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Description
What's your masculine model ? What "healthy masculinity" refers to for you ?
Have you even thought about it before ?
More than trying to define what "healthy masculinity" is, or claiming what it should or shouldn't be, Daniel and I are sharing here our own perspective on what this term refer to for both of us.
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Transcription
A lot of stuff in my life has been impacted by an unhealthy relationship with a masculine. And whether it's with father figures or people in power or friends that I was close to and lost relationship with, my intention was to actually understand a little bit more about the divine masculine. What does this mean for me?
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Hello, hello.
Welcome. Thank you very much for being here for this. This is my first podcast episode in English, so I'm a little stressed out. thank you for being here deciding to do this in english yeah thank you very much for that um so what's your internal forecast how do you feel being here and now what brings you here yeah
so what brings me here right now is this wonderful conversation with you um currently in the sunny place of madeira which is nice and you hot and internally I'm feeling very good very at peace for with all the things a lot of things have been happening for me the last this last year for sure but
I feel very uh at peace internally so cool yeah how about you how about your internal forecast um yeah you just mentioned the external forecast in Madeira now that is the Sunny and hot and That's pretty much what I feel too. I feel grateful too for you to come here, take this time. And grateful for you, grateful for me and grateful for the topic. Because this is a topic that is important for both of us. And we figured this out together while talking about it and opening ourselves to it. And I'm very happy. About the idea that we might be sharing a bit of this with the rest of the world through that podcast. So yeah, this is the energy that I'm coming up here with.
Amazing.
Thank you. So as an introduction of the topic, a little, let's say, outline of the topics that I would like us to cover today on masculinity. So we hear a lot about, I mean, many contents on masculinity. whether toxic masculinity, healthy masculinity, what is even masculinity. And the objective of this episode is not to give any kind of universal definition of what masculine is or should be, but it's more a personal perspective that we already talked about, and our own perspective on masculinity, the struggles that men or us, you and me as men, or identified as male persons, might have gone through, through our history, our own path, solutions that we found, resources that we tapped into, internal resources, external resources, to try to figure out what kind of masculinity we want to develop for ourselves and for the rest of the world. Yeah, so that's the main outline of the... what I want to discuss with you today. But as I want to co-construct this introduction in this podcast, what is your own perspective on the topic and how, what kind of angle are you interested in taking?
Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like I for so so much of my life I feel like I really this wasn't something that I was able to explore because I don't think I was able to because I had so much other stuff that I was dealing with patterns and inner healing stuff that I needed to deal with and also just like avoiding anything that was uncomfortable so I think that for most of my life because I I really avoided a lot of the uncomfortable things This probably was something that I felt discomfort with, but I didn't really know how to approach it. So, you know, growing up, I grew up in a pretty broken family where, you know, my mom had three children with my dad and then they divorced when I was super young. And then she remarried to my stepdad. And there wasn't a lot of... stability and there also wasn't a lot of examples that I felt like I was able to see. And so I think for me, when I experienced growing up, I didn't have somebody be like, oh, this is what I want to be like, or this is how I want to be like. Am I, as I get older, like I had no type of like person that I could feel like I could say like, this is, this is what masculinity. is, and I really, this wasn't a concept for me as I was younger.
Until when?
I think most of what I heard in my life, and I'm sure it is the same for you, is toxic masculinity. I heard a lot about toxic masculinity. I heard eventually as I got older, especially in different parts of, like, I lived in Toronto for a while and some very liberal places, a lot of people talk about the patriarchy. And so I think for me, my perspective on masculinity was very negative. So it was like, oh, like toxic masculinity is really bad, which we would agree it is. And then the patriarchy is also this terrible thing. And it was all kind of like, I felt like put together in this, like, all of this is bad. And there was never really a conversation around, well, what's good? And so until I actually got to the point where, as of late, I've been diving into my own relationship with masculinity, which... began when I was in Peru and I had a plant medicine ceremony and my intention was to actually understand a little bit more about the divine masculine like what does this mean for me and When I asked that question it was kind of something I never had asked before and I never explored and that brought me through this journey, especially the last several months of unraveling how much A lot of stuff in my life has been impacted by an unhealthy relationship with a masculine. And whether it's with father figures or people in power or friends that I was close to and lost relationship with and so on and so forth, me learning the hard way of what maybe a healthy masculine isn't and then now starting to kind of heal that. and now have better relationships with other men in my life and understanding what does this look like to step into a healthier place for me. And I think it's different for everyone. For me, when I understand masculinity, I, and of course, it's not the definition, but for me, it's really being true to myself and being strong in who I am and being really, really happy about my inner self and also expressing myself, you know. in a real and honest way. And so, yeah, I think like in the end, those are the elements that feel really resonant with that for me. And it's also me learning every day. Like, for example, I did a bachata class a few weeks ago. And this was something that was completely new for me. I'd never done a bachata class. And you essentially have to be a container and you have to hold this container as the leader. And I would see bachata as like leader. follower and usually the man is leading and women is following but like obviously you can interchange that for the man to or the leader you you hold this container and you're leading and you have to really hold it it's for that other person to know what's going on and also has to be strong but also open and I feel like it's such a good reflection I'm starting to see these these different patterns of like okay that's something to take and maybe understand a little bit more about what I feel like the masculine can be outside of like and if you're really rigid or if you're too like you don't have any any control or you don't have any you know freedom and openness then then that really constricts the other person and so how does that reflect in in the you know experience of understanding the masculine better for me i think that helps me understand it more so how about you like what what are you like how have you experienced the masculine and what has that been like for you
Thank you for that. Well, I was still in that bachata class with you right now. I'm going to answer the question. Thank you for that. So masculinity today in the way that you see it, I heard the words strength, like being strong for yourself and for the other person and other persons. Like strongly holding a space of freedom and of of relationship with somebody else in a healthy way, meaning that it takes some strength to be ourselves while being in connection with somebody else and giving the opportunity for the relationship to freely happen somehow. I don't know, that's what I heard from that end. Yeah, and so I also took a bachata class, it wasn't the same as yours because I'm a very beginner, but For the first time, I remember the teacher telling us to, like, as I was the leader, and as you said, essentially, I mean, culturally, I guess, men lead in bachata, but it can be the other way around, but in that case, I was the leader, and I was the man dancing with the woman. And the simple fact, back to patriarchy that you mentioned earlier, the simple fact of leading slash controlling, The woman in her own movements, in the directions that she had to take because I led her into those directions. I felt so bad about it. It wasn't good for me because I was like, okay, what space for freedom does she have right now? I'm leading her to the left, but what if she wants to go to the right? And what if she wants to... to do this movement instead of the movement that I'm trying to guide her through. So maybe guiding, I like that word more than leading. But yeah, back to your question, my own perspective on masculinity. I grew up in what I can say, broken family too. I didn't know the term. My parents got divorced when I was young as well, maybe five or six or something. And all I can remember of the relationship, especially from my father's side, because we talked about having role models and exemplary, I saw a lot of violence. I saw a lot of violence, mainly in the words, in the communication, or non-communication. What I happen to understand as being non-communication or wrong communication. very violent. And so the way I grew up with that, personally, from a very young age, I always saw my father as a man, a type of man that I didn't want to become. That's rough. That's interesting. But at the same time, yeah, it's, you know, it doesn't feel very loyal to him, but it's... That's the thing. And that's, I think, a kind of a protection that I kind of developed for myself to grow up healthy, I guess. And I gave myself the opportunity to connect with other male, identified as male persons, you know, grown-ups, adults, that I would like to look like more. you know people who could have values that would resonate inside of me that would act a certain way talk a certain way relate a certain way yeah so just like you i grew up with this topic of masculinity not even being a topic and when you mention toxic masculinity for most of my lifetime i didn't make until very shortly I didn't make the difference between masculinity and toxic masculinity.
You kind of like mashed them up together. It was kind of like the same thing.
Yeah, exactly. Because the masculinity that I've seen all along my life, a lot of it was toxic masculinity, whether between my own parents, whether between uncles and grandfathers and family, extended family and everything. So... I just like you and never really had a role model of what healthy masculinity is. And so I guess that's pretty much what we are going to build up together today. Once again, for us, you know, we are not here to say or to design what healthy masculinity is. We are just two men reflecting on their own path and connection with masculinity. So you started with what is healthy masculinity for you. Can you develop more on that?
