260 Stefanos Sifandos: Evolutionary Wholeness
This is a transcript of episode 260 of the Wellness Force Radio podcast (host Josh Trent) featuring Stefanos Sifandos. The conversation traces Stefanos’s journey from a violent, traumatic childhood to becoming a men’s-work leader and speaker, and introduces his framework of “evolutionary wholeness.” Topics include trauma, self-inventory, breathwork (breath–sound–movement), neuro-empowerment/reframing, masculine identity, men’s groups, and relational work (sacred/monogamous union). Practical tools and practices (daily five-minute reflection, journaling, breathwork, somatic processing, mentors/therapy, men’s groups) are emphasized.
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We begin to realize that we're not our actions, we're not our thoughts, we're not the mind, and we can begin to become less attached to these things that we were and create a new version of ourselves. And so exploration is another tenet, another key principle of the conscious worry model for me. So exploring our inner world is something that we don't do enough. Again, just come back to the simplicity of spending five minutes every day thinking about who you've been. We have an ability to be reflective on who we are and who we've been, and if it doesn't align with what our values are, then we can move through that.
That's Stephanos Sifandos and this is episode 260 of Wellness Force Radio where we discover the physical and emotional intelligence to live life well. In this podcast, we're talking about a brand new yet incredibly powerful topic called Evolutionary Wholeness with my friend, world class speaker and author Stephanos Sifandos. Now, if you haven't heard of Stephanos, not only is he an absolute powerhouse of a human being, a conscious man who leads men's work online in person across the world, but he just also happens to live here as my neighbor in Encinitas. Which is why I'm so thrilled to bring you this podcast. We recorded it just hours ago and I was so on fire from the conversation that I wanted to get you this hot off the microphones. One of my favorite deep dive conversations of 2019 to date. I've come to know Steph over the past six months, doing work with him, spending time together and seriously honored to be able to spotlight this amazing human being for your listening and really edutainment pleasure. This is one thing I've realized in my life. Can you relate to this? Focusing on enjoying the process, enjoying the climb, focusing on the joy, not making life so serious and allowing all of us to have this space and the capacity to do our personal development work, but not have it be so arduous. Yes, we can do our personal development and our growth and have it be fun at the same time and have it be expansive, but we can't have fun. We can't enjoy the process if our body isn't feeling great. And I'll raise my hand and admit that the past three months for me, I've had a lot of health challenges, getting sick a few times. But one thing that has been my absolute bedrock, my go to two and even sometimes three times a day, has been my organifi green and red juice. I want to talk about the Green and red specifically because not only do they believe in Wellness Force in our mission of this discovering process us for the physical and emotional intelligence, but they also sponsor our podcast. They have legitimately given me the most trusted micronutrient delivery system on the planet, which I get to share with you. And this is through adaptogens. Now, these are plant compounds. These adaptogens go into our mitochondria, which is the powerhouse of our cell. It's where all the energy is derived from. So think of this. Have you ever had one of those moments where you've been sluggish or tired and you, like, slam an espresso to get some kind of external energy source? We've all been there. The great news is, like, we don't have to do that anymore. We don't have to get energy from stimulants on the outside. We can actually get energy from the inside of our cells through these plant adaptogens. They're actually fricking magic. These adaptogens go so deep down into the mitochondria that they give it this fuel source. Now, if this seems daunting to go to the store and get fruits and vegetables, take the path of least resistance. Get your micronutrients and your greens and reds for from this slow dried, organic, non GMO powder To stack the environment in your favor, head over to Organifi.com WellnessForce and give Organifi red and green juice a test drive. You get the ashwagandha from the green to help manage stress and increase energy. And also you get the reishi and the cordyceps from the red, which helps to boost immunity. And of course you get the hookup because you're part of the wellness board community. That's 20% off. Just use code wellnessforce@organifi.com wellnessforce you will not find a bigger discount anywhere else online. You get the best code for 20% over@organifi.com wellnessforce because in your life, you're a force of love and energy and wellness for the family and friends you care about. And this is why on this episode with Steph and I, we so deeply explore what it means to be our best self. That term is thrown around so much in the industry, isn't it? How do we become our best selves? We're actually going to go to the tactical and the pragmatic pieces that have helped Steph transcend literally an incredible, remarkable background of violence and hardship as a youth to transcend negative feedback loops and utilize powerful emotional intelligence. And also somatic tools like breathwork and journaling and different embodiment practices to now be able to be one of the most sought after speakers and in regards to both men's work and emotional intelligence on the planet, do not miss the show. Notes. We have a ton of resources for you today from this conversation. As always, we take the notes for you copiously. These are at wellnessforce.com260 that's wellnessforce.com260 to get free resources and links and videos from Stephanos. Now I'm not going to wait one more second. Here we go, live and in person with the one and only Stefanos Sifandos. Steph, thank you so much for letting me come to your house. I want to say welcome to Wellness Force, but I'm in your home.
You are Wellness Force brother. So I'll welcome me to you.
This is special for me because I, I love doing podcasts with my friends and I've gotten to know you. Gosh, it's been probably six months now that we've been hanging out and you are just this in there. I've never seen you be anything other than inspirational. I know you're a human being. You have your days where you're not perfect and everything else, but where does this come from, man? You, this, this fire inside of you that I, that I truly feel all the time. And it's this fire of like you always sign your, your Instagrams and your socials with one is glad to be of service.
Yeah.
Like, what is up with this fire that you have inside of you that makes you, affects people in a positive way.
There's a movie, Bicentennial man, with Robin Williams, who's. I just, I admired him so much growing up, watching a lot of many American movies in Australia and in Bicentennial Man, I won't tell you the plot this was. It's. It's a long plot, but it's a beautiful. It's one of my favorite movies. And he, he basically signs off. Not everything he says, but so much of what he says with one is glad to be of service. And I love that. And I resonated so much with that and I thought if I could just be of service, I feel my life is complete. My life is unraveling the way I want it to. And so go back a little bit about this fire. And I thank you very much for your compliments too.
It's something I can feel, man. It's palpable all the time.
Yeah. It is a fire within me. And ever since I was young, I. I wanted to be United Nations Secretary General.
United Nations.
Yeah. Well, back then, I had a misconception what the UN was. Now, I mean, geopolitically and socioeconomically. Now I know the UN to be different. And the way I understand geopolitics, the way I understand the world that we live in, is different to how I understood when I was five, six, seven years old. And I always tell my mom, I want to be United Nations Secretary General. I can. I can help the world, and people can eat and there'll be no poverty, there'll be peace.
Yeah.
That type of thing. It wouldn't be unnecessary war and violence and etc. Etc. And, you know, when you're a kid, it's. Well, not for everyone. For me, my voids became my values. And so when you ask where this fire comes from, I felt all those things. I felt very. I grew up in an abusive household, so I grew up in violence. And so for me, that was the norm. And so this fire. To live an inspirational life, which I don't always. I mean, I'm not gonna say I don't get it right. I do get it right. I just. Sometimes I falter and I lose my shit.
You do that human thing very regularly.
But there's a drive there to live a life that isn't dictated by our emotions, isn't dictated by our circumstances, that there's this level of awareness that almost moves through and rises above the mundane or the superficial. And so there's this explor. And I've been very blessed in my life that I've. I've pursued experiences that have allowed me to touch God or feel like God, feel like the divine, feel this oneness, this permeating oneness that actually exists, some through plant medicines, some through just conscious breath work, through gratitude, practice, through sitting practice, meditation, whatever you want to call it.
Me, through a breath work that was so powerful. I'm stoked to share that on the show today. Yeah, we'll share that later.
Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. I just so. So much of. There's so much richness in life, this thing called awareness. And so all morning, by the way, I've been listening to Advaita Vedanta, which is non dual Vedanta, which is just a form of. It's a form of philosophy. It's a form of being. It's a form of understanding our reality and what consciousness is. And so I'm just consistently toying with this and playing with this notion of what is real and what is Us. What is it? What does it mean to be human? That's, that's a question.
That's a big question. You're a deep guy, man. You know, it's funny, you have this term on your website that I absolutely love. It's called evolutionary wholeness. And it really, it's the subject of a lot of the questions I'm going to ask you today. Evolutionary wholeness. Like when did you come up with that? How did you come up with that? What is that?
I was probably high or depressed or.
This is a long time ago.
To be honest. I just like putting non common words together.
Okay.
And I'm just being really honest and then and looking at that and going, oh, is that a gateway to some form of insight? For me, evolutionary wholeness is me again. Voice become our values. And I remember Dr. John Demartini saying, that is an awesome guy. Are you familiar with him?
Yes, absolutely. I know you did his course like in the early 2000s.
Yeah, he's, he's gold. I really, really. And I wish I had a greater level of awareness when I did his course of self. You know, I was a little bit detached and fragmented and fractured. Hence evolutionary wholeness. And what I mean by fractured and fragmented and not that I was broken, a broken person. What I mean by fraction fragmented was I was just confused. I was just confused about life. I didn't know what I wanted. I wasn't behaving in integrity. I wasn't congruent in my actions and my thoughts. I was feeling and thinking certain things. Behaving in a different way to what I was thinking and feeling.
Yeah.
Not giving the world what I really wanted to because I didn't know what I wanted to give the world. So I was just a delinquent. If I wasn't delinquent, I was just hyper aggressive or just so confused and frustrated and agitated. Life, I'd project and take it on other out on other people. I take it on myself out of myself. My negative self speak. It was so intense. And so I just, I just felt fractured. I didn't, I didn't feel stable in myself. Like my, the ground that I would walk on, it was like almost I was walking on an earthquake 24 7.
Wow. So your nervous system felt like literally imprinted from a place of trauma or just be cautionary about everything in life, which it was.
Because I hadn't dealt. I chose not to deal with my stuff from the past. And so this, this, this concept of evolutionary wholeness is evolving and moving through our pains, our Traumas. We don't all experience pain and trauma. The vast majority of us do. I think most people do.
It's so interesting, Steph, because sometimes trauma can be like, oh, sexual trauma, rape or physical abuse. Trauma can be, you know, zero through seven is where all the imprinting happens. And then we spend the rest of our adult lives kind of imprinting the love again. But trauma can be not being held enough. Trauma can be something that doesn't have to be so dramatic, but it still can be traumatic.
Yep.
How do you see this play out in your work now? Because you coach mainly men, right?
Men and. Well, yeah, I would say mainly men, but on a one. On one level, men and women quite balance on. On more of a group level at this point, which is evolving and changing as well. More men?
Yes, the men that follow you. And I know that this is what I love about your work. You really speak about, like, really brutal authenticity and taking an inventory of truth. Like, one thing about your work that I've noticed is that you take people right to the fire pretty quickly when people are looking at the traumas and whatnot. We could do a podcast just on trauma, but if. But from your vantage point, like coaching all these people, being a sought after person in the space when it comes to actually looking at trauma and like taking an inventory of trauma, where does someone even begin? Where does a man begin to look at his trauma? And by the way, how does he even know that trauma's causing him, how he doesn't want to be as an adult?
