and welcome. I am delighted to be joined by my guest Yaron. Yaron Engler is joining me today. He's the founder of Ambient Men and he's a specialist with working with men in a whole host of fields. But I'm going to let Yaron go deeper and explain that fully when we get into conversation. And our conversation point today is to talk about how we can go from pain to power. So that's quite a, quite an interesting trajectory and I'm really Excited to talk to Yaron about his work with men and how he's taken them on that. Plus I have some interesting points on that. So we're going to jump straight in. So first of all, Yaron, welcome. Really good to have you,

Thank you, my friend. It's really great to be here, and I look forward to see what we're going to explore.

me too. So let's, let's really get clear when we're talking about pain and power. Again, they're words that can take us places. What's your definition of, of pain and power?

First of all, I really like the fact that you're starting the conversation with, with clarifying definitions, because I think a lot of times we talk about things and we don't really know what we're talking about, so it would be great to experience that. I haven't thought about it before, so I'm going to share my spontaneous, in the moment answer. Pain for me That's a really interesting question. Pain for me is a burden that can be either a teacher or a source of suffering. I like that. I didn't know it before. Power for me... Power for me is freedom.

Perfect. Really, really, really eloquent. And as we say, it's so, for me, it's so important to get clear on what do we mean by a phrase or a term, because it could mean something different for me as it does to you and to, to anyone else. So it's so important to, to get clear. So for me, pain, pain is something which is highly sensitive. I'm sensicurity. Um, it hurts. I found it interesting hearing what you said about it being a teacher and I you're right. It can also be a, uh, for me it can be a suppressor as well. It can become, it pushes me down. So it's a, it's a powerful force. I guess it's how that force is going. Is it pushing us down or pushing us forwards is something that I'm interested in, in, in going into. And power. Well, power is an interesting word in my term. Power sometimes makes me think of energy and drive and moving forwards. And other times it can feel a bit dominating. So a little like a shadow and light, there's sort of perhaps different aspects of power. Again, it feels to me. How is it applied? You know, what's the force behind the there would be my interpretation. So um, So we've kind of got some idea of where we're talking about now. So perhaps we'll start, let's take We're men. Um, being a man in 2023 unusual thing. Certainly I'm, I'm over mid, uh, mid century now. I've been around for, on this planet a long time. And it's a funny old thing being a man. Because when I grew up, I was... Given all these messages, not explicitly in a handbook, but you know, by my parent, my dad, and culture, and those messages don't fit today. That's what I find. They don't fit today. Some of them do, but then some of them don't. And I've had to do a lot of self work to question would be, certainly to you personally, how have you adapted yourself as a man of the, of the world from being a young boy when, when you grew up to the man you are today? How have you

That's a good question. it's interesting that it comes, but I think Payne was an amazing guide. At the beginning, something put to push away, and to try to avoid as much as I can until I understood in my early twenties, I understood that, as I said before, pain can be an amazing teacher and, and, and, and a door to a lot of wisdom and a lot of freedom, which again, as I said, power, power is an interesting word. And I'm sure we're going to touch that more. I didn't have positive role models as a man, as a child. I'm, I'm, I don't think so. I saw what I saw. I had an inner truth that there was something better than that, but it's hard to really apply that when we, when I didn't see external examples, but there was something, you know, I suffered from depression from being a teenage, for many years. And in my case, it was also physical. So I would get stuck with my neck or with my back for two, three days. I could not move. And it happened every two, three months. I would get stuck like that. And in my mid twenties, through a brother of a friend who later on became my girlfriend, he introduced me to Greenberg method. I don't know if you heard about Greenberg method. But Greenberg method, is a form... they do the analysis through your feet and then they start to work on the body. And it's all about connection between body, mind, spirit. It's, you learn how through breath and work with your muscles, you can really release pain. And it's incredible since I did that, work, I really learned how to release pains and find more freedom in me. So that was part of the release. of negativity that I had, but then also, I think another very important milestone for me, apart from acknowledging that pain is a I think in my case, I didn't really have healthy role models as, as a man, as a child. And, I always wanted to find them. And it wasn't easy. So there are two layers for the answer that I'm going to give you. One is, I think the thing that really helped me is to find, role healthy role models more or less 10 years ago, actually, when I heard about this concept of men's work, which is what drove me into that. Because I suddenly saw men that had this very strong capacity to. being what I would call the masculine traits, you know, very direct, strong with business, strong with strategy and, you know, all these kinds of traits. But at the same time, they had very easy access to compassion, to love, to, to self awareness. And I really liked that overall. spectrum that I saw from a man, because for me, it was used to be either the macho guy or the kind of the losery guy or something like this. So that's one thing. The other thing that is in a way contradicts the idea of being a man is I suffered from depression for many, many years in my life. And after, you know, it started when I was a teenager and. In 2010, I learned once and for all to let go of my depressions and that happened through a deep spiritual path that I took, which helped me see the, disconnection from identity and that everything that we add to the story that we, you know, we live in a story. Our life is a story. But it's completely imagination. So I can say many things about myself, I am a man, I am a father, I am I am whatever. But it doesn't really mean anything from that space of depth of spirituality. So in a way, disconnecting from the idea of a man as well helped me become the man that I am right now. So there is a contradiction there.

