Soul Boom - The Birth of the Manosphere: Raising Conscious Kids Through Modern Struggles w/ Dr. Shefali

Episode Date: October 8, 2026

SPONSORS!👇 🛒 Quince 👉⁠ https://quince.com/soulboom 🛒 Get 25% Off Cowboy Colostrum with code SOULBOOM 👉 ⁠⁠⁠http://cowboycolostrum.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠. 🛒 Grow Therapy 👉  ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://growtherapy.com/soulboom⁠ 🙏 Fetzer 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://fetzer.org⁠⁠⁠⁠ Clinical psychologist Dr. Shefali Tsabary joins us to explore conscious parenting, anxious kids, the crisis facing boys and girls, social media, AI, spirituality and why raising healthier children begins with parents waking up themselves. MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://soulboom.com/store⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Sign up for our newsletter! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://soulboom.substack.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ SUBSCRIBE to Soul Boom! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/Subscribe2SoulBoom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ FOLLOW US! Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://instagram.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tiktok.com/@soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Sponsor Soul Boom: [e-mail] Work with Soul Boom: [e-mail] Executive Produced by: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kartik Chainani⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Instead of us as a society constantly saying, what is wrong with our men? Because we do have a wounded male problem. But that's the wrong question. We need to turn the question around to what happened to these men in their boyhood? And so many men are walking around feeling so ashamed of their sexual thoughts and urges and then suppressing them. The algorithms are so designed to predate on this loneliness. So this boy who's sitting there on his video console, no one to talk to, shamed into silence, feeling like he has no blueprint for masculinity.

And then the manosphere is right there. So the manosphere is this group of influencers who predate on the fragile identities of young boys and tell them that the cause of your problems are these girls. And if you have a six-pack ab and if you make a six-figure salary and you have, you know, a six-foot and taller, you will get the girl. The manosphere says these women need to be under your control. So the manosphere is directing this rage in a very targeted way towards women. We can't just keep hating men. We have to ask what happened to them in boyhood. That is the greatest sentence that's been said on this podcast in a very long time.

Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience. I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. Folks, beloved neuroscientist and podcast host, Myambialic, recently re-featured my episode of Myambialic's breakdown, because apparently my breakdown deserved a rerun. She and Jonathan Cohen explore science and spirituality. We talk therapy, meditation, and faith.

They are wildly overqualified to interview me, but head on over there, and enjoy my buffoonery anyway. And be sure to follow Myambialic's breakdown wherever you listen to your podcasts. Full video episodes are available at YouTube.com slash Myambialic. A quick shout out to our sponsors, Quince, Grow Therapy, Cowboy Colostrum, and Fetzer.

Links and promo codes on screen and in the description. Enjoy the show. Dr. Shafali, welcome to Soul Boom. I'm so happy to be here. Excited. What a privilege it is to get to know your work. Thank you. So excited to get into these ideas around parenting

but what you write about, what you work on is about so much more than just parenting. Absolutely, absolutely. It's about being a whole human being and parenting is one major facet. Yeah, I had to talk about parenting because the departure from our wholeness and the departure from our authenticity comes in childhood. So it's not because I'm so in love with children or parents. It's about understanding where the first departures occur and the first wounds occur. And because they occur in those early years, I mean, with the earliest caregivers, in our earliest psychological climates that I had to go for the jugular, you know, what is the source?

And if the parent is living an unlived life, if the parents' own inner well-being is ruptured and, you know, truncated, how can the parent hold that emotional space for the child? So what I teach parents is that this is about them. The more they access their unlived selves, the more they heal their wounded parts, the more they understand that this journey is about, you know, fulfilling one's authentic destiny,

they won't be able to bestow this to their children. So we think parenting is about raising a good child. We think parenting is about raising a successful child or getting our kid to be happy or having this life that looks good on paper. But that parenting misses the whole point. The parenting that I teach is that it is about the evolution of the parental self. That really resonates with me.

And I've done a lot of work in my own therapy and my own recovery. around exactly this topic. Because I feel like parenting was really fucked up in the 70s and 80s. That's when I grew up. And, you know, there's today there's this whole free range kid movement. But that was the 70s. Right.

You know, it just was like you came home. Your parents were usually at work. You watch TV. Latchkey kid. Yeah. You know, as long as you were home for dinner, your parents had no idea where you were. There was no find my phone. We used to just wander.

miles away and get into all kinds of trouble, start fires and throw rocks at things, and then just be home for dinner. And on the weekend, it was kind of the same thing. Make sure you're home Sunday by like four or five so you can at least do some homework before the next week starts. And the parents have kind of no idea what's going on with the kids. You know, with stashes of porn everywhere. And then it switched gears somewhere in the 90s. I'm not sure when. The late 90s, all of a sudden this helicopter parent phenomenon started. And I remember speaking to this guy who's a writer-producer in Hollywood, and he had a nice house in Beverly Hills.

And it was, I'm not kidding you, Dr. Sheffali, it was a block and a half from a playground. And he had four kids. And I was like, oh, that's so great. Your kids can just go right down the street and play at the playground. And then they can come back if they want. And he goes, oh, no, we would never let them do that. We would never let them go by themselves a block and a half.

