Liberated Love: How To STOP Repeating Codependency Patterns | Mark Groves + Kylie McBeath

Some of the principles we talk about about what liberated love is, one is that it's a commitment to fierce truth. Telling the truth, like enough hiding, enough bull, enough going along to get along. That because there is no coming to change without coming to truth. Like you can't change if you don't acknowledge your circumstances and your way of being, because you can't change something you don't accept as true. That question should I stay or go? It's the birthplace of finally prioritizing oneself.

Codependency is any rel dynamic where we source safety outside of ourselves from someone or something at the expense of our wholeness, our sense of self and our core needs.

If you don't have access to what you need, what you want in your nervous system, you won't have the capacity to hold choice.

The template of how we relate is essentially broken. But it's broken not just in a mental emotional level, it's broken on a physical level as well. Where literally unconsciously, our bodies try to make our partner our parent.

Why do you think we end up with people who are unavailable or the same people over and over again? It's because of that familiar pattern that we just haven't created the space.

Can we come back to the body? Can we actually increase our capacity to be with our full emotional spectrum? Some of us have never been able to identify our emotions and our emotional needs. This is work for all of us, but it's crucial work. Do I actually understand what's going on beneath my neck? We're kind of playing out our survival strategies in self protection mode and doing what we learned how to do in order to survive our earlier family system dynamics. And we're just repeating that in our adult dynamics now.

Until we make that unconscious way of being and relating conscious. That pattern we seek to get the things we never got from our mother. Until we do that, we seek it in our partner when we're really seeking it in ourselves.

Foreign. Hey, it's Josh. Before we get into this episode, I have a small yet powerful favor to ask of you. The community has been growing by thousands lately and the bigger the tribe, the bigger names of world class guests we can have on this podcast that I can bring to you from my heart, from my curiosity so you can have more wellness and wisdom in your life. Would you please be so kind as to hit the subscribe button wherever you're watching or listening to this podcast. It'll allow us to rise naturally in the algorithms based on your 2 second act of generosity by you. Just tapping that Little subscribe button wherever you're viewing or hearing this episode. Thank you so much. It means the world to me and our entire team here at Wellness and Wisdom. Now, enjoy the podcast. Mark, Kylie, we finally made it. Welcome to the podcast.

Oh, so excited to be here.

Thanks so much, Josh, for having us.

One thing that's been on my heart so much as I've become a new father is all the ways that my childhood wounds and my mirrors of awareness have come up inside me. I'm sure y' all can relate to this. So many people, by the time they find either your work, Mark, or your work, Kylie, they've done some work. But this book, y', all, I was telling you before we hit the record button, this is a freaking masterclass. And you know me, Mark, Like, I'm not here to blow smoke. I have a lot of people on my podcast, as do you. And I know Kylie, you have a podcast, too. You guys have done an incredible job, an absolutely incredible job. I'm so stoked to go into the layers of what liberation actually is. I think it's a very misappropriated term at times. Liberation.

Yeah. Completely agree. And, yeah, thank you. I. It's so funny when you start, when you set out to write a book like this, you're just like, oh, gosh, there are so many pieces that need to be a part of this conversation. Like, yeah, I mean, each. Each chapter I've joked around with our collaborator and our editor could be an individual book. Like, truly, we could cloud a chapter and be like, okay, let's write a full book on this. But we just had to, like, we had to really put the necessary pieces in. But, yeah, each chapter, you're right. Could just go on and on and on.

Yeah, it was a lot of challeng. It was a lot of fun to write, though, in that, you know, you. You look at your own development, your own changes, your own, you know, stuff as a couple. You're, you know, what got us past. And in what was an insurpassable level in the previous versions of us, like, we. We broke up. That's in the book. We. We were done, and then we came back together. And I look back at, like, ever since I first was, like, why am I not good at relationships? What do I need to learn? And everything that was necessary to learn in my 18 years up until the book came out is coming out is in there, really. But just distilled, as Kylie said in the very necessary. Here's exactly what you need to do to understand why you do what you do and how to change it. And I think one thing that was really fun to include, and I know you'll appreciate this, Josh, is that so much of the work on codependency or relational dynamics is actually doesn't include the nervous system. But I would say now, you know, it's. Any change, absence of some awareness of your nervous system is not going to be permanent change.

Yeah, the way that we literally emotion, energy in motion. And I know a lot of our mutual guests would say, whether it's Bessel, van der Kolk or anyone at a high level of somatic intelligence, everything is stored in the body. The body is a freaking living library. So all the associations that y' all make in the book to how we develop codependent strategies as children. I was reading it this morning at like 5 in the morning and the sun was coming up on the deck out here and I was just like nodding my head because I thought about, wow, I can see as a 43 year old man. And whether you're single or in relationship, y', all, this is for you. We all develop these strategies and these mechanisms for just safety and security. In the same way, when you hold Jasper, when I hold Naya or Nova, they're so dependent on us. I remember I was hearing Jordan Peterson speak about this once. He started crying. He was like, these children are so fallible. They're so dependent on you. And we are literally those children encapsulated in adult form. So I think this is a beautiful jumping off place, Mark, because you mentioned the nervous system. The template of how we relate is essentially broken. But it's broken not just in a mental, emotional level, it's broken on a physical level as well, where literally unconsciously, our bodies try to make our partner our parent. Let's start there.

Let's start with that piece.

Yeah. If you can be with that truth, then we can begin to change.

Yeah. You know, this really didn't land for me personally until I was on a call with Mark Wallen. I'm not sure if you've had him on as a guest yet. He's the author of. It didn't start with you.

I think you just did.

Oh, you did?

Yes, multiple times. And I've also had sessions with him and Carrie, Michelle and I have had sessions with Mark. Thank you very much, Mark.

For the benefit.

Yes, yes.

Well, I. Before I got on a session with Mark Mullen, I remember telling Mark after the session, I was like, I didn't, I thought like, I didn't really need this Work. I'm fine. I've got it. Like, I have a pretty good understanding of my, you know, quote unquote stuff. And then I got on the call with Mark Wallen, and in 15 minutes, he had, like, completely dismantled my whole core relational blueprint. And I was like, what? Like, okay, awesome. But basically, one of the things that he said in. In the call, and I'm, you know, I'm going to just simplify. This is like, man is mother. Until you do the mother work and attachment work, you will continue to recreate your early childhood narratives with your partners. And I was just like, oh, this goes that deep. Like, we have to go all the way to our core first relational dynamic to really understand why we do what we do in relationships. And like you said, as newborns, as babies, we're 100% dependent on our primary caregivers to meet every single need. And in our current society, I think that's becoming more and more challenging for any parent, let alone any mother, to show up and meet all of these needs in the ways that. That I think babies require. And so I just want to, like, note that there's a lot of grace and compassion in this conversation for parents in this modern society, because it's crazy insanity out.

Yeah.

And it's, you know, the questions that I'm holding is like, how do we create adaptive strategies, not instead of maladaptive strategies to cope in our current cultural climate as parents, but also to really honor the foundation of our children, which is their nervous system. And a big piece of that is how do we be regulated adults ourselves? We have all these expectations on our children. You should be able to regulate yourself. You should, you know, calm down. And it's like, can you calm down when you're sad?

Yeah. Like, yeah.

And it's like, this is why this work starts with us. And that's why it's the second. Is it the second chapter in our book? I think no, maybe the third about attachment. Second or third, anyways. Yeah, but it's really like, can we come back to the body? Can we actually increase our capacity to be with our full emotional spectrum? Some of us have never. Maybe, maybe your listeners are like, yeah, no, we. We got this down, which is great. But, like, some of us have never been able to, like, sit, name, identify our emotions and our emotional needs. Like, this is. This is work for all of us. But it's. It's crucial work, especially as parents. But I think for any individual, it's like, can I come back to my body? Do I actually Understand what's going on beneath my neck.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting too, because until we make that unconscious way of being and relating conscious, that pattern, we seek to get the things we never got from our mother. As you're talking about Josh or a parent, but usually our mother. I'm sorry, mothers, like, it's a big bag to carry, but it's like, till we do that, we seek it in our partner when we're really seeking in ourselves. So, you know, I think the beautiful thing, I remember when I was talking with Mark Woolen, he asked, you know, the questions, did you feel scenes who then known by your mother and everyone in the group that I was working with said no. So, you know, it's like the common. That's the common experience. And as Kylie's saying is like, we need to. To recognize that the current state of how we generally do things relationally and familiar familially. Yeah. I think that's Word is not supportive of that. And we. And so as adults, we're like, hey, I didn't get what I needed. Okay, I can now shift that. I can now change how my nervous system responds. And I can do it. When you're a parent now, you have this observation of someone to do it for, also for your partner. But if you're single, it's like, you got to do it for yourself. Because if you don't have access to what you need, what you want in your. Your nervous system to the capacity to hold stuff, you won't have the capacity to hold choice. You won't have the capacity to be discerning. Why do you think we end up with people who are unavailable or the same people over and over again? It's because of that familiar pattern that we just haven't created the space through being resourced. Both internally. Things like breath work, cold plunging, even therapy will expand all these things. Mindfulness, but also externally, good friends, reliable community. You know, what do we do when we end up in a relationship with someone who's toxic? We usually push away the friend who's like, yo, that person's toxic. Right. But that's actually the person we need. Which, of course, that's part of the dynamic of the. The abuser is to push, to push away, put a wedge between you and the people who see what's going on. That was a long way around the barn. Hysterical.

