Digital Social Hour - Clearing Sexual Energies, Negative Energies & Attachment Styles I Stefanos Sifandos DSH #398
Episode Date: April 7, 2024Stefanos Sifandos comes to the show to talk about clearing sexual energies of past partners, cleansing negative energies & attachment Styles. APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/D2cLkWfJx...46pDK1MA BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: Jenna@DigitalSocialHour.com SPONSORS: Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Transcript
Discussion (0)
I feel like a lot of people have childhood traumas.
Most of us, if not all of us, experience some level of trauma,
whether it's big T, capital T trauma, or little t trauma.
And mom or dad ignoring you, not because they're not happy with you,
but because they're really busy doing something else
or they're attending to something.
And how you make that one moment feel can change the rest of your life.
That can be interpreted as trauma, so to speak.
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and here's the episode ladies and gentlemen stefano sofando's here today how's it going man
good man i just flew in i'm happy to be here. Yeah. Where'd you fly in from?
Austin, Texas is home.
Oh. Why'd you choose Austin as home?
Wife's family is basically there.
Okay.
And we've got a good community there. The community is great.
Yeah. Dude, I really love what you teach on your YouTube about relationships, dating and everything.
How did you get into this whole world?
Man, you know, Dr. John Demartini
often says our greatest voice become our greatest values, right? So for me growing up,
relationships and life was very hard, very difficult relationships, challenge relationships
with my mom and my dad, you know, a lot of violence and volatility, a lot of uncertainty,
a lot of unknown. And so growing up, I craved what would it, I also crave the familiarity,
which was the volatility and the
violence and all that only because it was familiar and familiarity feels safe. But I also crave,
what does it feel like to be in a really healthy relationship? What's the opposite of this?
And so I tried to find that for myself, but couldn't quite do that because I had so much
trauma still stuck in me from being a kid. And I thought, well, maybe this is, this is the ignorance of humanity, but I thought,
well, maybe if I work with other people and I teach them and coach them and help them and maybe
it will help me, but without actually doing the work, it doesn't really work that way.
So that's sort of where my, my journey began. That's relatable. And do you feel like a lot
of people have childhood traumas? I think, man, I'd say most of us, if not all of us, experience some level of trauma,
whether it's big T, capital T trauma or little t trauma.
Even just coming home one day and being really excited about something
and mom or dad ignoring you, not because they're not happy with you,
but because they're really busy doing something else or they're attending to something.
And how you make that one moment feel can change the rest of your life. That can be interpreted
as trauma, so to speak, right? It's not this acute, chronic, intense trauma, but it can impact
your self-worth. So I'd say the answer to that is yeah. Yeah. I just figured out I had some and I
didn't even know because you're so used to it, I guess, that you just act that way as you're an adult,
but you don't realize it's not normal. We're used to it. And we also have psychological
coping strategies that block that stuff out. That's too intense to look at when we're kids.
So as adults, if we want to address it and close that trauma loop, which is a big part of my
journey, we have to look at that stuff in some capacity. We have to expel it from our bodies
because it's stuck in our nervous systems. Right. So what's that process look like? Say you identify
it. How do you go about expelling it? Well, for me, we're relational beings, right?
What you do in the world doesn't exist without other people. Same as me too. We're here to grow
with each other, to learn from each other. So the first thing is we often can't see the forest through the trees.
So find someone to work with, a coach, a counselor, a therapist, a spiritual guide, whatever it is,
someone that can help you navigate the difficulties and the challenges that come with addressing our trauma.
So you need to be met with curiosity and compassion and non-judgment.
Because often when we experience trauma, there's a bunch of judgment that comes
with it. And because we have so much judgment around it, we have this push-pull relationship
with it and we can't actually touch it in a way that it needs to be looked at so we can actually
heal it and feel whole again. So working with someone and having that experience of, oh,
this person's really seeing me. This person gets me. They understand me. I never had that growing
up. We're rewriting stories. Now, at the beginning, we may push that away, but if we stay consistent and the practitioner
that you're working with is still compassionate, still curious, asking questions, not going
anywhere, not reacting to you. I don't know about you, man, but I had a very reactive,
volatile father. I'd say one thing and bang, like I'm either getting hit or I'm getting screamed at.