like yeah yeah so i think when i talked about the plant medicine ceremony with a plant medicine called fochuma and i asked to experience what the divine masculine is and this is my own experience like you said so i experienced this feeling of this it was like a grandpa energy that was like super warm and loving and keep in mind like i don't i never really experienced this type of experience with any like familial father, grandfather type of experience just because it wasn't something that I had in my life. And so I felt like this beautiful, warm, loving, just like kind, but strong, safe, and secure energy. And it was very, very clear in this experience that this also included, there's this verse in the Bible. Some people, you know, like I used to, when I was a child, we went to church and I would sing these church songs. And one of the songs that literally came up in the ceremony was the verse that people read a lot of times during weddings. So, love is patient, love is kind, as everything does not boast, etc., etc. And if you read through these, the second half of these terms about love are very interesting. Because the first half is very like, love is kind and patient. etc, etc. But then the second half is it always protects, it always trusts, it always perseveres, it does not delight in evil, it keeps no record of wrongs. And it really centers around what I would say is a little bit more connected to the, what I would say, masculine love and masculine energy. And I think when in my life, in terms of a lot of the healing work and stuff that I've gotten deeper into my own spirituality, A lot of stuff points back to love, and I think anything is connected, whether it's masculine, feminine, or whatever it is, goes kind of connected to love. And so for me, that is what I found. Like, that was kind of the first one. I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. And then that feeling that I had of the safety and the strength, a lot of that stuff felt really resonant. And then I think that gave me a picture of what I could see and look for in people in my life. If I was around another person and if I felt this, then I could be like, okay, I recognize this. And I can start to understand and feel into, okay, this person has some of these elements that I feel like it could resonate with because now I can recognize it. And so that for me has been very important. I think one of the things on the list is deep integrity and honesty and really clarity around that. Because for me, I saw... In my childhood, I saw words that were spoken about like, okay, I should do this or do this or do this by parent figures, especially father figures, and then they would do the opposite. Their actions were completely opposite. And so I learned as a child that words were different than actions, and so that created a misaligned integrity. So most of my life, whether it's small lies or things that I did, I... I didn't have a clear understanding and sense of integrity. And so up until, you know, like I think this is something I've been having to learn, and that's a big part for me of healthy masculine. Let's say if I say I'm going to do something, can I do it? Or if I feel very clear about something, can be honest and share it and then follow through with it? Or if, you know, like can somebody trust me? You know, can I be a safe person that somebody can be around? All of those things I think would... I would say there's something beautiful about being in that and embodying that. And so those are some of the things that I feel are what I connect to when I think about a healthy masculine experience for me. Yeah,
and it gets back to the container that you mentioned earlier about the bachata dance. They call it container, containing a safe space. For me and somebody else to be, to grow. So integrity, protection. Yeah, those are the beautiful aspects of what masculinity can drive for ourselves and into the relationship. Yeah,
and I think it's interesting because whether it's just you yourself, we all have masculine and feminine. But if I'm looking at a relationship, for example, and I'm in a heterosexual relationship and my partner is a woman, then I have this experience where I can hold as this container, as you know, that strong feminine energy of holding container that's flexible. And a lot of times as a feminine, there's a lot more emotion, waves, intensity, ups and downs. It's beautiful, it's fierce, it's also gentle at times. But being able to hold that and be a container for that and see the beauty in all that is really beautiful. And it's not just romantic, it can be friendships and all these things. But I think that that's something that... I started to see a better picture of because if we're able to do this and if we're not super rigid and we're not like oh like there's so much like if we give it gives more freedom and creativity and flowiness and we need that we need strength and we need stability we also need flow and need creativity and if we have this all together and this harmony then
I think that's when there's so much beauty that can be created it's very beautiful because back to what you just said about Finding to me a healthy masculinity is a, so we often refer energetically speaking to the yang energy as being the masculine energy and so the yin energy being the feminine. And as you said, we all have both inside of us. And to me, healthy masculinity for ourselves and for the rest of the world and relationships and everything is a masculine that actually finds and meets. It's Yin part as well, which would mean, related to what you just said, as a male identified person, the question of meeting our own emotions, which is huge in everything that I hear on masculinity today. So, you know, meeting, finding, feeling our own emotions and being fine with it, being OK with the fact that they are here. and they are here just because we are a person whether male female or non-binary person so just because we're human we have emotions and this yin part that you mentioned about being more about flexibility and ups and downs and movement you know all around um it it's very interesting to me healthy masculinity is a masculinity that kind of finds its feminine part but within myself, you know, not something that I'm trying to get from somebody else, even though many people can be very inspirational for me. And you are, you, Daniel, here, very inspirational for me. But I was more thinking about, yeah, I mean, I'm inspired by your yin, actually, your yin energy, as a, you know, person identified as a male. Yeah, I, that's one of the things that I was very, in French, we say we were touched. by this but I was touched by your this ability to meet and then very quickly share with me you know your path and your the different methods and experience that you've had to get the heck out of this toxic masculinity that you finally recognized at a certain age and that you wanted to get out of but nobody ever told you or asked you to do so like you did it because you wanted to do that you wanted to improve for yourself um and yeah thank you very much for having to share all that to me it made me feel even more confident to share with you about my own you know intimacy and path and stuff and so i felt like back to what we just said i felt like we we were meeting with our masculine and feminine inside of each other like you were meeting your own your both energy i was meeting mine so i like that um and yeah one more thing on that i think what i learned growing up and most of my life is feelings are
inherently bad as as a a boy growing up with a child when i when i was crying that was bad when i was angry that was bad All of these things, you have to start to learn how to disconnect from these feelings that are actually super healthy to have. And I think that's been a big part of the masculine journey too. How do we reconnect to our feelings? How do I reconnect to these feelings? Even anger. Like the anger is a healthy, healthy emotion. It's just we look at this emotion as like this is bad or negative and this is good. Okay, I can be happy, but I can't be too happy. Yeah. You know? Please don't. Yeah.
Actually, please do. Please be.
I can be sad, kind of. But if I get too sad from crying, that's not good.
That's inappropriate.
No, no. And so I think that's something I've been learning and processing is, you know, feeling in connection to my feelings and knowing how to hold them myself and feel into them and know, okay, today, like, I'm feeling sad right now. Okay, that's okay. And being there instead of what happens a lot of times, I think, with people is people feel a feeling. I will say from my own experience, I felt a feeling. And I did something to disconnect myself from that, to distract myself, whether it was through different ways of numbing that or whatever it is. And so that is…
And this is so easy to do today. Very easy.
So easy.
To find distraction or to blame somebody for the anger that I am feeling right now. Yeah. Like it's very different to say I am angry versus you made me angry. So yeah, it's all about taking back. Our own responsibility for the emotion that we feel inside of us.
Yeah. And then understanding and identifying there might be reasons why I'm feeling this way. And sometimes it's just, I feel this and that's okay. Maybe the moon is full and I feel more and more sad today.
There's nobody to blame for that. Yes. Cool. Do you want to share with me and with us your own... I mean tools and methods, you already talked about plant medicine ceremony in Peru. Like I figured that you and we on our path towards some kind of healthy masculinity, we kind of built up our own role model for that. So we were seeking for information and exemplarity and lectures, resources to blossom. the masculinity that we want for us um so can you share uh some resources that you uh that you met so internal resources that you tapped into you talked a lot about you know reconnecting with your emotions and feelings and be okay with that um but also external resources like i know you've done some retreats and people that you met discussions that you had yeah that you read yeah many many things so there's there's a
Man, there's so many things. So yeah, I definitely feel like it's this holistic approach of therapy. I think a lot of men could go to therapy. Go to therapy.
Go to therapy. Go to therapy.
And I think that helped me a lot in connecting to my feelings and looking at the trauma and cycles and stuff like this. I think when I worked with some different plant medicines, including What's Your Mercy and Pedro, that uncovered a lot of things for me and patterns that have helped me kind of get up. clear picture of what masculinity, healthy masculinity could look like. And then I have a group of six other guys that we connect with every other week. And we talk and connect and we share what's going on with us. We're going deeper into our struggles and our hopes and our dreams and et cetera, et cetera. And so that's something that's really helped me and going and connecting with other men, because what I find is... In my experience, in my personal experience, I ended up gravitating towards more women. So like I would like have emotional connections with whether it's a partner, like a relationship, or I would just find emotional connections and trust because I would feel safer in those. So yeah, like connections with more, I guess, men in my life that I've really been able to build connections and friendships with. Like us connecting and being able to go deeper into our kind of like just... friendship. And then there's a book called King. warrior, magician, lover. And it's actually, there's probably just like any book, there's going to be stuff that you're going to want to throw away, but there's a lot of really interesting insights in it in terms of looking at historical information and talking about the patriarchy and toxic masculinity and where the archetypes of some maybe more of a healthy masculine could be and how we can emulate that in our lives. And so that was extremely helpful for me. And it's been. really helpful for me as a bit of a resource. And I think also in different places, I've been to some different retreats and finding retreats that are reputable and have been able to support men in learning how to connect more to themselves. In the past, I feel like there's a lot of resources for women, especially in, let's say, spiritual communities. And so there are more and more stuff. And I think more people, more... people are coming to connect with themselves and like there are more resources for other other guys but i think this is going to continue to grow so there's going to be stuff out there that i think is really helpful for for you to do maybe like a week retreat or something that you can dive deeper into this yeah
especially with people you don't know so it's easier to to not being afraid of the you know the people looking at you judging you and so that can be once again a safe spot where you can find yourself or where you can give yourself permission to be yourself uh even in the struggle that it is to go to such places because it can it can be you know terrifying sometimes to go to um to places like that but yeah yeah and
i also did i did this eight week group i i would call it a course but it wasn't really a course it was just live weekly calls with this this guy and I don't think it matters who he is, but the name of it was Emotional Mastery, and it was with about 15 other men. And we would go through pretty much two-hour time. People would share things, and then you would be connected with each other over those eight weeks, answering questions and supporting each other. And that was extremely helpful for me, and I think more of those type of resources are out there. So it's just looking for them and looking to see what can be discovered. I think there's a guy on Instagram called...
it's called man talks man talks man m-a-n-t-a-l-k-s and he has a lot of resources i i would highly recommend checking that out and it's very interesting thank you very much for for sharing this because you know back to um the difficulty that men can experience into taking the step towards those uh on-site retreat like uh getting to meet other men getting to open up uh you know in front of everyone and stuff uh that's what online courses and programs and stuff. That's the good thing about it. You can relate to some kind of community. You mentioned 15 men walking together on their path of finding answers to their questions or even getting access to all the questions that I did at the beginning of the walk together. So with this sense of trust, this sense of brotherhood, this sense of of confidence that we can grow collectively and that is going to nourish our own confidence into exploring our masculinity in in a different way than we that we did before because
we didn't have any any education on anything but what we saw like yeah yeah and we all i think a lot of times what happens is a lot of men even like myself in the past and i know people that I've been close to and I'm close to have found themselves pretty isolated, especially if they go in a relationship with somebody that's kind of their life. And then you find yourself isolated and you feel like you have no support. There's nobody there that can help you. And that can create a lot of issues. And so I find that the best thing to do is be intentional as much as you can. And there's people, it's wild. When you go into some of these groups, you're like, wow, all of these other men are experiencing the same issues that I am. And, you know, you feel like you're alone, but then you realize you're not. And there's so many things that people are going through that are similar. And it's really helpful to have that support and understand that you're not alone.