No, it's beautiful. I love the barn because the barn is also the schoolhouse. And you guys talk about this in the book on a microscopic level and also on A macro level marriage. And just, even the concept of union, it actually came from old school England. And this is what you've written in the book that I love so much. It's this broken template where really our ancestors and our parents, God bless them, I've gone through the journey on just having compassion for my mom from a real place, from an authentic place. And my dad and my grandparents and my great greats forgive them because they truly did not know. And I'm not waxing poetic here, like initially, I think, and I'm curious how you guys feel. We go through the stages of emotion where first there's just anger and rage. Once we find out. Wait, you mean I was sold a lie? You mean the old school version of marriage is a psyop and, and even the society we live in is a PSYOP. Is 20, 24 the PSYOP?

I think it is marriages now. The breaking of the family is the psyop now, basically.

But, but expand on this because man, marriage from old school England was passing land and title and it was actually sharing your wealth and okay, I'll give you my daughter if you give me 10 parcels. And it's just a totally myopic and really darker side, patriarchal view of what love actually is. In liberated love, you talk about this and then you also shine the light on the other side, which really sacred union is. And it could be marriage, it could be just long term commitment. But there is a brighter side to this. But first we have to actually retch and vomit on the soup that we've been eating that actually was never palatable from the very beginning because of the old school English values. Let's, let's go there, please.

Yeah, you know, I, when I went through an ending of an engagement when I was 27, I thought to myself, like, I grew up Catholic, so I was taught, get married by a certain age, have kids by a certain age. And if you don't, that age was 30 then, but with inflation it's probably 35, 40 now. But I, I got to 27, got engaged. I was right on target. I didn't want to get engaged. I ended the engagement. And I remember thinking to myself, like, why did I do something I didn't want to do? That makes no sense. And why did I spend a lot of money doing it? That made no sense. Why did I hurt someone else on the way? That made no sense. So I, that's what dove me deep into wanting to understand relationships. One of the first books I read was the History of Marriage. By Stephanie Koons. Completely. It was the truth. It was the truth. She's this, she's a historian, but she wrote this book on the history of marriage and she said, like, essentially the purpose of union was to require, was to get more in laws. That's what she said. And you know, she says it jokingly and, and like, who wants more in laws? I actually love my in laws. I'd take more of them. But. And even that, the origin of the word wife is peace weaver, which I thought was really beautiful. If you look at the, the history of marriage, it was too, as you said, Josh, you know, to merge tribes, to share resources. Of course there was love sometimes found there. But, you know, as Esther Perel talks about, like, we usually sought love in our affairs, right? Not in our marriages. So now we have these, and we talk about this in this book. We, we have these, these old world skills that are trying to keep a new template alive and they can't. And that's actually, you know, the whole perspective is that the, the material that is coming up between you and your partner or you and your relational patterns is material that needs to be worked with to liberate you from these historic patterns of silencing yourself. And for whatever reason, if you're a woman looking up your matrilineal line, you probably don't have to look far to see that a mother didn't use her voice or she didn't have access to anger. Right. And a father maybe didn't have access to joy, to calm, to. To vulnerability, to grief. Right. And of course, those, those can be switched up in people's experiences. So, you know, today we have this opportunity to return because I do believe historically it still was there, that return the sacred to union. Now, whether, as you said, you do that in marriage or you do it in partnership or even if you do it in how you date, it really is that you're bringing this deep level of reverence to yourself, to the people you're relating with. And you know, one of the, some of the principles we talk about, about what liberated love is, one is that it's a commitment to fierce truth, telling the truth, like enough hiding, enough, enough going along to get along. That, like, I'm not here for that. I'm not here for that. She's not here for that. That's great. We're married. But, you know, for there, it's also having a deep appreciation for the other person's path. And I think when we're dating, especially when we're dating from a Scarce place, or we're in a relationship and we're worried that the relationship might depart. So we do everything we can to hold on. We're trying to control the flow of the river. It doesn't work. Instead, if we can have this acknowledgment that your paths are alongside each other, and if you are committed to fierce truth now, you might align the paths, and you also have to be ready to let that go. What do you think?

Oh, I. I think that was big. I'm curious to hear what Josh has to say around it.

I was literally. I conceptualize and process in images. So when, Mark, you're speaking, I'm actually seeing a river, right? And on one side, I'm seeing this false dichotomy that I think a lot of people find themselves in. And on one side, it's like, I'm going to grit no matter what. I'm going to stay no matter what. I'm going to abandon self no matter what, just to keep us alive. And then on the other side, there's this truth of like, oh, the water's moving this way. It might be painful, it might be uncomfortable, but this is actually what our creator, the divine God, whatever nomenclature you want to use, actually wants. This is where the water is going. How does one. Because I'm going to pitch it right back to y', all, because this is my curiosity in life and in wisdom and in understanding well being. When do we know? What are the guideposts? What are the ingredients? What are the signs that we can count on to know which side of the river to stand on and why? In other words, when to grit, when to quit. Where do we even begin that process? I think that's a fundamental human universal learning curve.

Well, you have to have deep access to yourself in order to even explore. And I think that question, should I stay or go? Which is obviously a very common question, is usually the birthplace of agency, of. It's the birthplace of finally prioritizing oneself. Because most of the time that's someone waking up mid relationship, maybe mid life, maybe. And, you know, in their 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, in relationships that they were. They. They just are in. And so that question, we have to follow it, because that question leads to. It is the river leading to. It's like you're on the actual side of, okay, now we're with the truth. The river is going this way. Okay, I'm going to go that way instead of, like, I'm going to dig this trench over here, and it's going to Feel like you're digging a trench because you're trying to force something. That's what I would say is that is follow the. The invitation.

Yeah. In our book, we call it getting right with reality. And I think it's a really beautiful entry point into that question is like, just acknowledging what is alive and real.

Yeah.

In this moment, without the truth, without needing to change it, without needing to fix it. But, like, something's off here. And whether you say that with a therapist or with a mentor, with a friend, somebody who you can trust, because there's so much complexity in that question. And really, do I grip and. And hold on? And where is that being derived from versus, like, okay, let's just flow into the river. It's like, there's so much involved there, especially even with the nervous system as you're talking, because I'm also a visual. So I'm, like, hanging back in the, like. What do you call those inner tubes? And I'm like, yeah, life is so good when you can just chill like that. And there are moments, I'd say a decade, where it was, like, gripping onto the side where my survival instructions and my relational DNA as we talk about in the book were just like, hold on over everything. And for me, my body is always the somatic. Somatic canary in the coal mine. It is going to let me know, like, something is way, way off. And so this showed up for me, as in sibo, as in autoimmune ibs. Like, I had. It was like. It was wild. I was getting.

Starting to collect them.

It was like, oh, my gosh, I'm getting sicker and sicker and sicker and sicker. And at what point are you actually just gonna acknowledge what is here and what is real so that we can work with the material instead of it working with us unconsc consciously through the body, because the body will always speak. And this is why I love this conversation in this book and in the greater field is like, can we bring up what is true and actually work with that material in various different ways so that we can arrive to a capital T truth of whether we should stay or go? And I don't think it's as simple as just that question. It's like, we just need to acknowledge the truth first. And baby step, because there were things in relationship 2.0, which we talked about. We had a sacred pause in between a relationship 1.0 and 2.0, and Mark and I both, at certain points of re. Entering back into our relationship, were a no, like this is not actually in alignment or working out. Because there were other things that needed to be processed and identified and worked through and cleared for it to be a yes. But if we would have just overridden and minimized, gaslit ourselves and each other.

Through that, we gotta get back together. Blah, blah.

Yeah. Just to like, collapse into, well, we're back together.

It.

It wouldn't have created this strong foundation that was necessary for a new template to. To be birthed through us.

Well, the capital T truth that it was one of the big fundamental shifts was one me saying, look, I can't keep doing this the way we're doing it. Like, I need, like, I love you no matter what you choose. And you can go, I love you if you go. I love you if you stay. But we can't keep going the same way.

Yeah.

And then that allowed Kai to experience this unconditional love to be able to finally honor. Because we're like, yo, we did everything, you know, much like, I know you're very resourced. We're seeing therapists, we're doing weekend. We're doing it all breath. Yeah.

Yeah.

But, yeah. The real canary in the coal mine was Kylie felt called to not be in the relationship anymore. And on the other side, here I am living out my wound that I never felt chosen. And so I'm in a state of ambivalence. She's in a state of ambivalence. I get to blame her for the ambivalence I'm tolerating, which is my own ambivalence. Right. Because if she's ambivalent, I am, because there's not certainty. And so it shifted from what's wrong with Kylie, from the self identity, and also, like, what's wrong with you. You need to figure out how to pick this or not to what's right with Kylie. And I think a lot of us, when we're like, I can't choose this relationship. What's wrong with me that I can't choose this relationship? And we're saying what's right with you, that you can't. Because even if it's avoidance and trauma that's getting in the way of closeness, what's right with you? That you can't be close to people because you still haven't developed the capacity for trust, so you override your trust or you build a wall and an island and you have no connection, but we're like, that's the material. There's nothing wrong with you. So most people find their way to personal growth from the Idea that they're broken and there's something that needs to be fixed. And we're saying, there's nothing broken. There's something to be healed, there's something to be expanded. We're starting from wholeness. Like, you're complete, not a piece of the puzzle, not a to. You're taking up more space. And through this work, that's actually what happens, is two individuals start to actually step back into their individuality, and then the relationship is a space that actually loves and nurtures and celebrates individuality, individuation, adulting. And it was that level of accountability and responsibility. Like, that's your stuff. This is my stuff. I love your stuff. You love mine. But I think it's. I forget the personal growth master guy who said, I'll grow me for you, and you grow you for me. I'll grow me for me and you grow you for you. That's what it is.

