Jason Lange on Enhancing Masculinity and Emotional Intelligence for Deeper Relationships | The Intimacy Inquiry

Jason Lange: Yeah, absolutely. You know, unsurprisingly, my journey to becoming a men's work facilitator started with my own personal journey of, you know, what I needed. And in a lot of ways it began pretty young for me. You know, I'm a white guy, raised in the Midwest of the United States, kind of lower middle class and had pretty much all my basic security needs provided for me. Right. In a lot of ways, a lot of privilege. But as I grew older and particularly as it became an adolescent, hit puberty and in my case I'm heterosexual, got interested in girls, I started to be confronted with what wasn't easy for me, let's just say. And I had a lot of pain around connecting to women. I would get really anxious and uncomfortable in my body and kind of tight and didn't know how to talk. And this perpetuated for many years into my 20s and was a source of great pain as I saw my friends getting into relationships, having experiences and I couldn't quite figure it out. And more and more know depression and kind of mental stress just took me over and long and short of it, it got me on a path of realizing, oh well, while I had a lot of things provided for me as a, as a, literally as an infant, up to a young man, the one thing my family did not know how to do was emotional connection and frankly physical connection. There wasn't much touch and there was not much intimacy in terms of just talking about what's real, what we're experiencing in our bodies, what I'm feeling. And in particular I didn't have a very strong connection with my mother in my case. And I tell this story about when I was, I think going in, when I was about maybe 15, I did this summer program for like an environmental camp where a friend's father was going to drive a bunch of us out and you know, it's cool, cool learning thing. And we were carpooling, so he was driving us in a minivan. He kind of went around, got all the kids, got to my house and I viscerally had this memory of my mom walking me out and it was kind of the first time I went away on my own, I guess you could say. And because I don't know, media culture, whatever, like we hugged goodbye and I remember it feeling really weird. Just like this feels really weird. And I didn't really understand it. And it kind of just went on years later when I was doing, finally kind of on the inner path and doing some deep work with a somatic therapist, I realized, oh, that felt weird because before that moment, I could not tell you the last time I physically touched or was touched by my mother. Like, as far back as my memory went, it just was not there. And so long and short, this inner pain I was carrying caused me to go out and try to find, like, okay, there's gotta be a better way. Like, I'm just not feeling good in my body in my day to day as a young man. And it really led me to two things which transformed my life after, you know, a lot of meandering but somatic therapy, which was helping me get in touch with my body and know what. What I was feeling inside. And then men's groups and men's work, where I learned to kind of go deeper inside myself. And by working those things, lo and behold, all my relationships started to change. And it's been a long journey, but I'm now at a place where I'm much more comfortable in my skin, have an amazing wife, kids, beautiful friendships and relationships. And a lot of that inner turmoil is gone. And that now, you know, I'm particularly passionate about specifically helping men around, which is moving from disconnection to connection, which in a lot of ways I think is kind of one of the miracle medicines of our time, that a lot of people, and men in particular, are very malnourished on. Just the feeling of being present and emotionally connected and seen by someone. And there's lots of reasons for that, you know, that what of us men are taught and the way society has played out. But I've just continued on that path and it just keeps revealing more and more gifts and layers of the onion to how I can become a more whole person. And frankly, I just started talking about it so much in my own journey. Eventually people started asking me like, hey, can you, can you help me? And that kind of was the big pivot of my life.

Host: Okay. It's fascinating, isn't it? So from. From something that was obviously quite painful and led to lots of distress in your younger years, and it's gone on to become something that's helped so many hundreds, thousands of people now. It's. Yeah, you almost don't want to say, well, actually that if I hadn't had that pain and challenge, you know, early life, I wouldn't be the person I am today to do all these things. Nobody wants pain, obviously, but in this case it is. It is positive that you've not only worked so hard on yourself, but then you've taken that and built something very different. And something I think a lot of men appreciate. He says talking for men, it is something that is. Is grounded in science, if you like. Isn't that sometimes I think as men again, talk of all men. It. We sometimes feel a bit hesitant to go. And so I'll go see a therapist or a somatic healer or a tantric. Tantric guide or whatever. I'm not sure about that. But when you, when you talk about. And your website is fabulous, talk about evolutionary psychology and how evolution has shaped us and formed who we are, whatever, would you be able to talk a little bit to the evolutionary psychology side of things? So for people that don't necessarily have a full grasp of it, how does that help or how has that helped shape the way men approach intimacy and relationships?

Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean the, the. There's quite a bit here in the sense of first, I'll maybe speak to a pain point that I notice a lot of men are in these days, which is what are we supposed to be? How are we supposed to show up in the world?

Host: Right.

Jason Lange: What does it mean to be a healthy man? And you know, a lot of guys I work with were raised in a way where we were taught what not to be as men. But there hasn't been much modeling of, of what does a healthy integrated man look like these days.

Host: Yeah. Host: Yeah.

