GS Youngblood - The Art Of Embodiment

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Team. Welcome back to the Men Talk Show. I am Connor Beaton. Joining me today is a previous guest, Mr. G.S. youngblood, and he coaches men in relationship on how to live, love and lead from their masculine core. He is the author of the Masculine in Relationship, which lays out a three part blueprint for developing more masculine energy. And he is also the author of the Art of Embodiment for Men, which teaches men how to build and maintain a daily embodiment practice. His work pulls from a bunch of different leadership principles and from a variety of different fields like psychology, spirituality, martial arts, tango, meditation, et cetera. And so what we're going to talk about today is embodiment. You've probably heard this term thrown around a whole bunch. You've probably heard it talked about, referenced about how important it is for your relationship, for sexual intimacy, for communication, for leadership in any capacity at work, at home, in your family. But maybe it hasn't been clear. I've had a number of men actually reach out to me recently, asking me for some resources, some information on just how to be a more embodied man, what it is, what it looks like, how to actually integrate this into your life. And so I thought this would be a good sort of segue into that conversation as GS had recently written a book on it. And so that's what we're going to talk about today. We're going to talk about embodiment. Why does it matter? What does it actually mean? How do you cultivate it within your life? What are the sort of net positive impacts that it can have in your relationship and your sex life? So this is a great conversation. I found this to be a really sort of simple, pragmatic and practical approach that GS has. And this might be something that you want to listen to with your partner. There might be certain things that, you know, if you're a man listening to this and you are wanting to work on being more embodied, on being more grounded, one of the things that might be helpful is to sort of solicit some help. You know, it's like, when does it seem to you like, I'm very embodied? You know, if you're somebody that's kind of getting into this, if you're further along, you'll probably know when you are and when you aren't. A good sign is if you're reactive, you know, if you've done a good amount of shadow work or if you've gone through my shadow work program, uh, you'll probably know that reactivity moves us out of embodiment. It Moves us into our head, into our thoughts, and out of our physical sense based form. So anyway, without any further delay, I hope that you enjoyed this conversation. Please welcome Mr. G.S. youngblood. All right, G.S. welcome back on the Man Talk Show. How you doing?

I'm doing great, Connor. Thanks a lot for having me on. I'm. I'm excited to have this conversation about embodiment.

Yeah, likewise. Last time we spoke, I was thinking about it this morning when I saw that this was coming up, and I realized that last time we spoke, I was in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, at the very beginning of the pandemic.

So my wife and I were hiding out in Whistler. I remember having the conversation with you and really loving it. And I think the last conversation that we had really, I mean, that podcast got a lot of traction, a lot of downloads, and people really resonated with our conversation and what we had to say and what you had to say. So I'm looking forward to the conversation today. And you wrote this new book called the Art of Embodiment. And that term gets thrown around a lot. Right. You should embody it. Embody masculinity, embody your virtues, embody your traits. And I think it's. In some ways, I'm just going to make a statement, and I'm curious if you agree with it or not or how you would, you know, how you would view this. But I think in some ways, the term embodiment has become nebulous for a lot of people and it's not really defined. And so first, I'm curious if you agree with that, maybe why that is. And second, can you give a little bit of context of why embodiment is so important, and then maybe just your definition of it. So sort of three pronged. Start here.

Oh, shit. I got to remember all three of those questions. But I'll try.

Yeah, I'll remember them. I'll remember them.

