June 25, 2024

Living the dream with Embodiment Coach and Evolutionary Guide Jason Lange

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In this episode of Living the Dream with Curveball, we delve into the transformative journey of men seeking deeper clarity and purpose in their lives. Our special guest, Jason Lange, an embodiment coach, group facilitator, and evolutionary guide, shares his insights on the importance of men's support groups. He discusses his personal journey, the concept of the "man box," and the profound impact of men's groups on personal growth and relationships. Tune in to explore why all men should consider joining support groups and how it can lead to a more fulfilled and connected life.
Please be sure to follow, rate, review, and share this episode to as many people as possible.www.evolutionary.men

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Welcome, um, to the Living the Dream podcast with curveball. Um, if you believe you can achieve Chee Chee, welcome to the Living a dream with Curveball podcast, a show where I interview guests that teach, motivate and inspire. Today we're going to be talking about helping men wake up to deeper clarity and purpose in their lives and relationships, and why all, uh, men should be in support groups, as I am joined by embodiment coach, group facilitator, and evolutionary guide, Jason Lang. Jason, as I said, helps women or, uh, men wake up to deeper clarity in their life purpose and relationships. And he believes that all, uh, men should be in support groups. So we're going to be talking to him about that and why he feels the way he feels and everything that he's up to. So, Jason, thank you so much for joining me today.

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> Jason Lang>So excited to be here. Curtis, thanks for having me.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Why don't you start off by telling everybody a little bit about yourself?

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> Jason Lang>Yeah, so, uh, my journey is in this work is kind of wrapped up in how I support men now going all the way back to my own personal story and really begins in, you know, I'm a man raised in the kind of lower middle class of uh, the US and had a lot of my basic security needs met m growing up. But one thing that became abundantly clear as I was getting older, um, was my family didn't really have a capacity for connecting emotionally and even physically in some sense. And, um, I had the experience that a lot of men I work with had of, you know, I had a pretty good childhood. And then we begin to dig in underneath and discover, yeah, you know, to no fault of our parents, there were just certain nutrients I didn't get growing up that then had an impact on how I was showing up in the world. And for me, that was most, um, strongly noticed in my ability to connect to women as I was going through puberty and getting a little older and wanting to start relationships and just not having the capacity to do that, getting anxious in my body, feeling very disconnected and confused. And that really Curtis started for me a journey of kind of inner transformation of trying to figure out like, hey, what's going on for me and what's another way to be in the world that feels a little better? And it was through that I got exposed to men's work in my twenties and then particularly started doing work in men's groups and different types of somatic therapies, which are just body based therapies. And my life started to transform from there and in the process of that, I got so into the work that other men started asking me like, hey, can I join your group? What's going on? And so I started facilitating men's groups kind of in my mid thirties, and it's really just taken off since then because there's a, uh, pretty big gap right now in the world in terms of a lot of men struggling and not necessarily getting the support they need.

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> Jason Lang>As so much has changed in our world and culture and the way we're supposed to show up in relationships that, uh, so many men are lost and not really getting the help and guidance they need. And I consider myself just one of many voices out there that are saying, hey, you know, there's a better way to do all this. And most importantly, Curtis, you don't have to do it all alone.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So you say you're an evolutionary guide, tell the listeners what that is and what that means.

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> Jason Lang>Yeah. So to me, you know, we're, we're each on a journey of growth and evolution in our life. We each kind of come in with, uh, a certain karma from our family of origin in our lineage. And when I say evolutionary guide, um, right, uh, I can't grow anybody. Growth is always up to you, the individual, but I can be a guide. Kind of like if we were going to go hike a mountain together, I'm going to do it with you, and I'm going to take you on a path that maybe worked for me and support you along the way and help you get to the most whole, complete, loving, joyful and alive version of yourself you can be.

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> Jason Lang>And, you know, we have different seasons in our life where we focus on different elements of our life. But this idea of, you know, life, relationship, career, they can all be avenues for our growth, right?