I love that. A contradiction I would probably also a paradox, which is of course a, uh, holding two, two opposites at the same time, which feels like there's a lot of that in the world, but we don't see it. Our brain slash mind is very much built on binary, certainly in our Western culture, we're very much binary thinking. It's either this or that. You're a man or you're a woman. You're a tough guy or you're a pussy. Whatever these binary terms are. But that's not actually true in my experience of life, certainly in my personal and my professional. And I'm really curious that you said there, but that unhooking of identity, that's such an interesting one because identity, you know, it's, we, we defend it, don't we? We're like, I am whatever, I'm this, I'm that. And if someone says that you're not, it's very hurtful. And yet. It's really interesting if we challenge that assumption, that, that construct, that story we've either told ourselves or somehow, you know, like, like clothing, just managed to put all these clothes on and like, Oh, I felt this is who I am. Can I, I'd love to go, because the word spiritual again can take us off into different terminology. What's your interpretation of spiritual? So we can understand how you perhaps got to, to, to that

You have really good questions. You know, you asked me to define things that I use on a daily basis, yet I never really defined. So what is spirituality? I think my interpretation of spirituality would be an inquiry for truth. Like, you know, instead of protecting my identity, I prefer to spend my time to feel what is true to me, because when I find what is true to me and I can apply it, I feel free. And if I said before, freedom is power. When I try to protect my identity, I am getting lost in ego, in a lot of things that I found really damaging, to be honest, to my life experience. So, for me, the spirituality... is a beautiful inquiry again, yeah, to, to find some freedom and peace and quiet.

Wow, That's really That's such a powerful way interpretation. I'm really touched by that. Um, I kind of want to speak to my interpretation of spiritual as well, because when I was younger, I thought it was all about a religion. Then I just realized that religion was a particular thing. And I was lucky enough to be involved in, Dwighter Vedanta, which is the, uh, ancient Sanskrit practice of non duality. And I got involved in that many years ago. And it did a similar thing to try and inquire what is truth and, and to go beyond the assumptions that we all have. And in many ways we can't live without assumptions. Otherwise it'd be a very confusing world. But to believe the assumptions are true, perhaps is dangerous or limiting. And I'm always fascinated to hear when we, we challenge something or question and say, Yeah, but is that really true? Or perhaps is it really true in my experience can open us up because if someone's in pain and wants to change, it feels like there needs to be some movement. There needs to be some movement either with the pain or out of the pain. But if there's no movement, it's you know, you're stuck in that that and it's not a nice place. So when we think about moving out of pain, what other powerful ways are you working either on yourself or with the guys that you work with to help that trajectory, that moving out of pain? So using it as a doorway, as you said, what

It's, it's interesting, it's to do the complete opposite. It's, instead of moving out of pain, it's to lean into the pain. I think most of the sources of our problems in life is by the fact that we are avoiding things. A question that I would ask the people that I work with, the same as I ask myself, is what am I avoiding? And the thing that I'm avoiding, that's what I would say, okay. It's time to lean into that, because if I'm avoiding a tough conversation with my wife because we have tension between us, I can continue to avoid it and avoid it. The relationship is going to get more tangled and more tangled and more tangled, and we see the outcome of so many divorces, so many, separations, so many toxic relationships, so many. The commonality of talking about, the wife or the husband that I, Oh yeah, kind of talking behind the back as if it's a burden instead of something that it should be like, wow, I really love my wife. I really am connected. So if, if I'm avoiding to have the tough conversation, I'm just leading to more pain. If instead of avoiding that pain, I'm leaning in and I'm having, Hey, something isn't working here. And my voice can be a little bit, you know, trembling and whatever, and I can be shaky, whatever the trauma is, but I'm leaning in and through that I can release the pain. Same thing with work. There is this phone call, or that email, or this conversation that you are avoiding, and that creates you to feel more lost, and more disengaged, and more pissed off, and more resentful. If instead, like, no, I'm going to lean in and I'm going to make that phone call and I'm going to allow myself to face that person, whatever, and, and, and in the work that I do with men, it's a lot about how to embody the traits that you want to have in those conversations. So it goes deeper than that, but it's always, instead of going out of pain, I'm inviting people to go in now. It's not a surprise that there are not a lot of. Men that are willing to go there. you know, there is a lot of stuff that invites us to kind of go around it and play, you know, around the bushes. This is not my approach because I didn't find it useful. I found it very, very useful to lean in and deal with stuff for real. At the same time of doing that spiritual practice where you start to really get to know, and I'll choose my word carefully, what you are, not who you are, the who is again, that identity, but to understand what I am. and move my life from there. This is how I deal with pain. I found it super