So to be met with someone, if I say something that is maybe socially
unacceptable if I do something and someone says hey I'm going to set a healthy boundary but I'm
still here with you I love you I care for you or they show that by not going away or not getting
angry that's a really big thing for that person to experience that's where healing comes in man
yeah we just need compassion and love that's the first steps wow yeah my grandfather was like that
with my father you know physically abusive so my father took the opposite approach with me so hyper passive hyper
like wouldn't lay a hand on me but at the same time that's not good also right because it's
detached as well yeah pretty much yeah so because he was so traumatized and he never got the right
help for it you know what i mean yeah yeah so So that's tough. Did you, were you able to
repair that relationship with your father? Oh, absolutely, man. I remember the day that I did,
I went to a seminar and it was a three, four day intensive of really deep shadow work and
somatic exploration, right? Which is, which is part of your original question of how do you
start moving through this stuff, right? Yes, it's retelling the stories in different way,
relating to them in different ways, being met with compassion and
curiosity, but then moving this stuff through our bodies, through trauma release exercise and
emotional release practices as well. And I remember leaving that seminar. It wasn't really a seminar,
it was more like a workshop. And I just felt this forgiveness, like this spaciousness in my body. I
felt light. And because I'd released a bunch of feelings
that had been trapped and stuck around my father,
particularly that moment,
I was able to call him and just,
I didn't, he'd never understand the stuff that I was doing.
I mean, he doesn't even speak English.
He speaks, I'm half Greek, half Italian.
So he speaks Greek, speaks a little bit of English.
But he just, he wouldn't get it.
It's very foreign to him.
He's in his eighties now, when he was a little later. English, but he wouldn't get it. It's very foreign to him.
He's in his 80s now, when he was a little later.
So all of this personal development work and self-exploration, it's new to him.
Not that it's new to us.
It's been around for thousands of years, but new in this context.
But I rang him and I just said, I love you.
I care for you.
And just thank you for being the father you were.
I was able to equilibrate and collapse all of those moments.
And then there was more work to do after that.
And he received that.
He really did.
And that was helpful that he received that.
He said, oh, thank you.
I love you too.
And that's all it was.
It wasn't, I did all this work around all the things that you did to me.
There was no need for that.
That was my journey.
Some people may have a need for that. And there's ways to express that in healthy communication that can help
relieve you and relieve the person that you are projecting hate towards.
Yeah. So you're a big fan of forgiveness, right?
Yeah, absolutely. But not without feeling. Because we live with the resentment. We live
with the anger. We live with the rage, right? And so why wouldn't we want to practice forgiveness
or be on that journey of forgiveness? It. It's not for the other person.
It's for us.
Yeah.
When you hold it in, it really affects your health.
Big time.
I think his name is John, Dr. John Sarno.
He speaks to the mind-body connection very eloquently.
He's passed away now, but he's written many, many books on this, on how repressed emotions
and dense psychological states,
they impact our physical health and it manifests into cancer
or stomach ulcers or whatever it may be.
Wow, that's crazy.
Yeah, so I guess disease is somewhat caused by mindset.
I think there's definitely a correlation at the very least, man.
We're a whole being.
Again, look at Dr. Joe Dispenza's
work, right? And how he has been able to articulate this profound spiritual, psychological,
physical connections, this whole being that is us, that they play with each other. It's like
the baseball player can't really play baseball unless he's on a field. This is the
interrelationality of life.
Yeah.
It's the same with the mind and the body.
What he's been able to do, man, is insane. Joe Dispenza.
Yeah.
I mean, he's curing diseases with just mindset.
He's doing great work, man. And the interesting thing, I've been to two of his advanced long retreats. The interesting thing is that he really pulls from a lot of ancient wisdom.
