Core Level Healing with Luke Adler

Jason Lange: All right, and welcome back. So I'm stoked to be here again with my man Luke Adler, who we're doing a regular series with each other now, and Luke and I just had the pleasure of spending, I don't know, about five days with each other, deep on retreat, a personal retreat. We take a couple years with each other to do a lot of the things we've been talking about with each other on this show, primarily shadow work and brotherhood and connection. And we thought we would kind of get a little nitty gritty and real here and just each share a bit about the work we did on this last retreat we did together of kind of what the work was, what the insight was, how we got there and in. In kind of what unfolded. How's. How's that feeling to you, Luke?

Luke Adler: Yeah, no, I think that's a. I think that's a great idea just to share. Share how we do the work and. And how that looks and why I think we're so passionate about sharing it with other men. So. Yeah, what do you think? You want to go first, Jason, or you want me or what's your sensibility there?

Jason Lange: Yeah, why don't you kick us off, man? Then I'll. I'll dive in.

Luke Adler: Yeah, so I'll just get right into the work that I did. The first thing I want to highlight is that having been together, I think you and I have worked together for six years, Jason, and this group has been together for about five. I think just the thing I want to highlight first off is the container is so strong, so much trust in it. Within that context, there's the permission to really bring anything forward. And so just a lit space of the group awareness allows for so much depth. I think for me, it. It allows me to. To touch, you know, very deeply into my being, places that I'm just in my waking state not aware of. So I think men out there who are looking or interested in doing some.

Jason Lange: Work.

Luke Adler: You know, it seems like a small thing, but a container that's really strong and really deep and well facilitated is so valuable, you know, when you. When you discover that. So, you know, for Jason and I and the other men that we work with to hold that for each other, it. For me, it's One of my life's most precious resources. And so I. I kicked off my work by just talking about an edge that I have around, like, how to deal with challenging situations, challenging people. And the men helped me see, like, I. I go for the first thing that happens when I'm challenged by someone, you know, who's got. Maybe they're not intending to be aggressive, but they. They trigger in me this. This first this feeling of hurt, and then this other feeling that joins in, which is this panic where my. My rib cage lifts up, my diaphragm tightens, and then the. The next thing that kicks in after the hurt, the pan and the panic is this boundary wants to come forward, that. That has a lot of fire behind it, maybe even some rage. Like, I want to set the. The situation straight. And I realize in the evolution of our work, Jason, that that. That's actually a piece I learned to develop. Like, I learned to find my boundary. And because my father has a very powerful, dominating energy, growing up. With some ferocity. So it's not. It's not necessarily a gentle boundary. So part of the work that I was desiring to figure out is how can I find, you know, the. The. The softness if I. If that, you know, little boy in me gets hurt if I feel some panic, how do I navigate the rage part into some deeper kind of kindness, or not necessarily kindness, but the ability to hold, you know, what, an awareness of the other person's wounding as I'm feeling my own wound. And so my. My piece of work was very cathartic. I. I had you guys kind of, you know, holding my rib cage, and it brought up this traumatic memory of. Of my childhood where I was kind of lifted off the ground by someone and literally couldn't touch the ground. And I first felt that lifting diaphragmatic tension and kind of processed through that. And then I went back to more of a dialogue with, you know, someone that I have an upset with. And you actually gave me this great insight, Jason. You said, you know, Luke, when you're speaking, it sounds like you're very paternal, and I really resonated with that. And then you said, what would it be like for you to talk to, you know, his little boy from your little boy? And when you said that, it broke open this space underneath my rage, which was this ability to feel this other person's pain and where they were actually coming from, not as an intellectual exercise, but to really be able to just go there, to sink deep in myself and feel like, whoa, they're really hurting and they're really confused and they're really longing for meaning in their life. And I can relate to that. I can relate to all those things. And, and the space that opened up in me was very deep, very tender. But the ability to then relate in a really heated moment where I've cultivated this energy of. Of, you know, boundary setting, to feel underneath to this deeper desire I have, which is to be able to connect with someone when I get triggered, to stay in a place of connection without overriding my needs, perhaps whether they're personal need for, you know, clarifying and agreement. And so it was, it was. It was just this expansive space for me to hold multiple levels and layers of. Of my wounding, my desire to set a boundary, and my deeper desire to stay connected and to bring healing, you know, not just to the person to who I'm working with, but to myself, you know, to stay in the space of. Of healing and. And relatability. It was just like I said in our session, it was. Felt like it was like lifetimes of work that I was trying to. Longing to reach. And I just been unfolding it since I've been home. There's different dimensions of it. I've had like a physical release of mucus and, and fatigue and, you know, it's very rooted in my body as well. So I think that kind of captures the.

