Masculinity doesn’t need to be detoxxed, it needs to be healed.

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Masculinity doesn’t need to be detoxxed, it needs to be healed.

What does healing mean?

Heading back to wholeness.

Our current cultural norm for masculinity is utterly fragmented—it requires a vivisection of self that is not just unhealthy, but dangerous for everyone.

Men are conditioned to suppress emotions, not show vulnerability, not share their joy and their authenticity, not express themselves in the full spectrum of possibilities. Seeking care or comfort is “for sissies.” They don’t even have the same variety of clothes options women have—simply wearing pink is considered edgy (how in the world did that brainwashery happen?!? So fucking arbitrary.) When they do show any of this, they’re denigrated—for being too feminine.

All of the epithets thrown at men are about the valuelessness of the feminine:

“Don’t be a pussy.” “You cry like a girl.”

What utter bullshit. Completely arbitrary, made-up bullshit. If it were just arbitrary, okay. But the problem is, this does real damage on a huge scale—and not just to women and girls.

The problem is, these parts of ourselves are not just feminine traits of the female gender, they are human needs.

The dominant mainstream indoctrination of masculinity requires men to separate from their humanity. Let this sink in.

This disconnection from self makes men susceptible to being manipulated, and the rage, isolation, and shame they feel are harnessed—because anger is profitable. Because sexism is profitable. Because racism is profitable. Because homophobia is profitable Because shame is profitable. Because divide and conquer is profitable, and it is the oldest trick in the book—because it works.

As bell hooks wrote in her landmark book The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love, “The first job of patriarchy is to disconnect men from themselves.”

The horror of it all is that shame, isolation, and disconnection breed violence, oppression, and rage.

Sometimes that violence is turned outward and expressed as racism, sexism, homo- and transphobia, degradation of the planet and its creatures, slash-and-burn development, domination, exploitation, hoarding, plain old assholery.

Sometimes, that violence is turned inward and expressed as depression, mental illness, self-harm, or suicide.

Everything we see happening in the world today is utterly predictable.

Disconnecting anyone from themselves results in violence—the only variable is how it manifests.

I consider this a crime against humanity.

The antidote, then? Give men (and everyone) the opportunity to reconnect with themselves. To heal. To love. To love themselves, so they can love others.

What would healing masculinity look like?

• Embracing the full, healthy range of expression + emotion.

• Learning how to express anger in healthy ways—not lash out in violence, rage, oppression—so that it can then be transmuted into generative activism.

• Learning how to regulate the nervous system, especially when it’s stuck in a protracted state of fight, which manifests as dominance, violence, exploitation, overpowering, general assholery.

• Learning the skills to connect intimately and vibrantly with all of life, not remain detached, apathetic, or scornful of connection.

• Learning how to discern what one’s needs and desires are, how to communicate them in a healthy way, and how to get them met in a healthy way—so we don’t resort to manipulation, control, or domination to get them met.

• Discovering what nourishing, regenerative relationships look like—with the earth, our loved ones, communities, and self.

• Dismantling the idea that growth = accumulation. Accumulation is just more stuff. Sometimes, that’s dead weight, imbalance, or false growth, or growth according to someone else’s beliefs. True growth includes letting go of certain things, as well as expanding in the direction of what we truly love—not what others tell us we should love.

• Shedding the myth that dominance = power. Dominance is actually a coping mechanism for NOT feeling one’s power. (What a paradigm-shift—the news isn’t that women feel powerful, it’s that MEN DON’T.)

• Understanding that true power comes from within—that love of self is key to our own power. This may well come with learning how to atone, make amends, forgive, grieve, learn new skills, unearth deep soul desires, share gifts, create joy, create health and a healthy environment.

• Learning that healthy, aligned masculinity is the perfect complement to healthy, aligned femininity—not its foe, controller, or oppressor, but its potentiator and balancer.

• Learning that healthy, aligned femininity potentiates and balances the masculine, as well.

• Knowing that this is a healing path for ALL humans, regardless of gender. That we are all flowing with the energies of masculinity, femininity, androgyny, non-binary, and countless other currents that we can heal and express in healthy ways.

• That the more we consciously understand and balance these energies, the more personal power we have to navigate and respond to life in healthy, happy ways.