And I love that. I love that because for me,
I like to go to the source of something or as close to the original source as possible,
if that makes sense. And where he pulls from is from a lot, especially his breath practices and
his somatic practices, a lot from the Sanskrit tradition and the Vedic tradition as well.
So what are those retreats like? Are you just meditating the whole time?
Not the whole time. There's a lot of education and there's some downtime,
but there's a lot of meditation, like hours and hours every day.
Jeez, I don't know if I could.
I mean, I don't want to say that because then I'll manifest it,
but that sounds tough.
It is, it is.
And then you get accustomed to it just towards the end
when you're about to leave.
Yeah, because it's tough for me to meditate, man.
How did you get good at it?
Because my mind is all over the place.
Well, me too, man.
Me too.
My mind, I have a very fast mind.
I learned that it wasn't about quietening the thoughts.
It was less about having less thoughts and more about being the observer of those thoughts with non-judgment.
That was a tough part because I would make the thoughts mean something.
I'd either make the thoughts mean that I'm not good enough because I can't have less
thoughts or I'd make them mean something in terms of going down a rabbit hole with them
and then getting frustrated with myself.
And so then I'm releasing cortisol and adrenaline because I'm experiencing frustration and anger.
And so once it's still a
practice, man, but it's really about allowing the thoughts to just be. And if I do 20 minutes of
thinking or 40 minutes of thinking or five minutes of thinking, that's okay. Let me just keep coming
back to it consistently. Consistency is key. Interesting. So you'll have a thought and you'll
look at it objectively. I attempt to look at it objectively and neutrally, yes. That's cool. And just let it be.
Have you ever heard that adage of go through to get there faster?
And so the buffalo, when a storm is coming, instead of running away from the storm, they huddle and they move into the eye of the storm to get through the eye of the storm in greater pace, right?
So our mind is very similar to that.
Basing problems and challenges is very similar to that. Facing problems and challenges is very similar to
that. Don't avoid the thing. Don't run away from it. Don't suppress it or repress it. Be with it.
Feel it. Feel it to move through it faster and to actually gain some wisdom from it and grow.
I love that. What's been your journey on the dating relationship side? A lot of people these
days have issues there. Have you been in
successful relationships? I'm assuming yes. Many unsuccessful ones. So the interesting thing with
me, because I play in the realm of relationships and intimacy and dating, I choose to keep my
finger on the pulse of things that are going on. So I haven't dated for a few years, obviously,
because I've been married for a few years. However, what I'm seeing is that more and more people, this is anecdotal,
and there's some empirical evidence for this.
You do some research and there's some latitudinal, longitudinal,
cross-cultural studies done on dating and relationships in today's day and age.
We're seeing some problems, man.
We're seeing men say, you know what?
I don't really – it's too much trouble dating.
Let me just stay at home.
Let me have my gadgets.
Let me do my thing.
Let me look at ****.
We're distancing ourselves from intimacy.
Yeah.
And it's an epidemic because what's happening is when we're not intimate with each other
and we're not close with each other, we don't trust each other.
And when we don't trust each other, we don't collaborate and innovate in deeper ways.
I'm not just talking from a business perspective.
I'm talking about sex magic.
I'm talking about creating intimacy
and creating families and creating,
and I'm not saying that everyone's path,
you have to create a family and you have to have a child.
Not at all.
It's not about that.
But if you're avoiding that
because you're scared of rejection or abandonment
or being hurt because you're not looking at your trauma
or because you're taking the easy way out of convenience of not doing the, you know, the sometimes difficult work to be in
relationship and the effort that's required and to be challenged. That's a problem for humanity,
man. Because one of the reasons why we're here, why you and I are sitting here today is because
our ancestors were resilient. When we start to avoid difficult, guess what happens? We become
less resilient. That gives me a dismal hope for
humanity, man. Just from that perspective. You saw it with, everyone got sick as soon as it ended
because they weren't, their bodies couldn't handle it. Yeah. We all became weak. Yeah. There was a
couple of interesting YouTube videos you had. I want to go through them, take a deeper dive.
