John Wineland - Integration, Your Masculine Core, And How To Embody It All

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Okay, team, welcome back to the Man Talk Show. I am Connor Beaton and joining me today is a guest that I've had on the show two or three times now. His name is John Wineland. John is a friend of mine and has come to be a dear colleague whose work I really appreciate and respect. He is an LA based speaker and teacher leading men and women in the practices of embodied masculine leadership, spiritual intimacy and sexual polarity. So I've known John for quite a while now, I guess it's sort of seven or eight years, maybe a little bit longer, and watched his work unfold, which has been really wonderful. Just to tell you a little bit more about John, he studied under David Data who wrote we had the Superior Man. And he has drawn from a lot of deep practices like Tantra, Kundalini, Yoga, Taoist and Iron shirt Qigong traditions and seeks to create a profound experience for men and women longing to express their deepest desires with open, fierce and loving hearts. So John's joining me today because he recently wrote a book that I've had the chance to dig into and really appreciate. There's lots of practical practices in the book and the book is called from the Core. And the book is essentially, I mean, I don't think I do a good job of summing it up. He'll probably give you a better idea in this conversation, but really we start this conversation off by talking about what is masculinity and John shares his version of that, his perspective, whether or not he feels like masculinity has shifted or changed. We get down the rabbit hole a little bit talking about culture and modern day society and gets a little existential at a certain point. And then we bring it all back and talk about very real practices to engage in your relationship through a more grounded, embodied sense. We talk about what is embodiment in a very practical sense because this term gets thrown around a lot. What does the term integrate actually mean? And how do we go about integrating something? So this is a very robust conversation. Whether you are a man or a woman. I know that you will enjoy this. I hope that you enjoy this. And as always, if you enjoy this episode, please do share it with somebody else. Goes a long way to getting us into the ears and onto the phones of other people. And because of you, because of all the sharing that you have done and telling other people about the Mantalk show, last month we had our biggest download month ever. We cracked the 100,000 downloads a month mark. We have consistently been in the top 50 most downloaded podcasts in relationships in the United States and in Canada, and we're making our way in the ranks in Europe and the UK and Australia. And so thank you for all my listeners that are abroad. I deeply appreciate you. And, yeah, that's it. So thanks so much for being here. Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. And without any further delay, please welcome my good friend, Mr. John Wineland. All right, John, welcome back to the Mantalk Show. How are you doing today?

Oh, it's so good to be back. Connor, great to see you, man.

Yeah, man. I think this is number three. I think this is our. Our third time. I was just celebrating with the men in the alliance the other day because we, we finally crossed the six digit a month mark, which feels like a, you know, like a hundred thousand downloads a month. And I realized that I've been running this podcast for, like, seven years.

Yeah, it's just, you know, time and commitment. Right. It's commitment.

But I remember when this was a tour, when Man Talks was a tour that you would do in different cities and have different men's teachers or, you know, figures and, you know, the world speak on what it's like to be a man and many other things. So it's been really cool to watch your journey over the last seven, eight years.

Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. The evolution. Well, instead of asking you the normal question, because I've had you on the show and normally I ask, tell us a story about a defining moment in your life, which I've done twice now, so I think this time I would love for you to just speak about, you know, you've got this new book coming out called from the Core, and I would just love for you to maybe share a little bit of insight into either what it was like to write the book, to birth something into the world like this, or just anything of substance from the last couple years. I don't think we've been on the podcast together in the last two years. So anything of substance that you feel is noteworthy in your life in the last couple years?

Yeah, well, so writing this book, maybe it's similar to the book you're writing, but, you know, this book was meant to be a sort of a compilation and a transmission of the things that I teach. Right. So I've been teaching men's groups and men's work for a long time. 20 years, basically. And, and, and in the last 10, I've really started to consolidate some ideas, some practices that, that felt important to, you know, give to a wider audience. So what was, what was Interesting for me was to see that arc of things that I teach. I practice, I literally see happen in guys bodies, in their, you know, in their lives. And, and then to put words to that and to give it, give it the structure of a book and also how things have changed. You know, like I'm constantly, hopefully, hopefully constantly evolving my approach, expanding my approach. I think some of that we'll get into today and to see how, you know, from the time I started writing the book, which was about five, five, six years ago really to the time I actually am getting it out there, how much, you know, my approach has changed. There's still, there's things in that book that I probably would write differently today, right? I'd probably look at it a little differently. Don't ask me to name them because I probably won't, I don't remember. But I just like going, oh, I think I would have touched that a little differently. So that was one very interesting piece of this. And the second thing, which is a little more humbling, which is good for a guy like me, is writing a book on consciousness, love. You know, working into the ever expanding space of, of embodiment. It shows you where you fall, are still falling short. So it showed me these concepts where, where I still have work to do. And, and as I went back and reread it, I was like, wow, I, I think I could, I could really up my game on this again. I think I could really, I understand this now at a different level and I could do this a lot better. And so it was humbling and it helped me realize that most of the things that are in the book, many of the practices and concepts are really not destinations, but journeys that are filled with lots of failure, lots of recommitment, and a real sort of like yoga, right? Like you're, you're just constantly expanding into, you know, a deeper and deeper pose of these things. So that was humbling for me to reflect on. And I also, you know, take my own advice and go back and go like, oh man, you could have, you know, you could take your own fucking advice here. So anyway, those are two things that came out around the book.