Okay, good. Yeah, I agree. Embodiment is thrown around a lot in men's work. I mean, you know, this. It's kind of the. This one of the terms du jour. Everybody's talking about it, and people have different meanings of what that is. I'll give you mine, and I'll give it in this very specific context of men's work that we're talking about. And you can go through life and for most of us, we get so much in our thinking minds. I mean, we can't help it. We spend all day reading emails, reading texts, reading messages, watching videos, reading articles, responding to emails. I Mean, we're just information, information processing machines now in this modern world. And it's really hard to get away from it. But fact is that anything you do all day long is going to get stronger, like that muscle will get stronger. And what happens is our world starts to consist of a lot of thoughts, thoughts and projections onto the world. And you know as well as I do, thoughts are always about future and past. They're never really about right now. And so what happens is we create stories about the world around us to make sense of that world. If anything's confusing, we come up with a story and a projection. So if I call you and you seem nonchalant to talk to me, I'm like, well, maybe Connor's kind of upset with me, or maybe Connor's kind of a dick, or maybe Connor's this or that. I sort of have these stories to make sense of what I experienced in the call, which felt like nonchalance. And then I start reacting to the world as if those stories were true. And we know how that goes because when you start doing that, you're never actually quite present. You're just going to be in more of a reactive state to all your stories and projections. And that's when you allow yourself to be kind of a floating head, to be in your mind. But if you instead take your attention and turn it in, turn it towards the physicality of your body, that physicality only exists in this moment. Sensation only exists in this moment. So when you turn your attention down into some sensation, and we can talk about that in more detail, but some sensation in the body and just have a little bit of your attention on that, it actually tethers you into the now and it makes you more present. It's going to have you more in touch with your primal, but it really, you're going to just be more here now, less susceptible to believing all these stories that the thinking mind creates for us. So embodiment to me is the practice of doing exercises that naturally start to train more and more of your attention onto your body. And you just, you start to have that be more of your natural state. And you go through life and you're just part of. Your attention is always connected to the. To the sensations in the body. And then what that means is you're going to be more here in the now, a more present, grounded man. And other people are going to feel that. So for me, that's what embodiment is. It's the practice of naturally turning some of your attention towards the body so that you rest more in the body so that you rest more in this moment. That's how I define it. Okay, so I said a lot, so I'll just pause there for a second.

Yeah, no, that's. That's good. And one of the main pieces that stands out to me is, you know, this, this idea of letting some of our awareness, some of our consciousness rest in the body and being able to have a kind of relationship with our direct felt experience. The charge that's coming up within us, whether that's the charge of anger or arousal or anxiousness or whatever it is. And when I remember first hearing this term, and maybe like many men, I kind of had the question come up of like, well, why does that matter? Like, why should I care about my embodiment? Why should I care about what sensations are happening in my body? Is that really relevant? And so this might sound like a bit of a strange question, but I feel like it's important for maybe some of the listeners. I would love for you to kind of give us a sense of what's the benefit of being able to have a deeper connection to our bodies? Why should we understand what we're embodying? I think as men, and I'm trying to use the rational mind to get us into an roi, right. What's the return on investment for us as men of having a deeper connection to our embodied experience?

I'll give you a four word simple answer. Feel more, react less. And then, of course, let me dig into that. When I do my embodying practice and when I stay regular with it, as I said, I'm more grounded into the now and I'm just less reactive. You know, my woman gets my woman. She loves to throw fire at me, like a lot of our women do, and that can create a sense of threat in us. And you probably remember this from the first book. We got a whole chapter on threat and anxiety. So she throws fire at you, anxiety arises and you really want to get away from that. Regular embodiment practice helps you sit with that anxiety that arises so you don't have to try to make it stop. Because usually your dysfunctional behaviors are the things you do to try to make anxiety stop. But if your nervous system is acclimated to intensity, which happens through embodiment practice, you don't have to make it stop. You can actually sit with it. I think the easy analogy that most of your audience would understand is the cold plunge. When you start to acclimate to cold immersion. The next time you get in, you're not freaking out as much, you're not having to get out of the tub as quickly because you've learned to acclimate to that intensity. So through embodiment, you acclimate to intensity. Therefore, you can be less reactive in lots of situations, but most importantly in relational stress. So that's reason number one. Yeah. The other one is you're going to feel more. And the ability to feel sensation in your body is the. In my view, is the same capability that you use to feel your emotions. And so, you know, I don't think we need to go into, like, how men aren't in touch with their emotions. I think that's well established. But the more you learn to feel sensation in your body, to notice the nuance of it, to have it rest there, maps over perfectly to your ability to feel your own emotions and also to feel your woman's emotions. And in my experience, one of the most powerful things you can do when your woman is in an elevated state, in an activated state, is to actually feel what she's feeling. I know my woman, the thing that calms her down the most is when she feels me feeling her. So if she's upset with me, I can actually, instead of getting defensive, I can just pause and can actually feel what it's like to be dropped. You know, if I forget to call her when I said I was going to call her or do something for her that I said I was going to. And. And I don't follow through. Like, she feels dropped and that there's pain in that for her. If she can feel me feeling her in that pain, she actually calms down way quicker than if I try to talk her out of that pain by getting defensive. And that's what embodiment does for you, because you're learning, not learning, because you're developing the capacity to feel sensation in your body, you just magically light up this parallel capability to actually feel emotions both in yourself and in your other. And I don't know a man out there that wouldn't benefit from having a little bit more sensory capacity around emotions, you know, theirs and others. So I think for those two reasons, less reactive, more feeling. Like, the ROI for embodiment for me is absolutely clear.