But either way, it's good, man. There's so. There's so many layers of the onion there. And whenever I peel an onion, I cry. And I think that relationships, I think, make people cry and really harvest the best and sometimes the ugliest parts of self. When you were talking, I was visualizing the island and the wave that Tatkin talks about and this avoidance in the attachment style of secure or even anxious. And then the ambivalent. There's a lot of layers here. And I wonder, like, if we could take a breath and just pull 30,000ft above all these concepts. Right. The heart of the matter that I really feel from both of you, especially in this book, is that liberation. One of the key aspects is this ultimate devotion to truth. And you even said, kylie, capital T, truth. And I wonder, there's lowercase T trauma. There's capital T trauma. Does it work the same way when it comes to truth? In other words, is there a lowercase truth? Is there a capital T truth? Right. What does that look like?

Yeah, I think there is. Because I think there's many parts that are operating within self, right, in any given moment. It's like this part, their truth is like, I got to go. This part is like, I want to stay. And so it's. It's sitting with all the various, you know, small T truths internally and being able to differentiate who's saying what, what's saying. Like, there's a lot going on inside these beautiful bodies and minds. And so being able to create the space to tend to all of these parts, I feel like, allow us to enter into capital T. Truth, which in the book we call coherency, is like my mind, my throat, my heart, my gut, my womb, for me personally is all coherent. There is a full body. Yes. Here it's not like one parts me over here, one part of me is over here. It's like, no, we are actually all clear. We're all here. And for many of us, we don't even know what that felt experience is like actually like of actually being coherent. Because so many of us are outsourcing and our consciousness is jumping into other people's fields, intuiting what they need. How do we show up in order to survive and source that safety. So a key point of this book and our work is like you said, is capital T truth. But first and foremost, like what is true right now in your body and your being. And the only way to really discern that in my experience is nervous system work and being able to access clean anger, being able to access the full range of human emotions so that I can sit with what actually all exists in here. And without the capacity to sit with that, there's. There does feel like a mishmash, a lack of coherency where that wave is like, ah, like parts of me are yes, parts of me or no, I don't know. Like, you know, so many different stories and narratives going on. And it's like, how do we get this wave to come into coherence?

It's so good. It's so good. You know what it makes me think of is this paradox that I think we all find ourselves in, of intellectualization and then heart based wisdom or science and spirituality. They seem that they're opposed, but they're actually not. They're all taking us home in some way. And I wonder, when you talk about the capital T and the lowercase T, is it that the capital T truth, the full body, yes, that is the objective. Or is that is the subjective truth that we have earned through doing the work? Is it our subjective truth? That's capital T. And then the objective truth, what is that? How do you work that model into this understanding?

I like where you're going, Josh. I didn't talk about this in the book, but I like these questions. I like to ponder them with you in this conversation. It feels deeply subjective. Yeah, how could it not? Right?

Yeah.

You know, and that's okay.

Like the level of self trust that is necessary to just really fully honor your yes and your no and to have that. And I think the key component here is for a lot of people is really starting with the question of what does a yes feel like in my body? What does it know feel like? What is a maybe? Like, I'm not sure yet. And can we really start to just honor whatever those somatic impulses are till we can arrive at a full body? Yes.

And to separate our truth from another is like. The word subjective is so important here because in some way we would say that's your subjective truth, and that would be that it's not valid, or it's. It's through your lens, it's your opinion. But actually that's very important because everyone has a lens, and their lens is valid. So by validating someone's subjective truth, they're starting to have their own experience of the world instead of seeing their experience through other people's experience. We talk about one of the clients that. That we worked with, with where he was in a relationship, and his partner did not question their relationship at all. She was like, 100 all in. This is it. I can never not choose this. You're that. And I was like, do you want to be in it? And like, is it a full. He had felt guilty because it wasn't the same exuberance.

It wasn't the same clarity.

Yeah. And when we worked through it, it was like the reality was that he wasn't always sure. And so that was his subjective truth. But it was so important because he was so used to taking on the experience of other people and them being his own, that he was overriding his own experience. And so this is that differentiation where you start to create, you know, a space between us and other when we. Our adaptive strategy is to, you know, and really at the roots of codependency that, like, compromising ourselves at this, you know, choosing something or someone at the sake of our own needs, our own. Our own safety. And if we've been doing that since our childhood, where we've been adapting to other people, trying to walk on eggshells, attuning and. And being vigilant. It's the real nervous system work. The work to be like, holy, who am I? Like, I've worked with people where I'm like, what do you want? And they're like, I've never. I've never thought. I worked with this one woman who. I remember, she said to me, I was like, you get to decide, like, what experiences you want to have. When she was like, wait, I don't have to go on a second date with someone I don't want to see? No. And I remember her to maybe all of us and to people listening, that's preposterous. But to her, it was like oscillate around what the man desires. If the man desires her, she desires him. And so it was like this epiphany for her. And so I think that space is so important.

Yeah. And I also just want to name, kind of going back to a previous question, is, is I think the work, the material as Marcus is bringing light to is what helps us, you know, sharpen and navigate the frictions and create the necessary fire and heat to. To arrive at the capital T. Truth. Like, I. I do think that it's a.

Both.

And there's.

Yeah. It's so easy to reductionize relationships, especially if we're hanging out with the people that become our echo chamber and tell us exactly what our ego wants to hear. Those are the wrong people.

Y' all so great. How can they not?

Yeah, you should just leave him. Like, especially, you know, the classic Sunday brunch where, you know, there's all the divorcees in Orange county that are drinking mimosas and they're like, oh, there are. Men are all shit.

Right.

Careful where you hang out. Right. Because the environment of where you are is so, so important. So, you know, to mirror off of what both of you said, right. This, this codependency aspect is something that I've taken a slow, methodical. Not in the beginning. I'm not going to bullshit y'. All. In the beginning, I was looking for reductionized answers, but now that I've actually truly committed over the past five plus years to really taking my time, and that's what this book is for, by the way. This is not some get out of jail free golden ticket that you can just read the book, not apply anything, and all of a sudden you're healed. Like, this is a book and a manual, a masterclass that you actually get to take the time to go through. Like, this is a very step by step method that'll allow me and all of us to go to the parts of us that first of all, we didn't even know were there. We had unconscious incompetence about them. They were in a blind spot that we didn't even know we didn't know. And then secondly, there's the guidance to actually move us through these nuanced spaces, not reductionized spaces in our world. And I'm sure y' all see this a lot. There's so many of these phrases like good vibes, only if it feels good, do it. We reductionize their spiritual bypassing at play and I see it so much and honestly, it used to make me angry. I don't know if how y' all feel now. I'm in the place where I just put my hand on my heart and I'm like, ah. They're looking for the short quick fix. They're following the social media influencers in the world, these memes, and it's just so addictive. Can you talk about that? Because the real work is where you slowly unpack the new house that you're wanting to purchase. The old work is like, oh, I'm just gonna rent something that already has all the furniture in it. There's a major, major difference between the two.

Well, in a world that commoditizes attention, you know, it's easy to be captured by anything that is promising. A pill, a quick fix, a short, a real will change. Don't get me wrong, a quote can change your life only because you're actually ready to explore those words and them actually hit as a truth, you know, and. And a real can change your life, but changing your life in the moment by moment, you have to be present. You know, I used to think that time moved really fast, but when you're present, time doesn't move very quickly. It's actually, you know, you think about it when you have nothing to do, you're like sitting there. But now you see everyone bypassing all these present moments by being on their phones. Like, and when I think of just the cultural way that we try to resolve discomfort is that disc. And this just all comes back to the same thing, which is that if we can't be with discomfort, we can't be with the information that is necessary, that is actually telling us about our environment and our experience. You know, I think it's crazy, and I know you talk about this a lot. Josh as well, is like, we're in this world where if you were to put your hand on a stove and you burnt your hand, you would move your hand. But if you are in circumstances that cause emotional pain, you're told that there's something wrong with you, that you have emotional pain, and here's this thing to fix it, here's a pill. And we're saying like, hey, sure, there are time and a place for interventions. But we're like, actually, if you start to orient to the information, the emotion that is coming into your body, you are brilliant. And it is actually informing you about why your environment that you're co creating is actually not in service of you or what you're trying to create. And it's not evidence of your brokenness. It's evidence of your wisdom, of your brilliance. That is a complete shift for people because they go from being the child who maybe didn't feel attuned to or attended to, to being the adult who's like, oh, yeah, there's nothing wrong. That is the flip of codependency is when all of a sudden, when someone's like, I'm gonna stop trying to fix and save and help everybody else. Put everyone else first. Oh, does anyone think about me? You actually don't get an award for it. I hate to tell you, if you're trying to compete to get a gold in, then you will not. Because, for the record, there's billions of other people competing against you. But, yeah, I think a lot about, like, that final moment where you're. You actually need that information. You need that rock bottom. And the rock bottom doesn't have to be a cosmic dump truck. It can be the recognition something's off. And for Kylie and I, that is the culture of our relationship. Something doesn't feel right about this, or I'm not feeling good about this. And it's. Sure. We have all the same relational things. You know, sometimes I get defensive sometimes, you know, we don't work through it in that moment, but we have a constant repair and a constant recognition that if something is coming up for Kylie, it's also coming up for me. I just might not see it. If something's coming up for me, it's coming up for her. There's a positive regard. That's the word we use in the book, that we have a positive regard for each other's experience and that we honor the other person's wisdom that's coming up for them. Because that was true in relationship 1.0. Like, it couldn't work the way it was working. And Kylie was picking up on that.