That's great, I love that. And I would, I definitely empathize and understand where you're coming from. You know, I had moments of, of writing my book. I was like, how do I take what I would teach in a session or at a weekend and then put that into a written form in a way that is meaningful, direct, practical, something that people can replicate at home and As I read through your book, I was like, wow, you really did a wonderful job of laying it out in a way that. That I think people can. When I say replicate, I mean actually take the content that's in the book and do it at home, which is hard. You know, that's. That's no small task. Like, that's. That's really fucking hard, man.

So, so kudos to you. I just wanted to drop that in. Let's. There's lots that I want to talk to you about. Honestly, I feel like you and I could. Could just spend a day having a conversation and, And. And, you know, sort of like, let people listen into it. But let's just start with masculinity. You know, we had this conversation with Stefanos and Brian Reeves and Preston the other day, and the idea of, like, what is masculinity? That's sort of how we started that conversation. And I feel like that would be good for us to begin with here as well, because you talk about the new masculine paradigm, so I'd love for you to just dig in what is masculinity? And maybe a little bit about what is this new masculine paradigm that you talk about?

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, if you ask that question, what is masculinity? You tend to get lots of answers about what it's not. You know, like, it's no longer this, and it shouldn't be this. And, and, and, and, and I was watching this in the space as, as. Because as. As I was writing this book, you know, Me Too happened. There was this. This whole kind of metamorphosis around what the masculine could be. Right. And so I felt it was really important to kick the book off with that question. And this is just my approach. Right. But I see masculinity as a transmission of depth. So the deepest place in our heart, transmitted through a moment, through our bodies, in a moment, projects onto the world what my deepest masculine core is. So that could be me, you know, breathing slowly and deeply, feeling the core of my heart, and then just letting my partner feel that, you know, through my eyes, through my body, through my breath. And that occurs as masculinity. Right. And I know this because I see it in workshops, and I also see that it's not gender specific, that. That, you know, a woman or any human could. Could. Could practice transmitting the deepest, their deepest stillness, their infinite consciousness, their core heart, their dantian. Right. You know, and so that's the basis of embodiment, is that these beautiful traits, whether it's depth or presence or integrity. These are things that can actually be displayed and transmitted through the body. So masculinity then would be the transmission of those traits or traits like that. I would consider open heartedness, width, depth, groundedness. And, and when a man does that, he's felt as masculine, he's felt as still, he's felt as solid. On the flip side, you know, we could also, you know, start to define what feminine traits are, right? Energy, pleasure, movement, devotion, all of these things. And those can also be transmitted through the body, through a male body, female body, other, you know, so I think what I'm hoping people get out of this is that masculinity is not something that they ever, you know, it's not a destination to be achieved, it's not something that they need to do. It's more about a way of being that relaxes and grounds yourself and those around you. I love that.

I love that. Especially the part where you said it's not something that you need to do, it's a way of being. And you know, we in, in the Man Talks alliance right now, we're, for the next two months, we're going through Iron John and such a, you know, such a fascinating book in many ways, but he talks about the masculine being solar, you know, and the feminine being moon oriented and the different, I mean, when you start to look at mythology and the different representations of this sort of like solar nature, right? Radiating positivity, as I think he talks about it in the book, it really is a way of being. And so maybe can we pause with that notion that you're talking about that masculine is a way of being? This transmission, as you're talking about what are, from your perspective, the things that block us as men, we'll just talk about men specifically at first, from connecting to that transmission, from being embodied in that masculine transmission.

Yeah, that's a great question. And, and, and the, the simple answer is thinking, overthinking. Now, you know, of course thought is necessary, strategy is necessary. You know, creation is necessary. But 90% of our thoughts are habitual and repetitive. And so the whole idea from the core, right, was that the journey into your masculine is a journey into the deepest parts of your psyche, your heart, your body, your consciousness, your awareness. And that journey, it can, it's, you know, is the way that I've worked with it is, it's meditative, it's, it's martial, it's yogic, it actually includes things that the body does, right? So I think what, what stops men in particular from going there Couple things. A feeling is hard, right? And as you take your journey deeper into the body, feelings will come. Feelings will come. And it, it takes work to get still, you know, which is kind of an oxymoron, but it's an interesting, you know, it takes work to learn how to get still. Your mind, deepen your breath. And we're habitually trained to produce, to consume, to conquer, to win. And so those things all are actions, movements, doing. And to teach men this new paradigm that like, no, wait, before you do, which is very important, you know, be in this space. And I just think it's a new way of approaching masculinity so that, that gets to the whole new, my, my version of the whole new paradigm. And I think that most men I know want to go there. They want to have deeper experience of themselves. They want to have a deeper experience. It's, it's. I, I think really it's as simple as nobody's ever really taught us how. Nobody sat us down and said, hey, if you breathe into the base of your belly, your whole nervous system will re. Regulate and people around you will feel you differently. Nobody, I don't, nobody taught me that. Right. So I think it's just a relearning and a redefining of what masculinity is, what the masculine is in every human, and then how to spend more time there as a daily way of living.

