There's this paradox every man faces: the very parts of ourselves we've learned to hide and suppress are exactly what we need to access if we want genuine aliveness and intimacy. I had a powerful conversation on the Man Alive podcast with Shayna about shadow work and why this contradiction sits at the heart of everything men struggle with in relationships and sexuality.
Luke and I got into what actually makes our approach to shadow work different. It's not just journaling or talking about your wounds intellectually. We create spaces where men can express what's been locked up in their bodies since childhood. That unexpressed anger, that hidden grief, the parts of themselves they learned weren't safe to show. We're bringing that up through the throat, giving it voice, letting it move through the system.
We talked a lot about how much energy it takes to keep parts of ourselves hidden or suppressed. Over time, that becomes a kind of numbness, a flatness. Men end up reaching for porn, weed, booze to regulate themselves because they were never taught how to be with what's actually moving in their bodies. And meanwhile, their relationships suffer. Their vitality disappears.
One thing Luke shared that really landed was a recent breakthrough with his wife. He'd been coping with disconnection by meditating more, focusing on his kids, essentially detaching. What broke through was when he finally brought his anger forward, responsibly. She felt met for the first time in weeks. That's polarity. When we bring our truth, even when it's intense, our partners can actually feel us again.
Shadow work gives men a place to practice bringing the full range of their emotional intensity without collapse or destruction. We get to calibrate. And honestly, that's where the power is. Not in being cool or unaffected, but in being alive, connected to head, heart, and guts.
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Jason Lange: We're excited to be here. Yeah. Yeah.
Host: Does one of you want to start and dive in and tell us what do you actually mean by shadow work?
Jason Lange: I'll. I'll jump in. This is Luke. You know, I think we were talking about talking earlier that, like, meditation, they're kind of an infinite. Maybe not infinite, but there's many, many different kinds of shadow work. And what distinguishes the work Jason and I do is that it's. It's somatic and it's. It's experiential and it's expressive. So we're not necessarily, you know, working with a journal or just kind of intellectually talking about our wounding or our conditioning that we may start that way. We want to kind of get the narrative arc of. Of our conditioning. But where our work kind of really goes to another several levels is that we. We want to create a space where people start to express that voice that couldn't come out as a child that, you know, was angry or. Or was experiencing with sexuality and was, like, hiding in your room with it and just wasn't safe to bring it forward. We want to give voice to that. That place in the nervous system. And in kind of New age culture, we might call that the inner child, but really for our purpose. It's. It's a place in the body that's maybe it's dormant or it's vibrating, you know, in. In kind of the crevices of our joints or our organs. And our work was. We want to say, hey, let's. Let's bring that up to the throat, to the tongue, jaw, and teeth, and let it out. Let it out. Yeah.
Host: Yeah. And as a doctor of Chinese medicine, I'm curious, what do you see, right. For men who have not expressed these parts or the younger self or. Right. Just any part that's been held back, not. Not loved or not, you know, felt safe to express, like, what shows up in a man's life.
Jason Lange: I mean, the number one thing that comes to my mind is addiction, you know, that the. The energy, Jason, is something you talk about a lot, but the energy it takes to keep something hidden, or maybe not even hidden, but just not to not allow it to come to the surface. Tremendous amount of metabolic force, of chi, of prana, whatever word you want to use across any tradition, we're exerting a tremendous amount of our life force to not express ourselves.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: And over time, that. That just becomes normalized, a normalized suppressed behavior. And what we see in the demeanor is someone who's deadened.
Host: Yes. That's why I named the podcast Man Alive. Right. Because that sense of deadening is not what I want for men. I want men to feel alive. How do you see it, Jason, in your clients? What do you see when they're not expressing?
Jason Lange: Yeah. There's often kind of an icy crust or a numbness.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: Sometimes. Sometimes it's not even as luxurious as being down.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: Depressed. It's just kind of. There's just like a. Nothing.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: It's just like a. Life's just kind of flat.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: And often very low energy in the sense there's just not a lot of life force to kind of move things forward.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: And often a lot of. At least certainly how I experience in my body and often see it in men, it's a paradox because it's actually a lot of tension. But, like, frozen.