in Beverly Hills to the safest zip code probably in California down to this playground. They might get kidnapped, you know, all of the terrible things that might happen. And this was before I had my kid, our kid. And I remember thinking in my head like, whoa, something is really wrong here. This was our early 2000s. So what have you learned about this trajectory from hands off? parenting, like clueless unconscious parenting to this controlling kind of microcosm, highly pressured helicopter parent phenomenon. How have we swung so wildly on this pendulum? Yeah, we swung wildly

on paper, but the unconsciousness is still rampant. It's a different kind of unconscious. Back then, it was checked out, neglectful, benign neglect. You know, if we were. lucky or there was a lot of trauma, the kids were beaten up, but it was just, it was rampantly unconscious. But that has continued. We are still rampantly unconscious. It just looks different on paper. And I think as we get more industrialized and as we get more savvy and more connected, we know

too much. So we know about the predator down the street and we know about the pedophile and the zip code that we belong to. And we were hearing things and the red flags and we're listening. to all this messaging, which is alarmist, so we are hunkering down. And the more we get into progress, the more actually effed up we get, right? Because now we have more homes and more things. So we're controlling more and more. Now we have apps that control things to control things. So, you know, there's more than ever before, but we are emptier than ever before. We are at a mental

health crisis for our children at a level that we have never encountered in modern times. So how do you explain that paradox, right? We have swimming pools and thermostats and iPads and technology up the wazoo. We have too many things to carry around. And yet we are so disconnected and so lonely. What is happening to our children? And how can we as parents wake up and step in? Amen. That's so well said. But what I'm just curious, what do you think, happened where it went from this kind of hands-off like, whatever, to this micro-control. Was it simply the of the alerts and the amount of information that's coming in? But look, what's happened in the last 30 years, everything that we now know as technology has

happened in the last 30 years. So it feels very sudden, and it is. But of course, things are, you know, influx and moving in a very methodical, strategic way. we just get to the trend when it's amplified. But now things are changing every decade, right? Every decade, we have a new name from the boomers to the Gen X to the Millennials to the Gen Z to the Alpha. In just our generation, we have five more decades that are characterized by very different

phenomenon, right? The millennials will say, oh, I still had the first 10 years of my childhood. And the Gen Z will say, I grew up on social media. and the alpha generation will say, I grew up on AI. So what's coming next? Flying cars, right? So it's moving so fast, but everything has happened in this accelerated way in the last 30 years. So you're right on the money.

We are seeing it happening and it's shocking. But more technology, I think, creates more anxiety. Now we have Life 360. We have these apps which allow you to track your kids. the more you track your kids, the more you are anxious if you can't track your kid. Right. It's breeding anxiety. It's not allaying anxiety.

It's breeding anxiety. And we're wired for anxiety as human beings and our amygdalas that fire off when, you know, something might go wrong. Yes. This is the negativity bias, I think they call it, where, you know, we can have 20, positive things happened to us in a day. And one may be bad saying like, oh, my car might have gotten towed. Right. Because the rustle in the bush could be the lion or it could just be the wind. So we're wired for danger and taking care of ourselves in that danger. But, you know, it's an illusion that we have more control over our lives now. It is an absolute illusion. We think

we can answer emails in the moment. We have our phone. Somebody can find us, text us in the moment, but it is an illusion because it has done nothing for our sense of safety. It has done nothing for our sense of certainty because life, in essence, is brutally uncertain and it will hold no punches, right? It will knock you out as democratically as it knocks everyone else out. You are no special. None of us are so special to be absolved of life's brutality. So the panacea or the... I'm so sorry, I have to interrupt. That is the greatest sentence that's been said on this podcast in a very long time.

No one is absolved from the brutality of being alive. That was fantastic. Sorry, keep going. But I think that all this padding, our mansions and our pools and our tracking systems, and we can track our kids and track our popularity and track our ratings online in the moment. We think that is doing something for our mental health, as in boosting it. But actually, statistics show that we are the loneliest, the most disconnected, the most anxious generation. So we are falsely led to believe that more is better.

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Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. The threat worked. My assistant now controls my calendar. How do we create a simpler, more still? more connected, more whole life at home and in the family. Yeah. We first have to understand that children and the ingredients of childhood require mandate, dictate that we have stillness, simplicity, play, and safety.

Those are the ingredients of a healthy childhood. And we are hijacking childhood to such a degree that we are robbing our children of their right to a childhood. Wildness, discovery, curiosity, un-supervised play, conflict, friction, messiness, all of this. Skinning your knee and breaking an occasional bone. Yes, and getting rejected and trying and having no soft place, but yet being safe. All of that that you and I kind of had in our childhoods is being robbed.

And childhood is being run amok off its rails into this. artificial, superficial, curated, virtual version of what life should be. And our children are facing and experiencing the backlash, the whiplash of it in their bones. Children as young as 5 and 7 have anxiety disorders. They're cutting themselves. They're suicidal. This was unheard of when we were growing up. It is because it's too much stimulation, too young, unregulated and devoid of real.

life connection. Wow. This is really hitting hard. It's bringing up a lot for me. And I guess I want to drill down a little bit more. What are three things that a parent can do, a single parent or a family can do to help specifically to help create the atmosphere of learning and growth that you're talking about? So the three things I would say, the top of the line, is to first have awareness. Without awareness, as you know, there is no journey to be taken. So a conscious awareness of what the main issues are with our girls and our boys. For our girls, they are experiencing an unprecedented crisis of selfhood. They look really amazing on the outside, our girls, but inside they're falling apart because the act of living under constant surveillance where people

are constantly commenting on your appearance and validating you or invalidating you, is too much for the girl's brain in particular, because girls are more relationally sensitive than boys. So they pick up their sense of self through relationships. So now you have a thousand eyes on them, where before it was just grandma and aunt, you know, Becky. Now it's these thousand strangers' eyes on our girls where they have not even developed a sense of identity.

Now they're being told who they should be. So they are crumbling from the inside. So first is awareness. And our boys are experiencing a crisis of masculinity. They're told, you know, you can't be a man, man, man, don't be so macho. And on the other hand, they're being given this cartoon version of masculinity, you know, have the big biceps, have the, you know, six-figure salaries and the big flashy cars from the manosphere. You know, you've heard of the manosphere.

So that's trickling into the boys' psyche. They're told, don't be like the girls, but don't be an asshole. So they don't know who to be like. And what I've done in this book for the boys is to give them. a blueprint of a conscious masculinity. So awareness. So first is awareness. We need a wake-up call.