Nice, nice, nice. I'd like us to talk about touch. The way we give ourselves permission to think about and experience touch in something that doesn't have to be sexual or sexualized. I know that's a topic that we discussed a lot and we like to hug a lot.
well it's more cultural for you guys in the u.s to hug more than we we do in europe but still yeah so i think it's it is true that hugs are fairly normal in the us but touch yeah so much in terms of like being touch touchy or connecting like skin to skin if and i think what your hand yeah like even like if i held your hand for like five seconds that would be a little bizarre for some people For many people, especially many men.
Most of them.
For sure. And the thing that I've been learning, I went to this community, it's called The Garden, and it's a really beautiful place. And there is a lot more that is centered around openness and connection, embodiment, all these things. And touch is definitely something there where you're learning how to, first off, our bodies release a lot of oxytocin. serotonin and dopamine. It's a very, very beautiful thing for us to actually feel human touch. But what people's minds, you're really conditioned to think, if I'm touching this person, then I have this, I'm interested in them, they're interested in me, blah, blah, blah. But once you start to learn in some safe spaces about how to connect with people, through touch which actually can be very very beautiful and very special and it's not a central thing where it's it's really like i have a platonic connection with this person and it's really nice and maybe you of course express your boundaries and knowing that it's okay is this okay yeah
you just touch somebody who wants to be exactly for sure you want to make sure
Yeah, yeah. It's not okay. Like,
okay, well, that's not okay.
Yeah, consent. Consent is so important.
Consent, yeah. It might be okay in five minutes, but just let me, okay, yeah, land first.
Exactly. And so a place like this, there's a lot happening. So that's a culture where, you know, somebody comes in, they might not be comfortable initially just because it's not something they're used to. And eventually they're like, you see them like a week later and they're all, you know, touching everybody and connecting. It's beautiful. Yeah. But like for me. I think learning how to feel really comfortable with, wow, this is great. I have my hand over your shoulder, and we're connected, and this is beautiful.
And knowing— And I feel your presence here with me, Satan's presence.
Yeah. It's a beautiful—it's really—I think it's not only healing but grounding, and it feels connecting, and there's so many beautiful things about it. And I think it is something that— is not the easiest thing for many guys because it's like, oh God, what are they, like people are gonna think like I'm interested in this other guy or something and it's funny because like it's definitely doesn't, we could just connect like it's not that big of a deal. And for me I think the thing that I've realized is the more I am learning about myself and healing and the masculine stuff and all these other things, The more I care less about what other people think about me. So like being able to be okay with this and be really happy in this and not be worrying about X person who's like, oh gosh, what are they doing? I don't care really. I really don't, I don't really care at all. It's really, I'm here and present in my body and this is what I'm doing.
Who you are and yeah, who you're becoming or. Yeah. Yeah.
And that's a beautiful thing when you start to, start to go into discomfort and then it becomes comfortable. then you're able to embody more of who you are. And that's something that's actually really helpful for me is like, I think it's a practice in learning what are you not used to? Like I didn't grow up with touch in my family. We weren't touchy because it wasn't safe, A, in terms of that, and B, it was very just not touchy and there wasn't a lot of nurturing.
Yeah, and there were a lot of the influence of church and everything, right?
Yeah, for sure, for sure. And so... It's funny, like you'd think like a place, so like let's love each other, but love didn't equal like that type of thing, which is bizarre. So I had to learn what does this look like for me and how do I get out of my discomfort zone? And then once you start to have that, then you feel comfortable. And not everyone's going to want to be like, you know, get like a back rub or something. I would take a back rub any day. But I think... That's something that has been really nice for me and it's been it's opened up a part of me where it's like this is a beautiful thing and it's part of my human experience and I and I think a lot of humans would really enjoy that.
Yeah, and it's part of us being human, back to what you talked about, the hormones and neurotransmitters, oxytocin, we need that. Like, there are, you know, scientific evidence that show that, especially the kids, that oxytocin is very related to growth hormones. And so the babies and kids need oxytocin to develop well, I mean, in health and everything. So it would be crazy to think that as adults, this is something that we don't need anymore because we you know i guess we won't grow anymore but uh definitely something it's part of you know those happiness hormones and everything so yeah we you know when i hear you i feel that uh developing some kind of healthy masculinity for ourselves and for myself i'm going to talk from my own space um has to go through um Finding my own, what I call, ecological relationship with touch, with me, like, you know, discovering the self-sensation that I can have when I touch my arm and my hair and the sensation with my own body, the sensation with another guy or friends or even family and everything. And so it's all about, to me, part of developing. a sense of healthy masculinity goes through questioning the relationship to touch, which is going to help in relationships as well. Because when you put consciousness on touch, there are some parts of other people that you just won't touch. Like, I'll be happy to hug you. I'll be happy to have, just as you said, my arm around your shoulder and staying here and maybe, you know, yeah, because it feels great. But of course, there are parts that I'm not going to touch. And it's, yeah, you set healthy boundaries for any kind of relationships with yourself and with anyone else. So that's interesting. Back to that. Back to, I mean, on this topic of relationships, I love this acronym that you shared with me the other day on setting kind of a consent space. Maybe that's how we build up this safe space that you mentioned earlier. Um, What is it? Like B, S, R? Can you tell us more about this? So that's... You didn't know where I was leading to.
So yeah, this is helpful in... I learned this in a boundaries and desires workshop. And it's helpful usually, I would say, especially if you're in some type of romantic situation where you are... Maybe you kiss somebody and it was great. But you need to understand a little bit more and clarify some things. And I think what happens a lot of times in these situations, and we're going from the platonic touch to maybe a little bit more of a romantic thing. Yeah,
but how do we get there?
That's the whole story. Yeah, and so I think there's a lot of communication that usually you would need to have with somebody, right? But when you get to a certain point when there is... A clear, obviously, consent on both sides. And then maybe you kiss or something. Then there's this thing called R-B-D-S-M. So R is relationship, so talking about where are you at, what's your situation. You could be, you know, I have two lovers in the south of France and blah blah blah, whatever it is. Or I'm single or I, you know, open relationship, all of the above, whatever it is.
Making it clear, right?
Making it very clear, yeah. B is boundary, so it's like what... What are my boundaries right now? What do I feel? And that can change in five minutes. It could change in ten minutes. So that's your boundaries. D is desires. What do I want? And you go back and forth and you're sharing those things. What do I want in this situation and today right now? S is if you're going to have maybe a deeper intimate connection with somebody. S is sexual health. And then M is meaning. What does this mean in this moment right now for me? Sometimes they add an A to it, which is aftercare. Let's say you would have some type of... intimate experience and you know what do you need afterwards and i think it's actually really helpful because you were able to understand and bring clarity around that connection and and i think what happens is you can there's been i've had some beautiful you know times when it's like this brings so much clarity and safety and i go back to the safety part like consent and everything it's like what feels safe and what feels not okay and how do you make sure that like everyone feels good about it or the you know the parties are involved feeling safe in that situation i like that thanks for developing on that too yes of course
So we're getting to the end of that episode. If you were to wrap it up like your own perspective on what healthy masculinity means to you, after everything we've been discussing, or maybe there's something that you want to add, and that's totally the moment as well. How would you describe, once again, not give a definition that anybody else should follow or anything, but... Your definition for you of healthy masculinity in the sense that the kind of masculinity that you want to keep pursuing for yourself, what would it be like?
Yeah, so I think for me it comes down to being full of integrity. So what feels integritous in your own life and how do you live your life aligned with it where what you say and what you think and what you do are all aligned. So that's the first thing. The second thing is how do you make other people feel? Do you make them feel safe? Do you help them feel maybe inspired or they feel like they're able to feel more uplifted around you? I think that's a beautiful expression of masculinity. And then how do you, do you have strong boundaries? Do you clearly define those boundaries for yourself? And how do you make sure that you uphold and respect the boundaries that are, you know, shared with you as well? Because I think that's really important. And then also, you know, is there an understanding and a feeling and experience of abundance? And I'm not saying like monetary, like, oh, like we're all wealthy if we walk into this. I'm talking about more so a feeling of abundance and expansion. And I think expansion and that container can create. a lot of beauty and creativity and all these things when you're walking that. And so for me, those are really, really beautiful elements. And then also we, as like our male anatomy, so like our, however you identify as a male, we create a lot of, we create seed or life. You know, that's a part of our, you know, a beautiful gift that we can, you know. bring that gift to the the creation of a human if we if we so choose and and i think that is so powerful and i think for me taking great care and honor with an understanding what that is and that's for me it's just part of healthy masculinity is connecting to the and we didn't talk much about the sexual part of of masculinity but it's honoring that part of us too it's Being very understanding, having a deeper understanding and relationship with that. It's our sexuality, our feelings, our emotions, and our strength, and the different parts of us. And aligning to that and being able to be integrative across the board and being clear with all those things.
