What happens when a man realizes he's been living his entire life disconnected from his own body, his emotions, and the people he loves most? I recently sat down with The Intimacy Inquiry to explore this question that transformed my life and now drives all my work with men: the journey from disconnection to connection. We covered a lot of ground in this conversation, and honestly, some of it still gets me fired up.
I opened up about my own path into this work. Growing up in the Midwest with all my basic needs met, but completely starved for emotional and physical connection. I shared this visceral memory of hugging my mom goodbye when I was 15 and realizing it felt weird because I couldn't remember the last time we'd touched before that. That disconnection created so much pain around relationships and intimacy that eventually drove me to somatic therapy and men's work. Those two things changed everything.
We got into the big question a lot of men are wrestling with right now: what does it mean to be a healthy man? So many guys were taught what NOT to be, but never shown what TO be. You've got the aggressive dickhead archetype that causes real harm, and then the pendulum swing to the nice guy who's suffocating and not getting what he wants. The work right now is about integrating both, having access to our power, sexuality, and desire AND our sensitivity, our ability to feel and attune to others.
One of the most powerful pieces we discussed is how men are literally missing 80% of available information in any moment when we're disconnected from our bodies. There's this research on the vagal nerve showing that 80% of the communication highway between brain and body flows FROM body TO brain. When we're stuck in our heads, we're operating on 20% bandwidth. That's why so many men feel stuck, can't make decisions, struggle to take action. Emotions are information, and they drive movement in our lives.
We also talked about the paradox that trying to avoid an emotion actually creates more of it. The quickest way to dissolve grief, anger, or fear is to touch it completely. And here's the thing, some feelings aren't meant to be felt alone. I've seen guys who say they can't cry suddenly dissolve a lifetime of grief when they're held by a circle of other men. That's the power of doing this work in community.
If you're a man feeling disconnected, stuck in your head, or struggling to access what you're really feeling, there's a path forward. Men's groups, somatic work, learning to create conscious containers for your emotional content. This isn't woo-woo stuff, it's the work that makes you more effective, more powerful, more present in every area of your life. Check out my programs at evolutionarymen.com if you want to go deeper into this.