Yeah, I love the way that you laid that out. It's interesting. You talked about feeling is hard, this notion that feeling is hard. And it sparked this conversation. I had a conversation with a man the other day. He said, I've been to therapy before, I don't want to talk about my feelings anymore. And I said, how about you just fuel them? And it was just like a silence on the other side. And I was like, how about you just learn how to feel them? There's just silence on the other side. And he's like, well, that fucking sucks sometimes. And it's hard. And I was like, well, that's the point, right? Like, you know, it's not just thinking about them or talking about them, it's actually being with them. You know, learning to build a kind of physical vessel and expanding your tolerance of the intensity.

Yeah.

And, you know, I think I'm going to sort of make an assertion and then ask a question. I see a lot of men that are carrying intense experiences within them. You know, intense anger, intense sexual arousal, intense anxiety, intense existential worry. And I'm curious, from your perspective, how do we as men Start to learn to be with that intensity. Because. And I don't know if it's necessarily something that you see as well, but I think a lot of the guys that come into my space are saying, I'm going through something intense, and I don't know how to deal with it. I don't know how to be with it, don't know how to work with it. So have you experienced that? And.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

What do you say?

What I do in workshops, right, is teach men how to be with these things. So I think a good way to look at this is think of that. The intensity, right? The feeling, the sensation, the anxiety, the pain, right? The angst, the anguish. I would say anguish is a huge piece of the masculine, underrepresented piece of the masculine experience. Loneliness. All of these things. These are all emotions, energies, right? They are, in my definition, the feminine. They are our feminine, all of those things. And I have a whole section on shepherding your own feminine. But practically, if you think about those things as electricity, and the more intense the experience, the more intense the emotion is, the more this. More electricity is pulsing through your vessel. So part of the work then is just like an electric wire that's, you know, disconnected and flailing around. It can cause a lot of damage. So what do you do? You ground it. You ground it, right? You literally ground it into the earth, grounded into metal, right? And so part of the first thing I teach men is that that intensity gets stabilized by grounding, by plunging your sacrum into the earth, by opening the soles of your feet, by breathing lower into your body, by slowing things. So grounding would be the first real practical skill. It's a fucking skill to ground. You know, martial artists have been teaching it for thousands of years, but it's a skill. And then the second one, which is equally as difficult when we're in an intense experience, is relaxation. So to ground, relax, deepen the breath, slow the voice, all of those things actually create a container or a structure, let's call it, for the intense emotion. And what tends to happen is that intense emotion, which starts on the surface as anger begins to get grounded and transmuted into the true issue, which is oftentimes fear or sadness or anguish. And learning taking that journey, teaching men to take that sort of yogic and meditative emotional journey has been a big piece of what I do. And I hope that's what a lot of men can take some practical tips from in the book.

Can you say a little bit more about a man's Relationship to fear. Because over the years in working with guys, I've noticed that most men have a very specific relationship with fear that they're often. Not always, but often unaware of. And so I'm hoping that you can kind of illuminate what role does fear play in a man's life?

Yeah, well, it's. I think you hit the nail on the head, Connor. It's largely unconscious. And what's also unconscious is that fear, Fear of not getting what you want, fear of losing what you have, fear of being the big masculine fear that I think is very under the surface, but it's at the root of almost every. I'd say 90% of masculine pain is the fear of being trapped in something, right. A career you don't love, a relationship, that's. That you don't know how to navigate an emotion. You know, to be trapped in an experience that is not that you don't know what to do with is one of the great masculine fears. So working with fear requires everything to. Requires you to develop two key skills. The first is awareness. Like literally being able to take your awareness and place it inside your heart, your body. And then the second is sensitivity, right? To be. Start to be sensitive to. Not sensitive like, you know, not emotionally sensitive, but emotionally sensitive. Like a ninja is sensitive. Right. Like a, you know, like an animal, like a wolf is sensitive to the environment. Just be very to and that. Which is also a skill. So I think the more men practice these skills of awareness and sensitivity, the more, let's call it emotionally intelligent they become, the more emotionally integral they become, the more they can put their finger on what's the real issue, which I'm afraid I'm going to fail. I'm afraid you're going to leave me, I'm afraid. Right. And they can get to those things, but without the sensitivity or the awareness they tend. It just becomes the child programming habitual reactivity loop that we see so many men, you know, including me too. Right? Me too, you know, fall into. So it's a. It's a. Castaneda said that consciousness is the great battle, you know, of the. At that time, it was the 20th century, I think it's. He's still right there.

Yeah. So. So good. So let's. Let's maybe transition a little bit to this. The notion of the integrated masculine. All right. Because I think, you know, that term just integrated or integrated, you know, you need to integrate that. I think that gets thrown around a lot, and I would love for you to just maybe put some parameters around what is the integrated masculine? What does it look like? And what are some of the pathways towards the integrated masculine?