Host: Yes.
Jason Lange: So on the outside, everything kind of looks, you know, chill. And I remember when I first started getting to the work, people are, oh, you're so present. You have such a deep presence. And it took me a few years to realize, oh, no, I'm just super numb.
Host: Wow.
Jason Lange: I'm actually just really numb, like. And, you know, oftentimes it was very attuned women that helped me start to distinguish the. The two of, like. Oh, wow. Yeah.
Host: Actually, Yeah, I was just thinking that. Right. Because in our history together and in the Authentic man program work. Right. Sitting across from a man, I feel like I can tell the difference. When a man is numb versus present, there's like, there is. There's a vitality that's there in the presence, or there's a connection, or I look into his eyes and it doesn't feel like zombie, you know, it feels more like alive. But it can be tricky, and especially out in the world, if you haven't been doing a lot of personal growth work, it may not be as clear. So you may be, you know, for someone who's in a relationship with a man who's deadened, it could seem like they're there and they're helping and they're, you know, contributing. And you might not notice this, that. That deadness is happening. Or for a man himself, like you said, if he's numb can be kind of like, ah, I don't know. It's all. It's fine. Things are fine.
Jason Lange: Yeah. And there. There's a. There's then often a turning towards. Of anytime something does come up.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: Wanting to disperse it from our body so energetically. We want to eject it. Right. So for most of us men, and a lot of men I work with, that's porn, that's weed, that's booze, that's. There's some sensation coming up in my body. I don't know what it is. I'm a little uncomfortable with it. I've never been taught how to be with it.
Host: Yes.
Jason Lange: And so here's the tools my culture has given me.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: Like booze, weed, and porn are really the things we go to. To. To self regulate as men, which gives that temporary kind of respite, but then never gets to the underlying. Never gets to the symptom underneath. And so guys will be stuck in these patterns of addiction or. Or just stuckness in life, of just. My life's not. I don't feel like I'm moving. There's no movement in my life in that. You know, in the best of scenarios, there's a point where that starts to really kind of penetrate a man. And like, I don't. I don't know. I just know I need to do something different. Is often something I hear from guys. Like, there's gotta be something more than this.
Host: And if there's no consciousness in the 40s or so it becomes the midlife crisis. Right. It's just like, I gotta break because I don't know what else to do.
Jason Lange: Or.
Host: I need a car. I need a young woman. I need. I need something.
Jason Lange: Yep.
Host: Yeah. Would you. Anything you want to add to Luke's definition of shadow work?
Jason Lange: Yeah. That, you know, oftentimes we're not aware of it. So it's often below the surface. These are what I've seen in a lot of men I've worked with are Right. We're born into some kind of family system. And then we quickly have to learn to survive in that system.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: So our. We. We build certain mechanisms for protection. Right. To just survive and protect. And those get laid down pretty early. A lot of times. You know, we definitely work with men. And later life trauma comes up. But there's almost always kernels of this really early. Like zero to five, a lot of the wiring gets laid down. And the. The. The trick with it or the thing I've really come to see myself, you know, in particular, where I first noticed it is all that armoring I use to protect myself when I'm young is what gets in the way of what I want as an adult.
Host: Yes.
Jason Lange: And so there's this really delicate, like, honoring and unwiring of that.
Host: Wow.
Jason Lange: Okay. Like, I'm Grateful that this got me through something, but now it's not serving me. And becoming aware of that is, is huge. I mean, I, I, I was telling some guys on a retreat lately, I've done, and I've probably done 2000 calls with men at this point about various things in their life. And, you know, one of the phrases that just gets my red alert up these days is, I had a pretty good childhood.
Host: Wow.
Jason Lange: Like, yeah, I had a pretty good childhood. And then with usually just a little digging, it's like, no, there's actually a lot of suffering in there.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: And yeah, the parents were doing the best they could. It wasn't totally mal intended, but there was, like, a lot of nutrients a lot of men didn't get.
