Checking In VS Jerking Off (with Luke Adler!)

Jason Lange: All right, and welcome back. So I am once again excited to be joined by my man Luke Adler here, who's doing this Heart of Shadow podcast series with me that relates to the program we run, the Heart of Shadow for men a couple times a year. And today's episode I'm pretty excited to talk about just because this kind of came up organically in, in our men's group and in fact. But the topic we want to explore today is checking in versus jerking off. And really the idea here of these are two strategies for us men of how to deal with our emotional pain, our frustration, our anxiety and whatnot. And that, you know, certainly in the work we do, certainly in my life and what I've experienced, you know, as having an addiction to porn and masturbation when I was younger, for a lot of guys, ejaculation is one of the primary tools for self regulation. Right. So it's how we try to deal with energy in our nervous system we don't necessarily know what to do with. And a lot of times that energy is sourced in unfelt or unprocessed emotions. And so the habit for many, many men is when they feel uncomfortable or stressed out is to try to relieve that tension through a quick jerk off, right through an actual boom, getting it out. And what we're going to argue today is there's another path, and that's what we call checking in, which is a process of coming towards, turning towards our men's group with our pain to kind of bring forth ourselves. And Luke's over here cracking up just at the title of this. So I think it's going to be a fun one here.

Luke Adler: Yeah, I mean, this, this is an organic kind of revelation and, and it's something we talk about in men's work a lot because I think the nature of male physiology, it's not. I think the nature of male physiology is that we release a ton of energy through ejaculation. And what I think most people and men, women don't know is that we're not just releasing sexual energy, we're releasing emotional energy, we're releasing emotions. And that's in part why ejaculation feels so good, is because we're releasing things we haven't felt. We haven't brought them up from the pelvis up to the gut, up to the heart. The heart's the place where we feel things, and. And then how we really express and release that feeling vis a vis the heart is we take it up to the throat, the mouth, the gums, the teeth, and the tongue, and we speak it. And that's why having a group being witnessed is so incredibly powerful. When you have a safe group of people that have been initiated, trained into creating a safe space to be vulnerable and transparent, you can bring up that content. And so the nature of wound, of shadow, of pain is that we're experiencing something stressful. We're experiencing a moment of failure, a moment of loss, a moment of challenge, and we have this incredible ability to go, you know what? I cannot feel this right now. This situation is too emergent, it's too dire. I need to take this feeling and I need to literally push it down away from my heart, away from my throat, because if I feel this now, I won't be effective in responding to this situation. So I can't feel this. So instead, I'm going to push it down, down through my guts, right? And then I might have a. Have a stomach issue down into my pelvis, into my, you know, whether it's female sex organs or male sex organs, into that region of the pelvis, and I store it there, and I store it as far from my heart as possible so I don't have to feel it so I can function. And then, of course, what happens at a subconscious level is we're in our daily lives and we're not in an emergency. We might be working and coming home from work and feeling stressed. And then some of that stuff down there in the pelvic bowl starts to bubble up, and we feel depressed, we feel agitated, we feel numb. This is a big one for people, but for men especially, we feel tired. I feel tired. This is something you and I talk a lot about, Jason, is it takes a ton of energy to store pain. And what happens is the body automates that, so we automate automatically, put our pain into a dormant or a latent state, to use a medical term. So we store our pain, and then we exert energy to keep it there. But when we have a moment where we're not in action, it starts to percolate. And we sense these subclinical symptoms of, I'm sad, I'm lethargic, I have melancholy, I'm a little anxious, you know, and then we think, oh, let me medicate that. Let me get onto a drug or something, because I don't want to feel that. So let me interrupt the hormone response. And we think, oh, this must just all be hormones. Well, hormones are just one component, but energetically, emotionally, physically, we're storing our pain. And then it's true for men, but it's just easier for women. It's true for women, but it's easier for men. When you ejaculate, you release this clear, this white substance, this ejaculate the sperm, and within that. This is. In Chinese medicine, we say the sperm is, what do we say, 100 times more valuable than blood. Fascinating, right? Because within sperm, you have life. You can literally create a life, right? So we acknowledge this is the most precious, vital substance in the male body. In the body. And so within that not only holds pure life force, but holds all the energy that's stored down in that area. So you ejaculate and you release, literally your vitality, your vital force to create a new life. And along with it, all of the emotional content of everything you haven't been feeling or processing or haven't had a chance to process. And you think, oh, cool, I've released that now. Well, you've released the emotion of it, but you haven't released the conditioning, the way of being that has. That we've been trained into either through, you know, always through survival to store pain. And so that pattern of storing is still there. So our tendency walls would be to keep storing and storing and storing, and then to go, this is too much. I'm feeling a bunch of. A bunch of emotions conflicting. Let me ejaculate. Let me go jack off. Let me jerk off. Let me really heighten it and put some porn on to create more polarity around the charge in my. In my testicles and really kind of get an explosive ejaculation to release all this pain. And of course it's pleasurable. But it's not only about sexual pleasure, right? This is about emotional regulation. And it's somewhat effective. But what we're really pointing to is it's not addressing the wound. It's not healing anything, right? It's. It's survival management, right? We're managing adversity and discomfort by ejaculation. We are not getting more skillful. We are not learning how to navigate difficulties relationally, we're not getting better at communicating with our partners. We're not getting more attuned to our process. There's no growth happening there. It's just more of the same, which is more survival, okay? It's, it's a survival consciousness, you know, let me just get to the next thing, right? And so it's kind of a funny title, but this is actually a pretty serious thing for, for us.