Jason Lange: The.

Luke Adler: The gist of it, if you want to maybe offer your. Your sensibility.

Jason Lange: Yeah, I mean, it was such beautiful, beautiful, deep work to, to witness, you know, there your work exemplified, I think a lot of things we sometimes see of how you kind of come in within an idea. Like there's a kind of a sense of what I need to work on or somewhere I need to go. And then we never have any idea where it's going to go in that. That memory that came up for you in particular, which was really, you know, painful to see, like to see your body relive that and release that, that we couldn't have predicted. But in a way, the group's intelligence and your body's intelligence kind of found its way there and then that seemed to be a gateway to the deeper things that started to unleash. And, you know, the thing that always blows me away about this work is that I saw in your work are kind of the. It's like so much of who we are are all these reverberations like these. It's like these frequencies and wavelengths of being that like bounce around and sometimes bounce back in on each other. And we have our parents coming in and are coming in and other generations and our culture and it's just like kind of can cause all this chaos. And so there we had this deep piece of work for you, which was like deep dealing with conflict with others that leads you back to a tremendous conflict you had as a child where you were kind of overpowered and something, you know, as you shared happened a lot to you with your, with your family of origin and your father. And so that was like on my heart, right? Just really feeling that, like getting to experience your little boy in that. And. And then we like pivoted back to kind of the, the modern day conflict. And so it was like the lens had already been set for me of like, like, you know, that power hierarchy just which, you know, fathers and sons. Is there any more primordial one than that? You know, I, I don't know. And then as, as you started to share, it was like I just had this sense in my body of like, oh, that like, because you actually had a beautiful opening and you were like expressing in a different way. But I was like, there's just, there's, there's some kind of residue here. Like I'm still feeling. And that was when that word paternal just hit me of like, yeah, if I imagine in that it's like dad's talking at me. And that was where it just dawned on me. Like, I wonder what it'd be like for you to, you know, exactly like you said, like your little boy connect to their little boy and a man. It was such a. You like took that. So like, it's so amazing getting to work, you know, guys like you, because you just, you took it right in. It was like there was no defense against it. There was no. Yeah, there was no like trying to contort around it or. But you don't understand. Just like you just took that in and it was like seeing you literally transform in real time. Like something was. Suddenly it seemed like you had access to something in your body mind that you hadn't had access to before. And I think this is, you know, why we often call this shadow work is you got to see something that maybe wasn't totally apparent before, right. That had kind of been under the, under the radar a little bit there. And then as you connected with that, it's like almost seeing that allowed this other pathway to emerge, this new way to be in conflict. But stay connected at a human, to human level. I think you're really going to be trailblazing in some deep ways. So. I fucking loved it, man. I Think we both finished that session. We were like, this is the good shit. This is what we live for. This is what the work is. It's so deep. I mean, you move so much. There was tears and anger and grief. And what I love about this work is right on the other side. We were like, fuck, yeah. There's just so much excitement, the feeling of whatever that was. That's why we do this work. Because there was a big movement there. There was. Was a big shift there that none of us could have predicted. That took the group's intelligence, your intelligence, all of our combined and collected experience with each other, and just, you know, a little bit of whatever juju from the heavens allowed this unfolding to happen. That, you know, Jeff from the outside was like, wow, that's like a different man. That's a different man. Then Kate walked in here an hour ago.

Luke Adler: Yeah, yeah. When you. When you. When you made that comment of me, like, literally taking in what you had to say, your words, the vibration of them, it was like a. A vibratory key that unlocked something. I mean, I kind of feel in my body, like unlocked a piece of my heart. And I was able to drop from this protective stance into this surrendered holding where I felt held. And I didn't have. Feel the desire. I didn't feel like I had to protect myself. I knew that I could. I still had that online. But that. That wasn't my. That wasn't my deepest response. My deepest ability to respond was from this. This place of being held by more understanding and compassion. And so I was like, I could rest. And as I just reflect the last few days, I could feel in some ways that anger, that anger to make things right, that when I see something that's wrong, something that agitates me, I can. I'm seeing that anger everywhere in my life now. Like, I'm like, wow, that's really held a. An energetic space in my life. This. It's not so much. I guess there's some reactivity in it because it's not fully lit by my heart. It feels like this, like, angry activist in me. I was, like, so pissed off that this is the way it is and that our government's this way or whatever. It is just like this agitation that there's like some righteous indignation in it. I'm like, you know, there's some good qualities to that, but there's some part of it that's hardened from, like, a deeper trusting and knowing. And I'm. Yeah, I'm working with it. I mean, It's. It's. It's not like I've achieved it. It's over. It's more like I'm working this piece. It's just magnificent.