I appreciate that. And I think one of the things that stands out for me is that it. It actually gives us a broader palette, I guess you could say, for choice, you know, because one of the things I talk about charge and intensity quite a bit, and that for most of us as men, we have this inner charge that we Experience the charge of anger, charge of anxiety, charge of arousal, sadness. And for most of us, when we approach it from that rational mind, we usually go through a dualistic lens of I need to shut that down, I shouldn't feel that way, I don't want to feel that way, or I react from it, right? I need to do something with it, so I got to react from it. And that's a very limited choice spectrum. And so I like to look at it from the lens of, you know, and I love what you said. And I'm just like reframing what you said. I think through my own context and my own language, which is like, this gives me more freedom when I'm in my body. It gives me more freedom and more sovereignty because I have a depth of awareness of what I'm experiencing, what I'm going through. And I have more choice than I need to shut that down or I need to react from it. And that in many ways is the kind of emotional intelligence that a lot of men are maybe wanting or being told that they don't have for whatever capacity, for whatever reason. And so I feel like there's merit in just dropping that out there. Anything that you would add to that or anything that, that you disagree with.

In what I just said, Nothing I disagree with. I would just, I would even reflect it back in just some of the terminology that I'm using. You know, what I heard you describe, it's kind of like the ocean receding to reveal maybe the reef or something. And it's really the same thing with our anxiety. If you can clear out your anxiety, what you reveal, you use the word sovereignty and, or sovereignty and choice. I use the word intention. I want to live out of my intention rather than out of reactivity or self protection. And so a lot of this embodiment is about clearing out the anxiety in our system. And then you're like, oh, wow, there's my choice, there's my intention, and there's certainly my sovereignty. And I talk about intentionality a lot in the book. In fact, I've got a. Just yesterday recorded a new mini course I'm putting out on a practice that I teach called Intention to Assertive Movement. And it is all about developing your capacity for intentionality. On top of that, you know, if you remember the COVID of the book, it talks about the ani framework. Well, the ani framework is attention and intention, like that. Those are the two pillars of the philosophy that I've got in the book about how you can bring, how you can use Attention and also intention in your embodiment practice to really deepen your practices significantly. In fact, I kind of, I'm pretty clear in the, in the forward of the book, I just say, look, I. You don't need a lot of fancy practices and to spend three to five years learning Kundalini Yoga, you can actually take the simplest breathing practice and apply attention and intention in kind of the ways that I talk about in the book and make that as powerful as any Kundalini Yoga practice. And in fact, you could do the same damn single breathing practice every day of your life. And you're still going to build capacity each time. You don't need variety except insofar as your mind starts to get bored and needs the variety. But in terms of the development, you can really bring attention and intention to bear on your practice.

Yeah, well said, well said. I love that. And I have a couple follow up questions because I want to talk about what it looks like to start with an embodiment practice or what are some of the basics that you think that are good for men to understand. But I think one of the things I just want to drop in there is how much of this is about being able to build up a tolerance. You know, one of the things that I, that I talk about with men is that sometimes we just don't have any kind of real tolerance for our own anger, our own anxiety, our own arousal. And so when those things come up, we, we moved that approach of shut it down or react from it. Right. We become enthralled by it, we become it in some degree and then we react from it. And so how, how much of an embodiment practice is building up a kind of tolerance threshold where you're able to work with your internal experience a little bit more?

Yeah, that's part and parcel of what we're doing here. So I couldn't agree with you more. It's like, how do I build my capacity to sit with intensity? And I've got actually a whole chapter in the book that are around intensity exercises and I've got a few. You would know all of them, I'm sure. But it is, it's a lot about building our capacity for intensity. And you know, you talked about anger as one example. Like I don't know how to be with my anger. And most, most guys will experience anger and they either shut it down or they blast it out irresponsibly at other people. And of course, you know, in neither of those states are you actually a present grounded man. You're just a very reactive man. Whether you're clenching or blasting, both of those are really coming out of reactivity. And so we again, we want to get you more towards intention. So when you clench down to not feel the anger because you don't know how to what to do with it. Or your father always modeled shutting down. Or maybe your father was a maniac and you vowed never to be like him. You know, whatever it was from your childhood that has you clenching that. I mean, you know this as well as anybody, Connor, that anger still running you. Just because you're like, you can't see me doesn't mean it's not running you. So that's so for guys to really feel that flash of anger and then to acclimate their system to. They can handle it. They can still operate in the. In the fire is so part and parcel to embodiment practice. And like I said, there's a whole chapter in the book on building your capacity for intensity.