Jason Lange: That's frankly, a dickhead that causes harm in the world. And we've both been shown these men by our culture and plenty of human history, that as countless examples of what happens when men who are specifically disconnected from their hearts, what they can do to people, to women, to children, to the environment, to other men. And a lot of men I work with experience that firsthand through, you know, physical abuse in their house, bullying from other men. There's, like, lots of examples that cause men to like, whoa, I don't want to. I don't want to be like that. And then there was kind of this pendulum swing to the, the, what we call the so called nice guy, which is, well, I don't want to be that. So I don't want to be aggressive.

Host: Yeah.

Jason Lange: I don't want to be too assertive. I don't want to be too forward with my sexuality. I never want to make anyone feel unsafe.

Host: Yeah.

Jason Lange: And those men often experience a different kind of pain, which is I. I'm just not getting what I want. I feel like I'm showing up for everyone else and I'm. I'm kind of dying inside, you know, I'm suffering, I'm in pain, and I have a hard time saying no or setting boundaries or people use me. And so the evolutionary chain right now is kind of, well, what's the third way? You know, which in a lot of ways is what does it mean? You know, it's crass in some sense, but as a man, to have connection to our balls, our power, our sexuality, our desire and our heart, our sensitivity, our ability to attune, to feel ourselves, to feel other people, and to kind of integrate those two, in a sense, into, you know, what I would kind of call this Evolutionary man that, that can do both, depending on what's needed. And where the evolutionary kind of psychology comes in is, you know, there's a lot of things that influence how we look for connection as men, what we think we're supposed to do as men, and those social norms that come from that. And one of the most fascinating things, pieces of research I discovered last year was this. They basically interviewed a bunch of men and women. So it's both around what marks the transition from being a girl into being a woman. Like how do you know when a girl has become a woman? And how do you know when a boy has become a man? And both men and women answered this. So this is part of what's interesting. When it came to girls, both men and women tended to point to physical attributes. She has her cycle, she can give birth, her body has developed. She's a woman now, right? She's not a girl anymore. The same did not hold true for men. For men, you could be a so called man in a fully mature body, but people would still call you a boy. Because the both men and women pointed towards behavior. Behavior as what marked that transition. He's a man, he takes responsibility for himself, for his family or you know, whatever, or you know, something we're seeing more and more these days, fully grown man. But he's kind of failed the launch, right? He never left home. He can't really take care of himself. He's fully mature in his body, but he's still like a boy in the world. And so there's this way that because of certain evolutionary pressures, we're just seen and known and have been expected to do different things. And it shows up in kind of this meta sense in what we would call the man box, right, which is the set of expectations. And you know, it varies in different cultures throughout the world. But there's some similarities. This set of expectations that were expected to check the boxes on in order to be a man. And if we're not, we're not a man. And intimacy and emotionality, these things are deeply related to this in terms of what's considered okay and not. But it also goes down to some extent in terms of biology. So that's another way to think about the evolutionary psychology is sometimes our behaviors are not solely motivated by biology, but they're certainly influenced by them. And for a lot of guys, you know, where this starts to fit into the man box is lit just because of the way humans procreate. Right? One man can technically sire many children with many different women. So if you know, after a war or whatever, you kind of only need one man. You know, you need a lot less men. The pressure point is not on the men. Let's just say it's on the women who can carry the children. And one of the ramifications of that is this has changed quite a bit. And again, it's a generalization, but oftentimes, in different cultures throughout the world, men's bodies and lives were considered more disposable. Because if we lost 100 men, we only needed 10 men to repopulate a town, let's just say. Right. With. The same is not true with the feminine, with women. And so that has kind of filtered up into all kinds of things in terms of. Again, it's changing now, but traditionally, you know, the military was mostly staffed by men. Men mostly died in wars.

Host: Yeah.

Jason Lange: The most dangerous jobs, the most toxic jobs have tended to be held by men. Men's bodies have more often than not been considered kind of disposable. And that has huge ramifications because then what it teaches us men is that our bodies aren't important. And then so often from a young age, young age, boys start to get this signal that it doesn't matter. You don't need to be connected to your body. Right. So even at a young age, oftentimes they've done studies. And again, there's always exceptions to this. Young boys are often parented differently than young girls.

Host: Yeah, definitely.

Jason Lange: Boy falls down, scrapes his knee, it's like, oh, stop crying. You're okay, you're tough. You can get through it.

Host: Yes, Right.