Yeah, well, let me, let me say one more thing about fear that I think is really crucial. So fear, like many intense emotions, has a physiological impact, right? So when we get afraid, we close. It might just be our chest sinks a little bit, our breath gets a little more shallow. Right. Literally it's a fight or flight response, oftentimes that I'm going to die, which is very strange to think about in your relationship. But there's a closure that corresponds to fearful thoughts or fearful sensations. And so part of working with fear is to be aware that your closure is now impacting everybody you're relating with and is also intensifying as your body kind of sinks into itself. So the yogic work is to, you know, lift your sternum, deepen your breath and drop your shoulders and feel the earth and all of those things. And when I talk about the integrated masculine, all I'm really saying is that you've cultivated the great masculine tool, which is awareness and consciousness, you know, with the great feminine tool, which is sensitivity, intuition, right within. And so when we've cultivated those tools within ourselves, we've now sort of maximized, I guess, although we never get there, we've maximized our capacity to be uber sensitive, uber intuitive, uber aware, you know, uber feeling, let's say, with great awareness. And I'm really trying to talk about these things, although they sound very woo woo, I'm really trying to talk about them in very practical terms. Your awareness, you know, my heart, just the idea of a heartache or a heart flutter or anxiety. And if you have anxiety, your heart is likely fluttering. So the capacity to bring your awareness to your heart and feel the flutter in your heart and just stay with that. Right, Stay with the flutter in your heart is a very profound skill that I don't think we've acknowledged, celebrated, really taught men what the ROI of that is.

Women know, women know, your woman probably knows, but we don't know what that the ROI is. So the integration, I mean, there's deeper layers of it. I'll give one more layer and then I'd love your thoughts on this. But I think one more layer is to, is to really journey into your internal feminine, which I define in the book as your emotional body, your thought processes. Anything that's moving and constantly changing in the lexicon that I use is the feminine. Right? Anything that is still and unchanging and, you know, sort of the essence of you doesn't change. So your capacity to feel both of those things at the same time and be with both of those things at the same time creates this internal. Creates an internal integration. And so your capacity to be with your own emotional body, with your own yearning heart, with your own neediness, with your own insecurities from a place of very deep awareness and sensitivity is an integration practice. And so what I'd like guys to get out of this is that, look, these are things that actually can be. That aren't sound harder than they are once you really break them down into a practice, once you really get on the mat with them.

I appreciate that distinction and direction. For guys, I think the really important piece of what you were saying is describing the roi. Cause it can sound nebulous sometimes when you hear these things, it's like, oh, I need to be more aware. It's like, well, I think about myself 10 years ago, 12 years ago, and if I heard that, I've been like, well, why? It's almost like the child in me or the teenager in me would have been like, well, why would I do that? And in some ways it's like, well, A, what do you have to lose? And B, what are you if you're not aware? You're unconscious. You're acting unconsciously. And so is that free? Are you a free man when you're acting unconsciously? Probably not, right? You're acting from your anger, from your anxiety, from your fears, from your worries. You're not acting from grounded choice. And so that's a little bit about how I've always tried to approach that conversation. I don't know if that gives any more context for the listener, but can you maybe just say anything else about. I think you said awareness is the ultimate masculine tool or some version of that. I did want to ask why, but I would love for you to just expand on awareness as the ultimate masculine tool.

Yeah, well, let's start with the ROI piece first, because just, you know, just to give these guys a little meat on the bone, virtually every complaint that your feminine partner has about you, when you boil it down, has something to do with your lack of awareness. Leaving the toilet seat up is a lack of awareness. Not feeling me, a lack of awareness. Not, you know, being aware of time and space, lack of awareness. And. And if you start to break down where the disconnect happens in relationships, almost always there is a lack of awareness that she is sensing in you that is painful to her. And so the more aware you can get both body awareness and, you know, mind Awareness, the more trustable you are to your feminine partner, which translates into your business, into your clients, into, you know, every. You know, people want to give you. This is the great unnamed strategy for success, is a deeper awareness and a deeper sensitivity. People want to give you money. If you're more present, it just means that you're more aware of the present moment and you're transmitting that awareness through your body to the way that people can feel it. People will want to give you more money. People will want to have more sex with you. People will trust you more. Men will trust you more. I mean, the benefits are insane. And so I think this. And I know you know this, right? But the great, you know, tragedy, you know, for men is that they don't. No one's ever really taught them that strategy. So that's the ROI piece, hopefully, that, you know, that inspires a couple guys to get on the mat. The. The core masculine. If we break up, just humanity, our. Our humanity into our masculine, which is the ever changing, ever. I mean, the unchanging, ever expanding consciousness field of awareness that we are at all times, it never changes. Consciousness never changes. Kind of Buddhism 101, right? So consciousness just is. Everything else is changing. Our thoughts, our bodies, our emotions, the world. Everything else is changing, so that everything else is the feminine. The tool of consciousness is awareness. I'm aware that I'm having this conversation with you. I'm aware I'm alive. I'm aware that there's an ocean outside. I'm aware. And so the reason why it's actually sexy awareness is because it is an instrument that demonstrates a connection to consciousness, right? And so one of the great masculine gifts in relationship is to be aware of the depth of feeling that your partner has at any moment. You know, that occurs to her as a very deep form of love. Basically, you're just putting your awareness and your sensitivity on her, not on your thoughts, not on your desires, not on your agenda. So awareness is the tool of consciousness, which, what is what in my definition makes it masculine. And feeling is the tool of the feminine. Our feminine, her feminine. The feminine.