It really is profound. It's, it's work. I've had to get involved in myself. I've trained as a psychotherapist, so psychotherapy is a, is a, generally a going to the darker places in a, with a person. I, I've moved slightly on from the psychotherapeutic model now to a more of a coaching model, but I've two done years of therapy and looking at the pain and, and pain's. An interesting thing, I, I'm, I'm fascinated in neuropsychology, like how the, the physical system of our mind body works as well. And pain is a very. Acute signal. That's what it is really. If we talk about, you know, how the body's responding, it's a very acute signal. We, we have nociceptors in our, in our body. So they are actually, they're often called, pain receptors, but I heard someone recently described them as threat receptors. And I thought it was quite interesting about these parts of our body, which are saying, Hey, there's a threat, whether it's, you could burn your arm on a hot stove or you could bang your hand on a solid wall or something like that. But when we think of pain, if it's a signal, It's a sign. Signal and sign are the same thing. So what is the sign telling us? And that's what I'm hearing you're, you're, you're helping people figure out. So what is that sign? And it's interesting because we often have a reaction to pain, which is quite... well, it's neurological, right? You know, if you, if you, the classic in your kid, you burn your hand on the stove, you pull your hand away. It happens before thinking. I think it happens in the 20th, 20th of a second. It's a really quick time, but it's before the thinking brain comes online and says, that's, that's not good for us. So I do question and I wonder if our response to, say, emotional pain, say, a difficult conversation with partner or someone at work, if we're having the same, almost like the amygdala part of the brain, the old brain saying, like, alert, stay away, we need to get the front part, the, the present part online to say, what's the signal? What is that? Rather than just let's move away from it. Because if we keep moving away from pain, we're being hunted, we're being chased by the pain. And I think that's a really interesting point that I'd love your thoughts on.

Yeah, it's, I really like what you just said. And for me, what I'm noticing, let's take fire. You know, if I put my hand into a fire, I immediately go away because it's, it hurts physically. But we also have the understanding that fire is great for us, and we use it for many, many different ways. So there is the differentiation there between, okay, it can cause pain. But there are more benefits for some reason, and especially with men, because of stigma, because of society, because of social norms, because whatever it is, because of, again, not so great role models, male role models, when it comes to emotional pain, because it's also a little bit less tangible, you don't really see it, we don't see it, when we get the burn, we run away and we don't go back anymore, because we're not really given the tools to deal with emotional pain, especially as men, you know, the, the usual, cliches of, you know, don't be a pussy, man up, all these kinds of things. And I always say that because it is important also, we are being taught in school, you know, what happened in 1827, how to calculate angles of triangle, never use this kind of stuff in life, you know, it would be more useful if they teach us how to put a shelf straight on the wall, how to create saving accounts and how to be more emotionally capable to handle the challenges in life, because in the end of the day, this is what we are all craving. We are craving to love and be loved, yet wherever I look around me, most people are guided by fear, not by love. And for me, this is another great question that I ask myself on a regular basis. Am I acting from fear or am I acting from love? And when it comes to pain, I can choose. Am I acting from fear or am I acting from love? The choice is extremely obvious for me. Yet. The choice that the majority of us take is, is acting from fear, which caused more fear, which is called more pain, which is caused more fear, which is caused. It's a chain. So, yeah.