The second step for the girls is to understand that because a girl's sense of self is developed through relationship, we need to be very careful about our judgments, calling her to dramatic, shutting her down, not letting her express herself. For a girl, expressing herself is her lifeline. You know, because girls have their left and right hemisphere so. integrated more than boys, or earlier and earlier than boys, they need to talk about their feelings. And you know how men are? I don't know whether you are one of those men who, when your partner comes to you, your female partner, and says, oh, we need to talk. And you're like, oh, my God,

I need to run away, right? Most boys can't talk about their feelings as articulately as girls. So for girls offering a safe space for her to process her feelings and for her to be seen within the relationship with you is extremely important. So paying attention to how you show up for your girl is of monumental importance in a non-judgmental way, in an emotionally safe way. And the third thing for girls is that you have to pay attention to how culture will objectify her. Culture will over-sexualize her.

She will be given so many messages that her beauty is her worth, her body is her value. And we at home need to deconstruct that for her and combat that. And that's where mothers come in very strongly because our girls are going to look at their female role models, their mothers, and see how the mother is at war with her own body or not. And most of us women who grew up in the boomer culture, Gen X culture, my generation, we grew up pretty much at war with our bodies. And we have to be very careful about passing this on to our girls. So acutely intentional, conscious, heal yourself, become present.

And for our boys, I would say pretty much the same things. Boys need to move. Girls need to feel, boys need to move. Wow, that's great. We're physical. Boys are physical. They're not going to sit and talk about their feelings by the fireside. They're real, that's not their preferred way of expressing themselves.

They will move. They like to do things. They like to feel competent, solve problems, take risks. that's what their testosterone does. It's the hormone of pursuit, and it'll make them pursue dangerous things. But that's how boys become competent when they have a mastery over their environments. So pay attention to that in your little boy. Let him move, let him run around, let him be wild.

He is wired to be feral and explore and get dirty and break things and put them together. And then his sexuality, he needs to be initiated into his mental. manhood. I interviewed over 100 boys and girls and adults, and I asked most of the adult males, you know, were you initiated into your sexuality and your manhood at the age of 12 or 13 or 14? And he said, they said, no, you know, pornographic. What does that mean initiated when you say that word specifically? Well, it means, it means a lot of things. But let me just say what they told me and then I'll go back. So most men said that they were initiated by pornographic magazines or porn and shame in the darkness of the night when no one told them what to do with their sexual

desires, how to harness or control that energy. And so in my book, I have a whole chapter on how to help your son initiate into manhood. So what do I mean by initiation? You know, when we lived in tribes, boys were tested, were physically tested with friction and real life. They had to pass real life tests in order to be initiated in. to the brotherhood of the other older men. And they were initiated by elder men,

their cousins, their uncles, their fathers. What does it mean? You go through a period where you are going to be given these tests of autonomy and competence, you know, being sent out into the desert. Of course, not the real desert, but the desert of adult life. And given a map and a compass and come back in three days,

what that means is that the elderly men are telling the young boys, it's your time and passing down the baton, you have this drive and this ambition, and I want you to find your purpose and your mission. And boys without purpose and mission become dangerous boys. And then telling these boys that they are now sitting on testosterone 50 times greater than they've had in their lives, which means they will have unbidden and unmitigated sexual urges, which could potentially be very harm. harmful, if not restrained, if not integrated, if not understood.

And we have to have those conversations with our boys that when he masturbates at night and when he dreams of his mother's friend's breasts, which are normal things for young boys' images to have. But he needs to know what to do with these feelings. And he's not a bad person. And so many men are walking around feeling so ashamed of their sexual thoughts and urges and then suppressing them. And you know when you suppress something too long, it comes out sideways and perverted

and shows up as pedophilia or shows up as raping someone. So, you know, instead of us as a society constantly saying, what is wrong with our men? Because we do have a wounded male problem. I mean, it's quite clear. But that's the wrong question. We need to turn the question around to what happened to these men in their border? And this is not to absolve them of accountability or responsibility, but to ask deeper questions. We can't just keep hating men.

We have to ask what happened to them in boyhood. But we're also asking, aren't we? Like, what happened to their parents? That's where it goes. And that's why I would. Oh, this whole lost generation of men with toxic masculinity and getting off track and in cells and what and whatnot. What happened? What happened there?

It's been happening. It's been happening. And what role did their parents play in that? And that's why I wrote these books, not to blame parents, but to offer a compass. Because obviously every parent, quote unquote, loves their kid. Sure. But love is not the same as raising a healthy. And a lot of parents have to have three jobs in order to get by in our hardly home.

What do you want them to do? And then the algorithms are so designed to predate on this loneliness. Right? Before when the kid was lonely, he went outside and played marbles or, you know, with sticks and stones. Now the algorithm is waiting by his bedside saying, come, come, I'll be your best friend, I'll be your lover. Right. So this boy who's sitting there on his video console, no one to talk to, shamed into silence, feeling like he has no blueprint for masculinity, obviously will fall prey to the AI chatbots who are offering him. I'm terrified. I'm terrified

of this new generation of like the AI chat bots and people falling in love with them and romantic and sexual relationships with them and them being kind of their algorithms being tweaked to give sexual fantasy. Of course. And some 14-year-old boy alone in their basement and their parents are both at work. You know, and this is their introduction to sexuality.

Exactly. And you can't blame that boy because there's a void. And whenever there's a void, that's how life is. Something's going to come and fill it. So I'm waking parents up, giving them the map to fill that void. Do not let your boy. be lonely for too long.