One of the things that I wanted to just backtrack on was the notion because, you know, you're talking about how awareness and consciousness is the tool. Being able to deepen that awareness, being able to deepen that consciousness into the language that I would use, like the charge in the body, this, you know, the direct felt experience, you know, what. What we're actually experiencing physically, emotionally, mentally. It's interesting because we've almost been Sold this notion that the rational mind, that the thoughts that we have and the consumption of knowledge that we have all become addicted to is somehow.

Masculine in its nature. And so there's. I see a lot of guys going on this journey of, well, if I can just accumulate enough information and if I can learn how to think sharp enough, then I'll be very masculine. Have you. Have you witnessed that? And what do you. What do you. What would you say about that?

Yeah. So. So here's the great. And this is the lesson that I've learned in my own life, right? Because I am a junkie of practice, you know, information teachers, you know, for many years, what I realized is that all of that information just got layered on my patterns, right? And it just became another strategy for, you know, working out my childhood patterns. Quite frankly, my. My need to be known, my need to be acknowledged, my need to be seen, right? I. A lot of people come to my work wanting to master these techniques so that they'll be more lovable or more sexy or more. Right. That is still taking something and then layering. Layering on top of basic. Of your wounds, of your childhood wounds, which we all have, right? So information and strategy and skill without awareness, ultimately, very unconsciously and very insidiously become part of our pattern, you know, continuation of pattern, right? So the ways to move out of pattern. And pattern tends to happen in the mind, right? It's a thought loop, you know, same thought, same fear, same da, da, da, da. The way to move out of that is to drop into the deeper space, which is the part of you that is aware of the pattern, witnessing the pattern surrounding the pattern, you know, the space from which the pattern emerges, right? And dropping into the space from which all experience emerges is a deep. You know, deep. Monks have been practicing this in caves for thousands of years, but it is the deep masculine practice doesn't actually need it. Here's the great thing. The combination of being fully aware and fully sensitive, and if the resting in those spaces, like feeling the moment fully and having full awareness on it, is almost needless, we don't need anything when we're in that space of great expansiveness or great sensitivity or great love. Great love, love, love, love. Right, Right. And so we don't need anything. So to answer your question, that space of no need is the antidote to trying. Trying different strategies to keep winning.

You know, not that we. We're human, we have needs, right? But we give our needs way too much fucking cred.

And way too much airtime.

Yeah, I love the use of patterns in your answer, because I think we get caught in those. And I remember having a meditation teacher give me the line to meditate on. Who is it that's aware I'm thinking? Who is it that's aware I'm thinking? And that was such a perplex at first. I was like, what the hell does that even mean? But then to literally be in the experience of witnessing who's thinking and to have that experience, to separate a little bit, to create a little bit of space from the thoughts, from the patterns that are running constantly, from the repetition of thoughts that we think over and over and over again, and to let some of those things go frees up some space, frees us a little bit from the need to reconcile that pattern, to act from that pattern, to replay that pattern. So there, there is a quality of freedom, I think, in what you're describing. Is that correct?

Absolutely. It's the only true, true freedom. All other freedom is transitory. Right. And the masculine basically designs their life to attain freedom. I'm going to make enough money so that I can be free. I'm going to have the kind of sex I want to have, so I will feel free. I, I'm going to finish, I'm going to get rid of all the things that are burdening me so then I can feel free. And the great, you know, tragedy in that is that we still think that those. I'm going to travel the world and do ayahuasca because I'm, I'm going to be free. The tragedy is we're still bound by pattern and thought that we didn't necessarily ask for, came from our parents, came from our upbringing, came from society. So the true freedom is what you're describing, right? To be, to rest in that space of the great I am. And then what makes it a relational or sexual gift is to transmit that great I am through the body. That's where things really get interesting in terms of relational experience and sexual experience. I'm sure a few of you guys here have sex. So that piece of being able to take this, what you just described, that space of I am, and then transmit it through your eyes, through your breath, while you're with your partner. It's an incredible gift for them. So more roi. I'm gonna just seed some more ROI into this. And it's a skill that can be learned. It can absolutely be learned. Just like meditation.

Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I think I'll just speak from personal experience. And I have a follow up question but you know, as I've cultivated more awareness, more consciousness, there is, there is not only more freedom, but there's more room for choice versus reacting from those patterns, those needs, those wants, those desires that just sort of like come up, right. The emotions that come up, right. Feeling angry, feeling anxious, feeling horny and then needing to either shut that down if it's not the right time or react from it. And yeah, so I just again, I wanted to add into what you were.

