Zen Wisdom: The Wound Is Where You Serve From | John Wineland

The wound is where you serve from. You integrate your wound and it allows you to be a better leader.

I do feel that that's true. And I do feel that leaning into the loss and grief of Claire has been really helpful for me as a teacher to learn, you know, how to share from there and be able to access my heart from there. I'd been in a couple of relationships that didn't work out, and I think a lot of that was mainly because I was still grieving Claire or choosing things from a confused place. Like, I'm so blessed at the spectru of life that I've been able to live. I've experienced the most gut wrenching pain and the most, you know, ecstatic bliss that, that a human can experience. This is something that I think a lot of men's work misses, right. Is that the masculine is not in experience. It's not just fucking pounding your chest and warrior ing up unless you are able to stay connected to that which is never changing. The you before you were born. Right. That you is going to be the same you when you die. And this is where Buddhism comes in. Right. Because the capacity to really stay in that deep tether to that which never changes while fully experiencing everything changing all the time right now is a true masculine embodiment. Men want to love their partners really well. And then I think what happens is they get confused because the things that they thought worked aren't working.

John, the last time we talked, it was during 2020. Oh, right, in the insanity.

Yeah.

And I was living in a totally different place. You've come to Austin, you spend half your time in Sedona, half your time in Austin. Yeah. What energetically, like what was palpable to draw you out here to Austin?

Yeah. Well, whenever I've been in a transitional period throughout my life, I've always sort of built my life around men's groups. You know, I did this when I was 30 and my daughter was young and, and sick and I was in New York as a graduate student and, you know, there's a men's group in la and I literally moved back to LA and to be with this men's group. And then I guess when Claire was, I don't know, 12 or something and really fake, you know, up against it and started a new business. I was starting to train in what I do now. And so I built a men's group there and that became. Those guys became, you know, like my brothers for eight years, you know, Tail, Ferro, Rich, Litvin, those guys. So I'VE always kind of like, relied on men's groups, like having a really strong group of men and the opportunity to create one here came up. You know, I'm in a group with Stefanos and. And Preston and a few other guys. Adrian and Brian Reeves and, you know, a bunch of really good guys.

Yeah. Yeah.

And Luke's story's in it. And so I was like, I'm just gonna, like, I. I want to, like, be in a community of men. And in la, most of that had dissipated. All of our. All of my guys had sort of split. So I was like, you know, at every time that I felt transitional in my life and LA has just sort of felt done. You know, Claire's gone, and.

Yeah.

You know, I don't have a romantic partner there. It was like, you know, there's just nothing there for me to keep me there. My family had moved out, and I was like, all right, I'm gonna. I'm gonna just stay with this formula because it's worked my entire life.

Yeah.

And so I came here really with that intention. And, you know, so I got here two weeks later. We put together a group. We meet twice a month. And, you know, that's. And I'm just sort of dropping into the beauty of having a, you know, a personal men's group that. That I can just, you know, be in and be myself and not have to lead, you know.

Yes. So I assume because you lead so many people. Yeah. The nourishment. One of the ingredients for the masculine you talk about in the book is you just receiving instead of you always leading for your nervous system. That's got to be, like, the most healing thing for you to actually be held.

Yeah, for sure. For sure. And it's just good for me to be in that space of just being humble and being able to ask for help and being able to go like, fuck. I don't know exactly what I'm doing right now, even though in my work I have a very clear vision and I feel. But in my personal life, it's been one of those things since my daughter died where I haven't, you know, the last four years. I haven't quite figured out exactly what life without her should be like, you know, and it's a hard thing to. I don't talk about it much, so we're just jumping into it here. But, yeah, it's just been, you know, it's. It's. Grief is a weird thing, and, you know, losing your only child is a deep thing. And. And I haven't quite figured out, like, what my life is supposed to be like outside of work, you know, which again, I love, but it's not.

Yeah.

You know, it's not. It. You know, it's not everything for me. Yeah.

I totally feel like I'm a dad. Yeah. We're pregnant again. Car's pregnant. And so our second babe's coming in April. And. And I cannot even. I. It would be a disservice and an injustice to you if I pretended to know what that feels like, because I don't.

Yeah.

So the only thing I can offer, all of us can offer for someone that's gone through that is reverence. Like, true reverence.

Thank you.

And so I feel to the bottom of that. And it. And it. It's.

It's.

I didn't know we were going to go here, but, like, I remember two, two and a half years ago, I had done some preparation for our 2020 interview, and I remembered, I'm going to paraphrase, you had said something like, the wound is where you serve from. You integrate your wound and it allows you to be a better leader. Otherwise, God's spirit, higher intelligence would not have given you the contrast of that pain. Something like that. You needed, like, the depth of the pain to really understand what the other side of the light feels like. Do you remember saying that? Does that still feel?

I definitely.

Yeah, that still feels true.

And I can't remember exactly how. I can barely remember last week, but last podcast. But, but, but, yeah, that. I do feel that that's true. And I do feel that, you know, leaning into this, Leaning into the loss and grief of Claire has been really helpful for me as a teacher. Right. To learn, you know, how to share from there and be able to access my heart from there, you know, rather than try to teach over it. Right.

Yeah.

You know, yeah. And. But at the same time, this. This is sort of. This is sort of a different thing. It's like, you know, as a parent, you'll spend the next 20 some odd years you have, you know, newborn and, you know, and. And another one coming. Right. Your first baby's two years old.

One year old, almost. Yeah. 19 months.

Yeah. Okay. So it's just like you'll spend the next 20 some odd years, and then there's this whole life after, you know, they leave the nest kind of thing. And even though I knew Claire was dying, like, I always. I just always. I never thought that the transition would be this destabilizing in a certain way. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like Just this confusing. Like, wow. You know, so, so really, to answer your, to go back to your first question, one of the reasons why I came here was just, I just needed a fresh start. You know, I needed to, to rethink. You know, I, I'd, I'd been in a couple of relationships that didn't work out. And I think a lot of that was mainly because I was, I was still grieving Claire or choosing things from a confused place and not able to really be, you know, so I've just kind of just needed to reset. Just needed to reset. And Austin had a bunch of friends and a bunch of community. And my daughter was actually born here. Claire was actually born here in Austin 25 years ago.

What a cool homage to her to be here. Yeah, it was a trip.

I was driving Breckenridge and I was like, I had this feeling of like, whoa. Like, Claire was born here. Our journey started here. It's a long winded answer. Just a lot of personal reflection and going into, going into, like to find answers. Find. Okay, let's see how I can put this.

Yeah.

Finding where I belong as a human. Not necessarily as a teacher in the world.

Yeah.

Because I feel good about that. I know my space there. But just like as a human, as another human, where do I belong?

Yeah. You know, it's like that's just one facet of yourself. You, the teacher. Like, you're also a man.

Yeah.

A brother, a student.

I need, you know, I need things. Thank you.

Yeah.

You know, and yeah. Yeah, I mean, I need community. I need to belong. I need, you know, just, I need a, I need a, I need space just like everybody else does, you know.

John, it's just, I feel like in looking way back for you, like 30 years of Buddhist practice, plus 10 years with data, multiple decades of like the deepest possible work. Not having the father figure when you grew up. My dad did the best he could, but he fell short. And I think a lot of men fall short. And it's not a judgment against them, it's just more like they didn't have the consciousness to show up fully with the level of awareness they were at. So with all these ingredients, do you ever take a 30,000 foot look and float above your timeline and look back and go, wow, God really gave me the contrast to be able to serve, really the most expansive canon of love and light and awareness around masculine, feminine relationships because of the contrast that you experienced in your life and maybe still do. Like we all do.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, I, I, I haven't thought about it as contrast, although it is, right, for sure. What I've, what I've, what I've done recently is to just take like, take stock, like, really be like, I'm so blessed at the, at the spectrum of life that I've been able to live. Like, I can say very clearly, like, I've experienced the most gut wrenching pain and the most, you know, ecstatic bliss that, that a human can experience. Right. You know, and, and I'm just grateful that I've been given such a varied, such a wide swath of life experience, including not having, you know, my grandfathers died when I was quite young, my father kind of bailed and so. Yeah, and I do feel blessed that, you know, my, that somehow it worked out that I ended up how I, I mean, think about it, you know, when I was here in Austin, I was studying art. I was studying to be a curator when Claire was born. I have no fucking idea how I got from there. Here. None. Yeah, no, I, like, how did. I didn't even know what I do now for a living. Existed. Right, right. And this was 25 years ago. So, so it's just so, it's so mystic, man. It's so beautifully mystic that you know where we end up and how we end up. And, and, and I guess, you know, for any of your listeners, you know, that are, you know, starting their journeys of what they want to give in the world, like, you really have no idea, like how things are going to play out. Yeah, I had no idea.

