Know Thyself - E211 - John Wineland: Your Wounds Are Choosing Your Partners

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

John Wineland has spent nearly twenty years teaching people how to love more deeply, and in this conversation he lays out why intimacy has become one of the most demanding spiritual practices available to us. We talk about why relationships surface our oldest wounds, why the partner we choose so often mirrors the exact pattern we grew up in, and why that mirroring is not a mistake but an invitation to heal. John also opens up about his daughter Claire, who passed away eight years ago, and what her life and death taught him about grief, presence, and unconditional love.What We Dive Into:1. John explains that whatever part of you remains unhealed keeps transmitting into the world, and it draws a partner with the opposite wound so you can replay your childhood dynamic together. He frames this pattern as an opportunity rather than a flaw, since the relationship that triggers you most is often showing you exactly what needs attention.2. Years of unspoken fear shape how we stand, breathe, and hold tension, so real change requires more than insight alone. John describes training the nervous system through practices like breathwork and qigong so the body can stay open in moments that would normally trigger defense, attack, or withdrawal, which is where lasting change actually happens.3. Reflecting on his daughter Claire, John shares that there is no end to grief because there is no end to love. He describes honoring grief as an act of self love rather than something to rush past, and encourages anyone facing loss to give that grief real space instead of staying busy to avoid feeling it.Know Thyself, but not by yourself. A guided space to return home to yourself.https://www.knowthyselfcollective.com✨THANK YOU TO OUR SPONSORS:https://www.mudwtr.com/knowthyselfUse code KNOWTHYSELF for up to 43% off sitewidehttps://www.oneskin.co/KNOWTHYSELF Use code KNOWTHYSELF for 15% off OneSkin___________00:00 Intro01:48 The Historical Evolution of Love05:45 Why We Attract Our Reciprocal Wound08:17 When Relationships Deepen the Wound10:48 The ROI of Doing the Work14:30 The Four Pillars of Divine Union22:56 Safety, Belonging, and Being Loved26:34 The Wound of Being a Man31:47 Patterns in Men's Work37:49 What the Manosphere Gets Right40:03 Why Men Stay Silent46:47 Masculine and Feminine as Universal Forces55:12 Energetic Polarity and the Three Kinds of No1:01:22 Liberation Through Relationship1:03:23 Staying Connected Through Busy Seasons1:10:14 John's Own Attachment Wound1:15:51 What Claire Taught Him About Love1:24:00 Should I Stay or Should I Go1:33:41 Healing Generational Trauma1:44:45 Preparing for Divine Partnership1:49:02 The Practice of Incremental Improvement1:52:01 Closing and Where to Find John___________✨MORE FROM JOHN WINELAND↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/john_wineland/↳YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@JohnWineland↳Teacher Training: https://johnwineland.com/teacher-training/↳Men's Leadership Training: https://johnwineland.com/embodied-mens-leadership-training/https://johnwineland.com📜MORE FROM KNOW THYSELF↳Spotify: https://spoti.fi/4bZMq9l↳Apple: https://apple.co/4iATICX↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/knowthyself/↳TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andreduqum↳Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/knowthyselfbyandreduqum/↳https://knowthyselfpodcast.com/👁️MORE FROM ANDRÉ↳Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/@andreduqum↳Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/know-thyself-podcast↳Book recs: https://www.knowthyselfpodcast.com/book-list

You say that love is evolving. Yeah. What is it evolving into? Love now is asking us to heal. It's asking us to expand. But there's a problem. Most of us think that if we find the right one, everything will work itself out. But if we were raised in a household where we experienced neglect of love and care, that wound comes with us.

Any unheeled part of you that is still transmitting is going to be a beacon for somebody with the opposite. So that you guys can play out the childhood dynamic that you both were raised. stand. And the deeper you love them, the deeper the wound. It can be painful and confusing. Yeah. To be honest, I've been leading men's programs for over a decade, and I'm still fucking dealing with this thing. Me. And I'm supposed to be the relationship guy. Would you be open to sharing a bit about what Claire taught you about love? Yeah. Yeah, Claire was my daughter who died eight years ago. Man, she was 21. Claire taught me to love unconditionally, knowing that I was going to lose her. There's no end to grief because there's no end to love.

We heal in relationship. We're here to liberate love in each other. You can either evolve into that power struggle or use that moment to become more devotional to love itself. So the first thing I'll do is... Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Nileys Health podcast. Our guest today is a best-selling author, a Buddhist practitioner, a men's group coach, an

intimacy coach, and for nearly 20 years, he's been teaching people how to actually come deeper into intimacy and truly love one another. John Weiland, thank you for being here, my friend. Thanks for having me, Andre. It's my pleasure. I'd like to dive right in. You say that love is evolving. Yeah.

What is it evolving from? What is it evolving into? Right. Let's set the stage here. Yeah. Well, let's discern love itself has been love itself since the dawn of time, right? That's a part of our humanity and part of sentient beings, right? Like animals love, we love, right?

So love itself has been this ocean of the high, expression of consciousness and energy that is known, right? But how we love is evolving, right? How we are being asked to love is evolving. And if you think about, you know, the history of humanity, we went from, you know, procreation-driven relationship, right? And to love, I guess. And then into, you know, sort of a survival mode of where we had to till the soil.

And we had to have a group, you know, for family and security. You know, love became relationship, came about security, about, you know, being able to survive and make food and all of that, to into the last, you know, 50, 60 years ago really, you know, self-expression and pleasure. And up until, you know, Tinder culture, right, has been about expression, right? What love is asking us to do now is to deepen that relationship. Like, what are we using relationship to evolve into versus to just have pleasure or survive or procreate? and love now is asking us to heal, it's asking us to expand, it's asking us to create better families

and children, right? If you think about, you know, the generations of children that came up over the last hundred years, many of them came through dysfunctional families, right? And so as we learn to love from a different place and using different sort of approaches to love, as a healing modality, for example, as a meditative and yogic modality, for example. We expand and how we love, our capacity to love expands, and then how we raise our children will change, right? And so we're literally as a species evolving through the, let's call it transmutation evolution of relationship, right?

And if you think about it, it makes sense in evolutionary terms, right? So the flowers, I use this example in the book I'm writing, which is, you know, the flowers that got brighter and smelled better actually attracted the bees, whereas the ones that didn't evolve didn't, and they died off eventually. So that's what I think is happening with humanity. That's what we see with the in-cell population and these groups that are not going to be able to, you know, spawn children, to be honest, right? And their lines actually are dying off, whereas the people in, you know,

we're in a sort of a bubble community, but this is happening on the fringe. where people who are looking at love and relationship from a deeper lens are actually going to evolve, going to attract partners who are doing more healed partners, more evolved partners, or we're going to have more evolved children, and we're already seeing this. We're starting to see this in certain communities. So that's a framework of love's evolution that I'm seeing. And I think that what I write about is that there's certain pillars that we need to adhere to in order to sort of live into this evolutionary call.

Hmm. Yeah. And so much of your work is centered around addressing the very real intrinsic personal behavioral adaptations, suppressed fear, shame, anger, guilt on the men's work that you do. And then in the relational work between men and women or through all people, addressing what's getting in the way of how love wants to evolve. Yeah. Instead of just being from the survival procreate lens. Yeah.

Lens. Find the right one and everything will work itself out. Yeah. Model, you know, which is the Disney model, I guess. Right. So what, when you say that we attract our reciprocal, right, it's not a crazy new concept. Most of us have heard, you know, that opposites attract and that we will sort of seek out what is familiar to us embedded in our nervous system since childhood. Yeah.

In ways unconscious to us, really, in many ways. can you explain for somebody who doesn't know what that is, what is the reciprocal, why to be attracted? Yeah. Well, the best example is the avoidant, anxious avoidant, right? Dynamic, right? And so if we have, if we were raised in a household where we experienced neglect of love and care, right? That imprint is going to be in us as children. And then as we grow older, we're going to be transmitting that sort of wound into the world, right? So we're always transmitting. We're always transmitting. We walk down the street.

We're transmitting our subconscious, right? So we're always transmitting. And if we have that wound, we're literally signaling someone who has the opposite wound, it becomes sort of a magnetism, right? And that's why avoidance love anxious, and that's why anxious love avoidance. So if somebody was raised in a place

where they were dominated or abused or controlled, they're going to attract somebody who's anxious, who's going to kind of naturally want to control them. You know, and so these two fear-based unhealed modalities attract each other. It happens all the time. You see it all over Instagram. You know what I mean? It's just everywhere.

But it's much more nuanced than that, right? The way that I like to write about it is that any unhealed part of you that is still transmitting is going to be a beacon for somebody with the opposite. So that you guys can play out the childhood dynamic. that you both were raised in. And I think the thing that I really want people to know is that that's not a problem. That's actually an opportunity to heal it

if it's approached from a certain point, right? If it's approached with a sense of like, okay, this person is mirroring the work that I need to do, so I actually need to go back and deal with that little boy who was left alone, right? I need to actually deal with that part of me because this person is mirroring what I need to work on so clearly,

which is part of the evolution of love. So the people who can see that, grasp that, and embrace that, they're actually going to grow. Right? And this is also, I mean, everything from Amoghotherapy to Stan Tatkin, to, you name it, Esther Perel, like everybody in modern psychology now knows this. I just think it hasn't really filtered into the general population.

What do you say that it's more obvious for somebody who gets maybe a couple years into a relationship where the initial sort of chemistry starts to, not fade, but there's a normalization where the triggers start to become more present. And then it's like frustratingly persistent, like this phenomenon, right? Yeah, you see it in almost every relationship. Yeah. Yeah.

And what's happening is that as they deepen their commitment to each other, other, they're becoming in their subconscious mind, they're becoming more and more family. So you see it like a couple will be great for a year and then they move in together. And then all of a sudden the shit starts hitting the fan. And all this happening is that your brain is going, oh, they're family. So I have to now take the posture that I took in my family, either withdrawing or being aggressive or, you know, being secretive or any of those things, right and being being reactive right all those things kind of show up just sort of materialize as we deepen commitment so that's the thing that's confusing everybody right it's like as as i've deepened my

commitment to this person now we're all of a sudden having these problems maybe they're the wrong one what i'm trying to say is likely that might have that might be the truth but you don't know until you literally apply a set of principles and do some work to really see if that's the case because the divine beauty in this is that because you occupy the role in my subconscious mind of caregiver, my partner, right? You also have the capacity to be a healing agent for me in the way that my parents never could.