For those who follow my podcast and like my little snippets of neurosciences, there's a... There's three levels to the brain, not literally, but this is an old piece of idea called the triune brain. There's the very old part, which is, they call it the lizard brain. So it's the bit that runs a heart rate, blood pressure, lungs, breathing, responses. Then the mammal brain, which is the emotional center of the limbic brain, and then the neocortex. I'm just going very quickly because we can get caught up in neuroscience. But what we forget as human systems with our iPhones and our businesses and our cultures is that we're still animals at heart. We're still, we've got all those primary systems and the primary systems are called primary for a reason. Not only were they first, they act first. And I think it takes some from really self aware as you said about being spiritual, being really questioning about how am I reacting? Who is reacting here as well, is another question I ask. Is it me? Is it my dad? Is it an idea of a bloke that I think I should be? If we don't stop and question, we are in a state of reaction. If we do stop and question, and of course use our breath, and like, literally breathe for a little bit, like, let's get part of that mind or brain online to say, Where am I coming from? Love, fear, who's responding now, then we don't get out of that cycle of pain. Do you know another thing that strikes me, Yaron, is that I remember when I was a kid, I was, I've always been highly sensitive. Now that used to be it, ribs, like sensitive. Now I realize it's a skill set. It's like having 4D technology. I'm aware of everything, but it can be overwhelming sometimes. But when you're super sensitive, like you feel a lot, like literally, I mean, I feel a lot physically and mentally, emotionally. It's can be overwhelming, but it can also be revealing. And if you show, and my experience of being a boy when I grew up in the seventies of showing, if you showed stuff, which was anything other than what the social construct was, rather than be tough, and it wasn't tough, there is this. I know I got laughed at. I can remember peers being laughed at for stuff. And there's that quality of shaming that can go on. Whether kids know this or whether people know this, there's something wrong with you because you've expressed an emotion, a feeling. And shame's something I've had to do loads of work on myself. I continue to do work on it. I talk about it a lot with people, certainly the men I work with. I'd like to get your insights on shame because it's this... Sneaky, powerful, kind of damaging energy or emotion, whatever we want to call it. And it really, for me, has stopped me so many times in my life until I faced it. Like you were saying, face your pain. What would you, perhaps you could share more on your thoughts about shame and how that works with something with men and moving from pain.

It's really interesting that you're asking that because we literally just this on Tuesday we did a session with one of the groups around shame, and it's a very challenging session, but beautiful because again, it's leaning in and on the other side, guys suddenly feel like, ah, I'm free from this thing that I've been holding with me inside me that nobody knew for 20 years, suddenly like it. doesn't matter anymore. And it's, and there are two things I would like to mention. first of all, it's important to differentiate between shame and guilt. because they're, they're similar. And I think a lot of times we mix them. Shame is more connected to kind of an understanding, feeling that something is wrong with me as a being, you know, something was the way I was built is wrong, it's kind of very, very, ingrained in the sense of beings. I am, something isn't right about me. Guilt is very similar, but it's more about an act, some action that I. did. So with guilt, it's easier to, there is someone that you can, again, lean in and have a conversation, apologize, clean the thing. With shame, it's more about your relationship with yourself. And then you probably know Brene Brown. She has a sentence, which I think is just bang on. And it says, shame cannot survive being spoken. I have seen this so many times that when we allow ourselves to speak our shame in a safe space where we can just share this thing, and it's amazing with the groups of men because a lot of times I see men that literally held this really dark, horrible, painful, suffer causing thing in their being for literally 5, 10, 20 more years, speak it out, And And the funny thing that happens, first of all, feel free. There is a little bit of like, oh, shit, this is like, a bit scary. But, but then once it's done, they feel free, but also this, this realization that they suddenly see, they will see in the, in the space, three, four, five other men saying me too, and then you understand that this dark thought that you had about yourself, that you are ugly, that you're stupid, that you're not good enough, that you're whatever it is that the is, it's like, oh, shit, I'm not alone. And it's actually just common. And so on. And I think it's really important because so many of us, and I used to be there, I'm no longer in that space because I've done a lot of work on myself, but if you are someone listening to this and you judge your, the way you think, the way you feel as something is wrong with you, trust me, if somebody would put a mic on anybody's thoughts, we would all be either in prison or in a mental asylum, all of us. So everything is okay. and again, take this. Shame cannot survive being spoken. That's a great tool that I believe

absolutely Beautiful, Yes. I know Brennan Brown's work. I've used it. I've cited it. And it's, it's powerful for, we'll, we'll put a link in the show notes for, for listeners. if you don't already know Brenny Brown and it's so powerful, what you said there, and it's something I've experienced and clearly you're, you're working with him naming it saying, Hey, I feel like this, I feel whatever that is, it releases the power. It's, it's like, it dispels its, magic charge, doesn't it? For me, it's like, once you've spoken it, particularly if you've been witnessed. And someone who's just like, yeah, okay. Yeah, me too. And that's, oh, that's okay. And the witnessing and the speaking is a really powerful thing. Is that something you've experienced?