You have to adapt to whatever the tide is pushing you towards. You might have this concrete shoreline as a man where you're like, I know exactly where I'm going, I know exactly what I'm doing. But then life, mystery comes in and just fucks up that whole plan. Yeah, so it's the adaptability is what I heard from you. Like, like being an adaptable man means that you have an understanding of all the intric of yourself. And if you don't, then I think nature and the tide will continue to crash against your razor edge and humble the out of you.

Well, certainly I've been humbled. Right. But, but you know, in all kinds of ways. But the thing that I, looking back now and this goes to the piece about men's group is, is, is the one constant has been structure, structure of practice, the structure of a men's group, the structure of a student teacher relationship. Like I've, I've really, I've really, like the in between has been, you know, kind of Interesting and, and fluttery as fuck. You know what I mean? Like, who knows? You know, the human condition is very sensitive. But, but I've, I've always maintained the structure of having a teacher. Like, always having a teacher, always being a student, having multiple teachers, you know, so I've, I've been, I've been with teachers for many, many years. You know, David and I aren't really in that relationship anymore. But, but, but I was with him for a long time. I was with a men's group for a long time. And so I think this, the thing that really held, that really was the missing ingredient. And I say this in the book, right? Is the men's group.

Yeah.

The structure of, of like, of being a student. And I hope that I'm a student for the rest of my life, you know, because everything else, there's no way I could have predicted both the heartache and the amazing blessings that came, but I had something to hold me the whole way through.

Yeah.

You know, and that really called for me to be in integrity and depth and the whole thing.

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Well, I'll just, I'll, I'll give a little setup, which is that, you know, we all have a masculine and a feminine, right? We all have the part of us that feels, experiences, emotes, expresses. Right? That's, that's everybody's feminine, not just for women. Ye, you know, and, and we all have a masculine. That's the part of us that is grounded, still expansive consciousness. So you could just really think of the masculine and feminine in all of us as the, as these energetics, these natural energetics that all humans have. The new masculine paradigm is a, is an amplification. First an amplification and then an embodied amplification and then an integration of those two things so that the conscious, the conscious masculine is aware of the infinite space of unchanging consciousness, aware of the ground, but also fully sensitive to feel the space around them so that there's a perfect blend of sensitivity to make it real simple sensitivity and grounded consciousness. And when those two things are in balance and in an integration, then you have like a fully sensitive, intuitive, open hearted, loving human, man or woman or other, right? That is connect as tethered to something beyond experience. And this is something that I think a lot of men's work misses, right, is that the masculine is not in experience. It's not just pounding your chest and warrioring up and getting in a ring with somebody. You know, I mean, like that's one element of masculine training, of course, Warriorhood, and. And it's important one. But when you. Unless you are able to stay connected to that which is never changing, like there's a part of you that will never change. The you before you had a name, the you before you were born. Right. That you is going to be the same you when you die. Everything else has changed is changing right now.

Right.

So. So this capacity to. And this is where Buddhism comes in. Right. Because the capacity to really stay in that deep tether to that which never changes while fully, fully experiencing everything changing all the time right now is like a true masculine embodiment. And when we do that, when we're in that space, we feel more. We make better decisions. We're not acting from ego or habit. We're acting from sensitivity and depth. And it's a lifelong practice that I certainly haven't mastered. But it's what I believe is where men are wanting to head all of them that I work with for sure.

Well. And I assume, and I can feel that the reason why you're trustable and you've had the success you've had is because you actually share about where you are. You're honest about it. There's nothing, in my opinion, less trustable than a leader who's on the mountain and does not ever open the kimono to show the wounds. But then, of course, there's the dysregulated version of that, where the leader is just hyper sharing about their wounds. So it's like there's a middle point. I was feeling into what you're saying, the tether. Because remember back in school, we had the tetherball where we hit the ball. So the tether is. It almost feels like the string is the awareness and the consciousness that is connected to the pull and the concrete in the ground, which might be the soul. I haven't thought about this until now. Yeah. Is that kind of a visual for people?

Yeah. I mean, I think there's so many ways to describe it, you know, and.

Then life hits the ball for us and we have to, like, hang on. Right.

Yeah. I mean, I think there's another way to think about it is, you know, think of an astronaut tethered, you know, to a space station or to something floating out in space. Right. And it's. It's that there's something, you know, consciousness, however you want to define consciousness. Right. I consider it the infinite expanse of the field of awareness. Right. So you and I are having this experience of having a conversation, a great conversation. There's a. There's A field of awareness in you and me through which this whole experience is emerging. There would be no experience for us to have without the field of awareness. Right. There's behind it. Right. The witness behind the witness behind the, you know what I mean? And, and, and feeling that helps to deepen and ground, you know, our consciousness, our conversation, our relationships. And rather than this just be some kind of monkish practice, know guys go, you know, head out into the cave or go into nature, you know, whatever this is now something, you can take it out of the retreat and bring it into the moment and make it relational. So, you know, in a Vipassana retreat we'd go for 10 days and we'd practice this.

Yes.

You know what I mean?

Yes.

Now, so we take that, that tether to consciousness in the retreat and we attach, we, we add our feminine, we add feeling, we add sensitivity, we add our emotion, we add our hearts, we add our desires, we add all that stuff and both of them exist simultaneously. And that's where you get really deep, beautiful practice, whether it's sexual practice, whether it's, you know, holding your daughter, whether it's, you know what I mean, whatever it is. Yeah. So that's, that's the new masculine paradigm is how does that trans, how do we transmit that through the body? Right. Because masculinity, as I define in there, in my opinion, and this is just my opinion, other people can have different paradigms, but masculinity is the transmission of that, that is the embodied transmission of that. It's not winning, it's not, you know, it's not seducing the woman, it's not making the billion, it's not like any of the things that, you know, it's not stoicism, it's not riding a horse, it's the capacity to feel and to feel the depth of infinite space in this moment and the depth of experience in this moment and then transmit it through your eyes, through your breath, through your body, through your sex, through your heart. Right.

And those things you mentioned like the billionaire and you know, being stoked, maybe in the full, I guess you could say, color palette of being a man or also being a woman, you might touch those or experience those at times, but like to sit in that and to identify with being a billionaire or being a hard charging entrepreneur that never takes a break, full truth. John and I were supposed to interview already and I read a passage in his book about how the masculine sacrifices his health many times to have names taken in for productivity, in the name of productivity and It's a learning edge for me at 42 that I still bump up against, where I'll go really hard and then I'll come back. And so I visualize myself as the tether. Like I sometimes disconnect from myself in the name of getting shit done. Where do you think? And that's just my story that I'm working through. But I think a lot of men feel this way. And maybe the masculine, masculine inside of women too. You know, maybe that occurs inside of human beings where the hard charging is like the thing that we're going to sacrifice ourselves for. I see this a lot with Italian grandmothers, you know, that. Or Jewish mothers. Right. The guilt. Where does this come from? Looking at behavioral psychology and just, just 30,000ft above society, where is the emanation of this, the hard drive, hard driving, hard charging for productivity? What is that?

Yeah, well, I mean, ultimately it's all about love and you know what I mean? And, and if we get this, then we'll be loved, then we'll be adored, then we'll be right. I mean, ultimately, virtually every decision we make, even the ones we make to win, even the ones we make to be successful, even the ones we make to be, you know, to have a six pack, to, you know, to be the best football player, to be the best billionaire or the best, you know, oftentimes it's, it's, it's driven by an unconscious desire to be acknowledged, to be loved. Right. The toxic masculine, I would describe it as, is bent on winning. The toxic masculine is bent on winning. And you know, you could, you could take it all the way back to the papal, you know, the papal decrees of the 1500s, you know what I mean, where manifest destiny was born and we were, you know, go out and, you know, take over these lands, you know, in the name of God and, and, and, but, but the, the, the toxic masculine is really about winning, dominating, conquering, acquiring, right? Whether it's acquiring experience or acquiring land or acquiring wealth or acquiring women or acquiring sex or whatever it is. So when feminism came in the 70s, the, the only real paradigm that, that, that women had was the toxic masculine paradigm of mad men of corporate America. Right? And so they definitely seized that and they should, right? I mean, this was great to be, have equal parity with men, even though they're still not making the same money that men make. But that was the, that was what they were charging for. What they got was, you know, the toxic masculine paradigm through a woman's body, and which many of them are unwinding like very. They're now aware, like, oh, like we didn't want that. We don't want to die of heart attacks and be totally stressed out. And like, that's not what we signed up for.