Most of the time we don't know. And so we take on these unconscious patterns and beliefs that we experience, like you said, from zero to seven, where we're imprinted unconsciously, consciously, almost hypnagogically, we're moving through the world and everything that we're taking on, we're literally taking on as truth and gospel for our lives. And so we. We bring this into our world, into our adult life, and we behave the same way we behave. The defense mechanisms, the coping strategies. Christine, my fiance calls them compensatory strategies that we developed and cultivated as a young person. We bring them into our adult lives and our adult relationships, and they generally don't really have a place. We don't need to behave in that extreme, but we do. We're coming from an unconscious fear or set of fears, and so we don't know where to start, generally speaking. So where do we look? And this is a great question. And for many of us, it's too difficult to do it on Our own. In fact, for the vast majority of us, it's way too difficult unless we're hitting rock bottom. And so the gauge here is the way we feel about ourselves and the way we feel about life. But even then we can get stuck in this rut. And I don't mean to be painting a no hope picture here. There is hope. There is intelligent hope.
We got to explore the darkness to get to the light.
Yeah, intelligent hope. And so, and so we get stuck in our drama or our trauma or our pain or our fear. And it's the norm for us. And so we don't know any other way. We justify it in every way, shape and form. And so what we need is again that inventory. And so something that we could be taught as young people is to take regular inventory of our lives. So here's something. Whether you think something is quote unquote wrong with you or not, at the end of every day, and I'm not the first one to say this, the ancient Greeks have been saying this for thousands of years and they're not the first to say it either. Take inventory of your life that day. How did you behave? How did you think? Were you happy with your thoughts? Were you happy with your interactions? How did you relate to others? How did you give and receive love? You experience pain, fear, discomfort? What was the cause of the discomfort? What were the patterns around discomfort? Have you noticed that discomfort before? Most people don't want to. We're too fucking lazy. Now lazy is an interesting term. It's not that we lazy, it's that it's not in our values to be self reflective because we're not taught. It's not a collective value to diligently reflect and be self critical in our lives. It's not something that we're really taught at school or we're not taught in our family. Often we may have the closest resemblance we'll get of that is if you happen to sit at the dinner table with your family every evening and the family may ask questions, how was your day? How was school?
Which is very rare that families come together for dinner.
That's rare these days. And those questions are very superficial.
Right. How was school, Johnny? What does it actually mean? You know, how was school, right?
I don't know.
Fine. Fine.
Great. I just want more food.
Yeah. This inventory, it's like in my life too. And one thing that I've done on a regular basis is taken inventory of what am I the most afraid of.
Oh yeah, that's a nice question.
Fear, right? Like I Loved. Recently, you put something on social. You said specifically about fear. Stress is the high achiever's word for fear.
Yeah. Whoa.
I mean, huge explosion for me because I catch myself using I'm stressed, I'm overwhelmed, when really, if I just take that shirt off, underneath it is fear.
Yeah.
Why'd you post that?
Because. Because I heard Tony Robbins. I'm an avid listener of audios. I read, et cetera, et cetera. But I heard Tony Robbins say something very similar. I'm like, fuck, yeah, that's, that's that. I, I. So I'm going to share something now. I don't like saying. This is interesting for me. I don't like saying I'm stressed. I have a problem with saying that I'm stressed. It doesn't feel. I don't. I feel weak if I say I'm stressed. I'd rather say I'm scared of something. So I have the opposite. The opposite for me. But the point is, I still don't have a healthy relationship with stress. And underpinning that is a fear as well. And so I'll say, no, I'm not stressed. I don't feel stressed. But I do feel stress. I just don't like to say it. For me, it's the antithesis of that. And what underpins that is a fear of saying that I'm stressed because it's actually saying I'm not good enough to cope with what I'm producing or what I'm acting in the world, what action I'm taking or what's being thrown at me. And that I don't like.
That just made me take a breath. Because it's funny, I heard Gretchen Rubin talk about, like, anxiety. What is anxiety? It's some kind of excitement wearing a different shirt. Anxiety. It's excitement wearing a different shirt.
Yeah.
Stress is actually almost maybe a disempowering way of saying I'm afraid of something.
Yeah. What's.
What's a better way to describe, like, hey, I'm in overwhelm and I need support. Like, what's the language we use there?
Exactly that. Hey, I'm in overwhelm and I need support. Why not? Yeah, that. That right there. Why disguise it with anything else? I. I feel overwhelmed. Not all the time. Regularly, though. I would say, yeah, especially because I'm wanting to create something. I do have a fire in me. I have a fucking massive fire in me. And sometimes I don't even. I have very. I have clarity and I have discernment with where I'm going in my life and sometimes I have no fucking idea where I'm going.
That's so honest.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, it's true because I'm so in what I'm doing and I'm experiencing what I'm doing at such depth and what I'm being and what I'm. What I'm creating and unraveling within myself that sometimes I get lost within that. It's, you know, it's that old adage, oh, you're a hypocrite. And we hate hypocrites or we dislike hypocrites, or we're against hypocrites. And the reality is hypocrisy is a natural part of life. Like without hypocrisy, there's no growth, there's no transition into a better version of you. Think about this. Let me explain it. You have a thought about something. Let me just go backtrack for a moment. How, when we deal with trauma, how do we know? Because I want to.
Dr.
I want to do that question justice too. And so what I said before about being self reflective is just have a yearning to actually grow and just be better than you were yesterday. What does that mean? I don't know. What does it mean for you? And you have to answer that question. So when we start paying attention, conscious awareness, which is almost maxed out because consciousness and awareness, almost the same thing.
Yeah.
When we place awareness on who we are and what we're being, we get to know more about ourselves. And then we have to also be okay with being uncomfortable, though, because as we know more about ourselves, we may unpack something that's very uncomfortable. We may unpack something that is painful.
Yeah.
And so then we have to say, well, what tools do we have when we unpack that? And so there's a variety of tools. There's journaling, there's support groups, there's psychologists, there's counselors, there's mentors, there's guides, there's shamanic work, there's spiritual work that you can do, there's esoteric work you can do, you can read. There's so many different support mechanisms. Have something in place that resonates with you to help you when you start to unpack some of the unknown or the painful stuff. Cultivating resilience in the body, in the mind. In a world where we. In a world where we're very complacent and everything's. For most of us, everything's pretty easy.
Yeah.
But we go, we go to the grocery store.
It's Designed that way. At the moment, it's designed that way specifically for men because. Yeah, I feel like there's so many things out there. Excessive sports, excessive shopping, chasing, money chasing, having the sickest car, pornography. There's so many ways that men are kind of.
Except docile.
Men are kept docile by these things and they block what really you're talking about, which is, hey, can I look at my truth right now?
Yeah.
Can I take an inventory of this truth?
And, and to be prepared for that, we have to be resilient and we have to be tough, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. And so in today's day and age, we have to pursue that actively ourselves. We have to pursue that challenge actively ourselves. Now, let me come back to that question which you asked last. What was that question? Because it's just loaded me.
Yeah, we pinned it back from the trauma and that was out asking you about in modern day, like, how do we actually have this togetherness as men? What does it mean to actually be a man who's understanding his traumas, understanding the things that have happened to him for him, things like that?
Okay. And so this, this, this desire to be self reflective, it requires work, it requires effort. And so in contemporary times, without the application of effort, we're losing the essence of who we are as men. Because if you look at ourselves and our biology, look at our us as we've grown up evolutionarily, as we've grown, we have been accustomed to being in volatile environments. Our bodies are made to work. Our bodies are made to, quote, unquote, dig trenches. The more physical work the body does, the more, the healthier the body is. It's interesting, it's. It's like what, I'm wondering what next sports fad is going to be invented?
I mean, hopefully it's not more mma.
Maybe, maybe it's throwing rubber, rubber spears at rubber mammoths or something like.
Well, it's really cool to contrast this man, because initially what we're really talking about is evolutionary wholeness. And then we talked about trauma and that's how we connect to the dots. Yeah, I'm thinking about the way that we evolved as a species. We used to, hundreds of years ago, burn people at the stake and there'd be like a crowd eating food, celebrating it. So we've come so far in this evolutionary piece to become whole. And I'm curious how you even see that unfolding now. Because evolutionary wholeness came from you and your story, which I'd love to go into, because I actually don't know the Depth of that story. Like, I know. I know it was pretty rough at times, and I know it kind of shaped the man and the power that you have now. But. But let's contrast it with the. The evolution of humanity, the evolution of how we used to treat people. What was deemed acceptable, that was heinous. That now is completely different. I mean, the path that you're on, the kind of conversations we're even having today. 50 years ago that people would have called us for having this kind of a conversation. Well, some of you guys talk about your feelings for.
Well, some still would as well.
Some still what?
Absolutely. Some still would. And so hard. Hardcore, Hardcore proponents of biological masculinity. What makes a man a man or what makes a man being good at being a man, which is different from being a good man, would say that it's not that we're. We're weak for speaking to our feelings. It's that there's other things to focus on. And part of that is cultivating a brotherhood, being in gangs, having a hierarchy, fighting, pursuing sexual intercourse. And that's the. That's the nature of man. And so there's. There's an extreme view there, and there's. There's truth to that too. We've evolved that way as well. And we're very different. Our consciousness or our understanding of reality is very different to what it was. I don't have proof of this based on archeology, based on how we understand primitive tribes were. It's very different to what it was a million years ago, 500,000 years ago. And so we have to take that into account as well. And so we're taking that into account. Do we know what the next evolution of man looks like? Speaking specific, when I say man, I don't mean humanity and humanity but man specifically, or mass, The. The. The embodiment of masculinity in males. We don't. This is something that we're unpacking and unraveling. And there's many different theories out there. There's many different opinions on what a man should be and could be in today's world.
I feel like we came from the age of bread and circuses where there was people committing, you know, murders and watching it in the coliseum. And then we came from, like, women being owned as property, and then women couldn't vote, and then men weren't allowed to talk about their feelings to. Now you and I having a conversation about what's it like for a man to take a deep emotional inventory. I mean, it's Such a trip just to even think about where I came from. When I was a kid, I was 18, and when I played football or when I'd go home, there was no talking about emotions like that. That wasn't present ever. And I think part of why I love having this podcast and why I love interviewing friends and people like you is because it just creates this necessary capacity for men to talk about how they actually feel. Because that's where all the healing comes from. That's where all the evolutionary wholeness comes from.
Yeah, well, it comes from awareness and acknowledgement and movement through and not being attached to a trauma or a pain or a fear that we allow then our past to dictate our present. And here's the thing, it needn't be one or the other. So we needn't be. We need to talk about our feelings and be considered effeminate, or we needn't not talk about our feelings and be considered hyper masculine. We can speak to our feelings. We can speak to this feeling body and this emotional state that we move through as human beings, because we have a limbic system. Right. And a nervous system. And we feel the world. And we can still be in what I would call vertical masculine posturing, which is we still carry confidence. We still have these. These masculine attributes of courage and mastery and honor and how that ties into the masculine expression in the world. And we can bring some of the past into the present, too. And we can create a new version of what it means to be a man. And there is emergence with. Not femininity per se, but there's just a different. There's a different way to be than how we've been, which has been segregating and has been exclusive as opposed to inclusive. And we can still form a brotherhood and we can still form contemporary gangs that don't exclude others in this to the extent that it harms others as well. When I say gangs, I'm talking about a gang mentality that men have generally. The male species have. Male gender have generally evolved through, which is really interesting.
We were built for tribe.
Yeah, absolutely.
