155: The TRUE Role of Men & Women | Steve Coughran

Men problems require men solutions. Instead of coming home to your wife and treating her like your therapist, your guru, or like your man buddy, that's not the role as a man. The average guy has no idea that this is even the game board. It's like, here's the game board, here's what it means to be a man. These are things that we weren't modeled or taught by elders, by men in our community. A man is like a big truck, and the heavier the load, the straighter the drive. There's this paradox that the more that is put on, the better the performance. Men need challenge. We need discipline. When we are physically soft and we're in a world that's very convenient, it becomes really easy. We like to have these really complicated stories of what it means to be a man and what this archetype is. The guys that I see, they show up and they want to win and they want to be good to their women. They just don't know how. Maybe you're doing a lot right. You're working out, you're eating decently, and still your body feels puffy, your hair feels thinner, and your skin feels crepey. You were taught to call that aging, but I am choosing not to. I don't believe that beauty is vanity. I believe it's a hobby. It's a skill. It's something that you can practice and learn at any age. So I'm hosting a free beauty backroom live stream event for midlife women who are ready to glow up and feel leaner, stronger, and more radiant than they have perhaps in their entire life. I will be sharing exactly what I've done over the past couple of months to do just that. So 2026 is your rebrand year. Come play with me. KellyBroganMD.com forward slash BB. Hi and welcome back to Reclamation Radio. I am Dr. Kelly Brogan. And today I sit down with the founder of the Unbreakable Man Project, Steve Cochran, who happens to be the beloved husband of my longtime Vital Mind Reset collaborator, Jamie Davidson. So we share a powerful ethos around embodiment and health and the relational empowerment that is possible when you take radical responsibility. So we talk about the role of initiation for men. We talk about what it is that men should actually be doing with their feelings, especially in the context of romantic relationship and marriage. We talk about the problem with a lot of men's work out there and specifically the role of shame in a man's experience of overwhelm and all that's required for him to develop the capacity to self-contain and offer that containment to others. You might have noticed that I don't believe I have ever come on here to endorse a men's work offering. And I am very, very excited to spread the word. However, it organically trickles through probably the primarily female ears that are listening to this podcast. And so I've arranged with Steve for any man who is interested in working with him to receive $400 off the offering. The code is KB400, and he is also offering a complimentary strategy session to this fine gentleman. So the link, of course, will be in show notes. It's theunbreakablemanproject.com, and I hope that this is extraordinarily grounding for everyone listening. It certainly was for me. Welcome, Steve, to the pod. Thank you. Happy to be here. Good to see you. So this is such a delight for me to have this chat with you on a subject that I am so passionate about. And it allows me the opportunity to reflect on the almost decade that I've been entangled with your beautiful family, and particularly your gorgeous, radiant, exceptional woman, Jamie Davidson. and to just sit in awe of the process, right? The journey that we've been each walking home to ourselves and just like the many moments of waking up out of the anesthesia of the programming. So as I mentioned, in the intro, Jamie and I have some beautiful soul level karma from my perspective and have, grown this field of reclamation for women and men. But our focus was always really on women and really mostly on moving beyond victim consciousness in the health arena. But we started to learn together that there's kind of an order of archetypal operations, right? Like you align with your biology, you smoke out the victim there and resolve the triangulation against your own body. And part of that biological reclamation is the remembrance of your womanhood or your manhood, right? So the biological imperative that is a defining feature of your existence, right? And so the understanding of this very necessary binary leads to a different perspective on relationships. Like, for example, I often talk about the biological reality that women who walk the earth, which is all of us, live with this white noise of vulnerability, maybe even fear around the capacity that a man has, should he feel so inclined to violate her, you know, abuse her, murder her with his bare hands. And that inequality, biologically, is something that the feminist ideology invites us to gaslight ourselves around, right? Like to just deny it and imagine that it's not real, and that we can do whatever he can do. And, you know, we will subdue him and all of his monstrosity. Okay, so as we remember this, we started to recognize that there are roles. And I think that the shift away from health and the understanding of what it is to be a human in a human body to relationships is a very natural progression, right? And so I started to have an unexpected awakening around my role as a woman. And this was probably deep into my second, ultimately, marriage, right, where I started to see like, oh, there's something I didn't know when I first got married and had children. I decided I could be a career woman and also a wife and also a mom. And there's something I'm figuring out here, Jamie. We used to have these conversations. And so I was like in on her side of the evolution of your family and your relationship. and you were very supportive, our membership, Vital Life Project, and started to collect masculine energy around you because there were men in the fields that needed a leader, okay? And I was not in a position to provide that, nor did I ever imagine that that was my role. Like, it's always been very clear to me, you know, I am here to work with women and if men resonate with what I'm saying, wonderful, but it's not my business almost, you know, literally and figuratively. So with that bit of context, I would love to start, Steve, with kind of some of the inversions that you yourself were steeped in, right? Because a lot of what I'm referencing is like, you know, I thought initially I was like an egalitarian feminist, right? So I thought, you know, that equality rather than, let's say, equity is the goal, right? And I thought that I could have it all. And I thought that I would be fulfilled through my dharma and my mission rather than my relationship. So there were, I call them poor bargains. So there were a lot of inverted conceptualizations. There was a lot of misalignment with my native priorities. And I don't