, all of them.

Host: Yes. Yeah. Jason, I mean, I've learned a lot from you in this conversation. There's a lot for me personally to also take back right now to process, to reflect on. And I know there are a lot of more things that we could talk about, a lot of more things that we could dive into, but I would love people to reach out to you, to contact you. So I would like to know what's the best way to connect and work with you.

Jason Lange: Yeah. If you're interested in learning more about kind of what I'm talking about here, best thing to do is visit my website, which is evolutionary.men. so it's not dot com, it's actually dot men. And on there, you can read articles I've written, listen to a podcast I have, see programs I run, some of which I do are virtual, so they're open to men all around the world and to just get a cut of, you know, what this works work is really about. And there's a contact form on there. You can reach out to me. You can follow me on social media, but just head on over to evolutionary.men.

Host: Evolutionary dogs man. The link to this website will be initial of this episode. So I encourage you to reach across to Jason through the website. Like you said, there's a tab for podcasts. When you click on the website, you can listen to podcast episodes also. And also a lot of information that you could make use of. Thank you so much Jason. I really appreciate this soulful conversation. I've learned a lot from you, especially you shed more light on on shadow work. You explained the importance of men's group and I've gotten to understand why. It's very important for us to face our problems, our emotions, our feelings, heads on, process them, work on them, and come out as better beings. Thank you so much.

Jason Lange: Thanks for having me. Toby.

Host: Wow. You made it to the very end of this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I'm grateful for your time, your love, and your contributions. Subscribe like, Review and share this podcast God bless you. Bye.