Yeah. Just to expand on that, too. I. Our. Our nervous systems are constantly seeking and coding. Our external environment is this safe, is this dangerous based off of our. Based off of our template. And so, like, when I see the Good Vibes Only and all this, and I'm like, wow. Because I used to be. There was a. There was a part of my journey where. Yeah, I fell into that. No, I.

Did you wear a Good Vibes Only sweatshirt?

I did not.

You know what?

I probably had something.

You did have a sweatshirt. I'm gonna.

I'm gonna scroll down your IG and look.

Listen.

Post divorce, she was in Orange county, too, drinking mimosas.

I didn't have.

It's almost impossible to not wear a good Vibes shirt there, right?

It's not. You're. You're 100, right?

Matching flip flop.

I didn't have the mimosa at that time, but I probably had the spiritual gangster shirt and.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

You know what? When I look at it, it's like, wow, I was truly surviving. Like, that was such a way for me to. To. To try to contain the amount of emotional discomfort I had in my system that I had no idea how to work with. Like, zero idea. I was like, okay, this actually feels much safer and nicer for me. And I can orient to the world from this spiritual place because it keeps me out of my body. And for me, I was looking for transcendence at the time. Like, let's transcend experience, because this is hard, you know?

Yeah.

So I have a lot of grace dynamic of how that shows up and operates. But, you know, we chose to come here. You know, on some level, I think that that's my belief system is like, we chose to come here. We belong to the earth. And this journey of liberated love is about incarnation coming fully back into your body because you are a human being with a body, and it's wise and intelligent. And I personally think we're not using even a percentage of the gifts and potential of this human body in the ways that we can. But. But ultimately it comes down to creating capacity within the nervous system to experience more and that more good and more bad. You know, I shouldn't say bad, but more discomfort and more good. Because the more you can experience grief, the more you can experience emotional pain, the. The more you can actually experience the opposite too, of joy and goodness and full embodied joy and goodness and intimacy. And so, yeah, this is the. The work of adults. You know, I think about mother too, as like. Like when you become a mother, your capacity just has to continue to grow, grow, grow, to continue to hold, hold, hold all of these emotional experiences. And I think that's the work of adults, is being able to create the containment field for ourselves and others to be with the full range of human experience.

There's so much there. You know, what phrase comes up? I don't know if you all remember that TV show Arrested Development. Have you ever heard that phrase?

Yeah.

So arrested Development. The theory is that whenever some type of trauma happens or some significant event that one places meaning on their development, gets arrested, it essentially stops right there. And we see this with so many adults. Look at politics, y'. All. I mean, it's Just basically hundreds of.

Thousands of people that have had teenagers.

Complete arrested development and their child. They're a child walking around an adult.

Body, or their development has gone off the cliff psychologically, as in dementia. Oh.

Or that, too. Yes. Or maybe they have low acetylcholine and they think that a Corvette inside of a shopping cart, like Joe Biden is real. And trying to parse words together. I'm not here to crap on Joe Biden. But, like, we all see it, right? We all see the complete disillusionment and disconnection from politics, and it's actually a beautiful mirror for us to look at.

Wow.

If we all don't like politics and all of us feel. I would be suffice to say that every human being that is ruled by some governing agency that they think they voted for inside their body, there's a mechanism screaming that this isn't trustable, that this isn't right. And the way that we have been trained, we have been trained to ignore that feeling in our body and our nervous system is saying, this person actually can't be trusted. But I'm just going to do it because my mom and dad and my grandparents said that I should. This is actually a core aspect of what y' all talk about in the book. And I want to get to this other piece, right, the 1.0, the pause and the 2.0. But before we get there, I just want to go really high again, Kylie, because there I haven't gotten to talk with you as much as Mark. So, Mark, I hope you don't mind, I'm going to go with Kylie right now, because, Kylie, you were actually born as an identical twin and you've done so much work with Mark, and initially you had come from a divorce, and then when you met Mark, it was like, I think you were 10 months in or a year in or something, and you were like, can I trust him? And this vacillation of, like, in and out or resistance to the relationship. If you were to float super high above your timeline and you were to identify where you actually were on a somatic, emotional level in the 1.0 version, who were you then speak to that person? Not from shame or blame, obviously, but just loving awareness of, like, okay, this is where she was and this is what she was dealing with. And I wonder, how did the birth process fall into that? Because we've talked about this quite a bit on the show this year already.

Birth. You've talked about birth?

We have, yeah.

Oh, I love it. Yeah. From like a 30000 view up. You know, when, when I sit with relationship 1.0 and where I was somatically or even just developmentally to kind of like riff off, that is I was in a very, very, very, very like young space of not being able to trust myself, not being able to trust the world or another. And you know, for me in navigating the split of like this part was me was a yes and this part was a no. It's I, I call the, the no part my survival instructions which was in order to be safe you need a man. Like you must depend on somebody else. You don't know how to be safe and okay on your own. Like I've never seen that modeled in my lineage. And so I think these survival instructions for me were very young, but they seem very old. Like it felt like I was breaking through intergenerational patterns of belief and, and patterns of survival of like this is how we learn how to survive as women in, in relationship and also on the earth. You know, I, I take it back to like even the Inquisition of like old Europe when 9, 7 to 9 million women who are all healers and connected to their bodies and instincts and intuition were killed through the Inquisition. It's like it goes that deep. Like for, for me it's, you know, I don't, I don't you know, know the relationship with the morphogenic field on this, but it's like how women are treated on this planet affect all women. And so like we're moving through really old wounds as we continue to take up space and re inhabit our bo. Restoring our trust to our intuition and our instincts. And so I'd say that developmentally I was very young, but I'd say that developmentally women in my lineage were stunted because of, of the fact that it wasn't safe to actually fully enter, to fully choose life, to fully be here on the planet at this time. And so oh yeah, that, that, that feels really deep. And I think you know, to kind of circle back in the, the view of how birth has shifted that one of the main reasons why relationship 1.0 didn't work is because Mark had a non negotiable around having children. He was very clear, I want children and I want them, you know, not to say asap, but not to not say asap. It felt like ASAP was time.

And then it became time game.

And you know, I think in my bones and in my agreement with Jasper, our son, and also within our relational dynamic, I knew that I couldn't give Birth from that developmental place. I could not give birth from the wounded, immature maiden. Like I needed to have agency before I gave birth because I needed to break the intergenerational cycle because if I was to give birth, I would be repeating it. And I knew how. And trust me, like, once you give birth and you're a mother, like it's so easy to collapse back into like all of the old patterns. It's like it's an intense time. So that felt imperative for the sequencing of relationship 1.0 to end because I needed to restore trust. I needed to go through the individuation process to be able to be okay no matter what on my own so that I could have a voice in relationship 2.0 and for my child. Like, because there are things that, and I've seen this in a lot of my work and work with women where women will continue to override what their instincts are saying in regards to relationship to their children. And in this psychotic society and culture we live in, the mother baby dyad is not honored at all. And I get really enraged about this because I have access to my rage now. In 1.0, I did not. I now do. And I think this is imperative that women start to, to, to come back into right relationship with their rage. Because it's screaming, it is like we must change something. We must honor our children. We must be able to stand in the face of what has been been indoctrinated in all human beings. And this isn't to blame anybody. But it's like, no, I will not do XYZ at the expense of my child because it's at the expense of me too. Like that's how deep the connection is. Mother baby dyad. You know, we say it's like, oh, the babies just, you know, teach their own on this, but not teach their own. But like if the baby's crying, like it's fine, just let it be. And it's like if my baby's crying, my nervous system is in a full tilt guilt. And if I'm just going to override.

That, like, because some pediatrics, because some.

Pd, whoever it is, said something like this is just the way it is. And it's like, no, no, guys, this isn't just the way it is. Your body is communicating to you. And I think for me, I needed to be able to have trust that I can stand for what, what is actually true in my instinct so that I could raise Jasper, so that we could raise Jasper in a way that is, is pro life. Like that Is honoring life.

Life.

And pro life is a word that kind of gets distorted these days, but, like, for life, I should say.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, my God. So good. That's the tip of the iceberg. I'm gonna pass. Pass it back to Mark after this one comment, because recently we just had Eric Klopper on the podcast, and I don't know if you know his work, but he was passed to me by a mutual friend, Luke Story. And when I started to really see some of the aspects of what you're describing, Kylie, where a mother's intuition is shunted and blunted by modernity's messaging, what happens is we get things like forced ritual circumcision, where men are being traumatized when they enter the world in the first day or week. Welcome to planet Earth. Let me snip off the end of your penis. Let me traumatize the most, the most sexual place of you. Elliot Holtz calls it walking around always with your sword unsheathed. And we wonder why there's so much war in the world 100%, when 120 million men in America alone are walking around that their parents, God bless them, they just simply did not know. It's back to this unconscious incompetence model. So they simply did not know. And this is just one aspect of what you're speaking about, because, Mark, I know for you, like witnessing a life come into the world through your wife, the ways in which you were being called forth to provide more, to hold even more space, to be even more patient, in the same way that Kylie's tuning into our. Her intuition, to her sacred anger, and to be able to tap into all of her intuition as a whole. She was expanding. You were expanding, too. You can't get out of this process of parenting without massive expansion. And honestly. And lastly, like this example of your word in the book liberation, part of liberation is looking at all the things that are considered normal and knowing that they're actually evil in nature or that they're harmful in nature. Did you see that playing out in your mind? And what was the psychedelic experience of birth like for you?