Beautiful. Thank you for that. Well, let's kind of get into some of what it looks like to work with embodiment practices. And so can you give the listeners maybe a little bit of insight into where does one begin? If somebody's listening to this and they're like, okay, I'm sold. You know, you got me. Yeah, you got me. I see the benefit of this. I know that my relationship could benefit from it. My work environment, my colleagues, my family, I can benefit from this. Where do you recommend that we begin?

Well, my answer will sound, of course, self promoting. You know, buy the book. There's actually a companion video online course to take you even further. You know, find some resource, whether it's mine or somebody else's. There's lots of stuff out there. Find a resource. But let's not make this too complicated. You can actually, as I said before, you can do the simplest of things to actually bring you more into your body. And I thought maybe we would just go over one right here. Remember, here's our goal is to have some connection with our physicality, some sensation in our body. But we can't forget part two, which is and also be relational with the other. And so I have a concept in the book that I talk about a lot and is often cited called split attention. And split attention is where you practice actually having some attention on the body and then having some attention with the other. And so, you know, if you and I were going to do one right here, I would say, okay, Connor, give me 50% of your attention through your eyes and ears. Because you want to hear me and see me, and let's be. We'll have eye contact. So we're sort of being relational here in some small way. But I want you to drop the other 50% of your attention down to your butt that sits in the chair. So you're sitting in a chair right now. Gravity is pulling you down and pressing you into that chair, and the chair is pushing back up. And in between, you feel that sense of compression right on your soft tissue. So that's your sensation of weight. So just drop that 50% of your attention down to the back of your legs and your buttocks and feel the weight. And what I want is, I want this attention to be a very visceral attention. So don't think about what it's like. Don't picture it in your mind. Don't have a story about it, actually simply just feel weight. Okay? It's almost like a radio was on, and you just listen to the noise of the radio and it just keeps going. You listen, listen, listen, even while you're dealing with me. But here, what you're listening to is the sensation. So just keep feeling that. Keep feeling that. And so what we would do over. Over time and different practices, we'd really cultivate your ability to have this feeling attention. Like, it gets better with practice, I'll just say. And most guys are really kind of in their mental cognitive attention, so we practice getting them into their feeling attention. And now we practice just being with each other. And so if we could just have eye contact insofar as zoom allows real eye contact. But see, now I'm practicing. I'm practicing being with you, but also feeling my weight. And I just practice this. There's no information I'm learning here. Okay? This is all a felt sense that I'm acclimating my body to actually be in touch. So let's say you do that every day for three months. Why the hell would you do that? Well, one of the techniques I use in real life is if my woman's super upset with me, which has been known to happen, I will let my attention drop down to my feet. Like she's. She can bring the fire. And so I need a little help. And so I let my attention drop to the feet, even while I'm still present with her. So I'm not shutting her out and just like, thinking about something else like my feet, I'm actually feeling them. But still being with her, still engaging with her, still being present with her. And I can say from personal experience, it Decreases my anxiety by 50%, you know, which is a pretty tangible number because then it gets it into the realm where the rest of my nervous system can really handle it. And so I actually, this is not only a practice that you and I can do in two minutes here on a, on a, on a call, but it's the technique you use in your real life of dropping that attention down, just even feeling that takes away all the voices of self doubt and all the projections and all the, you know, stories I might have about her being unreasonable or she doesn't understand anything. Like that tends to just kind of drift off when I connect with my body. So that's one of the tamest exercises. I mean, a lot of the other exercises have more physicality to them, whether in the breath or movement. This one was just more of a still and silent one. But I'll be damned if it's not powerful. And so this illustrates something about. I think maybe the flavor of embodiment that I'm bringing to the world is there's a lot of focus on gravity, because gravity is ever present. It's a sensation that's always there. You just reach out and get it, take a little. Because it's always there. Whether you're sitting, standing, laying, walking, there's always some sensation of gravity that you can use to tune into. And so it's a good illustration of, of the amount that I use gravity in the, in the framework that I teach. Okay, I'll pause there.