Yeah.

So, you know, a lot of women that I teach are kind of unwinding that toxic masculine paradigm. That was kind of an un. It was an unexpected byproduct of feminism.

Yeah.

And now what they're trying to do is celebrate, you know, the. Kendra. Kendra Kunoff, who's a. Who's a dear friend and co teacher of mine, she says the new wave of feminism will celebrate the feminine. Right. And I think she's. That's what. That's where women are. Are really sort of starting to land of like, how do I. We integrate this masculine, this, you know, hard driving masculine with, you know, with the intuitive magic goddess that, you know, is at the core of me. Right. Nature driven goddess, that's at the core of me. And so, you know, women are going through this change too. And you got to think that this is new, man. Like, this is the first time in fucking history.

It is brand new.

Yeah. That we've, we've actually, as humans, been able to not need each other for the things we needed each other for from the dawn of time. Security, procreation, you know, wealth, like all the things that we need. I needed kids to work the farm. I needed kids to help me hunt. I needed a lot of kids to help me hunt so that we could have enough food. Right. That's new. Like, that's just changing. So it's a. We're at a interesting stage of both the history of relationship and just the history of, you know, men and women and, you know, and the way that gender itself is being looked at and practiced.

Yeah. There's so much there. Oh, my God. Yeah.

Sorry, man, I just.

No, that's great. That's great. One of the things you wrote is you said the new paradigm of masculinity does not deny our primal natures, but harnesses them consciously in service of love and freedom. I mean, just that right there is like a lifetime of work. Like, in order to be loving, you have to have an open heart. In order to be free, you cannot have your amygdala hijacked by media and confusion.

Yeah, exactly.

So. So the, the order is tall for us men.

I've.

I've felt this ever since my 20s. I got into men's work with Johnny Blackburn in like 2013 and. And I have consistently felt in all relationships and Definitely in this one where I'm a father, that the demands of the modern masculine are so high. The bar is set so high. There are sometimes I wonder if we or I will ever be able to achieve them. Do you ever feel like that?

Of course.

Yeah.

And I mean the bar is set so high that we'll probably never achieve them except for moments. But that does not mean that it's not the bar we make, we try to ascend towards.

Right.

You know, because you know a fully what'll happen. What I've experienced is that there is a process of practicing opening expanding capacity, expanding nervous system, expanding awareness, expanding sensitivity, which is a yogic and meditative practice. It's not something too woo woo, everybody can do it.

Yeah.

And then there's a forgetting, there's a contraction, there's a forgetting. And then there's a recommitment, there's a failure, there's a recommitment. And then you get on it and you start doing it again. You know, Perfect example is being reactive when your partner's criticizing you. Right.

Been there.

Yeah, me too. Right. And I think like, oh, I should just hold space for her and I should be consciousness. Yeah. I should be the fucking oak. But, but she's just like, she's cutting me so hard, I can't. So, so that's a failure and recommitment. Right. And, and, but you don't stop recommitting. You don't stop recommitting and, and, and, and expanding. So it's like, you know, a stock graph going up. Right. You know what I mean? Like there's, there's ups and downs, some years are lean. Yeah. But there's, there's, you know, consistent improvement and then there's moments of where, of where just relation your capacity to love and to feel and to what I talk about in the book, you know, liberate another through your practice. Liberate another in the moment. Like women don't need us to liberate them in their lives. They're sovereign beings. They can do their own thing. Yes, but we all need somebody to liberate our hearts in a moment every now and then, right? To like take us from the place of forgetting to the place of open remembrance of love. Right. And so our capacity just grows to be able to do that. And the more we do, the more our capacity as leaders, you know, especially leaders of men grows. And our capacity to love our partners, well, grows and parent our children grows. And so this is an embodied process of failure and recommitment that we never master. And I think that's the problem going to the way the superior man. A lot of guys read that book and they were like, he makes this sound so fucking easy.

But that's what it felt like to me.

Yeah, it's not, right? I mean, it's. It's not. And so guys are like, well, this sounds so easy, but I can't do it, so it must be me. So they start beating themselves up and trying to contort themselves into this.

This.

This sort of masculine data bot. Right. And, you know, one of the things that I. I really wanted to do with this book was to say, yeah, this is not easy. Like, this actually takes all these other commitments and skills to just start to approach that. You know, not everybody has 40 years of yogic and meditative practice. Not everybody, you know, has that kind of experience. Right.

Yeah.

So we're householders.

Householders of what, exactly? Like, it seems to me like it's householders of wisdom that maybe the Native Americans and many cultures, they just naturally live that way. But there's a. Really. What we're doing is we're remembering what that way of living and way of being actually was before it was genocided and torn down.

I think in some instances you're right. I mean, you know, whatever your ancestry is, right. There's a remembrance to your. I think there's a. There's. We're circling back because the 20th. 20th, 20th century, you know, modernity didn't.

Quite work, and we're also not in their world. So I wonder how our ancestors would have shown up in our world with the kind of. It's such a paradox there.

Yeah, yeah. It's an interesting thing. Like, how do we bring that wisdom? Bring the wisdom of those cultures. Right. You know, the. Whether it's a Taoist or, you know, a Tantric Buddhist or, you know, a Native American or any. Any other wisdom culture.

Right?

How do we bring that wisdom, you know, to modern life where we do have technology and we do have social media and we do have our phones and we do. You know what I mean? And that's a really important question. And my thought on that is that it has to be. If we're not grounded, if we're not grounded and tethered to that which never changes, we'll be swept up in that which is constantly changing, and we'll lose what trustability we have as leaders and as men and as romantic partners.

How do you deepen your practice to the anchor, to the tether yourself and you Talk about in the book, there's certain ingredients for men to do this. There's got to be something practical that you just naturally do because it connects you to that tether. What is that?

Well, the first is ground, right? So the first is, you know, you kind of first is ground. The very close second is breathe, right? And I go through the whole process of it. And you, you know, we just did a beautiful breath practice before you let us in. And so breathing is breathing. It's impossible to drop into any higher level of consciousness without breath. Really, it's almost impossible. I mean, I guess some people can do it, but.

No, I'm with you. I don't think it's possible.

Yeah, but, but, but then grounding is something that often gets missed. So opening up the soles of my feet. I can open up the soles of my feet and feel down 10ft into the earth with no trouble at all. And that grounds me, right? I could. I could press the diamond, you know, that my. My pubic bone, my sacrum, the outside of my hips, that's a diamond at the base of my body. I press that down into the earth and plug it into the earth. And all of a sudden I'm. I'm plugged into the magnetism of the earth, right? And if you're with me, you can actually feel that happening, and it has an impact on your nervous system. So if I'm breathing and grounding at the same time, and this is really good for men to know about their romantic partners, if you can ground, then you can impact their. Her nervous system or anybody's nervous system.

Yes.

Now, once you're breathing, then you start to. You feel your heart soften, right? There's like a process to this. And then after you feel your heart soften, your breath is deep, your body's grounded you. You feel back into that part of you that's never changed, like, to the core of you, which is why the book's called from the Core, right? So there's a core essence of you that has never changed. That's always there. That's infinite, right? Your soul, your consciousness, whatever you want to call it. And you feel into that, and you put all those things together. You know, first you do that in your own body. Then you give it. Then you start to, like, give it to who you're with, your partner, a space, the people you're teaching, you know, so it's a process of learning to ground, breathe, open, deepen, and then give.

I love that man. And also, what's going on physiologically is you're clearing the cerebral spinal fluid and you're getting the four diaphragms to pump into the cranium all the way from the perineum. Like, there's so much kind of heady science stuff going on. I just know that it feels good.

Yeah.

And then when I feel good, like, case in point, I know that everybody listening can relate to this. When I go home and I haven't done 10 breaths in my truck before I show up to the house, my woman can smell it and feel it on me right away.

Oh, yeah.

That's not some kind of like a wiping of my work energy.

Yeah.

Then she's immediately turned off.

Yeah.

And it's been vocalized.

Oh, wow.

And it goes to the point.

That's great.

Yeah. Oh, she has no problem letting me know.

That's great.

Letting me know I'm showing up. So. So one of the parts in the book, it's on page 115. We're talking about this book right here, which I love the COVID Did this. Is this somewhere you visited?

No, they just. I'm. I'm a big fan. Mountains and glaciers and rivers and cold lakes. So. Yeah.