And I would add to the list our behaviors. Like being internally aligned all the way to outside of ourselves and what do we do. Subtitles by the Amara.org community about it, and then behaviors. I feel like if we align what we feel, what we think, all the respect that we put into our own boundaries, the other person's boundaries and everything, and then it's kind of a guide for us for a healthy relationship, whatever it is, intimate or... even as you said friend or communication and so on so yeah i will add behavior to that wonderful list that you just draw yes i think that that's a really good image right and for you what what do you feel wrapping this up is your expression or understanding of healthy masculine well this discussion made me think a lot once again just like every time we we have conversation together and Back to, it made me think about yoga and yoga as being one with myself. And so back to what we were talking about at the very beginning of that podcast, putting consciousness on all the different parts of who I am, trying to put light and consciousness on the different parts of who I am. It is linked to putting light and consciousness about my path, my... journey as a human in this life at least to uh to know more about uh how I have been influenced directly or indirectly, I mean consciously or unconsciously, through the work with the therapist that you mentioned earlier, to make sure that I become entire or entirely one with myself. Like with all the shiny parts and all the shadow parts. And so to kind of be okay with who I am, with what I heard, with what I saw. all along my lifetime to be able to like make a strong choice for myself and for the kind of relationships that i want to develop with you know with friends new friends new persons that i that i meet in my life with a partner potential partner and even you know we talked a lot about new meeting new people but even transforming the the actual relationship that i already have Like the relationship that I have with the members of my family, the relationship that I have with my current friends that I've had for years maybe. Even to the point that it might transform also the relationship that I have with past relationships. You know, resentment and everything with exes or stuff. And so for me healthy masculinity is, yeah, kind of gathering together all this information. past and present to become entirely one with yourself and making sure just like you said that you are your behaviors and your intentions are well well aligned with uh what you feel what you know what you want what are your desires are uh and yeah being able to yeah to to act uh accordingly yeah that will bring way less violence i guess than what i've heard uh on my path yeah i like that amazing thank you for sharing thank you very much for sharing all that is there anything that you would like to add on i don't think so i think this was beautiful conversation about something that i'm grateful to be exploring and understanding more and i
feel like i'm just starting to scratch the surface of understanding it a bit better and so i'm grateful to have been talking about this with you and exploring more together. It's unraveled some interesting things for myself, even in this conversation.
Oh yeah. This podcast is going to be a guide for ourselves. So we're going to listen to it again and again and again. Thank you very much for that. Can we hug to finish up? Of course. Did you just hear that? That was actually the sound of our two hearts beating together while we were hugging. Isn't this incredible? There was no way I would cut it off from the editing. You should have seen Daniel's face when I had him listen to it. Okay, thank you for listening this episode till its very end. Thank you for how you'll show your appreciation about it through the stars and comments that you'll leave on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Once again, if you want to join the Permahuman community and access more inspirational episodes, but also relaxing content like meditation, easy yoga sessions, blog articles, and more, just click on the link below in the episode's description. I wish you have a great day or evening and happy to meet up again with you soon. Bye.
Description
What's your masculine model ? What "healthy masculinity" refers to for you ?
Have you even thought about it before ?
More than trying to define what "healthy masculinity" is, or claiming what it should or shouldn't be, Daniel and I are sharing here our own perspective on what this term refer to for both of us.
Join the Permahuman community here for more inspirational episode and relaxing content.
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Transcription
A lot of stuff in my life has been impacted by an unhealthy relationship with a masculine. And whether it's with father figures or people in power or friends that I was close to and lost relationship with, my intention was to actually understand a little bit more about the divine masculine. What does this mean for me?
Welcome to Permahuman. Inspirational content about wellness and productivity, powered by nature. Human permaculture teaches us how to rewire the connection we have with our own self, with our relationships, and with the overall living world. The first step consists in growing self-awareness, questioning our personal ecology through sleep and stress management, nutrition balance, mental health, and overall personal organization. The second layer highlights our interpersonal skills and our capacity to switch to positive communication and overall mutually beneficial relationships. Then comes sustainability, our ultimate ability to build up projects that make us thrive while having a positive impact on the environment. Feel inspired by those topics? Well, take a comfortable seat and I wish you to fully embrace this episode. Find out more about the Permahuman project by joining our community through the link in this episode's description. Okay, let's dive in, man. Hi, Daniel.
Hello, hello.
Welcome. Thank you very much for being here for this. This is my first podcast episode in English, so I'm a little stressed out. thank you for being here deciding to do this in english yeah thank you very much for that um so what's your internal forecast how do you feel being here and now what brings you here yeah
so what brings me here right now is this wonderful conversation with you um currently in the sunny place of madeira which is nice and you hot and internally I'm feeling very good very at peace for with all the things a lot of things have been happening for me the last this last year for sure but
I feel very uh at peace internally so cool yeah how about you how about your internal forecast um yeah you just mentioned the external forecast in Madeira now that is the Sunny and hot and That's pretty much what I feel too. I feel grateful too for you to come here, take this time. And grateful for you, grateful for me and grateful for the topic. Because this is a topic that is important for both of us. And we figured this out together while talking about it and opening ourselves to it. And I'm very happy. About the idea that we might be sharing a bit of this with the rest of the world through that podcast. So yeah, this is the energy that I'm coming up here with.
Amazing.
Thank you. So as an introduction of the topic, a little, let's say, outline of the topics that I would like us to cover today on masculinity. So we hear a lot about, I mean, many contents on masculinity. whether toxic masculinity, healthy masculinity, what is even masculinity. And the objective of this episode is not to give any kind of universal definition of what masculine is or should be, but it's more a personal perspective that we already talked about, and our own perspective on masculinity, the struggles that men or us, you and me as men, or identified as male persons, might have gone through, through our history, our own path, solutions that we found, resources that we tapped into, internal resources, external resources, to try to figure out what kind of masculinity we want to develop for ourselves and for the rest of the world. Yeah, so that's the main outline of the... what I want to discuss with you today. But as I want to co-construct this introduction in this podcast, what is your own perspective on the topic and how, what kind of angle are you interested in taking?
Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like I for so so much of my life I feel like I really this wasn't something that I was able to explore because I don't think I was able to because I had so much other stuff that I was dealing with patterns and inner healing stuff that I needed to deal with and also just like avoiding anything that was uncomfortable so I think that for most of my life because I I really avoided a lot of the uncomfortable things This probably was something that I felt discomfort with, but I didn't really know how to approach it. So, you know, growing up, I grew up in a pretty broken family where, you know, my mom had three children with my dad and then they divorced when I was super young. And then she remarried to my stepdad. And there wasn't a lot of... stability and there also wasn't a lot of examples that I felt like I was able to see. And so I think for me, when I experienced growing up, I didn't have somebody be like, oh, this is what I want to be like, or this is how I want to be like. Am I, as I get older, like I had no type of like person that I could feel like I could say like, this is, this is what masculinity. is, and I really, this wasn't a concept for me as I was younger.
Until when?
