There's a moment in every man's life where he realizes the surface level connections he's been settling for aren't enough anymore, where something deeper calls to him but he has no idea how to access it. I got to explore this exact territory with Curtis from Living the Dream with Curveball, diving into what it really means for men to step into deeper presence and connection in their lives.
We covered a lot of ground. I shared my own journey, how I grew up in a family that just didn't have the capacity for emotional or physical connection, and how that showed up later when I wanted to connect with women, just feeling anxious and lost. That eventually led me into men's work and somatic therapy in my twenties, which completely transformed my life. Now I do this work with other men because there's a massive gap right now, so many guys struggling and not getting the support they need.
Curtis and I also got into the nice guy syndrome, this pattern where men prioritize everyone else's needs at the cost of themselves. It's actually an evolution of masculinity in some ways, but it ends up not working well in relationships or life. The path forward isn't going back to being disconnected from our hearts, it's learning we can be powerful and sensitive at the same time. We need both.
We talked about men's groups, why they matter so much. The stats are brutal, men's close friendships have been cut in half since 1990. We're wired to triangulate, bond over activities instead of actually being present with each other. Getting into a solid group changed my life more than anything else I've done, and I've seen it do the same for countless other men.
And we dove into masculine presence, what it actually means to show up grounded and still, holding space for the moment. This is what partners are craving, not just financially providing but being trustable and present. The work is getting out of our heads, dropping into our bodies, actually being here.
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Host: Welcome to the Living the Dream podcast with Curveball. If you believe you can achieve cheap, cheap. Welcome to the Living the Dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today we're going to be talking about helping men wake up to deeper clarity and purpose in their lives and relationships and why all men should be in support groups. As I am joined by embodiment coach, group facilitator, and evolutionary guide, Jason Lange. Jason, as I said, helps women or men wake up to. To deeper clarity in their life purpose and relationships, and he believes that all men should be in support groups. So we're going to be talking to him about that and why he feels the way he feels and everything that he's up to. So, Jason, thank you so much for joining me today.
Jason Lange: So excited to be here. Curtis, thanks for having me.
Host: Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?
Jason Lange: Yeah. So my journey in this work is kind of wrapped up in how I support men now. Going all the way back to my own personal story and really begins in, you know, I'm a man raised in the kind of lower middle class of the US and had a lot of my basic security needs met growing up. But one thing that became abundantly clear as I was getting older was my family didn't really have a capacity for connecting emotionally and even physically in some sense. And I had the experience that a lot of men I work with had of, you know, I had a pretty good childhood. And then we begin to dig in underneath and discover, yeah, you know, to. To no fault of our parents. There were just certain nutrients I didn't get growing up that then had an impact on how I was showing up in the world. And for me, that was most strongly noticed in my ability to connect to women as I was going through puberty and getting a little older and wanting to start relationships and just not having the capacity to do that, getting anxious in my body, feeling very disconnected and confused. And that really, Curtis, started for me a journey of kind of inner transformation, of trying to figure out, like, hey, what's going on for me and what's another way to be in the world that feels a little better. And it was through that I got exposed to men's work in my twenties and then particularly started doing work in men's groups and different types of somatic therapies, which are just body based therapies. And my life, you know, started to transform from there. And in the process of that, I got so into the work that other men started asking me, like, hey, can I join your group? What's going on? And so I start. Started facilitating men's groups kind of in my mid-30s. And it's really just taken off since then because there's a, you know, pretty big gap right now in the world in terms of a lot of men struggling and not necessarily getting the support they need, as so much has changed in our world and culture and the way we're supposed to show up in relationships that many men are lost and not really getting the help and guidance they need. And I consider myself just one of many voices out there that are saying, hey, you know, there's a better way to do all this. And most importantly, Curtis, you don't have to do it all alone.
Host: So you say you're an evolutionary guide. Tell the listeners what that is and what that means.
Jason Lange: Yeah. So to me, you know, we're. We're each on a journey of growth and evolution in our life. We each kind of come in with a certain karma from our family of origin and our lineage. And when I say evolutionary guide, right. I can't grow anybody. Growth is always up to you, the individual. But I can be a guide. Kind of like if we were going to go hike a mountain together, I'm going to do it with you, and I'm going to take you on a path that maybe worked for me and support you along the way and help you get to the most whole complete, loving, joyful, and alive version of yourself you can be. And, you know, we have different seasons in our life where we focus on different elements of our life. But this idea of, you know, life, relationship, career, they can all be avenues for our growth. Right. To become even more present, loving, like I said, versions of ourselves that often the pathway to getting there is addressing some of the things we inherited from our family system growing up, some of the different patterns or woundings of our nervous system that, you know, were normalized for us when we were young. But as we get older, we realize, wow, I think there's more possible here.
Host: So you call yourself a no more Mr. Nice Guy Coach. Tell us about some of your mentors and leaders that you studied and trained up under.