Hence Thunder Mountain in Sedona.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So this one was deep for me. And it's about men taking responsibility for the relationship. Take responsibility from the core. And I can relate to this. Each unconscious abdication of leadership in the relationship is a pin prick to her heart. Over the course of the years, thousands of these moments will scar or harden her. As time went by, she felt your lack of presence, awareness, and attention, and she grew increasingly angry. This is such another paradox, because when a man is on mission on purpose, he bleeds for his mission. I know I do. And so by the time I get home or the presence and the attention that I want to give to her, it's just not there. And it could be man or woman, woman or man, either one. That really hit me hard because if I'm going to take responsibility for my relationship, it doesn't completely take all the responsibility for her to show up off of her, but it definitely gives me the capacity and ownership to fully harness who I am as a man, as a leader, as a father. Can you unpack that slowly? Because I needed some more clarity even reading your book.

Sure, sure, sure. Well, I think the first thing we're talking about is capacity. Right. Like, so bleeding for your purpose, Bleeding for your mission requires you to be here. Giving, you know, giving everything you can. Yeah. And then going home, you know, you've got a child to take care of and you've got, you know, someone who wants your presence and, you know, awareness and heart open, you know, heart openness. So building the capacity to do that. And I'm so glad you mentioned a breath practice before you walk in the door. That's one way. I'm sure when you do that, that you have some more capacity.

Right. And when I choose to remember.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. And.

And that's.

That's part of the failure and recommitment, you know?

Right.

You know, so, so, so what we're talking about is expanding our capacity. Basically, life has expanded beyond the modern man's capacity to be present with it. So we are behind, which is why we'll opt for numbing out with social media or Reddit or whatever.

Yeah.

Rather than really, like, elevate our nervous system capacity, which can happen. Doing yoga, doing qigong, doing martial arts, doing meditation, like nervous doing, you know, embodied men's work. Right. That's a big thing that I train men in, is how do you expand your capacity to hold more? So the first step is expanding our capacity, like training ourself to get strong, not just physically, but in our nervous system, them, and in our capacity for awareness. So that's the first piece then, being aware of what your limitations are within the relationship. Right. So you may really only have. I don't know. I'm not. I have no idea where you are. But you might have three or four nights where you can fully be present for her and hold your. And hold your child and hold your business and hold your, you know, as a romantic partner. I'm just talking about a domestic partner. I'm talking about as a romantic partner.

Mm.

Because that's what really pisses the feminine off.

Right.

So. So you could be a great domestic partner and a shitty romantic partner. And you will. She won't be happy. She won't be happy. Right. Because she'll feel like there's no love if she's truly feminine.

So.

So getting clear. Like, okay, baby, like, I. I know, I know. Like, I can show up for us, like, as a husband, as your lover, as your romantic partner. Three, three nights a week or three days a week.

Week.

And then the rest of the time, I'm going to be taking care of our house, taking care of, taking care of my body so that I. I can rejuvenate. Right. Having space with no demand, which I talk about in the book.

Yeah.

And. And so that when we are together, I can be like, with you. Right. And. And so that kind of integrity and that kind of honesty and that negotiation, because, you know, she might be like, nope, three days a week ain't enough. I need four. Or we need to do it this way. Yeah, it's a negotiation, but it's a negotiation from this place of I want to show up for you versus just what a lot I see a lot of guys do, which is kind of like, tough it out and live in this kind of state of numb, almost resentment at the burden of life rather than. You know, rather than.

I feel that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's normal. And I'm sure women who have to hold a lot feel it too. You know, mothers and. I mean, you know, this is. This is the masculine, not necessarily men. Right. Like, the masculine in all of us.

Yes.

Feels the burden of responsibility and longs for freedom, peace, space. So, you know, that. That whole concept about how do I own what my limitations are, Craft an honest space for us to be deeply romantic together and then still attend to the outside world. How do I do that? That's what I would consider good masculine leadership. Right. Because you're. You're. You're feeling her, you're feeling yourself, you're feeling the relationship and what it needs, and then crafting a plan that you can live with.

Because these pin pricks, they. They might not even be palpable to the unconscious man because it seems so tiny. But over, like, 10 years, enough pin pricks could just rupture the heart.

Yeah. The feminine heart is so much more sensitive. And I'm talking about feminine bees. And this could be a man or a woman or anything.

Yeah, yeah.

So, so, so. So the feminine heart is so sensitive that every time, you know, you're next to her and you're having a conversation or she's, like, asking for some part of your attention, and then you just kind of go look at your phone. That's a pin prick.

That's right.

That's it. You might as well just slap her. You know what I mean? Like, it's like you're hurting her. Yeah, Right. And if that happens over and over again or every time, you know, you just kind of come in with a mediocre presence and give a mediocre kiss and not really look her in the eyes or breathe with her or feel her body and then just go to the couch and turn on Netflix. Yeah, that hurts her. And. And those things fucking add up. And. And, you know, by the time it's chronic, you know, she's pissed. She's pissed.

And there Might be this unhealthy kind of boomerang cycle that's created where there's resentment on the.

On.

Let's just say a traditional relationship. People relate in many ways.

Yeah.

In a traditional relationship, the man would come home, he's exhausted from work, AKA I'm talking about myself. And I literally have to do the practices of grounding and breathing and all the things, and then show up and just be open to her and be affectionate in the way. Not because I have to or I should. That's. I think what I struggle with, and maybe what a lot of parents or busy working pros struggle with is we've done the practices, we've shown up. There's still that choice point, John, when it comes time for, like, the. The union or the affection.

Yeah.

Where sometime I do actually tell myself, I know I feel this way. This feeling is like a fucking leaf that floats by. Just because I feel something does not mean that it's true or does not.

Mean it's the right action to take 100%.

And I find that if I. And I. And my experience with Keri Michelle is that she goes primarily. Not all the time, but primarily off of the way she feels. And that's been the majority of relationships where the woman shares how she feels. And that. That's kind of what dictates the flow of energy where I have a tendency to feel my feel, but also do what I believe in. My heart is right and my throat is right and my mind is right. Connecting those three. There's such a dichotomy there at times in the traditional space, and I'm sure it unfolds in many different ways, but can you talk about that?

Yeah. Well, I mean, every. Every relationship is different. Right. I'm not there with y', all, you know, at dinner time, you just come.

And sit in her living room and.

But in general, what I think you're speaking to is, so you do that. You expand your capacity, you do some breath work before you get in. You're feeling pretty good. You've kind of cleansed your system. You feel pretty good. You step in and you feel what's true in the space, in the moment. And because you have more capacity, because you're more sensitive, more grounded, you can actually feel like, oh, this happened, or this is where she is, or this is right. This is what is going on behind the scenes. And you can make a decision as to what would liberate love from there. Right. Does she need. And I talk about this in the book. Does she need, like, just to be held. Does she need to, like, talk about the. Of her day? Does she need me to draw her.

A bath without me trying to solve.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, without, like, you know, if she need. Yeah, you know, I mean, men should know by now. Like, don't give advice unless you ask. Can I. Do you want my advice? But does she need. What. What does the space need? So there's what you need, right? And. And if I said, hey, Josh, like, what would you prefer if you could just do anything you want. You get home tonight, you might, man, crash on the couch and, you know, watch Netflix or whatever it is or, you know, massage. Yeah, yeah, get a massage. Like, yeah. So if we asked her what she wanted, she'd have her thought thing, right? Then there's. So there's what you want, what both of you want, and then what love wants. And tuning into what love wants may often be at the expense of what you want. Sometimes at the expense of what she wants. Right. Like, and it might be something else. And your capacity to tune into what love wants from a. From a trustable place takes practice. And you're gonna make mistakes. But is.

Is.

Is the big part of masculine leadership that I'm talking about in that book.

Oh, dude, that's so good.

Yeah.

Oh, that. That, like, really hits for me and everyone else I know. I think about when you were raising Claire and you had that experience of, like, you were still very on purpose at that time. Yes. So you were already giving a full breadth of your energy to your mission. You're bleeding for that. You come home, you would deal with the struggles of parenting. And when I. When I. Or when Carrie, when any of us pour from an empty cup, there can be, without a check and balance system, a level of resentment towards the partner. And there can be an unconscious projection of that resentment at times. Is there a way to know when it's such a masculine question? Tell us, John. Exactly when are we aware. How can we be aware of an unconscious projection of resentment onto our partner?

That's a great question. Question, Josh. Okay, so let me just back up a little bit. So one of the things that's crucial so that we don't do that, so we don't even get there.

Good.