It's so beautiful when you think about it, right? And in the way that like a dumbbell in the gym has the capacity to grow strength, right? Because it provides the necessary resistance. Yeah, yeah. Like that friction that you're met with actually allows you to work with it in a way we're sitting in a cave meditating won't.

Yeah, no, we heal, we're wounded in, Sue Johnson talks about this, right? We're wounded in relationship, we heal in relationship, right? So, you know, you can get a certain, and I work with men all the time on this, where you can do a certain level of work with yourself and with the divine, with, you know, with the world, but you really won't know what you're up against

until you're in relationship with somebody you love. And the deeper you love them, the more love there is, the deeper the wound. The deep of the wound. And so it can be painful and confusing. Yeah. Yeah. Why should anyone care to like look into this work and by virtue of this podcast and this

conversation we're having? What's the promise of exploring this and what it can bring into your life? Yeah. Oh, that's a great question. So there's the ROI, you know, especially speaking to men, right? They're like, what's the ROI of my commitment to this work? Is astounding, right? I mean, so think about, you know, how I opened with,

not only are you going to not be passing on to your children, the trauma that you experienced, right, which should in and of itself be motivation, but your capacity as a human expands. So, for example, I'll give you a good example. Like, let's say that you're with an avoidant partner, right? And you're kind of anxious, or you have you skew that way. This is kind of my thing, like I was raised in a lot of neglect,

so I have anxious stuff comes up. I actually have fearful avoidant. in my chart, which is a lot of fun. But so when my partner who could never speak her truth because she would get beaten down for it is able to come to me and speak her truth to me and I won't beat her down for it, I will love her through it,

even if it's difficult things for me to hear, even if it's feedback that, you know, is really challenging, she then is able to heal that part of her that could never fully express her heart's truth when she was young, right? that in and of itself is one of the great joys of my life like being able to see somebody i love heal in front of me because i'm able to show up in a different way right and sometimes i'm triggered sometimes the thing you know my initial response will be defend i didn't do that i'm not that way

you know what i mean but that's not what matters what matters in that moment is i have the opportunity to be a healing agent for her and that reward is that reward is not only just just makes my heart open, right? It makes me feel like a really good human, but it expands my capacity. So my nervous system is actually expanding as I'm able to be with my feelings coming up, her feelings coming up, all the fear she's experienced around sharing her truth. My capacity expands, my nervous system expands, and that translates into the world. That translates into how I relate to my community, how I relate in business. It's relationship is a dojo. And people talk about it, you know, usually in the therapeutic sense,

but nervous system capacity can expand massively in relational moments. We're not even getting into sex, right? And what that can do for your nervous system. So, nervous system expansion,

being a healing agent, expanding your own capacity, not passing it on to your children, there's something that I see in my workshops all the time, which is, you know, somebody, let's say somebody has an unexpressed part of themselves. for example they a lot of women have the experience of i'm too much that's the message that they got right and so they'll come to my workshops and they'll be a little demure they'll be sort of withdrawn

and i'll say to the group and their partner will give them the feedback like i want more of you i want more of you but they were taught more of me is dangerous more of me gets shut down well if i ask the whole group do you want more of her too the whole group will be saying yeah like more of like more anger, more rage, more hot mess, more of this. So the whole world is feeling your limitation. And your limitation is nowhere is better expressed in your relationship. So, you know, I mean, I guess the answer to your question is if you want to be the highest version of yourself, the dojo for that, is relationship. Yeah. Now, would you say that responsibility is the very thing that takes a typical marriage or partnership

into the divine union category, which people throw around with ayahuasca ceremonies is like a fluffy term, but what is it that really takes it to that for you? Yeah, well, I wrote about this, I wrote about this, and I think I'll just lay them out really fast. So there's four pillars, I see. The first is obviously doing your own deep work, right?

So I've got to look at what's blocking me from being the deep sticks, wounds, what patterns, what traumas? And I've got to take responsibility for the way that I create stories, the way my personality runs the show in relationship, all that stuff. So without that, I'm not bringing a high, I'm not bringing the most capable version of myself to relationship. So that's a piece that I just think is a starting point for most people. The second piece that takes it into divine union. So you can't have divine union if you're, you know, if you're like, if you've got all these unheeled wounds, let's call them, right?

The second piece, which is where everybody really gets tripped up, is I need to learn to be devotional to love itself, like the field of love that's created in a relationship, over my own pattern, my own defensiveness, my own wound, which is where, so when the relationship, when they hit that two-year mark, right, and the power struggle begins of my needs versus my needs. We've all been in those moments. You have a choice.

You're at a fork in the road. You can either devolve into that power struggle, and that usually ends the relationship, or you can take the opportunity to apply certain tools and use that moment to become more devotional to love itself, the field of love itself that holds the relationship. Then you start to move into this healing divine space, where you're honoring love, which I would call God, right?

you know, over self, right? That's what marks it's starting to move into divine union. Then the third pillar that I express is intimacy itself, right? Like, I love you as a human, right? You and I are the same. Like, I am love, you are love, I have fear, you have fear, I'm consciousness, your consciousness. You know, there's a sameness, there's a oneness, you know. and the more that two people can recognize that oneness, the more intimate they can become.

But the fourth pillar, which is the really fun one, is where we use erotic magic to amplify all of it. What's the layman term for erotic magic? Well, you can call it. How do you explain to someone from the Midwest? Erotic magic is, yeah. Well, I think we've all felt it, like those moments where sex becomes an elevated. It's not just about getting off. It's not just about getting them off so that you feel good.

It elevates out of that realm into the realm of like, oh, something more is moving through us here. Something more is moving us. There's love itself that's moving us. There's ritual. There's devotion, devotion, right? Like devotion to your partner's full expression sexually. That's an aspect of divine magic, of erotic magic. So erotic magic is sort of the elevation out of just,

the pleasure mode or the stress release mode or the obligatory I got to take care of my wife mode or you know what I mean into something that is deeper more energetic more makes us feel more alive helps us feel divine you know to feel the divine through sex which I think most people even if they haven't experienced it they kind of understand that it's possible we have those moments were like, oh my God, that was, everything disappeared. And it was just love happening, you know? And so that's something that can be practiced. That's something, I mean, all the things that I just laid out are lifelong practices.

So what I find is that people don't invest time and money into the art of loving well. And that is kind of, these are all the different aspects of loving well. So you call it an art, right? commitment to be open because it is a dance. It takes two to tango, but we have the most immediate access we have to heal the division on the planet and see, you know, the change we want to happen in the world is right here. Yeah. And so I guess why do you call it in art and what does it take to cultivate that commitment? Because especially in moments where you're triggered and you have this ancient avoidant loop for whatever, you're, it's tough to actually really. It's tough to actually

respond consciously because you're literally acting in an unconscious trigger. Yeah. Well, that's where, you know, I mean, the stuff that I teach in workshops is about training people's nervous systems to meet those moments. Because it's not like you can't step on to Wimbledon, never having picked up a racket. So if you're like, if you find the person that you really love and you know this moment's coming, practicing staying open when you want to close, it's kind of a yogic, meditative move. right, of like, okay, can I feel my heart?

Can I relax my body? Can I, you know, lift my chest? Can I actually take the pose of openness when I want everything in me says constrict, hide, protect. Is that the first approachable kind of practical tool? It's the easiest one. I mean, the easiest one, you know, I mean, we've all heard now that the body, you know, the body takes the shape of our subconscious, right? So all these unconscious wounds and fears are over years, our body starts to take the shape and there begins to be this kind of collapsing inward.

So opening, you know, my teacher used to write about, you know, open, open, open. And so opening is literally like, you know, going from this to this, right? And it's, I can't have the same consciousness here, the consciousness I have here, and the consciousness I have here are two different consciousnesses, two different ways of seeing the world. and sometimes it's subtle and sometimes if I open my arms and I was just like, okay, now I have a different consciousness.

Like if she's yelling at me and I just open my arms and I'm like, I love you, baby, I love you, I'm on your team, I'm here with you. Eventually, this consciousness is going to override the consciousness, the childhood consciousness

that she's bringing. Most people don't, now if I want to answer your question about art, so if I'm doing this and she like, is yelling at me and I like, and I like, yeah, yes, right? And I start to like, I get creative. I respond in the moment. It's emergent. It's spontaneous. But it's, it's free flowing. Great art is free flowing. And if my body's open and I'm opening and I'm meeting that moment,

sort of artfully, we would call it. Or I start dancing or anything, you know, I mean, anything that's not the pattern of me defending, that's art. I think it would be an art too for that to feel like authentic in that interaction where otherwise it could further sometimes a trigger if it feels like a tactic

that is being deployed right? But what is authentic Andre? You know what I mean? Like we have to distinguish between habitual and authentic.

Right? And authentic for most of us when we really feel down into ourselves authentic is love. Like we just all want to be loved, right? We just all want to love

and be loved at the core, everything we do, the money we make, the status we try to create, like all of it so we can belong and be loved. So I would argue that most of what people are calling authentic is pattern, habit, right? My habit is to go withdraw and get silent. It's not your authentic self, right? So I just think that people, there's so much more available in a moment, whether it's an erotic moment, whether it's a relational, emotional moment, there's so much more creativity,

full expression, available than we normally have access to. That feeling you mentioned about what's really behind all the things we say we want, this sense of safety, belongingness of being loved and feeling like love and being as love, this takes the model of like,

obviously my other half, you complete me into two holes, coming together who source their safety internally. First, talk to me about that shift of stopping, and of course we'll have our tendencies and our habitual patterns that bring us back, but to orient ourselves with that feeling of, there's ultimately nothing external that is going to fully satiate me in the way that I have the capacity to realize internally for myself.