Host: That's a really good way to say it, the nutrients. I was, I was thinking about that as I was having conversations with both of my parents this week, and there's just, there's not like that kind of inquiry. If I'm going through something, it's not like, oh, well, how is that for you? Or what's happening? Or maybe do you want to brainstorm something? It's like, okay, let me know when you fixed it, or like giving a suggestion or something. And, and, and I had a kind of breakdown this weekend about that as I was doing one of my kind of shadow work processes where my mentor said something that totally triggered and both of those conversations came up and I was like, nobody gets, like, nobody understands. Nobody's actually really curious, you know? And so. Right. I would say I had a pretty good childhood. My parents were there and supportive and, you know, there was nothing blatantly off except those basic nutrients that I think parents of our generation and before really never learned how to mirror us or see who we actually are.
Jason Lange: Totally. It's, it's, it's such a big development. In some ways, I think we're going to look back, you know, with just a generation before ours. Right. Dr. Spock cried out was like the, the wisdom of just letting leave your baby in the crib, leave your baby alone. Yeah. And it's like, crazy. There's a whole generation, generations now we're dealing with that of, like, what that meant to our nervous systems.
Host: Totally.
Jason Lange: So there's the, the nutrient piece and then just the last piece. Part I just want to share is it's like, in my experience, what I love about shadow work is there's almost always an element of, as cheesy as it sounds, time travel. Right. Because our bodies don't know the difference between Then and now. And that's often where so much of the strife comes from, is our nervous system is still on guard for something or has something unexpressed from a different moment time. And we get to kind of plunge back into that. And every time there's been one of those moments of containment, which it either wasn't safe for us to express, we got overwhelmed. Yeah, there's lots of reasons that happens. It's like, you know, in kind of the Chinese medicine side of things. It's like a. There's a kink in our chi, as I see it, in. In our. In our body, mind somewhere. It's like some energy stops moving and gets contained and locked there. And that builds up right over time. And then those things that were containing or disconnecting from or pushing away. The interesting thing is then, as one of my teachers then put it, it's like if I've disconnected from my anger, let's say oftentimes what that means is I've pushed it outside of myself a little bit, so it's kind of like. And it ends up being like a pair of glasses. So when I see someone else's anger, I'm not only seeing their anger, but I'm seeing my layer on top of it.
Host: Right. Which I didn't want to see super.
Jason Lange: Triggering in that sense. It's like these things become these concentrated pools, and I may have an interaction with my spouse or wife. Right. That's. Yeah, there's some tension there or there's something going on there, but the amount of energy it evokes in me isn't actually correlated to the.
Host: To what's now. To the current situation.
Jason Lange: Yeah, because it's. It's like. It's like hitting a pocket of gas underground that's been stored for years. And suddenly I'm like exploding. I'm like, what? What? You know, where did that come from? And I think that's one of the things that we've just really seen is another marker of shadow, is when we keep doing things and we don't understand why.
Host: Ah, yeah, right.
Jason Lange: I've set the goals or I've decided to drop porn. I've done these things, and yet I keep coming back to some kind of behavior or experience in my life, and I just don't understand why. And in Luke and I's world, that means there's. There's often some shadow there underneath that we can start to dive into.
Host: Okay, awesome. Luke, anything you want to add to that or anything coming up, as you're hearing Jason talk I mean, it's just.
Jason Lange: It's just prolific. I give. I'll just give one example. You know, my wife and I have gone through just a recent spell of kind of disconnection, and I. We kind of came to a head this week, and we had this big breakthrough conversation. And, you know, some anger came forward and some tears, et cetera and so on. And in reflecting, you know, one of the patterns I've used to cope with pain is I meditate. I learned to meditate when I was 13 years old. So I. I'm really good at it. And so I've been. You know, when she kind of disconnects from me lately, I'm like, you know what? I'm just going to meditate more, focus on my kids. Yeah, I got a lot of. On my plate.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: And I found you. She gets more disconnected, gets irritable with me. And then I might laugh a little bit, like, are you kidding me? Like, we have such a great life. And you're. You're complaining. And. And what I. What I realized since we've had this conversation is in some ways, my laughter was a reflex. It was a shadow reflex. That was what was covering up my anger. So fucking pissed wasn't available to me. And so in the background, in my shadow was anger. And of course, underneath that was my hurt. I'm hurt. I'm hurt. She's like, where's my wife?