Jason Lange: Which that signal. What that signal really means is overrule what you're feeling in your body with your head. Right. Then we get into school. The. The kind of mainstream educational system where they've done lots of studies, boys do tend to be more kinesthetic, need more movement. They've got a lot of energy. If you've ever been around a young boy. Right. There's just. But what are they told in school? Sit still. So that that desire to move in your body, override that with your head, I disconnect from that. Then we get into adolescence, and then it starts to come from the peers. Our bodies are developing at different times. There's, you know, social hierarchy. We start to learn this lesson. Don't show any weakness or vulnerability because you'll be bullied, you'll be made fun of. You may literally be hurt. So hold it all inside. Whatever you're feeling, hold it all inside and override it with your head. Put on that brave front like, yeah, no, I'm cool man. Right? And then we get often out into the workplace where we're generally rewarded in our kind of hyper capitalist culture for, oh yeah, he works like 80 hours a week, just super dedicated.

Host: Like. Host: No, no, it was, I hadn't a couple of things there. One, I hadn't, I don't know why I hadn't really thought of the fact that girls become women. That's just, it just happens by, by nature. Whereas boys almost have to earn manhood. And I guess if you look at lots of societies globally, sort of societies outside of the Western culture where boys go off to hunt at 14, 15 have to come out with a kill or boys have to undergo a certain ritual and things to go through that even, even in the, in the Jewish religion you go through a particular ritual to become a man. And that, that's something that, yes, I've got a 15 year old son, an 18 year old daughter and, and absolutely we, we parented them differently. They're very different, they're very different individuals. My daughter's very much into drama and psychology and philosophy. That's her big passion is my son's very academic but super sporty and goes to the gym and all those sort of things. So, and I think intentionally we sent. So Alexander goes to an all boys school, Madeleine to an all girls school. And I think the reason we did that was because as you said, there's quite a lot of sort of when you hit teenage years or even earlier the race, boys are very, I can remember being a boy a long time ago, but very fidgety and very moving and almost when you, when you benchmark against the, the girls in the class who sat there very quiet and very just getting on with things. So they're having all the boys together and all the girls together. Hopefully the teachers will manage it in a different way. And to be fair, both schools have, have been great. They really have one thing that they, they don't teach and I don't know any schools that teach this necessarily in the UK anyway, we have sex ed. Yeah. So sex education, it's very practical. So they learn about safe sex, they learn about sexual diseases, they have a lesson or two on consent, which is great, but they don't have lessons on how to communicate, how to, as you said in the beginning, how to talk with girls differently, you talk with boys, how to, how to have that conversation, what intimacy looks like and all those things. And I think the, the challenge with that is that obviously if you're not getting information from one source, going to look for information elsewhere. And one of the big changes in society has happened since I was young. So when I was young there was no social media, there was no smartphones, there was no, no laptops, no computers basically. And pornography as an example was a magazine your older brother might have had in the, in the cabinet back and it's, oh my God, there's a naked woman on this picture. Look at this static picture. Whereas now the research shows average age now is 12 and 13 year old boys access everything or can access anything. I think there are, I think there are 4 billion hits a month now on Pornhub and those sort of things. And, and when, when boys in particular, 12 and 13, that haven't really understood what a relationship's all about, when they see that as potential relationship is or sex is, or they hear from people like a nurse of an Andrew Tate type character and the sort of incel community. Yeah. You can understand when their brains are still forming, they're still having all this input. Why they can be so confused and, and that's as a dad of a 15 year old, you know, I'm asking forever three free therapy. But it's sort of, how do you, how do you handle that when you've got a teenage, teenage kid is a good kid, good friends, all that sort of stuff. But you still don't know what he's really believing in. What he thinks. Yeah. What he thinks a man, a young man is allowed to be in today's society. That's. I know that's a challenge that you, you've addressed head on and that, that's the big one for me personally as a dad. How do I make sure he's set up to go out and do well in the world? And to be a good partner, a good dad, a good. A good. Yeah. A good friend. Those sort of things. That's what. That's what you want for your sun, moon, is just to be a. Yeah. Be a decent. Be a decent man. But what does that mean?

Jason Lange: Yeah. Yeah. Well, this is, I think, one of the great challenges of our time right now, because like you said, in a lot of different cultures around the world, there were what we call rites of passage. Yeah, right. Where were these actual initiatory frameworks that young boys were taken through? And, you know, long and short of it, it's different in different cultures, but really what happens is young boys start to spend time with older, mature men. Yeah. And so they start to receive the transmission, you know, of what healthy masculinity, you know, for better or worse, is in that culture at the time, which different cultures obviously have different manifestations of that. But the practice itself is really useful because. Right. Robert Bly, who wrote Iron John and was a big author in the 90s, you know, kind of kickstarted a lot of men's work. Another one of the things he pointed to. Right. Is the shift from pre industrial to industrial cultures. There was a big change because. Yeah, around that age, you know, boys would go off and be with the men, the uncles, their fathers on the job, learning a trade, spending the day kind of seeing their father be in the world or seeing other trusted elders, males in the world. And when industrialization happened, there was a split. Suddenly, dad's going off to work all day in the factory. I'm staying home with mom, or eventually I get put in school, which more and more has been female teachers. So young boys have spent more and more time around women, not men. And that has a ramification, because then again, we don't have necessarily the modeling that we need for. Okay, what does it mean? And so these rites of passage are something that are starting to kind of come back online. But the, you know, one very simple thing when you ask that question is help expose him to other good men, where he gets to sit and talk and learn and ask questions. Absolutely. With you, but also with peers and other men you trust in your community because that's a really important thing. And again, I can't remember the exact reference, but there's an incredible piece of research that shows boys in particular, like, sometimes just a single intervention from an older, mature man who gives them some guidance and lets them know, hey, you're okay. Like, just sometimes even a single intervention can completely change the trajectory of their lives.