So I would challenge that. Go ahead. I would challenge that, yeah. I think that you're right that it starts with internal safety. Like we have to bring a modicum of being safe within ourselves, I would call it, right? And the way that I teach people to do that is to source safety inwardly like you're talking about. But there's when we actually include another and there's this sort of synergistic co-creation of safety in the relational field, then we're kind of, then we're in the healing modality of relationship versus it being only a self-contained,

you know, aspect of ourselves. So, you know, coming to a triggered moment, my partners, like, got feedback, you know. And so the first thing I'll do is, and I make this request, I'm like, hey, I'll hear anything. I will hear any truth you have. In fact, I demand it, but just give me a heads up. Give me two minutes or three minutes. And in those two or three minutes, I'm feeling my heart. I'm feeling the deepest aspects of myself. I'm literally like using every practice I have. I'm breathing. I'm slowing my breathing. I'm down regulating my nervous system. I'm imagining my heart is the wide expanse of love. You know, I've got all kinds of tricks over the years. So I'm sourcing safety and myself first. But then when she's coming at me and I can, I can provide

safety to her by saying the right things, by by downregulating her nervous system. Now we're in this sort of co-creation of a healing modality where we're actually, we are healing agents for each other. But yes, it starts internally, but then a lot of people will stop there. They won't actually see how providing safety for the other, like being the safety the moment needs, right, rather than just saying, hey, I'm safe within myself, and I feel good and they're having their experience. it's a layer of devotion one step further, I would argue. Yeah, you open this podcast with saying, you know, we're always transmitting something, right?

And you also write about how safety is an inside job. Yeah. And so, of course, the natural extension of one's own safety is that you provide that for others. Yeah. Well, you think so, but I see so many people who stop there, who stop there and don't actually and think, well, it's not my responsibility to do that,

or they don't deserve it or look at them, they're being childish or da-da-da-da-da. but they're going to be childish and I'm fine, right? They're going to be, and that's actually, you know, mask defensiveness. So I would love to think, Andre, that people are learning that, okay, now I can be the safety that this whole moment needs, and I'm transmitting that to them, and then they can heal and I can heal, and the world can heal. I believe the world heals one relationship at a time.

Yeah. I'd like to zoom in a bit more on the experience of being a lot. man, which I'm sure any of the women listening will also get benefit from. Sure. Where does that experience of love get stuck in particular within men? Because there's all these, obviously, patterns. You mentioned the one with women feeling like they're too much, right? We have our own as men, and so I'd like to start to unpeel some of those layers.

Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, when we boil it down to the human experience, it's all about safety, right? It's like, and the wound that we all received at some level or another, no matter how great your parents were, is about am I safe, which is, am I being, to a kid, being safe means I'm loved, right? When you don't feel loved by your parents, all, you know, you think, you literally becomes a life or death experience. Because if I'm not loved, I could be tossed out. I won't survive as a three-year-old out there in the world. You kind of know this as a young child. That's why moments of trigger are so life and death

because they're linked to this thing. So it's all about safety for both men and women. It tends to occur in two different ways. Women have all this epigenetic and cultural and historical trauma in their bodies of actually being physically safe, of being energetically safe, of being used for sex, and being burnt at the state.

I mean unsafe. Unsafe, yeah, yeah. So they haven't been safe, yeah. And so they're, the fear, the great fear that they're fighting against is being safe in the world, right? Alison Armstrong talks about. Yeah, yeah, yeah, she talks about this. Like, women, raise your hand if you felt unsafe walking through a parking lot at night, and they'll all raise their hand.

And men, two or three guys will raise their hand, you know? And that's what women are sort of constantly up against in the relationship. moment. For men, it's about being bad. It's when you boil down most wounds that are happening in the relational field, it's about him getting criticized or him not being recognized for his efforts, appreciated. Not enough. Not enough. Yeah. So when we kind of trans, when we really break apart the not enoughness, there's this really deep belief of somehow I'm broken, somehow I'm bad. somehow I'm rotten, which I also argue is culturally kind of pushed on to men and you can see it now, right?

So men are constantly trying to fight for this thing of, I'm good. I'm a good, you want to make a man cry, just tell him what a good man he is for five minutes, you know, and he will ball. Because the wound is very deep of like something is wrong with me. Somehow I'm broken, right? Somehow I'm bad. Where does that stem from? I think some of it is, some of it is obviously parenting, right? You know what I mean? Some of it is, I think some of it is this, you know,

we have so many years of the patriarchy coming through us, right? Where men really were, not all men, of course, right? But that men did take liberties with women and men did oppress women and other people and killed, right? I mean, we have years and years and years of men warring, of men like literally being forced into, like, you know, most people suffer from the patriarchy, not just women, men too, right? Men were enslaved and forced to kill for generations, right?

Men were, you know, kind of taught this cultural oppression of women up until the last, what, hundred years or so? So this sort of feeling of, I don't want to say it's guilt, but there's this imprint of like, you know, am I bad? and I think that actually lives in more men than you think and you you couple that with mommy saying you know you're a bad boy more than once right and then all of a sudden or your full expression being shut down

or you being told you know not to wrestle too hard with your brother or whatever it is right and and this feeling or you not being loved like the thing about the thing about children is they internalize everything Like, mommy and daddy, I love mommy and daddy. I have to love mommy and daddy. I'm compelled to love mommy and daddy. So if they're angry with me or they're not giving me love, I don't think there's something wrong with them.

I think there's something wrong with me. And I think that's also a really big piece of what men, you know, have had to face over the last few generations of like absent fathers, lots of absent fathers, right? Single mothers, raising children, right? And not having enough attention. or energy to really give the love that was needed. So I think it's a combination of those two things.

It's pretty pernicious. I've been doing leading men's programs for over a decade. And as I see what men are suffering with, you pull the string on it, and it's all some form of self-loathing. What are the top three things and the patterns you see in the men's work that guys are struggling with unanimously?

They had to pick three. Yeah. numbing and distraction would probably be one like i don't i don't i don't want to i don't know what to do with the things i feel and i don't know how to express the things i feel and they're uncomfortable and i'm afraid so i'll numb like men numb primarily because of fear most men are are operating with some deep level of fear which isn't in itself a problem if you have a relationship with it that's healthy so they numb they numb um um um um um um um um um um um the second one that I would say is their nervous systems are weak, for lack of a better term.

Like they really can't handle a lot of energy. That's why they ejaculate in seven minutes. That's why they can't handle when their partner's really, when a woman's really upset. Their nervous system is actually, even if they go to the gym five times a week, or they do some yoga or they do some meditation, nervous system training is different. It's more of a martial arts, Chi-gong kind of work, right, to train your nervous system. Jiu-jitsu is a great way to train your nervous system. So most men have weak nervous systems.

And a big part of the work that I do is to get them into uncomfortable situations and teach them to keep their nervous system opening through uncomfortable situations. Most of them intimate with men, intimate with women, holding specific poses, you know, getting them to expand their nervous system capacity. The third piece, and it's kind of related to both of those two, is most of them are sitting on a pool of unfelt feelings that they haven't really excavated and expressed in a way that is healing. And the way that I always set that up is to be witnessed by other men

in the source of your deepest unexpressed pain. To actually, like, for a short period of time, And for five minutes or ten minutes, like let's, and I take them to a whole process out in the desert, you know, let's, let's point it right at that. And for five minutes, man, you are going to be held back by two men and you're going to look into the eyes of another man and you are going to, like, express all the pain of your mother not loving you the way that you needed or all the pain of this woman betraying you or all the pain. And to be witnessed in that is life-changing for most of them, like to really be held. by another man while you're telling the story of your grief or your anguish is something that most men just don't have access to. And I'll add a fourth, which is, I think that a lot of men have good friends, right, or they have bros, you know, or they do medicine together, or they hang out together. But there's something that happens when men do deep work with each other, like they really go there with each other. And that kind of brotherhood that occurs, like,

It's kind of like going into battle, you know, going into the battle of the subconscious, right? And I think men are so, I see it every year. Like they fall so madly in love with each other. And it's because of that, because they've like finally, they're being met at their deepest level by another man. And there's no substitute for that. There's no substitute for that. Those are all great. What is it specifically about men being with other men without other women present?

Yeah. that allows for the stuff to happen. Yeah. What is it? Well, it's usually the father wound. You know, it's usually some aspect of father didn't provide all the stuff that I needed. So, you know, I hear all the time, like, nobody really taught me how to be a man. Or the lessons of manhood that I received were skewed or distorted or absent completely.

That was my experience. My dad was absent. And so, so I think it's, I think. think it's a it's a it's a healing of the father wound right it's it allows for a healing of the father wound and a re-parenting right of from a from a more healthy and i would even argue sacred masculine space um which also creates a relationship with the father right the great father however one wants to describe that right like so you feel the divine masculine or god or however you define you know Shiva You know, however you'd want to define that,

there's a relationship that happens through a masculine body where you can not only feel the love of this human in front of you, but you start to feel sort of the divine masculine itself, which was likely absent from your father. And unless you grew up in a really beautiful environment for most men. Yeah. Hey, everyone, one thing that reliably brings me a sense of joy in the morning is starting my day with a warm, nourishing drink.

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Manosphere movement, but I always like to ask, what is something getting right? And what do you feel like they are addressing? The Manosphere is addressing within men that is a very real need, because it's obviously addressing something. Yeah, well, that's a good controversial question. I would say they're reminding men their value, you know? that, you know, and I think that's important, right? That you know, that you're a catch too, right?

You know, if there's certain things that you can do in the world and adhere to, like even if all you do is make money, you're valuable, right? Because you had the force of will to create something out of nothing, right? Or if you can, like, show up with a sense of pride for yourself and confidence in yourself, right? that those are valuable things for men to learn, right? I think where they get it wrong is that, you know, women are kind of the enemy. It's sort of this sort of using women to just continually bolster your ego, which we know doesn't go very far.

But they do, you know, to reminding men that they're valuable, I think men need that now. Yeah. Yeah. That they're useful, that they can have a quest, that like to acknowledge the desire for competition and like all of that. Yeah.

Feels like present within it all too. Yeah, I mean, the masculine grows, masculine grows in challenge. You know, it's a famous David Dateline, right? The masculine grows in challenge. And so getting men together to challenge each other from love, right? So it's a difference between competition, which is I'm better than you. It's an ego-driven thing versus I see who you are, fucker, right? Like, I'm a stand for your ass.

Like, you're not going to collapse in front of me. You're not going to, like, go back into that pattern in front of me. Like, I've got you, now I've seen you. That's a different thing. And men fucking blossom in that. They're just like, they just, they cry, they laugh. It's just, you know, it's so, I love my job. It's so fucking beautiful to watch.

Yeah. Yeah. I feel that. I feel that from you, man. Yeah. Why is it that men are so silent? They're afraid. They're afraid.