No, but I just had like a really interesting, you know, it's the thing about like a water that is getting stuck and you have the hole there and you see that something is stuck and it's like, I don't want to touch it. I don't want to touch it. I don't want, but if you just go and touch it and you move it, the water starts to flow. It's, and I love what you said because the image came very strong for me that it's just that we need to, again, it's about leaning.

me, there's something, and I want to speak around the body of this and embodiment. So I, I do a lot of my regular, as you'll know, for new people. so I work with the mind, I work with emotions and I work with the body. I'm so interested in how we use physical movement. in an intelligent way. And I don't just mean to grow big muscles and be cardiovascularly efficient, even though that's really good. If our body is functioning and moving well, it's a processing system. It processes trauma. It creates all sorts of things that work our brain, and hence our mind is in a different state. And all experiences embodied to some degree. I had a, share something personal. I had a treatment done recently, a fascia treatment. So those who don't know, if you have a certain deep tissue massage, fascia is the connective tissue. And there's some deep work going in there. And my, my, my guy did a bit of work on an old scar, 30 year old scar in the body. I thought it was fine, you know, I've been, I've had a lot of work done and he did some work on it and the next, through the night and the next day, oh, the anger and the fury and then the fear, literally, I was as if I was drunk and I hadn't drunk any alcohol, it was as if I was drunk and I said to my partner, like, you know, just give me space, I need space, it's something that's got triggered and released, it's coming up and it went, literally, it was 24 hours and it just sort of faded away. So there's so much in our body and we want to get closer to our body as well. The embodiment, the physicality. What are you doing, Yaron, that brings men into their bodies and, and does any form of bodywork? I'm curious to what you might use in your practice.

Oh, there's a lot. As you know, I'm sure that you have many, many practices. I think. You know, I won't go into all of it because it's, it's useless, but I think as a first step is, it's just to, it comes back to what we spoke about before. It's to build awareness. So again, just as a simple form, we are so busy as man, especially in our, we are in our heads thinking constantly. And it's about allowing myself to, okay, there is thinking, but what is going on with my body? And really to start developing the awareness of sensations in the body that we don't even notice. So something that I really like to do, and I do it very often, is kind of a body scan. It's a form of simple meditation. You draw people into breathing a little bit, and then I tell them like, Notice where you carry tension in your body right now. And for example, I am now, as I speak to you, I'm noticing that I have Some tension in my throat, which is a common place for me. It's a chakra that I haven't yet released and still work in progress. But by noticing it, then I can start to change my breath or to change my posture a little bit or not. Just acknowledge, Oh, here's a teacher. There's a teacher here that told me that I am holding tension in one part of my body. What does that mean? And then to spend some time with it. And it's, it's to start using the body as a guide that if there is tension, I can slowly release the tension. And if I start to release the tension in my body, I will release more potential for thinking, for relaxing, and so on. A lot of people don't notice that they have headaches. All the time, that they have pain in the neck all the time. And, and then we're surprised that we are constantly angry, frustrated, ta, ta, ta. And that's the thing. Okay. So pay attention to the body and start releasing that. And you'll see that again, the impact will be on all the other ingredients that you're more interested in your level of clarity, confidence, and so on.

Yeah, it did. Um, I've done body scans and if you, if, if, if our listeners haven't done it, it's really a case of going to any part of the body. A lot of us start from the feet up and you spend time noticing. Now I'm fascinated. I have a lot of kinesthetic awareness. It's perhaps a natural intelligence I was given and I've done huge amounts of physical training and I'm very connected to my body. I've worked with people who've been traumatized for different reasons, different, situations, and they've had a really difficult time connecting with their body. So for some of us connecting with our body is difficult. So I would say wherever we are at, start with the most obvious, and I almost guarantee you can connect with your fingertips. So here you need to be touching your fingertips. There's reasons for this. There's more neurons in your nerve cells, in your fingertips, your lips and your tongue than anywhere else in your body. So if, if that's the least you do, rubbing your fingertips will give you a feel of what's going on just physically. And it starts at the subtle. And some of the guys I've worked with, we go gross, like the big stuff. So if you carry a heavy weight or let's say do a heavy deadlift, you really have to pay attention to your body to do the exercise because it's so overt and demanding. And it can start there. It can start there for guys. I found that's a really powerful way. Go heavy, go intense and go there. And then if you're luckier, you might be able to go towards the yoga practice where you spend time and it's really, really subtle. But it's start where you have some connection will be my, my, my work on that. I will start with where we can find connection and then we expand from there. What, what, what's your thoughts on that?

I think the gym example is great. And that's a great space for men, actually, to start building that awareness and to literally work on it in a way that they can notice. So I have seen so many times in gyms, trying to lift a weight, we are closing, squeezing, and that's the complete opposite of what we should do. So the invitation for men, if you are someone who goes and does weight. Next time you lift, instead of tensioning and tensing everything, try to release and to take a deep breath in and as you exhale and you lift the weight, relax your body instead of creating tension, it's contradictive, but doing the gym actually is a perfect exercise. Thank you. Place. You know, I'm still waiting for the gym that instead of putting also this kind of music that takes you all kind of out of yourself. What if we do gyms that have more relaxed music that invite you to slow things down and to lift those weight from a place of relaxation instead of place of forcing. We are forcing too much in our lives instead of creating from just a more relaxed and free