• Reclaiming joy. Joy is your birthright. Turn it back on, and turn it all the way up. Then share it.

When we can learn new awareness and skills, and cultivate the courage to act on them, life itself becomes our sacred intimate, our partner in potentiation and joy.

That is true power, not toxic power—the kind that heals the self AND the collective in symbiosis. Healing is a collective act.

To heal masculinity, reconnect it.

~

If you haven’t already, I highly encourage you to read The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks. I wish it were required reading for every human.

Why feedback feels risky and what to do about it

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To the ego, feedback is a threat. In a growth system, feedback is a necessity.

Offering feedback can feel risky, whether it’s at work or to someone we have a close relationship with. Receiving feedback can feel awful.

But why?

Because we have egos.

The ego feels threatened by feedback when its identity is wrapped up in ideas of perfection, authority, goodness, worthiness, value, or rank.

“Perfection” doesn’t need feedback, it’s already perfect—so feedback threatens its perfection. However, there’s no such thing as perfection, so what that’s all about is actually needing to be perceived as excellent. It’s about identity—and comparison.

“Authority” is in charge, so feedback threatens its in-chargeness—its power over others, its higher rank (which keeps the ego feeling worthy). This is also about identity and comparison.

The ego HATES its identity being questioned.

This is why, in an organization, it can feel risky to offer feedback up—if the hierarchy is rigid and identities are very invested in their rank within it, then the person receiving the feedback can feel like their authority is being questioned.

The person offering the feedback feels vulnerable, because the person they’re giving the feedback to is often the one who evaluates them—and thus can determine their livelihood.

This is one of the perils of hierarchy—and a great loss.

In our personal relationships, the stakes are also high: we risk the possibility of rupture if we lack the skills to navigate the dynamic of giving and receiving feedback graciously. No wonder we don’t like to deal with this.

This is source of tension that’s rarely talked about, but very real and pretty common.

Instead of tiptoeing around our egos and pretending this dynamic isn’t happening, why not just admit to the fact that our feathers get ruffled—but that’s okay, we can learn the skills to get on with things anyway?

Any organization, system, or relationship that plans to grow needs feedback. Without it, it’s flying blind and stunting its own growth.

Like failure, feedback is just data.

When we remove judgment from it, it’s neutral—not an attack on someone’s skill, worth, or authority.

It IS an admission that things are not perfect—which is REAL. Reality is something we can work with.

And so are egos: we can learn to witness our egos, but not let them derail the feedback loop.

We can build feedback-sharing practices into businesses and relationships so it’s expected and welcomed—like vacuuming under the rug when we’ve swept stuff under it. It’s just good hygiene.

We can de-personalize the feedback, so it doesn’t feel so vulnerable: it’s just what happened, not the sum total of who you/we are.

Again, we get tangled in the identity piece.

The more feedback we give and receive, the more our egos can relax into and trust the new pattern.

We’re all still responsible for our actions, but the more we give and get feedback about how we’re impacted by events and our part in them, the more levers we have to find healthier ways of doing things.

Without feedback, we’re stuck repeating the same unhealthy habits.

We can learn that our egos can survive feedback, and even better—thrive beyond it.

Then, we can grow—together.

Failure is just feedback. How to use it well.

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Recognize that failure is just feedback.

What is failure, anyway? Just something that didn’t work. 

So why are we so ridiculously uncomfortable with it?

Not because it didn’t work—all sorts of things don’t work—but because of the judgment we place on the fact that it didn’t work. And the scrutiny that subjects us to—from ourselves, and others.

Why do we need to judge and scrutinize?

We don’t need to, really—we’re just used to it. Why? Because humans love control almost as much as we love rank + authority to define ourselves. We pretend they’re not the arbitrary illusions that they are in order to feel some sense of agency in our lives.

But control and rank are not actually agency, they’re coping mechanisms for NOT feeling our agency.

For trying to force outcomes, instead of allowing them to unfold. For allowing the trial, but not the error. For judging others—or ourselves—in order to rank our identities as “better than” or “not enough.”

But true agency is actually NAVIGATION of what arises, not control over it.

What’s the best way to navigate something?

Get curious, not judgmental.

To the ego, feedback feels like a threat. To a system seeking healthy balance, feedback is a necessity.