When men don't have tribe, they suffer massively. Well, I haven't been in a men's group for a while, which is why I'm so stoked to. To check out your men's work. Really?
Yeah.
Because without men's work, the conversations that really matter, the ones that are deeply, maybe painful or maybe vulnerable, they don't occur. And I'm just curious, man, like, how did you come from this violent upbringing? To be able to hold space and have conversations that impact men across the country. Like, how does that story even unfold? Because when I look at the violence that you talked about, that's. That's a rare. It's a rare opportunity that somebody would take the trainings you took, go through the. The pain and the inventory that you had to go through to actually be where you are now. That's a very interesting story. I'd love to start at the beginning of that.
Yeah. So for me, I just. I felt I was suffering a great deal, and I was blind to that suffering. And I ignored that suffering as well. But I could ignore it consciously, but it kept driving my life. And so I had these experiences of the past that I hadn't equilibrated, I hadn't neutralized, I hadn't understood or connected to men, like to understand men. Men. And so one of my woundings was this unapproving father. One of my woundings was what, no matter what I did, he didn't approve of me. That strong, masculine figure that I looked up to as a young child, that imprinted in my mind, in my brain, at a cellular level, in my body that I wanted to be that I wanted him to appreciate who I was and what I did and how I thought he just. He just couldn't. And it wasn't because he didn't love me or didn't care for me. He just didn't know how to express that and he didn't know how to give that and show that. And so I went through this. These oscillating stages of being very passive and withdrawn because for me, it was safer to be that person. I would ensure that I wouldn't be hit, I wouldn't be abused, that I wouldn't be told I was wrong. And that's an uncomfortable, undesirable feeling to experience. And so if I hit it and kept quiet, that was easy. It was easy. It was very hard to do that. And it was safer, though. And I went through a stage in my early teens, into my mid teens, that. That didn't cut it for me anymore. And so I discovered I was. I was quite overweight as a young child as well. And I was. I wasn't really.
I didn't know that about you. You were overweight.
Yeah.
People look at you now, they're like, who's this tattooed six pack shredded mofo? I had no idea that you struggle with weight.
Yeah, massively, massively. Until the age of probably about 14. And I started doing something called the milk Run. I don't know if you have it here in the us so Milk run.
Milk run must be an Aussie thing.
I think you'd have it here. We would have got it. We would have got it from here. So it's these, these trucks that have milk and orange juice. And juice. Oh, okay.
Like the milkman.
The milkman, yeah. And so I would be a delivery. So I would be delivered. I have the. The guy driving was the owner of the business. He would call out the order and would get the order and would go, there'll be two of us. And we'd run it out to. So I was running a lot and it was fun. It was jumping off the truck and sometimes I'd stack it and I'd hurt myself and I'd learn how to roll and I just became more athletic and I started losing a little bit of weight and I thought, oh, this, this feels good. And as I started doing that and I then started training at the gym, I became stronger in my own physicality and all that repressed aggression and pain started coming out. And for me enough was enough. I didn't want to take that shit anymore from anyone. And so I started outlashing into the world. I became hyper aggressive, I became, I became my father, I became violent, I became short tempered, my fuse was very short. I became frustrated with life. Like I drop a salt shaker or something and I'd just lose my shit.
In a restaurant, like in public.
Yeah, whatever it was. Because that's. I observed my father doing, doing that and. But I couldn't make the connection back then. I'm making them, I'm making them now. I made it, made it many years later. And so then I took that aggression into my adulthood as well. And I behaved that way with anyone and everyone. If someone disagreed with an opinion that I had, I'd, I'd scream at them. I'd be, I'd be aberrant verbally, I'd be emotionally abusive. And I just thought that was a norm. I couldn't see, I couldn't step outside of myself and observe myself. And really for me it wasn't until. And I would. And I was very studious as well. At the same time I was highly intellectual, always studying, whether it be Eastern mysticism, Eastern philosophy, psychology, no matter what it was, whether it be university, whether it be so formal study or informal study, just in my own personal study, much like you, just consuming information and not just for the sake of consuming, just because I'm genuinely interested, but I had this emotional Block. I couldn't shift it. And it wasn't until I was in a relationship a number of years ago where that became unraveled. I was unfaithful in that relationship. I wasn't in integrity in that relationship. I was dishonest to myself and to her. And I, I, for the first time in my life, I really observed how I'd hurt someone. And even beyond all the fights that I had and the punch ups and I don't know what slang you'd use here, but all the fist fights, brawls. The brawls, etc. Yeah, all the stupid that, that, that we do when we.
I think that's mutual among any country. I think every men fight everywhere.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
And so, and well there's something to be said for that as well. And, and there's a repression there as well to be. We'll speak, we'll speak about that later. And these are concepts that I'm still fleshing out in my own mind too. And so once I saw that, that I really hurt this woman, I kind of described to you the feeling that I had and a lot of pain started coming up in me. I started feeling it. And for the first time in my life I really allowed myself to feel it. More than just feeling it, then stopping it and repressing it, feeling it, then stopping and repressing it. And at that moment I had two choices. I was at a fork in the road. Do I explore this new potential way of being and understanding myself and actually look at some of this pain that's coming up and where is it really coming from? Because it felt it was more than just the present moment. It was so intense. Or should I just continue the path that I'm on and forget about that or do I explore this stuff? And so I made a commitment and it was the first commitment that I was, I was very non committal.
Yeah.
Generally the only thing I'd committed to was like my university degree and that was a struggle. One of my university degrees, that was a struggle. I was very non committal. Just didn't want to commit to anything. Had a constriction around not feeling free. That's why I was with other women, because for me it gave me, as is, some insight into the, the male brain. It gave me a sense of freedom. I didn't have that when I was young to express myself. So I started making these connections to my trauma that I experienced as a young child.
Yeah.
And these aren't excuses. The. For my behavior. I own my behavior completely with complete responsibility.
It's easy to look back and describe it too, because I'm visualizing you stuff at the fork in the rope where you've caused this woman pain. On the left. On the left you could have just continued on. On the right. You chose this path towards evolutionary wholeness.
Yeah.
What, what was the inflection point? What was the spark inside you that made you choose the evolutionary wholeness path rather than going and hurting more people?
The first, the. The first real confronting experience of shame. The shame and the guilt that I felt. The shame was so intense, man. The shame. Because I told her everything. I told her and I probably told her too much. And that was very overbearing for her. And she asked for it. And this load came off my shoulders at the same time, this shame. I told her about the prostitution, about the unfaithfulness. Everything, Everything. And so in this deep shame and all these memories started coming up as well. When I was a child, when I experienced as a child, I told in telling her and her being very stable as a mirror, which the relationship wasn't stable at that point, but her listening to that gave me. I'm very grateful. It gave me an opportunity to really look at my stuff and look at me as a fuller person. And I invested in myself massively. Counselors, shamans, spiritual healers, guides, mentors. I gave away my business. I stopped. I went into debt because I stopped work. I submerged in personal growth for 1012.
How much money do you think you spent on personal growth when you let your businesses go?
Oh, and the debt. 100k.
100K on self growth.
Easy.
Yeah.
Yeah, easy. I was spending at least at one point for the better part of a year, a thousand dollars on. On practitioners.
Yeah. I mean, to me this feels like life or death. Because there's no way that a human being would spend 100k unless something was truly making them feel like they wanted the shame.
And I had to understand where the shame was coming from. And I said, men need to. We need to understand. It helps out the way our brains work. It helps us understand the source of our pain. It helps understand the source of our discomfort or our difficulty. And when we have some. Some tangible understanding of where we are, it helps us feel safer. It helps us understand ourselves better. And then from there we create spat consciousness in ourselves that we can then explore because we're natural explorers as well. We're very good at exploring. We're just not very good at exploring the inner chasms of self. We're good at exploring mountains and the depths of the ocean and our physical environment and the outside world. But when it comes to emotions and so forth, this is a little bit more challenging.
This brings me to a question I've wanted to ask you for a long time, man. And it's like this term of men's work. We hear about the term men's work, but what does that actually mean? Like for men to get together and do work? You have, you have a slew of programs, you know, conscious warrior, and we're going to talk about relational alchemy. But when it comes to men actually doing work, we've had a lot of conversation on the show. How do you define that? Like how do you see men doing work? What does that actually mean to you? Men's work?
Yeah. I will take it back to the individual first. And so for me, the first tenet of my, of the reclaim your kingdom model or the conscious warrior model is ownership, responsibility and self acknowledgement. And so we have to take ownership for where we are. We have to take ownership for where we are. In other words, how we behave, how we think, how we feel, what we do, what we want, our purpose or purposes in the world. Again, back to an inventory. An intellectual, emotional, behavioral, relational inventory and a life inventory. Essentially. I use that word. I actually don't use the word here inventory often, but I like it. So you mentioned it earlier. I'm stuck on it now. Like a self assessment, whatever it is. Yeah, yeah. Critical reflection, self awareness. So which leads to self actualization and self realization, greater awareness of self and fulfilling of our potential or living through an actual, an actuality of our potential, which is self actualizations. Where we're physically being and doing in the world what we know we're capable of as instead of, you know, for lack of a better term, playing small.
Isn't that the top of Maslow's triangle? That's where we all want to be, man.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. And we can even go beyond self actualization as well. And for me, self realization is above that. And that's a, that's understanding what, what our, our truth actually is. In, in. In Advaita Vedanta, it's our tiriam or our four. It literally means the fourth state or the, the fourth. Which isn't. Isn't the fourth state of consciousness. Just a side note here. So in Vedanta. Well, the, the introductory level of Vedanta says there's. There's three states of consciousness. The, the waking, the dreaming and the deep sleep. And then the fourth state is the tirum but that's a fallacy. The tirium is what underpins or moves through or allows the three states of consciousness to be, to be realized or actualized rather. And so for me, that theoryum is that. That, that blackma, that soul, that spirit, that consciousness. You are consciousness. And so I don't want to go too much on a tangent right now.
I mean, it relates to men's work. It's definitely connected deeply.
And so that we begin to realize that we're not our actions, we're not our thoughts, we're not the mind. And we can begin to become less attached to these things that we were and create a new version of ourselves. And so exploration is another tenet, another key principle of the conscious worry model for me. So exploring our inner world is something that we don't do enough. Again, just come back to the simplicity of spending five minutes every day thinking about who you've been. It's a tool. The mind is a tool. The brain is the hardware that the mind as a tool or the, the software expresses itself. And we have an ability to be reflective on who we are and who we've been. And if it doesn't align with what, what our values are, then we can move through that.
This is crazy. This morning I was sleeping on the couch because I was actually watching a Netflix documentary about actualization last night and I woke up on the couch and I had this moment of just bliss when I woke up. And then immediately my observer, I watched this software program come in and it said, what about your money? What about your day? What about your travel? What about going Costa Rica? I mean, literally, stuff like 10 seconds after I woke up and I caught myself and I laughed out loud. I was like, this is something. This is, this is some kind of crazy program. You talk about the mind being a tool. This is some kind of crazy program that earlier in printing, uses a tool that no longer serves me.
Now it's a conditioning. It's a habitual conditioning.
That's how I watched it come in. And I was like, no, I have a good day ahead of me.