Forgive me, I'm chuckling in the background as you're on speaker. I go to a popular gym, it's a really great gym, I won't name it but... Sometimes I see some guys there doing the face and the face is squeezed, the eyes, the jaws, like crazy. And I could almost guarantee they need to go triple on that weight. Because I've been made to do it by some of my trainers. They'll just go, no go double. You're like, What?! That's when you really would pull that face because it is beyond almost the edge of possibility. What is interesting about your thing, and it's both funny and also concerning, is we need to help, I think when we're moving, whether it's weight, whether it's yoga, or whether it's walking down the road, we have tension and we can be tense. And they are very different phenomena, so physically and emotionally. You can be tense, which is tight, which is resistant, which is a freeze state, which is... It's kind of tantamount to moving towards a trauma type, experience. It's also perhaps a depressed state, it's lockdown. Whereas tension is the right amount of force that your body might need to walk, or to lift, or to carry. If we misunderstand the two and get binary, we go, we're tense or we're soggy. We're in problems. So the right amount of tension, and I had very fortunate experience in yoga. I did a lot of yoga for years, became a yoga teacher and learned about tensional forces and, biotensegrity is one of the terms of the, the tensional integrity of the body. The same I see with the mind you're on. This is such an interesting thing that people have tension in the mind. It's like, okay, I need to focus on something or they're tense. Like, Oh my God, I've got to do this. And I think if we are softer, more with the feeling, and this is everything you're saying, and I love it. We're with that feeling, whether it's a heavy weight or whether it's a challenge at work. A difficult conversation. The right tension, but not tense is possibly how we're going to navigate that. That challenge isn't in front of us.

And just to build on that, a great, just to connect things with what we said before, it's to observe where you're coming from. Are you coming from love or are you coming from fear? What I mean by that is those guys that you say that are like, Oh, like this, what actually guides them to lift such a big weight? It's if we take it down and we drill down, it is fear. I'm not good enough. I need to look strong. I need to, it's, it's, it's, it's, and if someone goes to the gym for a place, I'm going to take care of my body. I'm going to take care of myself. I don't care what people think about me. I'm going to take this weight, take a deep breath and lift it because I do it for myself. That's coming from, from love. So all these things, It's, yeah, the tense and the tension, it's to, again, analyze for yourself, where am I coming from? And that will help you to guide yourself to what you said, to the, to the positive path

yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's so interesting. I've been there, I've done it where I've shown up at a gym or training session where I've I've tried to prove. because my own insecurities, my own shame has been sneaking up in my mind. And I'm like, yeah, I'm going to, I did. I'll catch it. I'm like, dude, what are you doing? No one gives a damn anyway. And I moved because of all of the health markers for health, for mental, physical, emotional. And I say this to everyone I work with. Exercise has got the wrong concept in our culture. Exercise is freedom. Exercise should be joy. It's vitality. Who doesn't want more of that? And there are ways to do it. But if you come at the gym or whatever training you're doing, and you're trying to prove something, you're trying to fill a hole of insecurity, the weight will never be heavy enough. It just won't.

I love that. I love that. And again, I totally relate to that. And I still catch myself. It's again, it's a work in progress forever. It's not like I'm, you know, but it's good to catch ourselves and clean and clear because then again, we have more power. We have more freedom.

let's bring our, this kind of bring our trajectory. So we're, we're really speaking like, okay, how can we move from pain to power? And it feels like we're really naming the key components about seeing it, being with it, and some of the, the, the ways to start understanding where are you coming from? So if we move our attention more towards how do we, we're going closer towards power now in. in this space. We, you defined power earlier and I'm wondering about power. I'm wondering about, I'm trying to embody this myself, the pain I've been through and as place of power, how can we get more power? So perhaps, what are we aiming for? What is it? You describe freedom. I describe movement autonomy, but what's, what are some of the strategies you've been deploying both for your own experience and the men you're working with to start tuning into what is power? How do we go towards them?

So for me, as I said, power for me is freedom. And when I say freedom, it's the freedom from the identity that I'm supposed to be something or someone. Once I remove that pressure and understand that I no longer need to live by what my parents are expecting from me, what society expects me, what I should be doing, but I'm, I'm investigating more. What is it that is driving me? Not even what it is that I want, because that's another, what is it drives me? and we can connect this to the word purpose, which is a big word, you know, but I, I do believe that, spending time to, Let some kind of thing that is a drive a why whatever the language again language is a funny thing But we all know that there are things that pull us that we will do anyway That it's and a lot of us because we spend a lot of time in our head We we forget about this and we start to kind of go follow the written rules and some written rules and and and it's miserable so by Disconnecting from that identity and that need to do something because I'm supposed to, and spending time in really defining who am I and what do I want to create, and then I can create freedom, and then I can, through that freedom, I, again, power is a funny word, as you said, because when I think about power, it's like, all this macho and if people are still chasing that, I find it funny, to be honest, and, so it's not really what I'm talking about, because for me, power is presence, is freedom, um, so again, I think the lack of identity, the relaxation into what is instead of what's supposed to be, and yes, and spending some time in, in feeling into what is my purpose, what is it that I'm meant to be here? Thank you.