Jason Lange: Yeah, so that one in particular, one of my dearest mentors and friends is Dr. Robert Glover, who wrote the book no More Mr. Nice Guy, which has been out a couple of decades now and amazingly sells more copies every year than the previous year. And for a lot of men I work with, is kind of the. The gateway book that wakes them up to wow. Some of the strategies I've been using in life don't work particularly well. And the nice guy in particular, which is a kind of a term for a lot of type of men I work with and I have elements of this and myself, is actually really interesting because it's, it's a positive thing in the sense that it is an evolution of masculinity in that, you know, for a long, long time, the way not all men, but certain men in the world showed up would be disconnected from their hearts. So just going after what they want, taking what they want, with no regard or consequence, no regard for the consequence for the people or environment they're with. The idea of the nice guy, Curtis was kind of a response to that, that many men grew up in volatile households with volatile fathers, or being shown examples in our culture of some of the destructive possibilities of certain types of men. And the nice guy basically shifts that to, well, you know what? Instead of, I'm going to kind of prioritize the safety and well being of those around me. And that's a positive thing in a lot of ways. But where nice guys in particular struggle then is they do that at the cost of themselves. So the, the idea of codependence is often linked to nice guy syndrome. And this idea that nice guys often lose connection with their boundaries, their needs, their wants, and instead just keep moving towards what other people need and want. And Dr. Glover really highlighted this, that for a lot of men, while it's has a positive intent, it ends up not working very well in their relationships or their life. And people trust men like that less. And so as a Certified no more Mr. Nice Guy Coach, part of what I do is help men come back to themselves and learn that it's very possible to be deeply connected to your own sense of personal power and autonomy and remain highly sensitive and attuned to the environment and the people around us. That it's not an either or, it can actually be a both. And, and that's a big part of what us men are being called to step into these days. We need the power, we need the presence, and we need the sensitivity. And so Dr. Glover's guidance has really supported me in my own journey, bringing that forward in my life. And now I do that with other men. So he's just one of many mentors I've had in, in my personal growth that are in fact a big part of why I emphasize, you know, the importance of us men joining men's groups and spending time with other high quality men. Who have some kind of depth or capacity that that's even beyond what we have because that's how we learn. And you know, specifically for me, Curtis, I was in my 20s and yeah, stepped into a room and one of my first other mentors, I quickly had the experience in my body of, oh, wow, for the first time in my life, that's what I want to be when I grow up. And it wasn't, you know, his job or his occupation. What it was was I've never seen a man that present before, that attuned to himself. The way he breathed, the way he dealt with conflict, the way he connected to other people. I felt in my nervous system I want to be like that. And I hadn't been exposed to men like that earlier in my life, and that drastically changed my trajectory as a man.
Host: Can you explain to the listeners what a man's group is and, and why they're so important?
Jason Lange: Absolutely. So, you know, kind of like the term meditation can mean many, many different things. I often say men's groups can mean many different things. But the most simple explanation I'm giving these days, it's when a group of men, so two or three at minimum, up to, you know, sometimes a dozen, gather together with the intention of putting their attention on each other to get real about what's happening in their lives. And this might sound very simple, but the paradigm so many of us men are raised in is many men by default relate to each other via what I call triangulation, which means you and I build a connection with each other by having our attention on a third thing, whether that's a sporting game, an activity, hunting, fishing, you name it, we often bond by literally having our attention. Looking at this third thing, which there's a time and place for that, it can be great, right? But what that often misses is when our attention is not on each other, we can spend a lot of time with people and really not get below the surface with them. And so many men these days are suffering from isolation and loneliness. You know, since 1990, the percentage of men with at least six close friends fell in half, from 55 to like 27%, which is really significant. And in that same time period, the percentage of men without any close friends went from 3 to 15%, so a five fold increase. And it's just getting more extreme since the COVID pandemic and the shift to more and more remote work and the way our society's kind of organizing itself, men in particular are particularly vulnerable to isolation and loneliness because again, we're not raised for all kinds of reasons to be as relational by default. So a men's group is part of what I say is the antidote to that. So it's getting together, putting our attention on each other. And it can be as simple as, hey, what are you feeling? What's going on in your life? What's working well? What's not working well? Where do you want to be going in your life? And in the process, and there's, you know, many different ways to, to kind of enact this, of doing that, we get more connected to each other, we shift from thinking of other men as competition to allies. We get more resourced in our nervous systems and we often get much clearer about the direction of our life and our willingness to tackle it with the support of others at our side. And so I've been in men's groups, like I said, for about 20 years now. I've been leading them for about 10. And out of all the different types of personal growth and transformation work I've done, being in a solid group has been the single thing that changed my life the most. My career, my relationships, literally even my physical health. And it's why I strongly encourage men to find some kind of group in their life to join up and be a part of. Because the power of it is it'll help you move towards the life you want to be living even faster.
Host: Or describe to the listeners what the man box is. Host: Well, what do you feel, in your opinion, like, what do the feminine crave from the masculine?