You know, when he's down there in the basement and he says he's okay, it's not okay that he's down there for so long because boys need to be physical. They need to be moving their bodies. What is he doing sitting in a chair? That is mutation of his natural instincts. I remember bonding with my son, Walter, every night we would wrestle on the living room carpet, clear the furniture. And he just loved, he needed to throw himself at me, get his arms around my neck,

like pummel on me and try and. And I would roar like a bear and it was a nightly thing. And he kind of needed it to discharge all that energy. That energy. Yes. And feel safe at the same time. Exactly. So all that roaming you did in your neighborhoods and getting lost and getting into trouble,

that is where you got your wildness out. But now this wildness is mutating and getting perverted. And then you get the 21-year-old who comes out of his basement and shoots up a school. Yeah. You know, it's not too hard to see how those dots line up. The breadcrumbs. You know, two things around that. One thing about boys, I read the statistic that was a scary, and you probably know about it,

but they did a survey of emergency room visits. Yeah. And throughout history, the number one visitors to emergency rooms were boys between 13 and, let's say, 27 with broken arms and car accidents and bike accidents. And I fell off my bike and broke my hand. And once. And then all of a sudden, around 2004, 2010, that just dried up. And they have found many less visits to the emergency room with boys having broken bones.

They're not getting outside. They're not trying things. And they're not dating. They're not having sex. And they're not drinking as much. That part may be okay. But where is all this wild energy going? Testosterone at the highest levels of a man's life between 14 and 24.

testosterone is a huge hormone that kept our species alive. It kept you racing and running and exploring and propagating. All that energy is involuting and creating depression in our boys. You know, when I go to India, for example, you've been. Yes. I don't know whether you notice, but the amount of men on the streets, aimless, no jobs, economically deprived, sitting there, Obviously, they're going to be looking for trouble and victimize women and children.

You cannot have testosterone undirected, unmissioned, unpurposed. Testosterone will find its predation. It needs to be channeled. It's a powerful hormone. See, women with our estrogen, we have outlets of connection. Women will typically have, you know, your wife must have a whole girl group, And you must be like, are you meeting your girls again? Right?

We women need to meet each other. Every Wednesday she meets her best friend for Mexican food and they talk there for like three hours. It's like, Jesus. Yeah. Come home. We need to watch this show. We need to watch Widows Bay on Apple. Get your ass home.

Yeah. You want to check out on a couch. You're chilling. She needs to chill through connection. Through the talking, talking, talking, talking, talking, so much freaking talking. I didn't realize how much girls talked until I had a daughter. I'm like, am I like that? Like she needs to talk and process and let me know everything.

And I have 10,000 texts from her, which is so amazing. But I'm like, holy moly. And I ask my mothers of boys, you know, sons. I'm like, how many times does he text you? They're like, are you kidding? We're lucky on our birthday. Yeah, yeah. The other thing that my son has brought up to my attention,

and I've read a little bit about Scott Galloway, writes a lot about this around boys and men. And I really appreciate his work. And there's many other folks. Arthur Brooks talks about it as well. Have you heard of cringe? Cringe culture? He calls it cringe.

It's so cringe. Yeah. But what it is is it creates a fear of cringe. Yes. So a fear, one of the things Scott Galloway talks about is like they're having less sex because they're dancing less because they don't want to dance because they don't want someone filming them. Exactly.

And they dance poorly. and they post this person like, look at this nerd and this dork. It's this constant surveillance. And this fear. Freaking phone. That they're going to be captured on a phone doing something silly. Yes. Yes.

I mean, don't you. I mean, I don't know about you, but everywhere I go, there's a phone. Oh, yeah. When I do talks on the stage, I'm like, are people even listening with them? Like, the phone is out. Oh, yeah. I'm like, why are you? I'm surreptitiously filmed all the time in a Starbucks or a train station.

So how do you deal with that? I don't really care because I don't give a fuck what people think about me anymore because I've been through the ringer. Exactly. I don't really care. Exactly. But imagine that generation who. If you're 16? Yeah.

You're like your identity. When social status matters the most is the most important thing in your life. So you don't take risks. So someone doing this. So you shut down. So the boy is not taking risks. And again, dopamine is the hormone for risk taking in pursuit of ambition and competence. When that is getting shut down.

He's invaluting. The boy is under so much pressure because he's not being allowed to be himself. He's not being allowed to be his wild self. He's being told he's bad from a young age. Sit at circle time. Be quiet. Be like your sister. Talk like your sister.

Talk like a girl. Don't talk like a girl. You know, don't be an asshole. But be a man. What's a man? Who's a man? I worked with a therapist once. And he was talking about his master's thesis.

They did a study with brain scans on trauma. And they had an inner city young woman from Detroit whose cousin had been shot, dead right in front of her in the face. And they did the brain scan on her trauma. They also did the brain scan of a trauma of a young woman that had been bullied online that there was some, I don't know if it was her having sex or something like that. It was some really awful video or photographs of her that were disseminated and she was mocked in the school. And their traumas were the same. Wow. So that bullying had the same level of like physiological trauma in the brain as someone getting shot, a loved one shot in front of you.

Yes. This is what we're talking about. Yeah, because the rejection is felt so deeply. Yeah. especially in that cohort and for girls. Girls feel rejection as much as a bullet wound or as much as a physical pain. So putting our girls with their fragile identities online, where they are prey to trolls and real jerks who have so much time that they're commenting,

now our girl's sense of identity takes one comment. You know, you're a fat, ugly person or whatever. Yeah. And she is going to collapse. And same with our boys. Our boys want to show up and feel successful and competent. So when he's told that he dances like a goofy, he's like, I'm checking out. I'm not even going to try.

I'm never going to dance again. And then the manosphere. I'm never going to dance again. Sorry, go ahead. And then the manosphere is right there. So the manosphere is this group of influencers who predate on the fragile identities of young boys and tell them that the cause of your problems are these girls. And if you have a six-pack ab and if you make a six-figure salary and you have, you know, a six-foot and taller, you will get the girl.

So all these men, these young boys are going to the gym, they're getting flashy cars, they're trying to make six-figure. And you will also be invulnerable. And you'll be invulnerable. And then when the girl rejects you, because on porn, no girl is rejecting them, right? On porn, look at her. She just bends over. She's quiet. She's always in pleasure.