Host: Yeah.

Jason Lange: And so that kind of mentorship, that being around older men, whether it's through an explicit rite of passage or just involving him in community and bringing him to things, can be really important then along with just a lot of curiosity around, what do you believe? Right? Asking him, what do you believe? What are your friends believing? What are you guys seeing? Because the, I think the struggle with a lot of young boys right now is there is a vacuum. And in that vacuum, the loudest voices like Andrew Tate are the ones that boys are gravitating to, because there aren't a lot of other voices that are saying, actually there's more to it than that, right? There's more complexity to that and there's a lot more available to you than that. The other thing that I imagine just, you know, the nature of the, your podcast and the work you're in, is you're already modeling something to him, right? As a man who's interested in interiors and intimacy and connection and I imagine growth and is continuing to do your work, that is one of the greatest gifts I think a father can give a son or any of their children is to show them that, hey, life is a process of growth. None of us come out perfect. We're always learning and growing and trying to become more whole and human. And see, look at me, I'm still doing that, right? I don't have it all figured out as your dad, but here's what I know has worked for me, here's what hasn't worked for me. What's working for you, what isn't working for you, right? There's that curiosity along with, you know, also just starting to, when possible again, I imagine you do this, but rewrite the story that it's okay to feel, right? It's okay to grieve, it's okay to be sad, it's okay to be anxious and scared. None of those things are the problem. And the guys who say that that stuff is a problem, the real honest truth is they're afraid, right? They're afraid. They're afraid to feel grief, they're afraid to feel uncertainty, they're afraid to feel self doubt or they're afraid inner critic or whatever that might be. So they have to construct all this posturing and armor about how men, real men don't feel. We never show weakness, we're always tough. But it's, it's just made up. It's not true, right? Another stat I saw last year was men who self identify heavily with traditional masculine and stoic ideas of kind of, you know, Head over body and all that kind of stuff. Like twice as likely to commit suicide. Twice as likely. It has massive ramifications, this don't feel thing. And the other thing I would say along with that is teaching our kids that feeling is okay and how to identify those feelings and then what to do with them. I think this is another thing where a lot of men and boys get lost is no one shows us what to do with them. No one shows us how to identify them and become, you know, fluent, let's just say, in the language of emotionality, let alone what to do with them. And when we can identify it and we don't know what to do with it, guess what we do as men when there's this disease, unease in our body, we try to get rid of that feeling by turning to something outside of us. Yeah, Alcohol, weed, overworking, sex addiction, you name it. Because no one has really shown us any other tools to frankly medicate ourselves. And so a lot of guys get lost in that. And what I've seen is we increase our emotional fluency of understanding what's happening inside of ourselves and then have some tools with which what do we do with that? Lo and behold, a lot of that stuff goes down. Our need for it, our compulsions for it, because we have ways to work with the discomfort in our body.