No, that's great. I appreciate you walking through the exercise. And, you know, I think it's. Obviously we're limited in what we can do on a, on a zoom call and on a podcast, but I feel like that's super helpful. And I think one of the things that stands out for me is just this notion of having some of our consciousness, having some of our awareness, especially in intense moments, because we can move into fight, flight or freeze real quick. And then 100% of our consciousness, of our awareness, of our focus can be on the thoughts of, I need to get out of here. Or you know what? I fucking had it with this conversation. I don't even talk to you anymore. You know, those types of things. Our entire sort of awareness can get wrapped up and knotted up in just those very simple thoughts. And so even just taking some of that relief down into the body is incredibly, incredibly helpful. And I know for me, it's very helpful. My wife's a little spicy sometimes too. I call it spicy. She's a little spicy. She's Lebanese. And German and Italian, and so there's. There's lots of spice to be had. And I know that when we first started dating, sometimes when conflict would come up, it would get heated, right? And I remember having to use some of these practices of just like, all right, breathe in. I like to breathe into my feet and feel my feet on the floor, breathe into my lower abdomen, bring my attention down, lower into the body. And just in doing that, I automatically had more mental space. I was less angry, I was less defensive, less reactive. But, man, if it doesn't take some practice. So I appreciate you bringing that forward. Can you say a little bit more about this notion of gravity? Because I feel like you touched on it, but I feel like it sounds pretty important, and I would love for you to just pull on that thread a little bit more.

I like it because it's so available to us. No matter what you're doing, you can sit on the couch, walking, taking a walk with your woman standing there in front of her. Gravity creates a sensation. And this is one of the complaints I have about a lot of the embodiment teaching I've experienced over many years. They're kind of like, feel into your body, feel the sensations in your body. And they're pretty vague about it. And I remember sitting there as, you know, as a student, just thinking, well, do I feel my, like, tickle in my hair or my knee kind of aches? You know, what am I supposed to do? And it just. It felt, you know, scan your body. And I want to be led more. And so that's where I'm very specific. We're doing three sensations in the ANI framework. We're doing breath, the physical sensations that are associated with breath. And I'm even specific about which ones we're doing gravity, and we're doing intensity. So intensity is things you do to create intensity in the body and then learn to sit with it. Those are the three that we focus on. And we don't leave it up to the student to try to figure out what the teacher is talking about. Very directive on what we're going to use. So gravity is just a core part of that. It's always available. And it damn well pulls me out of my stories really easily and is very, very effective at that. So I talk a lot about gravity points, which are where we contact the service beneath us. And pretty much every. I'd say every single session that I lead with students, we start with establishing some more, what I call ground connection, which is just. It's really your spatial Awareness of how you relate in space to the ground. And getting that not in a mental sen of understanding more, but in a felt sense of always feeling the sensation of gravity. Because what that means is when you're in intense argument, it's easier to remember, it's easier to feel. If you don't practice this when you get into an argument, you're just blown out. You're not even gonna. You're not even gonna remember to feel your feet, let alone actually kind of have an actual connection to them. But like anything, if you practice it and then you get into the heat of battle, then you can execute. So that would go for sports, that would go for the military. You know, you're actually drilling so that when you get into the fire, you just operate automatically. And that's exactly what we're trying to do here, is drill you and practice you so much that when you get into the fire, you just naturally have a connection to your body.

Is there, can you speak maybe a little bit about the difference between what you're experiencing with something like anger, with something like arousal, with something like anxiety? Are there different practices for those different experiences or do you recommend similar practices across the board?

It's more the latter because I think ultimately underneath it's just an energy. You know, there's an energy plus a story. So if you take, you know, you got an energy of anger, but then you've got a story of anger and kind of like, I'm angry at you. Well, that same energy is pretty actually close to your to like your revved up sexual desire. It's just got a different story on it. Instead of I hate you, it's like I want you. So it's really at the energetic level. And I don't get that specific because I feel like the energies of intensity are really at the end of the day, it's about capacity to hold whatever the flavor inside is. So I don't draw a distinction. Other people might, but I don't. One of the questions I get a lot is, well, what's the difference between embodiment and meditation? And I've got my take on that. Meditation is very much about what I think is the mind governing the mind. So my conscious mind is supposed to notice me thinking, and then it's supposed to pause and not identify with that thought and then let it go. So it's a little incestuous because it's sort of the fox guarding the hen house where the mind is governing the mind.