Did I see it playing out everywhere? I mean, prior to Kylie giving birth to Jasper, I mean, I think everyone listening, and I know, you know, we were in a world that it was like you're being asked to not see. You're being asked to deny the evidence that your eyes see and that your. Your ears here. And so you're having to be with reality, with capital T, truth that is actually destabilizing your Sense of psychological and somatic safety in insert whatever country you live in. And that was my experience of the public health issues in the last three, four years. So here I was being vocal about that having a business that as soon as I started to get vocal, you know, I think coming back to our relationship to things like social media, if you, you look at it, that's not a liberating relationship because one, they're tied to financial compensation for a lot of people due to businesses and, and two, if you say the wrong thing, you can lose it all. So it's very much like an abusive relationship dynamic. So that add to that the pressure of providing more and also that provision is being challenged by my authentic self expression. So I'm in this sort of competing experience that has been and was very stressful. But I will say that first watching my, and witnessing my wife give birth was one of the most beautiful things that I've ever experienced. I think on one level it really mammalianizes you. Like you realize you're really truly a mammal and you're no different than a couple will the beasts giving birth on the African spells, you know and, and we did it at home and it was amazing. And watching a life come through my wife that she grew. I mean I said to Kylie after do you, do you think you can do anything now? And she was like oh yeah. And I was like yeah. Like I started to see. Because I'm sure you experienced this too. When we started to learn about birds birth, we did it with this group in Vegas who were former labor and delivery nurses who are midwives and they teach this class on the history of birth. And I was like now for anyone listening to give you context, I was also in pharmaceutical sales and in Pharma for 14 years. So I had left that and here I am like I've, I've explored all the, about cholesterol, all the. I mean I wasn't just, I didn't just wake up to lies. I was part of the lies. I, I spread the lies not knowingly. Unconscious incompetence, I like that term. But when we were in the birth training I was like holy. So much of birth is just commoditized. It's just like a dude decided hey, we can make a lot of money if we just create some value based needs that don't actually aren't actually needed most almost all the time time. And this is not negating the value of emergency interventions. I think what happens in this world we're in today is that the criticism of something Means the rejection of it. No, it does not. This is just, this isn't invalidating people's experiences. I'm just saying that for the most part we're telling women and their bodies and parents that they are incompetent in the birth process. The body has no idea what it's doing. We need some guy to come in or a woman and remove the baby. I couldn't believe the C section rate in Vegas or in Nevada, but across the states is somewhere in the 30%. In the UK where midwives are in charge of birth, the C section rate is something like 1.7%. And I was like, wow, if that isn't evidence of a monetizable intervention. So for me, all of that again was more of a wake up, but also a deeper, a deepening reverence for her and just reverence for the feminine. Like what it creates with the womb creates. Like I look at Jasper and so coming back to the original comment and I'm like, okay, well I could tell him what I stand for. I could tell him what I believe is important. I could tell him what RNA values are as a family, as for me as a man. But if I'm not living that a hundred percent, he'll smell that. Not only will he smell it, he'll repeat it. And that to me is a. I mean, I get emotional thinking about it because that's like a level of responsibility that I'm like, no, like he will not know that. He will not. He will be, he will see a father who stands for what's right. And you know, you know, looking back now, I'm like, like I was ready to lose it all. And I know you were too. And for me, I think that's just. It's like no matter how we get to the place, liberation, which I think the magnifying glass is most available through our relationship patterns. But wherever you can't share your voice, you're not liberated if you don't have a choice in your relationship to your phone. Not liberated if you don't have a choice in. And again, this isn't negating the very system that sometimes make it so you can't share. You know, I remember listening to this guy in Canada, his name is Corey George. And he said, you can complain all you want about the financial system, you can complain all you want about money, you can moralize money, you can do whatever you want, but you can't change it from the bottom. You can't change it. You can't change it by denying the system you have to, you have to use the system to change it. And I think about that in the context of, of everything. It's like what do like men are here to protect on one level, are we actually protecting and preserving our, our, our women and our children. I mean I think there's a lot of, there's probably a whole other complex. Navig another podcast on this, but on the idea that like look at the levels of Testosterone in a 20 year old male today or something similar to a 60 year old male in the year 2000. Look at the sperm count that's dropping that the Dr. Swan says by the year 2045 a lot of men will be infertile. It's like, what are we doing? You know, And I think coming back to what we're saying, like liberation through relationship. But also if you have a generation below you, it's never too late to take your bags back. It's never too late to give your bags back to your parents, give their bags back to them. It's none of this is like a finite. We are the destiny of our biography. It's like, no, like this is your lineage trusted you to change your lineage, found a partner that is bringing up the stuff with you so that both of you could actually heal. Like to me I'm like, what a gift that is that my parents went through what they went through. So I have the resourcing today to choose a really incredible partner who chooses me and, and actually do this sacred work not just for ourselves, which is important, but actually for our son, for the children, for all the children. You know, I think about that all the time. It's like I could just have an interaction with a human who's never had a regulated person acknowledge them and that could completely change their life. And not to change their life, but just to make our way through the world from that unconditional space. I mean that's a whole other.

Man. When you, when you were talking about that Jasper can smell the. That's actually part of what Kylie was sharing that existed in both men and women. And that is our intuitive faculty. You know, the Zach Bush calls it like the afferent and efferent neurons that our systems are trading. Right? Right. I look at you, Stephen Porges, as the micro muscles in our face from the polyvagal theory. We're all looking for safety. And so man, when you said that, I had the cry feeling because I think about all the ways in my life that I'm still continuing to work on being liberated personally.

Same I Think it's an ongoing journey.

It's an ongoing journey, and there's so much more. And I just want a presence to everyone. If you're feeling like you're stuck in a piece of liberation. This book and the relationship to self and other, especially an intimate container and. Or the relationship to a daughter or a son, there is no greater fucking proving ground on planet Earth than intimate relationship and parenthood. It will bring up all your stuff. I mean, is literally, I think, the only thing in my life. There's no way I could have learned the things that I've learned about Josh. Unless I've been a father or unless I've been in sacred union. There is no ticket otherwise. Like, you got to buy the ticket and take the ride for that, y'. All. And I wonder how both of you feel if you were to wave a magic wand and speak to the single person who might be interested in the concept of liberation. Because we've talked a lot to the parents. Man, in my heart, I'm like, I really wanted to cry. Maybe I'll cry when we're off the podcast. Because that was so beautiful. It was so good. When you were sharing about Jasper. I know all the parents felt that, but the single man or the single woman, that is like, I really want union. I really desire that. But I'm going to the brunches, and all the ladies are telling me I should just be single and have fun. Or the men, I'm going to the man cave and drinking beer and watching football on the weekend for 14 hours. We have to choose a different thing if we want a different result. And by thing, I mean our behavior, the people that we hang out with. What is even the starting place? It's a very. Another highly complex question that I like to ask. I like to ask complex questions. Questions not. Not with the knowledge that the answer is going to be simple at all. But for the single person who is desiring real union with self and other, what is the starting place for that? And what is the higher level of that that you talk about in the book?

You're really good at questions, Josh. I'm learning this about you.

That's why he has a podcast.

I like your questions.

I just ask what my heart wants to know. Because I remember myself when I was single in Encinitas, making all the choices that were keeping me blocked and I wanted.

It's a good place to make choices. Good old.

It absolutely is. Yeah.

Yeah. You know how you don't know until you know? Like, I think this is why we provide a, a potential pathway to liberation through what we call a container. Like creating a conscious container in your life to get really clear about your yeses, your nose. One of the things for women, because I work majority with women, is we don't realize how much of our actual mental, emotional, spiritual energy goes into seeking, to seeking this partnership and this companionship. And I think that's coming from such a beautiful place, that longing to, to unite, to com, to have companionship, to have relationship. And I love that and I think that's beautiful, but. Or I should say and can we be okay on our own? Can we actually be with our aloneness instead of distracting, instead of seeking, instead of searching, instead of like constantly being on this wheel of like I need to find like in the time crunch and all of these different pieces is, is can we create this intentional time period to release the need to find someone, release the need to be in union just for a very short amount of time, minimum, we like to say three months in the book. But for our single people who are seeking liberation, it really does start actually at the beginning of a relationship. Like how you begin the relationship. And the energetic signature really determines the energetic signature for the whole relationship. And so this is why for our single peeps, we always like, you know, start now starting a conscious container where you completely remove seeking, dating, texting, social media, stalking, etc, and just come back to yourself. Because a majority of us, Josh and I'd be curious to hear your thoughts in, in your timeline of Encinitas. But majority of us don't know what it feels like to be in our center, don't know what it feels like to have inner authority, don't know what it feels like to be really solid in our foundation. And for us, this tool of creating a, a conscious container, what we call like liberation through limitation, actually allows us to see the blind spots, allows us to see where we're still trying to source that validation, where we're still trying to source that security or safety from someone at the expense of our wholeness. And so for the single people, this actually, I would have loved to have this after my divorce. This concept of like, you know what, you should enter an intentional pause because there's some stuff you need to work with and there's some stuff that you don't even realize is operating in your unconscious because you haven't even removed the very thing that is triggering these parts of yourself, so you have to remove it. And this is why this conscious intent or conscious choice to remove something actually illuminates all the things that are driving you unconsciously and in within your nervous system.

Do it. Yeah.

To. Yeah. To actually work with that material.

Real. Yeah.