I think most of what I heard in my life, and I'm sure it is the same for you, is toxic masculinity. I heard a lot about toxic masculinity. I heard eventually as I got older, especially in different parts of, like, I lived in Toronto for a while and some very liberal places, a lot of people talk about the patriarchy. And so I think for me, my perspective on masculinity was very negative. So it was like, oh, like toxic masculinity is really bad, which we would agree it is. And then the patriarchy is also this terrible thing. And it was all kind of like, I felt like put together in this, like, all of this is bad. And there was never really a conversation around, well, what's good? And so until I actually got to the point where, as of late, I've been diving into my own relationship with masculinity, which... began when I was in Peru and I had a plant medicine ceremony and my intention was to actually understand a little bit more about the divine masculine like what does this mean for me and When I asked that question it was kind of something I never had asked before and I never explored and that brought me through this journey, especially the last several months of unraveling how much A lot of stuff in my life has been impacted by an unhealthy relationship with a masculine. And whether it's with father figures or people in power or friends that I was close to and lost relationship with and so on and so forth, me learning the hard way of what maybe a healthy masculine isn't and then now starting to kind of heal that. and now have better relationships with other men in my life and understanding what does this look like to step into a healthier place for me. And I think it's different for everyone. For me, when I understand masculinity, I, and of course, it's not the definition, but for me, it's really being true to myself and being strong in who I am and being really, really happy about my inner self and also expressing myself, you know. in a real and honest way. And so, yeah, I think like in the end, those are the elements that feel really resonant with that for me. And it's also me learning every day. Like, for example, I did a bachata class a few weeks ago. And this was something that was completely new for me. I'd never done a bachata class. And you essentially have to be a container and you have to hold this container as the leader. And I would see bachata as like leader. follower and usually the man is leading and women is following but like obviously you can interchange that for the man to or the leader you you hold this container and you're leading and you have to really hold it it's for that other person to know what's going on and also has to be strong but also open and I feel like it's such a good reflection I'm starting to see these these different patterns of like okay that's something to take and maybe understand a little bit more about what I feel like the masculine can be outside of like and if you're really rigid or if you're too like you don't have any any control or you don't have any you know freedom and openness then then that really constricts the other person and so how does that reflect in in the you know experience of understanding the masculine better for me i think that helps me understand it more so how about you like what what are you like how have you experienced the masculine and what has that been like for you
Thank you for that. Well, I was still in that bachata class with you right now. I'm going to answer the question. Thank you for that. So masculinity today in the way that you see it, I heard the words strength, like being strong for yourself and for the other person and other persons. Like strongly holding a space of freedom and of of relationship with somebody else in a healthy way, meaning that it takes some strength to be ourselves while being in connection with somebody else and giving the opportunity for the relationship to freely happen somehow. I don't know, that's what I heard from that end. Yeah, and so I also took a bachata class, it wasn't the same as yours because I'm a very beginner, but For the first time, I remember the teacher telling us to, like, as I was the leader, and as you said, essentially, I mean, culturally, I guess, men lead in bachata, but it can be the other way around, but in that case, I was the leader, and I was the man dancing with the woman. And the simple fact, back to patriarchy that you mentioned earlier, the simple fact of leading slash controlling, The woman in her own movements, in the directions that she had to take because I led her into those directions. I felt so bad about it. It wasn't good for me because I was like, okay, what space for freedom does she have right now? I'm leading her to the left, but what if she wants to go to the right? And what if she wants to... to do this movement instead of the movement that I'm trying to guide her through. So maybe guiding, I like that word more than leading. But yeah, back to your question, my own perspective on masculinity. I grew up in what I can say, broken family too. I didn't know the term. My parents got divorced when I was young as well, maybe five or six or something. And all I can remember of the relationship, especially from my father's side, because we talked about having role models and exemplary, I saw a lot of violence. I saw a lot of violence, mainly in the words, in the communication, or non-communication. What I happen to understand as being non-communication or wrong communication. very violent. And so the way I grew up with that, personally, from a very young age, I always saw my father as a man, a type of man that I didn't want to become. That's rough. That's interesting. But at the same time, yeah, it's, you know, it doesn't feel very loyal to him, but it's... That's the thing. And that's, I think, a kind of a protection that I kind of developed for myself to grow up healthy, I guess. And I gave myself the opportunity to connect with other male, identified as male persons, you know, grown-ups, adults, that I would like to look like more. you know people who could have values that would resonate inside of me that would act a certain way talk a certain way relate a certain way yeah so just like you i grew up with this topic of masculinity not even being a topic and when you mention toxic masculinity for most of my lifetime i didn't make until very shortly I didn't make the difference between masculinity and toxic masculinity.
You kind of like mashed them up together. It was kind of like the same thing.
Yeah, exactly. Because the masculinity that I've seen all along my life, a lot of it was toxic masculinity, whether between my own parents, whether between uncles and grandfathers and family, extended family and everything. So... I just like you and never really had a role model of what healthy masculinity is. And so I guess that's pretty much what we are going to build up together today. Once again, for us, you know, we are not here to say or to design what healthy masculinity is. We are just two men reflecting on their own path and connection with masculinity. So you started with what is healthy masculinity for you. Can you develop more on that?
like yeah yeah so i think when i talked about the plant medicine ceremony with a plant medicine called fochuma and i asked to experience what the divine masculine is and this is my own experience like you said so i experienced this feeling of this it was like a grandpa energy that was like super warm and loving and keep in mind like i don't i never really experienced this type of experience with any like familial father, grandfather type of experience just because it wasn't something that I had in my life. And so I felt like this beautiful, warm, loving, just like kind, but strong, safe, and secure energy. And it was very, very clear in this experience that this also included, there's this verse in the Bible. Some people, you know, like I used to, when I was a child, we went to church and I would sing these church songs. And one of the songs that literally came up in the ceremony was the verse that people read a lot of times during weddings. So, love is patient, love is kind, as everything does not boast, etc., etc. And if you read through these, the second half of these terms about love are very interesting. Because the first half is very like, love is kind and patient. etc, etc. But then the second half is it always protects, it always trusts, it always perseveres, it does not delight in evil, it keeps no record of wrongs. And it really centers around what I would say is a little bit more connected to the, what I would say, masculine love and masculine energy. And I think when in my life, in terms of a lot of the healing work and stuff that I've gotten deeper into my own spirituality, A lot of stuff points back to love, and I think anything is connected, whether it's masculine, feminine, or whatever it is, goes kind of connected to love. And so for me, that is what I found. Like, that was kind of the first one. I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. And then that feeling that I had of the safety and the strength, a lot of that stuff felt really resonant. And then I think that gave me a picture of what I could see and look for in people in my life. If I was around another person and if I felt this, then I could be like, okay, I recognize this. And I can start to understand and feel into, okay, this person has some of these elements that I feel like it could resonate with because now I can recognize it. And so that for me has been very important. I think one of the things on the list is deep integrity and honesty and really clarity around that. Because for me, I saw... In my childhood, I saw words that were spoken about like, okay, I should do this or do this or do this by parent figures, especially father figures, and then they would do the opposite. Their actions were completely opposite. And so I learned as a child that words were different than actions, and so that created a misaligned integrity. So most of my life, whether it's small lies or things that I did, I... I didn't have a clear understanding and sense of integrity. And so up until, you know, like I think this is something I've been having to learn, and that's a big part for me of healthy masculine. Let's say if I say I'm going to do something, can I do it? Or if I feel very clear about something, can be honest and share it and then follow through with it? Or if, you know, like can somebody trust me? You know, can I be a safe person that somebody can be around? All of those things I think would... I would say there's something beautiful about being in that and embodying that. And so those are some of the things that I feel are what I connect to when I think about a healthy masculine experience for me. Yeah,
and it gets back to the container that you mentioned earlier about the bachata dance. They call it container, containing a safe space. For me and somebody else to be, to grow. So integrity, protection. Yeah, those are the beautiful aspects of what masculinity can drive for ourselves and into the relationship. Yeah,
and I think it's interesting because whether it's just you yourself, we all have masculine and feminine. But if I'm looking at a relationship, for example, and I'm in a heterosexual relationship and my partner is a woman, then I have this experience where I can hold as this container, as you know, that strong feminine energy of holding container that's flexible. And a lot of times as a feminine, there's a lot more emotion, waves, intensity, ups and downs. It's beautiful, it's fierce, it's also gentle at times. But being able to hold that and be a container for that and see the beauty in all that is really beautiful. And it's not just romantic, it can be friendships and all these things. But I think that that's something that... I started to see a better picture of because if we're able to do this and if we're not super rigid and we're not like oh like there's so much like if we give it gives more freedom and creativity and flowiness and we need that we need strength and we need stability we also need flow and need creativity and if we have this all together and this harmony then
I think that's when there's so much beauty that can be created it's very beautiful because back to what you just said about Finding to me a healthy masculinity is a, so we often refer energetically speaking to the yang energy as being the masculine energy and so the yin energy being the feminine. And as you said, we all have both inside of us. And to me, healthy masculinity for ourselves and for the rest of the world and relationships and everything is a masculine that actually finds and meets. It's Yin part as well, which would mean, related to what you just said, as a male identified person, the question of meeting our own emotions, which is huge in everything that I hear on masculinity today. So, you know, meeting, finding, feeling our own emotions and being fine with it, being OK with the fact that they are here. and they are here just because we are a person whether male female or non-binary person so just because we're human we have emotions and this yin part that you mentioned about being more about flexibility and ups and downs and movement you know all around um it it's very interesting to me healthy masculinity is a masculinity that kind of finds its feminine part but within myself, you know, not something that I'm trying to get from somebody else, even though many people can be very inspirational for me. And you are, you, Daniel, here, very inspirational for me. But I was more thinking about, yeah, I mean, I'm inspired by your yin, actually, your yin energy, as a, you know, person identified as a male. Yeah, I, that's one of the things that I was very, in French, we say we were touched. by this but I was touched by your this ability to meet and then very quickly share with me you know your path and your the different methods and experience that you've had to get the heck out of this toxic masculinity that you finally recognized at a certain age and that you wanted to get out of but nobody ever told you or asked you to do so like you did it because you wanted to do that you wanted to improve for yourself um and yeah thank you very much for having to share all that to me it made me feel even more confident to share with you about my own you know intimacy and path and stuff and so i felt like back to what we just said i felt like we we were meeting with our masculine and feminine inside of each other like you were meeting your own your both energy i was meeting mine so i like that um and yeah one more thing on that i think what i learned growing up and most of my life is feelings are
inherently bad as as a a boy growing up with a child when i when i was crying that was bad when i was angry that was bad All of these things, you have to start to learn how to disconnect from these feelings that are actually super healthy to have. And I think that's been a big part of the masculine journey too. How do we reconnect to our feelings? How do I reconnect to these feelings? Even anger. Like the anger is a healthy, healthy emotion. It's just we look at this emotion as like this is bad or negative and this is good. Okay, I can be happy, but I can't be too happy. Yeah. You know? Please don't. Yeah.