They're afraid to speak their truth. Yeah. And so a big piece of work that we do is like you learn to speak your truth to another man. This is how I'm experiencing you right now. I'm experiencing you. I'm experiencing you as open, attentive, da, da, da, da. But if, you know, we were at a party

and I was experiencing it was distant and closed off or whatever, I would say, Andre, like, here's how I'm experiencing you right now. And that's my truth. Some of it's projection and some of it's, you know, my own wound or whatever. But it's my truth in the moment. And I'm experiencing you this way.

So just like having men talk that way to each other is a nervous system training, right? It's a nervous system training. And once they get good at, once they realize they can do that and there's actually like value in that. And when they're with other men that receive that stuff well, they build that muscle. Right. And then they can start to take that to their relationships, which most men stay silent in their relationship because they're afraid they're going to lose love. they're afraid they're going to be criticized. They're afraid they're going to be, you know,

especially over the last, you know, few years with, you know, Me Too and all the stuff that men have had to, you know, kind of culturally endure that they're going to be labeled as bad in that way. You're misogynistic, you're narcissistic, you're da-da-da-da-da, right? Like, men are, you know, men are like trying to deflect and defend, which is the wrong stance, I think, but you can understand why. Yeah. Yeah, no, it definitely points out, like, the suicide rates between men and women, like, why there's so much pervasive suffering that is just silent, not talked about, swept under the rug.

Yeah. So it's- Some of it's cultural, too, under it, you know what I mean? Like, some of it's cultural, like, there's still this sort of big weight of a man doesn't cry, a man doesn't talk about his fears, a man doesn't, you know what I mean? And that's still out there, yeah, yeah. Less so than ever, but it's still out there. Yeah. How much of the men coming to your stuff is like as initiated by their partners or?

Yeah. I used to tell women don't do it. But then like I see these guys blossom and their partners had to push them into it. And so I'm like, okay, ladies, send them. Yeah. Like send them a lot. And, you know, what I'm seeing is that they, again, it's like the healing that's possible with other men in a properly held container is just something that, you can't get with women.

And the women have the same experience. Like the healing that can happen with women alone. I just did a women's retreat that I teach with five women. So I'm not going to teach a women program myself, but I had five other teachers. And I was up there leading the retreat. And it's just so amazing to see how guards can come down and the same kind of like demand for your fullness.

You know, men need men and women need women. And that's the way it used to be, right? There's a red tent. You know, I don't know what the men. tint color was, but, and then we'd come together after we were nourished alone. Yeah. Yeah. How does, what's the texture different on the women's group side of things?

When just women, because women have a more natural proclivity to have a connection to and verbalization of their inner world typically. But what, what challenges do you see or heard, you know, have you heard in those spaces more? Yeah, you know, it's eerily similar to the men just to take, it's truth. it's being able to express the truth of their heart. Yeah. Right. And whether that truth is I'm afraid,

whether that truth is, you know, I think I'm, you know, I think I'm ugly or I think I'm, you know, whatever, or my expression is ugly or my demand for love is needy or like they're dealing with very similar messages. And what I've seen is it's actually a distorted imprint of the masculine within them. right within them because when they're in their feminine you know the mornings would usually start with women practicing together for two hours right and when they're in their feminine they just like they have like full permission to express and just it doesn't matter they can bring their rage they

can bring it's all welcome right well the moment you put men in front of them all the stuff all not only their internal masculine programming but all the things that they've learned about you as a man start to come in and and it clamps down right it clamps down so women need to expand to expand their nervous systems and to be the big the practice I did that I thought was we did two really impactful practices but the one was like I you know imagine we're two women right and you're in the masculine and I'm in the feminine and for 30 minutes I'm just going to keep opening as the love that I am and I'm going to let whatever comes up as I open I'm just going to expect. it, whether it's fear, rage, resistance, anything.

And you're just going to be a yes to it. You're going to hold it. You're going to penetrate it with love. And what I saw was just how much fear women are carrying around being in their full expression. Which makes perfect sense because for thousands of years, they were punished and burnt and excommunicated and, you know, excoriated for being in their full expression. full expression. And yet, that's what we crave from the feminine, your full expression. Yeah.

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they'll ask where you heard about them. You can let them know we sent you. Link in description, as always, back to the show. Is the framework of masculine as like conscious awareness and feminine as energy? Do you see that as like a structure of reality like cosmologically?

Or is it just like a story that is useful and works? Yeah, that's an interesting question. I actually do. see its relevance, right? And I understand why people are, you know, so tripped up by the gender associations. So the way I like to describe it, I don't think I've written more since I sent you the book, but if you break down polarity, right, the concept of polarity into the experience of life itself, right? Life itself is energy, like we're alive because there's energy moving, and even our flesh is energy, everything is energy, right? That is the feminine,

constantly changing, constantly moving, life force itself, that is the feminine cosmologically. But we wouldn't be alive if we weren't aware, if we weren't conscious. We wouldn't know, we would just be energy with no consciousness, who wouldn't actually have the experience of life as a human. So when you break it down into the energetic capacity, so the more that I'm connected to awareness in this moment, the stiller my body gets, the more I'm, transmitting what I would call masculinity, right? The more I'm in the energy of life, right, the more I'm transmitting the feminine, right? And pick other words if you don't like those

words. But those two things are universal truths. You know, energy and consciousness pretty much express the human condition and not just the human condition, but all sentient beings. The mycelium networks have consciousness. The animals have consciousness, right? And they're all alive, so to speak, grass, flowers, right? They're all alive because there's a consciousness that's actually aware of the energy that's moving through them. So that's the way I like to hold that frame

and most people can kind of get behind that. And then you get to choose. Like, what do I want to animate more? What do I want to incarnate more? What do I want to... This is where we get into the art question, right? So as a man, my art was, how do I expand my capacity to express what's true in me, what's alive in me, everything from joy

to grief to anger to anguish to desire? How do I get to work with a life force, right, while remaining conscious and grounded and tethered to consciousness as how I describe it in my book? And the more I learn the art of expression, let's call it, different ways of, you know, some Sometimes my partner and I will be in a little kerfuffle and I'll be, she'll be doing something and I'll just like start making sounds because they're the sounds that want to come through me. I'll just be like, blah, blah, blah. And I think it might trigger her, but she's smiling. Why? Because somehow the arts of my spontaneous expression like kind of opened her, right? So I don't know. Everybody's got their own, everybody's their own artist here, right? And every relationship is different. But, but. But the more that I can expand my capacity as an artist, both in the feminine realms and then also in the masculine realms, like how deep into stillness can I go? So what I end up teaching men and women, too, is what I would call the essential masculine practice. So, you know, the art of whole, let's call it the art of wholeness for any human, right, is to have a fully expressed feminine and masculine if you want to just use that framework. So the essential masculine practice is to be the transmission and the embodiment of consciousness.

So the way that that works is there's four steps to it. The first is locate. So you locate consciousness. If you feel, you turn your awareness back to its source, you'll find this field of awareness, field of consciousness. So you locate it. Then you allow the body to receive it. So that's just an opening of the body and you just receive that consciousness into the cells. then you transmit it, right, then you transmit it, right?

And then you amplify it, right? So, like, if you're working with a partner and you're working with a feminine partner, your primary masculine practice is to receive, locate, receive, transmit, and then amplify consciousness as a gift to them, right? Or as a gift to any moment, right? Even sitting here, right?

I could do this and it would deepen our connection. So that's the essential masculine practice. The essential feminine practice is to amplify life, right? The energy of life. And that could be through the expression of an emotion, the making of a sound, the movement of chigong, the hiking in the woods. Like anything that amplifies vitality, the expression of truth. Like anything that amplifies vitality is the essential feminine practice. So that's a good way to think about those two practices.

Those map on, would you say, pretty perfectly with the depiction of Shiva and Shakti, the pure stillness and full exuberance. How, when you zoom in on the practical day-to-day on a Tuesday, you know, it feels like the answer from the feminine of how much do you want is more. More. But our feminine, too. Right, yeah, not just women, but. the feminine at large, right?

Yeah. Now, for someone who's potentially more masculine, yeah, who just wants more emptiness and stillness, I actually had a combo. We kind of have like a private podcast in our online community. I had one with David Data. Oh, cool. We were talking about this phenomenon.

Yeah. And how does one relate as a man or someone who's more masculine identifying? Yeah. How does one relate to the feminine in a fruitful way when they are, complementary but opposing energies. Yeah. Right. Yeah. From truth. From truth. Right.

And so on a Tuesday, your truth might be, I need stillness. Right. I need to do, as David would say, nothing. I need to be zero. That's David's thing, right? And I need to be zero. And I want to sit on my deck and stare out at the trees. That's my idea of a good time. That's what's going to make me more alive. Right? If that's my truth and I go shopping with her, for example, it's not going to end well. I'm going to feel drained. I'm not going to. I just had this conversation with my partner. She loves shopping, right? It's one most feminine beings I've ever met. It enlivens her, like more trying on 10, 20 different things to take the Burning Man and I'm just like dying. I'm like, baby.

This does not enliven me. So I'm going to let you do this. I'm going to go meditate or take a walk and then just text me when you're ready for. like the, you have it narrowed down for the, you want my input. So truth, that was my truth, rather than what I see a lot of men do, which is just kind of placate or tolerate. And so, so I think that there is a, again, this sort of work with, working with other men kind of helps sharpen the capacity to like really be in your truth. And then again, the real dojo is when you're in a partnership with a highly feminine being. What's the truth? Now, there may be days when the truth is like you want to dive in with her like it's enlivening to dive in with her it's it nourishing it feels great but then but that's the authentic truth of the moment for you and so i think men need to

learn how to discern what their truth is versus relating to women and the feminine from their pattern of being afraid to lose love being a nice guy being you know being overly rigid which i can I can be like my partner is actually really good at taking me out of my own like masculine rigidity. And so, so, you know, it's a moment by moment thing. You know, that's that's the, that's the point of great practice is that it, you know, we practice on the mat so that we can bring it. You know, David used to say to me all the time, it's like, you know, bring it off the mat, bring it off the mat, bring it off the mat. And so the moment is where that happens. Yeah. And do you also see it that you will

as you mentioned earlier, attract your reciprocal, not just in the relational pattern space, but the energetic. So a very masculine man or feminine man will attract the opposite. You see it all the time, yeah. You see it all the time. David used to use the example of Bill and Hillary, right? You know, and so you kind of have this energetic.