Host: I really resonated what you said about the boys working with their dads, I mean, other people or whatever. So my, my family, so my dad, granddad's great granddads, they're all from coal mining country and then sort of north of England. And my, my granddad, so my dad's dad was a coal miner. My mum's dad was a coal miner. My dad went down the coal mines when he was sort of 16, his brother did. And so my dad's boss was his to be father in law and he watched his dad work all the time. And in that generation when there's, you know, boys are sort of 16, they would go to the, the pub or the bar and the, the dad would buy them, you know, half a pint or a drink that I sat in the corner quietly and just watched really. And they were sort of, even though it wasn't legal to drink at that age, he was just having half a pint for the night. Watching the other men, whether they be talking about horses or playing snooker or playing darts or whatever, they just got used to being around other men. And then, so yes, and it's not, not necessarily saying they were, they were very, they're very Emotional with one another. I think, you know, coal miners aren't traditionally very emotional people, but it's interesting how they, they had that big family unit. The whole, the whole village was a column in village. Everybody knew when somebody didn't come back from the mine or somebody was injured, they're all out there helping. It was a proper community. The community raised the family. I certainly find that now, whether it's doing this or, or just knowing my son, I certainly have much more open conversations with him than my dad would with me because I, I, I think the gosh, for, for if it, if I might feel this is going to cause both of us some embarrassment for a minute to ask him about emotions, sex, intimacy, whatever. It's, it passes so quickly and I would much, much rather he had the information from, from people like you vi me that I can sort of pass on to him rather than him hunting around. Because, yeah, there's always information there to fill the void. It's just being able to filter the information, which is hard. So I, so we do intentionally listen to podcasts together or watch something on TV and a prompt conversation or whatever. And I think that's part of our job really. I see. It's part of my job as being, being a dad. My job isn't to be his, his best friend. He's got friends for that. My job is to sort of hopefully guide him and find resource and information that will answer the questions that he has in the hope that, yeah, he'll, he'll then go on to become a. Yeah, he'll make mistakes. I still make mistakes, for goodness sake. But if you can sort of arm them as much as possible to recognize what vulnerability is all about. But on the, on the emotions piece, then, so, so as you said, we, we have been taught or we've recognized through media that if we get, if we get shot in the shoulder, we just brush it off. If we get shot in the leg, we keep running and all of a sudden we just, just carry on with it and we, and we, you know, and we rescue a damsel in distress at the same time. And so those emotions are not something we wear as a man, as a dad, and as, etc. So I, I guess the fear is that, gosh, if I, if I recognize all these emotions and I'm aware of all these emotions, gosh, what do I do with them now? Now I thought, I've got them all. I've got this. I've got fear emotion, I've got happiness emotion, I've got sadness, I'VE got grief, whatever. Oh my goodness. What. What do I. So when. When you take a group of men and you start to talk about them and help peel about the layers and get them to understand what emotions are. Emotions aren't bad things. They help us connect. But how do you help them? It's probably not the right word, but man. Host: [email protected] use their emotions or use them as opposed to being sort of stuck with them.

Jason Lange: If.

Host: Does that make sense?

Jason Lange: Yeah, totally. I think this is where a lot of men get lost. I've literally worked with dozens of men who will share, like, yeah, you know, I get. I can feel there's this like tidal wave of grief. But my fear is if I let myself feel it, I'll never come back. Yeah, it's just gonna. It's just gonna devastate me. And that's often because we haven't had the experience of being led through them. Yeah, in a sense. And that's where, again, masculine presence can be a particular gift, whether it's another man, a brother, friend, in. I mean, the long and short of it is it's a bit of a paradox that men are often surprised to learn that the more we tend to try to avoid an emotion inside of ourselves, the more we'll actually end up creating more of it. This is like one of the wild things that in trying to avoid hurting someone, will often hurt them. Yeah. Or in trying to avoid feeling grief, will actually start to feel even more devastation in our lives. So the work I really guide men through is. Is Just kind of conceptually is we learn to turn toward our pain, to actually go into it head on and build the capacity to just stay present with it. And the thing a lot of men don't know or haven't experienced because again, they maybe didn't have a father lucky enough to stay present with them and help them get in touch with their feeling, is that the quickest way to dissolve an emotion is to touch it completely. It's like when we fully go into it. And I've done some unbelievably intense work with guys with various different types of trauma and shames and things they've had in their nervous system literally for decades sometimes. And the wild thing is, when we really fully go into it, it often doesn't last more than 10 minutes or so. Like, doesn't mean there won't be another set that comes through in life like ocean waves. But the actual visceralness, it doesn't last when we give ourselves over to it. And where groups of men become particularly incredible is when we're in community and connection, we're allowed to feel more right? So suddenly we have our bearings as this grief comes over us. What a lot of guys get wrong is, as I say, some feelings aren't meant to be felt alone. We are relational creatures. And so some guys will come to me and say, you know, I wish I could cry, but I can't cry. You know, I just. I cannot access it. I get them in a room, eight other men around them, suddenly just one hand on the shoulder, and they dissolve. A lifetime's worth of grief comes out because suddenly they're being held in something. So it's both learning to identify and then how to work with them safely and consciously. That's the other thing. And again, what I've seen is just like that kind of masculine mentorship thing is one of the quickest ways to start to get a sense of what do I do with my grief, how do I express my anger in a healthy way, or my fear, whatever. Or frankly, for a lot of guys, my just exhaustion and overwhelm is when they see another man do it. And right. Another man just fully lets himself go grieving a loss in his life or something. But he's still there, right? He's not totally collapsed.

Host: Yeah.