I. I watched my entire friend group completely dissolve. The man that's with you today, the father that's with you today, is a completely different human being than he was in 2017, 2018. Literally. I speak to no one from that time. Not one. Because that environment, that echo chamber and. And I know you talk to some aspects in liberated Love about this. The environment that I was living in was actually feeding the part of myself that was keeping me stuck. And so I had to literally move to Sedona, be with Carrie, climb to the top of Cathedral Rock, give her a hug, know it felt familiar, knew that it probably was going to be the mother of my children. And all this happened really fast. And what happened was, is when I left it all behind and I mean I literally and figuratively cut possession, moved to Sedona, then we ended up moving to Hawaii, San Diego in the middle of pandemic, and then finally landed in Austin. Throughout that process, it was just constant shedding. You know, Mark, I remember we were on the phone years ago and you were like, you know, when Kylie and I split, I was sitting by a river and I literally felt my mind and my psyche start to unravel, start to just completely dissolve in certain ways. And that's, I think, a shared journey for me and my own unique way of like for the single people and where I was in 2017, 2018. I wanted something so badly and that was real relationship, but I had no idea how to get there. I actually. My first step was changing where I lived and changing my environment, but not just because I wasn't running away from something. This is the come from is really important. I was actually going towards what I thought in my best intuitive faculty was the most peaceful path path was the most loving path. And that's a really big part of your work. Mark, you talked about it earlier where it's like all these things that are happening inside of us where we feel like we're wrong. We're actually not wrong. It's just the protector bringing up our stuff, what's right with us. What was right with me at that time is that I had a heart of gold. I still feel my heart right now in the same way. But my heart was clouded by pornography addiction, unconscious sex with women. So many things that were literally shunting is to refract on many of the things you and I have talked about. Kylie. I was being Shunted by just my own unconscious incompetence. I just didn't know what I didn't know. And then it was me just pulling the trigger and going on the journey and actually committing to going on the journey that made the whole difference. And along the way, being humbled more and more and more. And the very last thing I'll say before I flip it back to you guys is this. I had this prayer that Paul Check gave me at that time, and it was. It's so beautiful. And he said, you know, when you close your eyes and you think about what it is that your soul and your heart is really wanting for you, can you just say, God, what is it that I most need to learn and how can I be most humble to learn it? And I would say that prayer all the time, like, what is it that I most need to learn and how can I be most humble to learn it? And it, like, I'm actually feeling like tears of happiness because in the past, it was. I just had no idea what that was. I had no idea how to connect with spirit. I had no idea. And I mean, we're talking five years ago, six years ago. And it was really just that prayer and seeking mentorship that allowed me as a single man, Kylie, to transcend that environment and to start to humbly work towards a path of being with Keri Michelle. And I wonder if you find this for both of you guys. Do people come with that humility? Because when they don't come with that humility, it's almost like the path won't unfold.

Well, yeah, it's almost like the universe is going to deliver them the humility. You know, that's because there is no coming to change without coming to truth. Like, you can't change if you don't acknowledge your circumstances in your way of being because you can't change something you don't accept as true. Right? Like, if I know I can be defensive, but I don't want to touch that I'm defensive about my defensiveness, then I can't change it because I can't then be with the part of me that needs defensiveness to protect from something, thing or some, you know, someone. What do you think? I feel like you're holding on to a sentence.

Well, I just love the. The doorway of humility. I think there's just. It provides such a fertile ground for. For growth, for new, for different direction, for softness and tenderness and grace, for self. I think personally, I think humility is like the super pathway to all of that.

It.

On this planet at this time.

It's openness.

It's openness.

Humility is openness.

And first of all, I just want to acknowledge you for. For listening, you know, and for providing a template and a pathway for. For others. Because what you did there, you're like, this isn't working. And so I'm going to completely listen and tune into what. What I have access to and follow that. Like, oh, like, that's so much courage to just be like, all right, goodbye, Goodbye, previous world. Goodbye, previous self. Like. And that's you taking strategy. You're saying yes to the initiation to become. You're saying yes to life, you're saying yes to love, you're saying yes to your heart. You're saying yes to all of these qualities, you know, deep within. And you're saying no to any environment, any friend group, or any behavior that is not in service to that deeper knowing. And I'm just like. Like deep boughs. That is the work.

Yeah.

And so you actually got up and left, which I think is great. It's a great option. I've done something similar where I'm like, I'm just gonna move towards something else and that'll look of different ways for all of us. But in the book, the. The creating of the conscious container or sacred pause is very much. The quality of what you're describing is like, yeah, how can we move towards what's a yes? By saying no to what is actually clouding us in our ability to make.

I'm. I'm literally just getting this one piece right now. Your 1.0 was Mark, you coming in with all your bags all neatly packed with your stuff. Kylie coming in and I believe. You know, I didn't know this. I actually forgot both going through a process of either separation from engagement and. Or divorce. So that's at play. And then nervous system works at play. There's a lot in the suitcases, y'.

All.

There's a lot of stuff in there. So when you show up, there's some it factor. There's something else here, right? And. And maybe it's what love actually wants, to keep two people together. It kind of. It kind of goes with my other question of. Of standing at the river. And Mark, you said, knowing yourself is the beginning path to figure out which side you're going to be on. And I wonder for y', all, like, when. When people go into this work, because it is, I believe, a lifetime journey. Like, I'm 43, about to be 44. I feel like I'M just cracking, like the initial codes. Like, there's so much more work to do and that's fine. I wonder when people begin the process and when they start to go through the book and when they start to actually understand and start to embody, like, truly have this live in their body of this liberation of self. What are the common pitfalls that come up or what are the things that come up for most people? I know I'm reductionizing. I know I'm blanket statementing, but I'm sure you see this in both your social medias and mark your work and Kylie, you know, all the speaking that you do. There's got to be some common, common threads with people where they want the liberation, but there's something inside of them blocking it. What is that?

A lot I. For me, I would say like the biggest blind spot in my own personal journey. But in a lot of the work with the women is, is it hasn't been modeled. Like, there is no template for a woman who's embodied in connection with her instinct, her intuition, her anger, etc. Like, that is a new template that's kind of being birthed into the collective field right now. So I think the pitfall is, is not knowing what the wall is, not knowing what the invisible barriers are that we're having to navigate culturally and intergenerationally. That's where I think a lot of us might be stuck right now. Personally, what do you think is like, we're running into survival programming that is like, stay right here. Don't.

That's been encoded. That's been encoded in our nervous system from our lineage.

Correct.

So and it's normal, like.

And it's quote, unquote normal in our.

Sure.

So it's like being culturally validated. It's also somatically validated in terms of this is where you should stay. Like, the invisible parameter.

Well, it has so many layers because you have one how you were in a family and what you learned to adapt and survive. So you have the mask you wear in your family. Then you have cultural norms, which are behaviors that the culture adopts as quote, unquote normal. Like right now, a cultural norm is don't question things. So then if you challenge the norm, you're seen as the black sheep. And what does culture do? What do groups of tribes do? They ostracize the person who's challenging and shifting the system. What does the family system do? When one person orients to change, to point at the truth that no one wants to look at, it actually tries to amplify the way the system actually already works, to try to drown out and get the person who's changing back into the role. What happens in a relationship when one person changes the dance? The other person usually unconsciously protests and tries to get back into the old pattern. We have to build the capacity to hold change, the capacity to hold difference. The way to do that, we could talk about the sort of logistical way, which is of course, keep using your voice, keep speaking up, keep setting boundaries, keep practicing. Because language is such a gateway to the nervous system. System. I can use a word that can completely shift someone. But also if on an unconscious level I don't know how to be regulated, then no matter what word I use, even if it's dressed up in the best good vibes only, it's going to disrupt the other person. So then what we're really talking about is do we have the nervous system capacity for change to hold difference? That requires one. I, I firmly believe that you need to have other people around you who actually are aligned with your values and what you want to create. Because in a relationship, when we talk about a container, we're really talking about 1. Create agreements with yourself. If you're single. I don't even know. Obviously in a relationship you've got the sacred material. It's already there, present. We could probably figure it's pretty obvious what the material is if you're single. What an opportunity. I remember reading the book Wait, but why? Or sorry, the website Wait, but why? Which he makes everything understandable for a five year old. It's so good, good. And the other one about like, is someone in a. I'm sad, I'm single, everyone is in a relationship and I'm not. And he's like, actually being in a relationship, being single is such a better step because if you're in an unhappy relationship, you need to change it. And then it needs to change. If you're single, you just enter a relationship and start developing it. And so I think if you're single, what an opportunity to create transformation and, and, and play with dating. And really when we're saying container, we're saying agreements. And the last thing I'll say is that in order to hold the capacity for change, you need anchors. You need people who are like, you're standing for something actually that really matters. And we're standing beside you. We're not going to let you go into this new world of boundaries on your own or this new world of vocalization. And so that is in the book we Talk about it being internally. Like having the resources to know how to regulate yourself or to know when you're dysregulated and then reach out to external resources that allow you again, to hold difference. I mean, at the end of the day, it's like we. I know there's a lot of fun poked at things like cold plunging being like the bro activity, which. Cool, bro. I like it. But the reason it's so powerful is because your body is literally saying you're gonna die, but you're not going to. And so you just start to create space between the somatic experience, observing it and then responding from it instead of reacting from it. What do you think.

What you're speaking to is the state. The state and story piece of creating more space between the states we're in and the stories we tell ourselves and being able to decouple that by entering into a space of regulation so that we can shift the story so that we can shift the way we show up in the world, which is what allows us to have conscious choice, which is what we're after.