There is no friction of courting. There's no courtship. So boys think that that's real life. So then when the girl looks at him and goes, who are you or I have no time for you, he collapses. Right. And then he's angry. The Manistphere says these women need to be under your control.

So the Manosphere is directing this rage in a very targeted way towards women. So what do we do? We've diagnosed these immense issues. You've talked a little bit about how you have a pathway forward for raising conscious sons and raising conscious daughters in these new books that have come out. I imagine listeners at home, the viewers at home watching this right now getting really depressed and like overwhelmed. Yeah, it's dire.

It's dire. And you have to get our heads out of the sand. You said awareness is the most important thing. Right. Now is action. So what action can do you do? So give us some hope. What's our handhold moving forward to be more conscious as parents?

Yeah. As children of parents raising ourselves, of families. Yeah, the most beautiful thing about time eternal as a human being is that we will always thrive best through connection, intimacy, real relationships, presence in the here and now. So actually, the solution is cheap. It's always available. It belongs to you. You just have to turn it on, which is your. present moment connection with your children. Do you really see them? All of us as humans just want to be

seen for ourselves, for our worth, for our value, our intrinsic value. And you can always show your child how much they mean to you by just sitting with them one hug, one text, and that will build that in the real moment connection that they are yearning for and need so desperately. And that is really all you need to do. But to do that, you have to create the availability within your beings. You have to put your phone down. You have to make the space and time. And you have to be genuinely curious about who it is they are and be very careful about how you are regulating your anxiety because it's really anxious for the parents. The children are anxious, but the parents are anxious about the children being anxious and about what is going to happen to our children in 15, 20 years.

I'm sure you've thought about what's going to happen to your children. child in 20 years because the world is not going to be recognizable. And there's a sense of foreboding that comes with that. I'm so glad that my son went through school pre-AI and didn't have that tool that can be turned to evil so easily. Yes. And can provide a shortcut to learning. Yes. And this is what, again, what AI, now we're talking about what we're up against. I'm going to leave that. So the solution has to be coming back to real life connection, throwing away technology for most swaths of your day.

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The threat worked. My assistant now controls my calendar. I'm Richard. One of the most powerful things a family can say or a parent can say in a family. Yes. This is, what do I know? Yeah. Or a gathering, like a family gathering, is without any shame or resentment or anything like that to say, hey, guys, what if we all just put our phones away? Let's put our phones away and just play this game or connect or, you know, even watching a show where you're not kind of looking on your phone and watch.

Like, let's do something communal. without this phone. And the most beautiful thing is, you don't even have to say, put your phone away. What you have to do is create those opportunities. Because children will come, they will play games with you.

They will love to solve a murder mystery with you. They will walk outside with you, but you have to create the conditions and you can't give up after one or two times of failed attempts. Children want to be connected. We have to work from that premise. The reason why children are disconnected from us

is because every time they connect to us, we are disconnected, we're judgmental, we're giving sermons and lectures and preaching to them, we're boring as hell, we're uninspired, we're not enlivened, we're not awake, why should they want to be with us? How many times you go in a restaurant and you see the parents with their faces and their phones

and the kids with their faces in their iPads? Exactly. And it's like, hey. Right. So if you've lost your own vitality and if you don't believe that you can be creative and come up with a game and dance and have fun,

You're not an object of magnetism. So your child is going to be repelled from you. And then we're judgmental. We're mean. We're critical to our children. So we repel them. Board games. Yeah.

Board games. Burgues are the best. Board games are the best. I mean, I can't get my kid to stop playing games with me. She's like, can we do more? I'm like, oh my God. Can we go on our phones now? But children, and she's 23, children love playing games.

They love teams. They love competition. Yeah. Who doesn't? I love, give me a game right now, I'll play with you. And they love nature to. Right. So we have to be plugged in to creating those opportunities.

So I always tell parents, don't take away anything. Just keep everything the same, but add in things. And that's what we say about eating, healthy eating. Don't take away everything. Just add in things. And then automatically your body will start changing. I took my son who's living in Chicago for a spell to a Cubs game. And he turned to me and he goes, do you remember when we used to throw the baseball when I was young?

And he said it like in a really sweet way. And it just melted my heart. And I was like, okay, you did it, Rain. You threw the ball with your kid and he remembers it. And he likes that. And I was like, yes, I did something right. I know, I know. We all have done a lot of things right.

And we've all done some things out of unconsciousness. It's not about getting it right. perfect all the time. It's about when your kid tells you, you know, you screwed me with that comment or you really hurt me that day, it's about showing up in the present with vulnerability and saying guilty as charged. You just take it for their reality, right? There's no point saying, but, but, but, who cares? If your kid is saying they're hurt, take their reality as serious. I am so sorry, I hurt you. I can see how that was hurtful. Wow, tell me more. And then you can explain in a few days, can I tell you why I was such a jerk?

You know, I was, I just got fired or I just found that I, you know, had a disease. Or, you know, then you can explain later. I've shared this before on the show, but one of the things that we tried to do, Holiday and I, my wife, was whenever we were having struggles, or even if we had failures to share that with our kid, yeah, kind of be like, hey, Walter, I just want you to know, that I thought I was going to get three different jobs, acting jobs, and I didn't get any of them. Right.

And it devastated me. Yeah. I was really sad for days because I really wanted them and it makes me feel like a failure and I'm really struggling right now. Like, and I think that that's so important to share your, your struggles and your failures and missteps and vulnerabilities. Your ordinariness. So that they see that parents are not like have everything kind of figured out.

Yeah. We're just working through shit too. Yeah. And of course, when they're younger, most children will place their parents on a pedestal because they need the parents so much. And when they're younger, they can't really handle the parent falling apart too much. We want to try to not fall apart too much because we are their sense of safety. We are their sense of certainty in a world that feels very scary to them. But as they grow older, you know, when they're teenagers, they're going to bust your bubble anyway.