often have the opportunity to ask, you know, a man who has evolved in this similar way, like, where did you get it wrong? Where and how did you take the bait, whether it's agenda level bait or whether it was just because of habits and unconsciousness in your roles as husband, as father, as man in the world. So I'd love to start with sort of like, you know, the things that you compassionately appreciate you fucked up and didn't understand and got wrong and were asleep at the wheel around. Right. Because I don't really know exactly what those parallel processes are because it's just not been my focus to look at how men should be. Right. Or like how they're correcting the course. I'm just so, so focused on a woman's role. So maybe we can start there. Yeah, no, that's a beautiful inquiry. You know, I was raised by my parents that were fairly traditional. My wife, you know, my mom stayed at home. My dad worked and provided. So I was accustomed to that. I think like so many men in our culture, you know, we never get like this initiation from boy to man. So I was, you know, technically a man, obviously biologically, you know, doing the things right. Going to work. I had the house. I had that containment piece handled. handled, but it was never, you know, I always had this sense of like, like looking around the room, like, whoa, like, where's the adult or like, where's, where's the actual man, right? And I was in my 30s, right? I was like, who's going to bail me out of here, right? Or like, what do I do in this situation? And found myself just oftentimes just kind of making it up and being headstrong about it without, you know, taking input from the outside world, from reality, from, from my woman. And I would just chart a course and just go for it, which is also a great part of being a man is you can be steadfast and work towards a goal and have mission focused. But I had these blinders on to everything. And it felt like if I look at anything outside of my blinders, that my whole world is going to crumble and my whole world is going to crash. So I was very closed off and very rigid with my thinking. And then the big kind of viewing of COVID, whatever that was. And I really appreciate you and you being a cheerleader. We're literally stocking up on one of those called the sanitary wipes at Costco, right? We're in Cabo, right? We're in Baja, Mexico, right? And then we started to listen. We were connected at that time. And I thought like, whoa, is this true? Is what she's saying true? And I'm so grateful to you because it really flipped everything on its head. I thought like, no, like none of this is true. And if this isn't true, like what else isn't true? You know, and it's just this huge explosion of like, wow, like what is sovereignty? What am I? What is our family? Like what's my role here? So that really blew everything up. And then there's a lot of freedom in that. I was like, well, you know, I mean, if it's, if this is the game board, like we're going to do whatever we want. So that was a big like awakening. And you all left the country. So you started our nomadic journey. Yeah. Into the wild. Yeah. And Jamie, you know, with like her just unbelievable intuition sniffed it out. You know, we're, you know, it's a month before COVID happened and we take off, you know, in our literally our old Dodge truck and our camper van. I have a, you know, three and four year old and two dogs. And we're living on this land, you know, kind of recreating ourselves. Prior, I had a 20-year successful run in sales. And yeah, we just decided, what does this life look like? And really, what do we want to do? And part of where I tripped up along the way was Jamie had an emotion, kind of a fleeting emotion that, yes, I want to be boss babe. I want to really figure out what I can do in the work world. And what we're seeing a lot in culture right now is there's almost like, oh, well, I got what I wanted, but this isn't really all that great. Right. If it's all the same, I'd rather you go back to work and make the money and I'll be with the kids and I'll do the baking and, you know, do do the traditionally, you know, you know, female roles. So where I went wrong in the polarity and that as a leader of the family is I didn't understand the nature of how the feminine changes and how they do change and how that's actually a celebration. But that my role is to not follow each one of those whims necessarily, but to be open and adjust our mission as a family accordingly. So not to expect linearity of her, but also not to allow her to lead, right? So that's like a subtle dynamic where you're attuned and receptive to what it is that's coming through her while also retaining the decision making, you know, the rudder in the water. Yeah, no, exactly right. I mean, you know, the kind of the makeup of a man as I see it is, you know, more linear, more strategic. It doesn't change as often. And as we've kind of figured this dance out, Jamie and I, you know, we know that, you know, we probably shouldn't move, you know, that moment that she feels like, hey, it's time to move. We shouldn't do anything drastic in those times, and we should actually be a little more thoughtful. And it should probably be big decisions like that should be led with me. And in the work arena, I am more robust as a man. Stress, competition, challenge sharpens me. Years of that on Jamie will eventually wear her down where it's the completely opposite of me. And I think that's where, you know, kind of the feminist movement, you know, has their blinders on on a bit. Yeah. And even just to watch, you know, I talk about this all the time, but just to watch female CEOs and entrepreneurs like myself lie to themselves and others about the ease with which they are operating, you know, because it took me getting to the place where I literally was working two hours a week, sometimes not even that. and I still felt the energetic sort of like donation of my life force to the business. And that went on for so many years where I was like, why is this so fucking intense if I'm not actually right? Because when you're working 80 hours plus, it's easy to be like, this is a lot. I look forward to when I am in the visionary seat and I get to just contribute a little bit. But I got to that place. And I still felt like my biology after 15 years, you know, in the business world is complete with this. You know, I'm done with this. And it was when I started to. And of course, you know, then I had the grace of transitioning into a different realm where now my business is run by somebody else. And I do chill. And it is wonderful, you know, until I meet my next husband and I retire at the Hellcat, which is exactly what will happen. But that lie that we tell ourselves that our biology is, as women, structured to sustain the relentless chase and capture of marketing and sales, which is almost always a part of any, you know, a solopreneur