Host: You know, I can totally feel those layers, right. They're like, whatever, ha. You know? And then the anger. Right? And then underneath the hurt. That makes so much sense.
Jason Lange: And then how I was coping is I was meditating. I was connecting spiritually to myself, connecting with my daughters and filling myself up that way. Meanwhile, my marriage is kind of iced over. It's not connective.
Host: Yes.
Jason Lange: And then you could see just multiple problems. Right. She's. She's. She's spinning stories about me.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: I'm not necessarily spinning stories about her. I'm just detached.
Host: You're detaching. Exactly. Exactly. Thank you so much for being honest and vulnerable and showing that. Right. Even as leaders and facilitators, we go through these things and, you know, we don't get to avoid them. We get to be more conscious with them, but. Right. They kind of creep up us. Creep up on us sometimes, too.
Jason Lange: Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Host: We're.
Jason Lange: We're not. Apart from the work. I mean, I. That's part of why I love this work is, you know, we are all doing it too. This isn't like we've attained. Attained some Meditative heights. And we're bestowing our vibrational power on.
Host: No, that would be reality.
Jason Lange: Be awesome. No, we're. We're all in it together. Yeah.
Host: Any. Any wisdom from your weekend and how you actually navigated that together that you want to share?
Jason Lange: You know, the key. The key, Shayna, was and Jason, we know this, is that I brought what was authentic, which has actually brought my anger forward. And as you guys, as we know, in polarity work, when I brought my truth forward energetically as anger.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: She felt met. She finally felt in the space, you know, so she's like, luke, where are you? And I'm like, I'm up here meditating.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: Yeah. And then I'm holding.
Host: Holding the ground. All is good.
Jason Lange: Exactly. I'm like, I'm right here and I'm sick of this. And all of a sudden that started to shake apart her grief and then her hurt.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: And so by actually bringing what was in my shadow, you know, I brought it responsibly.
Host: As I was going to say, I want you to speak a little bit to that because so many men, I think, are like, what. How on earth would I actually bring anger and have it not just create a downward spiral? Yeah.
Jason Lange: I mean, fortunately, I've done enough work to not just dominate her.
Host: Dump it. Yeah.
Jason Lange: I was super conscious and I was tuned into like, okay, am I too. Am I too loud? You know, am I too forceful? You know, I was attuning to my. My intensity and I was wanting to be there enough to see if it would wake her up or not. And it did. So I was. I caught myself wanting to get a little bit hotter and I was like, bring it down a little bit.
Host: Nice. So you're actually. You're tracking that in yourself while you are communicating in real time.
Jason Lange: Yeah. I mean, that's a skill I've developed. Of course, I'm great at it.
Host: But, yeah, I think that's what I've often talked about with men is the mastery of knowing what's going on for you, being able to express what's going on for you and also being able to track what's happening in that we dynamic and the other person and seeing the impact you're having and then. Right. And then being able to kind of tweak it from there. It's. It's high level work.
Jason Lange: It's relational yoga. Relational Jedi.
Host: Yes.
Jason Lange: Yeah.
Host: And to your point, to both of you, the work that you're doing. Right. The more you actually know your shadow and the more you're releasing that Gas bubble like you talked about, Jason, the. The easier it is to be conscious with it.
Jason Lange: Totally. And there's one thing I've certainly got out of this work is the. The place to experience that. So in. In a sense, you know, as I've worked with men over the years, one of the things that's become abundantly clear to me is a lot of men shy away from our emotional experience because we don't know what to do with it, where to put it. And then maybe we find a partner who's open and we get really vulnerable, and then they're like, oh, my God, what do I do?
Host: Then they freak out.