They're going to take you off the pedestal, throw you into the gutter. You're going to be like, what happened? My kid used to love me. Then you're going to go through a period of disillusionment. And that's healthy too because that means the kid is ready to move away from the nest and find their own identity. And then you move into friendship, right, when they're in their 20s, where you're like, hey, this is who I am. I'm struggling here. And you can be candid and upfront.

But you never want to use your children as your therapist. You at best want to get into a friendship relationship when they're in their 20s. Hey, everybody, make sure to click subscribe. It's right over here somewhere. Please, pretty please. It would help us at Soul Boom so much. Click subscribe. One of the things I've loved about getting to know your work,

and you have so many books, The Conscious Parent is one. The Awakened, what is it? The awakened soul? I have it written down here somewhere. I have the conscious parent out of control, the awakened family, a radical awakening. A radical awakening.

Yes. The parenting map. and then these two new books. Oh my goodness. You've written a library. Congratulations. It's amazing. But one of the things I've loved about getting to know your work is this intersection.

You have a PhD in psychology. Yes. And you also are an advocate for mindfulness. Yes. And you have undertaken a deep study of Eastern philosophy related to Buddhism and Hinduism. And you've integrated these two. Can you talk a little bit about how can we learn from the best of Western medicine having to do with mental health and the Eastern tools that can really be our rudder and our guide to real conscious awareness? Yeah. You know, I always like to think of it like the Western mentality, philosophy, psychology is all about drive and ambition and progress.

So it teaches us how to do. But the Eastern mentality, and I'm talking about in general, I'm not talking about how India or China or the Philippines are right now. I'm just talking about the foundational principles. Call it the Dharmic tradition. Yes. They are more the gurus and the teachers of how to be. How do I be in this moment?

The Western mentality teaches me how to do. But how do I be in the doing? and it's so beautiful because Eastern spirituality is very, very keen on teaching present moment awareness. I'm here right now. I'm not in my past. I'm not in my past. I'm not in the Middle East. I'm here.

I'm here right now. And as long as I'm breathing, I have a being that I can connect to. I have a relationship I can create. I have life that I can live. So it brings you back into the present in a very, you know, repetitive, very disciplined way, where it becomes your muscle. Okay, I'm here now. Okay, I'm here now.

So every time your thoughts go into the future, which you can never predict or control, you're reminded, but I'm here now. But we're here now. Let's enter gratitude for the present moment. So this constant reminder is the biggest gift of Eastern spirituality. And then deeper, you know, Eastern spirituality is very clear, you know, remind you moment by moment that life is impermanent. You know, you're in the moment and tomorrow you may not be in this moment. So this awareness of impermanence, you know, you go to

homes in Bhutan, you'll see skeletons everywhere. And it's not morbid. It's considered a celebration. That's who you are. And this is just an illusion. This is just borrowed, you know, physical presence, borrowed form, but there's a formless energy to you and stay in touch with that. So the impermanent nature of life makes you realize that all this pressure we put on ourselves to be fancy actors or authors or multi-millionaires. I'm a fancy actor. Yeah, exactly. That's the first thing I said when I saw him.

I said, well, that's a fancy actor. And when we take that very seriously, we lose the plot. And Eastern spirituality is always reminding us that this is an illusion. I named my daughter Maya, which means illusion, to remind myself that she and me and my idea of raising an amazing kid is all an illusion. Because none of this is who we are, right? The books, the money, the pool, the cars. It's not our reality.

It's not who we really are. Who we really are is just formless essence here on this journey, in this borrowed body. for a very ephemeral moment in time. And if we can just keep that perspective, then we kind of have really nothing to worry about. And is there a way to bring that into being a conscious parent? Well, it's all about that that is the essence of being a conscious parent, which says, you know, stop trying to raise the perfect child

and don't try to be the perfect parent. Just be here now. Be here fully present. Don't try to tell your child he has to get good grades and has to look a certain way and has to fit in and has to be a millionaire, because that's a lie. He doesn't have to do anything because all of this is the ego. It's the persona.

It's the false self. And letting our children understand that who they are as they are is perfectly good enough is teaching them how to be in this mad world. One of the things I see so much in parents in kind of more upper middle class suburbs is all this pressure that's putting on kids. Yes. And pressure to get good grades, pressure to take the right classes, pressure to have the right internships during the summer, pressure to get into the right college, pressure to have the right

major. It's not, they don't, parents don't want kids taking poetry classes. It's like, no, you need your, you need your business degree or your pre-med degree or your pre-law classes that will help you get into, you know, NYU law school or whatever. And because this anxious fear that they're not going to be able to. okay. They're not going to be okay. So they're projecting the parental anxiety onto the child and not spending the time. Allowing the child. Holding hands with the child and being exactly what you said, being present and focusing on the child's happiness that can never come from externals.

It will not. And we're lying to them pretending that there's a prescription list for happiness and joy and fulfillment and setting them up to only believe in that one track. which is really money and power at the end of it and youth. And for me personally, and it didn't come from my parents. I think it just came from culture. I wanted to be an actor more than anything else. And then I got into one of the best acting schools at NYU, the grad acting program there.

And I was very young and I was so lucky to have gotten in. And it was great. And I went. And then I got out and I had an agent and I was working as an actor. And my whole late Adela. lessons in early adulthood were geared towards this. And I knew I wasn't going to make a ton of money. I wasn't in it for the money. But I was, I just wanted to have a career. I wanted to get a paycheck as an actor. And I was getting paychecks as an actor. And I had my degree and I had an agent.