The keyword is conscious here. There's so many things unconscious. One of the biggest parts of the book that we haven't touched on. So we cannot leave until we talk about this part. It's codependency. You've touched on it. But I want to go into this because to be codependent doesn't just mean you're being codependent with an intimate partner. It also means you're being codependent with. With everyone you interact with. I mean, it's blasting out of the system at all times. There's this key differentiation that I was milling on this morning, and it's like, okay, if the opposite of codependency is authentic co creation from this full body truth point Kylie, that you talk about, then really what we're saying here is it's a shared reality of commitment to bring out the best in my partner or the people I interact with and bring out the best in myself and do it in an imperfectly perfect way. So it seems like they're opposed, but actually one is feeding the other. Because if we know the potential of co creation and we feel it, and we know it's possible. Right? We all know it's possible. What is it that is so alluring? Like, what is the serpent's tail that wraps around our ankle and pulls us to the bottom of the ocean to the codependent rock that keeps us stuck? What exactly is that?

You know, I feel like a broken record, but it really does root back into the nervous system of safety. Because our definition of codependency, of how we orient it around it in the book is codependency is any relational dynamic where we source safety outside of ourselves from someone or something at the expense. And that's the key word, Josh. At the expense of our wholeness, our sense of self and our core needs. Because in the coded codependent dynamic, our true. No one's true needs are actually being met. No one's truly being seen. No one's truly being heard, understood and loved for who they truly are. We're kind of playing out our survival strategies in self protection mode and doing what we learned how to do in order to survive our earlier family system dynamics. And we're just repeating that in our adult dynamics now. And so, you know, what is the rock? The rock is we don't have this felt sense of safety or self or felt sense of self trust that I can actually bring all of who I am, them to myself and also into relational dynamics because based off of previous dynamics, I learned that I needed to shut this part down, Shut that part down. And you know what? Like, this is such a tender journey. As I sit here and talk about it is like many of us, this, this question in, in and of itself of who am I? Is initiatory in nature. Like, who am I? What do I really value? What do I really need? And, and what do I really care about out. And so I think that is a, as a, as a starting point out of codependency is reorienting to our own true north. And we've talked about that in various ways in this book. But being able to have this felt sense of safety of like, I know Josh, this is what makes me free in my relationship with Mark. I know no matter what happens in the world around me or in my relationship that I'm okay. And I don't just know that intellectually. I know that in my bones, in myself. Not only because I know that I can trust myself, but I have people in my world that I can lean back on. I have sisterhood, I have community. I have healthy relationships with my family. I also have my own, you know, financial foundation where I can, I know how to resource in that way. So I am not dependent on Mark financially, yes, right now because of where we're at. I am. But I'm choosing that. That's the difference. It's a choice.

And the power dynamic is explicit.

It's explicit. We know that. That's part of Our dynamic right now, and it's not being exploited, which makes their choice on both sides. And I think that's the beautiful part about liberated relationship is like, there can be these dynamics, but when we actually bring voice to it, we're free. We're choosing it, we're naming it.

Wow.

Okay. So, Mark, would you say it in this way? I'm curious how you might explain this. So if liberation is this commitment to sourcing from self instead of outside of self, then really, aren't we talking about being okay with processing fear and having the skill set to process fear when fear enters that human experience? Because really, fear has complexity, right? There's different faces of fear. It energetically blocks love from expressing in lots of ways. So what exactly I'm saying, and what I'm curious for you to expand on is like, is it really at the core of it all, just fear? Fear that we're going to be abandoned, hurt, unloved, that we're going to be abused, that we're going to be neglected, that we're going to not be accepted? I mean, at the bottom of it all, like, what are we actually talking about here? When fear enters the space, when really false evidence is appearing real, it does feel real. Real. It feels very real for us.

When someone says something like, let's say, for example, I'm afraid of commitment. You're really not afraid of commitment. You're afraid of what commitment leads to. You're afraid of. You don't trust yourself in the face of commitment. But even if I'm a I, I don't trust somebody. It's because we don't trust ourselves in relationship to somebody, right? Like, can I still, as Kylie's talking about, have access to real, true choice. Because if I'm entering that fear, that below is like, I lose myself. I don't have access to my voice. I let them decide everything. I have to feel broken to be with them. Even in the relationship to things like abuse, it's like, I don't trust that I have access to my. No. And so we have to go beyond what the fear is, the fear of what's going to occur. We have to build the skill set that would be necessary to confront that fear. That's why the things that are left unexcavated because we're ashamed of them or whatever they are, and they're put in this little box or big box. We have to open the box up, sometimes with guidance, sometimes with support, because we need to learn from the experience. And I know this, this type of subject often brings up, like, you know, that shift of something happens to you versus something happens for you. And when we enter the space of something happens for you, the response is often, well, that is saying that an abuser happened for me here we can hold space. That victimization is obviously a very real thing. And we're not going to say, like, that happened for you. Yay. We're saying that you can't change the past, at least not in the model of the time machines that currently exist. And since you cannot change the past, you can change what the past best means for who you are today. You could take the material from the experience. So to be liberated is to. To be able to go into those things without fear of being lost in them anymore. You know, it's being able to be with that. I'm afraid you might betray me because the last time we had this conversation or we were in relationship, you did. I'm afraid you might do this. I'm afraid I don't trust myself to stand up for myself. What beautiful truths to bring forward to a relationship, you know? Wow.

Okay. So one of the things in the book, I actually wrote this down, and it hits on exactly what you said. For a new relationship, one that feels different, lighter, and exciting, demands that we develop the skills and abilities of someone who was already in that type of relationship. I wonder for people that have had traumatic experiences, right? Like. Like the true capital T's. And I loved how you said, like, we're not, you know, pacifying that. We're not making that small. Like, those things are real at the end of the day, if we do truly, authentically desire something new, if we want a liberated love, if we want to feel like we have agency, where we're free to leave at any time, no one's here as a slave, right? Then when these pieces come up inside of us because I or we think it's about the other person, but it's actually what I'm experiencing in myself, then the skill set that's being built there is actually emotional resilience, actually emotional adaptability. And that adaptability and resilience is something that it just honestly takes time. And I wonder, from looking back on your timeline, was there a piece of you, Marc, that you can look back on with fondness and be like, wow, he really used to be deep in a program. He really used to act in a way that was projecting towards Kylie. He really was. And not to shame or blame him him, but, like, was there a part of you in the past that you can look back on in 1.0 before the sacred pause, and now that's in 2.0. Looking back that you could share that might ease the suffering of a man that's potentially behaving in that way.

Well, I could look back prior to Kylie and I can see a version of me in my early 20s that I had to come to, I had to bring out of the box and find love for. And that was the frosted tip, puka shell necklace, womanizing, younger version of me that I did.

You had puka shells?

Yeah. Poop shell necklace.

You didn't have one of those Justin Timberlake? I might have, actually. You forgot it was early 2000s. I probably did.

And not have.

I probably did, yeah.

Did you have frosted tits?

I probably. I think, yes. When I was 20, I dyed my hair frosty. I look like a. I look like one of those frosted mini wheats. Okay. But I digress. Go ahead.

Yeah. That I had to come back to just, like, appreciating and loving that version of myself for what I learned. What. How I. What I do when I'm in pain, when I feel rejected, you know, and with kylie and relationship 1.0. Yeah. The. The wound that I was carrying the whole time was, you don't choose me fully. Like, that was a hundred percent. It was operate. It wasn't there at the beginning because I kept having conversations about, you know, what I desired, what I wanted. But as soon as she expressed that and we talked about it in the book, that she had this dream that she might have to leave, that left unresolved, was always operating in the background. So here I had learned somewhere in my life, early childhood, almost always, that it was okay. That was okay. That, like, it was okay to leave myself in relational circumstances where I don't feel fully chosen. Chosen. And that made me really sad when I finally came to the awareness that I could talk all I wanted about my desires and what my deal breakers were, but if I wasn't honoring them, they're just suggestions. And it was a deal breaker and me not being willing to shift on it, that ultimately brought everything to a head. And it was my commitment to what I wanted to create and the fact that I wanted to have children. And I knew that there would be a movie called Old Dads made one day and I would be in it. I was like, I have. You know, there's a timeline and I want to do it and I want to do it now. So, yeah, that's where I finally chose myself. And I finally realized that in relationship to someone who couldn't choose me. I didn't choose me. I would actually collapse. And, you know, we talk about building this level of agency in the book, where it's like, if you can't trust your choices around men or women in the context of anything, then your yes is not a true yes. It's not. It comes with small print. If you don't have access to your no, your yes is not authentic. And that's not to shame anybody, of course, because she. I know that yes. Well, it comes with autoimmune, it comes with stomach pain, it comes with anxiety, it comes with depression. Because when we're faced with what is not a full yes and we say yes, we're just putting ourselves in wounding circumstances.

On your arm. I've always wanted to ask you this, by the way. I think this is our fourth pod together, maybe even fifth. And, Kylie, I'm so grateful that you joined us today. It's our first. Like, I. You have a heart tattooed on your arm. An actual physical, like, aorta with the ventricles and what? So if y' all are watching on Spotify or YouTube, like, Mark's throwing it up. I've always wanted to ask you, man, it's a heart and a brain. So what. What does that mean to you? And when you got it, has it changed? Has the meaning changed?

No. But I gotta laugh that when I first got it, one of my buddies was like, did you get a scrotum put on your arm? I was like, you. No. You know, what it. It meant for me is like, I always wanted the actual. Just the heart, the anatomical heart. I used to work in. In cardiology as a rep, and I just always love the human heart. I found it so fascinating, and I started to see that. That a brain and a heart can't operate independently. Like, if you're too in your head, you're not following trust and body and. And heart and openness. And if you're two in your heart, you're not protecting and curating what you allow into that. And so it was this real. I liked that it was this anatomical 3D expression of what was very much, much a metaphor too, for just how we operate. And it became my logo and it became kind of everything.

Does it still feel the same?