Jason Lange: Not being a dick, he's not dissociating from it. And they're like, whoa, I trust you more now. I feel you more now. I experience you as more powerful. There's more of you here than there was 10 minutes ago or For a lot of guys, too, who are kind of more in the nicer guy territory when they get to experience and see a man fully embody and move his anger. But not one second of that feels unsafe, right? You were fully owning your anger, and I felt totally safe to be around you. Nobody even showed me or told me that was possible. Right. These different ways to stay present with it. And so when we see other men modeling it, it's like our nervous system. Oh, that's what it is to stand in presence and grieve or fear or be angry or whatever that might be. And there's countless tools, like specific tools for how we work with that. But the most basic one is we learn to create contained and safe spaces where we can explore our emotional content. And that's why I particularly focus on men's groups, right? Where we have a place where the actual context is. We can go into these things and there's agreements around them. I mean, a simple example I sometimes give, maybe a less pleasant version of this is, you know, we all probably know some people in life who are just kind of complainers. They just complain, and it's usually pretty draining to kind of be around that energy. But sometimes just simply setting a container, a context around it where it's like, hey, you know what? It seems like you've got a lot on your mind. Here's what I love to do. I'm going to put on timer four minutes, and I want you to just whine and complain about everything that's awful in your life right now. The thing is, most of us are totally happy to do it for four minutes when we know there's a container around it and the person can really just vent and let it go. And then almost always after the timer, there's like a. And now we can, like, connect as human beings, and this stuff's not there. It's when it's unconscious that it's often destructive. And for us men, that might be our anger. We're not wanting to deal with it. And then sometimes we just explode in totally inappropriate rage, right? Someone cuts us off in traffic or in line somewhere. And the. The offense, let's just say, is not at all correlated to the bigness of the response. That's because it's. It's not that that you're angry about. It's all the other stuff in your life you haven't been able to be bring that forward. So we create a conscious container for that of, oh, I'm gonna go be with my men, and I'm actually gonna allow my body to feel the anger that I need to feel to tell off my boss to rage about my job loss or my relationship or whatever that might be. So in a sense, we create conscious spaces where we're intentionally going in to move the energy. And that's almost all it ever is, is it's energy in our body that just needs to move somewhere. And this is what a lot of guys kind of get wrong then is that because we don't know how to handle that, you know, and we're taught we disconnect from our bodies and our emotions and guess where the only place to go is then? Up into our heads.

Host: Yeah.

Jason Lange: Where we overthink things and ruminate things and have these inner critics and voices that are just so painful for so many guys. And we get so stuck up here and we actually lose a lot of our capacity. So, you know, some guys, when I start talking about emotions, they oh my God, that's like, woo, woo. You know, everybody's just crying kind of stuff. Like there's a lot of that in the culture still. But what I come back with is, you know, there's an incredible amount of research now that shows, you know, we have this bundle of nerve that goes down our body called the vagal nerve, right. Which is a collection of different nerves that link up our nervous system and is essentially the highway between our brain and our body. Just what connects it. But what they found with research is, and this is totally wild, is only 20% of that highway. 20% of that bandwidth is brain to body. 80% of that channel is body to brain. That's the direction the information is flowing. Wow. I would never thought if we are not in our bodies as men in any given moment, we're missing out on 80% of the available information that's alive in that moment. That, lo and behold, is the exact information we need to make wise decisions and be effective leaders. So if we're not in our bodies and our emotions by extension, we're actually missing out on quite a bit. We're not as effective in the world. And most people have, you know, this intuition about gut instinct. You know, sometimes it's like, oh yeah, just I followed my gut and turns out it was right. That's all that information flowing up through our body that so many of us mentioned are taught to ignore. And when we come back into contact with it, lo and behold, we just become more effective in the world and we're able to make better decisions. This is the other thing a lot of men get Wrong about emotions is we like to think decisions are made by our rational mind, and they're not. Emotions drive decisions. And this is something a lot of men don't want to face. And there's this wild, you know, kind of. There's always these extreme case studies, right, where someone gets like a. A rod through part of their brain or something. So part of the brain's off and the rest is. Yeah, and there's an example of someone who, yeah, basically the emotional part of the brain got damaged. Everything else was fine, but the part that feels and processes emotions. And lo and behold, that man could not make very simple decisions anymore of what shirt am I going to wear? What should I eat right now? Because those decisions way more than most men want to realize they're actually emotional decisions. Right? And so when we're cut off from our emotions, we're also less able to make decisions, be decisive in our life, and take action. And, you know, it's right there in the word emotion. This is kind of a platitude that, you know, a lot of people have heard. It's energy in motion. Emotion is our body's biochemical reactions to the environment in our relationships that are supposed to drive action in our lives. When we're not in touch with those emotions, we don't often take action. And that's why I think more and more men are suffering from just deep depression. And what I found is we get men in circles, get men into their motions, in their bodies. When they finally feel how angry they are, how sad they are, how exhausted by their job they are, when they really let the emotional experience come up and contact it, what tends to happen pretty fast, they make some actual changes in their life. I gotta set boundaries at work or I'm leaving that relationship. There's an actual movement that goes along with the emotion. But when we're stuffing them all the time, we don't take as much movement. And that's where so many men just feel kind of stuck, lost, not empowered in their lives. And it all comes back to this emotion thing. So what I tell guys is you're going to be more powerful, more effective, more connected in your relationships, the more you build fluency with what's going inside. And more than anything else, regardless of all that, you are going to feel more empowered to handle yourself and your experiences right? You're going to have a sense of, oh, I can work with my grief. I don't have to be afraid of it or it's not going to overwhelm me. Like, I Have some agency and control over my state, over my mood by learning to work with this stuff with other men, with coaches, with therapists. You know, there's lots of different avenues.