Power is presence. Wow. That is a line. I'm all about presence because if you're not, if you don't exude presence in life, where are you? You're somewhere in the past. You're somewhere in the future. They're both abstractions in reality. If you're not really with what you're doing, then you don't have presence. And power. You know, if we think for a second, What do I want? What do I want for life? And I don't know many people that different. I don't know, yeah, you might want this car or that house or this job. They're kind of the expressions, but what do we want? We want to feel good. We want to feel loved. We want to feel safe. Whatever those feelings are, they're all generally positive feeling. Most people want the positive stuff. And freedom, presence. Those are wonderful ways to express yourself into being. And of course, when we think about freedom or the opposite, being trapped or shut down, if you're driven by an idea or the past or a construct of what a man should be, what you should be, You need to get free of that because otherwise it's, it's, it's, it's a box and I'm really fascinated to, to sort of talk a bit more about freedom. It's a value that I hold dear. Freedom is something which, for me, I'm just going to caveat this. It's not about sitting on the sofa doing nothing. It's, it's free to choose, free to be present, free to learn. So it's quite a dynamic thing that connects to things as opposed to, I don't have to go to work today. That's just not doing anything. So my term of freedom is, is having volition and energy to go towards and learn. How Are you helping people uncouple that old narrative and connect with freedom? Do you actually, do you help people say like, this is your freedom? How are you working with some of the guys you're working with who might have strong connections to the past identity and yet want to move towards power? What's some strategies you're, you're using?

there are many ways that I can work, with men. And I think probably the best way to describe it is I created a very simple framework that really helps men understand where we are playing. So we are using a lot of tools, but it will all fall into that crop framework and crop. First of all, we like to talk about meanings of words here. So the meaning of crop, there are two meanings. One is something that we're planting. in the ground in order to nourish ourselves later on, that it will come as a crop, which is something that I feel is a good strategy for life. And to be very careful with what we're planting, of course. And the other meaning is, you know, like in Photoshop, we have a lot of a picture. And there's a lot of stuff and we like to crop the thing that really matters to us. The same thing with life. You know, we have the mortgage, the kids, the thing, the work, the whatever, the going to the gym. There's a lot of noise. How can we let go of everything, all the noise and keep what we, what truly, truly matters to us. And crop comes from the C R O P and I'll start from the end. What we want in that sense of freedom that we're talking about is, is peace, play and potential. We want to play life with our potential and to really enjoy a free life, fun of, where we connect with people, where we have fun. In order to be in that peace space, we need to move to the O. And the O is what we have been talking about. It's to have a much deeper observation of what's going on. How am I acting? Why am I thinking like this? Why am I speaking like this? What is actually going on here? And the more self aware I become to what's going on, the more I can then act in life. In order to do that self, that observation, I need to know who I am. And that takes me to the R. The R is reconnecting, reconnecting with who you truly are, not what you've been told, not all the stories, all the masks that we put, but really reconnecting with something really, really. Deep, that is you. And in order to do that comes the C, which is where the heavy lifting of the work is happening. That's the cleansing and clearing. And that's a lot of unlearning. You know, we live in a world where we constantly need to learn more things, and we get more and more information. I go in the other way. I'm telling you we're going to cleanse and clear a lot of shit that you've accumulated, that it makes you feel that you're something or someone, but it's actually killing you because it's not. And so we do a lot of practices around the clean. We spoke about shame. We clear the shame. We spoke about, we talk about habits around the information that we consume and the food that we consume and a lot of things. And we start to let go naturally. Once we start to let go, it's like a hard disk. You know, you take a hard disk that is full. The computer says I'm full. No more space. You take the hard disk out. You start to cleanse a lot of files and then by doing that you can plug the hard disk and suddenly there is space for new programs, new apps that are more relevant for you. So coming back, we do the cleansing and clearing of... A lot, which naturally, this reconnection with who you truly are just bubbles up naturally, and that can be scary for a lot of men, because what comes up as truth can contradict the way you lived your life for 10, 20, 30 years, and that can be scary, and this is where a space like the men's group is really good, because you will be encouraged to go there, lean in, lean in, lean in, lean in. compared to your habitual environment where people tell you, what are you doing? What's wrong with you? And a lot of judgment. So you do the cleansing and clearing, you reconnect with who you are. You start to observe yourself and life in a very different way. And then you start to play to potential. And actually I can add another P, the power. I didn't think about it before, man. It's something that comes out of this