And we get so attached. We. And, and just a caveat here, every person will judge. The brain compartmentalizes its environment and its reality. And it does so to make life easier. We're always going to judge. We're always going to judge. Is this safe or is this not safe? Essentially? And we largely do that through this massive threat funnel that we have, which are our eyes. And so judgment is okay. So we needn't judge these previous Conditionings, they needn't be right or wrong. They just ask, does it suit you now? Does it serve you? How do your relationships play out? Are you in constant argument? Are you going from relationship to relationship? Are you satisfied in your job? Are you satisfied in your purpose or purposes? Do you even know what they are? Do you know what your values are? What's most important to you? Do you wake up every morning being pulled by life or do you have to fucking push? Is it just drudgery every day? It's not hard to figure out. Are you living a life of truth, truth, and then pursue what truth is and if you don't know, explore it. Oh, but it might take me a while and. And you're going to be closer to living your truth or living what is actually satisfactory to you by searching for it or exploring it, as opposed to just doing what is normal. But the ego loves what's habit. The ego loves habituation because it's familiar. This aspect of the ego, familiarity is safe. So better the devil that you know than moving into a space or place or occupying that, that mental, emotional, spiritual, physical space or relational space. That's more empowering.
I heard you say on a podcast, part of your work in the world is to make the unknown more known.
Yeah.
And I love that because I'm like, oh, well, the biggest fear for most people is the fear of the unknown. It's why sabotage even exists. So looking at this construct of what is men's work and, you know, making the unknown more known, how do you merge those two? Where does men's work and making the unknown more known come together for men?
Yeah. So I want. I'll share a personal story. There were, There were so many times, particularly in 2017, where 2017 and actually from. From 14 to 17, 2014, 2015, 2017, a few years ago, there were times where I was. So many times when I was on my. On my lounge room floor. And this was before I had this deluxe thick, plush carpet. The carpet was harsh. It was just. It was just, yuck.
Got like dust from 10 years.
It was just no good. And I was on that carpet floor crying and screaming and not understanding who I was and, and, and so scared of the unknown and so scared of this state that I was occupying and I. And again, I sought some help. And a great deal of that was me exploring. Me just being on the analogy is being on the edge of a cliff and looking down this complete darkness. And you don't know if that cliff is one meter, a thousand meters is There water? Are there jagged rocks? I don't know. And then just jumping. And that's how I felt almost every day. Almost every day. That's how I felt until I got comfortable with that. That feeling, what I was moving through, whatever that was for me back then. And I identified that as well. I wasn't able to tangibly understand or connect to or be more comfortable with this unknown, this mystery. And so one of my mentors back then said, this mystery that you're plunging into is the feminine. And your masculine is so reluctant to go into this unknown. But if you allow yourself to go into the unknown, know that your masculine has you. I felt safe in my own masculine, masculine self. And this is all symbology, right? Because I didn't feel safe with my father as a child. If you allow yourself to go into the feminine, this express, more expressive version of self that can actually healthily connect to the core of who you are, you'll become more whole and less fragmented. And so I made a decision. And I don't know how we come to this decision. Maybe it's my dharma, my karma, whatever. I felt supported enough. I was on the cusp of feeling supported enough in some capacity. And also just fuck it. If I die, I die. Whatever. That was. The feeling that I had.
You felt like you were gonna die on the floor?
Absolutely. I felt.
Like a physical death or like a physical death?
Both. Both. I felt. I felt every day there was a stage. I was waking up every day contemplating suicide because it was so painful. I didn't want to live like that. I didn't want to live like. Because I knew that that spark had dwindled within me. And I knew that I was. Because I wasn't giving the world what the world deserved of me. And I didn't want to put the people in my life that love me through that as well. I'm not the first or the last to have suicidal thoughts. And suicidal thoughts really are a byproduct of not living in our truth and being completely confused and in a haze and being in so much pain that there's no other alternative. And again, gracefully and gratefully, there was a spark in me that was still, just. Still just there. And I thought, okay, maybe there is an alternative alternative. And so I plunged. And the more I plunged, the more I realized that, oh, there's another way to be. I'm not dead.
What was the plunge, man?
What did that look like in my mind? Yeah, literally in my mind, plunging and so was surrendering to these feelings. It wasn't being. It wasn't having this war with them. Do I feel them? Do I not feel them?
Only for a little bit, I'm gonna feel them.
And I. Yeah. And so the fastest way to move beyond anything that is so painful is through. And so I went through. And so I allowed myself, I gave myself permission to fully feel whatever that was. If I needed to be aggressive, then I was aggressive in a way that was held by me. I had to just become more self reliant, essentially. And even though I knew I had support from people that loved me, I had to be my own first, my own source of inspiration. And so I had to feel those feelings and they needed an outlet. So whether it was, and I've been physical for a long time, so whether it was running more deliberately, whether it was doing some hard training, whether it was doing some fight training, whether it was lifting heavy weights, hitting the steel, some cast iron kettlebells, whatever it was, and again pushing myself for. Until exhaustion. But then there was a cycle where I'd come back through and allow myself to feel again. Purpose, purposely, deliberately. So everything I started doing was deliberate, was with intention. Then there'll be a reflection piece where there was a form of journaling or release writing or whatever it was, where my brain was understanding differently in seeing my world, past and present from a different perspective. That gave me intelligent hope because I knew there was another way. It wasn't just that way. I wasn't locked in rigid.
I love the phrase intelligent hope. I've heard Dispenza talk about that a few times. Has he been a mentor to you? Because I'm thinking about you going through this like dark tunnel man. You can probably see the light at the end. But like you're doing your breath work, your workouts, like you're going, you're going through the who. Who were the mentors that were helping you when you felt like, ah, this isn't working, I'm actually not going to feel my feelings. Like, who were the men and women that were guiding you?
So there were, there were, there were three or four personal mentors that you wouldn't know the names of. They were local to. To where I was. It fit in physical contact, contact with. So there was, I was engaged in breath work, I was engaged in some spiritual healing, I was engaged in, in long distance mentorship and I was engaged in some counseling as well. That was all at the same time too. And so, and there was me. It was just me. Yeah, I was with me. That was, that was the power for me. Is becoming more self reliant. And as a man in today's world, I, I, I, it hurts me to say this, but we're not self reliant enough and there is so much weakness in us. And I was that so much. And even last year when I went through a very traumatic time where I purposely and deliberately put myself through some somatic healing, psychosomatic, sexual, somatic, not healing, but process was a 2, 3 month journey that was fucking intense. And I didn't want to be self reliant in that process. I wanted to blame others. I wanted to reach out to others to take my pain away. Because I was so much in my pain. Even though I'd done so much work around self reliance and it forced me once again to go deep and be more self reliant. There were times where I wasn't self reliant. I was like a child, I regressed to a child state. Fix this for me, do this for me, take this pain away for me. Doesn't work like that, dude.
What is it like being this really leader of the new men's movement in the world? I feel like you're one of the.
I'm very humbled, brother.
When you say that you're not like the leader but you, you're among the leadership. You're definitely. If there was a council for like the new masculine, it would be like you up there with Jordan Peterson and David Data, like, wow, that's very humble.
To be in the category of those men.
But you have this, this fire in this voice and you have this, this story of you doing the deepest exploration I feel like that's possible for a man. Also, you live with Christine Hassler who is leading as a leading voice for so many women. Like, is there ever sparks between you? Because I feel like, like when you guys are creating so much like what's that actually like?
I love that you love it. I love her, man. Yes and yes.
Is it ever challenging to live with a woman who's a leading voice and so are you in different categories?
It is when I'm in my unhealthy self. Yeah.
What does that look like?
The unhealthy self is, is egotistical. The unhealthy self is unworthy for me. For me it's, I'm not good enough, I'm not enough, I'm not doing enough, I'm not being enough, I haven't studied enough. It's all the not enough. It's all the lack of, it's all the, the less than attitude again. When I come back into that. And this isn't blaming my father by any means, and I don't want to paint my father as a villain. My father gave me a great deal, and there were times where he deeply did love me.
And he also gave you life.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. And his family, my family, the, the intergenerational family that we have. My grandparents were beautiful. His. My paternal grandparents, my maternal grandparents were beautiful as well. But back to your original question. When I'm in my unhealthy self, there is an unhealthy. And I have to. Again, I'm taking responsibility for this. She can be unhealthy self. Sure. That's for her to speak to, not for me. And I can make observations about that. Cool. And when we're both in our unhealthy self, if that ever happens, which is rare, that's where it's really one or the other. And we hold really well for each other. But if it's both of us, again, really ram actually trying to even think of. Oh, yeah, of course. There are times when we may be having an argument and I'll react and shoot Will react. And then in that moment, it's a short moment, we're both in our unhealthy selves, and it can get pretty intense, but it's very short.
Yeah.
And. And I need to come back to what would love do now? And not only what would love do now, because love can be a very ambiguous term.
That's such a good question. It's like ultimate. It's the ultimate equalizer, isn't it?
Yeah.
What would love do now? Peter sage.
Yeah.
Huge TEDx speaker. He's been on the show. He, he said that, like, what would love do now? So you're, you're mirroring that sentiment. But, man, when you're triggered, and I know you've done so much work, but I'm hopping in. I love how open you're being about this. Like, no matter how much work you've done, no matter how much work you've done, like, there's still going to be those moments where what would love do now is the last thing on the human brain.
The other day, I, I had a water bottle in my hand and I, I fuck, I'm getting. I'm going back to that state now. I just, I, I destroyed the water bottle. I wanted to punch the door because. And because I was. I had this intense energy and anger and I was talking to Christine because. And she wasn't really. I was triggered. It was My stuff, she was just being her. And she actually really wasn't being that aberrant in any capacity. And she wasn't being rude in any capacity. I just didn't feel listened to. So that little boy came out and because I was not in a healthy state of mind, because I'd been. I hadn't done my work, man. I hadn't been reflective, I hadn't, I hadn't done the physiological work, I hadn't moved the energy and I was ruminating in the mind. I got angry. And for a split moment, as a very split moment, I went back to being out of control. Now I didn't act on it. Besides squeezing the water bottles, I was releasing energy. Right. But I did say some things to Christine, to the woman that I care for most in this world that weren't pleasant. And literally, immediately, within seconds, I dropped back into a humble state of being, drop back into the present, not regressed. And I apologize profusely. And my. One of my patterns is I remain in shame for probably the next 24 hours. And so what I did was I just did some personal work around that, some, some writing around that, some reflection work around that, some breath, sound and movement around that. I went and hit the bags as well to let out some, some healthy energy and gave it some context too. And then came back to Christine and again, apologize, even though she accepted the apology immediately.
Yep.
That for me wasn't good enough. And again, that's just the work, man. It's not. I'm not this. Yes, I'm an embodied human being and I wasn't a few years ago. I'm far more embodied than I am now. And I also have the times where I do regress. And just to say something right now, like in this moment, there's some real time stuff the ego is saying. Oh, should you be saying that? You should be saying that is. You know what? Well, it's.
Yeah. Because people can relate to you, but.
It'S the truth, right? Yeah, it's very, it's very true. And I have to remember, I grew up in a very hyper aggressive environment. Violence, abuse, screaming, that was the norm, man. I didn't know any different. Being very passionate, grew up in an ethnic family, half Greek, half Italian. We would scream our opinions and then have dinner and share a meal and.