When we remove judgment from a situation, “failure” becomes incredibly useful data for how to move forward—and how not to.

Then, when we move forward, integrate feedback, and iterate, the “failure” becomes just one more step in the process.

This isn’t to say we need to aim for failure, just that when it happens, to not act as if we’re shocked by the treachery.

Failure. Is just. A thing. That. Didn’t. Work.

That’s it.

Why did it fail? Why did that person do this thing? Why didn’t I?

Those are the more interesting questions—open-ended portals to solutions, rather than judgments people can’t wait to squirm away from.

When curiosity comes in, there’s POSSIBILITY. And whenever there’s possibility, there’s POWER—power to iterate, tweak, putter, collaborate, practice, try, try again.

That’s where true power lies: building agency and identity through navigating ALL of life, not just the successful parts—together.

Create what you desire, don't just push against what you don't

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Put your energy into creating what you want to see in the world, not just against what you don’t.

Here’s something interesting:

The root words of “control” are contra and rota, which mean “against the wheel.”

The roots of “influence” are in and fluere, meaning “in the flow.”

Control is against.

Influence is flow.

We are so much more powerful in a flow state, when we are riding with a current we desire—even if we’re trying to redirect it—than we are when we’re pushing against a current, a force, or someone else.

Pushing against something by attempting to control or overpower actually reinforces the polarity and strengthens each opposing force.

If we’re not careful, we become entrenched in the pushing itself and don’t put any energy into where we’re actually trying to go—which deepens that groove of polarity.

“What we resist, persists.” This is why. This is the trap of the binary.

If we ride the current—or create it—we’re accepting what is AND adding our input to help direct it. It gets us out of the polarity of for/against and into some other possibility.

Choosing not to push against doesn’t have to look like surrender: it can look like transformation.

This is one of the reasons I work with my clients to focus on what they are FOR, how they desire to move the needle—and not just on what they are against.

For sure, there is plenty of work to be done in the world for those of us who hold a vision for a more beautiful planet—but true power comes from creating new possibilities.

Power is drained when we focus solely on resisting the old.

The power of creation amplifies itself. The power of control drains itself.

Make sure you are directing as much energy as possible to the NEW possibility, the one you are here to help create.

This is why I often use creativity as a gateway for self-development + systems evolution with my clients—to get us into our own unique flow of authentic power.

It’s our truest power because it’s generative, procreative, and evolutionary—not just a resistant stance to an external force, which creates a closed, binary system.

Doesn’t it feel more fun to be wild, playful, and expansive to create something with that energy than to try to control everything?

Aren’t there more possibilities in creativity and generativity than there are in destruction?

What’s the thing that only you can create? That’s your r/evolution.

Laugh until you snort on a regular basis

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Laugh until you snort on a regular basis.

I think this one’s pretty self-explanatory.

But in case you’re not convinced laughing can actually shift a paradigm, consider this:

• Laughter can actually help the nervous system shift out of a fight or flight response.

• Laughing releases endorphins.

• Laughter enhances social bonds.

If a story elicits a laugh, it’s probably because we’re seeing something from a different perspective, opening up other possibilities.

What do all of these have in common? They help us grow.

So, really, laughter is evolutionary. 

That’s the paradigm shift: we can evolve through laughter, not pain.

Welcome to The Pleasure Paradigm: choosing pleasure IS the paradigm shift.

Go forth and get your laugh on.

Don’t you love it when homework is easy?

What it means to be humanful

Fill yourself up until you are overflowing with your own humanity. Be humanFUL.

When we are satiated by the fullness of our own humanity—when we are “humanful”—we then get the pleasure of pursuing not just what we lack, but what we truly desire.

Can you feel that tipping point where acting to fill a void tips over into sharing excitement and desire from a place of fullness? That’s our sweet spot.

But… how do we fill ourselves up?

By being fully human:

Filling our senses with healthy pleasures.

Spending our energy on what feeds us back: healthy food, water, movement, authentic connection, beauty, awe.

Healing.

Resting.

Playing.

Co-creating.

Fueling our passions, core values, and deep desires.

Fostering healthy relationships, ones in which we all get to be exactly who we are and who we aren’t.

Expanding our definition of “human” to include the environment that supports us, grows us, and nourishes us, to include all the other earthlings, flora and fauna alike, in our interconnected web of life.