Jason Lange: I've never had a man, like, collapse in my arms before. Or I finally bring my anger, and it's too much for a part.
Host: So painful.
Jason Lange: Right. And it's. It's tough. So a lot of men just kind of, again, try to get rid of it. But in groups, what we can do is, you know, Luke and I live for this work. There's, like, nowhere we won't go with a man in terms of intensity, level, darkness, whatever. And so it's in that space that we can start to calibrate. We can actually bring a man like, yeah. Come all the way to maybe even a little further than you might normally in life, because then you have a sense of, like, whoa, okay, I just went somewhere there. And that's something I have access to now.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: I don't have to go all the way there in the future, but I know how to now bring a little bit of that through me.
Host: Right. Yeah. There's.
Jason Lange: I've actually had these. Had the experience in my body of, wow, I got angry and I wasn't shut down.
Host: Right. And nobody died. I didn't rain.
Jason Lange: Nobody died.
Host: Nobody got hurt. It was like, oh, I can actually do this in a way that doesn't. Because I think that is a lot of fear that I've heard from men with anger is, what if I let it out? I don't know if I'm gonna. If I'm gonna hurt someone.
Jason Lange: Totally. So we can learn as men to trust our anger.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: And when we can trust our anger, I think it's a lot easier for our partners to trust our anger. Right.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: Because if I can get to the place where I'm like, I'm really angry right now, like, I'm fucking pissed. My blood is boiling, and I'm here.
Host: With you and I love you. Right. And I'm here and I love you. Claiming. I'm not shaming. I'M not attacking. I'm not dumping it on you. And I'm, you know, alive in that.
Jason Lange: Anger and I'm aware to it, which means I'm in relationship to it rather than I am fused with it, which is. That's when it gets dangerous.
Host: That's when acting it out.
Jason Lange: You just are the reaction. You are the anger. Right.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: The men who don't know they're angry a lot of times are the ones that are like, okay, you got to like, really be careful. Yeah. It's totally different when we start to have a relationship to that and then we're not run by these parts of ourselves, but we can relate to them. Oh, that. That part of me that gets really upset with you when X, Y or Z. It's. It's here right now, like, and I feel it and my blood is boiling. Right. There's a way we can safely start to bring that energy in the space and. Yeah, and some of this stuff goes. Goes deep.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: Like, Luke and I were working on some of what. This is fascinating to hear that story of, like. Oh, yeah, man. We worked that in the room back in. In July in a different context, but it was. It was right there. Right. Of the. The patterning of how big your family can go and how. How much intensity that sometimes that is for people to receive and then calibrating to what's underneath and how beautiful that you brought that forth. Yeah.
Host: This reminded me a lot of. I don't know why I'm thinking about my parent. Well, I know I'm thinking about my parents a lot in the seven zone, obviously, but my mom is much more hot and volatile and my dad is much more, you know, kind of ghost. Like, he, like he's just floats around and is checked out and. And it's so interesting because then I have a relationship with both of those dynamics and hold both of those dynamics in myself. And so, you know, even that feels intense sometimes. Like I've got not just one. I guess we all do this, but not just one family pattern, but living all of them. And I think a lot of the men I work with end up realizing that they're more sensitive than they realize. And the degree to which they end up shutting down or turning off their emotions is the degree to which they actually feel them.
Jason Lange: I would definitely agree in just in my experience of how, you know, there's the story that men don't have intuitions and don't have emotions. And we do. Yeah, we're just. It's kind of trained out of Us from a pretty young age, very young age. Stop crying, be tough, keep moving forward, don't show your, you know, feelings to other men in particular. You know, this is another thing that we really focus on in the program in that for a lot of guys we work with, just being around other men can be triggering.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: Because of just baseline kind of macho culture and, you know, junior high through high school and beyond in particular. And so it's not safe to, you know, bring any vulnerability or anything.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: And just being in the room and realizing, wow, these men aren't, aren't, you know, my enemies, but are my allies. Yeah, These are men that actually I can bring my fullness to and they want it. They feel closer to me when they want it. And that is such a healing move we've seen just in the, in the power of the group itself, let alone the shadow content. It's just being able to go to these places and then see another man go there and realize, oh, you know, how I learned, how I started to learn, you know, how to be with anger in a heart open and powerful way was I saw other men doing it.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: I was in their presence and I was like, oh, I've never experienced that before. And what you didn't even.