Host: Avenues. It's. Yeah, it's very, very, very interesting and relevant to me right now. So just a personal moment for a second, if that's okay. So my. So my dad died about five weeks ago and my mum died about 18 months ago. And I think with my mum, she died of dementia. So almost. Almost died twice in a way. And my dad didn't. He. So I went into hospital, was fine, had an operation and didn't come out of it. But I think when my mum died, I held off on grieving to make sure my dad and everybody else was okay. And my dad died and I held up on the immersion to make sure my sister was okay, my kids were okay, his grandkids and everything else. Yeah, so I'm exactly in that place that the emotion's all in there and it's that sort of. Exactly as you said. It's that sort of fear of, oh, my gosh. But if I let it sort of creep up, then is it. Is it going to overwhelm? Is it gonna. Is it gonna stop me now? So. So I didn't. Didn't cry either. Funeral sort of held other people while they cried and trying. And I, I think I'm relatively switched on human being touching my emotions and things and, and generally, generally I am. But just with that, it was almost that almost something sort of took me back to. No, no, you've got to be the sort of stoic upper lip here and sort of look after everybody else, really. So. So what he said was, is, yeah, you could literally be talking just to me. So, yeah, with that. So. So thank you for that. And. And I do. I do plan to do what you said and sort of talk to somebody and I think have that discussion. And I've. When I've been to therapy and I think before, and I've always found it much easier to release those emotions with a stranger or something, I don't know, or somebody that has no. No skin in the game, so to speak, you know, and it's not. It's not a fear of being seen as being weak by my family or whatever. But, yeah, I know they're grieving and I don't want to sort of add my grief to their grief. That makes sense. So I think what you said was, yeah, it's everybody else, but it felt like it was just a thing. Thank you. Host: Right.

Jason Lange: And this is such a big deal for us men that we just, we literally have to be taught. And it really helps to see it modeled and it helps us to get feedback from other people as well. Which again, is why I'm a big fan of groups, because we can play with this stuff and be like, wow, you're realize you said that. Like you're extremely pissed off. And they're like, no, I'm not. Yeah, actually, I can feel the agitation. Like, what do you think that's going to feel like for your partner to get that versus you coming towards and saying, hey, like, I'm really angry. Right. I'm really angry at what happened last week when you said Wicks Risley. It immediately feels really different. Yes, we can own our experience and our emotional process and content, but to be able to do that own, behold, we got to be in our bodies, connected to them, know what our feelings are. And that's where a lot of men just are not educated.

Host: 1. I've taken a lot of time, so sorry, I've just got two more quick questions. That's okay.

Jason Lange: Yeah.

Host: One was about the heart of Shadow men's group and live retreat that you run. I know there's one coming up in September this year. I was just it. First of all, why is it not in London? And secondly. And secondly, what. When men, when you meet the men at the beginning and you sort of talk with them and then they graduate or finish, they go to the live retreat and they come out at the end, what are the biggest changes that you. You see? What is it that people say to you? I know there's refs on your website and I would put everybody to the website. The podcast is the heart of the chatter. Podcast is fabulous. I love listening to it.

Jason Lange: What.

Host: What is it that you find that men leave that with?

Jason Lange: Yeah, they leave often feeling a lot more empowered to. Just as I say, it's like everything becomes workable. Any emotional tension or problem or bit of shame. Suddenly, in the exact thing we create in Heart of Shadow, it's like we have this kind of engine to metabolize it. Whether it's a fight with our partner, insecurity, you name it. Because really what guys have the experience of is all of the energy and resource, literally metabolic energy we put into not feeling something is energy that is not available for us to deploy towards the things we really want in life. And what's the major issue Most men have 35, 40 years old and beyond energy management. I'm just, I'm just so tired. I have too much to do. I feel so burdened and fatigued. And a lot of that ends up it's unprocessed emotional content. Right. And this, there's research and you know, examples you can feel in your body of again, going back to a young boy. Example, if you imagine there's a young boy crying and I come up to him and I'm like, stop crying. What does he do? How does he do it?

Host: Yeah, yeah.

Jason Lange: Holds his breath, his whole body tightens up. Literally stops the feeling by contracting his body. And they can trace this down to individual cells. Now like our body actually tightens up and closes these certain latches and holds it. And sometimes that's totally appropriate, right? Sometimes it's appropriate. Oftentimes after someone passes away, there's just so many overwhelming logistics and organization, you don't have time. So we have to like latch this down. And then it's usually once it's all done, once all the estates are hand, then often the huge wave of grief will come because it's like, okay, now there's space. But that mechanism takes so, so much from men where we don't have the energy, the vitality, we don't feel alive because so much of our life force is going to holding and resisting these feelings. So what I particularly see in something like the heart of shadow is men come alive, their bodies relax, their faces brighten, their eyes brighten. There's more joy, there's more feeling. Because this is the other thing a lot of guys do, don't realize is my first men's coach, I remember talk to me about this, he's like, you can imagine feelings again or it's, it's just one pipe. And so if there's grief in there and you don't want to feel it and you clinch down on the pipe.