enterprise. We're just all participating in it. So the fact that you you know you allowed her arc is unusual because a lot of relationships can sustain that kind of a shift in priorities and identity on both the woman and the man part So you and I believe in radical responsibility I know we share that belief system And as I mentioned, I've been very focused on what women can do and the responsibility that women have in marital dynamics, let's say, let alone as mothers. And so it's kind of fun for me to talk to you about what you imagine to be the specific responsibility that men have. Because I think in this segregation of responsibilities, we have a lot of fertile material, right? Because it becomes problematic, and I imagine you would agree, when part of what we are working on as women is inducing a shift, change, realization, you know, or behavior in the men in our lives, right? Like, if that's what we're focused on, we're in that codependent giving to get externalized focus of our trauma field. And I imagine, you know, there's a parallel for men where if you think that what you need to do is change your woman, you're in that realm of, you know, that codependent energy that it's a violation of the actual power that you do have. So how do you think about the responsibility that a man has? Let's say first in this role as husband, but I know it extends also to role as father and role in the community, maybe even also with other men. Like where do you begin to orient without it feeling crushing, right? Or overwhelming or like, you know, you just have to manage everything. You just have to fix everything. You just have to, like, figure out exactly where, you know, you're going. And does that feel like just totally crushing to a man who is already overwhelmed? Because the most triggering archetype for me is the overwhelmed man. It's my, like, whole body contracts when I am in the presence of an overwhelmed man, because it almost always translates, you know, neurobiologically, where I can then feel his destabilization and his like kinetic movements and his lack of stillness and he's just dysregulated. And then I no longer have the opportunity to, you know, potentially enjoy the containment of a man's body around me, literally just like standing in line at the post office, let alone in dynamic. So I don't think the goal is to overwhelm men with how much responsibility they do have. So what is sort of like the entry point where it feels, it feels exciting, interesting, compelling for a man to begin to take responsibility, do you think? Yeah. For me, it's like this archetype of a man that's super overwhelmed and doing it all. He's like this pressure cooker. And what I find when I work with guys is like step one is you need to be able to have a pack of men to be able to talk with. And this type of talking is different than And when females typically talk together, the best medicine for a man is for him to share his deepest, darkest truth and to be in a room or in a Zoom call with six or eight other men who are successful that he respects and just have everybody be deadpan. Just say nothing, do nothing, just offer their presence. And that most of the time just allows these stories and the stress and all this pressure just to immediately drop. you know, people, men don't need other guys coaching them or telling them what to do often, right? It's just this group of men. We know what to do and we're all together and there doesn't need to be a guru. There needs to be, you know, someone who facilitates it. So someone, you know, who is less skilled doesn't take the mic and, you know, talk for 20 minutes and bore everybody. But that's the medicine for me. And as a man, it's like peeling the layers of the onion. And in the middle is this presence. And that's what women want from us. That's what our children want from us, is just to be able to be that calm, strong presence. And that's the whole goal. What stands in the way for most men, as we know from David Data's work, is this idea of shame. So if a man isn't willing to feel his shame or is uncomfortable with the parts of him that he feels are shameful, he'll either try to avoid the situation, right? That'll be the guy that goes out in the garage and has beers or go gets high or tries to escape or shuts down and just watches football and numbs himself with Cheetos or whatever the people are eating in the States. So, I mean, that's kind of the work that I see. And that was a big unlock for me is being able to feel my shame, really like literally feel it in my body, feel this heat that comes in over my head, this heat that comes through my chest. and just be able to let that energy flow through me and understand that it's almost like a cloak you put on, this shame cloak that was put on us by society, by our folks, by people. And then it's not us. And we often collapse that shame of this was a thing that I would do differently in the future or a thing that was not my best moment with I'm bad, I'm wrong, this will never change, this is hopeless. So working with that shame piece I found was really, really powerful in my work. And I see that with the guys that I work with as well. When you're able to feel your shame, you can stand there in the fire, in the heat of these high highs and these low lows. And just understand that this too shall pass and we'll be able to release this. And it's almost like as a man, I walk around my family. I walk around in the world. And I'm almost like, how much of this can I ground? How much of this energy that's around me can I ground and have passed through my body with me still standing there showing up? So you've probably heard about diversifying investments and saving for the future. But what about becoming your own bank and opting out of high interest loans and difficult decisions about whether to sell off an asset? As a single woman and a mother, my whole system exhaled when I learned about the specific and unique whole life insurance policies that my now friends Josh and Ken offer. So unlike crypto stocks and even gold, you can borrow the money that you invest in this policy even days after you deposit it. 