Nourishing them back, so they can continue to nourish us.

Wondering.

Sharing.

Giving and receiving. 

To know ourselves and to honor ourselves is to fill ourselves up.

When you are full of yourself in the healthiest way possible, then please—GIVE the gift of yourself.

You—yes, you—are the gift you are meant to give.

Be an earthling. Love earth. Act accordingly.

In a universe where everything is interdependent, we are made human by our connection to all that is.

We’re not human perched on top of all that is. We did not evolve in some hermetically sealed capsule.

We evolved WITH all the other earthlings—saltwater, cicadas, orchids, worms, hawks, gazillions of bugs, maples, giraffes, amethyst, groundhogs, fire, dust, dew, whale sharks, waterfalls.

All of it.

We take in tiny remnants of it all every single time we breathe, eat, see, hear, touch.

The word “human” has its roots in the Latin “humus,” which means earth. We are of the earth.

When the earth changes, we change. When we change, the earth changes. We all have our place, and when one thing changes, all things do.

The only way to truly be happy and healthy is to love and respect ourselves, others, and everything.

If we are made human by all that is, we must love earth and all the other beings who share this planet (and universe, and multiverse, and…) in order to be fully human. Humanful.

I’ve started using the word “humanful,” because to me, it feels like filling ourselves up with our own humanity—in the largest sense of our human earthlingness, connected in a reciprocal relationship to all that is—not the small, arbitrarily separate sense.

When we are full to overflowing with ourselves—not in some unhealthy, ego-based narcissism, but in knowing and feeding our own generative, divine fire because it is also earth’s fire—it’s so much easier to find balance, generativity, and generosity, and spill that over into loving everything else.

It’s so much easier to find our purpose.

I think the purpose of humans is to be fully healthy, happy humans, because I happen to think that that works out well for everything else.

To me, this is how we define our humanity: by remembering and loving our true nature and our place here as earthlings—entangled with everyone and everything else.

Humanful.

The best tool I ever learned

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Replace judgment with curiosity.

This is one of the best tools I ever learned.

Instead of immediately adding my judgment to a situation, if I add curiosity I can expand my understanding—and if I can expand my understanding, I might be able to help transform a problem, instead of just being ticked off about it.

So, instead of:

“What a dumb idea, I can’t believe they did that, what a nincompoop!”

It becomes:

“How interesting that they are a nincompoop. I wonder why?”

(This also applies to my own nincompoopery. And to yours.)

This helps me to see the factors at play that produced said nincompoopery: the conditions, desires, and needs that led someone to believe nincompoopery was their best option.

And when I can understand that the behavior was a result of a variety of factors—and have compassion for it—I can start to imagine how to shift some of the factors that perpetuate nincompoopery, and OFFER OTHER POSSIBILITIES.

(To be clear: This does not mean we excuse or tolerate bad behavior. I’ve said this before, and I’ll continue to say it: just because we can become aware of the conditions that led someone to choose bad behavior—or worse, violence, abuse, destruction, neglect—does not mean anyone is absolved of their actions. We are all accountable for our actions. And, the only way to change behavior is to offer other options—when we can practice curiosity, we can better fathom off-ramps from destructive behavior and provide alternatives.)

Curiosity is generative. Judgment is not.

There’s a time and place for judgment—but there are so many things that need the fuel of curiosity to help drive actual transformation.

More often than not, judgment is stagnant; it stops the exploration, and the evolution. Judgment is seductive—it feels good to judge someone for bad behavior, like we’re aligning with the high ground. The problem is, it rarely spurs change. And if you truly want real change, then judgment just isn’t the right tool.

Next time you find yourself judging—someone, something, or yourself—see if you can add curiosity to see what conditions produced the thing you’re judging.

This is where the wiggle room is. And wiggle room provides the off-ramp from nincompoopery.

This is how we act in partnership with what life is actually presenting, rather than what we think it SHOULD be presenting and judging it for not doing that. And acting in partnership with reality is the only way to shift it.

What if choosing pleasure IS the paradigm shift?

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What if choosing pleasure… IS the paradigm shift?

Our senses are starving and overwhelmed at the same time.

We’re inundated with noise, traffic, screens, pop-ups, feeds, inboxes, polyester, 7,000 varieties of everything. These choices may be convenient, but they’re not truly pleasurable.