Jason Lange: I like that image of the key. It's like, yeah. It's not that it. It's not that this work magically, like, fixes these things, but it's like suddenly there's a portal into this body, this work, this pocket, this energetic that we didn't have access to before that now we can start to. You can start to play with. Right? You're engaging with in your life, getting to feel the textures of it, how it shows up, how do I work with it? And it becomes a process that you can more deeply, you know, engage in versus, like, when we don't even know how to get in there. A lot of the times that's where it can be so painful.

Luke Adler: Right.

Jason Lange: It's like there's something here, and I just. I don't know how else to get around it. But then once that door is unlocked, you know, the beauty of. It's the beauty of a shadow work in a lot of ways. It's Right. Bringing awareness to where there was no awareness before. And you can't change anything because you can't change something if you're not aware of.

Luke Adler: Is that simple. There's something about, like, that core. Like, I would. I would categorize the work I did and you did as like, a core level awakening where, you know, there's levels of our awareness that, oh, I've become aware of that pattern at an intellectual level. I become aware of it at an emotional level. And then a core level awakening is like when all. Whatever four or five levels of awareness coalesce. And I would definitely say what ha. What occurred with me was that. With you was that it just. It encompasses all of who you are and awakening so complete. We could say it's a core. A core level awakening, healing, integration. Anyway, I'll pass it to you, Jason, let you check in on yours, and we'll flow.

Jason Lange: Yeah, totally. My. My work was also surprising and deep. And, you know, I came in a little bit fuzzier in the weekend of, like, yeah, I'm not. Which is kind of more. My disposition with my background was more like, neglect and just kind of being cut off from myself and not having strong responses to things in a lot of ways. And, you know, I think we really kind of got the ball moving when I located this energetic or belief that I've been working with recently and kind of become aware of, of like, I'm afraid it's too late and I. I've already things up. Like it's like it's too late to fix whatever it is. And I've severely something up and it's like a. There's no going back, it's over, it's the end type thing which shows up, you know, has shown up in my work and in my relationships and all kinds of deep, deep ways. But there was a way working with you guys as you led me deeper into an experience I had.

Luke Adler: I had.

Jason Lange: I had mostly been kind of processing that on like a kind of a tangible surface level of like specific things and instances and whatnot in life. But as we got in, particularly into my body and exploring, you know, what was going on in my posture and particularly my back, spine and my shoulders, and it's like kind of wall of tension I often just carry in my body of like being braced, just braced. And as I really, really dug into that and as you guys kind of led me deeper into that, I went in deeper and you know, this core level is a great way to put it. Feeling emerged from me of, oh, it's so much deeper than like these little surface things. Like, this is. This is my karmic fear about my lifetimes that I've been living for a long time that I didn't show up in life or I made a mistake and it's too late and this life is over. And what it really unlocked for me was kind of a newer type of relationship I've had of, you know, be 43 soon, have a young daughter, kind of getting into that middle age of like, yeah, I'm feeling afraid of death for the first time. Like genuinely, like, afraid of death. And where these pieces kind of collided was this realization of like, oh my God, I am terrified of having to start over again. Like, the prospect of returning to undifferentiated, undifferentiated consciousness and having to like, claw my way up through the kind of neglectful hell that was my reality in a lot of ways. There was just a sense in my body like, I just, I cannot do that again. I can't. I can't do it again. I just. I cannot go through that again. You know, it was like, as I went there and the tears came, there's quite a bit of release and just like, I just, I can't do that again. And I'd realized I'd been bracing against that for my entire life. Just like this fear, deep, deep fear. And as my body started to relax and, you know, I think you said that and it was such a theme of our work. I felt a softness come into my spine, come into my upper shoulders of just being able to exhale and, like, relax, just, ah. I'm, in a way, like, I feel like I've been stuck bracing against something that I've already changed. So that was like, no, like, that karma's. It's not going to look the exact same. It's actually already shifted. Embracing against it, like, is just wearing me out. Just fucking wearing me out. And that as I really dug into that, it was like, well, so much of that fear of starting over was like, I actually feel like I'm at a better place than ever have been. Like, this is great. And the idea of having to go all the way back and try to get back to here, like, that's terrifying. And so it was such, like, an interesting, like, deep pain, but also what's continued to flower of, like, deep gratitude for, like, oh, like, it really is better. My life really is better. It's easier, it's more open, it's more loving, it's less stressful when I'm actually with the experience of my body in the moment and not just habitually living from that contracted braced place, which is. It's just. It's my default. It's my habit, if I'm not careful, to just drop into that. So it was. It was one of those. Yeah, it was one of those pieces of work I never could have predicted. But then hitting that, like, karmic fear of just, like, I can't do this again. I've been living this for lifetimes. This, like, raced, grinding, withdrawn, lost kind of way of being. And now that I'm on the other side of that, I was.