Everything would be normal. I know what that's like. Yeah.
You know, like it's so I come from that and I can very easily go to that. And so sometimes it's nice to be passionate and sometimes maybe it will call for me to be aggressive and let my nervous system be sharp because I need to protect myself or protect my fiance or protect a friend or whatever it may be. But most of the time I'm not at that threat. And the only way to really be certain around where we want to go in life is again, take that inventory of self and be aware of how we're behaving in the moment. A few years ago, it would take me making maybe days or weeks to come back and go, oh, I behave that way then. Now I'm far better. It can be seconds or minutes or hours, sometimes days, depends. But it's shorter and shorter and I can come back from it. So my. My brain physiology, my neuronal mapping is changing because I'm making the changes earlier. So you speak to Joe Dispenza? I've never heard him say intelligent hope before, but I love Joe Dispenza. He's awesome. Yeah. Yep.
You know, there's so many things I want to ask you, but one of them is around this neural mapping and a term, actually there was a definition that I want to ask you about this on your site, man, you talk about neuro empowerment. I'm thinking about you having the learning experience with Christine, doing your breath work, doing your journaling. Like, you're literally changing the space between the dendrites and the axons in your brain. You're literally remapping the neurons in there. So. So when we look at this phrase of neuro empowerment, what exactly is that? I mean, I know you like to combine cool words.
Yeah, well, that's not my term in any capacity, but essentially what we're doing is we're changing our brain physiology. We're changing again, the neuronal network and the map, the neuronal mapping and how our brain sees the world or sees certain events or experiences. We're changing our perspective at a behavioral level, level, emotional level and physiological level, neuronal level, through being attentive to the experiences we're having and reframing them. That's a part of neuro.
The magic is in the reframe.
Massively. Yeah, massively. And seeing our world differently in a way that is empowering as opposed to disempowering.
Can you give us an example? Can you give us an example, a client, maybe yourself, anyone of this reframe, the magical reframe?
Oh, yeah, yeah.
I mean, there's tons of them and.
We'Ve been actually giving them the whole. The whole way through this.
That's true talk. There's been your empowerment baked into this podcast.
Yeah. So I can, I can give one. Oh, you want to. I'll use a client.
Yeah.
So yesterday he sends me a. He sends me a boxer and he says, I just closed this deal. So part of his, part of his wounding is needing to be seen and needing to be validated for his actions and being worthy enough in the world. And that comes from his childhood adopted, etc. Etc. And somebody other, some. Some other issues. And so he sends me this box and said, man, I landed this client and he's very successful outwardly in the world in terms of his money, generations, his title, his status, et cetera. I landed this amazing client. It's going to give my new company great deal of revenue. Let my boss know. And essentially his boss came back to him really disappointed. Oh, this client is no good. This client's going to give us problems and we have to do this. And so immediately my client went into, I wanted to pummel this guy. I wanted to, I wanted to hit my boss. I wanted to get aggressive with my boss. I wanted to, I wanted to be so angry, I wanted to quit my job. So I sent him a voxer back and he calmed himself down. So he's really good at beginning to see things differently. And I sent him a voxer back and I said, brother, talk to me a little bit about what your boss actually said. Did he actually say, you're not good enough? Did he say that you did wrong? Did he say, did he actually not recognize the fact that you got the client or is he speaking to something else? Can you look at that situation from a completely different perspective? And the quicker we can do that, the quicker we fall into not being reactive and being responsive, not coming from past reactive experiences and not coming from habitual patterning, which is instant. And we come from a place of, ah, he's not, he's not actually attacking me. Nowhere in that email back to me did he say that I'm not good enough. Why am I feeling that? Ah, that's something that I'm being. The environment is triggering an old pattern that I'm now reacting to that I think I need to survive. So I'm getting aggressive to protect myself. That's actually not the case.
Take a breath. Yes.
And there's a reframe as an example. Right. There's a. There's a neuro empowerment and it's a behavioral and relational empowerment technique as well. So he takes that attitude, that newly formed attitude of can I take, can I apply the three Second rule. Let me take three seconds, take a one breath, which is actually longer than three seconds, but let me take. Let me take three breaths even and really ask, is what is happening right now really true? Byron Katie has a similar method to this. What's happening now really true? And can I respond to this in a different way? And what would that response look like?
Oh, my God. I had a moment where I was in a medicine journey and the facilitator came up to me and she put her hand on my chest and she said, the next time that you're feeling like you can't breathe or like you're stressed out or you can't reframe something, ask yourself, is this really necessary? And it's in the same vein of Byron Katie's work where she asked one of her four questions, is this really true? Is this really necessary? And it seems almost like a heuristic that's too simple for me to believe. But if I can remind myself in a moment where I feel like I can't breathe. Teeth. To just ask a question, to just ask one question. It's this trigger action response where I feel like I'm actually in control and I'm not a victim to my own physiology.
Yes.
This victimhood to physiology, it's rampant.
Or a victim to unconscious patterning.
Unconscious patterning. I'd love for us to jam on this a little bit. The physiology that we deal with specifically as men.
Oh, you're gonna love this, bro. I'm gonna. I'm about to go deep now, so.
Hold on, let me get comfortable.
Okay. So I want to share a personal story again and real life example. So. And I wish I could do it. If I didn't have this headset on right now, I'd actually show you. It'll be fucking epic. But you'll get the picture and your listeners will get the picture as well. And I'll probably.
You guys get comfortable too.
You get comfortable. So last year when I went through this psychosomatic work, which was a game changer for me, by the way, and a game changer for the relationship for Christine and I, it was amazing. And during it was, man, I don't even want to go there. So painful. So painful. And caveat for a moment. Side note, I don't. And it will probably speak to this about do we need pain to transform in life? The answer is no, we don't. And yes, we do. We can come back to that later if you want. Okay. Because I say that because maybe, maybe the listeners thinking, well, this Guy's been through all this. He states that he's been through all this pain. Is that the only way he's changed or transformed form? Yes. For me, that's been my journey. I've had to hit rock bottom and beyond. And for most of us, and there's patterns in the world around this, we have to really listen. Some deep, sincere transformation. But let me go back to this. Physiological state change. Tony Robbins speaks to this, right? All of Tony's work is predicated on this. You want to change your behavior, change your physical, physiological.
Change your state.
Every.
Every 18 minutes, people are getting up while he hits the drumsticks. Change your state, man.
Always dancing away at Tony Robbins. Every moment I could, music came on.
Did you do the worm?
I can't do the worm. You can, can't you?
I can do the worm.
I hate you and I love you. I'm practice. Let's just say I can't do it. I've never practiced.
The next party, you're gonna teach me?
Yeah. Okay. So. So I would. I would. I would have to come up with. So at that time, the. The. The two people, husband and wife, that were facilitating this. This journey for me, were saying, you need to. You need to get out of your mind. You're in your. I was so much in my mind, man. I was literally. I was becoming. I felt I was becoming possessed. So I needed to get out of my mind. And rather than them as good, good teachers, coaches, mentors, guides, whatever, rather than giving me the information, they would really prompt me to ask me, what can you do? What can you. I said, okay, I need to go back to what I know. I need to go back to all the tools that I've cultivated, the stuff that I've come up with myself. I just wasn't going back there. In these moments, all the amazing information that's out there. I need to get into breath, sound, and movement. I need to breathe. I need to engage in breath work. I need to move my body, and I need to sound out what's fucking going on at a primal level and do the work myself and not expect Christine or someone else to take it away from me. At that time, man, I just moved here. I was feeling lonely, really alone. The work was very isolating as well. I was missing home. I was. Was homesick. I didn't have my friends, my brothers, my tribe. I felt I lost my set. Some suitcases over. I didn't insure them. I forgot to insure them, and they. And I lost my suitcase. I lost all these. I just, I felt like I was losing and losing. I was losing my ego, self, my identity with the world. What was the norm? I was just losing. I was perceiving to lose and lose and lose. I felt I was becoming distant from Christine. Even though we just got together and it was recently got together. It was amazing. And it was a. It was, it was a clusterfuck. So I needed to change my state and so I had to force myself. When I was in this mindset of the world is coming down on me, what did I do? I got into breath sound and movement. I moved back into old tantric practices that I had been so familiar with. And I started to shift myself. The best one was if Christine and I were experiencing tension, I would immediately take responsibility as a man. I'd take leadership on my actions. I would hit the ground, I would lay on my back, feet over my head, plow position. And I'd communicate to her from there.
Wow.
And we'd laugh.
That's an interesting dyad. You on your back and plow.
Yep, we and my bum in the air. And we would laugh. And that immediately changed the state. It changed my state. And I was actually able to create psychological, psycho, emotional spaciousness within me, which then allowed Christine and I, in this instance, to speak from a different place and perspective, a more real and authentic place and man. I went through other exercises as well about the voices in my head and asking, is this voice really true? Is what the voice is telling me? Is it. Is it me? And is it true? Beyond the Byron Katie work of is it true? Like I got into the voices, I started naming these voices that were coming to me, telling me these, these things about my life.
What's one of the names? Did you have a name for your inner critic? My inner critic's name is jt. So when J. When JT wants to be cocky and in control and is afraid of actually being seen, then JT's running the show for a moment.
Yeah, I. I had some names. One wasn't very nice. I'm not going to repeat it on here.
Okay.
And it just. Just because the C word, because it's very common in Australia and we use it as a term of endearment and we use, use it as, as a, as a derogatory term.
Everybody knows what the C word is.
And a side note, and a side note that that word actually is embedded. The etymological root meaning of that word is embedded. Endearment towards women. FYI, just in case you don't know, but how we use it. So I had different names for those voices in my head as well. And some were just very random names.
You talk about breath, sound, and movement. Like, I get the breath. I'd love to share after this next question about my experience in working with you, because I think breath work. Work is not only a trend, which I'm glad it's a trend. Yeah, but it's a movement based on what the world needs, man.
Yeah, like, breath work for me saved me, man.
Literally.
Yeah, literally.
I'd love for you to answer, though, the sound, though, because I get the movie.
Yeah, sure.
Like, I can see you on the ground and plow talking to Christine. But. But the sound piece. Like, what do you mean by that?
So, for example, I would. I would do. And depending. I have various sitting practices where I. Where I can. I'm fairly flexible and mobile. Mobile. My hips aren't that flexible and mobile. We've spoken about this. Your hips are amazingly flexible. My hamstrings, my inner thighs are flexible. My back, my thoracic's not too bad, and lower back's pretty flexible, but my hips and glutes, not super flexible. So I can only get myself in certain positions, but I'll get myself in a particular sitting position. And then I'd cycle a type of breath. A cycle of breath, whichever. Whatever system of breath I'm using. And I would move the body. So I'd move the vertebrae as I'm breathing. And we're obviously doing it now as well as I'm breathing. And I'll then sound, as I'm breathing, Different sound, primal sound, whatever. Sometimes it'd be very loud screaming.
Sometimes it wouldn't be just making whatever noise comes up naturally.
Whatever comes up naturally. And experiencing coming back into the body. And so that's a very good technique for people that have experienced trauma, because what the body wants to do is kick you out of the body. Body, because it's safe to be out of the body. Because the body holds the trauma at a certain level.
The body keeps the score.
Dr. Peter Levine is amazing. He's one of the. Are you familiar with Dr. Peter Levine?