At the same time, so many of us are starved for fresh air, feeling moss beneath our feet, the smell of earth after rain, the taste of foraged greens, simple human touch. Things that seem so simple, but which bring us satiating pleasure.

All of the simple ways to feed our senses have health benefits—being outside, eating fresh, touch—which makes me wonder…

What if pleasure is actually homeostasis?

Here’s my POV:

-Systems seek balance through action, feedback, integration, and iteration.

-Humans are systems: our bodies, relationships, communities.

-Human feedback includes pleasure, pain, sensation, emotions, intuition, and instinct.

-We’ve created A LOT of narratives that glorify pain (No pain no gain! For your own good! What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger! Pay your dues! Do the math!)

-We’ve created narratives that denigrate pleasure (Laziness! Overindulgence! Hedonism! No napping!)

-These stories trained our nervous systems to believe pain = good, pleasure = bad.

WTF. 

Let’s flip the script.

What if healthy pleasure is a virtuous path?

What if pleasure is homeostasis?

Not addiction, overindulgence, nonconsensual, imbalanced, unhealthy pleasure. Definitely not nincompoopery.

(BTW, these aren’t actually pleasure, they’re numbing mechanisms for pain—which is not the same thing. True pleasure satiates us. False pleasure feeds us the promise of satiation as a way to dull the pain, but we never actually get full—because it’s a numbing mechanism, not a nourishing one—which is why we overindulge, form addiction, etc.)

Healthy pleasure honors our individual and communal feedback systems and their need for balance, healthy, connected growth:

~  Sensory, sensual experiences

~  Authentic connection with ourselves, with others, with nature

~  Vibrant health in body, mind, and heart

~  Nurturing

~ Generosity

~ Creativity

~ Generativity

~ Kindness

~ Peace

~Feeling our own healthy power and life force

~ Joy

I believe healthy, well-balanced humans don’t spend much time oppressing, warring, and hoarding because they know they could be having ecstatic sex, dancing, cultivating a beautiful garden, snorkeling with amazing marine life, making art, baking tart cherry pies, having coffee with friends, playing with their dogs/kids/lovers/whoever.

When we allow ourselves healthy pleasure, we don’t really have time for nincompoopery.

AND THAT IS BY DESIGN.

The brilliant human design that comes packaged with pleasure receptors—even the nincompoop base model.

Let’s use them as they are meant to be used: to steer us towards vibrant health + happiness, for ourselves and for each other.

That’s the pleasure rebellion. No rebelling required—just prioritize pleasure.

Why value emotional intelligence?

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Intelligence is a good thing. Thinking is a good thing. Intellect is a good thing. Reason is a good thing. Thoughtfulness is a good thing.

Here’s the thing: emotions have intelligence.

They are also a good thing.

When we develop the skills to listen to them, rather than tamp them down, we are actually amplifying our intelligence.

Emotions are information. They are data-conveying states that arise from the body’s experience of life.

If we dismiss our emotions in favor of our “rational” thoughts, we are dismissing half of our body’s own lived experience. Basically, it’s like gaslighting ourselves.

Not so intelligent.

Emotions exist for a reason: to communicate to us what we need and desire, and as part of the elegant human feedback system.

Emotions try to get us to course correct when needs and desires aren’t being met (fear, grief, anger, e.g.), and to feel satiated when they are (joy, pride, awe, e.g.). 

When emotions work in tandem with our reason, they are an elegant alignment system. 

To attempt to reason our way out of feeling emotion is to shut down a major line of communication—all of that rich information.

Our bodies have their own natural intelligence. When we learn to tune into it all, we give ourselves more awareness, which equals more ways to navigate ourselves and our lives.

That is powerful. That is power. That is human power. Why not use it all?

Why not be human and love humanness?

What could change in the world if we acted more human, not less?

From where I sit, we are living in an increasingly anti-sensory, anti-human world.

So much of life asks us to show up as brains, with bodies in tow as afterthoughts or inconveniences.

Emotions, exhaustion, illness, inconsistency, injury, are considered liabilities.

Have you ever asked yourself: liabilities to what?

Our humanness is a liability to systems that require relentless productivity, predictability, replication, perfection: all those things machines do so they can keep feeding a bigger machine.