Is this idea of nourishment. Right? And so what I see with a lot of men in your position, like, working hard with a family, you know, with a. A partner that, you know, demands conscious presence, as she should, taking care, nourishing yourself is a crucial piece of. Of Life practice. Right. So that might be your meditation practice. That might be morning walks. That might be time in nature with men. That might be time in nature by yourself. That might be, you know, 10 minutes of reading something or listening to something that inspires you. That might mean playing guitar. It could mean anything. But prioritizing your nourishment. So for a short period of time, obviously, letting her know. Right. Allows you to be full, so you're bringing fullness. Right. That helps to snip a lot of resentment. Because resentment, as you said, comes from an empty cup.

Yeah.

Let's just assume that most of our resentments that we have in relationship are not coming from, are based in our childhood systems. Right. Once we get married or once we commit or once we move in, virtually every complaint we have about our partner stems from the things we didn't get when we were young and the wounds that have sort of persisted since then. And this is not just me. Like, you could talk to the Gottmans. You could talk to Harvl Hendricks. You know what I mean?

Literally, John, every person at your level of consciousness and intelligence has reflected this one point in their own words.

Yeah.

So this is like universal wisdom.

Pretty much.

This is not just your animation.

No, this is not just me. This is not. Yeah, this is. This is, you know, every therapist that's dealt with relationships. Stan Tatkin is somebody I like a lot.

Right. So. Yes, so.

So one of the things that. That I think is important is that we just understand, like, oh, man, if I'm resentful, usually it's my shit. And usually there's something I need, there's something I need from them. And so rather than get caught up in the story, drop into your heart and really feel, what do I need? I just need her to give me a little space so I can reconnect to myself. Or I need a little acknowledgment, or I need a little sweet energy, or I need a little bit of praise and love. Like, what do I need? And then you can actually, once you're in your heart feeling the need, like, literally, I say go into the tissues of your heart and feel where it lives, because that's where it lives. Lives. It's not mental. It's literally in your heart. And then you can feel what she needs. So from my heart, feeling, I need. I need praise. I just need to be acknowledged for how hard I'm working. I'm just, you know, I'm saying you feel this way, but a lot of men do. And then you can feel her heart. What does she need? Oh, she needs just my slow, deep, grounded presence. She needs to feel safe. She needs to feel held. Right. Okay. So I'm feeling my heart and what I need now. I'm feeling her heart and what she needs. And I can go to her and say, baby, what do you need, my love? What do you need? Right. Like, what do you need? Just tell me and she'll. And if I'm coming from the place of feeling my heart and feeling her heart, I'm not coming from the mental. The monkey mind. She did this and she never. And she always. And they always. I'm not doing that. I'm actually in the body, in the heart. And there's a whole different possibility of relating that comes from that kind of experience.

Yeah, it's because dogs, women and bees can sense, smell, fear.

They.

They have this intuitive capacity. The feminine energy has this intuitive capacity that is so different and so much more beautiful. It's just unique than. Than the masculine, I guess you could say awareness. And so the come from when I'm asking my woman, hey, baby, what do you need? If it's right from here, she's gonna know, actually, in the first audible of my first word.

Yeah.

But if I'm asking her, what do you need? Yeah, that's totally different now.

What do you need?

This isn't a checklist for us to be like, okay, I've asked her what I've needed. And I find a lot of men fall into this category of like, well, if I just do the five things to open her heart, then that's gonna open her heart. But it does. It's such a paradox, because checking a box on this stuff does not work.

No, it's got to be real. It's got to be in the body to be. Yeah, it's got to be in the body, man.

An embodiment. Which is why you teach so many workshops. If you had to guess, probably over a hundred thousand people at this point. Plus something that you've taught in your career.

Something like that.

I trust you're loving this podcast as much as I am. It's one of my absolute favorites. You know, when we show up to relationships, when we show up to ourselves, we show up to life. If we don't have the proper physical nourishment, it's going to end up poorly. We're not going to be able to love ourselves. We're not going to be able to love others as effectively. If you are dealing with this right now, you have low energy I've dealt with this in my own life personally. You know that phrase hangry, like you forget to eat or you're in the afternoon and you're like what should I consume? Maybe you don't have healthy snacks around you and you don't want to go to to a junk machine and get some chocolate. Nonsense. Instead of the nonsense, do something called ketone iq. It is ketones delivered in a shot from my friends over at hvmn, otherwise known as health via Modern Nutrition. Now this is really cool. These little exogenous molecules, the scientists that actually did the research, millions and millions of dollars that the Department of Defense paid them millions of dollars for, you can benefit from from this. This tech used to cost so much. It used to cost 20 times more than what you're going to get it for, which is like way less than going out for dinner with your friends. These scientists have proven that these ketones, they lower appetite signaling. Now this is what's really cool. When you turn down the volume of the hunger hormone ghrelin. This is why it's so important a lot of the time. What stimulates your central nervous system can be an unfortunate byproduct that may you hungry a few hours later. Key in coffee. If you're doing a bunch of stimulants, you're going to have a bunch of energy, you're going to block the adenosine and then you're going to crash. There is a better way. You can use exogenous ketones which are produced naturally by the body in a fasted state. But who the hell wants to fast all the time? Not me. This is a powerful way for you to get the benefits of fasting without actually stopping your food consumption. Think about it as a way to retrain your insulin, your ghrelin and your body for greater satiation and satiety. This is where you get energy from the inside out. You can get 20% off. Give these ketone IQ shots a chance. Give them a chance at 2 or 3 o' clock in the afternoon. If you don't like them, you can write to them and send them back. By the way, nobody's ever done that, but give it a shot. If you've been looking for something besides coffee, do this. It's a beautiful, powerful coffee alternative. Just clean energy without a bunch of stuff stimulation. I think you're going to love it. JoshTrent.com HVMN use the code Josh J O S H to get 20% off. JoshTrent.com HVMN use code Josh, get 20% off, have a new energy source in the afternoon besides coffee. I think this is something you're going to really enjoy. Now let's get back to the podcast. Is there a common thread when you look at the, I guess you could say unintegrated, or the wounded projections of men, specifically when it comes to the mind and the heart, you know, Hawkins talks about the greatest space for us is between the head and the heart. Sometimes for us it's Miles. Has there been a common thread with all the men that have come to your workshops and they say like, I'm doing everything she asked for and I'm still not getting what I want. What are they missing? What is that thread that they're missing?

Yeah, I mean, basically the whole book is about that. I talk about the myth of the good husband, right? Like, like I'm giving her everything that she wants. I'm supporting of her career. I'm a good husband, I'm a good provider, I'm a good father. And yet it's still never enough. And those currencies, the currencies that we were raised on thinking are the most important currencies for love are no longer the most important, that now they're just the table stakes. That's just where you start right now. There's these new currencies that the feminine is waking up, up to about presence and depth and humor and embodied embodiment. Right. And a certain kind of sexuality that's possible. Like they are realizing that there's a. And it's great because they're calling us to a deeper understanding of magic, love, all the beautiful things. Right?

Yeah.

They're a hundred thousand years ahead of us. They've been dancing in the woods and, you know, practicing magic and doing the things that women were trained to do for hundreds of thousands of years. We were basically warring and I'm generalizing tremendously. But over the course of time, the arts that women in a society were taught to develop were much more intuitive. Embodied heart centered, magic centered, expression centered. Right. What we were taught to do was hunt and fight and protect and kill. Right. 100,000 years of that. There's only been 50 years of us trying to catch up to them. So they, this is what I tell women all the time. I'm like, you got a hundred thousand year head start and you've got to give these guys who are trying give us some grace. Yeah, give us a little grace.

Give us some grace.

Because you asked about the thread, the common thread, and the first one is that Men want to love well, like, really they do. Like, they wouldn't come to me or. You know what I mean? They want to love their partners really well. So there's this really beautiful, innocent, deep yearning to be a good man, right? To be. To be a deep, beautiful lover of their partner. And then I think what happens is they just. They get confused because the things that they thought worked aren't working. Right? And so where they. Where they end up coming to me is there's a bit of confusion. Like, I'm successful, I've got. I'm a good dad. Like, I mean, I'm, you know, I mean, like, we've got this incredible life and there's still this tension between us. And. And so, yeah, I'd say the predominant experience is men feel confused as to why things aren't working. And I think it's basically. We weren't taught that these new practices and currencies were what really, that the modern woman, you know, in a very small period place in society. I mean, I'm talking Western society, mainly heteronormative relating, right? All those things. But that the modern woman wants from us and. And feels is needed. And so they come, like, going like, what am I doing wrong? And that's kind of where we start.