One of them was called, should you masturbate if you're in a relationship?
Walk me through that. Well, the answer is yes and no, or yes and whatever.
So my thought around this is it's less about the thing and more about your own integrity and the agreements that you have in any relationship. But here's an example. You and I have an unspoken
and spoken agreement that I'm going to come on here. I's an example. You and I have an unspoken and spoken agreement
that I'm going to come on here, I'm going to be professional,
and I'm going to honour your physical space,
and in return you're going to ask me questions
and we're going to have a conversation.
I may ask you some questions.
And we're going to trade our time for something.
And you'll at some point put me on the podcast on your platform
and then I'll receive an audience and blah, blah, blah.
You get it, right?
Most relationships, it goes back to the question around dating as well.
They start their relationship in this honeymoon period, in this limerence phase, and they're
all excited and all they can see is beautiful.
This person's the best.
I can't believe they love the same things that I love.
The sex is great.
They live here.
Oh, that's where I want to live.
Oh, they make their own money.
Whatever the thing is, right?
They have these blinders on.
And the whole person isn't presented because we're in this hormonal flush.
So we don't really think about, the majority of people,
don't think about setting agreements.
What are your highest values?
What are the things that are most important to you in a relationship?
How do you want to do conflict?
Where do you want to live?
Do you want to have a family?
What are your sexual fantasies and desires?
What are your deepest wounds and fears?
People don't ask themselves really big questions and ask each other big questions.
As a result of that, the relationship drags on and drags on.
And then when there's conflict, they either avoid the conflict or they're hyper-aggressive.
So either way, there's no real deep conflict resolution.
They're hyper-vigilant.
They're hyper-triggered.
They're dysregulated in their nervous systems.
And so what do we do when we experience a lot of pain?
Well, we need pleasure because the greater the pain, the more pleasure we require.
What do most of us do?
Food, masturbation, orgasm, sex, right?
Whether it's cheating on someone or just masturbating, whatever it may be.
Adrenaline, success.
So we want to build success.
We want to define ourselves by the things that we do, our accolades, our achievements.
Shopping.
We feel bad, so we want to shop and we feel good then, then we get guilty about it.
So the cycle continues, but we need more pleasure in our bodies, right? So it's very convenient in
the day that we live in. I don't have my phone on me, but get your phone out,
.com and you're there..hub, whatever it is, right? But you're there immediately.
Yeah. Instant.
Instant. And you can just masturbate and instant pleasure.
Yeah.
But what you're doing is in that avoidance is you're not healing or rupturing.
You're not healing that rupture in the relationship.
And that compounds and stacks and it becomes more and more challenging.
And guess what?
Well, it's very convenient to go masturbate.
It's very convenient to go be with my friends when I don't want to be with my partner.
But you're not addressing the issues. And so in relationship, back to your
original question, let's say you have a healthy relationship where you have open communication
and let's say masturbating is something you enjoy doing. Can you go to your partner and let them
know that? Can you make requests? Can you forge agreements? Can you talk about the issue without being shamed?
That could be an agreement that you have.
Hey, when we bring stuff to each other, we've got to do our best to not shame each other,
to not judge each other.
And if that stuff comes up, let's have some space.
Let's come back to it until we're more neutral.
But that's part of relationship, man.
We come into a relationship to heal old wounds, particularly around shame, around judgment,
around insecurities, around abandonment, around judgment, around insecurities,
around abandonment, around rejection, around just not feeling enough, low self-worth.
Relationships, intimate relationships have the capacity to do that if we allow them to,
but we have to put the effort in. I love that, man. That was bars.
There's another video called eye contact during sex. Is that something that you recommend people doing?
Yeah, man.
Yes, because it's uncomfortable.
And it's been uncomfortable for me.
And sometimes it still is.
If I'm in a funk and my wife wants to connect to me and I'm not present,
I don't want to make eye contact.