Luke Adler: Well, and there's a. There's a few things that are kind of working against people around this. Is that the model of healing, particularly some of this deep work, the deep work that we do, which is very deep, connective, emotional, cathartic, it's very thorough. It gets very specific into historical wounding, cultural wounding, lineage wounding, you know, religious trauma, sexual trauma. A lot of this stuff comes up in group with men. And the modeling folks have for that is that those conversations typically happen one on one with a trained facilitator, whether it's a therapist or more of a somatic type of healer, or even kind of like a shamanic style healing thing. And so people are very used to working on their pain. People who do work privately, like, I want to do this just privately, just me and. And another person. And I think that that's beautiful and it's a great. It's a great place to begin. And I've certainly worked with people who are like, I don't want to do group work. I have trauma in groups. And so I get that. And working inside of a system, a family system where you have more than two people. So as soon as you bring a third person in, what happens is all of your dynamics and group and family start to come forward. So there's polarizing there's favoritisms, there's encampments, this camp versus that camp. And so the power of creating a group, a peer to peer group. So yes, Jason and I are the trained facilitators. We know how to do this work. We've done it a long time. But we also level set to say, hey, we're doing this right there with you. We're not above you per se. We do have more skills around this particular arena, but we're right there with you. Doing the work in our own lives is we start to break apart those family system dynamics and start to level set an environment that says, hey, we are all equal stakeholders in healing. We're all equal stakeholders in safeguarding what we share. That what we share is sacred. And one of the things that makes our work, you know, different from other work, not just men's work, but other healing work, is that the ritual and sanctity that gets created around our work is not based in formal ritual incantations, invocations and prayer. Now, I love all that stuff. I've taught meditation for 31 years and I use all of that in my meditation retreats. But in our work, the prayer, the sanctity, the kind of sacred space is generated by the courage and vulnerability of each person sharing what's deeply true for them and then going more deeply into it somatically, when that happens, the sacred core of each being generate what we call the masculine vortex. And the masculine vortex is a vibratory space that's surcharged with everyone's love, care and guardianship of each other's history. So there's a way in which we're safeguarding what has been shared historically in the group. And that's a sacred pact that we make as a group to say, hey, there's something we've shared with each other that needs to be ongoingly cared for and tended. And that tending creates an environment for transformation where the ritual actually is just the way of being that gets created with each other. And the specificity of care that allows a man to come forward and share what's true and then feel the truth of that vibrating through their body. And that can be often come up with tears, with rage, with trembling, with shaking. And so the power of going from jerking off to connection is this, it's this incredibly courageous move, right? And this is why we've created Heart of Shadow and is to set the stage for a group to coalesce around these ideas and this not just idea, but these experiences. And when men experience this level of Connection, truth, authenticity, safety, creativity, the ease by which traversing from jacking off to connection is so much more online and it's so relieving. Like, you check in with the men, then whatever it is that we do, you do to get away from pain loses its appeal quickly. Do I want to jerk off now? No, I actually don't. Because there's nothing unconscious in me pushing to want to relieve myself in that way, or in my case, a lot of the ways I've relieved my suffering is I'll go meditate and what I'll do is I spiritually dissociate. I will dissociate. Now, this is marked by the branding of, I'm transcending, I'm touching the light of God. Right? And that sounds nice and it's beautiful, but it's often used, and in my case, and I still do it sometimes is I'll meditate to get away from what's painful. And again, there's nothing wrong with it, but it's what I'm doing to meditation. I'm using it to escape my pain. And it's very ubiquitous and common in the yoga meditation world. And people will often say, no, I don't meditate to do that. I'm meditating to touch God and to be enlightened. But if you look at that relationship closely, you'll see I. I'm actually using meditation to get away from something. And implicit in transcendence is you're moving from here to there, you're leaving here to go there. What we're talking about is an integral model that's inclusive of here, that's body inclusive, that's embodied, and that's a different path. There's a path to leave your body and grow. I honor that path. It's a beautiful path. But that is not what we're selling and endorsing and promoting. We're promoting a path of embodiment, which means, yes, there's a sense of spiritual connection. There's a sense of connectivity to the unseen world and the unseen being, so to speak. And there is accountability and responsibility to physiology, to the dimension of matter, mass, color, form, texture. And this is really at the heart of shadow work. And it's, you know, I want to say this a little bit. If you haven't done can feel scary. It can feel a little scary because you're going to feel the thing. And I still hear this, and I know I always will. I'm afraid if I feel this, I'm going to fall apart. My life is going to Crumble. I am going to shatter into a million pieces. And what we know, Jason, is you'll shatter, but you won't break apart. You will coalesce as something more capable. Your nervous system will strengthen. And this is one of the things that we take people through, is how to strengthen your nervous system and build your capacity for discomfort. It's not about getting away from discomfort. It's about getting stronger. Not against discomfort, but with it. To be in the face of discomfort, challenge, and be present. And part of that is what we come up against when we want to jack off. I was like, we're right there with what's uncomfortable, and I want to stimulate myself, get my penis hard, get the lotion out and just take that big exhale. Nothing wrong with that. It's going to be wonderful, too. But you can even work with the pain and slow that whole experience down, which is another way to look at it. But connection really becomes the remedy. It becomes a way of remediating our pain and building skill, which, looking at it that way, every time I want to jack off, every time I want to meditate, whatever, there's an opportunity to build strength here, if I recognize it.