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And if you want someone to run the numbers of your specific situation, book a free call with my friends, Josh and Ken over at KellyBroganMD.com forward slash whole. This is amazing to hear because when I think of the containment goals, right, that men have for themselves and that women are yearning for from men, it seems to require a biological resiliency that I sometimes think is glossed over in more psycho-emotional treatments of this work. Meaning like if you just want to tell a man, and again, I don't know because I don't work with men, but like if you just want to be like, be like an oak tree, you know, and if your woman comes raging at you, like just breathe into your balls. I think that sounds great. But I also, as somebody who has been studying, you know, nervous system dynamics for 20 years, I know that it can take certain amounts of literal like nutrition, like literal biological foundational inputs to get to the place where it is possible to hold. the energy of shame is probably the most kinetic of all. It feels implosive. It feels like it could literally suck you into the depths of hell. So of course, you're going to have a reflexive habit of your body, like how you are going to somatically respond. So when you talk about that relationship to shame and learning how to just let the heat just wash over you in a moment and practicing that, I love what you're saying about the non-reactive, non-engaged dynamics in a group setting. It just makes so much sense to me that that would be a powerful remedy for men. But do you find that for a man to practice having this relationship, what I would call it in my space, a permission field to be the asshole, to be the fucking dick, to be the immature child, to just get it totally wrong, right? When that permission field is expanded, is it just, in your opinion and perspective, is it just a matter of choice? He just decides in a moment, okay, I'm going to grow to hold this sensation no matter what the context is? Or do you think that there are other foundational elements biologically, lifestyle-wise, self-care-wise, you know, that practice-wise, maybe even just meditative practice that have to be in place before a man can hold himself through those kinds of moments? Yeah. So I think one, you know, the average guy has no idea that this is even the game board. First, it's like, here's the game board. Here's what it means to be a man. These are things that we weren't modeled or taught, you know, by elders, by men in our community. So like, welcome, you're here typically in my space because your woman signed you up or told you you have to go or I'm leaving, right? I mean, that's still how men are, things have to get motivated. It's pretty bad or they feel like, okay, on this trajectory, this is a dead end, right? What else is there out there? So first they come in, they have no idea what even is this, what are we doing? So it takes a little bit of practice to say, okay, here's where we're up to. we're not telling each other how to live. What we're doing is I'll start usually in these group settings, at least like sharing, here's my most vulnerable share. And it kind of clears the deck for everybody else. I know you've done that. You've seen that in group, right? Where someone will just share this mic drop that it's like, whoa, this guy just shared that and he's fine and no one has to fix it. So that kind of models it for everybody. And eventually, guys, you know, feel more and more comfortable and are able to share things. So part of it is like knowing what the new game board is. And then two, it's like, let's practice in this safe container. Don't go out and start, you know, trying to be a hero, like work on your skills here, work on what's coming up, work on the feelings that you have now. And the idea is that it gets intense enough, hot enough, you know, funny enough at times to where all of a sudden our capacity starts to grow and you're out and walking in the world and you're like, oh, this was, you know, 50% of this experience I had in this group or in plant medicine or whatever the situation is. And all of a sudden everything's relative and it doesn't feel quite as hot. And you go back to whatever those practices are that keeps you grounded and in your body and real. It also, you know, men need challenge. We need discipline, you know, when we are physically soft and we're in a world that's very convenient where we can order food and it shows up at the door and then we watch our football and then we're, you know, we compartmentalize everything in our life that it becomes really easy. So part of this work also is expanding the capacity of your body as well. You know, a man that can, you know, knock out a hundred pushups and it's just on fire, you know, is much, has much more capacity than a guy who hasn't, you know, gone to the gym or, or can do five push-ups. So part of it is physically like, yeah, let's grow this container and let's grow your edges and grow your comfort zone so that you have more capacity to hold what's needed in life. I think it might have been one of my teachers, Omeropani, who maybe even in his book, I'm not sure where I heard this, but it was something like a man is like a big truck and the heavier the load, the straighter the drive, right? So this almost paradox around levels of responsibility, including, right, discipline, you know, a relationship to physical and manual intensity that is maybe even strenuous, right? So that there's this paradox that the more that is put on, the better the performance, right? Because most of us would imagine the more a man is responsible for in his life, the more overwhelmed he's going to be. But somehow there's this paradox. And so again, I could point to eight male business owners, men I interact with in my personal arena, who are just so fucking frazzled and running around like chickens without a head. And then I know all these women who are just like locked in, right? So that inversion, that polarity inversion, I think is arguably one of the most problematic of all energetic signatures that we are working with today. And I would argue that I'm not unique when I suggest that on a biological level, it's quite repulsive to me. And I imagine it's quite repulsive to a man biologically when he interacts with a woman who is all, you know, in her masculine executor, you know, sort of dynamic. So how do you orient men who come to you wanting this relationship to their own self-containment and capacity to contain others, but who are overwhelmed, right? And maybe even they're showing up late to appointments or missing appointments or they're just sort of like frazzled and they're not even sure they have the bandwidth for this kind of work. But you obviously know that without this kind of work, they're not organizing anything else in their life. It's a root of so much chaos and disorder that needs to be attended to. So how do you begin to orient a man like that? Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, one, the man oftentimes doesn't know. I think at some level, women are more intelligent and they understand this stuff quite a bit better. So a man that shows up just is frazzled and he doesn't know why he's frazzled and he doesn't even know that he is frazzled. That's just how he's operating. So once he is in a group of grounded men who are on the same page or at least a couple of grounded men and some other guys, like he starts to remember something that he didn't know before and that he didn't know was an option. And naturally, you know, men have like this hierarchy or this pecking order or some sort of structures that a man will like get in line with his best self when he's just around other strong men. So it's nothing that even needs to be said, right? So as he hears himself talk frantically about all of his things and these other men are just deadpan watching him right He all of a sudden starts to kind of get in his own alignment and get right with himself And then it's just practice. And then eventually, you know, that same man can choose, you know, do I want to be in like this mild hysteria or do I want to walk in a life that's different? And oftentimes he'll have that reflection from his woman as well, right? You know, that same man, his woman will be in the masculine and we'll have these conversations around polarity and really, you know, what he's attracted to. And oftentimes it's not this, you know, stoic businesswoman, right? It's this flowering, dancing, singing, you know, even yelling, right? Woman who brings color into his world. And then he starts to see, okay, right? We can't both be that archetype, right? I need to shift and she needs to shift. And it's just a natural progression. But there's so much beauty, like healing with men, with structure, around topics that all men know are inherently good in their best self that it starts to unwind. And what's beautiful, too, is it's not like traditional therapy where you go there and you feel like, I'm bad. I need to load up four or five of these techniques on top of my already busy packed schedule. It's like, come in, share the thing that you're not sharing that's running the show and then drop it or not. But at least you can share it and we can look at it and you can see if it's still serving you. Oh, gosh. It's so clear how important it is for men to share this kind of space together. And I know that I'm not alone when I say that many of the men in my extended field have no friends. like the isolation relative to, you know, we are struggling in our own ways, certainly as women, but we gather, okay? We gather. It's an irrepressible impulse that we have and we co-regulate together. And certainly in different arenas, there could be like a fetishizing of victim consciousness. I see that all the time. There's a fetishizing of catharsis and, you know, this rage-based expression. And I think there's potentially more immature expressions of women gathering, but it is something that we are inclined to do. And so when men are remembering that the return on investment for spending time together is like an unparalleled dividend, then something is restored for all of us, right? So like When I imagine you spending time together as men in this almost, it sounds like, non-verbal kind of containment, it's just clear that the hierarchical nature of man is playing a part, right? Because you're suggesting that there's almost like a leadership structure that isn't devaluing of somebody who's in the follower role. Okay, so like a guy comes in there, he's a hot mess, and he is called to a deeper expression, more consciousness, more presence, regulated breath, simply because there's a man in the room who's doing it better, right? And I sometimes talk about how this is the problem with female entrepreneurship is we are not hierarchical, right? So when I hire a woman to run my business, it's very complicated because I am not necessarily alpha relative to her. I want her alpha traits to be at the helm, but she's really in a beta role. And we don't organize naturally, hierarchically. We are communal in our dynamics, right? But you do. And so I can see how even in the space of like an hour, there is this expansion that, of course, the feminizing nature of therapy, no shade to therapists, maybe that's impossible based on what I just said, but is not able to provide. And that's a lot of what Laura Doyle's work, for example, really woke me up to is how problematic, for example, couple therapy is for a couple, how emasculating that is for a man to go and hear about his shortcomings from his woman's mouth to often another woman and then be, you know, treated like this riding bitch, you know, like in the dynamic. I mean, it's just so not the route to get what you want, right? When you're entering into that kind of a contract with a therapist. So what would you say, given that, is like the main problem you see in the men's work arena? Because they're for sure, just like I mentioned a couple of what I see as potentially regressive dynamics in women's work that are being put forth as empowering. what do you think is like the parallel in men's work where you look around at other men's groups that are cropping up and you're like, ah, guys, I don't know. I'm just not sure that's the way. Do you see any sort of trends? Yeah, yeah, for sure. So one, we agree totally on the therapy conversation. And I think just to add to that too, oftentimes then the man will have to pay for it, which just feels like absolutely insult. Masochism at its best. Yeah, I'm going to pay for this and come in. You're going to tell me all the reasons why I suck. That's not for him. I think what I see in men's work is a couple of things. One, you'll have an overinflated leader who thinks he's a guru, who thinks he's a magician, and he's not really willing to learn from other people and be grounded and rooted in his mission. So he wants to feel inflated by the members of the circle, by the group. He needs something from them. That's one that I see oftentimes is like this hierarchy, you know, and then the other thing is just, it's just inherent. Men just know what to do. You know, we gather and everyone knows who the biggest stud in the room is, right? You just, you like, you don't need to like introduce yourself. I mean, people just, men just know. It's like this, it's like this pecking order and we don't even feel bad about it. It's almost like inspiring, right? I mean, I'll have groups and if There's a guy who's crushing it at work and is crushing it in his life. Like, yeah. And we rely on him, you know, as we go through the eight pillars and discuss, like, you know, what is it that you're doing? How did you get here? You know, why are you, you know, so supreme to all of us right now? And we're all willing to hear that and do that. So I think when everyone and when the leader kind of checks his ego at the door and just shows up to be in service, I think that's that's really the thing that's that's different. I think we also sometimes overcomplicate men's work. While I love that book, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, we like to have these really kind of complicated stories of what it means to be a man and what this archetype is and take your quiz and do all these things, which for the average guy, he doesn't care if he's the lover or the joker or whatever this is, right? He gets up, he goes to work, he does his thing, he wants his wife to be happy, he wants his kids to be well. He just doesn't know what it looks like and what it takes to win. But the guys that I see, they show up and they