But I know I need to, to get present.
Because then she, not just she, but whoever you are, whoever you're with,
they can feel when you're not present.
Eye contact drops are straight.
And there's something about looking into each other's eyes.
It's very uncomfortable, eerily uncomfortable for a reason.
Let's think about that.
But also deeply, deeply healing.
If you can move past and beyond the challenge of it
and actually instigate it. Wow. And how long are you making this eye contact for?
Few seconds, few minutes. Minutes? Yeah. Bro, you're wild.
And not just, man, not just his sex. So there's deep men's work that I do as well. And we'll have
men gaze into each other's eyes for 20, 30 minutes, maybe more.
Two guys?
Yeah.
Well, most guys wouldn't want to do that.
No, most guys don't. And while we're running them through, while I'll be running them through,
we will be running them through a particular prompt or program.
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Well, the thing that they need to be doing while they're maintaining eye contact,
that's bringing up a lot of stuff. Wow.
Emotional stuff. And they have to hold that eye contact.
Interesting. But there's something special that
happens, man, when you're witnessed and seen.
There must be some studies done on this too.
I wonder what's going on there between the eye contact because I guess you're forming a deeper connection somehow.
Absolutely.
So for me, at least.
So symbolism for me is the oldest language we have access to.
Think about one of the core wounds that we carry as humans is not being seen, not being understood, not being respected, not being heard, not being appreciated, but not being seen is a big one. The symbolism of
actually looking at someone and seeing them without needing to do anything with that and,
and to hold, and a lot of people will laugh through this as well. It's, it's a coping strategy.
Right. Yeah, I think I would laugh.
Yeah, yeah. And, and you, because you're uncomfortable and that's okay. If you're
new to it, that's going to happen.
But after all that settles, you start to just see the real person.
You start to see not only their trauma but their joy and their aspirations
without words needing to be spoken.
Something really special happens, man.
Wow.
You're able to see their little boy or girl, that person, that part of them,
that part of their psychology that resides within them that is full of wonder and curiosity and innocence.
You start to see all that.
You start to see the humanness in the man.
Like, it's very difficult for me to talk about this without getting emotional.
Because I've been in so many spaces where I've been witnessed, but I have witnessed
the humanness in people.
Man, I guarantee you, you know, we'll often hear, hey, if most of the world just did some
LSD or some psilocybin, we'd often hear, Hey, if, if, if most of the world just did some LSD or
some, or some psilocybin, you know, we'll probably be in a more peaceful place because we, you know,
or MD, uh, MDMA and or DMT, man, if we just all looked in each other's eyes for a little bit
and did some, some really specific kind of breathing, man, I think the whole world would
change. It would be a catalyst just from that
yeah
I'm going to try that out man
what kind of breathing
do you have to do during it
it depends
it can be very slow
calm regulated breathing
or it can be more of a
holotropic style breath
which activates
a dysregulated nervous system
which you may think
well that's not
that's not good
yes
but you come back
from that interregulation
and the oscillation
between that the pen it's called pendulation neuroscience it can be very helpful for helping
you see aspects of self that you couldn't see before that is cool man really cool uh last video
and then we'll move on uh it was called clearing clearing sexual energies of past partners is there
so basically when you have sex with someone you're basically saying there's energy
transference yeah so there's something called microchimerism which is some will consider it
a pseudoscience so it's not necessarily full of empirical evidence and science back
but the the the essence of this theory is that when we exchange bodily fluids, we're exchanging DNA and we're also exchanging the energetics that are associated with that, the emotions, the thoughts, not all of ourselves, but so much of ourselves.
Similar to the Joe Dispenza conversation we're having a few moments ago.
So with that said, if your intention really matters in the world, I think it does for me.
Like you said earlier, you know, you've built multiple businesses.
This one you're really excited about.
Yeah.
You know, your level of intention must be pretty dialed in.
I'm dialed in.
Dialed in.
Yeah.
I can see it when you just talk.
I feel it when you talk.
So intention matters, right?