Host: Guess what? Yeah.

Jason Lange: Joy.

Host: Yeah.

Jason Lange: Peace, freedom, vitality, Love. And so we start to live in these very narrow bandwidths. And in fact that's how most modern SSRIs get tidy point suppressant meds work. They take the range of experience and they narrow it so your lows aren't nearly as low. But what you'll often find with people who've been on it, they'll report and I don't know, I just kind of feel. Yeah, like my highs aren't high. My lows aren't lows.

Host: Yeah.

Jason Lange: And that can be a life saving thing. So I'm not here to demonize that. But the point is you're often getting cut off from that top range. So in the heart of shadow, what we learn is we just learn to turn towards whatever the feeling is in community with tools and techniques for how to healthily and safely metabolize that and start to let go of this emotional burden we've been holding in our nervous system, oftentimes for some men, for decades. And suddenly that energy comes back to us and we can show up more present with our lovers, with our friends, with our kids. And we're not afraid of conflict of emotion because suddenly we know we can navigate it right. And in fact, oftentimes our greatest gifts in life come from going right towards that stuff we want to avoid the most. So it's a. It's a powerful tool that really gives guys this deep experiential sense of all those dark shadows in my nervous system and my past in my feeling state, I can let them out and I know how to work with them. And. And I actually become a more present, powerful, and frankly, alive and vital man who's enjoying my life. And then I get to do that in community and brotherhood. And we'll be having one in Portugal next year. So Portugal in the loop.

Host: Absolutely. Yeah. Portugal is an exceptional place. Yeah. I guess almost the best reviews you must get from partners of people that are on it. It's like, hey, who's this guy sent back to me? Where's he been for the last 10 years? It's. Yeah, that's. Yeah. And then my final question, if that's okay, would be, you have since. Since childhood really invested a lot of time and energy in yourself. You've invested a huge amount of time in getting the proposition to where it is now and explaining and talking and supporting so many people. Obviously going through that, you must have heard some challenging stories and difficult bits of difficult situations. I just wondered, how do you. How do you protect your own mental and physical wellbeing? How do you make sure that you're able to still be the person you want to be when all this, all this sort of challenge is coming towards you?

Jason Lange: I am probably the thing that I have the most abundance of in my life is incredible connection and community with other men. So everything that I guide other men toward, towards, I have myself. I'm part of three different men's groups. I have a Rolodex of men that I can literally show up and burst into tears and snot and physically be held by or be challenged by if I'm off base on something or whatever that might be. So really, my great north star in life is the quality of male connection I have around it that has allowed me to just take on more because like I said, I have a place as a coach, as a leader. I have to deal with my own stuff in my marriage and my relationships, trying to run a business and my own insecurities. And I have my guys. I bring that to that. Help me get in touch with those feelings and learn to work with them so I'm not trapped by them in the same way so many other men are. So that's really been. It is. You know, I use the very tools that I teach men, and why I teach them is because they're what changed my life. So a lot of times I just say, hey, here's what's worked for me. Yeah, this might work for you. I hope. Give it a try. And oftentimes it does. And then men get it. They're like, oh, wow. You know, I used to spend so it's embarrassing, Andrew. Like sometimes I would spend on different things, sometimes days, weeks, or I kid you, not even months, trying to figure something out on my own. So much stress and too embarrassed to ask for help or whatever. I can ask someone and they can answer it sometimes and help me in like two minutes. Now, as a man, I've had to just get over that. It's like, I don't know how to do this. Can you help me? And someone tells me and I'm like, I just saved myself months of strife. Or there's this emotion I've been avoiding. Turns out, oh, my God, I've spent three months been avoiding this. And I go to my group and I finally bring it. It's over in 10 minutes, and I'm like, oh, my God, I just wasted three months avoiding that. But now I've done it. So for me, it is men's groups that are really the thing that have allowed me to flourish in my life and why I'm so passionate about getting other men involved in them.

Host: Fabulous. Yeah, please, please let me know about the one in Portugal. It's only an hour and a half flight definitely, so I'd love to, yeah. Meet up in person and take part in one of those groups. Fabulous. Thank you so, so much for your time. I know you've so busy, but really, really appreciate it. You've given me a lot to think about. I'm really looking forward to listening to this with my son. He was really interested in the website and what you do and everything. So it'll give us lots to talk about and I hope other people listening will feel the same so. Yeah. Thank you so much for. For doing what you're doing and spending time with me.

Jason Lange: My pleasure. And thanks so much for creating spaces you thank like this to help get the word out and let humans and men know there's a different way.