Actually, please do. Please be.
I can be sad, kind of. But if I get too sad from crying, that's not good.
That's inappropriate.
No, no. And so I think that's something I've been learning and processing is, you know, feeling in connection to my feelings and knowing how to hold them myself and feel into them and know, okay, today, like, I'm feeling sad right now. Okay, that's okay. And being there instead of what happens a lot of times, I think, with people is people feel a feeling. I will say from my own experience, I felt a feeling. And I did something to disconnect myself from that, to distract myself, whether it was through different ways of numbing that or whatever it is. And so that is…
And this is so easy to do today. Very easy.
So easy.
To find distraction or to blame somebody for the anger that I am feeling right now. Yeah. Like it's very different to say I am angry versus you made me angry. So yeah, it's all about taking back. Our own responsibility for the emotion that we feel inside of us.
Yeah. And then understanding and identifying there might be reasons why I'm feeling this way. And sometimes it's just, I feel this and that's okay. Maybe the moon is full and I feel more and more sad today.
There's nobody to blame for that. Yes. Cool. Do you want to share with me and with us your own... I mean tools and methods, you already talked about plant medicine ceremony in Peru. Like I figured that you and we on our path towards some kind of healthy masculinity, we kind of built up our own role model for that. So we were seeking for information and exemplarity and lectures, resources to blossom. the masculinity that we want for us um so can you share uh some resources that you uh that you met so internal resources that you tapped into you talked a lot about you know reconnecting with your emotions and feelings and be okay with that um but also external resources like i know you've done some retreats and people that you met discussions that you had yeah that you read yeah many many things so there's there's a
Man, there's so many things. So yeah, I definitely feel like it's this holistic approach of therapy. I think a lot of men could go to therapy. Go to therapy.
Go to therapy. Go to therapy.
And I think that helped me a lot in connecting to my feelings and looking at the trauma and cycles and stuff like this. I think when I worked with some different plant medicines, including What's Your Mercy and Pedro, that uncovered a lot of things for me and patterns that have helped me kind of get up. clear picture of what masculinity, healthy masculinity could look like. And then I have a group of six other guys that we connect with every other week. And we talk and connect and we share what's going on with us. We're going deeper into our struggles and our hopes and our dreams and et cetera, et cetera. And so that's something that's really helped me and going and connecting with other men, because what I find is... In my experience, in my personal experience, I ended up gravitating towards more women. So like I would like have emotional connections with whether it's a partner, like a relationship, or I would just find emotional connections and trust because I would feel safer in those. So yeah, like connections with more, I guess, men in my life that I've really been able to build connections and friendships with. Like us connecting and being able to go deeper into our kind of like just... friendship. And then there's a book called King. warrior, magician, lover. And it's actually, there's probably just like any book, there's going to be stuff that you're going to want to throw away, but there's a lot of really interesting insights in it in terms of looking at historical information and talking about the patriarchy and toxic masculinity and where the archetypes of some maybe more of a healthy masculine could be and how we can emulate that in our lives. And so that was extremely helpful for me. And it's been. really helpful for me as a bit of a resource. And I think also in different places, I've been to some different retreats and finding retreats that are reputable and have been able to support men in learning how to connect more to themselves. In the past, I feel like there's a lot of resources for women, especially in, let's say, spiritual communities. And so there are more and more stuff. And I think more people, more... people are coming to connect with themselves and like there are more resources for other other guys but i think this is going to continue to grow so there's going to be stuff out there that i think is really helpful for for you to do maybe like a week retreat or something that you can dive deeper into this yeah
especially with people you don't know so it's easier to to not being afraid of the you know the people looking at you judging you and so that can be once again a safe spot where you can find yourself or where you can give yourself permission to be yourself uh even in the struggle that it is to go to such places because it can it can be you know terrifying sometimes to go to um to places like that but yeah yeah and
i also did i did this eight week group i i would call it a course but it wasn't really a course it was just live weekly calls with this this guy and I don't think it matters who he is, but the name of it was Emotional Mastery, and it was with about 15 other men. And we would go through pretty much two-hour time. People would share things, and then you would be connected with each other over those eight weeks, answering questions and supporting each other. And that was extremely helpful for me, and I think more of those type of resources are out there. So it's just looking for them and looking to see what can be discovered. I think there's a guy on Instagram called...
it's called man talks man talks man m-a-n-t-a-l-k-s and he has a lot of resources i i would highly recommend checking that out and it's very interesting thank you very much for for sharing this because you know back to um the difficulty that men can experience into taking the step towards those uh on-site retreat like uh getting to meet other men getting to open up uh you know in front of everyone and stuff uh that's what online courses and programs and stuff. That's the good thing about it. You can relate to some kind of community. You mentioned 15 men walking together on their path of finding answers to their questions or even getting access to all the questions that I did at the beginning of the walk together. So with this sense of trust, this sense of brotherhood, this sense of of confidence that we can grow collectively and that is going to nourish our own confidence into exploring our masculinity in in a different way than we that we did before because
we didn't have any any education on anything but what we saw like yeah yeah and we all i think a lot of times what happens is a lot of men even like myself in the past and i know people that I've been close to and I'm close to have found themselves pretty isolated, especially if they go in a relationship with somebody that's kind of their life. And then you find yourself isolated and you feel like you have no support. There's nobody there that can help you. And that can create a lot of issues. And so I find that the best thing to do is be intentional as much as you can. And there's people, it's wild. When you go into some of these groups, you're like, wow, all of these other men are experiencing the same issues that I am. And, you know, you feel like you're alone, but then you realize you're not. And there's so many things that people are going through that are similar. And it's really helpful to have that support and understand that you're not alone.
Nice, nice, nice. I'd like us to talk about touch. The way we give ourselves permission to think about and experience touch in something that doesn't have to be sexual or sexualized. I know that's a topic that we discussed a lot and we like to hug a lot.
well it's more cultural for you guys in the u.s to hug more than we we do in europe but still yeah so i think it's it is true that hugs are fairly normal in the us but touch yeah so much in terms of like being touch touchy or connecting like skin to skin if and i think what your hand yeah like even like if i held your hand for like five seconds that would be a little bizarre for some people For many people, especially many men.
Most of them.
For sure. And the thing that I've been learning, I went to this community, it's called The Garden, and it's a really beautiful place. And there is a lot more that is centered around openness and connection, embodiment, all these things. And touch is definitely something there where you're learning how to, first off, our bodies release a lot of oxytocin. serotonin and dopamine. It's a very, very beautiful thing for us to actually feel human touch. But what people's minds, you're really conditioned to think, if I'm touching this person, then I have this, I'm interested in them, they're interested in me, blah, blah, blah. But once you start to learn in some safe spaces about how to connect with people, through touch which actually can be very very beautiful and very special and it's not a central thing where it's it's really like i have a platonic connection with this person and it's really nice and maybe you of course express your boundaries and knowing that it's okay is this okay yeah
you just touch somebody who wants to be exactly for sure you want to make sure
Yeah, yeah. It's not okay. Like,
okay, well, that's not okay.
Yeah, consent. Consent is so important.
Consent, yeah. It might be okay in five minutes, but just let me, okay, yeah, land first.
Exactly. And so a place like this, there's a lot happening. So that's a culture where, you know, somebody comes in, they might not be comfortable initially just because it's not something they're used to. And eventually they're like, you see them like a week later and they're all, you know, touching everybody and connecting. It's beautiful. Yeah. But like for me. I think learning how to feel really comfortable with, wow, this is great. I have my hand over your shoulder, and we're connected, and this is beautiful.
And knowing— And I feel your presence here with me, Satan's presence.
Yeah. It's a beautiful—it's really—I think it's not only healing but grounding, and it feels connecting, and there's so many beautiful things about it. And I think it is something that— is not the easiest thing for many guys because it's like, oh God, what are they, like people are gonna think like I'm interested in this other guy or something and it's funny because like it's definitely doesn't, we could just connect like it's not that big of a deal. And for me I think the thing that I've realized is the more I am learning about myself and healing and the masculine stuff and all these other things, The more I care less about what other people think about me. So like being able to be okay with this and be really happy in this and not be worrying about X person who's like, oh gosh, what are they doing? I don't care really. I really don't, I don't really care at all. It's really, I'm here and present in my body and this is what I'm doing.
Who you are and yeah, who you're becoming or. Yeah. Yeah.
And that's a beautiful thing when you start to, start to go into discomfort and then it becomes comfortable. then you're able to embody more of who you are. And that's something that's actually really helpful for me is like, I think it's a practice in learning what are you not used to? Like I didn't grow up with touch in my family. We weren't touchy because it wasn't safe, A, in terms of that, and B, it was very just not touchy and there wasn't a lot of nurturing.
Yeah, and there were a lot of the influence of church and everything, right?
Yeah, for sure, for sure. And so... It's funny, like you'd think like a place, so like let's love each other, but love didn't equal like that type of thing, which is bizarre. So I had to learn what does this look like for me and how do I get out of my discomfort zone? And then once you start to have that, then you feel comfortable. And not everyone's going to want to be like, you know, get like a back rub or something. I would take a back rub any day. But I think... That's something that has been really nice for me and it's been it's opened up a part of me where it's like this is a beautiful thing and it's part of my human experience and I and I think a lot of humans would really enjoy that.