That's the unraveling. I love that you talked about domestic and then the lover. So there's like the romantic aspect and then there's the domestic aspect. I remember I heard Jordan Peterson say something like, there is nothing worse and a disservice to this world than an adult child, than a man who has ignored responsibility for decades. Not to shame this man. I mean, shit, Maybe in my 20s, that was me for sure.

Certainly been me.

But the complete almost ignorance and head in the sand aspect of men, where there's this chasing for hedonism. I was born and raised in Southern California and San Diego. So, you know, Pacific beach and all these tantalizing things and, you know, lots of unconscious sex and pornography and all these things that I've really done. Multiple vision quests, vipassana ceremonies, breathwork. To forgive myself for. Just to forgive myself for. Because that's where love comes from, is forgiveness. Do you find that aspect in yourself? When did you really accept responsibility for your life purpose? And how do you see that unfold where men could identify that in themselves?

Well, I think I. I accepted responsibility for my life purpose. It kind of was a process where I wasn't even looking to. Wasn't like, this is my purpose. I'm gonna do this it was like, this is my practice. And I think I really committed to becoming a deep practitioner of what I, what I knew was going to change my life. Right. And this was the work that I was learning with David and other teachers that I just, I knew. And so I spent three, four, five, six years just practicing, just being of service to my community, just assisting. And, and as I got good at it, people started to want things from me, like, hey, man, like, teach me some of these practices. And so I started to do that, and then at that point, I realized this must have been 10 years ago, I realized, like, you know what? Like, I, I, this is what I want to do with my life.

Life.

You know, at the time, I had a business, I had Claire, you know, I was trying to make money. I had a flower business. You know, I mean, I had a whole, I was a regular entrepreneur. And so what kind of business was it? I was in, I was in the wholesale flower business.

Oh, cool.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I bought flowers in San Diego.

That's so interesting with, with the work you do in the world. You were a, a seller of flowers, of beauty.

Yeah. Imported flowers from all over the world. Yeah.

I bet you if you've never talked about that, I've never heard you say it.

Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Yeah. For 15 years. Still had that business until 2021, when the pandemic wiped it out. But, but I wasn't in it. I've been in it for 10 years, so, so I decided then that was what I wanted to do. And then, but it was a process. And then the second piece is that that is still happening. Like, I'm constantly having to reflect and take responsibility for the things that I make mistakes on or, or, you know, things I wish I could do differently in relationship or things that I'm learning. And I don't think that's ever going to. I hope that never changes because I feel like, you know, there's the, there's the, to separate the teacher. Right. Like, and the practitioner. So I have this amazing set of skills where I can take people into super deep places and incredibly juicy places, and I can do that with my partner and I can create these, like, amazing love openings and tantric sex practices and all these things.

Yeah.

But then there's the karma of the human right, who was, you know, a product of multiple divorces and has the epigenetic history of alcoholism.

Your mom and dad both married and divorced three times each?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, my mom. Yeah, my mom three times. Yeah, My mom three Times my dad. Four times. Wow. Yeah, one. One was the same woman. So. So. You know what I mean?

But.

So, yeah, so there was just multiple divorces in my family. So, yeah, I have that karmic piece that I'm still working through. Right. And so sometimes I have to. I have to. I'm really good at one of those things. And the other one, I'm still learning, you know, I'm still learning how to choose the right partner and. And then how to recognize what I need versus what they need and to stay in integrity and integrate everything that I'm teaching. Right. And so, you know, I would love to sit here and say, like, I seamlessly and effortlessly integrate everything I teach into every relationship I've ever had, but that'd be. Yeah, I'm still. I'm just another bozo on the bus, you know, trying to, like, love well and love deeply and, you know, take care of the person that I love. And sometimes I make mistakes. And then what I'm. What I'm proud of as a man, and this is not as a teacher, this is just as a man, is that I'm exceptionally good at reflecting on my part in things. And luckily, I have really good men around me who can help me, you know, sort of sift through what's. What's my ego, what's my, you know, what's my masochism, what's my, you know, all of it and. And help me get to the truth so that the next time I can do a little bit better.

Well, we. Dude, that.

This.

So it's so truthful, because I remember I used to listen to Alan Watts in the shower when I was single like, for like 10 years. And one of the things he said is, you know, you can't. The reason that we need objective feedback is because you can't touch the tip of your own finger. You can't bite your teeth with your teeth. You can't. It doesn't work that way. Consciousness of self. We need conscious mirroring from other people. Otherwise there can be kind of the ego's thread where you lead a life for two decades, three decades, and there's no reflection. And actually our society celebrates no reflection. There's a celebration of consumption and less reflection.

Yeah.

Which. Which breaks my heart. Is there something about your mom and dad that breaks your heart? And how have you unpack that to where it doesn't hold the charge with you anymore so that you can show up clean to a woman?

Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question, man. Yeah, well, I think it's the piece, you know, both my mom and my dad are alone. You know, might eat my sister. Both my sisters, I don't know, one of them might be, you know, in a romantic relationship, but my family, the family karma is to grow old and die alone, right? And I am committed just as a human. And again, this is different. You know, the intersection of human and teacher is impossible to, you know, pull apart. And as a human. And I'm committed to changing that karma. Like, I've changed so much of my family karma. Like I was the dad to Claire that my dad was not to me. I have. I make a fantastic living teaching what I love, whereas both of my parents could not even, you know, could not go anywhere near that. Right? So I've changed so much karma. This is sort of the last piece of this. Of this really making a deep, powerful love work, Right? And. And so I'm committed. Even though I've had, like, incredible relations, I've had incredible relationships. I've had so many amazing women in my life. This feels like the last piece. So I'm not sure if I'm answering your question, but I really try to. Yeah, I'm really trying. That's the piece that feels undone for me. And even though. And it's. What's great is that I. I'm continually learning on the teacher side and on the practitioner side how. What I need for the karmic human side. And so the two are feeding each other in a really beautiful way. You know, clunky sometimes messy sometimes, incomplete sometimes. But. But. But, you know, this is part of being human.

It's interesting. The. One of the things I've said when I first got with Carrie, and I've. I've felt this for many years of my life, is, am I paying for the sins of my father and my grandfather? And how does that payment. How does that spiritual credit card of karma work when I pay for the sins of other grandparents and other men that have wounded a woman that I'm with? And there has been, I've noticed, an essence of resentment and an anger towards those men for the pain that they. And even to Carrie, Michelle, like her father, her brother, that lineage, like the things she shared with me. And I'll respect her by not sharing details, but. But there's a part of my heart that feels anger against the wounded masculine that wounded her, which then shows up in our relationship. And I say this with total love and respect, like, she's got stuff. So do I. Otherwise we wouldn't be together. And no One would be together. We, we are a Rubik's cube for one another in a beautiful way. Painful way sometimes.

Yeah.

Have you ever sensed that when you really. When you feel into that the sins of our brothers and our fathers and our grandparents and even other people's ancestry, how do you make peace with that yourself?

Yeah, that's great. I actually wrote a chapter on that about we're responsible for the sins of our fathers. Right. So the way that I look at it is that. And again, you know, this is just my intention. I might not always complete this or I might not always do it perfectly, but the idea is to step in and be a healing source. Source for the per. For those wounds and to step in into a partnership really from this place of like, I want to be a source of healing for her. I want to. For those old wounds. I want to. You know, the way that I. The analogy I use in, in the book is imagine stepping into this beautiful forest, you know, or at this beautiful waterfall and you see all this trash that somebody else left. Well, you could leave it there, right, and then just kind of go enjoy the waterfall and da da, da, da. Or you could actually like pack it out and maybe even leave something, you know, leave something in return so that you're leaving, you're leaving the. You're leaving her with the better. You know, with a better experience now, you know, again, this is one of those things that I'm. You know, sometimes I don't do perfectly. Sometimes, you know, I may have a partner that doesn't think I did it, even though I really tried my best. But I know that that's my intention is to be a healing source. And I do think, I do think that that not totally removes, but quells the anger that I would have towards other men because these dudes didn't. I mean, think about it like we barely know what the to do and we're a pretty conscious generation or two, right? There's been two good generations. Those guys had no clue. My dad was. My dad had no shot. He had no shot given the fathering that he had. And you know what I mean? And so it's a thing to forgive them.

It's such a fascinating concept. You talked about some of the research and you said you're dangerous in your knowledge about the inter family systems and family constellations. But that work we've had had Mark Wolin on the show a couple times. He wrote a book called. It didn't start with you on a cellular level, John. When you and I were Born, we had already been an egg in our mother when she was born, which lights my fire. I'm like, how is that even possible?