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> Jason Lang>To become even more, uh, present loving, like I said, versions of ourselves that often the pathway to getting there is addressing some of the things we inherited from our family system growing up, some of the different patterns or woundings of our nervous system that, uh, you know, were normalized for us when we were young. But as we get older, we realize, wow, I think theres more possible here.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So you call yourself a no more Mister nice guy coach, tell us about some of your mentors and leaders that you studied and trained up under.

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> Jason Lang>Yeah, so that one in particular, one of my, um, dearest mentors and friends is Doctor Robert Glover, who wrote the book no more Mister Nice Guy, which has been out a couple of decades now and amazingly, sells more copies every year than the previous year. And for a lot of men I work with is kind of the gateway book that wakes them up to, wow, some of the strategies I've been using in life don't work particularly well. And the nice guy in particular, which is kind of a term for a lot of type of men I work with, and I have elements of this and myself, is actually really interesting because it's a positive thing in the sense that it is an evolution of masculinity in that for a long, long time, the way, um, not all men, but certain men in the world showed up, would be disconnected from their hearts. So just going after what they want, taking what they want with no regard or consequence, no regard for the consequence for the people or environment they're with. The idea of the nice guy Curtis was kind of a, uh, response to that, that many men grew up in volatile households with volatile fathers, or being shown examples in our culture of some of the destructive possibilities of certain types of men.

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> Jason Lang>And the nice guy basically shifts that to, well, you know what? Instead, I'm going to prioritize the safety and well being of those around me.

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> Jason Lang>And that's a positive thing in, uh, a lot of ways. But where nice guys in particular struggle then, is they do that at the cost of themselves.

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> Jason Lang>So the idea of codependence is often linked to nice guy syndrome, and this idea that nice guys often lose connection with their boundaries, their needs, their wants, and instead just keep moving towards what other people need and want. And Doctor Glover really highlighted this, that, uh, for a lot of men, while it has a positive intent, it ends up not working very well in their relationships or their life. And people trust men like that less. And so as a certified, no more mister nice guy coach, part of what I do is help mentally come back to themselves and learn that it's very possible to be deeply connected to your own sense of personal power and autonomy and remain highly sensitive and attuned to the environment in the people around us. That it's not an either or, it can actually be a both. And. And that's a big part of what us men are being called to step into these days. We need the power, we need the presence, and we need the sensitivity. And so Doctor Glover's guidance has really supported me in my own journey and bringing that forward in my life. And now I do that with other men. So he's just one of many mentors I've had in my personal growth. That, um, are, in fact a big part of why I emphasize the importance of us mental joining men's groups and spending time with other high quality men who have some kind of depth or capacity that's even beyond what we have, because that's how we learn. And specifically for me, Curtis, I was in my twenties, and, yeah, stepped into a room and one of my first other mentors, um, I quickly had the experience in my body of, oh, wow. For the first time in my life, that's what I want to be when I grow up.

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> Jason Lang>And it wasn't his job or his occupation. What it was was I've never seen a man that present before, that attuned to himself, the way he breathed, the way he dealt with conflict, the way he connected to other people.

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> Jason Lang>I felt in my nervous system, I want to be like that. And I hadn't been exposed to men like that earlier in my life. And that, uh, drastically changed my trajectory as a man.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Can you explain to the listeners what a man's group is and why they're so important?

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> Jason Lang>Absolutely. So kind of like the term meditation can mean many, many different things. I often say men's groups can mean many different things. But the most simple explanation I'm giving these days, it's when a group of men, so two or three, at minimum, up to sometimes a dozen, gather together with the intention of putting their attention on each other to get real about what's happening in their lives. And this might sound very simple, but the paradigm so many of us mentioned are raised in is many men, by default, relate to each other via what I call triangulation, which means you and I build a connection with each other by having our attention on a third thing, whether that's a sporting game, an activity, hunting, fishing, you name it. We often bond by literally having our attention. Looking at this third thing, which there's a time and place for that. It can be great, right? But what that often misses is when our attention is not on each other, we can spend a lot of time with people and really not get below the surface with them. Um, and so many men these days are suffering from isolation and loneliness.