So if we're drunk and we're, you know, on drugs and we're just all over the place.
And I'll tell you something actually on that.
So I heard something really interesting the other day,
and I need to research a little more.
But this lady, this author was talking about casual sex.
And she was actually talking about the hookup culture.
Because I think casual sex is more than fine.
I think it's healthy.
I think it can be healthy, I should say.
I think it's part of our think it can be healthy, I should say. I think it's part
of our evolutionary drive and our evolutionary history. But she was saying hookup culture
is not really quote unquote normal and it's not healthy for us. And then she said,
oh, maybe that's why so many people need to drink alcohol to then engage in this
reckless hookup culture.
And I started thinking about that.
And I thought, yeah, okay, alcohol is part of our culture,
especially part of Australian culture.
But then I started thinking about, well, yes, and.
What if that is telling us something?
We have to be so disassociated to give ourselves in that way.
Right?
Right.
But back to your question.
So, oh, sorry.
It was clearing sexual energies?
Clearing the sexual energies, yes.
So with that said and the intention that we hold,
if we're not very intentional with who we're spending time with,
we may be at a certain phase in our lives.
I have a client of mine.
He's moved through, he was very much a, call him a player, right?
Just use a terminology that everyone's familiar with.
And he's turned into, he's a young guy in his late 20s,
turned to 360 in the sense that he's very clear on the type of relationship that he wants and he's clear that he doesn't want to partake
in that hookup culture anymore.
And so for him, he's being very intentional with the type of relationship and the kind of
woman that he's bringing into his life. So his whole world has changed. However, as he's reflecting
on his past experiences, he's reflecting on the casual sex that he's had and the casual encounters
that he's had. It's bringing up stuff for him. It's bringing up grief. It's bringing up guilt.
It's bringing up frustration. It's bringing up feelings of inadequacy because
he's seeing that so much of that was just, let me get a notch on my belt. Let me get a notch on my
belt. And so what's underneath that? What's underneath the reason to get a notch on your
belt? There must be something driving that behavior. So when you unpack that, it's low
self-worth. When you unpack that, it's pain that's suppressed and repressed and undealt with trauma
at some level, right? And so when we're clearing partners of the past, if we haven't been intentional and we
haven't been clean, we haven't known ourselves fully or we haven't known ourselves enough,
I should say, at that point in time, we've been just reckless with our bodies and reckless
with ourselves.
We're carrying imprints, at least psychic or spiritual, at the very least imprints,
if not biophysical at some level,
of those individuals, of that relationship dynamic, of that experience. And if it wasn't a healthy experience or it was a challenging experience, we're carrying that in our psyche
and in our nervous systems. So being deliberate about clearing that, and it's just practices,
maybe it's meditations, maybe it's seeing an energy clearer, maybe it's visualizations,
maybe they're cord cutting practices, maybe it's somatic work, like deep, deep breath work to really dislodge that guilt, that grief, that pain.
And it's a process. It's not necessarily just one session. It can be multiple sessions over
a long period of time. For me, I felt complete after about eight or nine months of doing work
multiple times a week. So you had a lot of trauma. Yeah, I had a lot of shit I just wasn't dealing with.
Eight to nine months.
Wow.
How does the energy healing work?
What is that process like?
Depends who you work with.
But, and again, some of it's a little, I mean, it can feel very abstract and feel very fringe,
you know, because you're not working with something that's tangible and material.
Right, you can't see it.
You're working with the immaterial.
And psychology is like that as well.
However, we can connect dots in different ways
when it comes to psychology.
But with the ethereal, the spiritual,
that energy, if you like,
it requires an element of faith as well.
I think people are walking around with so much trauma,
but they're just so used to it,
they don't even know if they need to clear it.
You're absolutely right, man.
I think we're walking around in such a highly,
well, a low dysregulated state that that's the norm now.
Yeah.
And so we're in this fight or flight response constantly
because of the world that we live in
and because of, again, I'm dealt with trauma.
Yeah.