Yeah, and it's part of us being human, back to what you talked about, the hormones and neurotransmitters, oxytocin, we need that. Like, there are, you know, scientific evidence that show that, especially the kids, that oxytocin is very related to growth hormones. And so the babies and kids need oxytocin to develop well, I mean, in health and everything. So it would be crazy to think that as adults, this is something that we don't need anymore because we you know i guess we won't grow anymore but uh definitely something it's part of you know those happiness hormones and everything so yeah we you know when i hear you i feel that uh developing some kind of healthy masculinity for ourselves and for myself i'm going to talk from my own space um has to go through um Finding my own, what I call, ecological relationship with touch, with me, like, you know, discovering the self-sensation that I can have when I touch my arm and my hair and the sensation with my own body, the sensation with another guy or friends or even family and everything. And so it's all about, to me, part of developing. a sense of healthy masculinity goes through questioning the relationship to touch, which is going to help in relationships as well. Because when you put consciousness on touch, there are some parts of other people that you just won't touch. Like, I'll be happy to hug you. I'll be happy to have, just as you said, my arm around your shoulder and staying here and maybe, you know, yeah, because it feels great. But of course, there are parts that I'm not going to touch. And it's, yeah, you set healthy boundaries for any kind of relationships with yourself and with anyone else. So that's interesting. Back to that. Back to, I mean, on this topic of relationships, I love this acronym that you shared with me the other day on setting kind of a consent space. Maybe that's how we build up this safe space that you mentioned earlier. Um, What is it? Like B, S, R? Can you tell us more about this? So that's... You didn't know where I was leading to.
So yeah, this is helpful in... I learned this in a boundaries and desires workshop. And it's helpful usually, I would say, especially if you're in some type of romantic situation where you are... Maybe you kiss somebody and it was great. But you need to understand a little bit more and clarify some things. And I think what happens a lot of times in these situations, and we're going from the platonic touch to maybe a little bit more of a romantic thing. Yeah,
but how do we get there?
That's the whole story. Yeah, and so I think there's a lot of communication that usually you would need to have with somebody, right? But when you get to a certain point when there is... A clear, obviously, consent on both sides. And then maybe you kiss or something. Then there's this thing called R-B-D-S-M. So R is relationship, so talking about where are you at, what's your situation. You could be, you know, I have two lovers in the south of France and blah blah blah, whatever it is. Or I'm single or I, you know, open relationship, all of the above, whatever it is.
Making it clear, right?
Making it very clear, yeah. B is boundary, so it's like what... What are my boundaries right now? What do I feel? And that can change in five minutes. It could change in ten minutes. So that's your boundaries. D is desires. What do I want? And you go back and forth and you're sharing those things. What do I want in this situation and today right now? S is if you're going to have maybe a deeper intimate connection with somebody. S is sexual health. And then M is meaning. What does this mean in this moment right now for me? Sometimes they add an A to it, which is aftercare. Let's say you would have some type of... intimate experience and you know what do you need afterwards and i think it's actually really helpful because you were able to understand and bring clarity around that connection and and i think what happens is you can there's been i've had some beautiful you know times when it's like this brings so much clarity and safety and i go back to the safety part like consent and everything it's like what feels safe and what feels not okay and how do you make sure that like everyone feels good about it or the you know the parties are involved feeling safe in that situation i like that thanks for developing on that too yes of course
So we're getting to the end of that episode. If you were to wrap it up like your own perspective on what healthy masculinity means to you, after everything we've been discussing, or maybe there's something that you want to add, and that's totally the moment as well. How would you describe, once again, not give a definition that anybody else should follow or anything, but... Your definition for you of healthy masculinity in the sense that the kind of masculinity that you want to keep pursuing for yourself, what would it be like?
Yeah, so I think for me it comes down to being full of integrity. So what feels integritous in your own life and how do you live your life aligned with it where what you say and what you think and what you do are all aligned. So that's the first thing. The second thing is how do you make other people feel? Do you make them feel safe? Do you help them feel maybe inspired or they feel like they're able to feel more uplifted around you? I think that's a beautiful expression of masculinity. And then how do you, do you have strong boundaries? Do you clearly define those boundaries for yourself? And how do you make sure that you uphold and respect the boundaries that are, you know, shared with you as well? Because I think that's really important. And then also, you know, is there an understanding and a feeling and experience of abundance? And I'm not saying like monetary, like, oh, like we're all wealthy if we walk into this. I'm talking about more so a feeling of abundance and expansion. And I think expansion and that container can create. a lot of beauty and creativity and all these things when you're walking that. And so for me, those are really, really beautiful elements. And then also we, as like our male anatomy, so like our, however you identify as a male, we create a lot of, we create seed or life. You know, that's a part of our, you know, a beautiful gift that we can, you know. bring that gift to the the creation of a human if we if we so choose and and i think that is so powerful and i think for me taking great care and honor with an understanding what that is and that's for me it's just part of healthy masculinity is connecting to the and we didn't talk much about the sexual part of of masculinity but it's honoring that part of us too it's Being very understanding, having a deeper understanding and relationship with that. It's our sexuality, our feelings, our emotions, and our strength, and the different parts of us. And aligning to that and being able to be integrative across the board and being clear with all those things.
And I would add to the list our behaviors. Like being internally aligned all the way to outside of ourselves and what do we do. Subtitles by the Amara.org community about it, and then behaviors. I feel like if we align what we feel, what we think, all the respect that we put into our own boundaries, the other person's boundaries and everything, and then it's kind of a guide for us for a healthy relationship, whatever it is, intimate or... even as you said friend or communication and so on so yeah i will add behavior to that wonderful list that you just draw yes i think that that's a really good image right and for you what what do you feel wrapping this up is your expression or understanding of healthy masculine well this discussion made me think a lot once again just like every time we we have conversation together and Back to, it made me think about yoga and yoga as being one with myself. And so back to what we were talking about at the very beginning of that podcast, putting consciousness on all the different parts of who I am, trying to put light and consciousness on the different parts of who I am. It is linked to putting light and consciousness about my path, my... journey as a human in this life at least to uh to know more about uh how I have been influenced directly or indirectly, I mean consciously or unconsciously, through the work with the therapist that you mentioned earlier, to make sure that I become entire or entirely one with myself. Like with all the shiny parts and all the shadow parts. And so to kind of be okay with who I am, with what I heard, with what I saw. all along my lifetime to be able to like make a strong choice for myself and for the kind of relationships that i want to develop with you know with friends new friends new persons that i that i meet in my life with a partner potential partner and even you know we talked a lot about new meeting new people but even transforming the the actual relationship that i already have Like the relationship that I have with the members of my family, the relationship that I have with my current friends that I've had for years maybe. Even to the point that it might transform also the relationship that I have with past relationships. You know, resentment and everything with exes or stuff. And so for me healthy masculinity is, yeah, kind of gathering together all this information. past and present to become entirely one with yourself and making sure just like you said that you are your behaviors and your intentions are well well aligned with uh what you feel what you know what you want what are your desires are uh and yeah being able to yeah to to act uh accordingly yeah that will bring way less violence i guess than what i've heard uh on my path yeah i like that amazing thank you for sharing thank you very much for sharing all that is there anything that you would like to add on i don't think so i think this was beautiful conversation about something that i'm grateful to be exploring and understanding more and i
feel like i'm just starting to scratch the surface of understanding it a bit better and so i'm grateful to have been talking about this with you and exploring more together. It's unraveled some interesting things for myself, even in this conversation.
Oh yeah. This podcast is going to be a guide for ourselves. So we're going to listen to it again and again and again. Thank you very much for that. Can we hug to finish up? Of course. Did you just hear that? That was actually the sound of our two hearts beating together while we were hugging. Isn't this incredible? There was no way I would cut it off from the editing. You should have seen Daniel's face when I had him listen to it. Okay, thank you for listening this episode till its very end. Thank you for how you'll show your appreciation about it through the stars and comments that you'll leave on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Once again, if you want to join the Permahuman community and access more inspirational episodes, but also relaxing content like meditation, easy yoga sessions, blog articles, and more, just click on the link below in the episode's description. I wish you have a great day or evening and happy to meet up again with you soon. Bye.
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What's your masculine model ? What "healthy masculinity" refers to for you ?
Have you even thought about it before ?
More than trying to define what "healthy masculinity" is, or claiming what it should or shouldn't be, Daniel and I are sharing here our own perspective on what this term refer to for both of us.
Join the Permahuman community here for more inspirational episode and relaxing content.
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Transcription
A lot of stuff in my life has been impacted by an unhealthy relationship with a masculine. And whether it's with father figures or people in power or friends that I was close to and lost relationship with, my intention was to actually understand a little bit more about the divine masculine. What does this mean for me?
Welcome to Permahuman. Inspirational content about wellness and productivity, powered by nature. Human permaculture teaches us how to rewire the connection we have with our own self, with our relationships, and with the overall living world. The first step consists in growing self-awareness, questioning our personal ecology through sleep and stress management, nutrition balance, mental health, and overall personal organization. The second layer highlights our interpersonal skills and our capacity to switch to positive communication and overall mutually beneficial relationships. Then comes sustainability, our ultimate ability to build up projects that make us thrive while having a positive impact on the environment. Feel inspired by those topics? Well, take a comfortable seat and I wish you to fully embrace this episode. Find out more about the Permahuman project by joining our community through the link in this episode's description. Okay, let's dive in, man. Hi, Daniel.