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> Jason Lang>Since 1990, the percentage of men with at least six close friends fell in half, from 55 to, like, 27%, which is really significant. And, uh, in that same time period, the percentage of men without any close friends went from three to 15%. So a five fold increase. And it's just getting more extreme. Since the COVID pandemic and the shift to more and more remote work and the way our societies kind of organizing itself, men in particular, are particularly vulnerable to isolation, uh, and loneliness. Because, again, we're not raised for all kinds of reasons to be as relational by default. So a men's group is part of what I say is the antidote to that. So it's getting together, putting our attention on each other, and it can be as simple as, hey, what are you feeling? What's going on in your life?

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> Jason Lang>What's working well, what's not working well? Where do you want to be going in your life? And in the process?

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> Jason Lang>And there's many different ways to enact this, of doing that, we get more connected to each other. We shift from thinking of other men as competition to allies.

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> Jason Lang>We get more resourced in our nervous systems, and we often get much clearer about the direction of our life and our willingness to tackle it with the support of others at our side.

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> Jason Lang>And so I've been in men's groups, like I said, for about 20 years now. I've been leading them for about ten. And out of all the different types of personal growth and transformation work I've done, being in a solid group has been the single thing that changed my life the most. My career, my relationships, literally even my physical health. And it's why I strongly encourage men to find some kind of group in their life to join up and be a part of, because the power of it is, it'll help you move towards the life you want to be living even faster.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Or describe to the listeners what the man box is.

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> Jason Lang>Yeah. So the man box is related to everything we're talking about. So, you know, they've done some studies, and it's really interesting, Curtis, uh, they did some polls of both men and women. Right, of, hey, what marks the transition of a girl to a woman? And what marks the transition of a boy to a man? And, you know, I'm not saying either of this is right or wrong, but this is where our culture is at. For, uh, girls to women, both men and women tended to highlight physical attributes as the. So a girl becomes a woman when she starts having her monthly cycle, when her body develops, etcetera. For men, for boys to men. It was not the case reported from both men and women that the physical transformation was the main thing. Instead, there were cultural and behavioral associations. Point being, a man going through puberty, a boy going through puberty doesn't necessarily make him a man in our cultural mindset.

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> Jason Lang>It's how is he showing up in his life? Right? And so the man box is actually this kind of list, this series of checkboxes that us men are expected to check off to conform to the idea of what a man is in our culture. And if we don't check those boxes off, we're considered not a man or less of a man.

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> Jason Lang>And just some very basic ones, you know, they change somewhat depending on the region or the culture, um, around the world. But some very basic ones are, don't show weakness, definitely don't cry, be tough, be independent, don't be over reliant on other people.

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> Jason Lang>And this continues in so many different manifestations that have an incredible impact on the mental and physical health of us men. Another way to think about this is, uh, as I say, Curtis, is, um, the man box is related to this idea that in most cultures, not all, but most particularly here in the US where I live, men are rewarded and taught from a young age to disconnect from their bodies.

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> Jason Lang>And what I mean by that is both the physical sensations of our bodies and our emotions, which actually start as, ah, sensations in our bodies. So from a young age, women hear this too.

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> Jason Lang>But boys, I think in particular are often, um, told things like, stop crying, get over it, you should know better. In the schooling world from a very young age, if we get kind of put into mainstream education, we're taught to be still.

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> Jason Lang>This impulse you have in your body, ignore it, be still.

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> Jason Lang>As we enter into our kind of, our adolescence, some of this pressure comes from other boys.

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> Jason Lang>Don't ever show weakness or vulnerability because you'll be made fun of for it. And then it continues as we age and grow up into many of the most dangerous and physically demanding jobs are taken up by men, and men are taught and rewarded for overriding their bodies. We see this in professional sports, many of which, um, there's pretty significant evidence now, like men actually destroy their bodies playing and sometimes even their brains. Um, in the military, which, you know, it's changing, it's becoming more, um, equal.