What's your take on this toxic masculinity,
red pills kind of movement, I guess?
So for me, the toxic masculinity, as it's shared in the mainstream is ****.
In the sense that if toxic masculinity exists, which it does, by the way,
toxic femininity must exist.
I haven't heard that before.
Toxic femininity.
And I'll tell you what I mean.
So firstly, masculine and feminine energies are a dual way.
It's a polarity, right?
It's a duality.
And these are expressions that live within us.
First and foremost, we're human.
They're human expressions first.
We split them into a duality to help us understand ourselves in a more rich and empowering way.
That's all it is.
So masculine and feminine is not exclusively connected to male and female.
Number one, it resides within all of us.
The second part to that, if that's the case in their expressions,
then one can't be toxic and the other can be.
Because all you're doing now is just, well, if we're saying,
if parts of our society unconsciously or in hidden ways saying,
well, males and or masculinity is superior,
and then we're saying, well, there's toxic masculinity,
but there's no toxic femininity,
now we're just saying the same thing for the feminine energy.
Right.
And the pendulum's swinging and extremes don't do well.
So we have to come back into homeostasis, greater harmony with ourselves.
So from my perspective, do unhealthy expressions of masculinity exist?
Yes.
Do unhealthy, unsustainable expressions of femininity exist?
Absolutely.
Manipulation is an expression that is unhealthy for femininity or feminine expression.
Coercion or oppression is an unhealthy masculine trait.
That doesn't mean that a woman can't be oppressive and coercive.
It doesn't mean that a man can't be manipulative.
Right.
We get confused.
And so we can use other language.
You can use do and be energies.
We can use go and flow energies.
We can use active and passive energies that reside within us.
Again, active.
How many podcasts are you doing today?
Five.
Five.
You're going to be active.
You're going to get up.
You can't just be passive.
Yeah.
But a full week of work,
maybe you need to be passive on the weekend.
Yeah.
You need to rest.
So these are just energies, man.
That's all it is.
All right, yin-yang.
That's it.
So if we look at it that way,
there's less controversy, less judgment, less separation,
and more how do we make the whole human better.
Yeah.
So you believe we're basically all energy.
Yeah, for sure.
And I think a lot of people have some negative energy.
For sure.
And I'll also say on the masculine-feminine piece, right,
is that I also – my belief is in what I've seen in the thousands
and thousands of people that I've worked with,
workshops I've facilitated and research I've done and so forth,
is that most men will carry a more dominant masculine set of energetics.
Right.
And most women will carry a more dominant set of feminine energetics or feminine expresses.
I do see that.
And then I also see females that are very strong in their masculine orientation.
Most men want to be in more of a dominant masculine posture within.
Yeah.
And most women in more of a, you know, dominant or active feminine posture within.
And is that like something to keep in mind in terms of balancing?
Like you said, guys have feminine energy too.
Is it important to tap into that a little bit, you think?
I do.
But what I usually, you see, I have a lot of, a lot of women will come to me and they'll say,
oh, how do I make, how do I help my man or make my man be more feminine?
Or men will come to me and say, hey, I need to tap more into my feminine.
And that may be true.
So if the feminine is represented by the emotional body and men struggle to be in healthy emotional posturing,
not because they're unable to do so,
because socially we haven't been taught
or we haven't been shown how to be healthfully masculine in our emotional expression.
We miss rites of passage.
Men need rites of passage.
We need cultural rites of passage because when a girl goes from being a girl to being
a woman, she has a menstrual cycle.
It's very definitive and clear.
Men don't have that.
So we need a cultural rite of passage to help us go from boys to men.
So when that scenario happens, I say it's less about being in your feminine energy as a man
and more about activating your healthy masculine energy.
Focus on that.
And you'll find that you'll be what you need to be.
You'll relate to others as you need to relate.
Often that comes from a place of,
this is how I relate in the world through my emotions.
I want you to relate like this with me.
I love that.
There's a lot of guys scared to open up emotionally.