Saying, but I think an example would be really helpful here, Connor, because there's one that one, you know, guys might be, well, what are you guys talking about? So one I see all the time is in relationship, she says something in a certain tone or criticizes or complains about you in a certain tone or certain way and there's almost a knee jerk defensiveness or reactivity that occurs. I know every guy's going to know what I'm talking about here. It's almost uncontrollable, Right. And that's what you said about being bound. You're bound by that pattern of reacting to her perceived complaint or dissatisfaction. So the capacity to breathe deeper into the belly so that your nervous system shifts almost immediately to drop into who's having this reactivity, Right. Who's just giving a little bit of space and a little bit of breath and a little bit of awareness of ground gives you that split 3 to 5 to 10 second pause that can change that whole pattern for you, for her, for your family. Because we know that moment can become really destructive. It can end relationships, it can end in violence and horrible fights. And that is a perfect example of trying to use these skills to shift that. Shift that pattern.

Yeah, I mean it's, you know, it's interesting as I'm going to segue into the notion of leading, just leading, whether that's in, in the context of our relationship or leading within our career or just leading ourselves. You know, something that I talk quite a bit about is this notion of like self leadership. I'm curious because in the book you talk about lead in any moment and I'm wondering, like what does that look like for you? I know you talk quite a bit about the breath using the breath, using awareness in the body. But what is it, you know, how do you define leadership? Maybe we'll just start with that ground piece and then what does it look like to lead in our relationship as an example?

Yeah, so this is not gender specific. Just I need to say that, right? This is not gender specific. This is any human in any relationship can take this, right? But the skill sets are the same. And the skill set is to be. So he or she who's most aware, who's most tapped into that infinite space that we just described, connected to it, tethered to it, and is sensitive enough to really feel what's happening in the field that they're in, right? And I give a number of examples of what this looks like in the book. But it's basically whoever has the deepest awareness and the greatest amount of sensitivity should lead the moment. They'll have something if they're resting in that space of patternless expanse. Let's call it expansive feeling, expansive awareness. An intuitive thought will come, will bubble up that is free from the pattern. That's free from the pattern. And that intuitive thought of, let's just say you come home from work, your wife's kind of agitated, she's been dealing with the baby all day, right? You could be, you could just kind of, I'll take it habitually or whatever or, or say something nasty to her, whatever the reaction might be. But pausing in that moment allows that space for something deeper to emerge. That might an intuitive hit of what would liberate her from her closure or her, you know, her pattern. Whoever's liberating others and themselves in a moment from a pattern of closure is leading and you know, it could even be a child in that moment, unbeknownst to us. So this idea of leadership being tethered to expanded awareness and deepened sensitivity and deeper breath because breath gives pause to things, is something I hope, I really hope guys take that one skill because you're gonna lead from a whole different place if you are in that state versus just the natural reactive state.

Yes, I think that's so good. And I mean the example I think is, I think a lot of guys recognize that within themselves, right? You come home, maybe your partner's stressed out and the pattern would be reacting how you would normally react, right? Ah, you always do this when I come home or withdraw, right? It's like, fuck this, I'm just going to like, can't believe, like again, like, here you go again, right? I'm going to shut down and withdraw. I'm going to close off. And so, you know, connecting to I almost. Because I can hear the men listening to this show being like, okay, okay, I think I have this. But like, is there a step by step, right? I come home, I walk in the door, she's pissed off at me, you know, I brought the wrong thing home for dinner or she's upset because she's been, you know, the baby's crying and my. I can feel that part of me come up that I want to react and get pissed off and say something nasty or I want to shut down, like, what the fuck do I do?

Yeah, that's. That's great. And I appreciate you bringing them into the conversation.

Yeah.

So. So let's think of it like this. Think of this stuff as martial, as a sort of martial arts. Right? And if you don't know martial arts and somebody throws a punch at you, you're going to have a habitual response that's probably not super effective for you, for them. Right. But if you've trained in martial arts, you've actually trained. This is why I do workshops. You've actually trained your body to build that muscle of deepening instead of reacting, of grounding, instead of coming up in anger, right? We get anger, we come up. Right. Or when we get into a pattern, our energy rises. So we're actually learning the kata, let's call it, for those of you who know martial arts of grounding and expanding and deepening in a moment. It might be clunky at first, just like learning martial arts, but after a while, it becomes automatic. So in three to five seconds, you can take a couple breaths, ground, open your heart a little bit and feel the space that you all are in and let whatever love and consciousness want to emerge come as a new possibility. Because we know the old possibilities are not super effective or loving, Right. But a new possibility that kind of bubbles up from this fountain of consciousness and depth has all new, creative, beautiful juices to it. So, yes, it is a little esoteric at first, but think of it like a martial arts piece where you're literally like, I would, I would do the step. You come in, she, you get the energy, you. First thing you do is press your feet a little firmer into the earth. Stop. So here's, here's the, here's the way to look at it. Stop. Ground, breathe, open sense, decide it's not in the book. It's kind of something new I've worked with. But you. But, you know, so those actually practicing those things, stopping, you know, grounding, taking a breath, opening your heart, your body a little bit, relaxing, sensing where everything is and then deciding. That would be the pattern interrupt that I would strongly suggest.