So if you are, for example, a man who wants to attract a more feminine, you've been attracting women who are hard-driven or a little more masculine in their capacity and I would argue that most women have masculine capacity, but their essence is still feminine. They develop the masculine shell, right? But if you want a woman who's more fully expressed and more feminine and da-da-da-da,

your work is in A, your own deep truth, like your work is in the masculine. It's in excavating and owning your deep truth, which is also essential masculine practice. It's in cultivating your capacity. to be in stillness, to be zero, as David Data would say. And as you become the transmission of that, you are naturally going to attract a more highly feminine being.

Yeah, so it's energetic and it's emotional and it's therapeutic as well. Yeah. Yeah. And capacity, too. Like, if your capacity is limited to, like, if you get reactive at the drop of a hat, you're going to attract somebody who gets angry at the drop of a hat. You know, you're going to, it's going to be.

all on all the levels. Yeah. Yeah, that's that nervous system training we were talking about earlier. Yeah. What are the three different types of nos? Talk about this sacred no. The know of pattern.

Right. Like a mood no. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So this is primarily I was talking about the feminine, right? About how men can be with their feminine partners know, right? So there's a no that she might say, which is just like, no, this is really.

not okay for me. It's the no that's actually really great feedback for you. Like, know you touching me that way or coming at me that way. My whole body locks up. It's a, it's a true no from her depth, from her essence. Then there's the no that is kind of just mood driven, right? Like, you know, no because. Hangary. Yeah, because I'm hangary or because, you know, because I'm just, my hormones are doing weird things or, you know, or no, just because something, else happened in the world that upset me and I'm just kind of a no to your desires and needs. And that's one you just try to play with. David would talk about it is that's the one you tussle with. You don't tussle with the sacred no. You don't like try to make fun of it or tussle with it.

But the mood no, you kind of tussle with. You try to open, you know, the way I would describe that is you try to open her with love and play and creativity. And so that's when you're noticing it's a mood. And being able to distinguish those is really important. And then there's the no that comes from her pattern. Misrust. Yeah, that comes from her mistrust. And so that's a no you want to stand in loving challenge of. Right? That's a no you want to be like, I'm here with you, baby. I'm on the same team. Like, I'm right here. I'm not going anywhere. You know, and I'm so like, I'm here. That's the no where you might, you stand, you know, now timing is important in this. This is a hard thing. too, right? But at some point, you don't just ignore that and let it continue. It's like a pattern

of jealousy. Jealousy's a great example, right? And so jealousy is a great example. Pattern of jealousy, so a way to work with jealousy is to help her get to the deeper emotion, which is usually fear. Right? So me being a no to her know in that would be like, no you projecting jealous, like a, her pattern might be, you were doing this, you were giving energy to other women and da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And, you know, there might be some truth to that for you to look at, but if you weren't really doing that and she's just working from pattern, then your response to her know is like, baby, I care.

This is the most, I mean, if I could give one piece of relationship advice to anybody, it's let them know that you care about whatever experience they're having. Whether you agree with it, whether it makes sense, like, I care that you're hurting. I care that you're in distress. Tell me about like what's the feeling underneath this? Like what's really like, you know? And usually when you can be a stand for taking her deeper

than she would take herself emotionally, not just sexually, that is a way that you help to unwind her pattern and really get to a deeper level of intimacy, right? like her revealing like, well, I'm afraid that you'll like her better than me, or I'm afraid that you'll leave, I'm afraid you're going to betray me, or I'm afraid maybe you're betraying me now, and I just don't know it. And, you know what I mean? Like those fears I can be intimate with.

Most guys will be okay with that stuff, right? And we can reassure them, and we can love them. But the, you're doing this, you know, the thing that jealousy can usually end up as accusation on both sides, men do it too. that's pattern. And that actually is a block to intimacy. So that's a good example of how to work with the no that's her pattern versus the know that's her mood versus the know that's like her true, like sacred,

no, they'll fuck with this. Yeah, yeah. That to me feels like an attuned way to maintain attunement within the connection and honor someone's reality without accepting it as ultimate truth. Yeah. You know, because when somebody's, like, projecting a pattern and then you play into the fighting of it, that it's like progress is not going to really be able to come to fruition there. But there's something more liberating about, like, viewing it as a team and looking at their neuroses or whatever it is together. Yeah.

And that's an art and of itself, right? And to get to the evolution of love piece, like liberation is the goal, is part of this evolution. Like, we're here to liberate each other, right? And if we're here to liberate each other, it's not always going to be pretty. It's not always going to be pretty. There's going to be some really serious truths that we're sharing with each other. Can we, I mean, I always mark the health of a relationship by three things. How safe are they to bring their like really wounded little boy, little girl to you, right?

How emotionally safe are you guys together? How rigorously and ruthlessly honest are you with each other? like can you actually speak difficult truth to each other without it turning into a month-long you know rupture and then how much erotic magic to go back to that term how much sexual life force do you guys actually create together and you know and so there that that is an art that is probably the artiest art part of the whole thing right where you get you get to be super creative with it you know like i'm a big you know my partner and i are we've been practicing these things we call temple nights, right? And it becomes, it's a full-blown thing where she's shopping for a

week beforehand and she's got a theme of a particular texture of energy that she wants to bring. And so there's outfits and outfit changes and, you know, altars and, you know, music and the whole thing. And some people, you know, some people, you know, practice that somewhat, but there is a really deep place. We talk about it a few days before. What's alive in us that we want to bring to the temple right and we really try to make it a ritualistic art and it's potent and so that's a really you know to the level that people can make

their sex life artful they thrive you need all three of those things I think to be able to have a thriving relationship what advice do you give to somebody who's maybe just started a family they got some new babies into the picture maybe they're having sex once or twice a month

and they just want to... Right. Yeah, like, what's a kind of simple thing that can help them? Yeah. The five-minute practice. Like, it doesn't matter how busy you are, right? If you're committed to connection

rather than just being drawn into, you know, exhaustion or whatever people talk about, you've got five minutes to make out. But make it like the, like, choosiest kitchen make-out you can, like, just let it be. like full heart open, full expression for five minutes. The iPhone alarm goes off and then you're back at it. But just that on a daily basis does so much, so much.

It liberates so much life force and so much love and so much of that erotic energy. Eros is like the highest form of life, right? Life expression, right? It's the highest form. It's the most, it's the densest energy of being alive. It's our sexual energy. It creates life. Do you think that Eros is sexual energy?

Do you use those interchangeable? No, it could be. No, it doesn't have to be. I mean, that's a very, I don't think they're interchangeable, but sexual energy is erotic, but all Eros is not sexual. Got it. Right. You know, you can be out in, you can be in Hawaii, right? Like in the midst of a forest in Hawaii, just like drenched in erotic energy, but it's not sexual.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there is. something about to the degree we get out of our own way. I certainly experience this on a lot of my friendships, but definitely like in my men's group. And when there is that like raw vulnerable truth and you guys like everyone like opens their hearts

to sharing what's real for them, the challenges they're going through. There's just this like presence that comes into the room that I would describe as eros that I feel like as a blueprint we all crave in our, in our, in our relationships at large, right? Because we're craving that sense of intimacy.

Yeah. I would call that the field of love. Yeah. Right? Like, you get your men's group together, right? You sit down, everybody's kind of closed and still bringing the weekend. The field of love, you can feel that it's weak, right? But the moment one of you starts sharing vulnerably or you guys start breathing together or you

start feeling each other's hearts or anything, the field of love amplifies. You'll feel in the workshop you teach. Right. You know, the workshop is a great example. of the level of field of love that gets cultivated. And the thing about a field of love is like dispens this quantum field, right? Like all new possibilities are open in that field of love. Patterns can dissolve and new ways of expression and new depths of love.

And, man, people have psychedelic experiences. The DMT gets released. There's all kinds of crazy things that are possible in a highly amplified field of love. And that could be a men's group. It could be just you and I here together. It could be a romantic relationship. The field of love is always wrapping our human connections. And if we start to become aware of that field of love and we take responsibility,

I mean, this is one of the things I write about. It's like, you are responsible for the field of love, 100%. You and your partner, both 100%. And if that becomes the sort of north star of what does it amplify, does my comment amplify the field of love or does it diminish it? my breath, amplify the field of love or does it diminish it? And to go back to your question about what somebody with two new kids under three can do, it can be to make the field of love the guiding principle of their relationship. And that could be a five-minute make-out. It could be spooning,

you know, for two minutes, you know, at the end of the night. It could be doing something nice for each other. It could be words of praise. It could be meditating together. doing practice together for a few minutes in the morning, it doesn't have to be a full day workshop, you know, and once people get that, they start to, they start to learn that, you know, this is something that happens all, it happens all day. It's not necessarily something that's relegated to a morning practice or an evening practice, yeah. While the, uh, the small moments of practice can be monumental in the big picture, it can, getting close as the way that you've described it,

even in your own past with relationships, has been easier, staying close, has been the harder part. Can you share more about that? Yeah, from my personal perspective, yeah. So, you know, I've spent years cultivating capacity, right? Like, I can create art, I can be super present, I can create sexual magic, I can create, I can hold space, I can do all these things.

What I kept bumping into and myself were the unheeled wounds of my childhood, right? Like, and as I, you know, I mean, I was in my 50s, like, recently, like, my God, I'm still fucking dealing with this thing, you know, me. And I'm supposed to be the relationship guy, right? And I realized, like, oh, there, I have to find a way to both to address it from a dual track. One is there's personal work that I need to continue to do. And I do it. Like, I'm in somatic therapy. And I'm, you know, I take responsibility. for my own healing. And then there's the relational field of how do I create a culture in my relationship where

healing is a big part of what we do together. Like we're here to heal each other. We're here to liberate love in each other. And so I think what I see in people who've practiced a lot, including me, this was my thing too. I mean, I found David's work in 2008 and followed him around for 13, 14 years. And like, you know, did all the. work I was supposed to do, but it didn't fix the thing internally. And so sometimes what'll happen

is that people in the tantric world or, you know, the sexual clarity world will create this great capacity, this great yogic capacity or spiritual capacity, but it doesn't heal the deep wounds. You need to find a way to integrate all of that together, you know. Yeah, that's why I love so much the integral frameworks of like the differentiation between waking up and growing up and the necessity of having an ecology of practices that support you at different aspects, right? Because meditation doesn't do the same thing as a semantic therapy. Doesn't do developmental work. No, I know a lot of Zen Buddhists who are fucked up.