want to win and they want to be good to their women. They just don't know how. Yeah. The simplicity is something that I want to double click on because I mentioned to you off air that I'm just hot off of a David Data teacher training that was life changing for me and an extraordinary opportunity. opportunity. And one of the many pearls that I had, it was co-ed, right? That I had the opportunity to witness was how regulating it seemed to be for one man to basically slap another man around for a couple minutes. Not like his face is there, you know what I mean? On his shoulders and stuff. And then the guy who was being slapped around or pushed around or however you want to indicate like more strength, more pressure, you know, so he's sort of toggling it, right? And within like a minute or two, we all could see this guy who was being pushed around by another guy physically, like come into his body, like his breath changed, his you could feel his spine all of a sudden, you could feel this, this stillness. And that is not what we do as women, right? And so So when I think about, I'm just laughing because one of my friends said the other day, she's like, it's clear to me, she goes, when I'm with a man, I need him to have zero emotions, zero. Like I am dealing with absolutely none of his emotions at all ever. And of course, right? Like we're not looking to hearken back to some 1950s archetype of repressed man. But that is sort of the polarity yearning. Polarity-based yearning is like, please allow me my heart's energy, right? If yours is here in an oppressive way, I can't expose mine, right? So what does that mean that men are supposed to fucking do with their emotions, right? If I'm not interested in what the new age told me I should be, which is encouraging my man to feel his feelings with me and loving when he cries in front of me. And this extraordinary psyop, truly, that we have been contending with, if that's not actually what I want as a woman, because I want to feel his stillness, I want to feel his spine, I want to feel his capacity to hold, then where does a man take his feelings? Like, does he just manage them internally, right, in a moment of stillness in a corner with himself? Or does it get alchemized through these kind of more physical practices? Or do you think it's important for men to, like, cry together? And I don't know. Like, I'm just curious what your take is on how a man best relates to his more vulnerable emotional expressions. I'm assuming you agree that it's probably not his woman who's holding that for him. Yeah, no, no, I agree. I mean, part of like the conditioning that you're talking about, you know, is I was I was under the impression that we were supposed to share our feelings. And that was like this next evolution of man. And how do I feel? And I went to a counselor one time and literally, you know, she handed me like a list of 100 emotions that someone could feel. Right. And in the beginning, I would like take that around and Jamie be like, what's on your mind? I was like, I would literally look at it, right? Like, you know, I'm feeling sad. You know, I had like three emotions. So I had to like explore that. And that's all helpful for me internally. But that's not the work to do with a counselor, with my woman, right? It's for me to explore that outside with men. And, you know, I mean, occasionally a man will shed a tear or cry a little bit in the group. You know, we're not like breaking down and like weeping and sobbing. You know, it never needs to get there. But like there's big, intense feelings that that comes up after we start processing, you know, 40 years of never talking to anybody about anything. So, I mean, again, it's like men problems require like men solutions. So instead of coming home to your wife and treating her like your therapist, you know, or like your guru or, you know, like your man buddy, like that's not the role as a man. At least that's what I felt in my experience. It is to go off into my cave, go out, work out, go talk to my, you know, good group of solid, you know, men that we work with and be able to process all of my stuff in my life. And then to come down, you know, and have a sit down and be with my woman in a like clear container, have some spaciousness, have some presence. And if you don't have a group of men to do that with, or at least one good buddy that you're talking about something other than like news, sports and weather, then it's really, really tough, right? And then you get, you know, like these guys who are so lonely and, you know, it manifests itself in other ways, right? Sports and overeating or, you know, addiction or whatever. Yeah, it's funny because I think, you know, data would say and has said like men have three emotions, like good, bad, and okay. So like what a, like a almost childlike, if not feminine lens to expect men to conform to in the therapeutic space. And it's just so confusing for women when we are thinking that what should be happening is that we're processing vulnerably with our man and inducing emotions in him. I mean, I've been there and thought that that was like an indicator of intimacy, right? That he's willing to cry in front of me. And so it's confusing for us because it's not actually biologically, I think, what we yearn for. And it's got to be so confusing for men to be like, okay, am I supposed to be the nice guy? Am I supposed to be like, effecting in front of you? Am I supposed to be like, just, you know, tearing up as you tell your tale of woe? Or am I supposed to be like, you know, so I mean, who knows, right? So this remembrance of not only the simplicity that men's work consists of, but also the imperative for men to do this work with other men and to have modeled for them what it looks like to have the permission to move these sensations, that's all they are, right? While also remaining regulated and the expectation that you can self-contain. There's also a difference between the stoic archetype that you're talking about that's present, that's engaged, that's in the room, and this shut down man. There's a big difference. We've all been in a room with a guy who's shut down. It's like no one can have their full expression, whether it's happy or sad, because he's managing his exterior world to try to not feel something inside. So there's a big distinction there for me in this work as well. So if you have a parent or an aging loved one who is struggling with balance, joint stiffness, or simply getting around, you may have wondered what you can possibly do to support them. 