Jason Lange: Yeah, that I love that. The connection versus disconnection, in a sense, is, you know, really kind of what we're talking about with checking in and jerking off. Jerking off is kind of, again, it's removing, it's going away from. It's often isolating, you know, in a sense. And when we say checking in, another way to think about that is plugging in. So whether, you know, it's that masculine vortex, it's the nervous systems of the men we're with, of, wow, I have something here that feels a little too much for me to hold alone. Can I plug in to this energy that we have in the groove? And that energy is a space for us to, you know, alchemize and transmute whatever it is we're with and just to be with it. And oftentimes, you know, emotions, we just need to be with them. And that's often the thing that starts to change them. We acknowledge them, become aware of them, and we accept them. And then that starts this process, right. Of the system just shifting in. In itself. And the willingness to do that is always, you know, so tender for men. But we, where the vortex comes in, we see it is every man does it. It makes it easier for each other man to do it. And then we're coming forward with our pain, which is, you know, the power of really turning towards it in the ways we're talking about. And ultimately that builds more resiliency and durability in us is what we've seen the connections we're making with ourselves and with the group. We can actually. We can handle more. Right? We have the capacity to be with more inside of ourselves and not be afraid of these emotions, whether they're anger, grief, sadness, fear, you know, some of the typical ones, we often, or even just overwhelm and exhaustion seem up, see, come up from in. And when we're just allowed to feel in these group settings, so much changes, you know, pretty, pretty fast for guys. And it's not like a mental coaching model of, okay, let's identify the problem and then try this and try this. It's more a man touches something directly and then in a way can never experience or see the world quite the same again. It's like, wow, I didn't know I was carrying that all these years. And now that I felt that I'm never going to experience certain things the same way again because I have this relationship online with a part of myself that maybe I'd been trying to push away for all that time. And this idea of checking in, we create some very specific structures for this in the groups that we run. But again, checking in just means bringing it towards, bringing it to the group, bringing it to the surface, not running away from it. Hey, here's where I'm at. Here's my truth. Here's what I'm feeling. And that goes against so much programming that we receive, right, as men of, yeah, never share, always keep it inside, be tough. You know, all that kind of patriarchal crap that I think our program does a lot to try to burst the bubble around of, hey, that's hurting you too. And there's a different way to do that that has a lot more space and energy around it in that, you know, no man gets this right all the time. You know, this is part of the building of trust in a group is. I feel like it's too much. I just checked in about this yesterday or whatever, and it's like, no, you just bring it. You just bring it. You just keep bringing it forward. And the great gift we've seen is, like I said, when one man does that, it often creates a space and gives permission for other men to do it where they're like, oh, he did that. I'm going to do it too. And then there's more likelihood that every man is just bringing his authentic self forward. And, you know, if there's a crazy thing I've noticed it's often how much capacity and energy as men we have to really hold other people's shit. We're, we're like, we're always afraid if I bring that these guys, I don't know, I don't want to burden them in. I mean, it's just shocked me in every group we've led where it's like most people are like, oh no, that's not a burden at all. Felt great to hear your anger, felt great to see your grief. And in fact that brought me some energy which is helping me be more present with that in my own life, in my own emotional experience. And that's where that kind of generative energy of the group of connection really comes online, where it's, it's like, oh, these things that are bringing me tension, I don't have to try to get rid of them. But they can actually create more closeness with my group by me bringing them forward, which generates even more energy for me to become even more present in my life. And it's that beautiful kind of upward momentum we've just seen over and over and over again.