And they meditate two hours a day, you know? It doesn't fix that. Yeah. No, no. That's big man. Are you open to sharing what was a core pattern that you needed to navigate? because you mentioned Yeah.

There was... Yeah, no, well, what I discovered a few years ago is that I indeed have some attachment wounding from my... Like, I'd kind of known about it and da-da-da, but it was actually brought into my field that I went and got tested

and it turns out I have disorganized attachment, you know, from my childhood. I grew up in an alcoholic home. And so that means that I can be anxious. It also means I can be avoiding. It means that I like, you know, I'm a party. You know, and so I, once I got...

that clear message. I was like, all right. So, and I could feel that I was both attracting avoidant partners and or the partners that weren't avoidant, I would get avoidant, right? I would find, you know, so that it's the deep attachment wounding that I had to look at and the pain underneath that, you know, the little three-year-old me that was afraid and got left afraid a lot. I had to go meet that. I had to go meet that. I had to do the development. mental work required to heal. And then once I did, you know, the spiral dynamics framework I like a lot, which is, you know, transcend and include, right?

Like, so I had to do that sort of beige, one to three-year-old deep, you know, snot coming out, you know, that kind of very deep work. I had to do it in relationship, too, in a group. And I'm still in that group. And then once you kind of open and start to heal that, you can then include it in a more transcendent way of being. So, for example, I can fully be feeling the part of me

that's afraid you're going to leave, but my body is open, and I could say to my partner, like, you know, my fear of abandonment didn't start with you. But when you say that, like, it just, I feel my heart start to leap and I can feel this little boy

that's afraid that you're going to leave. But there's no blame, and my body is open, and I'm relaxed. So that's an example of transcending and including, right? And that stuff happens. We have to go into the underworld. Bill Plotkin writes about this,

about the soul is fed in the underworld. And I've learned that to be true. That like we have to go into the pain. We have to go into these wounds. And when we, obviously, we don't stay there. You know, you go into the underworld and you come out. But you have to go into the underworld to meet those parts. yourself and then when you do you can then make them allies because when i have a moment like that with

my partner she melts you know and i'm not hiding anything and i'm not projecting under her and i'm not blaming her for what she's doing you know and and that those are that those that's the relational work that i think a lot of people are being called into doing like how do i take the childhood wound that's so tender you know and in the moment that i'm most triggered how do i how do i how do i soften and reveal in a way that has no blame or criticism. And that's magic. Yeah. Yeah.

Isn't it so ironic that the very thing we feel and we fear that will be rejected for when we express is actually the thing that generates intimacy? I see it all the time, Andre. Yeah. I see it all the time, man. And that's the beauty of doing workshops, right? Because you can, you know, I see women in particular men too, but I see women in particular, like, express their anger or express their anguish or express their

desire to men. And when it's met with like, hell, yes, give me more. Like, it's a life-changing experience for them that maybe they've never experienced. And so it rewires something in their brain, but they're like, I can't believe at the end of, like, I'll often have women do a no practice where they just stand in from the men. And the men will, the women can say all, all the noes that they never said for themselves, for other women. You know what I mean? They can just like just be for 15 minutes just no, all the different expressions of no. And the only thing the men can do is raise their hand when they feel her disconnect from her heart.

Right. So the moment she disconnects from her heart, you just raise your hand. And then she's kind of queued to find her heart again and keep going. At the end of that, I always say to the men, like, raise your hand if you could have taken more rage from that place. all the hands go up. All the hands go up. Why? Because it was coming through the heart.

And when we learn to express, like, literally through the heart, it purifies our rage. It purifies our fear. It purifies our jealousy. It purifies all those darker. It purifies our dark desire. Like, it purifies all of these things that we're afraid to show. And just learning, I'd say in my workshops, what I love the most is seeing that, kind of light come on for them when they realize like, oh, I can bring my darkest, freakiest

desires through my heart, and it's actually a turn-on, or it's actually enlivening for her. I can bring my rage or fear or mistrust through my heart, and it actually makes them want to come closer. Yeah. It's interesting to see all the different types of love in our lives, not just romantic, that bring different textures and things into the picture, whether it's the men's groups or the friends or family, would you be open to sharing a bit about what Claire taught you about love that no romantic could have? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, Claire was my daughter, for those of you don't know, who died six years ago, seven years ago. Eight years ago now. Eight years ago, September 2nd. Man, she was 21. Claire taught me to love unconditionally knowing that I was going to lose her. Knowing like, so, you know, most of us, if we feel like, oh, that person is going to go, and that's my wound, right? Abandonment was one of my wounds.

And so here my daughter, who I know is not going to live a long life, who I love more than anything, right? Because of a diagnosis. Yeah, she had cystic fibrosis, yeah, which is a chronic lung disease. and I just have to like I have to love her like like like like like she could die tomorrow right which was a really deep deep training for me to just like not hold it in not you know to just continue to pour let her see my heartbreak let her see my fear let her see my love let her feel my adoration and so that that training was beautiful on the men's work side, what she trained me to do was to bring my pain to men and ask for help, which is often hard for men. Like I would come back, we'd be in the hospital three months a year, four months a year. It was excruciating, man.

Like, you know, she would make the best of it. She was such an artist. She would make the best of it, but it was excruciating to watch your daughter get poked and prodded and be in pain and be sick. And then I'd have to go to work, you know? And so I had a men's group at the time and we met every day for lunch. and I would show up there for some lunches, and I would just be a mess. And I had to, like, just let it all out and be, like, I'm dying.

I'm fucking dying. And there's nothing to fix, and I can't do anything. I just need to share that I'm dying. And when I, when what got reflected back to me was, like, I'm going to go hug my daughter so tight today. And I'm, my heart just, I just forgot about all the things that I was worried about. and all these men came up to me and affirmed what me revealing my pain did for them,

that was a massive lesson. And that really sort of helped me carve the kind of men's work that I wanted to create at the time. And then the third thing that she, I mean, she taught me so much, but she made art out of her situation. Like she started a YouTube channel and started to talk about what it's like

to be a kid with cystic fibrosis. And it was so funny and so creative. And she did this YouTube panel and blew up. And then she would take her hospital room and we'd have to bring, like every time she went in the hospital, we'd have to bring like this whole, like we had this production thing. We'd have to bring bins like, you know. And she'd redo her hospital room into this kind of cool hotel room, this vibey lounge. And it really taught me to, and it's interesting because I remember coming back from my trainings with David

and sharing with her this concept of like, you know, make art out of your struggle, make art out of life, make art out of your pain. And she really took that to heart and started to do these creative things in the hospital room. And so in a way, David's teaching really informed her life. But she taught me what that looked like, you know, to face that kind of hardship and that kind.

I mean, you know, she must have been afraid. And she must, I know she was afraid. But she made art out of it. She shared it. She just, you know, she was just an amazing little human, and I miss her terribly. And, you know, it always, when I do go, I don't go to Burning Man every year, but when I do go, it's almost always the anniversary of her death falls during Burning Man. So I go out to the temple and I'll do a thing.

And so this year it's going to be on September 2nd, so I'll go out there and do another offering to her. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. What did touching that level of grief teach you about the nature of grief? that it's non-linear still, you know what I mean? Like, there's still moments usually around Christmas or around her birthday or just, like, out of nowhere,

I'll just miss her so much. And I feel, and I've grieved so much, you know, I've grieved so much. I created space. So that it's non-linear and that it's, you know, kind of never, you know, there's no end to grief because there's no end to love kind of thing, you know. it also taught me the grief to honor grief is to honor self and so i see this a lot with people who go through tough breakups and my advice to them is all right create a space where you can actually honor your grief really honor the loss take make you know give yourself a couple more

hours in the morning to cry and move and wail and have all the feelings like you know make it a container you know 30 minutes or whatever it is but give you your grief an altar. Give your grief an altar. And I think that because so much of the pain that humans experience is unprocessed grief, you know, I think that's, that's, it really taught me that grieving was one of the primary practices that I had to teach others to do. Like how do you grieve in a way that is not just wallowing, but it's actually honoring like the truth of your heart. Yeah. Yeah. So when Claire died. I remember, I mean, my career was just taking off. It was like just taking off. And I had all these things that I was doing. And I had to tell my team like, hey, you guys have to handle it till noon.

Because mornings are my time to grief. And this went on for six months or so where I was just like, I just need the mornings to, like, I have an altar for her. And I'll play a playlist that she made for me. And I'll like cry and wail. And I had to do that, you know. And it actually made me a better teacher. better human, better man, you know. Because you went into the underworld, so to speak? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because I went into the underworld. Yeah. And, yeah, I went into the underworld, and it was one of the greatest acts of self-love I could do

was to honor my grief rather than just try to mow through it. I could have stayed busy, you know? And so when people go through grief or they're going through loss, it's a huge message of mind of like, yeah, this is the greatest act of self-love you can give to yourself is to honor the grief.

Sounds like that also is the same of heartbreak of any kind relationally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Most people will not give themselves enough space after the end of a meaningful relationship.

Yeah. And until we get through the grief, I did a whole podcast episode on this, on my own podcast where I was just like the wisdom of of breakups, right? And so there's this process to first grieving, right? And just giving that, like, don't try to get the lesson. Don't try to like figure it out. Don't try to start dating again. Like give yourself 90 days or something

like that to just be in the grief and let that. Because it's going to touch the earlier wounds. Like all your relationships, the heartbreak of your relationships is touching the heartbreak of your childhood. So it's a portal to work through that. once you've done that, then reflect, then like do an inventory of like, what was my part in this? How did I create this? If I took 100% responsibility for this breakup, what would it be? And that's kind of, that's when you can start to get into the learning phase of a breakup, you know,

but you can't do it until you clear the grief. I'm sure it's a bit tough not having a specific example, but what for somebody who's in a relationship where there's inevitable challenges that come up, maybe there are a couple years into it, they're five or ten years into it, and the classic question of, should I stay or should I go? Oh, yeah. You know? I get that a lot. Yeah.