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> Jason Lang>But traditionally, you know, military and war has been men go off and sacrifice your bodies and then even in dangerous or physically demanding laborious jobs, it's often mentioned, but the point being, or even in the corporate world now, Curtis, it's like, work harder, 80 hours a week, override your body, disconnect from it. This is a message we are given so often from such a young age as men, and that has severe consequences for us. And it's related to the man box that it should be mind over matter. And I see this show up in many men I work with.

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> Jason Lang>You know, we come with a certain amount of, I guess you could say preloaded health and vitality in our bodies.

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> Jason Lang>But you know, by the time our late thirties, forties and fifties hit us. This stuff starts to catch up with us men and our bodies start to fail us, or we get autoimmune disorders, or we become depressed. And these things can often be connected to the fact that we're totally disappointed, disconnected from our bodies, because we've been taught that culturally, we've not been taught how to be present with what is happening in our bodies and how to name and express and share our emotions. And so all of this comes together to create this kind of confining way of being for men that tells us there's a right way to be. And that creates enormous amount of pressure and stress on men to, again, be disconnected from themselves, often hurt their bodies in the process, and to be disconnected from community along the way. And so part of men's work, like I do, is it's not so much about destroying the man box. There's always going to be a set of values we hold as a culture, but it's trying to shift it from the confining notion of a box to what are some of the foundational principles we can use as a foundation to stand upon, so to speak, to become truly available, um, powerful and aware leaders in the world.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Well, what do you feel, in your opinion, like, what do the feminine crave from the masculine?

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> Jason Lang>Yeah, absolutely. And so, uh, I'm going to use some language here that some people don't like these days, masculine and feminine.

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> Jason Lang>But, um, you don't even have to call them that for this stuff to be useful.

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> Jason Lang>Just there's this idea that in the world, there's one of the primary polarities and dualities is the energy.

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> Jason Lang>If we could call it masculine and feminine, we could call it structure and flow. We could call it awareness and energy. You could call it, um, yin and yang. You could call it perspective and, um, feeling. There's so many different things here. But the point is being. The point being we all have both of these energies inside of us.

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> Jason Lang>Whether we're born in a man's body, a woman's body, or we've configured ourself in any way in between, we all have access to these, and they pull each other close, meaning like two ends of a magnet. If they're different, there's a polarity, there's an attraction between them, there's a desire to be close.

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> Jason Lang>They're two the same. We can kind of push each other away, or at best, be neutral. So the feminine part of all of us, but particularly in, um, feminine oriented women, are deeply attracted to the masculine energy in the world. And in men or in other people. And so masculine energy, in a simple way to express it, is the energy of being grounded, still deeply present, holding space.

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> Jason Lang>And in some sense it's the energy of being unchanging. Just being really solidly here and providing structure or leadership to the moment is often a big part of that. And one of the challenges a lot of men I work with these days is culturally we've continued to evolve. So there used to be a set of expectations in relationship where basically as long as a man was providing, that was enough. But part of what shifted, and I, ah, frankly think this is for the better, is both men and women are being kind of liberated from some of these traditional roles.

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> Jason Lang>So in the sixties and seventies in particular, the women's lib movement really took off.

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> Jason Lang>And women were allowed to leave the role of the mother in the home, um, housewife, ah, so to speak. And they were allowed to come out into the world and have their own opinions and have jobs and move towards things and in a sense, bring their own agency and some of their masculine energy online. And that is an awesome thing. Simultaneously, it's happened a little later. So the men's work world is a little, uh, behind, I would say.

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> Jason Lang>Men, for the first time in a long time, are being asked to bring their sense of relationality and interiority online. Hey, what's happening inside yourself? What are you feeling? Can you express that?