Luke Adler: I was.

Luke Adler: Yeah. I think of the theme in your work, my work, one of our other buddies work who did another really deep piece, but really everyone who was there, and of course, the work we facilitated in Heart of Shadows. There's a momentum behind our patterns, and, you know, they could be genetic, like our. Our fathers, grandfathers. They could be past lives, like, whatever framework you want to consider. To me, it's. It's not really relevant, the. The detailed explanation, but the momentum that's, like, comes down upon us. It takes. It takes almost like an equal force mixed with a little magic and grace to. To shift, to purify and create a new. A new thread or new pattern, like you said. And I think that's really the power of a lit container, you know, whether it's men's work or women's work, like we said last podcast, it's human work in a container that's lit by shared desire and longing for freedom from the momentum of our past, our ancestors, you know, to shift generational momentum towards being asleep and stuck in pain is, in my view, it's a. The best thing, the most powerful thing we could do in. In our lives. So, yeah, it was. It was so powerful to witness your work and feel the. The heavy weight of this pattern that you, you know, You've listed back a few generations. Yeah, I feel you. Like when you said, when you said that you couldn't live another lifetime, man, my heart broke. I was like, I, I know you can't, and I can't either. It's to carry this weight again.

Jason Lange: Yeah.

Luke Adler: Implicit within that was, I won't live another lifetime like this. This is done. And you know, like, it's not so much that you, you were, you know, begrudgingly moving through your life, but that, that feeling was there somewhere deep, deep in your body and your psyche, in your being. And that's what came to the surface. That, that wound deep in your core came all the way up to the light of your heart and the heart of every man there. And inside of that light, it really hadn't, you know, you wanted to heal and it, it just, it moved, it healed. It got lit up. It was just, man.

Jason Lange: It'S, it still blows me away. And yeah, it's like. I think what I really appreciated about our group this time was the speed and efficiency with which it felt like we, we got to karmic knots. Like just that, that car, that core level stuff. You're talking about the deepest wounds and that how the. Why I love doing this work in a group is there's something about the group. The, the level of love and awareness a group can hold simultaneously is, in my opinion, stronger than what I can do with someone one on one, and helps create that momentum to, to kind of reset the system or blow that thing up in that it takes. There's just something about that collective, that collective energy that, you know, I think it's meant, I actually think it's how we're meant to heal in group, in connection, in relation in so many deep ways that, you know, we're just starting to re piece together as a culture on the other side of destroying most of those practices. And that, yeah, it's such a privilege and such an honor and, you know, we got to see some of this work with our first Heart of Shadow group and cannot wait to dive in with the next round this fall.

Luke Adler: Yeah, I mean, I think we look at the group, the work that they're doing because we're part of their, their WhatsApp group and you know, our group's been together five plus years. The momentum, the depth, the depth of love, nuance and care that just grows over time as you stay with the work, becomes this jewel that just gets more beautiful as time passes. And so one of our missions is to support men's groups that are lit by this intention. Not just a men's group that's a little more surfacey. Check in, that's fine. But we're talking about core level healing that only occurs through a deep commitment over time. And you and I are, are really on this charge to generate those groups. You set the container, we set the context, and then you're off and running. And ideally, you come back and do something with us once a year until you really. You really have that context charged up. But once it's charged, the group owns the work and it can live on. I think we're a testament to that. So, you know, that's the mission. We got our next one's, the retreats in October, Heart of Shadow, and got some other things brewing.

Jason Lange: And yeah, you can always check out when the next iterations of the program will be at. Heartofshadow.com will always kind of contain the information about the when the next one is. Or you can get on a waiting list if we're not. Don't have one coming up quite soon. But, you know, this is just one of those things where you just got to tune in and when you feel that, call that. Yeah, there's. There's something I'm ready to shift at this deep level. This is, you know, in Luke and I's path, at least the most powerful way we've found moving forward to. To make these big breakthroughs and then be able to keep them integrated so that you don't just lose it, but it keeps building on itself in the. In the container of the group. That's, again, what's so powerful about them. So we would certainly love to go on this journey with you if you want to check out more info.

Luke Adler: Awesome. Thanks for your time, Jason. Great to talk with you.

Jason Lange: Yeah, man, I look forward to chatting to you again soon. I will do it soon, brother. If you're interested in working with me around dating relationships or your masculine presence in the world, just go to Evolutionary men. Apply.