Luke Adler: Yeah, it's such a beautiful, a beautiful description of what occurs in, and sharing. And I was reflecting on, I saw some, some kind of Instagram video as some men's work, some, a men's work program I'd never seen before. Something recently. And the facilitator was kind of like a father like figure and was facilitating a younger guy in his 20s. And the guy said, hey, take your shirt off. And this was like in front of a group of people. And the guy like had a beer belly and, and the instruction was like, I never want you to take your shirt off again and feel the way you feel right now. The guy felt like ashamed of the way he looked and he's like, you know, you never want your children to see you like this. And it was kind of like a shame based way of facilitating. And I was a bit horrified by it personally and certainly done my time in like landmark form and places where you're really putting people in the hot seat and you're calling them out and you're essentially perpetuating like a toxic masculine culture. Now the guy in the video, he was, he was being somewhat sensitive, right? But the, the way it was happening was, was, it was too much. And I know some men out there, I mean, most men out there are used to that kind of culture with other men. And it's why a lot of men don't have friends, because they get To a point where they're like, I don't deserve that. I don't want to be around that. So I don't want to be in a men's group. I don't want to be around any energy that's going to remind me of that culture or my father or that kind of demeaning energy. There's a way in which we all know that's not healthy. It doesn't help us heal. And it still comes up. We've gotten some feedback recently of, like, well, where's the accountability and where's the system and where's the, you know, the way of. The way of kind of pushing each other? And, you know, Jason, you and I are very, very clear about this boundary and that we don't shame people. We never put people in the hot seat in a way where they're being called out. Now. It's not that we don't take people into their deepest, darkest pain and wounding. We do that, and we go way further than most programs I've ever seen, but we do that in the most safest, loving way possible, and that's that we allow the person to take themselves into their own wounding, and we are following along with them, making sure that the landscape is safe, that they're on the trail, that the ropes are tied, that the harness is tight. And we're those expert mountaineering guides that can take people up Mount Everest. We have that skill. And I just want to highlight this for a moment why this is so important, why connection is important, and why it's handled in a very skillful way. Because we could easily push men to have a breakthrough, just push them, push hard enough. Because men are used to that culture. We're used to the culture of sports to say, hey, get up. Don't be a pussy. Keep pushing.