And all of us, I had a resume and a headshot. And this was everything I'd worked for. And I was not happy. And I was unfulfilled. And it was so confusing to me. wait a minute I did all the things I took all the steps and here I am I'm doing my thing and yes and I'm miserable yes what the fuck is going on and that started a long spiral that you know ended up being thank God a kind of thank God literally a spiritual journey for me but I imagine that has intensified by a hundred these days and you talk to so many people are are Arthur Brooks talks about this. These kids are going through the top MBA programs,

and they're getting like, you're talking about six figures, they're getting seven figure jobs, and all of a sudden they're like, my life is empty, it's hollow. Because they have believed the lie that this thing on the outside is the most important thing.

And that's where we as parents need to step in and remind our children that they need to live their life from the inside out, that they must connect. to who it is they are. You know, my daughter is 23, and she's just starting and wondering what she wants to do, and I keep telling her, you can always drop what you're doing and think of something else. There's no fixed, fixed way to be in this world, because none of it is going to be the defining

indicator of your joy. Your joy is never going to come from the outside permanently. It may temporarily, so don't hold on to it. It has to be this deep, abiding inner connection where you consider yourself, your best friend, you consider yourself your best lover, you consider yourself your best ally. And if you don't develop that very intense relationship with yourself, where you are completely okay on your own, nothing on the outside will be enough for you. Let's go back to something you were talking about earlier about uncertainty, because I

recently have had about with some very severe anxiety. I've always had a generalized anxiety disorder. And then it started diverge into OCD. And a lot of the work I was doing with my therapist around this and I was had to do with being okay with uncertainty. Because that's what OCD feeds on is like inability to process and be okay with uncertainty. Yes. Too much anxiety. And you want to control.

it by doing something. Yes. You want to do something so you do a ritual or seek a reassurance or you're in rumination. Yeah. And I've had a taste of that. Yeah. It was really not fun at all. And Pema Chodrin has a book out now about uncertainty and she has wonderful works on anxiety. She just did an appearance on Ezra Klein's podcast. It was a beautiful conversation as well. And there's a doctor, Maybe you know I'm Dr. Judd Brewer, unwinding anxiety. It's a great book and a great app. There's an app with videos that take you through how to unwind your anxiety. But guess what?

All of this stuff from cognitive behavioral therapy and ACT therapy is all about this Eastern practice. Oh, of slowing it down. Slowing down and being present to your anxiety. And I've just learned this. whole set of tools of like, when I have anxiety, there is nothing I can do to squelch it, shove it away, medicate it, treat it. The only thing I can do is be present with it. And as Pema Chodron says, to befriend it. And it's kind of like, oh, there you are. Yeah, I don't

have to be afraid of it. And that's what, we've created, we've created this idea of perfection where you're not supposed to be anxious. You do this, you do this, and then you're going to be happy. That is the wrong message to give our children. We have to teach them to sit with their feelings and the messy ones and act like it's normal. Invite them into the house, right? So when children grow up believing that they can have their feelings and their feelings don't have to control them, they can watch them, you know, these feelings enter and leave their consciousness like waves, they are no longer gripped by anxiety because they know how to talk to the anxiety. They know how to work through the anxiety. It is the ability to be present with your anxiety that will reduce your anxiety, paradoxically.

The more you sit with your anxiety, the less anxiety you have. This is the paradox. It is. And you can't sit with your anxiety in order to reduce your anxiety. This is the catch 22. It's generally. And every part of my body, every part of my body and my brain and my physiology and my interior cortex, you know, amygdala, does not want to feel.

Yeah. Anxiety, shame, guilt, fear. This little, this little vortex of feelings, my body's like, don't feel that. Because I had a very unsafe childhood. I didn't have a warm nurturing childhood. And I didn't really have a childhood where mistakes were okay. Right. And so sitting with it, easier said than done, but just kind of like you're sitting with something that you really, really, really, really don't want to feel. Right, right, right. You have a great quote here. Life doesn't happen to us, but happens with us.

And I wanted to ask about, I love that, happens with us. Because you've heard people who say life happens for us. Uh-huh. You know, but what I mean. Or they, or they victim, they're self-victimized themselves. To us. To us. I'm a victim of all this stuff.

And definitely sometimes really bad things happen to you that you don't deserve. Sure, sure, sure. You get cancer or something like that. Right, right. But with us means that you at every moment are co-creating your experience of it. Even if something is so heinous or it happens out of your control, the next moment is you co-creating your experience and how it sits in your mind and the narrative. you create because that's where the most powerful experience happens in your belief system about

what happened. It's the story we create about the event that is the most powerful dictator of our experience. It's not the event. It is the experience of the event and that experience is created by your narrative. It's never the event. It's the story I tell about the event. I love that. Can you give me an example of what that would look like? I think that's that's, that's, That's fantastic. So an example of understanding that at every single moment, we are creating a narrative of events that dictate how we experience the event. So you can have a wedding.

It's your wedding and it begins to rain. And all your plans and your hairstyle and the tent and nothing is working and everyone's getting soaking wet. In most people's eyes, that could be a tragedy. The worst event, the devils have turned your beautiful wedding. into a pool and the gods are not on your side and you're always unlucky and this always happens to me and maybe this is a sign I shouldn't marry this person and oh my goodness and then you're devastated or somebody else could have a very different experience of that rain

and take it to mean that we are all going to just throw out all our makeup and throw out all our fancy dress and everyone get barefoot and let's have a communal experience and we're never going to forget looking at each other in this rain and we'll never forget this day together and we're just going to experience the rain. It could be such a different moment, depending on your narrative of that experience, of that event. Somebody gets a divorce. It could be seen as a tragedy or it could be seen as a renaissance of their new beginning. It depends on how you've created a story. Somebody gets molested in childhood. A heinous tragedy, but do you let yourself be defined by that? or you see it as, wow, that made me so impervious to tragedy after that.

That really strengthened me. So it's the stories we tell about the events in our life that are very important. That's a beautiful example. That wedding example is something I'll keep with me. When you were writing a radical awakening, you talked about how you were balancing motherhood, your achievement, your life as an author and a doctor and psychologist. just you're demanding life that you nearly fell asleep at the wheel. And you said that was a profound wake-up call for you.