I actually think that leads to people not succeeding. I Hate to use that word, but not having a deep experience and then drifting back into thought, and then they get bored, and then they're like, I'm never doing this again. And that's why meditation practices don't stop, stick. And when I started meditating in 97, and it was. Was hard for me for a while until I discovered more of the principles of embodiment to actually stick with it. Embodiment's different. Embodiment is just simply, I'm going to take my attention and then turn it towards sensation in the body and commit to that. Well, guess what? Then the mind actually naturally clears itself. It naturally pushes thoughts out of the cognitive mind when you do that. And then as thoughts arise during the practice, you don't try to get rid of them. You just say, okay, I'm just going to turn my attention back to my body. And you just keep doing that. You know, thought comes up, turn your attention back. Thought comes up, turn your attention back. I find myself much more successful in going deep in the practice, in staying with the practice for the entire duration that I intended to with embodiment rather than meditation. So I just, I find it much more effective and I. I recommend it to guys who have tried meditation a lot and just, you know, they might. They might say they meditate, but deep down they know that they get pretty bored and don't actually like to do it.

I appreciate that distinction. I'm going to shift maybe a little bit into what I have heard a lot of men talk about, which is embodiment practices and sex. And, you know, how do I deepen my pleasure? How do I, you know, last longer? How do I. How do I stay grounded, you know, And I think for a lot of guys, they've come into awareness about the word embodiment or some of the techniques through the realm of sex. And so I would love for you to just maybe speak a little bit about how do you see embodiment practices showing up or benefiting a man when it comes to sex and sexual intimacy, or even the act, the act of leading up to that. Maybe not even the act of sex, but the act of engaging a partner in arousal. So I'll just leave that there.

Let's talk in the bedroom, and then we'll talk before the bedroom. We'll do it out of order. Thoughts are a boner killer. I'll just throw that out.

That should be your next book. That should be the next book. Come on.

Now, hold on, let me write that down. This is good. If you've got Any kind of insecurity going, we all get that once in a while, hopefully less rather than more. But it comes up and what, whatever and you start thinking it's just going to kill your erection, we all know that. And then you think and then you try to make it stop and then it makes you think more. It's like, don't think about a pink elephant. And all you can think about is a pink elephant. So I think very obviously getting you out of your thinking mind, you know, chronic over time, not just in the moment getting out of it, but more developing the capacity to rest outside the thinking mind absolutely helps your sexual performance because thoughts are a boner killer. So I think that's really number one. If you've got any kind of insecurity running, then you definitely want to have an embodiment practice for that reason. The other is you actually, I mean, remember what we're doing. We're learning to feel sensation in the body. Well, I mean, what is sex if it's not a whole lot of sensation? So your ability to come out of the mind means that frees you up to actually feel your pleasure more. And women love it when you feel and express your own pleasure, you know, as long as you, you know, properly contained in your own masculine container. But to feel your pleasure is, is just, well, it's just a lot of fun. And so I think embodiment really helps you do that. And, and that's why a daily practice for both those reasons, I think is really very helpful for, for your sexual life. Now let's go to the second part of your question of how about before? Well, the whole point of embodiment is to make you more present, to make you less reactive, more defensive. I mean, less defensive. Your capacity to be more available for her emotions, to be more emotionally available, to be more emotionally tuned. Wow. I mean, you know this, we know this, all those things lead to opening your woman's heart. And we all know when her heart opens, that's when her body opens to you or is more likely to, barring other factors, of course. So you know somebody who's an experienced embodiment practitioner who's really committed to it, they're going to be more emotionally available, they're going to be more emotionally robust for their woman during the non bedroom hours, which is going to have her feel more connection, which almost invariably leads to more sexual openness. I defy you to find a woman that wouldn't say, yeah, when I feel more connected to my man, I feel more sexual. So really those Are the, you know, all three of those reasons are why I think that a daily embodiment practice is. It can be amazing for your sex life.