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> Jason Lang>Can you express yourself? And that's a big edge for many men. The problem is, um, these days, you know, because there's more complexity to these roles. A lot of couples don't know how to be in the world because a lot of women are like, hey, I don't need you to take care of me financially anymore. I got this. I have a career I love. I'm super inspired by what I do, but I do need you for some other things. And it's those other things that we're really talking about here, Curtis, of your capacity to be grounded, to be present, to bring spaciousness to the moment. It is shocking how impactful it can be when we as men, or the person holding the masculine in any relationship are able to show up in this way.

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> Jason Lang>The feminine craves the ability to trust and relax and bring down some of their vigilance, which they've had to build up over many years. Because the truth is, a lot of men haven't been trustable for many, many, many, um, generations in a sense. But so for us as men, this work to particularly becoming present, so getting out of our heads and the endless amounts of rumination that so many men do to actually coming down, being connected to our bodily sensations, being connected to our emotions, and actually paying attention in the moment to our surroundings and who, uh, we're with. And that's the work I do with a lot of men that completely transforms their marriages, their relationships, their dating life as they learn to become present in this different way that it's not just the feminine, but everyone is craving. And when we're.

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> Jason Lang>I can speak from it firsthand. When I'm around others that are present in this way, my body, my nervous system relaxes and I just want to be around them more.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>So tell us about any current, uh, upcoming projects that you're working on that listeners need to be aware of.

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> Jason Lang>Yeah. For anyone, particularly men that are hearing this and like, yeah, this sounds a little weird, but I'm curious. Um, there's a bunch of different ways to work with me. I lead one men's program online that's kind of a combination men's group and coaching program, particularly for men who are wanting, um, to transform how they relate to women.

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> Jason Lang>And that's called pillars of presence, and you can join that anytime. And then the other big thing I do is I do live retreats, Curtis, which means we get in the room together as men and learn to connect to our bodies and each other in completely different ways that often help us open up, uh, and unleash a tremendous amount of vitality in ourselves that we can then use, um, back in our world. And I run that every labor day. So I have one coming up again this, this year, this labor day in northern California. And it's pretty small, intimate group, about two dozen men in a beautiful location. We do work in nature, we do work with each other, and it's about coming alive as a man and learning to access your presence in these ways.

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> Jason Lang>We're, uh, talking about and all the information for that, um, you can find at my website, evolutionary men, um, under the events section.

00:28:03.314 --> 00:28:15.614
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Okay, that was my next question. Ah, your website, evolutionary men. So close us up with some final thoughts. Maybe if that was something I forgot to talk about that you would like to touch on or just any final thoughts you have for the listeners?

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> Jason Lang>Yeah, this is a message, um, directly to men, but also to any women who want to support their men in that part, uh, of the man box we're fed, particularly here in the US, is the myth of the lone wolf or the rugged individualist cowboy. And the honest truth is, in nature, in the natural world, the lone wolf is the wolf who was kicked out of the pack, and they don't live as long. They need the pack to survive. And we're like that as men, too. And the offering I have here to say about the power of getting into community and joining men's groups is it's not that life is going to become magically easier, but it will become a lot better because you will be resourced in a much deeper way to handle the challenges and stresses of life. So you will grow faster in community than you will alone.

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> Jason Lang>That, uh, would be my parting message for men. And if there's a woman out there whose man is struggling, have this conversation with him. Like, hey, have you ever considered connecting with some other men and getting some support?

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> Jason Lang>It's not something to be ashamed of. It's something to be proud of.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>All, uh, right, ladies and gentlemen, evolutionary men. Check out everything that Jason is up to, and if you want to check out that retreat, do that. Also, please be sure to follow rate review share this episode to as many men as possible and as many women who want to support their men. If you have any guests or suggestion topics, send them to Curtis Jackson 1978.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>Dot Net Dot as always, thank you for listening and supporting the show. And Jason, thank you for joining us.

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> Jason Lang>My pleasure, Curtis. Thanks so much.

00:30:17.124 --> 00:30:25.051
> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>For more information on, um, the living the Dream podcast, visit www.djcurvefball.com.

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> Curtis Jackson (also known as DJ Curveball)>until next time, stay focused on living the dream.

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> Jason Lang>Dream.