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So again, it's Juvent.com forward slash Kelly Brogan and the code is Kelly 300. Totally. And we could feel that the women in this training that I just did we could feel it like when a man even from across the room right Like when his gaze is like a stare right And there a kind of heart disconnection there. It feels distancing, almost a little scary in an intimidating way and certainly not like safe, but it could be like just a softening of the muscles around his eyes or just like a little, I don't know, I'm not in a man's body, but like whatever can happen from his heart to his like facial muscles and the glimmer in his eyes, just like a little bit of love comes into his otherwise very still and stoic body that somehow then translates this very attuned and aware, you know, signal. Because I think, yeah, a lot of men might imagine that what women want from them is this kind of strained, like, I'm here, I'm fine, you can't fuck with me. And it's something quite different. There was one exercise, and I could talk about this all day. I told you it would take like an hour for me to summarize my experience. One exercise that we did, and I'm not a big fan of women, like, catecting at men. You know, I did like a year and a half of Osho dynamic meditation every week. I've done my screaming. Like, it's just not compelling to me to express primal feminine rage at men. And I know that's happening in a lot of containers. It's just not for me. And so it was really the only time that we were like prompted to kind of like show ugly to this partner that we were working with and really tried to move him off of his groundedness. Right. to just kind of like see what we could do to destabilize him. And so there's like tons of screaming in the room and growling and just sort of like these unsexy flavors of expression on the part of the women. And then the men were instructed to, if the woman allows through like a set of signals, to just put like one arm around her, like the small of her back. and I was working with this guy and he had whatever, like super built, like very still body, okay? So he felt very self-contained as I was in my expression. However, his eyes had like a sweetness in them, energetically. I'm not talking about like aesthetically, right? And anyway, so he puts his arm around me at a certain point, just like literally like almost like slow dance kind of thing, you know? and I started weeping because I don't think in my life I could cry talking about it. I've ever felt that, you know, just like what, because I certainly can feel like, you know, recollect many moments where I've been seductive or, or sweet or cute, you know, or lovely and felt a man's like very still, even, you know, unconditionally present energy. That's one thing. But that magic that I just described where I felt this leaning in and offering of his biology to my expression. It was so primal and so fucking beautiful and so simple. and whatever it took for him to get to the place where he could offer that to a stranger in a moment, I imagine was a lot of work. Like I imagine this guy is pretty well practiced. Like he didn't wake up this way, right? And so the dynamics that can emerge in a moment, because a lot of polarity training is not about unwinding your trauma, right? It's like, what can you adjust in a moment to restore this divine, and I don't use that word lightly, connection? So I want to talk a bit before we touch on what you see as the eight pillars in this work and how you work with men and what it is that I'm so grateful you have on offer. I want to switch gears a little bit into fatherhood because you have just about the cutest kids on the plane. Oh, my goodness. And I also know that you have rewilded, right? I like the way that you have been raising your kids has probably asked you to reckon with, and I just mean homeschooling and traveling, you know, that kind of reckon with your role as a father relative to a man on a mission, relative to a husband, right? And I always think like, it's got to be also pretty confusing for men these days. Like, am I supposed to be around all the time for the kids? Like, is that the new way to be a good dad, right? Because we understand as women, at least in the first three years, yeah, be around, okay, girl? That's actually where we've been duped. That makes sense. But what is it supposed to look like for you? Is it a problem if you're super on mission and that's your number one day-to-day focus? Or is that exactly how it's supposed to be? How is it supposed to look for a father? because I think it's clear that offering your regulated body, literally, to your kids is your fucking responsibility as a mother and a father, right? And this is where we just did not get the memo, most of us who have been writhing around in our emotional immaturity and dysregulation. Okay, so we get that. But literally, what do you think it looks like, ideally, for a father who is also very focused on his mission and on his work. Yeah. Yeah. It's an interesting balance, right? Because as a man walking in the world, if I am not super focused on my mission at hand, I'm not happy, I'm not satisfied, I'm not worth much in the world. But then when my little girl comes to me and wants me to be present, I have to immediately give up that mission and shelf it and be present with her because that's also what's needed in the world. So it's challenging as a dad and as a homeschooler. Both of my kids are very much different. It's almost like polarity training outside of the system that they get to be who they are naturally and don't know that not all girls like pink and boys like blue and that's just the thing. So I mean, it's very much like that. Bodhi needs to be around me while I'm doing work, while I'm doing things. And he needs to feel a transmission from me. It's not said through words and it's not even acted out. It's just when we are doing things together, he picks up on that and he gets what he needs in this transmission. And Lotus just needs my absolute presence at any time, right? When she's happy, you know, when she's sad, when she has all of these emotions, you know, so it's a dance. It's a lot. I love those guys. You know, they've been such teachers to us and it's been such a beautiful, beautiful journey. And in the beginning years, you know, I was with them a ton. And like you were alluding to, you know, I'm not sure if that is necessary or even helpful. You know, I mean, I think Lotus being around mama and, you know, ideally Bodhi going off to work, doing something physical with dad is is kind of like the natural order of thing. Because as Bodhi gets older and bigger, right, he has these, you know, these bigger, more man, more masculine traits that actually kind of bother Jamie and bother my daughter. Right. But it's him and I doing those things. You know, it doesn't, you know, phase me at all. And I enjoy it. So it's an interesting evolution of what it means to be a dad and how I parent my kids, for sure. Totally. And I love that you have the opportunity to liberate your little man from inherently emasculating experience of being a schoolboy, right? With his female teachers sitting still in his chair, learning mental nonsense, you know, and his, you know, sort of raw