Yeah. Because it's like, is this challenge a signal to dive deeper into devotion and exploring and commitment and all the things? Or is it a signal of misalignment fundamentally? Mm-hmm. And how do you discern between the two? Yeah. What do you say?

Yeah. Most people stay in relationships longer than they should, not because they're not because of the other person, but because they know they haven't fully given it their all. They'll say they've given it their all, but they've given it they're all based on the knowledge and capacity that they bring, the consciousness that they're bringing, right? So my invitation to somebody that's in that question

is how do you change the consciousness that you've been bringing to the relationship? Like, how do you, how do you, if you got really honest about the story you've been running about your relationship, your partner, and you know and you acknowledge that that story is, those stories are basically the, the representation of the consciousness you're bringing to the relationship.

How do you get busy changing that consciousness first, right? And so it might be a six-month window or something. Not years, but, you know, it could be months where you're like, all right, I'm going to go in and deal with my control issues, for example, you know, like my fear of something. So when I'm afraid, I control, right? I'm going to go to the root of that. I'm going to go into therapy. I'm going to really take a, I'm going to take a, I'm going to take a, I'm going

to take a good, hard look at that. I'm going to take a good, hard look at the belief systems that I would call in my work the occurring world that I'm bringing to the relationship. Men always leave. Men don't choose me. Women can't be trusted. You know, men think I'm too much.

Like, those are occurring, those are the occurring world beliefs. And to really address those and the consciousness that those, you know, impose on your reality, because our reality, our relationship reality, is just a reflection of the consciousness we're bringing to it. It's now been proven, you know, that our reality changes when our consciousness changes. So if you can say another part of that is,

how do I create a consciousness that honors the field of love, right? How do I do it? And there's many modalities I get into my book. You know, there's lots of different ways to do this. Some of them are therapeutic. Some of them are self-reflective, embodiment practices. But how do I address that first so that I know in six months as my consciousness is elevated

and theirs hasn't, it becomes a really clear signal, right? Most of the time I'm staying because I don't have a clear signal both in myself and in them. So that would be my challenge to people is like give yourself a six month window and get busy on your own shit and try, you know, that's why couple's therapy rarely works because it doesn't change the consciousness. It just gives a place for people to dump. Right? Not all. Some of it's very good. Stan Tacken's great. You know, there's a lot of good therapists out there, but somatic therapy, you know, developmental therapy, all those kinds of things. Like get into that and then decide. Yeah. If they don't change as you're changing, that's a good signal. Or if you bring them your

vulnerable heart, like if you can bring them the truth of your vulnerable heart, without blame or without criticism, and they still react inappropriately, that's really good information. Yeah, you mentioned earlier viewing the relationship as a vehicle, potentially the most potent vehicle for your own liberation, and like those moments where you're really facing those kind of existential questions about a relationship feel like... It's fucking confronting. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Most.

Yeah. The most. Yeah. The most. Yeah. Most, yeah. Best art is all the heartbreak. Yeah.

Well, best is subjective, but, you know, it's like the music and the movies that are speaking to that moment of heartbreak and questioning such so much weight there. Yeah. And, yeah, but it really feels like your relationship to relating itself radically changes when you do come at it from that point of view of these are all actual opportunities for your own growth liberation. Yeah. There's a question that I always offer people,

which is okay, like just as a practice, man. I'm sure your partner's got their own shit, blah, blah, blah, blah, but just as a practice, if I took 100% responsibility for this dynamic that's alive in my relationship, what would that look like? I get really reactive when I'm criticized. Okay, great, let's pull the threat on that, right?

Or I withdraw for days and punish with silence. Okay, great, let's, let's, pull the thread on where that came from, right? And so if we frame it in the, hey, I'm going to take 100% responsibility for the dynamic that I'm co-creating here and do that work. And if nothing changes after I've really given it my all, then I know I can leave with my head held high. And I'm less apt to repeat it in the next relationship, which is the great fucking, you know,

fantasy of everybody. Like, the next one will be different. Yeah, probably. but you're still going to bump into the same stuff. Yeah, you're still you. You're still you. Yeah. They might be hotter, younger, whatever, you know, more evolved, but you're not.

No, that's real, man. Because it does feel like we often want the easy route when patterns come up. And it's like, it's easy to put the blame externally. And then you'd maybe do that for a couple relationships and see the same stuff keeps coming up. Yeah. This is why I'm such a, I mean, this is why the modality of embodiment work is so powerful. Because you cannot change, like I said earlier, you cannot change the consciousness in the same shape of the consciousness. And you literally have to pry your body open. You can use yoga. You could use embodiment practice. You could use chigong. You could use all kinds of, you know, this beautiful movement modalities out there and beautiful sort of, there are people that, you know, people that. do the work that I do that, you know, that allow for this to happen. But that's an area where

I think a lot of people miss. Like, they'll get into the therapeutic and they'll wonder why they can't apply it. And they can't apply it is because they're bringing the same body to the moment. So there's literally a body, there's like the responsibility, like if you were going to take 100% responsibility, one of the key things I always point out to guys is like if you're showing up like this and expecting to not get reactive, if your jaw is tight and your belly is tight and your breath, is shallow and you're expecting to bring a different consciousness to the moment she criticizes you, you're fucked. You can't do it. I'm sorry, I cuss a lot. You know, you can't do it. You literally can't do it. Your body's too entrained. So the embodiment piece is so crucial

for people to get and enact because nothing will change without that. You can work on the belief system and the body will still do its own thing. Because the nervous system is so, fucking entrained. Yeah, I think earlier on in my journey, I viewed my, like, practice as the practice, and then my life was, like, my life as opposed to my life as the practice, where there's so many more opportunities to actually find those moments to embody. Yeah. Right?

Yeah. Like, that's when it really becomes real. It's like where the rubber hits the road, right? Yeah, for sure. For sure. When they are saying the thing that is just, you know, is not true, and they're getting the details wrong, and you're the bad guy. and all the things for you to find equanimity and peace in that moment,

that is the real work, especially for men, women too, women too, but that is the real work. And I think most people don't understand what they're up against, the momentum of their karma, right? Like you have generations of karma behind you, right? Epigenetic karma. You know, I have a client whose family came out of the Holocaust, and he still has to, you know,

and he still worries that people are out to get him, right? And he's got all the resources in the world and all the safety in the world. But that thing is still in his body, right? And he has to unwind that in his body and literally be the one. I think this generation of people now and part of the love evolution

is that we actually have the resources. There are modalities online now where we can actually face the things that our ancestors couldn't. And we can actually clear the karma of our lineage. And that is a big piece of love of love's evolution, right? We can do it. Like our ancestors dreamt us to this moment where we can be in a workshop and we can

like, I can express the pain of not only my childhood but my grandfathers. Right? And my fathers and I can feel them and it can all have this sort of magical, you know, maybe it's a little woo-woo for your people. But it does, you are clearing a generational trauma wound. And that people don't realize how much. much day-to-day moment-to-moment practice that requires. It's not a five-day workshop once every three or four years.

It's really powerful to just look back a couple generations, let alone five or six. And when I was doing my family tree this past year and going back as far as I could, which when you get to the Middle East, like the documentation of things, they become pretty hard. Yeah, yeah. But just imagining what not even just one generation, but two or three generations back, what life was like for them and the capacity that even had to explore things like the nature of your mind

and trauma. It's like when you're in that state of survival, it's like you're not really given as much space to address these things. Exactly. What do you think if we draw that, you know, line of causality out into the next few generations,

what will our great grandchildren potentially have the capacity for in the way they love that we don't? I love that question, man. Yeah. I love that vision, right, that the things we're doing now will impact them so much further, right? Well, let's say that you have a daughter, right? Your brother here just has a new baby daughter, right?

Because he's healed or is in the process of healing that mother wound, right? He's not going to pass that on to her in the same way. Maybe there'll be certain aspects of it as he continues his healing, but she's not going to grow with a lack of, of presence. She's not going to grow up with a lack of presence and love and care that he may have received. I don't know. He might have had the best parents in the world, but just make this as a common occurrence, right? And so now I have a child that actually whose nervous system is settled and isn't living in the fear imprint of, I'm going to be left, I'm going to be abandoned, I'm going to die,

which happens way more than people understand. That person is going to grow up. And of course, have a different impact in the world. They're not going to be bringing that story of fear and lack into the world and how they're able to meet the world will be. You don't even know what the ripple effects of that are going to be, like who that person can become because you showed up and loved them well in ways that you weren't, right? And you don't know what kind of offspring and consciousness that that is going to,

you don't know who they're going to attract and then the baby they're going to make. And so the ripple effect of this healing journey that I'm talking about is the great mystery. The great mystery. So, you know, the answer to your question is, I have no idea how good it could be. Like how much people could, you know, if you really want to put a lens on all the problems of the world

and all the warring and all the clashing and all the dominance, right, it's all childhood wounding. It's all childhood wounding. and then cultural wounding, you know, on top of childhood wounding, right? And so, and trauma and all of that. And so once we start to unwind that, we have no idea how we can relate to each other as humans. We don't even know what love has to offer, you know, just like we didn't know about AI 200 years ago.

Right? Right. We just don't know. And so I think, I think the great mystery is like, I know what my pat, I know the outcome of my pattern, right? Once you're in your 30s, you pretty much know the outcome of meeting criticism with defense, right? You know that. I know the fight that that creates.

I know the separation that creates. I know the feelings that creates in my body. I know the cortisol that gets released in my system. I know the way I think. I know the way I can't work. I know what that does to me in the world. I don't know who I am when that gets healed and reversed. and I don't know the thousands of possibilities that emerge from that healing.

And I think that's the great mystery that I'm trying to impart to people. It's like, I don't know. I just have a feeling. It's going to be way better than what you've been experiencing, man. And then they start to actually feel that in their relationships and in their practices and in the workshops. And they're like, oh, yeah, like there's a whole other world of love possible. Yeah.

I think it's also powerful to look back and see the intelligence of all life and self-organizing systems and the phenomena of emergence. When something new is born and created in an evolutionary or adaptive system, biologically speaking, that is more resilient and adaptable to its environment and then sensory capabilities, all sorts of things. And to me, it seems like much of what you're speaking to is what happens when you live a life from the place of devotion is you're attuned to what wants to emerge. Yeah. And then you get to be in the great discovery of that mystery. Yeah. Yeah. Which is like the most beautiful way to live.