No, but Bessel Van der Cloak. That book blew my mind. The body keeps the score. So I'd love to check out this doctor.
Dr. Peter Levine is. Is. He's an authority on trauma work in the world.
And we're linking every single thing that you mentioned to us in the show notes. So don't worry. We're taking notes as we go.
You're amazing.
Yeah.
And. And so so and so breath sound and movement was very powerful for me. That, that three prong combination in releasing pain and stuckness. Where it be psycho emotional stuckness, whether it be like a physiological stuckness, I was feeling tension in my nervous system and I could completely relax and see a pain or a fear or an issue that I was experiencing from a different perspective. So I wasn't locked into a perspective that was keeping me rigid or keeping me in pain. And so shifting that pain, knowing that I was empowered to do it and that I wouldn't. Because part of my conditioning as a child was this victim mentality. I very, very easily got into victim mode because for me, if I went into victim mode, it minimized my, my environment being volatile against me because my environment felt sorry for me. So I'm making some really deep connections here. And I didn't make these connections until I was later in my adulthood. But a lot of that was driving my behavior. How I gave and received love, how I showed up in relationship, how I wanted something. I became manipulative without even knowing it. And so I have a propensity or had more of a pension to fall into this victim mentality. And so knowing that and engaging in breath sound and movement, or changing my physiological state, even going for a run, going for a walk, hitting a bag, whatever it may be going, doing some sparring.
Yeah.
Change my perspective on how I saw myself, saw others and how I saw others seeing me. That's a big thing for men because we usually, we usually take action based on we, we're usually driven by our status, material possession and how others see us.
Definitely. Like in the current culture, like how much money's in the bank account, like that's men's deemed worth sometimes.
And so. And so instead of. Because we don't, don't live in a society where we just fight for hierarchy, we fight for social dominance.
It's expressed through, as Tim Ferriss said, money is the new spear. A long time ago when we could kill a boar and bring it back to the tribe, like that was how we would actually be able to provide. But now you go and you. Money is the spear.
Yeah. Money is the new spirit.
Our ability to hunt is actually our ability to earn money.
Yeah, money. The amount of money you have is your new, is your new fucking physiology.
There's your new strength, which doesn't involve for most people being physical.
No, it doesn't.
It takes us away from that primal rooting.
Yeah. Yeah, massively, yeah.
One thing that I'm fascinated by, that you do Is like, you have these men's groups. You've taken me through this specific breath work, which. I'd love to share this right now, please. In my home, I had done breath work before, but you took me through, like, about 45 minutes of Wim Hof. And this is.
No, no, no, it wasn't.
Wim Hof wasn't. What was it? What was it?
It was a. It was a biodynamic holot breath combination. Breath plus some other things that we're doing that was breath, sound, movement. It was more than 45 minutes, bro.
It felt like 45 minutes. I was in a tunnel of transformation. But anyways, what I got from that was that I've done a tremendous amount of work in clearing my father wound. But what came out of that was I wasn't sick. I was feeling fine. But I literally, after our breathwork session, I found myself in this crouch position, coughing. We actually had to put paper towels on the carpet. And I was coughing, and I was feeling like, grief, grief and sickness coming out of my mouth, literally onto this paper towel. And I thought, okay, if I'm doing my work and that comes out through breathing, how powerful actually is breath work? And then I went to Thailand and did a week of soma breath work, which now we're going to be at this event in like a month, which is going to be even more powerful. But what I took away from that man is with the right intention and the right space. There's something about you where you have this ability to hold space. And I just got the ability. I just got your ability of how you hold space in a breathwork session. What do you think it is about you with the tool of breathwork? What space do you actually hold when you do breath work with somebody? What does that space feel like? What does that space look like?
I hold the intention that I'm of deep service right now. And I'm a vessel. I'm an instrument of God. I'm an instrument of the divine. I'm an instrument of the highest self that resides within all of us, that connects us, that unifies us. And I know there's a lot of esoteric speak there, but for me, it's a cognitive intention. It's a deliberate intention that I set to be of service here, to move as far away outside of the ego as I can, to not come in and say, I'm doing this for recognition, or, I'm doing this to feel better about myself. Of course I'm going to feel good about myself. You're Fucking idiot if you think you're not, and you're ignorant if you think you're not. And you'd want to feel good about yourself. That's also what drives me, but it drives me not to the point where that's why I do it. It's a byproduct. It's a natural byproduct. I do it because. Or I do what I can with the tools that I have. And I'm constantly learning, man. Constantly. I was having a conversation yesterday with a close friend of mine. I will never think that I know at all. The more I know, the less I. I know. And it's not even just about knowing. It's about embodied wisdom as well. And listening more to the direct experience that I have, but also reading books and listening, having amazing conversation with amazing minds and learning from other people's experiences, but also learning from my own. But I go into that, that space of service and it really becomes about the needs of the other person. And I can only do what I can do and they will only pick up and they will only take what they're ready to take. And. And reminding myself of that consistently allows me to really be present to what other people need.
It's such a radical fucking skill to be able to put someone in a space where you can kind of suss out the answers that are inside of them. Because you're not like, I don't see you as verbiage of a guru. Like, you're not some guru dude. But you do have a unique ability to bring out these answers that are inside your clients. And I mean, I felt it with you as a friend. Like, I had no idea. I was like, oh, we're some brushes, breath work. Next thing I know, I'm like hacking out grief from my lungs. And then I burned a note that I wrote to my father the next day.
You made some leaps.
That was incredible.
You had.
I just talked to my dad a couple, like for. I. We had a 20 minute conversation and it was like one of the best conversations we ever had. And I felt totally clear and open eye body. And he's like, yeah, let's go flying sometime. It was just so free.
Prior to that, though, what was the conversation?
Well, prior to that, a year ago, even though I'd done my plant, my plant medicine work at Rhythmian, a lot came up for me there. Yeah, prior to that, there was still a charge. Yeah, there was still an energetic charge that was like deep kind of.
Yeah.
I guess in my solar plexus. Feeling unpleasant. Feeling and so I was able to look back and be like, okay, what is this really about? It's about me being my own father. Like, you became your own inspiration. Like all the men and women listening, we have so much power and we just forget who the hell we are.
Yeah.
And so certain people in certain spaces, certain tools like breath work, can remind us who the hell we are.
Well, we deify our fathers and our mothers, we deify our primary caregivers. We come into the world, we're very vulnerable. Where we're weak, as in Australia, we'd say we're weak as piss. And we are. We're very vulnerable and weak for years. Think about that.
We deify our weak chest water out of our mother for a long time.
Chest water. I love that. Yeah, right.
I mean, I always do it.
Absolutely. I joke every now and then. I say, christine, if we ever have children, you're going to be breastfeeding for at least six years. I just tease it. At least you have to. Our child will just grow up so strong. But we do so. We're so reliant on our parents for so long. So we deify them. And if we're in an unhealthy attachment style, as an example, as a psychological, relational form of relationship, we in an unhealthy attachment style there. We carry that into our relationships as adults. And so what we do is we deify our partners and we deify those that we look up to, we deify those that we admire. And so this becomes a habit. And so something very interesting that Dr. Harville Hendricks says, amazing book, Keeping the Love you find. He's got a few books, but he's a massive proponent of relationships, intimate romantic relationships, particularly being a catalyst for our evolution in this world as a humanity. And I'm a big proponent of that as well. I'm a big proponent of sacred union and conscious relationships being a catalyst for our growth and acceleration as a humanity into higher levels of consciousness and self awareness. I can go into the definition of.
That and I would love to go into that.
Yeah, definitely. But first, and what he says is, is that what we experience as children again through that zero to seven. Right. Is we take that into our adult relationships and we search for what we experience and did not experience at an unconscious and conscious level. And therefore we deify. We really. We place these intimate relationships on a pedestal that are better than us. And it's not about better than or less than. It's about equity and it's about self empowerment. The moment we. We deify someone, we give our power away, our ability to transform or change. We become apathetic and there we become fucking weak and meek and passive. And that is fucking unattractive as a man. Particularly because we're speaking to men a lot women don't want that. So I'm going to speak to a normative heterosexual relationship or the feminine does not want the masculine to be weak, meek and passive. It's not the role of the healthy masculine to be that. And so when a man embodies that, he's in his unhealthy healthy masculine and it's fucking unattractive. And I've experienced, I've been that person so, so often. And so until I began to take onus and responsibility for my shit and all and celebrate the joy that was me. All of it. Evolutionary wholeness, right? All of it. Then I became more magnetic to people, organically, naturally, but more importantly I became more magnetic to me. I started honoring who I was and I had greater levels of self belief and I began to shift from the egoic nature of self thinking. There's a hierarchy and I'm better than into a more equitable understanding of who I was in relation to the world around me. Wholeness and the worth I have.
When you said evolutionary wholeness, like my heart skipped a beat because I love the whole framing of our conversation. Man to be whole, at least in our society. I think pair bonding exists from higher intelligence for a reason. I think it takes whether you're gay or straight, I think it takes a true relationship to be a fuse of higher consciousness. And you and I have talked about this monogamy being like a rare thing with all the polyamory conversations and the divorce rates climbing. Monogamy is like this conduit for the most powerful version of self empowerment and of self growth. I think now more than ever I.
I read a non monogamous say and state very openly that that non monogamy should be the norm in our society based on our evolutionary history and a few other factors as well. And that monogamy should be reserved for those that are more self aware, more conscious and carry greater intelligence. Right. And I was like, yeah, interesting, interesting. Very interesting perspective. Very interesting perspective.
Yeah, I think that's so true. Because what is the real reason? Like what do you believe the root cause is with the level of consciousness that men and women have right now as to, to why monogamy is so rare? Well, true long term.
Oh, so healthy monogamy.
Healthy monogamy.
Because as I believe as a species we're not self aware enough. We're not connected to ourselves. We're not self empowered. We, we, we dis. We, we are victims of our, of our past. We are victims of our pain and our trauma. Now you know, I put a, I put a post on this app yesterday around that in terms of taking responsibility for yourself and someone wrote what about those that have mental disorders or have physiological issues? Of course it's not. I'm talking about a victimhood mentality. I'm not talking about victim, I'm not talking about people that.
You're not making a blanket statement.
No, not at all. That people that have actually suffered by perpetrators and that have been physically. I've been physically abused, I've been emotionally abused, I've been a victim. How long do I want to hold on that story for and allow that victim mentality to dictate the way I behave and show up and relate to the world and think about the world and think about myself? I mean, I've got to be empowered to make some choices because if I'm not, then I'm just going to be apathetic and I'm going to be stagnant. I'm not going to grow. And growth is one of our. It's the prerogative of being conscious, the prerogative of being human. It's what we're here to do is to be and do is to grow massively. And so for me, back into conscious relationships and set what I call sacred union. And I'm not the only one to call this, of course. And it can be achieved through non monogamy and monogamy. I believe that, that I'm more of a proponent of monogamy for a variety of reasons. For me, not for all of humanity. For me, yeah, I've been down certain tracks that haven't aligned with me. I know what aligns with me. I know where I'm at. I know what lessons and teachings I need to move and want to move through in order to grow. For me personally.
Why does monogamy resonate with you personally?