Awesome. I love that. Thank you. And I would agree with what you're saying in terms of that emotional openness and connectionness is going to create more opportunities, more openings. And so I guess the follow up question that I can hear most of my audience saying is, okay, how, how do I do that? How do I create that connection and that opening? How do I create a little bit more presence with my partner and invite them into sexual connection? Because I think one of the, you know, I ran this poll the other day on my Instagram profile that got, I think a couple thousand votes. And I, you know, I said, what's the, what's the major problem or major challenge men that you're facing in your relationship right now? And, and one of the, one of the options was a discrepancy in sexual appetite, in sexual arousal and desire. And that one got a ton of guys said, that's the main challenge that I'm facing in my relationship. And so where does embodiment fit into that? How do we begin to use some of these practices that you're talking about in order to create more sexual opening and maybe balance out some of that desire discrepancy?

Well, I'll be honest. I think the answer I gave is the same answer I would give for this question. When your woman feels more connection, she will naturally want to have sex with you more. I'm just going to be as crass as I can. You know, again, barring other factors. You know, let's just kind of take the, you know, two sigma here. When she feels more emotionally connected to you, she's going to want to be more sexual with you. It's just like period, end of story. It's really very straightforward. Now, it's not easy to do, but it's straightforward to understand that dynamic. So you have to ask yourself, what are the ways that I as a man can foster more connection? And again, I'll continue my oversimplification of things. It's really two things. Can she feel you and can she feel you feeling her? It's really that simple. So can she feel you? I think consists of you knowing what your inner state is, knowing what your emotional state is and sharing part of that. You don't have to barf your, all your emotional messiness on her. You can kind of get some of that out with your guy friends, but you bring, it's not a filtered version so per se, but it is a. It is a distilled version of what you're feeling. And then in the first book, I go into kind of what I consider to be masculine ways to express your emotions. But I think the headline is keep it short and simple and direct, and you don't need to justify it. You just say, this is how I'm feeling when this thing happens. You know, I end up finding myself feel this way, and I feel sad, I feel angry, I feel a little shameful. I feel this. You know, your ability to share your inner state is so important to the feminine nervous system because it gives her something now to orient. She can orient to you, her nervous system can orient to hers. And you do that very simply by just sharing your inner emotional state. Like, what's going on for you, what's up for you? How are you feeling? That's part one and then part two. I think I talked about enough already is, you know, can she feel you feeling her in her emotional experience, expression? Well, I think all that becomes more possible when you're more connected to your body. So really, it's. It's kind of the long game to get your woman more sexual. It's. It's usually not how things are going in the moment. It's usually not even necessarily how things went that day. It's like over the weeks and months and sometimes even years. How much is she able to. To feel the connection between the two of you? How much can she feel you? How much can she feel you feeling her? So I think that's something you cultivate over the years with her. And then, of course, then it comes down to foreplay throughout the day and things that you can do to kind of get her more sexual. And all of that happens way, way, way before you get into the bedroom. So I'd say any of your listeners that feel like they're not getting enough sex, just look at the level of connection between the two of you, and you probably find the answer.

Yeah, good stuff. Really good stuff. I appreciate that. You know, as we've been talking about this, just this idea of embodiment and, you know, one of the things that I've been asked quite a bit is like, how did you come into a deeper connection with your own body and some of these pieces? And, you know, I one time talked about having kind of a cheat code in the sense that I, you know, I was a singer for a long time as I was a classical singer. You know, I sang opera for quite a while, and part of that was Getting into touch physically, sensation wise with what the going on in my body. And you know, from being a construction worker, being a hockey guy for a long time, when I first started singing, I realized like, oh, I'm living from my neck up, like, I really don't have a lot of connection to down here. And so when I started singing there was just a lot of like gritting, you know, pushing a lot of sort of aggression that I tried to use to sing, which didn't work worth shit. But then as I started to really get into touch with what I was feeling from the neck down, physical sensations, the gravity that you're talking about using the breath, which was, I mean, it's everything in singing. I went through a period of really feeling a sense of overwhelm. Sometimes I was very overwhelmed by what I was coming into contact with, whether it was the experience of anger or a physical sensation that felt like quite a bit. And I think one of the things I've heard over the years is that some men feel a lot, especially when they start these practices. There's an intensity that they feel, whether it's in their sexual arousal or an emotion that they come into contact with or a physical sensation they're carrying pain. And it's very challenging for them to be with that. And so I would just love to close our conversation today with a little bit of your take on how do we as men start to be with the things that sometimes feel like too much, a little overwhelming, whether it's a sexual charge or a pain or an emotion.