Beautiful. Yeah. Crop P. I love it. Thank you. it's really, it's a really elegant model. It's clear, it's simple, and it has a, a, a beautiful, life cycle to it. And it's, it's really powerful. you're, you made a point there, which I'm really struck by. I want to kind of, I want to speak to it, which is, When you change, other people may not be ready for that. So I've had it with my coaching clients where they've done deep existential work and they're like, I'm going to change. I'm done with being the person I am. I'm going to change. And I work with them in my own unique way, but not too dissimilar from you. But to caveat that, if you're in a place of change, people may not be on board with you changing. People may really struggle with that, because as humans, we like homeostasis. We like what we know. It's status quo biases, a thinking bias. Anytime we change, or if our partner changes, that can be challenging for the other. So if you're embarking on change work... I would definitely say, let your close people know and say, tell them what's likely to happen. You want them on board, right? You want them on board if they're doing this kind of process, as opposed to surprising the life out of them and like, Oh, suddenly you're different. What are you up to? And then creating more disruption. So it's, it's definitely, if you're going through an evolution point in your identity as a person, particularly as a man. I would say, bring the other in. It also demonstrates vulnerability and it also means when you speak of it, we are still distinguishing any bits of shame because we've spoken about it. That's, that's my experience of, of when someone really changes. Have you seen that Yoram?

Yes, but I would like to add another piece to that. I think it's a, it's a good take to, to tell the people around you, but I want to be very honest as well. When you really go there and you start to change, there is a price sometimes. And it could very much be that people that are very close to you as if, because they're not really if you look at it, but people that are, you consider to be very close, but you feel that there is a disconnect, you would naturally start to feel that there is more and more disconnect. Now again, that sounds scary and this is why we avoid this. But, and this is where the value of leaning in, imagine if you start, you know, you clear again, the hard disk from, from people that might pull you back or hold you back or judge you. What if you understand that by doing that, you clear the space and you will be with people who understand you better, who can really acknowledge what you do and appreciate this, who can really inspire you and make you think and feel things that you want, but you don't have access now because you're a little bit limited. So there are two things. there is the preparation of people around you and, and naturally you will see that some people join into the journey. but some people will drop on the way and it's okay because you'll find others. So yeah, it's an important point. And another thing I just want to mention about before you, you mentioned crop as a, as a kind of a complete life cycle or something like this that you mentioned. I want to be very, very clear. As you and I said before, what I said about crop, it's not that we graduate from cleansing and clearing, we then reconnect and then we observe life and then everything is great and potential. No, it's a continuous cycle. And every time we go deeper and deeper and deeper, as you said, you catch yourself still, I catch myself still. And this is another, concept that I think is important to break. Which is, as men, we are looking for solutions and we want to solve things and get to it. You will never get to it. as you already know, whatever was your biggest achievement in life, Really, like the biggest, biggest, How long did you celebrate for? Two hours? A day? Maybe you went crazy for a week? And then, life comes back in a cycle. So, let's stop kind of attaching to the results. Go there and have them because they're nice postcodes to aim for. But really, be present, enjoy what you're doing on the path. Because, I like to say this, we can either think about life, or we can live it.

Beautiful, absolutely beautiful. I think it is, I think it's an important point to bring ourselves gently to a close. Are you thinking about your life or are you going to live it? Thinking is safe. Because it's in your own head, it's an abstract, it's fantasy, a lot of the time, living it is real, smelly, tough, beautiful, elegant, all of the above. So you can either live an idea of life or you can live the real life. I guess we get to choose, right? So, you're on, we can speak for hours. It's such a delight to have you on. I know you do amazing work with men. We shall leave your details in the show notes for guys who want to learn more about your ROM. you can reach out through the contacts in the show notes. Amazing. Thank you. I hope, dear listener, that some of these points have triggered you, got you thinking. If you're feeling a bit scared, that's not a bad thing. As Yaron has already said, lean into it. But of course, if you feel like you need support, go find the right people. There's plenty of us out here. Change is possible. Till the next time, dear listener, take care.

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe and if a friend would benefit from hearing this, do send it on to them as well. If you would like to get in touch yourself, then you can go to my website, which is sal jeffries.com, spelled S A L J E F E R I E s sal jeffries.com. Hit the get in touch link and there you can send me a direct message. If you'd like to go one step further and learn whether coaching could help you overcome a challenge or a block in your life, then do reach out and I offer a call where we can discuss how this may be able to help you. Until the next time, take care.