Host: Right. You didn't even know.
Jason Lange: I didn't even write. So many men, we just don't even know there's another option until we've been in the presence of someone going there. And then it's like, oh, wow, okay, now I see there's a different way to do it. I can play with that a little bit.
Host: Yeah. And then I, I think one of the things I'm thinking of is that as I'm working with men, the more that happens, the less need there is to prove themselves. Right? To prove I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, I'm attractive enough, I'm any of these things. And wondering if you can speak to that a little bit, like, what happens as what kind of freedom comes in for you guys and for men as they do more of the pulling up the shadows and wrestling with them consciously.
Jason Lange: I think you're, you're, we're pointing to this default culture that we all, we all live in, we're all part of. And that's the cultural, that's the culture of cool. And it's, it's a trip to seed in like the 20, 30 somethings generation because, like, we're in our 40s now and like, we're not, we're not kind.
Host: Of not cool Anymore.
Jason Lange: And it's really. It's really funny, right? Because they have like a whole nomenclature and like a whole. A whole, like, semantics and how they talk. Like there's this phrase. You guys know this phrase. If something's cool, you say, that's what's up. Or you say that.
Host: No, didn't know that one either. Like.
Jason Lange: Like in, like, you. Like, it's weird because it's not really. It's not like correct English.
Host: Like, no, no.
Jason Lange: What's up? Like, what. What's. What's. What's up?
Host: What's up? I only know, bruh. That's the one I know.
Jason Lange: Yeah. My daughter's nine years old. She's saying bra now. She's like, okay, bruh. I'm like, don't call me bra. Call me daddy.
Host: You know, at first I was like, did you say bra?
Jason Lange: Like a bralette? Is that what we're doing?
Host: What are we talking about? Okay, sorry.
Jason Lange: Anyway, so the culture of cool is interesting because it's just. It pervades culture and it's. It's driven by different cultures, but implicit in cool is that something's not cool. Right. And so what's driving that energetically is shame. So if you're not part of our club, then we're going to shame you, and you don't get to be included in this family.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: So as long as you're chill or what you're wearing is fire or you know that that's what's up, then you get to be. Be with us. But if you're not like that, then. Then you know, you're. You're less than.
Host: Yeah. And belonging. Right. Belonging is such a primal need.
Jason Lange: It hits the core, that core familial sense of wanting to be included, you know, not feel alone, not feel apart from. And it. It's. You can. You can feel it just in mentioning it, it. It fractures all of us. Right. Right. In the guts. So men have to. Over men. And women have to overcome that, but they have to do it in different ways, because for men, we have. Being cool means being tough and impervious to weakness.
Host: Yep.
Jason Lange: And so when what. What's really cool about our work is all of a sudden what becomes cool is this culture of expression and feeling. And so when you get a man whose heart and guts and balls are. Are the flu, and I'm. I'm saying this literally. Yeah. The fluids in those organs are moving. The blood, the saliva, and the semen are flowing in a. In a connected way. All of a sudden, you have this man who's. He's not just cool, he's. He's the man who's alive.
Host: Yes.
Jason Lange: Right. He's vital, he's powerful. He's. He's really ready to infuse life with vitality wherever he goes. And then a man who's cool trembles around. A man like that.
Host: That is because he's brilliantly said.
Jason Lange: Yeah. He has no access to his interiority, his interior strength. His.
Host: He's like the paper. What's that flat Stanley, that book that we all read, it's like so. And papery. And there's no. It's not three dimensional. It's not substantial.
Jason Lange: No, this is. Jason said this to me once years ago. He's like. A man like. That is like a husk. He's like a husk of himself. Like a corn husk.
Host: Yes.