Jason Lange: Right?

Luke Adler: But that comes at such a cost because you're pushing some kind of sensitivity down when you do that. You're pushing your deepest sensitivity in your nervous system down, and you're burying it. And on top of it, you're putting this attitude, this can do kind of. Marines, pain is the. You know, the pain is. What is it? Fear leaving you or something? That's like the slogan of the Marines. And that's a great slogan if you're at war. But when it comes to healing, it actually doesn't work. It does not work to be a drill sergeant with your sensitivity. It stores the pain. It stores the wounding. And here's the kind of. The point I'm eventually getting to here is if a Man's pace is not honored. If the man or the woman does not see their wounding for themselves, does not consciously, step by step, walk into the place where they're storing their pain and reclaim that energy for themselves, then they do not own the pathway to their pain. They have not climbed the mountain, they have been bullied in up the mountain, and they don't know how to navigate it for themselves. They become dependent on me and you to motivate them, to push them. They have not found the strength. They have not found the awareness to navigate. And this is part of the context we create in our work, is we. We. It's not that we can't push people, we can. It's just not healing to do that. It's not strengthening, it's not vitalizing. It's more of the same survival mindset. And it's why survival mindset will never yield healing. It will just yield survival. You can get very strong in a survival consciousness, right? There's a time for survival, but that's not what we're talking about when we talk about connection. We're not talking about war cries and rallying each other and pushing each other at the expense of our own sensitivity. This is sensitivity inclusive. This is making space for your most vulnerable aspects of being to allow them to heal and develop and strengthen alongside of the aspects of yourself that are already strong. So I want to add that to our conversation around connection, because Heart of Shadow is a very specific form of connection. It's healing centered, it's trauma informed, it honors the pace, and it's safe for any man who really is ready for healing. It truly is a safe environment, and it's incredibly deep. And you're honored. You are honored for what is shaky inside of you, what is tender, what is young, what is tenuous. And it's crucial that there's space brought around that. That when that's fully honored, then your other strengths can really enhance the parts of yourself that aren't so strong. So this is part of moving from jerking off to connection. And why we're afraid to connect. We're afraid to connect because we've all been entrained as men. Even if you had a wonderful father, culture has not been wonderful to men. We've been at war every 20 years in the United States, in Europe, every 20 years. Since the early 1900s, the west has been at war, right? And we're still waging wars all over the world. So there's a consciousness that we have to talk about. And fortunately, there's a space to do some healing.

Jason Lange: Right.

Luke Adler: And that's, that's what the, the Heart of Shadow is a response to that space to say, ah, there's some space to heal. We need healthier leaders and healthier men. So that's why we're here.