Yeah. And, you know, the cultural moment that we're in, right, with, you know, we're in the biggest sort of cultural change probably in human history, right? So it would make sense to me that love itself and relationship is asking us to evolve into something different. If AI is going to be doing all of this stuff for us, then how we relate to each other, we're not going to be working the same way we were. We're already not since COVID, right? So more people are living together and working together and they're relating more. And so how we are being asked to relate to each other is, I think, an evolutionary and cultural moment that's upon us.

and we're having to meet it, and I think people are. And I think I wrote about this in the intro, it's like, most evolutionary work starts on the fringes, right? So now it's just the freaks like me, you know, talking about this stuff and people that I work with. And, you know, but soon it's going to start to like filter into the mainstream more and more and more. It might take 50 years, 100 years, but it will. Like any Renaissance, right?

Comes through the fringes and then starts to take. form and build momentum. Exactly. And that's what is also kind of shown in this great book called the fourth turning. Yes, sure. I know it. Yeah. And these cycles and generations and four kind of chapters and we're coming to the end of the fourth. Yeah. Which is like, okay, there's a new renaissance of sorts needing to come through, right? It's either the end. Yeah. Or it's something completely new that we could ever think. Well, you think about the spiritual movements that came out of the 30s. Right? The unity church and like all of this sort of manifesting. consciousness, think and grow rich.

I mean, there was a whole modality of spirituality that had some base in Christianity but was different. It was coming out of the Great Depression, which is the last turning, right? And so yeah, we're in that moment. Let's fucking go.

Right? Let's fucking go. And, you know, that's what I love about what I get to do is like, all right, like, I'm actually feeling what people are bumping into and having to, in an emergent, moment create scenarios that allow them to meet that.

Yeah. To me, it feels, I mean, there's no shortage of perspectives on doom when you tune into the, you know, news and media. But when you zoom out just a little bit and you see these cycles and then you see that we are perhaps, I mean, for many of us that are listening to this right now, like one of the only generations that straddled both the pre-internet and potentially post-AGI world. And what an opportunity to be a powerful, conscious agent of change. It's like no better time to actually show up and do the work

and be committed to that field of love and work. Yeah, and I have a new daughter too. I have a six-month-old, right? And so I'm actually seeing the possibilities for her and feeling into like, okay, like how do I want to, I don't want to give her the same tools that I gave Claire. it's a different world. I want to give her the tools of presence

and full expression and the capacity to like really be a conduit of life force. So there's different currencies that are developing now that I think people are starting to latch on to like the currency of presence and the currency of truth

and the currency of full expression. And those are things that when we talk about art, right, our body is the canvas for that. Our body is the expression. like we're all performance artists, you know, in our own, our own Shakespeare said, right, our own play. And I think it's becoming more and more true. And I think more and more people are waking up to the fact that, hey, there's something greater than my patterning that wants to emerge through me.

How do I make my body more attuned to that? And when I was thinking about knowing thyself, I was thinking about these levels. I was telling you earlier, it's like, you know, knowing the personality that I am, right? That's the first level. knowing the subconscious as it manifests through my body, that's the second level. Knowing the divine essence that I am, right? That's what I would consider a third level of like, I am consciousness and love, right? That's who I really am, right?

And what we're learning is we're learning to attune more to less to the personality self and more to the essence and the body and the essence. And I think that transition away from thought, thought, thought, thought, you know, 90% of our thoughts are all about ourselves. to like what's what's what's what's happening out in these trees right now you know like what's happening out in the ocean right now what's happening what is love wanting to happen you know as we attuned to that again the great mystery can come through us you know and it's uh it's really cool to see to the degree we all have individual roles on that you know some will create radically new models of money

and sexuality and physiology and this kind of work. It's all evolving into a new space. Something we don't know is doing, we know not what, or you know what that saying? And we get to be on that journey, which is fun. Yeah, I mean, if you think about just five or ten years ago, like masculine embodiment or men's work or women's work or, you know, goddess, priestess schools, you know, I mean, they were not existent or they were

existent really in the shadows. Now they're all over Instagram, right? And so it's happening, it's happening and it's starting to accelerate, right? And now what we're going to find is we're going to find, like, what's, what are those things, what are those things that are based on, still based on old patterning? And what are those things that are actually like transmissions of true love and consciousness, you know, which is, you know, my job. Beautiful. Yeah. Beautiful man.

Yeah. One question from somebody in the community that sent in. Oh, great. Love that. Which will ground it. I think ground it. We talked about earlier. Danelle asked, asking as a 26-year-old woman in the age of online and surface-level dating,

what is divine partnership and how does one prepare themselves and proceed in dating to make themselves available for their divine partner? Okay. So the thing I would say, and I say this to women all the time, is that you do. not have to wait for the right partner to be the full expression of love that you are. So the way that I experience the divine feminine in me and my partner and women in general is this ocean of love at the, you know, I feel it in the center of the heart that's just like this infinite ocean of love. Making your body the transmission of that, just like for a 26 old man, I'd say make your body the transmission of embodied consciousness, you know.

You don't have to wait for a man to do that. You can do that with your sisters. You can do that in your own practice. You can be on the floor moving and dancing in a way that like spreads that love and transmits that love to the world. So you are learning to open as love through fear, grief, anguish, all of those things, which will then attract. that reciprocal rather than waiting until the man is there and then trying to open his love,

which is almost, you know, it can work. But if you're single and you're trying to prepare yourself for a divine union, it's all about your own work, which is, you know, that's why I've made it the first pillar, because it's all about your own therapeutic work. It's all about your own yogic and energetic work. and the more that you can open as love, as a feton and being, the more you're going to attract a man who's attuned to consciousness. So I think the way I wrote about it was let them appear, right?

Like rather than go online and do dating and all that kind of stuff, like find the things that make you the juiciest, most alive, most fully expressed, most healed version of yourself, and get busy doing those things. And people are kind of finally. to you, it's going to be obvious to the world you're in that you're doing something different. Yeah. Yeah, there's something by living an expression of that, that you also, like, magnetized that.

Well, I'll give you a personal example, right? I think you and I were talking about my partner, right? And I've known my partner for, I knew my partner for a couple years, and she was kind of, she hadn't sort of discovered this thing that she started doing. So she started doing this modality of, like, of expression and letting life force. moved through her and I hadn't seen her she was in Europe for a few months we were in the same community in Austin but I saw her in Costa Rica and she had like tapped into something she had been doing her own work in a way that the next time I saw her I was like whoa like that is a different

human and I was like that so it was I was compelled to approach her I was compelled to pursue her because of who she had become in her own work, right? And so it's real. It's real, you know, people notice when we do our own deep work. Women notice, like, I will often have been coming out of a relationship. I'll often say, hey, take the next nine months or six months. Don't know women at all, no feminine energy at all. Like it's about you and your relationship with you and the divine

and getting really clear with yourself and just doing your own deep work. and I'd say usually two or three months in guys are like, I've got more women approaching me than ever. And I was like, that's what happens when you do your own deep work. Yeah. Yeah. One of the many great byproducts.

Yeah. Yeah. Not that that should be our motivation. But it is true. Like, we can't attract from the, if we attract from the consciousness we're living in, we're going to attract that same consciousness. It's pretty obvious.

Yeah. Yeah. I've loved this conversation, man. is there anything that we haven't touched on that feel super alive for you that you want to bring up? Let me scan. I think the thing that I would want to double-click on is just the true struggle of those moments that we talked about. You know what I mean? That it really is like a karmic moment every time that thing gets triggered in you and you want to defend, attack, retreat, right?

And so I want to give people this framework that it's about incremental improvement. You know, I can't remember the book that writes about this, but he writes about like that the people who really succeed and improve, they're focused on just a little bit better this time. And then a little bit, I closed a little bit less. I attacked a little bit less. I owned my shit a little bit quicker. And just to give people this understanding that you're really up against the demons of your lineage and your past and and it's not a battle that just gets overcome by reading a book or going to one

workshop it's a it's a lifelong process of failure and recommitment so if there are people out there they're like fuck i've tried and i keep i keep bumping into the thing please don't lose heart you know if you could do a little bit better and just a little bit better a little bit better over the course of time you will see the the seesaw will dip you'll hit the tipping point yeah yeah Yeah, well said, man. Thank you. All right, I sometimes like to ask this for our guests kind of as a closing tradition.

If somebody's listening right now and they have done no breath work, no men's group, and you had 60 seconds to share with one truth before they close out this conversation. What would that be? The relationship between your breath and your nervous system capacity is the most important truth to track all day long,

all day long. So if you can just get better at deepening your breath into your lower belly, your abdomen and slowing your breath, then your nervous system will respond. You will have less stress, less fear, more capacity. So if that's all you can take from this whole conversation is track the relationship between your breath and your nervous system, your whole life will change. Beautiful. I couldn't agree more.

Yes, yes. Deep exhale, this was a fully beautiful conversation. Thank you, Andre. It was deep. It was heartfelt. It was the right amount of woo. The woo quotient was just right. That's good.

Hit the spot. Thank you, man. We'll leave links down in the description where people can stay connected with you, your work, your books, your upcoming book. Yeah. And yeah, anything else you want to plug people towards? Yeah, I have a, for those inspired by what I'm doing, I'm doing, I started a teacher training, which is a leadership training program for men and women in October. they can find the links here, right?

We'll put a link up there on my website. And then if you're feeling like, okay, I want to sort of see what a workshop is like. Also, in October, in Austin, I have a couple's workshop. You don't have to be in a couple, but I have a co-ed intimacy workshop people can attend. Sweet.

Yeah. Man, thank you. The work that you're doing, I have some personal friends that have attended your stuff to and they come back to, you know, espousing how powerful it was. Thank you.

I'm lucky. Yeah. I'm lucky, man. I am blessed to be able to do what I do in the world. I don't. And I thank all my teachers and all the people, Claire and David and all the people that got me to this because I am blessed. Yeah. No, I feel you hold that responsibility with reverence. So thank you. Thank you, man. And thank you for everybody. Tune into this episode of the Know They Self podcast. Let us know in what particular way this episode has resonated with you on your own journey. Relationally, individually, we just, we want to hear. So thank you. Until next time, be well.