Yeah. Yeah, it does. I feel like the. Now my work is shifting, but as you can see, the logo's even up on the little light in the background. Yeah, it does. I think it feels more. It's beyond relationship now, you know, now it's like, oh, this is everything. This is everything. How do we bring these back into coherence? Like, you think of heart rate variability is really that polyvagal theory is that, you know, so it's like how everything is absent, you know, actually what has changed. Thanks for this question, because it's a good one. Is that this now involves the nervous system. I need to create a branch of neurons that run down.

You know, I also just want to speak to something on that because I'm. This is like, really loud in my consciousness right now. Is this, like, fear piece of, like, really being okay no matter what and have how that impacts our ability to show up and not be hooked into by external, you know, forces, narratives, etc. Like, you know, when you. When they hook into that fear of death or fear of abandonment, it is so easily, like, we so easily just get swayed. And so for me, like, really coming back to the body and being able to tend to the parts that are afraid. I'd say that there's been such a should. And I'd be curious to hear, Josh, from you. And you, babe, is like, my connection to the earth and like my feet on the ground and my connection to the earth and all of the elemental beings and also soul and spirit is so strong that it's very hard to penetrate my field with all of the narratives and all the distortions out there, like, to throw me off my center now, not only because I have the skills to be able to. To, you know, energetically, spiritually protect myself, but also, like, I am so rooted into this ground, into this body, that. And I have access to such a. What feels like such a. A deep connection to soul and spirit that it's. It almost feels like a force field. Josh, like, when you're talking about fear and it's like, oh, it's so interesting. I used to relate to that word so differently where fear. I would just be like, all over the place, my nervous system dysregulated and just operating off of automated historical scripts and stories. But through this process of individuation and coming back to center, it's like, oh, no, no, no. Yeah, fear will show up, but it's. It's not pulling me out of my center anymore, if that makes sense.

Profoundly put. We. We. You know, we hear these things, these platitudes, right? And I feel like, Mark, you and I have talked about this before, like, Michael Pollan's work, where he's like, you know, he was speaking at a church here once in Austin, and he's said, well, we see these memes that say, love is all there is. Why don't we believe it? It's because the truth hides in plain sight. So somebody heard you, Kylie. And they were like, yes. Like, their. Their body was. And their mind was like, yeah, she's right. But then why aren't we doing it? And that's another piece of the work of liberation. Like, we can hear a truth, but we might have to hear it 75 times. And on the 76th time, it finally. It's like, oh, yeah, I've heard that 75 times now. So hopefully. Thankfully, my prayer is that somebody heard you say that, and they really let it seep in, you know, on the Earth front. This is the last question I wanted to ask you. Well, actually, two more. The bird on the book, the blue bird with the wings open. You know, the Earth concept. Like, who chose that? I'm guessing it was Kylie, but maybe it was both of y'. All. I mean, y' all had to both sign off on it. So what's the meaning of the bird with the wings stretched? And why the color blue? Blue. What. What is all that for you?

I'd like to say that we created the bird, but it was suggested to us. Like, the publisher came back with the bird and the. That was, I think, the first cover, wasn't it, that they offer?

They offered us two covers, and this was the one that, like, I think the soul of the book really was. Was inching towards more than just, like, you know, really beautiful cover. The other one was, too, but it just felt like, soulless. I don't know. I'm always reminded of, like, the cage, right? The bird in the cage. And it doesn't realize it's in the cage. And then all of a sudden, it realizes it's in the cage, and it's like, hey, it's safe to come out of the cage. This book is like that. Like, hey, it's safe to come out of the cage of what's been familiar, what's been quote, unquote, normal. What's been. And it's time to spread the wings. It's time to. Yeah. Return to flight. And in new ways. We don't realize we're in the cage, you know, And I'm sure I'm still in a cage somewhere. You know, I'm not fully liberated. I don't know. I don't think so. But in this moment, I'm like, feel the edges of it. So I'm like, I can fly a little bit more, but this. Yeah. This book the bird specifically just feels like a beautiful metaphor to.

Yeah.

Open and fly again. Actually, the first words I heard from spirit in my reconnection process was just fly. And I was just like, no, at that point, I was married. I was like, shut that down fast. Like, it is not time to fly, baby. It's time to sink in. But it's like, no, it is time to fly.

Fly.

Just fly. Just trust. Just trust. And this is where that. That, yeah, this piece feels so important, is like, trust yourself. Trust yourself. Trust yourself.

Trust the calling. Trust the messages. Trust the. You know, and. And I think so much part of healing codependency is this desire to know. Step five, step seven, step eight. But it's like that I need to know I'm going to be safe. And really, the path. And we could say universe, God, God. But it's like, you actually need to know from yourself that you're safe. Like. And that's what the path provides in this book cover. Yeah. You know, you think of a bird flying, you always think of freedom. You know, I think that's, you know, what a lot of dreams people have. Like, I'd like to fly like a bird.

Thank you, guys. Thanks for being here. We're at the cul de sac of the interview. So before we go home. Before we go home, I mean, that's a great place to look live, right? Cul de sac, where there's just, like, peace at the end of it. That's my dream. We're actually. We're buying a house this year. So I'm like, okay, let's find something in the cul de sac. Let's find something private where there's, like, an energy space that just feels so safe and secure. The safety and security, the codependency. We explored so many different streets here. Like in this cul de sac, where there's peace, where there's liberation. Where does wellness fit in? You know, Mark, I've asked you this four different times, and we'll just go back and forth. I'll start with Kylie. Kylie, if you had to speak wisdom to what wellness actually is for you, what is your definition? What is your expression of wellness? What does wellness mean to you? To be well.

Oh, to be well is to be vital, to be fertile, to be abundant. And for me, and how that kind of lands in my body and being is. Is there's coherency. Like, there is congruency in my body and being, and that looks so many different ways. If you would have asked me that question five years ago, I would have probably said. Said, you know, even just a year ago, I would have said a different answer. But wellness is. Is honoring life and whatever that looks like to you. And for me, honoring my life at this time is. Is honoring. Yeah, my physical body. And, you know, I'd say that that's probably one of the most primary pieces of how wellness shows up in my life today is because I need to nourish this body and provide it with the nourishment and nutrients it needs in order to thrive. I think that is, you know, it's simple. It sounds so simple, but it really does feel like such a way to take care of and nourish life is by honoring your own mammalian body and your nutrient needs. And so you can function well. Like, without nourishment, you're not really functioning at your optimum. So that's a roundabout way, but it's like the base needs of. I'm meeting my base needs well so that everything else in my life can function well.

Well, I mean, just because it's simple doesn't mean it's easy.

Right?

So you can, you know, you can put out these simple concepts. You already shared something about nature that somebody heard the 76th time. Like, sometimes we just need to hear something over and over again. So, Mark, you know, take us home, because I remember you answered this, and we actually put your answer one year in a. In a highlight reel. I'll link it in the show notes for this episode. And you and Kelly Brogan and a few other people were in there just describing what they thought wellness was. Was. I'm curious how you feel about wellness now as a father, you know, and where you've been with the sacred pause and being now in 2.0 and having your stuff come up and being authentically you, you know, being authentically. Mark, how do you feel wellness has shifted for you? And essentially, how do you describe wellness now? What does it mean to you to be?

Well, it makes me think of a quote from Ram Dass where he says that, I hope I live with the integrity that the truths that live within me are the same same as the truths that live outside of me. And when that is not true, the message I send is one of both love and fear. And I think that true wellness is the constant alignment of that, because I don't. You know, I think integrity, being 100 in integrity is not possible because you're always learning more. And so it's really. The pursuit to be an integrity is to be in the pursuit of mastery, the pursuit Root, if not perfection. But, you know, as Maya Angelou said, when you know better, do better. And I think for me, wellness now, and I see the correlation to physiology and inflammation. You know, you think of the studies of psychoneuroimmunology, it's like to truly be well is to be aligned and expressed, to feel safe and loved by the people in your life, not free of disagreement, but free of the safety to disagree or sorry, with the safety to disagree. That, to me, is like to be in community that celebrates difference and openness and truth. And for the individual, to truly be well is to be in an honest relationship with yourself.

Thank you all for being here. I know you're doing a lot of talking for the tour, but this was really special for me. I didn't share it. I'll share it quickly. So Carrie and I went through 1.0 pause, and now we're working on the 2.0. And what I want to give is just grace, you know, just grace to everyone. Because there's going to be some times where it feels like you're back in 1.0. Things will come up. And, you know, that's okay, because the thing that blocks that is really just shame. Or maybe, maybe, Mark, as you have shared with me before, the inability to feel that shame, the blocking of what's actually real, what's actually there. So I just want to offer everyone grace. As you navigate this entire podcast. Maybe it's the third time you're listening to it. Please share this with somebody that is struggling, that is seeking liberation like you. You wouldn't be here unless you were seeking it. That's why you're here. So thank you, Kylie and Mark, from my heart to yours for being on the pod. So, so good. So much richness in our conversation and just super grateful for y'. All.

I appreciate you, brother. Thanks for having me back on us.

On such an honor. Yeah, I feel like we could riff for. For a long. A long more time.

We could definitely riff. And I'll make sure I send you some of these links for, you know, the. The birth process and what's happening with feminine energy and women. Because look on the screen right now, as we say goodbye, my business logo, there's an upside down triangle, which means water. So that is my declaration to the world that I am in the humble process of understanding what feminine energy is inside of me and what feminine energy is inside of my partner, Carrie. That triggers me at times. Right. That's my commitment. I'm just declaring that here publicly again. So until all of us see you again. We're all three of us wishing you love and wellness. We'll talk to you soon.