Jason Lange: There's. There's not the vitality. There's not the fruit in the middle. There's just a shell. Yeah. And. And the truth is, is that, I mean, most. A lot of men. Most men are living that life.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: That's why. Why Jason and I are so passionate about the work, because this is our form of activism, is to bring life back to human beings, to families, to children.
Host: Yes.
Jason Lange: You know, to spouses. Like, let's. Let's get our men back in the fold. Not just ghosting and floating around there like. No, you know, they don't. They don't have their balls. Right. They're just. I love it, you know? Yeah.
Host: Yeah, I love it. I mean, it's. It's. I think it's why I work with men. And a lot of times people are like, why are you doing. There's a lot of, like, suspicion. Why are you working with men? Or what is this all about? And I'm like, God, we need. We need to support the men. To have, you know, to heal our planet, to heal our culture, to heal our people. It's like. It just feels so important. And I also, you know, I feel how men get pushed to the side in a way, because everybody needs. You know, there are so many groups of people who have needs and need attention and need support. So I'm not saying that they don't, but I also think it's dangerous if we don't actually support the men.
Jason Lange: Yeah. Because then they'll. We try to regulate ourselves through these other means.
Host: Right.
Jason Lange: And then we're not as present in our families, in. In our lives and in our communities. And that, you know, in terms of how. How I've Certainly experienced this work start to free me is. Is a certain type of. It's not fearlessness in a sense. I'm never afraid. It's fearlessness in the sense of, oh, I'm okay to turn towards whatever it is.
Host: Yeah. I've.
Jason Lange: I've felt the waves come on so many times now that in my past I was like, oh, I can never go there.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: And now it's like, oh, I've gone through there. So when something's coming up in me, I can turn towards it. I can be with that feeling. And that is so liberating in a sense, because then there's not all the holding about what might be coming or what I might be feeling. It's just. Okay, there's some intensity here. There's.
Host: Right. You don't have to brace against life or woman or conversation, anything. You don't have to brace for it.
Jason Lange: And then it's. There's so much more space. Like, there's literally more space in my body. My breath is deeper. I'm more relaxed. I'm less tense. And then there's more energy, like Luke said, just flowing through me as before. Like, again, I was. There's a certain amount of stillness to me, but it was. Everything was just locked up, just totally locked up. Whereas now, you know, I can grieve easier, I can get angry easier. It's. I'm not afraid of this stuff coming through me because I know it's just going to pass and it's not going to take me over, so to speak. And so there's just a certain. There's a certain level of empowerment I found in myself and we've seen in men of like, oh, wait, I'm not. I'm not helpless here.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: I can work with these aspects of myself and I can turn towards the difficult stuff in my life and in terms of groups and the shame and the cool and the, you know, something I know you've probably experienced in the authentic relating world and beyond of. It's oftentimes the things we're holding closest to the chest, that when we're in a safe environment with the right people and we let it out.
Host: Yeah.
Jason Lange: That's what connects us the most to other people. Oh, now I feel you. And I feel seen and I feel held and I feel met and.
Host: And now I'm not stuck in that loop of wondering and doubting and all the pain and suffering that happens when I don't know if you're going to stay or go or love me or not love me. Or all that pain.
Jason Lange: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. So there's a lot more freedom.
Host: I love this conversation and I feel like we could go on for a long, long time. But I'm wondering if each of you just wants to bring, you know, one more piece that we can then close with what's something else that feels important or if, you know, if you don't have it and you feel like we covered it, that's fine. But anything that feels important that we haven't covered or anything you want to.
Jason Lange: Reiterate, I want to say something because we talked about sex and sexuality and I'll, and I'll keep this brief, but just the last week or so I've been contemplating shadow work and sexuality and sex. And you know, of course there's so much to say about that. But, but the, the one piece I want to offer is that when you engage in deep shadow work, you engaged in the work of your core vitality. And sex and sexuality is the expression of that.
Host: Yeah, right.