And that experience helped inspire a radical awakening. So what had to die in you in order for something else to be born? What sparked the journey of that book? Yeah. I think, you know, we are always called by life and experience to die onto old parts of ourselves that are no longer serving us. And for me in particular, like many women will resonate with this, I was wearing so many masks of the people pleaser, the good girl, the super achiever, the emotional caretaker, the perfect wife, the great mother that I got lost in those roles and somewhere along the way forgot who I was. And so my divorce was really about an abdication of those roles and those false personas more than it was to my ex-husband, you know. It wasn't about divorcing him as much as divorcing who I had become with him and who I had allowed myself to be before him.

No one forces us to become certain things. People like to blame their partners. Oh, when I was with him, I became like this. No, you turned into something. You chose to continue that. Yeah. And unconsciously. So at some moment in time, we have an opportunity to dare to wake up.

And unfortunately, society put so much pressure on us. especially when we're married that we can never leave. So leaving is always a tough choice. Do I want to leave my parts of myself that no longer serve me, but then I don't know how to be in this marriage anymore. And the other person is like, I didn't marry this person, I married that person. So sometimes couples can evolve beautifully together. But sometimes they need to walk away, and that's okay too,

because they are walking toward. They're not walking away. they're walking toward more authentic ways of being. So Soul Boom, my book and this podcast is animated by the idea that we need not just political change or technological change or even psychological change that we need a spiritual revolution. And you're the first person we've had on the show that's specifically talking about families about raising conscious sons and raising conscious.

daughters. But in so many ways, the spiritual revolution begins in the petri dish of the family, in the core of the family. Can you talk a little bit about what that might look like? How can we affect society? How can we change the trajectory of humankind by focusing on a conscious, awakened presence and service in our families? Yeah, I always say the well-being of the planet relies on the evolution of the parent. So when a parent is so deeply in touch with their inner abundance and they are living in the most enlivened way, untethered to dogma, religious beliefs or, you know, race, sexuality, untethered to rigid ideas on these fundamental institutions, they give to their child the freedom to explore who they are.

and to feel centered in the knowing that they don't need to know, and in the knowing that who it is they are is independent of how people see them or how culture wants to peg them. But in order for a child to grow up unencumbered, the parent cannot be affiliated with too much, you know. If you're affiliated, like, I'm an Indian, and I'm a proud Indian who is a proud Hindu, who is a proud Hindu who lives in Mumbai and who is a millionaire, right?

The more boxes we have, the more we encroach on our child's ability to be free, a free thinker, a free liver, a free lover, right? We're putting them in boxes, the boxes of marriage, and the boxes of career, and the boxes of monogamy, and the box. These boxes limit a child's ability to figure out who it is they are. And there's a price that children learn to pay if they step, out of the box. They lose societal approval. They lose

the parents' validation. They lose allegiance with the tribe. So if you really want to... So how do we teach them what to identify with what? With their own inner knowing and guidance. That is the most powerful inner barometer

and compass. But the moment you affiliate with something on the outside as the director, now you're teaching them to look outward. You know, that is where I'll find salvation. That is where I'll find forgiveness. That is where I'll find redemption. But they have to learn to do this for themselves and be their own inner parent, their own inner guru, their own inner divinity. And that takes courage from the parent because very rarely will you find an adult who is untethered

themselves. Most of us are deeply enslaved by institutions ourselves. So the more enslaved we are by the institutions of beauty, of youth, of money, of marriage, of monogamy, of religion, of, you know, success, achievement, then we are going to put that on to our children without allowing them the opportunity to come to it on their own. Right. So somebody listening to me may go, oh, she's just talking about free for all. Let's just, you know, do drugs with our kids at the age of eight. That is not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is teach your children. that culture will put its ways on you and teach you, train you, dictate to you how you should be, don't allow that until you have figured out who you are first.

And then you get to choose what culture gives. But most of us are unmoored to ourselves, and that's why culture sweeps in and abducts us. And all of life is about a return to self. And when you return to self, I promise you, you will be getting rid of what culture. has told you because that is a problem. And that will virally spread and make the world a better place, a richer place, a more humane place, a more connected place? Yes, because when we don't judge others by our standards, when we don't judge others by the different

color of their skin or the different religious identification or the us versus them begins to dissolve and we begin to see in each other the same, you know, divinity, the same wholeness, the same aspirations as ourselves. That's beautiful. So our name of our podcast is Soul Boom. And one thing we ask every guest is your definition of the word soul. What comes to mind for you, this crazy word soul that can mean a thousand different things to a thousand different people. I think the quickest words that come to my mind are unfettered potential.

You know, the unfettered essence of us all. That to me would be the word soul. The unfettered essence of us all. Which is not bound by egoic ideals of name or title or labels. It's unfettered essence. You know, where you are allowed to go wherever you wish to go and manifest how you wish with dignity of self and other. Beautiful. That's so well said.

Dr. Shefali, thanks for coming on Soul Boom. And folks, please check out all of her books. but especially the new ones that are just coming out, raising conscious sons and raising conscious daughters, whether you have a son or a daughter. Oh, you are a son or your son or a daughter. This probably could help for yourself. For yourself, yes.

Or I'm sure you have friends or family members that are striving to do just that. So cultivating purpose, connection and inner power in a chaotic world, building confidence, courage, and inner power in an anxious world. Thank you for your amazing work and for coming here today. It was such a pleasure.

Thank you so much. I'm so honored to have met you. Fancy actor. Fancy actor. Soul Boom is also on Spotify video. If you've got Spotify Premium, you can enjoy it free of Spotify ads. If you don't, you'll get even less ads if you hit subscribe to Soul Boom. Also enjoy on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Pandora, or wherever else you get your stupid podcasts.