Yeah.

That the. The. The feminine egg inside of a womb that held the sperm was already potentiated three gen, two, two and a half, three generations back. It's just so wild to even think about the mystery of life. And I wonder if you see this and maybe if even you feel this in your own being, the way in which we unconsciously hurt others, yourself, me, all of us, we learned it from our loving caregivers, who learned it from their loving caregivers. And so I'm not saying this to shame my dad or shame my mom. I really do believe in my heart of hearts that they did the absolute best they could with the level of consciousness they had, much like your dad, your mom.

Yeah, but.

But the awareness around this, I. I believe, and this is why I'm even putting this in the book that I'm writing, is like this. Emotional epigenetics, the way that. That you and I are born with certain health proclivities, like some people are born with type 1 diabetes. How could we ever argue. I wonder how you feel about this. How could we ever argue that emotional characteristics, behavioral characteristics are not stamped and encoded in our DNA waiting for the EPI to turn it on or off, just like the physical.

Yeah. Well, that does happen. And the good news is now if you think about how that egg. See, that's what I would call karma, right? So epigenetics is really just another way of saying manifest embodied karma, right? So our karma that epigenetics manifest as our embodied karma. And so every time we take a deep breath, rather than yellow. Every time we do that practice of going into our heart and feeling our needs rather than projecting, right? Every time we make a new decision, we are changing our karma. And every time we engage in that new behavior. And Rhonda Patrick, I don't know if you listen to her, but she's done a lot of great work on this. Every time we do this, we actually, if we do it long enough and we do it enough times, we change our epigenetic. We change the genetics, we change our DNA. So the. So that our children or even ourselves, we don't carry that anymore. So that's why this concept of capacity is so important. This is why, you know, guys that come to me and want strategies of how to succeed with women, I'm saying, like, you better, like, breathe, man. That's your strategy. Breathe and ground. Breathe, ground and feel the infinite. There you go. Soften your heart. That's your strategy. Because without that, we are almost, we are sitting fucking ducks to that epigenetic momentum. Right? So. So the karma, changing your karma is a moment by moment dropping into the body, relaxing the mind, and making the better decision. And in doing that, I believe. And I believe this is going to be supported by, you know, by research soon. Yes, that, that, that we change our genetics.

There was a study, and I'm, I'm not going to get the location right, but the study was done by like a prestigious university and they traumatized a mouse, and they could sense when that mouse breeded with other non traumatized mice that the signaling inside of their genome was turned on to hypervigilance five generations after the initial trauma, even with mice that weren't traumatized themselves. So what does that tell you? If all beings have a, you know, a systemic connection. I know we're not mice, but. But there is something that science is showing us.

Yeah.

About energy and spirit and emotion. Energy in motion.

Yeah.

That we, we must pay attention to. If we don't pay attention to it, then we're gonna like men that go to the, to the workshops. We're just gonna try to apply rigorous science all the time. I think science is supposed to inform spirit.

Yeah.

I think that there's. It was designed as a blending of those two and somewhere along science became God.

Yeah. That was the nature of the 20th century, really. Right. Like science and technology became more important than spirit. Right.

Like people that shout out, well, I believe it because it's science.

Yeah.

With their fist clenched like that's the wrong belief if you have to say it, like.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. And I think that, I do think that there's, there's a recalibration that's happening. Right. Where.

Yes.

Where God no longer means the church. Right.

That's right.

It can mean, it can mean any number of, you know, individuated spiritual practices. So I think that's, that's kind of. There's more space. But, but the thing that I was thinking about when you were talking was how many people in relationships are dealing with the traumas of their families, their parents, their grandparents, all of those things. Right. I'm still dealing with the Irish curse, you know, from my grand great grandfather.

Right.

And the potato blight and all that stuff. And so. And, and we're dealing with our partners and so the capacity to cultivate spaciousness. Right. Because trauma, you know, getting into it with trauma has some benefit, for sure. Like really getting into the body, relaxing the nervous system. I'm writing another book now on nervous system regulation as kind of a sexual relational practice.

Oh, beautiful.

But, yeah, but that's one approach. The other approach is to be spacious enough to allow for the trauma to do its thing without getting hooked into the experience of the trauma in front of you, which is hard, hard work. Right. And so that is a meditative practice. That is something that I'm hoping to experience more and more of as I get aware of it. And, and I think something that men like. These new currencies that men in particular are, I'm asking, I'm asking men to step into, require different practices, different skill sets, different commitments than the ones that they. That are just about make money, get the girl, you know, you know, da da da da. Be and you know, be a, you know, know, be a good, you know, community person, all that kind of shit. It's much deeper than that. It's much deeper than that. What we're being asked to do, I think as men. And it's why I have a job.

And I think you're going to continue to have a job. And also I believe you told me that you do certify coaches in your work.

Okay, teachers.

And this isn't okay, y', all, this is not coaches to coach other coaches, how to coach coaches, to coach coaches. This is actual coaches working with people.

Yeah.

Coaches that work with clients.

Teacher training, that is three. I mean, I have it. I have. A few years ago I started a teacher training program because I wanted there to be some accountability. You know, I would have people come to workshops of mine or two, one or two come to a couple weekends and then all of a sudden they're an embodied men's coach. Right. You know what I mean? And I'm like, no, I need to have more, a little more control and integrity and over the process of what it means to start to deliver this work right into the world. So I started a thousand hour teacher training because I thought that's the minimum of a thousand hours of practice with a teacher or in a modality for you to get competent.

Yeah.

You know, I mean think of a martial artist or a 10 tennis player or a concert pianist or, you know, I mean, like these are not. Or a pilot, an airline pilot. Like these are all reasonable things.

I think they have to do 10,000.

Yeah, something crazy like that. Right. So, so, so I started a teacher training program and it's a three year program and it's very, it's all peer Reviewed. And you know, we've had our first two years of certified teachers. And they're certified in embodiment, they're certified in masculine, feminine, embodiment, they're certified in sexual polarity, work or, you know, so we give them a certification. And not everybody who makes it through three years gets certified after the third year. There's a certain level of, of commitment. And so I'm very proud of that, man. I'm super proud of the group and I'm super proud of the people that actually commit to not just learning something so they can rush out and teach it, but really steeping in what I consider is a very deep lineage of embodied practice.

I love that you talked about the repatterning, the reprogramming of the lineage because that was an aspect of trauma or of unconscious relating that you brought up. But also something else you wrote in the book that just rocked my world that has like two colors of highlight on it. No true change in behavior or thinking can come without an awakened body and an activated heart and a spacious mind. That is another tall order. I wonder if you could summarize that because at first audible people might be like, well, how in the hell do you do that? Can you summarize that a little bit?

Yeah, yeah, sure, man. So, so. And again, these are all I know they sound so woo woo and so like, not really.

That does not sound woo woo to me.

So, so esoteric, let's say. Right, okay, okay, right. So, so. But they're really yogic. They're really yogic. Like activated body just means. You and I did the breath practice that activated our bodies. Right? I, you know, I soften, softened my heart and let's just like feel the heavy softness of my heart now my heart is active, activated. I feel beyond my thoughts into the spacious core of consciousness and feel it extending out into the cosmos as the expanding universe. I do those three things over and over again. It's a ten second meditative practice. Maybe I extend it to a minute or 30 seconds or something like that. But these are all very doable practices that we can start to integrate into our days. And I think what most people bump into is they don't realize like how much work they actually need to how much karmic patterning they're changing. So they'll like do five or ten minutes of meditation in the morning and be like, why isn't my life changing? No, because you might need it a hundred times a day. You might need to press your feet into the ground, press your sit bone into the earth, take a deep breath into your belly, soften your heart, and feel the infinite space of awareness that this moment is emerging from. And you might need to do that a hundred times a day just to train your nervous system to receive it. And I think that's what most people are kind of, that's the root awakening that I think modern humans are coming up against is, wow, we need a lot of work to change the patterning of our body, minds.

I think for a long time I used to ask the question of where does the power of choice come from? But then I realized that was the wrong question to ask because that's like saying, what is the origin of God? There's some things that my mind could like, never understand. So instead, now, and I wonder how you feel about this. Instead of asking the question, where does the power to change come from? I just focus on how can I generate more power to change?

Beautiful.

Yeah.