Jason Lange: Yeah. And I just want to note part of what that brings up. Just like pushing kind of shame based action, you know, we can see in certain types of men's work or just growth around the world. You know, the key thing to me about that is let's say it's shame or something we're afraid of. Yeah, we can, we can push each other to move through that, we can push ourselves to move through that. But the paradox is it's still fear based. So sometimes fear takes over and prevents us from taking an action in fear 1. But even if we take an action, but we're doing it from the fear, we're still reacting to the fear. Right. And that's how a lot of the shaming, slash, push stuff like just push through, push through. You're right, it's, it's a pushing down of this emotional content material. And so we desensitize to that. And there's ways it can be powerful and there's times and places for it in life. But that's not really what we're talking about about here. We're talking about this other thing which is, you know, and I'm realizing this is a, something constellating for me here that, you know, for the masculine part of all of us, really the most, a big part of our power is our capacity to be with. So can we be with anything. And there's a huge difference when we're able to be with our fear and not run away from it, not collapse into it and just be with it. And then on the other side of that we make some kind of choice of what we want to move towards. Which is very different from as I've talked about before, moving away from. And a lot of the shame stuff is wanting to move away from those feelings. And so our work is about delicately leading us into these parts we want to move away from. And once we're with these parts, they don't run the show anymore. Right. Then we don't have to shame base kind of push ourselves past it. And it creates a whole different level of self ownership. Like you're talking about where the, the place we really want to get to is, you know, we don't want to tell you to be anything or here's what you need to do. We want to take you so deep into your experience, and you're so intimate with it. You know what to do or what has to happen, and then we can help you create, you know, accountabilities around that or whatever. But the impulse is coming from within, and when it comes from within, that creates lasting change. We've seen of, Wow. I. I can't be this way anymore, right?

Luke Adler: This.

Jason Lange: It's so painful to be in my body in this way or to be in this relationship or to be out of alignment in some sense or to have not felt this thing or, you know, talk to m. My family about X, Y, or Z. I. I don't know. You know, it doesn't even matter in a sense, but it's. When you've touched it completely, you're going to be the one initiating the action around it because you've. You've felt it, you fully embodied it. And that's so different than pushing a man through that. And, you know, we grow in challenge as men, so there's kind of a fun time and place for that. But like you said, it's never about. I think the offer we're making in this work, it's not a push, but it's an invitation. Here's the space. Whatever you want to bring into it, we got it, right? There's. There's, like, literally nothing you can bring or feel that's gonna shake. Luke or I are often the. The energy of the vortex we've created with the men. So it's up to you. Do you want to play full out? You know, one of our. One of our agreements in our program is, you know, you're responsible for your own healing. We'll create the space. We will walk alongside you in anything you want to go into, but you're ultimately responsible for bringing it forward. But we might think, you know, oh, that lets guys off the hook or whatever, but it's so empowering, in a sense, when a man realizes, okay, nobody on the planet can do this part for me. I have to be willing to step in to this sensation or this feeling. And when I take that challenge on, that's where so much changes for men of, like, I can do this. I just did it, right. That thing. Thing I thought I could never do, I just did. And that creates such energy and vitality and, you know, a type of confidence I've seen in our men of, wow. Okay, I don't have to be afraid of these different things. I can be with them, and that's just a whole different ball game. Of that kind of shame based, pushing, kind of more traditional alpha culture that so many of us have experienced. And so it's this, you know, it's this delicate thing where it's. The work we do is hard and it's bold and it's extraordinarily courageous and brave. But it's not push based, it's not shame based, it's not man up or else, it's hey, let's be with it all right now. Like, let's really do that. And you know, I always used to joke or sometimes I tell this to guys, you know, again, kind of fear and emotions and traditional man culture, like, who's more afraid? The man who won't be with his shame or fear or collapse or the man who'll just go right into it. Right. And so many men that why emotions are labeled weak is because they're afraid of them. It's just, that's it. They're just afraid of looking like a pussy or crying or whatever that might be. And I'm like, well, you don't have to be afraid. You can be the brave man that's like, yeah, sometimes I cry, sometimes I collapse, sometimes I need to be held by other men. Sometimes I don't know what to do. To me, that's bravery and that's a man who can be with any part of his experience and is, is woven into the very fabric of, you know, what we're trying to create with men in this program.