Jason Lange: So it's an expression of life force, of passion and creativity. And if, if you want a better sex life and you want a more expressive, connective sex life, healthier sex life, shadow work truly is the gateway to that. It's engaging with. Where is my life force kinked? Whereas my chi, literally like a meridian that's just not firing and getting a backflow of energy or a diminishment of energy when that all starts to flow. Sex is just a natural expression of that. It just wants to come forward. It's not like you have to quote, unquote, work on your sex organs or your fantasies per se. Yes, it's more like the natural expression. Yeah, it just comes forward naturally as an expression of health and well being. And it's a great way to talk about deep work because it, it is kind of one in the same. When we're connected to our depth, we want to express our creativity. And the, the, you know, the physical representation of that, of course is, is sex. It's create, it's. It is creation of life. So I just wanted to just plant that. There's lots to say, but for, for folks here. Yeah.
Host: Thank you. How about you, Jason?
Jason Lange: Yeah, I would, I would just want to reiterate. So this is work that, you know, Luke and I do individually with men. But I've just been in this world long enough now to. There's something really powerful about what can happen in a group that we've just seen over and over again in terms of sometimes just the hidden connections between Men that we don't even know about when we form a group. And then stuff starts moving and there's almost always pretty wild synchronicities in terms of shared realities and experiences of what brought people together into that time and place in that sometimes what. What we've seen is that there's like a level of permission that starts to happen, of when I witness another man fully step into his experience, whether that's dark and angry and lustful or shadowy or grief laden and snot laden. I've been in it all myself. And we've seen it all. Suddenly there's like, oh, well, if. If he's willing to step in there, like, maybe I can too. And then sometimes some other man's work actually begins. Our work.
Host: It's like, oh, my God.
Jason Lange: Seeing you speak, you know, to your metaphorical dad like that, I. It just. Wow. It brought up a lot for me. And now I'm in process. And so what we see, particularly in our live weekends with guys as we work is it's just like the field keeps deepening every time a man steps in, it allows more men to step in bravely. And so this is where there's an aspect of this work that's just really hard to do alone, that there's something about the group. Like, I think this is a big part of how we learn to heal each other in. In old times, in relationship, in relationship. Right. In community with people that can see us. And so there's a. There's a power to being together in the group that is so transformational. And a man's willing. I'm very convinced at this point that a man's willingness to do this work is one of the most badass types of leadership you can have in the world right now. Because every time a man steps in, steps into his full experience, he's making it easier for other men to do that in the future. And that has an impact, that really has an impact on the world. And like Luke said, you know, we. We're in this because we're like, you need better. You want to save the planet? Like, it starts with relationships and families.
Host: Yeah, right.
Jason Lange: How many of us that do this work with people and ourselves, Right. We don't get a few nutrients when we're young, and we spend. Can spend the rest of our lives pouring a tremendous amount of energy into correcting that.
Host: Yes.
Jason Lange: So the earlier we can start to kind of reformat things and not, you know, for those of us that are parents, pass on less of this to our children in Our nervous systems. Like, to me, that's deep work. That's work any man can step into. Whatever your status or job or whatever is, that makes you just a badass warrior by being willing to take responsibility for the nervous system you were born into and to say, you know what? And we can shift it. I can shift it. There's never been a time better in human history. I think that whatever you were born into, there are tools that are a lot better.
Host: Yeah. Agreed. Well, thank you both so much for this amazing conversation and for the work you're both doing to support men. And in your own bodies and hearts and minds and nervous systems. It is much needed and I feel very grateful.
Jason Lange: Thank you for having us.
Host: Yeah. What were you going to say, Luke?
Jason Lange: Lovely to work with you and just feel your energy. Jason and I do this a lot together, so we. We love speaking with other people and just. And just, you know, having that affect our conversation. Thank you.
Host: Yeah. Yeah. And where can men find you guys?
Jason Lange: Yes. So the best way to find out about what we're doing here and how we work with men is heartofshadow.com I.
Host: Like that heart of shadow that makes. Just brings it all together. Right?
Jason Lange: Yeah.
Host: Awesome. Thank you guys so much and I look forward to doing this again.
Jason Lange: Thank you. Thank you.