Perfect. Yeah, yeah. How can I put myself in a better position to feel beyond the habits of my body mind, into what life is wanting to push through me? Right. Because let's face it, the, the magic of life is, is amazing. Right. Our hearts are beating. Yeah, right. All these, all these things are happening without us thinking about it at all. And if we can just like, if we can stop like, scheming, striving, and relax our body minds to connect to that pulse of life that is beating our heart, making the world, you know, flowers bloom, doing all those kinds of things, we are going to make better choices. We are going to have more wisdom emerge. And this is part of what I'm trying to tell men. It's like, you know, actually backing into that, slowing down and feeling that pulse of life wanting to move you will be a better strategy for success than constantly scheming, constantly, you know, trying to win.

Right. It seems like the strategy is that there's no strategy. And the strategy is actually just to learn how to have the faculty of trust.

Yeah, but, but there is embodied work. Like, it does take something to, to relax our mind enough to feel the pulse of life that's beating our heart.

Yes.

And then to allow that wisdom to emerge in the moment. That takes something. Right. And, and, and the way I try to teach it to men is I'm like, just stop doing, stop striving, stop practicing. Just like, relax into receiving the wisdom of the moment through your body and wait for some intuitive thought, Wait for something to come through, some next move. You know, like we were talking about when you come home from work.

Yeah, yeah.

Suppose you do that breath practice, you sit on the porch and you just kind of receive the wisdom of the moment and wait for how you're going to love your family to come through that moment, right? Might be play Monopoly. It might be, you know, carry my wife upstairs and make love for 30 minutes. It might be whatever it is, right? Whatever comes through you, it's coming from a deeper place than your habitual thoughts.

Yes.

And, and, and that's, I think, what I'm really trying to teach men to have access to too. And it's, you know, it's a challenge, but every. All of them get it. Like, you know, you're getting it right when we're talking about it. As soon as I start offering that as a possibility, men are like, oh, yeah, yeah, this feels a lot better than trying to figure it out.

Yeah. You know, one of them is like a hardware only approach. The other one's hardware and software. And then like, the brain is an amalgam of neurons and, and dendrites and axons and like, it's plastic Man. We. We train truly. Can I believe this with everything in my body. Like, we truly can change our brain. We can. My mom, as I've shared with the audience, she's fighting with kidney disease. And so she's in the hospital today. Today, actually this morning, getting surgery. And I'm like, with love and honoring of my mom, I look at the choices that she made in life to get her to this place. And at first I felt anger, like, why aren't you going to be here for my son, your grandson? And then anger quickly dissipated to what was always below that, which is just sadness and grief. And from that sadness and grief, I can actually just love her from that place. But I've had to go through each wave of it, which really constitutes what you're talking about, where any man has certain practices that allow him to just be still and receive what you said, the wisdom of the moment. Otherwise, how the hell am I going to receive the wisdom of any moment if I'm checking my phone, if I'm not breathing, if I'm jitterbug, there's just no way around it. So, dude, I could go for so much longer on this podcast. I've really enjoyed the juice that we've been extracting today. What is the wisdom that in your heart really drove you to write the book? And how does that wisdom continue to inform you about your curiosity for what's possible in the future?

I'm not sure if it was a wisdom more than Going back to one of the first things you said about the wound, you know, like, I'm a product of a. Of a. Of a. Of sort of an absent masculine and neglectful masculine. You know, it wasn't abuse, but it was neglect. Right. In my family, other families, it's abuse. And I think it's. It's. It's like a. It's a compulsion to, to help change that. Right. And. And so when I'm working with men, it's not like I. I feel how much they want to do better than their fathers did, how much they want to show up in a different way than their grandfathers and fathers did. And so I really feel like the wound has become the gift for me, you know, and in my life. And so I would call it just. It's very human why I wrote the book and why I do the work that I do, because I really, you know, I want men to have more choice, to have more capacity to be able to. To heal the world in a certain way that, you know, that they've never been taught.

Yeah. You know, that's so beautiful, man.

Thanks, man.

I was talking with a mentor, his name is Paul Check. And I was telling him about, you know, it's been almost 600 interviews we've done over the past eight years. And, and with you, there's 100% purity around you, owning your wound, but also not allowing that wound to cloud your wisdom. And with a lot of teachers, unfortunately, because of the rise of marketing and social media, we don't have to focus on it. I just know it's there. There's a lot of wounded leaders that aren't being honest about their wounding, and it tends to cloud their wisdom, which then unfortunately hurts their students.

Yeah. Yeah.

I wonder, as parting guidance, you know, people already know that I love your work, otherwise you wouldn't be here. And I trust that your integrity around, like, how you show up and your honesty. Is there a feeling that someone should look out for or is there a sensory perception that a student of emotional intelligence, emotional growth, spiritual growth, should look out for when receiving guidance from a teacher to notice if that wisdom is being clouded by the wounding.

Oh, wow, that's a great question. Well, first of all, let's just say that every teacher brings their wound into how they teach. Nobody has been able to separate it completely. Right.

Yeah.

All they can do is be trans, try to be transparent about it. And in that. So I think that if their teacher is transparent about the wound that they're working around, working with, you know, What I mean, that's a good sign. That's a really good sign.

Yes.

And the other thing is, and this is kind of new, this has been a shift for me, which is the willingness to not have to have one of the answers. That's possible. Right. So when a teacher says this is something like this is what I'm trying to give you, but if this doesn't feel right in your body, trust your body's wisdom like that, that's a relatively new thing for me that I started to realize. Like, you know what? Even though I feel in my body and my experience that this is the best approach to this practice.

Yeah.

Other people might have not even have the capacity or a whole different thing. And so the ability to be humble in the moment while giving the clear gift I think is also a really good thing to look for in your teachers. And then I would tell if I, if I could say something for the students. Right. The moment you start to get. Because I've just seen this with so many students, including me, I did this too. The moment you start to project your family's wounds, that you start to create a story or a narrative about your teacher, you are likely in the family system because it's almost impossible not to separate yourself from a teacher and the family. Right. Almost impossible. So when there's self righteousness or when there's projection, one of the things that we try to work with is to unpack that. Right. So that the students can feel like, hey, you know, I'm projecting this onto this, this trainer or I'm projecting this onto John or I'm projecting this stuff. Because otherwise if you don't address it with the teacher, you're going to bring it into your teaching.

Yeah.

And so it's something that, it's a really important piece to all of those things I think are really important. And it's why I'm so passionate about teacher training. Because it takes a while to unpack that. Man.

Dude, this was so good. Thank you. Thank you for coming on the show. As we say goodbye, we're gonna have all the links to your program to the book. You guys, I read this book in the sauna. Like no joke. It's. I'll show you my copy. It's highlighted and it's sweaty. I really discussed some drops in there. I really took the time to, to open my heart to your work and to open my relationship to the teachings. Because human relationship has been by far my most massive learning curve. That. And then close second would be finances.

Right.

But as Far as getting shit done and hard charging, let's kind of always come natural to me.

Yeah, me too.

So I really appreciate and honestly honor the work that you do in the world world. And I wonder with all that you've created, if you could just answer this last question. One thing that I've been teaching to the students in the Breathe program is this, this sensory perception of all the things that constrict us and make us feel like we can't express. And I've found that if someone isn't clear in their. In their mental, physical, emotional, spiritual, even financial nourishment, that they can't live their life well. What is your recipe though? Like, if you had to. To encapsulate wellness, you know, how does John Wineland live his life? Well, how would you begin to define wellness?

Well, I'll be super simple here, which is just breathe in, open as, you know, so breathe. Be a yes to like breathe in what's happening in the moment and then let your body like a flower bloom, open as. And if it's just. It's really that simple. It's actually, actually a practice I learned from my teacher. And it's being yes to the moment. It's breathing in the moment without closure or stiffness, and it's allowing your heart to open as whatever the moment is offering you. And I think if you do that moment by moment, multiple times a day, your nervous system relaxes, your brain chemistry changes, your heart rhythm stabilizes. Everything just kind of of becomes more clear. So that's, that's. That would be my tip for wellness.

That's very wise, man. And then from that place, there's a greater container, there's a greater capacity to do whatever it is we do in the world.

Yeah.

It's so good, man. So from my heart to yours, thank you, John. Thank you, John, for being here. Thank you guys for being with us. Until John and I see you again on another podcast at some other point in the future, we're both wishing you love and wellness. We'll talk to you then. Hey, thanks for watching this video. If you love this video, hit subscribe. That way you'll be automatically notified when new videos come out, new episodes, and also share this video with a friend. If you loved it, they're going to love it too. Check out some of the videos on this screen that are perfectly curated based on the video you just saw. Make sure you follow me and I'll see you in the next video.