Jason Lange: Yeah, absolutely. And so I'm going to use some language here that, you know, some people don't like these days, masculine and feminine, but you don't even have to call them that for this stuff to be useful. Just there's this idea that in the world, there's one of the primary polarities and dualities is the energy. If we could call it masculine and feminine, we could call it structure and flow. We could call it awareness and energy. You could call it yin and yang, you could call it perspective and feeling. There's so many different things here, but the point is being. The point being we all have both of these energies inside of us. Whether we're born in a man's body, a woman's body, or we've configured oursel in any way in between. We all have access to these and they pull each other close, meaning like two ends of the magnet. If they're different, there's a polarity, there's an attraction between them, there's an a desire to be close, they're two, the same. We can kind of push each other away or at best be neutral. So the feminine part of all of us, but particularly in feminine oriented women, are deeply attracted to the masculine energy in the world and in men or in other people. And so masculine energy, in a simple way to express it is the energy of being grounded, still, deeply present, holding space. And in some sense it's the energy of being unchanging. Just being really solidly here and providing structure or leadership to the moment is often a big part of that. And one of the challenges a lot of men I work with these days is culturally, we've continued to evolve. So there used to be a set of expectations in relationship where, you know, basically as long as a man was providing, that was enough. But part of what shifted, and I frankly think this is for the better, is both men and women are being kind of liberated from some of these traditional roles. So, you know, in the 60s and 70s in particular, the women's live movement really took off and women were allowed to leave the role of the mother in the home, Housewife, so to speak, and they were allowed to come out into the world, have their own opinions and have jobs and move towards things and in a sense, bring their own agency and some of their masculine energy online. And that is an awesome thing. Simultaneously, it's happened a little later. So the men's work world is a little behind, I would say. Men, for the first time in a long time are being asked to bring their sense of relationality and interiority online. Hey, what's happening inside yourself? What are you feeling? Can you express that? Can you express yourself? And that's a big edge for many men. The problem is these days, you know, because there's more complexity to these roles. A lot of couples don't know how to be in the world because a lot of women are like, hey, I don't need you to take care of me financially anymore. I got this. I have a career I love. I'm super inspired by what I do. But I do need you for some other things. And it's those other things that we're really talking about here, Curtis, of your capacity to be grounded, to be present, to bring spaciousness to the moment. It is shocking how impactful it can be when we as men or the person holding the masculine in any relationship are able to show up in this way. The feminine craves the ability to trust and relax and bring down some of their vigilance, which they've had to build up over many Years. Because the truth is, a lot of men haven't been trustable for many, many, many generations in a sense. But so for us as men, this work to particularly becoming present. So getting out of our heads and the endless amounts of rumination that so many men do to actually coming down, being connected to our bodily sensations, being connected to our emotions, and actually paying attention in the moment to our surroundings and who we're with. And that's the work I do with a lot of men that completely transforms their marriages, their relationships, their dating life as they learn to become present in this different way that it's not just the feminine, but everyone is craving. And when we're, you know, I can speak from the firsthand. When I'm around others that are present in this way, my body, my nervous system relaxes and I just want to be around them more.
Host: So tell us about any current upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.
Jason Lange: Yeah. For anyone, you know, particularly men that are in hearing this and like, yeah, this sounds a little weird, but I'm curious. There's a bunch of different ways to work with me. I, I read, I lead one men's program online that's kind of a combination men's group and coaching program, particularly for men who are wanting to transform how they relate to women. And that's called Pillars of Presence. And you can join that anytime. And then the other big thing I do is I do live retreats, Curtis, which means we get in the room together as men and learn to connect to our bodies and each other in completely different ways that often help us open up and unleash a tremendous amount of vitality in ourselves that we can then use back in our world. And I run that every Labor Day. So I have one coming up again this year, this Labor Day in Northern California. And it's, you know, pretty small, intimate group, about two dozen men in a beautiful location. We do work in nature, we do work with each other. And it's about coming alive as a man and learning to access your presence in these ways we're talking about. And all the information for that you can find at my website, Evolutionary Men, under the events section.
Host: Okay, that was my next question. Your website, Evolutionary Men. So close this out with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on or just any final thoughts you have for the listeners.
Jason Lange: Yeah, this is a, you know, a message directly to men, but also to any women who want to support their men in that part of the man box we're fed, particularly here in the US Is the the myth of the lone wolf or the rugged individualist cowboy. And the honest truth is in nature, in the natural world, the lone wolf is the wolf who was kicked out of the pack and they don't live as long. They need the pack to survive. And we're like that as men, too. And the the offering I have here to say about this, the power of getting into community and joining men's groups is it's not that life is going to become magically easier, but it will become a lot better because you will be resourced in a much deeper way to handle the challenges and stresses of life. So you will grow faster in community than you will alone. That's that. That would be my parting message for men. And if there's a woman out there whose man is struggling, have this conversation with him. Like, hey, have you ever considered connecting with some other men and getting some support? It's not something to be ashamed of. It's something to be proud of.
Host: All right, ladies and gentlemen, Evolutionary men, check out everything that Jason is up to. And if you want to check out that retreat, do that. Also, please be sure to follow Rate Review Share this episode to as many men as possible and as many women who want to support their man. If you have any guest or suggestion topics, send them to Curtis Jackson, 1978. As always, thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Jason, thank you for joining us.
Jason Lange: My pleasure, Curtis. Thanks so much.