I knew you were going to ask that. Because I do believe for me it is a greater great. Is it a great. It is a greater pathway and access point to higher levels of content consciousness and experiencing that with my, my, my family, my person, which is Christine. I have complete clarity on that. We both do. There's just something deeply profound in that. For me and in fact in my history, my, my upbringing, I have freedom through that commitment. Whereas years ago commitment was not free Freeing at all. It was constricting. I felt like I was being annihilated. Now I have commitment through freedom.
Is that your hashtag?
It's not mine, but it.
I freaking love that. Well, because I, we've talked about. I remember I was talking with Stephanie Godreau from she used to be stupid Easy Paleo. Now it's just her brand. And we were talking about sex at dawn. And I was thinking, okay, well, so what if so many tribes have shown that monogamy is only something that's American made just based on land title and transfer?
What.
How do you see that actually being real not just for you, but for the people that want to use monogamy as a conduit for conscious growth. How do we still address the novelty aspect?
Because it seems like monogamy or the.
Novelty of non monogamy, the novelty of people being in conscious relationship in monogamy but still keeping, still keeping the novelty factor high in that setting. How do we do that?
Oh, you mean, you mean the, the excitement of being monogamous. Relationships.
Right.
Because it seems like the immediate answer is perspective. Perspective. But let me, let me get perspective. So you, you choose to have a perspective. You choose to wake up every. Like a non monogamous say, oh, you need variety, you need sexual variety and so forth. Well, and there's this argument about bonobos and chimpanzees.
Yeah.
And, and it shits me. I'm tired of it. Everybody needs to shut the up because we're both chimpanzee. If you take that evolutionary theory and we're both a bit bonobo. When you look at our, when you look at our society, we have, we have evolved from. In terms of social behavior. We have part social behavior. Chimpanzee. We have part social behavior bonobo. So is monogamy or non monogamy right or wrong? I don't really think there's a right or wrong. It really comes down to a personal preference. Society has really made. It's distorted what monogamy is. And we haven't been healthy enough to actually be monogamous at a collective consciousness.
I love the way you explain that.
And it just shits me when monogamous say, well, it has to be this way and this is the way. And non monogamous say, oh, monogamy's dying and this is. And bonobos and it's whoa, whoa, calm the fuck down. Don't take a piece of information and turn into an encyclopedia. Look deeper.
Don't you have a sense that. Well, I have A sense that so many people, based on their perspective and how they see the world, are constantly looking for evidence to validate their perspective.
Ego's always got to do that because it's safe.
Vega always does that.
Because we want strength in numbers, whether it be in information or people or masses or whatever.
I can specifically remember talking with Aubrey Marcus on the show and he was saying, like, the reason that I do put myself in situations where, you know, my fiance is with someone else is because I know that that's how I'm going to grow. And I'm thinking, I wonder if that's the full story. Like, I actually wonder why people put themselves through. Through pain. Like they're consciously putting themselves through pain. Why not just let nature unfold it naturally? Why put yourself in a situation where you're forcing yourself to grow? It just feels like it's almost like contrived in a way, this polyamory lifestyle.
It's an interesting, interesting conversation. So this is a really interesting topic. I'm a proponent of not forced growth. Forced challenge.
Cool. Challenge and growth are different.
Well, yeah. Well, I think growth can be derived from challenge if we pay an enough attention.
Okay.
You have two people that live very similar lives. The person that reflects and pays attention and moves with intention to his or her life will grow more than the person that is just apathetic and just mundane in their life.
Right.
And so whatever path you choose, it's not to say that, oh, I'm non monogamous, so my part, and I'm monogamous, but a non monogamous person says, hey, I like putting myself in challenging situations seeing or knowing that my fiance is fucking someone else or in an intimate relationship with someone else or whatever it may be, or romantic with someone else, because that's my growth edge. Great. It is fantastic. I advocate that. That's your growth edge. Brilliant. Is it my growth edge? I'm sure it would be if I experience it. Is that what I feel I want or need to experience? Not necessarily other people. It's how far do you want to take. Take your growth edge? It's like, oh, I'm going to chop my arm off. And this is an extreme example because I want to take myself to a growth edge and learn how to function in this physical body with only one arm. Right, okay. And of course, that's a ridiculous example. I'm very clear on that. It's an extreme example. The point I'm making is that people will challenge themselves according to their norms and values and what they believe be Fucking leave to be true for them. Yeah, and so is there. And I'm not, I'm not advocating subjective relativism either here, although there is an element of that. I'm not saying that everyone just go do their own thing. There is, there is a structure to reality and how we live our lives. But certain things people are going to be attracted to going to their growth edge and others won't. But if his growth edge or someone else's growth edge is. Is non monogamy, then monogamy, if that's really difficult for them, it's a growth.
Edge of its own.
Of course it is. It's just not aligned with their values of where, where they want to be.
And it's also not as much of an input randomized inputs to the limbic system because the reward circuitry is built to constantly seek out fat sugar. You know, for. For women it might be a man's sexual organs. For a man it might be women's sexual organs. Like we're wired for this man. It's why we have so many excitatory hormones that activate when we get these beautiful stimuli coming in. Right.
But we can get that in other ways or get variety in other ways. I get variety is a human need and a human value.
Sure.
And so we can get variety in other ways. Sexual variety is not the only form of variety as. Because that's a common argument or disposition of a non monogamous. Right. I'm sorry to interrupt you, I just wanted you on that.
No, I loved it. Because really what we're talking about at the end of the day, at the core of this segment of our conversation is how do we operate as a unit, as wholeness together. How does a man or man, woman or woman, man or woman together, whatever.
Any of the other gender identification of.
Relationship you want, however you want to classify it. How do two people have a true pair bonding that's built on cohesive trust and a value system that align. Like what does that actually look like?
Consistent communication perspective. Consistent communication is a starting point. And so we, we communicate largely through verbiage of course. And we give meaning through verbiage and also verbiage. And the. The essence of language resides in illusion as well. And so. And that's a, A in Maya, that's a vedantic or Eastern mystic expression as well. And so whilst effective clear communication and the, the development of that between persons, whether it be two people or seven people depending on your intimate disposition, or of course the other people that are in our lives is super Effective and necessary. It's also all an illusion to some degree. And now so without getting too satiric and going on a tangent here, we make meaning of what we speak to. And so it pays for us come back full circle to be reflective of what we're saying and where's it coming from, what's the come from? From our language. And so in terms of building trust and building intimacy, that is connection, deep connection and growing in that we have to communicate our needs, we have to communicate what we're thinking and feeling. Now we can do that through verbiage and we can do that through non verbal cues as well. But being present to that and having a desire to do that, moving through the world and through that relationship with intention. So in other words, being deliberate and being clear on what we want to be in that relationship, what we want to do and how we want to act, and then paying attention to how the others are reflecting the information that we're feeding to them back to us. Also having a desire to be mutually respectful and reverent of that person, to revere them for who they are. Otherwise, if we're not revering that individual, if I don't respect your needs, then what type of. What are we having here? What's dialogue? What's the conversation? What's the communication? What's the narrative between us?
What can you say to. Let's focus on just the men like a heterosexual relationship. If a man is single right now and he's listening, what are the ways of being that you think are most attractive to our current source, our current definition of the feminine in modern day society?
Truth. Too many men live in lies. I've been that man. We live in lies. And we come across either convoluted, confused, manipulative, shady, untrustworthy, because we live in lies. And why do we live in lies? Because we're, we're valuing values over so for example status, accumulation of material goods or, or how others see us, we're valuing, this is an example by the way, we're valuing one or all of those or a combination of those three elements over being genuine and just speaking and living in our truth. Because we're living to the needs or the perception, how we perceive others need to see us in order for us to be loved and liked and be deemed worthy. So what we do in the world, this, this, this, this status is part of doing, doing, doing. The more we do, the more productive we are, the more utility we have in the world, the more worthy we are. And so we're driven by that. And often it's a wrong type of utility that's not aligned with our core truth. And so we live in lies and we don't even know it. We just fucking talk shit and we live in lies. We don't tell the truth, we don't speak the truth, we don't embody the truth, we don't live the truth, we don't be the truth. And so you want to be attractive to a woman, Be the truth, respect yourself, respect your body, be a physical specimen. That doesn't mean have a 10 pack and be chiseled and spend eight hours at the gym every day.
What do you mean by being a physical specimen? Because like, that could be one thing for a different man.
Absolutely. It could be in. So this is really cool conversation, this part of it. For me, it's not so much how you look, it's your ability to respond to your physical environment and be confident in your ability to do so. So for example, if you said to me, you need to right now you have to run, you've got to get on your feet. You can't drive, you can't cycle, you can't. You've got to get to your woman as quickly as you can because something's about to happen. I'm confident in my ability to get to her, which is maybe 100 miles or way. I don't know how long I'll get there, but I'm confident I'm going to get there because I trust in my physical adeptness, because I train my body, I prepare my body for a zombie apocalypse.
So it's not about like how somebody actually looks secondary.
As a byproduct, you look good. But remember, looking good is also arbitrary and subjective because how a woman sees you based on her personal experience. We've spoken about this, her personal experiences, her interpretation of what a good man is. Good man being someone that's actually suitable for reproduction. How a stable mate, et cetera, whatever her values are around that could be very different to the woman next to her. And so there's no, there's no, there's no norm here. There's no, you know, I think you're an attractive man.
Thanks, man.
And I mean it. I feel someone else might not think that. So that's a subjective thing. I'm talking about your utility and your physical depthness. And there's something very primal about that. There's an honoring of our masculinity when we're ready for life. Ready for life. Ready for a Zombie ready for a zombie. Because I'm going to tell you something.
Zombie apocalypse.
I'm going to tell you something. If zombies came, I want to surround myself with men that can turn it on.
Yeah.
I want to surround myself with men that aren't scared to do what they need to do to survive. I don't want to surround myself with a man that has no physical adeptness at all, that has no capacity, that hasn't taken his body to, to bad places.
Yeah. I can flash back to probably one of the most profound physical trainings ever. It was the seal fit the mark Divine event.
He's a legend, by the way.
He's a total legend. And I can remember the sun was coming up and I, I wanted to quit like 10 times, but we were running down the hill and the sun was coming up and I was like, wow, I'm so much more powerful than I thought. And it was cheesy. It was that moment where it's like, we're going to take you 20 times further than you ever thought possible. But I actually felt the lesson and I feel, feel like what's missing right now from so many men is this physical practice, right.
That's attractive to a woman. That's what I'm talking about being. And so I spoke about truth being attractive. And that's another component when a woman sees that a man is physically prepared. Yeah, that's inspiring. At a, at a gen, at a, at an unconscious genetic level.
Yes.
And you understand that the, the protection, the pursuing, the providing, like we get that, right? Procreation. There's something primal about that. It's fucking sexy.
It's totally sexy because it really shows like an ownership of one's domain. So like a man has ownership of his domain.
Right.
But what are the other qualities? Man, because we look at like good men. Like I've heard, I've heard in media the world needs more good men.
But that's culturally relative.
What's it like? What are the qualities for a man in the modern world to go from being a good man to a great man? Like, what are those qualities?