It's almost like we need to just slow for a moment because I think that we as. And this is a generalized statement, this doesn't apply to everyone, but I would say that we as men, love Action. You know, we love action. We gotta be in action. Gotta always have action. And so when a problem arises within our partner, within the relationship, our. Like, I feel this all the time as well. I have to combat this urge. It's like, I gotta act right, I gotta fix it. I gotta solve this. I gotta do something about this, like, immediately. And I've found that my process has been like, okay, just like you said, pause, breathe, feel my feet on the ground, and just have some situational awareness around what actually is going on. You know, what would be the pattern disruptor right now? You know, that thing that I want to say or the shutdown that I want to do? Maybe not super helpful. So let's just segue quickly into nervous system, and then maybe we'll close out with talking about the feminine and maybe bring some sex into this conversation. But, you know, a lot of what I hear you talking about is working with the. With regulating the nervous system to some degree. So two parts to this question. One, is that true? Is that assessment true? And two, why do you feel like that is so relevant and important for men specifically?

Yeah, yeah. So that's so great. I'm glad you brought that up. So we have our sympathetic nervous system, which is this, the nervous system we're in most of the time, that is very much geared to protection, right? To protect, to survive. You know, it's basically been what. What, you know, evolution gave us in order to survive. We're in there most of the time. The patterns live there. The patterns live there. Patterns of survival, patterns of domination, patterns of success, patterns of winning. When we're in a heightened state, nervous system state in fear or anxiety or defensiveness, we're in the sympathetic, taking a breath, grounding, opening. The body drops us immediately. Not long, 10 seconds, 30 seconds. Once we get good at it, into a parasympathetic state pretty quickly, or at least closer to it, right? It regulates the nervous system from that. There's all kinds of new information. I mean, this is literally like you're plugging into the Internet of the cosmos, let's call it right. Or you're plugging into the Internet of the moment. And the moment has so much information, so much new possibility. And if we're in our sympathetic, we're going to be in this information. We're working with this operating system, you know, and our operating system's not going to change a whole bunch. However, we can now plug into this new system this, you know, whether you want to call it nature or the force or just the moment. And in our parasympathetic, we're much more receptive. And I find, and I've seen that people, and I've noticed in myself that I just make much better decisions. I'm. I'm much more loving, I'm much more grounding for my partner. My grounded parasympathetic nervous system then has access to all this new possibility, but it also slows her nervous system. It literally relaxes her nervous system. So the benefits of really prioritizing down, regulating your nervous system before acting, they're really incredible and very under discussed and undervalued.

I agree entirely. And I think it's interesting because as you were talking about the sympathetic versus parasympathetic, I remember listening to a talk, I can't remember the gentleman's name, but he's a Stanford professor and it's one of his colleagues. He, in two minutes broke down how an erection works in the body. And he talks about how in order to get an erection, your body has to be in a parasympathetic state. So you actually have to be in a very relaxed state in order to get an erection. And then the closer you get to climax, the more you get into sympathetic. But it made me realize that for a lot of men, we have all of these externalized tools, porn, booze, weed, et cetera, to try and get into that parasympathetic space. Because most of us live in that sympathetic nervous system for so long and we don't have these training modalities, we don't have these practices that actually root us and ground us back into the parasympathetic space. And so we try and use things like porn or not to demonize porn. Right? I mean, you can use porn for very many different reasons, but I think that certainly some people, myself included, for a long time, use those things to access a sense of calm, a sense of relaxation. So.

This is maybe a terrible segue into talking about sex.

But I'm going to hard shift from second gear to sixth and take a right turn into that anyway. You know, you talk about making sex an art and I feel like we've done a good job of sort of laying some of the groundwork, you know, nervous system awareness, all these different parts. How do we start to bring all these things together in the bedroom or, you know, wherever we're having sex? How do we start to bring this to our partner, this awareness, this nervous system regulation? What does that look like? And what do you feel is important for men to know?

Yeah, well, there's A. There's a bunch of different approaches to this. I'll start with the yogic, right. Which is very simple.

If we're getting into an intimate moment and we can actually place our awareness on her breath or their breath, whoever your partner is. Right. And we can sync up our breath with their breath, we're immediately syncing up our nervous systems. We're entraining our nervous systems, which creates a much. Which creates a lot of safety and a lot of relaxation. Parasympathetic, which leads to better orgasms and more erection, you know, which is why. Why morning wood happens is because you're super relaxed. But other reasons too. But so once we. We can. That's one tool that is really, really helpful, which is just to sync up breath, right. The other one is to just be aware of her nervous system. And I think this is a big.