Luke Adler: Yeah, so. So it's not an experiment anymore because we've been doing this for seven, eight years. I mean, initially it was, but now we, we see how it. We've got a proven experience. It's not a method. It's a context that we live in and that we share and we teach people and train them in. And still we've been a part of a lot of groups, groups together. Groups that we run independently. And it is a big deal. It is a very big deal to stay open with a group of people. Group of men. Over time, over time, this is one of our big missions, is to form men's groups that are steeped in a context of depth and over time continue to develop together and grow and get better at, you know, becoming more nuanced at holding the space and welcome, welcoming each other into authenticity. And it's easy to do a week at workshop, it's easy to do a five day training. It's easy in our case to even do a 10 week training. Heart of Shadow. It's our 10 week commitment right but you and I, Jason, we've been part of a men's group for six years that's met regularly for six years. And we started with 10 men. And I think we're down to six men. And I love the four men who aren't part of the group anymore. They're wonderful men. And the reality is, with how busy our lives and our commitments to family, that we don't really have time to connect with those other four men. We, you know, in part because that commitment is not online. So we have this connection with the six of us, and it's just gotten deeper and deeper. And the other heart of shadow groups that we've facilitated over the course of the last two years, they've stayed together, and some of the men have left the group. The majority of the groups have stayed together like the majority of members. And there's something to say about that. Just for me, I always think.

Jason Lange: You.

Luke Adler: Gotta give it a couple years to know the value of it. And maybe it's not your time to stay in a men's group or you just don't see the worth, the value of it. Ultimately, I think it's a confronting thing to have a loving, supportive environment that also tends to its differences and conflicts that inevitably arise because over time, these groups become like family. And so you have to address hurt and communication issues like you do in any group. So there's a certain readiness for the experience we offer, and then there's a readiness for our vision. Our hope is that you'd want to stay together with the group and really see the benefit of the continuity of care and depth over time that's steeped in a set of principles of vulnerability, honesty, honoring your edge, honoring each other's edges, et cetera. So I think that's kind of the last thing I want to say and highlight is that connection for 10 weeks is beautiful. Connection for 5 days is great. But connection, that is a living experience in your life that you've invested in, that is a phenomenological group of men that care about you and that you care about becomes a resource that's not steeped in any religious tradition or any dogma. It's uniquely shaped and informed by the beauty of each man there that's growing and changing over time. And that growth, change, and creativity is encouraged and welcomed. And, you know, it's one of the most valuable experiences I've ever had and that I'm committed to. It's why we've made this offering. Because, you know, I'm not saying it's the thing that, you know, the path. I'm saying it's one part of my life that makes the rest of my life work really well. And I've got a few of those things in my life. But this is absolutely essential because it's relational, it's embodiment oriented, it attunes me so that I'm more effective as a husband and as a father and a business owner, etc. So that's really shifting from jerking off to connection. It's a big shift, it's a big investment and it's healing and its source of creativity and it's something that's available. I mean we've, we've now created this through Heart of Shadow, three iterations. We got another one coming up in September, September, October. And yeah, I'd say if you're out there and you feel called, sign up. This one's going to sell out quickly. So, you know, the last one did and the one before that. So we only do this twice a year. So it's out there and we'd love to do it more but we want to be present for our children and our wives. So we're making it sustainable for us so that we can offer something very potent. Luke Adler: Thanks, brother.

Jason Lange: All right, until next time, if you're interested in working with me around dating relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to evolutionary Men. Apply.