So I'm going to caveat this by saying this is my opinion and if you're not good at being a man, first, don't even worry about being a good man. So being good at being a man is something, some of what we've just spoken about now. Mastery over certain skills, having, displaying courage, being physically adept and honoring those values. And so that's being, that's part of being good at being a man. That's a far longer conversation. Right. So then being a good man comes secondary to that because we focus on being a good man. We don't focus on being. Being good at being a man. What does actually being a good man mean? Because are we actually honoring our true sense of masculinity? So back to being a good man, that's very culturally relative. It's going to depend on so many different variables. So for me, we've touched on some of those already. Being an avid explorer of the internal self and the external self, being curious because we're honoring part of our nature and also we're honoring our ancestors. Ancestors. We wouldn't be here if it wasn't for the curiosity of our ancestors. Think about that every way. Socially, culturally, biologically, we wouldn't be here. So being an explorer, that's. That to me, that makes a good man as well. Taking ownership and responsibility for who we are and how we behave in the world, that's important. That makes a good man. Not so much being vertically, what I call vertically vulnerable. And so we don't want to vomit out our emotions or vomit out what we're feeling without having some sense of self reflection first. So being continent with our internal dialogue and our internal self. So we're not just shitting the bed, being incontinent.
Interesting phrase.
Yeah, it's an Australian thing. Being continent with who we are and being self reflective, self assertion, self reliance. These are other qualities that I believe define a good man. Compassion, empathy, understanding, courage. Define a good man. For me, the application of this. What underpins, and I'm going to use different verbiage, the new man in contemporary times, or what underpins a healthy man in contemporary times for me is a greater deliberate, in my words here, in the use of words, a greater application of inclusivity and sustainability in the way we behave and act. I'll define them. Inclusivity means we're not as segregating when you look at the world at a social level and a collective level. We segregate township, cities, states, countries, this country going to war against that country.
Republican, pro life, life, pro choice, blah, blah, blah.
And so I'm not again, I'm just advocating a greater level of inclusivity in being more inclusive in the way we make decisions as men, as individuals and the way we think about life not being so segregate and not coming from such a place of fear when we segregate ourselves or we segregate others and we place ourselves in hierarchy. And there's an element that's required. Hierarchy is required in our lives because it's how we function socially at this given point in time in this epoch of our socio cultural evolution. But we do that at the expense of others being harmed or the expense of others not being harmed rather, that's harmful. And so the longevity piece comes into. Let's move beyond thinking about now, which it's great to be in the present moment, but let's think about seven generations ahead. So when we make a decision, how's this going to affect inclusively people that I love and care about, the people that I don't even know? Well, that's an interesting thought because that becomes challenging to do. This is a profound challenge. And how will it affect seven generations from now at an inclusive level as far as wide and broad? You want to be inclusive? Yeah, to me, inclusivity and sustainability. Greater levels of inclusivity and sustainability underpinning in being a healthy contemporary man in contemporary times. Now some people may disagree with that because it's not honoring our nature. We have to be segregated, we have to be segregating, we have to be exclusive. We have to develop and cultivate hierarchy. We have to have an in group and an out group. I don't necessarily disagree with that. What I'm saying is it's too extreme in our behavior in society today. The in group, out group mentality. It's too extreme.
So then really, to cap this segment, it's like, like we have this uprising of the feminine. We have, we have so much power.
Because there are issues with it as well.
So much power coming through for the feminine right now, which is beautiful as well. It's a beautiful thing. But, but really to kind of. And I love the points that you've made and really about leaving a legacy. It's almost like, hey, would seven generations. Would my great, great, great, great, great, great grandchild be honored and be respectful of the way that I've been in my life? Does my legacy based on the values.
Of today, that we, we that we.
That are important to us reflect positively on him? But then we look at right now, Stephanos, this is like the craziest time to be a man. It's also the most exciting because we can have this full spectrum of emotion.
Yeah.
The challenge though, that I find as a single man and, and I think a lot of men find is how exactly do we meet the feminine in this container where they have the power and they expect men literally just to be like the spiritual Superman. I flashback to a moment I had with Boysen Hodgson on The show, the founder of Mankind Project. And he said, you know, the feminine has developed power. Literally. If you look at evolution overnight and all of a sudden they're snapping fingers and saying, all right man, come to it, we have the power now. And like, you know, fall in line and do what we, we would like you to do. And he's like, you know what, what the feminine doesn't recognize right now is the masculine hasn't had time to grieve the old way of being masculine.
It hasn't had tom to feel. Feel.
It hasn't had time to feel.
We're asking, we're in psychological terms, we're asking someone to, to forgive themselves. Without them, you can't forgive and you can't release and you can't let go and you can't move on without feeling the, the full spectrum of feelings. And so men are moving through that at the moment. But to answer your question is how to, how do men step up to that? Yeah, if they step up to meeting the, the feminine consciousness where she's at. By not a feminine themselves, by not being effeminate men. Because the moment men think that women want other women or female men or.
Feminine men, we're done for.
They're wrong.
Yeah.
And so it's this honoring of being in a healthy masculine posture. Now that's all good and well to say that, but in order to get to that healthy masculine posturing and expression, we have to feel. And that requires time, that requires experience. That does require. In my own personal experience, brother, I have grown the most, the most and the fastest when I have been held in compassion and understanding by the feminine. And I've grown so much just being with Christine because she sees me in non judgmental ways. That for me, brother, is liberating.
Yeah.
And when a man experiences that, I fucking promise you this is a message to the women out there as well and to the men. When a man experience. And I know it's hard, hard. I get it. I get it. From my perspective, the only, the best place I can understand it from is that women have been ostracized and oppressed for generations, millennia. And that is a hard place to come from. And I can't imagine what that may feel like. I only imagine from the levels of deep empathy that I have. And I am an empath, but I'm also not a woman experiencing prejudice and discrimination in this lifetime, in this, in this world as it is today. I am a Caucasian male. Well, my genetic profile doesn't completely say.
That you're a Dark skinned.
Caucasian. Caucasian male. Mid. Mid. I think I'm officially in my. I'm still in my mid. Oh, mid-30s. I'm in my mid-30s.
Well, I mean, 30. Quasi.
Late. Quasi. Okay, I'll take that. Quasi. Okay. Mid to late 30s. Yeah, yeah, I'm male. I. My socioeconomic class is middle to upper middle class, whatever that may be. I'm very blessed in terms of how I'm viewed in the world. So I'm coming from that point. I own that. I get that. I don't make any assumptions that I know what any minority groups or any groups that are highly discriminated against systemically and overtly experience. And all I can say is that from my experience, when I've been held in that compassion, understanding and the forgiveness. I forgive you. And I see this in some beautiful, amazing women around the world. Begins with my fiance. Man to men. Grow and heal and move through and beyond so quickly. And what, what a woman wants. I don't want to claim to know what she wants. Every woman, because everyone, everyone is different. Of course, there are some elements of self that we could all agree on. When a man shows up in a particular way and a woman shows up in a particular way, like, that's inspiring and that's. There's a naturality to that and we come from that place and that the, the feminine is able, collective feminine is able to be compassionate and understand and forgive. Everyone wins. Everyone wins.
I feel like right now, what we're facing as masculine feminine, no matter what genders involved, it's really this moment where I think we're all realizing the only reason the war of the sexes continues is because we hold on to the swords. Like, can we all just do the work to learn how to put down the shield, put down the sword and actually just connect, like, literally drop the walls. It's what's talked about in all of personal development. There's thousands of books written on it for a reason. But I think that's really where we stand right now. And I just want to take this moment, man, to take a deep breath with you and honor, like, truly honor. It's been amazing to become your friend. It's been amazing to have this conversation with you. I know that people have had multiple moments where they're feeling like, wow, Steph actually gets it. And he has a story that makes me trust him even more. Where can they go? Not just to learn about you, not just to like, dig into your work. Where can they actually go where you're the most active and where they get access to you right now.
Firstly, thank you for just you and your friendship and how you show up and your art and your mastery in this space because you bring out the best in people. You're. You're an amazing human being on so many levels. I'm most active on Instagram and Facebook. Stefanos the Fanos is my handle. And you're really from there. You'll. You'll learn so much about me in. In different respects. Yeah.
And for the men listening, you do have a private Facebook group. Yes, which I'm active in as well. So some of the men in this community just so excited, Stephanos, for what you're creating, man. And I've told you this in person, you're filling a vacuum that was left here, not just in North County. And I know if it's in North County, I know it's in the rest of the country where there's a leadership void for men. There's a leadership void for men leading other men to these values that'll actually meet the feminine. Where she's at that. So I'm going to direct people to that as well. There's so many things that we didn't explore, which we'll do on another show. We'll do it another show.
But.
But I'd love for you to talk about this intersection, man, that I find myself at all the time.
And it's.
How do I live my life well, and what is the physical and emotional intelligence that I want to bring in so that I can actually do that? And, and really, it defines itself as wellness. Like, how do you see wellness in your life? Like, what does wellness mean to Stephanos?
Integration. And so for me, wellness means having aptitude and awareness of my emotional being, my spiritual being, my physical being, and my psychological being and my relational being. And so when I carry integrity in that, and I'm in constant conversation with myself on this, when I carry integrity in those five aspects of self, the five bodies of the self, I feel whole and I feel well. And so part of the physical is nutrition and movement, of course, and. And all the good things, whether it be herbal tea, whether it be infrared, whether it be meditating naked in front of the infrared.
That's my go to.
That's your go to. You know, whether it be all the good things, the incense, the sound, you know, whatever it may be, nurturing the physicality, to nurturing relationships. So conscious, aware communication, communication to being mindful or present, to what other people's needs are, to whatever it may be, to being studious and being willing to learn. I'm gonna give you some example, you know, to being spiritual. And for me, spirituality is connectedness. So nurturing my connected relationships with the intimate relationships and going deep into those because depth is depth and profoundness is a value that I have in relationships. It's linked intimately linked to growth and meaning and fulfillment in those relationships, to really allowing myself to tap into the spectrum of emotions that we have access to and not limiting myself to just one or two.
Yeah.
And so when I'm in integrity in that, that to me defines wellness and to me that's synonymous with what I call sovereign leadership, which I've developed a model around. Talking about leadership earlier. It is about the wellness is comes from being self sustaining in one's own leadership practices. Practice leading self first and making that a priority and a primary drive for how we are in the world.
If you felt something, well I know you felt something. Reach out to Steph on Instagram also. We're talking about this so much more. Wellnessforce.com forward slash group. Steph, thanks so much for coming on the show, man. I got pleasure.
Thank you.
Hey my friend, thank you for hanging out and growing with me today. Everything you learned on this podcast starts with your morning practices. So from over 200 world class guests and counting, we've distilled the gems, the best of the best science backed practices down into a 21 minute morning system guaranteed to increase the positive flow in your day. Get this free and powerful 21 minute life changing system over@wellnessforce.com M21 if you enjoyed this episode, tap tap your phone. Share it with someone you care about because that is how we all get better together. Supporting the show is easy. Leave us a five star review right now from your phone. It helps us reach other smart and conscious people like you. Either tap your phone and hit the link in purple that says review this podcast or go to wellnessforce.com review. And this show doesn't stop here. We're continuing the discovering process in our private Facebook group. You can be a part of it. All you have to do is is go to wellnessforce.com group and I'll welcome you at the door. Okay, now you get to go out into your world and live your life well. So until I see you again real soon, I'm wishing you love and wellness.
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