Hill to climb for a lot of men because they get so jazzed up on desire that they lose awareness of her nervous systems. Right. Some of her nose, body cues that might be nose. Right. Get blown through because we're not aware of her nervous system. So this idea of making sex an art starts with becoming super aware of her nervous system and her body and your own at the same time, both, which is a skill. And then the other piece, which we haven't gotten into. As you do this work, as you do these practices, your heart literally expands. Like the capacity of your heart to feel more, to love more, to be in devotion more expands, literally. You can give more love. Like, you could measure it. You'd be able to give more love. And so being able to give more love and to feel nervous nervous system allows for a certain sort of innate sacredness to develop. And that innate sacredness can take the shape of all kinds of interesting avenues. But once your nervous systems are entrained and once she feels your heart, you're feeling her heart. I'm just speaking heteronormatively here, but this is any peop. Any couple. Then that new information that I was talking about because you're more plugged into kind of a unified parasympathetic starts to come in, and it'll show up in new ways to love each other and new touches and new positions and new games to play and new inspirations. And so that is the starting point. I mean, there's a lot more to it. But I think that's a good place to start, you know, with making your body receptive to the art that the moment wants to push through you as love.

I have a. Maybe a Very specific question that I have seen happen for a lot of men and that I get. I get DMs about all the time on Instagram, which is the. I mean, do you get. Do you get like the wildest questions?

I have a stock, like, I can't coach you about this on Instagram. Like, come do a workshop.

My goodness, it's amazing. I love them. I love all of them. They're incredible. But there's one specific question that I see a lot of men asking, which is that as they love, it can shift how they show up in intimacy. So what I see a lot of guys doing and is, I'm going to be maybe crude about this, but I see a lot of men for a long period of time have separated loving and fucking. And when they go to try and combine the two, it screws with their. With their system. And so I see a lot of guys falling in love in a relationship, and they can't bring their primal energy into it. They can't bring any awareness. They lose the awareness. Or, you know, maybe they come very quickly or they lose their erection or they get emotional, right? And they start. They get very emotional. They start crying during sex or like, whatever it is. I would just love for you to speak to that. The convergence of the open heart and the. I don't know how else to say it, but the primal energy, the sexual energy that we.

Primal desire, primal hunger. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's think about this. In the body, right? So the heart and the primal energy, the primal, creative, masculine energy. This is Taoist, this is ancient Chinese and yogic wisdom. Lives below the navel, pretty much, you know, root of the body, like root, root of your body and, you know, the lower part of your abdomen, pelvic floor, right? That's where the masculine power center is. That's why when you punch, you punch from that place. I'll go to martial arts again. You punch from there. So that's the masculine power center. That's where the primal energy lives. That's where your fuck lives, right? And so it's in both an awareness practice and a sensitivity practice to be fully aware of your heart, to relax your heart, to open your heart and to breathe and feel and expand your capacity in that lower region. And what most guys, like you said do is they tend to toggle between the two. And a big practice. And I think it's actually in the book, I think it's the lover warrior practice, where I. I kind of name this in archetypes. Well, your warrior lives down There, right? Your warrior. I'd kill for her. I'd ravish her if she wanted me to. I'd rip her throat out for love. Like she's dying to feel that. If she's feminine, she's dying to feel that, but not with a disconnected heart. That's abusive, that's scary. So you've got to practice. And this takes a little time, but it's not that hard to learn to literally connect those two centers in your body with breath, with awareness, with relaxation, with sensitivity. And then they become this sort of unified, very powerful. Because love amplifies primal energy and dark sexual energy or primal sexual energy amplifies love. So it becomes, it's like a different gear. Let's just go super dude here. It's like turbocharging your sex in a way that is, I think if you're gonna bring Robert Bly in, your wild man lives here, down there, right? And so accessing your wild man and bringing it through your heart physically, literally feeling the heart, feeling her heart, feeling your heart, it just takes sex to a whole different level. And in terms of being able to go longer, being able to go deep, deeper, being able to be more passionate and primal, it's a skill that guys can learn.

You know, I feel like that's a good cliffhanger for us to end on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, maybe, maybe you and I can have a follow up conversation here in the, in the coming months and we'll, we'll pick up where we left off. But for everyone that's out there, certainly go on and head over and find a copy of John's book from the core. Where can people go, John? Where, where would you like to direct them?

Yeah, they can just go to my website. I've got everything there, the books there, everything, workshops, things like that. Johnwinland.com apparently, you know, as you're gonna find out, they, they, they want you to push pre order. So if you're gonna order the book, pre ordering it does help me. It tells the booksellers that, you know, it's an interesting, it's an interesting concept and read. So that would be the way I also have for guys if this content feels, you know, interesting and you want more. I have a compilation of thousands of hours of content and hundreds of hours of these practices that we're talking about on a space called the Virtual Workshop. And that's I think John Wineland streaming. And it's a subscription thing and you can just, you know, gorge on, on this stuff and practice your practice in the safety of your own home.

Wonderful. Well, for everyone that's out there, we'll have the links for that in the show notes in case you didn't write it down. And this might be a good episode to listen with your partner if you have one. Otherwise, send it to a friend that you want to discuss. And I feel like this is a great topic, a great episode to dig in with somebody else in your life. So don't forget to man it forward. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off.

Sam.