Opera singer, I never saw that one coming, by the way. Just had a comic. Opera singer, hockey player, construction worker. This is a renaissance man.

The contradiction, the walking contradiction. Yeah.

Yeah. I would say for somebody in that situation, it's two things. One, it's structural and two, it's training. If you're feeling overwhelmed in your life, it probably means there's something structurally wrong. And we men have a great capacity for ignoring pain, you know, and I think that you've got to really look at your life and say structurally what's going on here? That I'm kind of chronically overwhelmed. And whether that's often that's you take on too much at work, maybe have had a trauma like a divorce, and you really didn't give yourself the space to heal from it before you tried to get back out there, you know, to your full time job and the dating life and things. You know, maybe you're just, it's kids and work and you're just overwhelmed and maybe you need to really reconsider and, like, do I want to spend the money to hire a nanny and take the. You know, structurally, what can I do? So I'd say, guys, quit ignoring this sense of too much, this sense of overwhelm, and actually go root cause it and take some. Take some action to really structurally fix your situation. And then on the other side, it's doubled down on these intensity exercises. And so one of the favorite ones that I do. And, you know, this is kind of the big thing in men's work. So, you know, this is cold immersion. That one was just awesome for me. When I started doing that, I realized. I noticed my capacity for intensity kind of. It almost step functioned up. It was so kind of effective really quick, and it wasn't a panacea. It didn't solve all my problems, but it definitely took me up in terms of my own capacity. There's other ones that I talk about, and, you know, doing Wim Hof breathing, and there's a lot of constriction of breath that's involved in that. That's another form of intensity. All the things in chapter eight of the book, but you need to have a daily intensity capacity practice. Those are the two things that I would recommend. You know, get clear, stop ignoring, and start figuring out your structural fixes, and then have a daily practice to increase your capacity for intensity. I think between two of those, most guys can really handle 80% of what ails them. There's always things that are just like, really big. But I think you can handle most of the things in your life if you really, really dug into those two things.

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly with that. I appreciate you bringing that out. We're gonna have to wrap up here. And I feel like this is such a sort of like, scratching the surface of embodiment. But I feel like it's a great intro to the conversation. And just before we sign off, is there anything else that you feel is pertinent that maybe I didn't ask or dig into or poke at a little bit deeper that you feel would be good for men to know or understand?

I think we really covered everything. I wanted to throw in that distinction between embodiment and meditation. Here's the last thing I'll say, guys, if you keep doing the same stupid thing over and over in your relationship, in your relational life, that means it's bigger than your cognitive intention to be different. And so you gotta come down and come at it at a different way. You gotta come get it at the nervous system. Level. And that's what we're talking about here is really coming down at the nervous system level. So, look, if you're just like, you know, doing the heads, the forehead slap and saying, man, why do I keep doing that with her? I keep getting defensive, even though I tell myself I'm not, well, it's because you've got a glitch down at the nervous system level. It's probably some trauma from your childhood. We don't need to figure it out here. But you can go and address it at that nervous system, nervous system level. And that's when you'll see the biggest change in your life, the biggest change in your own habits and patterns.

So good. Well, well said. I was just going to say, like, you mean we can't figure out and solve all of our problems rationally with our rational mind?

Yeah. All right, well, listen, G.S. thank you so much for. For jumping on the show again and thank you for this book. I feel like it's definitely much needed in the space for everyone that's out there listening, definitely head on over and pick up a copy of the Art of Embodiment. GS Anything else? Where can people find you if they want to learn more about you, your teachings and what you put out?

I think the best way to get a taste of the content is to go to my Instagram, which is GS Youngblood M I R, which is masculine in relationship websites. Gsyoungblood.com that's where you can find the video course. And of course, the book is on Amazon. And then, you know, really, that's. That's. I've got, you know, a lot of new content coming out. I've got a workshop that's coming out on cultivating more some of the darker energies. So I just say, hey, guys, get on my email list via the website and you'll get all the announcements for all of these offerings.

Wonderful. Thank you so much, GS and for everybody that's out there, if you enjoyed this episode, definitely meant it forward, share it with somebody that you know will enjoy it or could benefit from. It might be something interesting to listen to with your partner. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.