dogging the world, which as far as I can see is what he's been doing since he was like a little nugget is such a pattern disrupt. And so when you and your peers are working to unwind how it is that you got into this inverted place and confused place and misaligned place, of course, you and I know that all we need to do is look back at the many layers of programming and dissociation from our bodies that has been run on us and our generation and those surrounding ours. So that's just so amazing, I think. So share with us a bit about how you, in terms of the pillars that you work with, how you organize this work with men that you do. Because I'm sure you could focus on any one of these. I don't know if you want to like literally list them or I can, but like any one of these could be, you know, enough group work to last many years, right? And it sounds like in your work with men, you want to bring the coherence of all of these, which, of course, is the way I think about it, too. It's like if you're going to work with, you know, transformational experiences like you got to you can't leave anything out in the cold. You got to bring all of these different points of awareness and embodiment to, you know, into the playing field. So, yeah, maybe tell us a bit about how you organize the work. Yeah, certainly. So what I have is the eight pillars of kind of what it means to walk as a man right now in the world. And the idea behind them and the concept behind them is if a man goes through these eight pillars with me and with a group, this will flush out any area that's a shadow part in his life, any area that he's not rock solid. So basically how it works is you know, I'll have a intake with a man. We'll go over the eight pillars, starts with courage, body, mission, ends with integrity. You know, money is in their relationships, containment, and then you're stoked. So we will go through and we'll literally rank, you know, it's very man, like, you know, how do you rank yourself on a one to 10 on each one of these pillars, right? So it's clear that some of them, he'll be hitting it out of the park and that, you know, we'll get down to some of the others, like, you know, containment or relationship or, you know, you're stoked in life. And all of a sudden he'll rank himself a two or three. So we know that moving forward, okay, here's kind of some blind spots in your game. And as a man does that for himself and is in group, he'll know, okay, like here's how I'm going to walk in this group. And here's the things that will really move the needle in all of my life. So it's very linear. Men really like it. So we'll come in, we start out with courage. That's kind of like the alpha a pillar because without courage, they wouldn't even have shown up to the group and they won't do anything in life. So then we'll have a discussion and resources around courage. It'll be an hour and a half meeting where everyone gets to share just kind of where they are courageous, where they're lacking courage in their life. And it's really a gut check for all the guys to see, okay, where am I at? Is this my thing? And then we start to learn. Typically, in group work, it starts out a little bit slower. So we don't, you know, choose like the biggest, gnarliest topic in the beginning, just so we can all kind of feel each other out. So you can, you know, see where the pecking order is, you know, how does this group dynamic work, and then go from there. So then we'll have two weeks to talk about that, you know, over telegram, or just kind of in conversation with guys. And then, you know, the next two weeks, we'll start on the next pillar. And we go through those eight pillars. And at the end, we'll also do kind of an exit interview, okay, you know, how do you rank yourself here? So there's a little bit of, you know, evidence that we can say, okay, yeah, I've really actually moved the needle, which to me has always felt much different than in traditional therapy. You know, for me, it always felt like, you know, I'm doing something, but it's kind of like this tangible thing. And yeah, I think I'm moving the needle, but here it's pretty clear. Like, yeah, like I know myself as being a man who has containment for his woman and for his family now. And I've moved that and practiced that in the group over and over and over again. So when things get tough in my life, I've had these really big experiences that I can lean on and it's all relative and it's easier. And then from there, we'll continue often and stay connected as a group, stay connected as men so that when things are difficult or hard, we have other people to be able to lean on instead of our woman. It's so good. And I'm so, so excited to endorse your work because I don't know how you support a man in his masculinity if you don't also understand how to be like fearless around health. Right. So it seems like there's I don't actually know of anyone else who's in this, you know, men's work world who like, of course, I'm very biased about what getting it means. Right. But like who gets it and isn't going to like put on a mask, you know, the next pandemic and think that that's an expression of masculine offering to society. because I remember even in like the BDSM world, there was like so many self-appointed doms, right? Who were, who are masking up. And I thought like, God, of course they just don't get it. They haven't researched it. They haven't taken the time to understand what it is to align with the body, trust the body. And they think that this is how they're serving, right? Like you could see how even masculine men who are otherwise quite unafraid, you know, it's not like they're like, oh, the germs, you know, whatever. But they think that that's a, an act of service, right? So I remember thinking at the time, like, wow, we need some strong men to stand up and make clear, which of course, you know, we have all these colleagues, you know, I have so many male, courageous male colleagues, but they're not focused on men's work. They're not focused on these pillars, of course, because they're focused on medicine and debunking all of these myriad psyops that are being run on us, right? So for you to have that baseline of ethos and belief that we share and to bring that, you know, like almost like a background understanding to this very practical, dynamic work in a man's life is just so inspiring for me. And I know I I speak on behalf of all women when we express appreciation, you know, that this work is happening, that you are leading in this way and with such humility. So I'm so, so grateful, Steve. And it's really, really wonderful to touch base, cross paths again at this point in our evolution. Yeah, that's beautiful. I really appreciate that. And you were a huge part of our journey into sovereignty over our health and understanding what the game board was. We're infinitely grateful to you and your brilliance out there. Thanks, too. Ah! The Up.