But we are bodies.

We are soft around the edges. We intake life, and that affects us physically, emotionally, spiritually—as individuals, and as a collective.

We output life, and that affects us physically, emotionally, spiritually. We have needs and desires that must be met.

But we’ve lost sight of the true needs of humans in an attempt to model ourselves on machine-like perfection.

Humans need healthy connection with other humans. We need to be held. We need healthy pleasure. We need joy and rest and to feel our own fire. We need purpose and community. We need a healthy environment. We need to feel sunlight, clean water, rich soil.

But we’ve treated these as negotiables, afterthoughts, non-essentials—in service to our brains.

Somehow, that became “reasonable.”

The idea of perfection is lovely. Productivity can feel good. Consistency is a fantastic skill.

But there is no movement in perfection—if it changes, it is no longer perfect—so it holds itself rigid and impenetrable until it cracks under the strain.

Perfection cracks because life is change. Life is movement, fluid, sensory, material, and messy.

Our bodily intelligence is what takes in all of this data and feeds it to the brain so it can discern how to feel and act—but we’ve been getting this backwards, assuming it’s our brains that should instruct our bodies. 

Unknowingly, we’ve pit our beliefs against our nervous systems.

What if we flipped the script? What if we knew the body held prized intelligence?

What if we could learn to tune in to our bodily and emotional intelligence and then combine that with the knowledge and beliefs in our brains?

Then, we get to fulfill our purpose—not to be just really smart disembodied brains, but to be wholly human.

Humanful.

Then, feeding our brains with new knowledge and skills becomes an amazing asset to building happy, healthy lives—together.

Let’s do that.

How to practice partnership

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How to practice partnership

The first step to practicing partnership is realizing that you are already in partnership—with everyone and everything.

Everything in the universe is interdependent.

You are in a partnership with yourself: your body, your mind, your spirit.

You are in a partnership with other humans, and with their bodies, minds, and spirits.

You are in partnership with communities, institutions, ecosystems.

You are in partnership with the planet.

We all are. What would it look like if we all acted like good, conscious partners to elevate and nourish each other and the planet, rather than individuals jockeying for rank and position perched on top of a randomly spinning sphere?

Sometimes, we forget that every possible thing in the entire multiverse is connected.

That WE are connected to everything.

That every act and thought has ripple effects in the immediate and over billions of years. (Or, that perhaps there is no time and it’s all just happening NOW.) That every possibility is right here, right now. 

That every action has a reciprocal reaction.

What we do for ourselves, we do for others. What we do for others, we do for ourselves. I think the Golden Rule must have danced with the laws of thermodynamics.

We can’t know all the arcs of every story we’re connected to.

But we can make sure that the fundamental pattern of reciprocity is the basis of our relationships: with ourselves, our loved ones, our communities, our systems, our planet.

This isn’t just stuff for the meditation mat, this is our blueprint for taking action in alignment with all that is.

We are living in a sorely divided world; forgetting that we are all connected, and fearing that connection, are taking a massive toll.

What if connection felt amazing, not unsafe?

What if sharing what we love wasn’t used as a way to manipulate us, but as a way to see where we’re the same, AND where we’re different—and celebrating all of those perspectives?

What if re/membering connection helps us realize that we are IN THIS with every other thing, and that we better take care of ourselves and our world, because it’s all US?

If this sounds like a lot, start with yourself. Love yourself. Hold yourself accountable to what you love. Hold yourself accountable for your nincompoopery.

Hold humanity accountable to its humanness—to its great capacity to love, and to eff things up—and to the idea that maybe if we loved outrageously all the freakin’ time instead of rationing it, there’d be less nincompoopery to deal with.

And if you’re ready for next-level partnership?

Invite others to elevate their game along with you.

Steel sharpens steel.

Vibrant, joyful, creative humans love playing with other vibrant, joyful, creative humans.

It’s how we evolve past our own edges and see new possibilities.

How we potentiate ourselves and each other.

How we feel the fullness of our humanity.

How we create a new paradigm by embodying the power of being fully human WITH others, FOR others.

Daring to be fully human with others—and with the planet, not just on it—is how we evolve.

If you’re a visionary who wants to co-create a more beautiful world, not leave it behind—let’s elevate.