For sure, man, because they haven't been shown
because it's been dangerous as well.
Dangerous meaning emotionally unsafe, right?
So when a man does open up,
he's then perceived as,
well, hold on a second. Well, you're meant to be tough, but you're crying and you're not tough. But I a man does open up, he's then perceived as, well, hold on a second. Well,
you're meant to be tough, but you're crying and you're not tough, but I want you to open up,
but you shouldn't open up and it's confusing. And then what? Yeah, no, for sure. Because when you lay it all out there and the world responds in a certain way, you're scared to do it again.
Yeah. Yeah. What's your take on psychedelics? Man, I'm a massive advocate of psychedelics
and comes with a caveat, right?
A couple of things. I'm very opinionated on this subject. Firstly, I think we're in a very
different world. Firstly, I think there's a bunch of charlatans out there and shamans that shouldn't
be holding space or administering sacred sacrament or plant medicine because they just don't know how
they understand the fracturing of mind, they don't understand the medicine because they just don't know how. They don't understand the fracturing of mind.
They don't understand the human condition.
They don't understand our soul's journey.
They're just so disconnected.
That's not everyone, but many, in my opinion.
And we live in a very different world now.
We have far more pollutants in our atmosphere,
in our waterways.
The earth holds a different energetic,
a different frequency, right?
Hundreds of years ago, pre-industrial era,
and when you're deep in the culture and the nature of that wisdom,
of those wisdom keepers, of those indigenous tribes,
it's used very differently.
So we either need to adapt to using it in a different way
or we need to respect the tradition that it's being used.
And many do, of course.
Yeah.
But I think it's overused.
It's replacing other addictions.
I think that people are unaware,
and they're going in for a quick fix
because we live in a society of convenience.
Yeah.
And that's not what this is about.
This is about insight.
Some of the deepest work that I've done
has been outside of psychedelic medicine
or psychedelic sacrament,
or psychoactive ingredients that alters my familiar state of consciousness.
And my recommendation is do deep inner work, exploratory work
of consciousness of self, of the cosmos, whatever,
in familiar states of consciousness, meaning just like this now.
And alter your state, not through a substance,
but maybe through breathing or through meditation.
But that requires a lot more effort.
It does, yeah.
But for people that are willing to do psychedelics, where do you find the proper shaman?
Because I've been offered some in Cali and I'm like, sounds weird to me at least.
Oh man, that's a really good question.
And one, I don't know if I can comment on because it depends on so many variables.
Where you're at in your life, how you relate to that individual, how they can relate to you, the immediate trust that's felt.
So when I talk about trust, man, I'm talking about a physiological function that's happening
in the body. This here is our Derek system. It's our nervous system that is unconsciously
constantly, as our eyes are, our greatest threat funnel, are constantly scanning the world.
Really?
Yeah, for danger wow
and giving feedback through the vagus nerve into certain parts of the brain saying safe not safe
safe not safe like right now if a gunman came through a big line came through we would start
feeling unsafe that would be recorded through here that wow punches information and through
here of course that's cool because i've had two near-death experiences and i never understood why
something kicked in into me to survive.
Your body knew.
It was probably that.
Yeah, your body knows.
We're made to survive as long as we can.
And so there's all these variables that are going on with respect to the question you asked.
Also, what is the medicine?
What's the sacrament?
Where are you at in your time of life?
And there are so many different plants out there, man.
So many different plants.
Is it a Baha'i faith sort of, you
know, many, many roads to the top of the mountain? Possibly. But I think what's more important to ask
is why are you doing it? What's your purpose? Right. And what do you, what's your intention
with going down a path like this? Yeah, for sure. Stephanos, it's been a pleasure, man.
Where can people learn more about you and your coaching? Yeah, appreciate you, man. At Stefano Stefandos for Instagram
or stefanosefandos.com for my coaching or coachwithstef.com. Love it. We'll link it in
the video, man. Thanks for coming on. Killed it. Thanks for watching, guys, as always,
and I'll see you next time.