Hello, hello.
Welcome. Thank you very much for being here for this. This is my first podcast episode in English, so I'm a little stressed out. thank you for being here deciding to do this in english yeah thank you very much for that um so what's your internal forecast how do you feel being here and now what brings you here yeah
so what brings me here right now is this wonderful conversation with you um currently in the sunny place of madeira which is nice and you hot and internally I'm feeling very good very at peace for with all the things a lot of things have been happening for me the last this last year for sure but
I feel very uh at peace internally so cool yeah how about you how about your internal forecast um yeah you just mentioned the external forecast in Madeira now that is the Sunny and hot and That's pretty much what I feel too. I feel grateful too for you to come here, take this time. And grateful for you, grateful for me and grateful for the topic. Because this is a topic that is important for both of us. And we figured this out together while talking about it and opening ourselves to it. And I'm very happy. About the idea that we might be sharing a bit of this with the rest of the world through that podcast. So yeah, this is the energy that I'm coming up here with.
Amazing.
Thank you. So as an introduction of the topic, a little, let's say, outline of the topics that I would like us to cover today on masculinity. So we hear a lot about, I mean, many contents on masculinity. whether toxic masculinity, healthy masculinity, what is even masculinity. And the objective of this episode is not to give any kind of universal definition of what masculine is or should be, but it's more a personal perspective that we already talked about, and our own perspective on masculinity, the struggles that men or us, you and me as men, or identified as male persons, might have gone through, through our history, our own path, solutions that we found, resources that we tapped into, internal resources, external resources, to try to figure out what kind of masculinity we want to develop for ourselves and for the rest of the world. Yeah, so that's the main outline of the... what I want to discuss with you today. But as I want to co-construct this introduction in this podcast, what is your own perspective on the topic and how, what kind of angle are you interested in taking?
Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like I for so so much of my life I feel like I really this wasn't something that I was able to explore because I don't think I was able to because I had so much other stuff that I was dealing with patterns and inner healing stuff that I needed to deal with and also just like avoiding anything that was uncomfortable so I think that for most of my life because I I really avoided a lot of the uncomfortable things This probably was something that I felt discomfort with, but I didn't really know how to approach it. So, you know, growing up, I grew up in a pretty broken family where, you know, my mom had three children with my dad and then they divorced when I was super young. And then she remarried to my stepdad. And there wasn't a lot of... stability and there also wasn't a lot of examples that I felt like I was able to see. And so I think for me, when I experienced growing up, I didn't have somebody be like, oh, this is what I want to be like, or this is how I want to be like. Am I, as I get older, like I had no type of like person that I could feel like I could say like, this is, this is what masculinity. is, and I really, this wasn't a concept for me as I was younger.
Until when?
I think most of what I heard in my life, and I'm sure it is the same for you, is toxic masculinity. I heard a lot about toxic masculinity. I heard eventually as I got older, especially in different parts of, like, I lived in Toronto for a while and some very liberal places, a lot of people talk about the patriarchy. And so I think for me, my perspective on masculinity was very negative. So it was like, oh, like toxic masculinity is really bad, which we would agree it is. And then the patriarchy is also this terrible thing. And it was all kind of like, I felt like put together in this, like, all of this is bad. And there was never really a conversation around, well, what's good? And so until I actually got to the point where, as of late, I've been diving into my own relationship with masculinity, which... began when I was in Peru and I had a plant medicine ceremony and my intention was to actually understand a little bit more about the divine masculine like what does this mean for me and When I asked that question it was kind of something I never had asked before and I never explored and that brought me through this journey, especially the last several months of unraveling how much A lot of stuff in my life has been impacted by an unhealthy relationship with a masculine. And whether it's with father figures or people in power or friends that I was close to and lost relationship with and so on and so forth, me learning the hard way of what maybe a healthy masculine isn't and then now starting to kind of heal that. and now have better relationships with other men in my life and understanding what does this look like to step into a healthier place for me. And I think it's different for everyone. For me, when I understand masculinity, I, and of course, it's not the definition, but for me, it's really being true to myself and being strong in who I am and being really, really happy about my inner self and also expressing myself, you know. in a real and honest way. And so, yeah, I think like in the end, those are the elements that feel really resonant with that for me. And it's also me learning every day. Like, for example, I did a bachata class a few weeks ago. And this was something that was completely new for me. I'd never done a bachata class. And you essentially have to be a container and you have to hold this container as the leader. And I would see bachata as like leader. follower and usually the man is leading and women is following but like obviously you can interchange that for the man to or the leader you you hold this container and you're leading and you have to really hold it it's for that other person to know what's going on and also has to be strong but also open and I feel like it's such a good reflection I'm starting to see these these different patterns of like okay that's something to take and maybe understand a little bit more about what I feel like the masculine can be outside of like and if you're really rigid or if you're too like you don't have any any control or you don't have any you know freedom and openness then then that really constricts the other person and so how does that reflect in in the you know experience of understanding the masculine better for me i think that helps me understand it more so how about you like what what are you like how have you experienced the masculine and what has that been like for you
Thank you for that. Well, I was still in that bachata class with you right now. I'm going to answer the question. Thank you for that. So masculinity today in the way that you see it, I heard the words strength, like being strong for yourself and for the other person and other persons. Like strongly holding a space of freedom and of of relationship with somebody else in a healthy way, meaning that it takes some strength to be ourselves while being in connection with somebody else and giving the opportunity for the relationship to freely happen somehow. I don't know, that's what I heard from that end. Yeah, and so I also took a bachata class, it wasn't the same as yours because I'm a very beginner, but For the first time, I remember the teacher telling us to, like, as I was the leader, and as you said, essentially, I mean, culturally, I guess, men lead in bachata, but it can be the other way around, but in that case, I was the leader, and I was the man dancing with the woman. And the simple fact, back to patriarchy that you mentioned earlier, the simple fact of leading slash controlling, The woman in her own movements, in the directions that she had to take because I led her into those directions. I felt so bad about it. It wasn't good for me because I was like, okay, what space for freedom does she have right now? I'm leading her to the left, but what if she wants to go to the right? And what if she wants to... to do this movement instead of the movement that I'm trying to guide her through. So maybe guiding, I like that word more than leading. But yeah, back to your question, my own perspective on masculinity. I grew up in what I can say, broken family too. I didn't know the term. My parents got divorced when I was young as well, maybe five or six or something. And all I can remember of the relationship, especially from my father's side, because we talked about having role models and exemplary, I saw a lot of violence. I saw a lot of violence, mainly in the words, in the communication, or non-communication. What I happen to understand as being non-communication or wrong communication. very violent. And so the way I grew up with that, personally, from a very young age, I always saw my father as a man, a type of man that I didn't want to become. That's rough. That's interesting. But at the same time, yeah, it's, you know, it doesn't feel very loyal to him, but it's... That's the thing. And that's, I think, a kind of a protection that I kind of developed for myself to grow up healthy, I guess. And I gave myself the opportunity to connect with other male, identified as male persons, you know, grown-ups, adults, that I would like to look like more. you know people who could have values that would resonate inside of me that would act a certain way talk a certain way relate a certain way yeah so just like you i grew up with this topic of masculinity not even being a topic and when you mention toxic masculinity for most of my lifetime i didn't make until very shortly I didn't make the difference between masculinity and toxic masculinity.
You kind of like mashed them up together. It was kind of like the same thing.
Yeah, exactly. Because the masculinity that I've seen all along my life, a lot of it was toxic masculinity, whether between my own parents, whether between uncles and grandfathers and family, extended family and everything. So... I just like you and never really had a role model of what healthy masculinity is. And so I guess that's pretty much what we are going to build up together today. Once again, for us, you know, we are not here to say or to design what healthy masculinity is. We are just two men reflecting on their own path and connection with masculinity. So you started with what is healthy masculinity for you. Can you develop more on that?
like yeah yeah so i think when i talked about the plant medicine ceremony with a plant medicine called fochuma and i asked to experience what the divine masculine is and this is my own experience like you said so i experienced this feeling of this it was like a grandpa energy that was like super warm and loving and keep in mind like i don't i never really experienced this type of experience with any like familial father, grandfather type of experience just because it wasn't something that I had in my life. And so I felt like this beautiful, warm, loving, just like kind, but strong, safe, and secure energy. And it was very, very clear in this experience that this also included, there's this verse in the Bible. Some people, you know, like I used to, when I was a child, we went to church and I would sing these church songs. And one of the songs that literally came up in the ceremony was the verse that people read a lot of times during weddings. So, love is patient, love is kind, as everything does not boast, etc., etc. And if you read through these, the second half of these terms about love are very interesting. Because the first half is very like, love is kind and patient. etc, etc. But then the second half is it always protects, it always trusts, it always perseveres, it does not delight in evil, it keeps no record of wrongs. And it really centers around what I would say is a little bit more connected to the, what I would say, masculine love and masculine energy. And I think when in my life, in terms of a lot of the healing work and stuff that I've gotten deeper into my own spirituality, A lot of stuff points back to love, and I think anything is connected, whether it's masculine, feminine, or whatever it is, goes kind of connected to love. And so for me, that is what I found. Like, that was kind of the first one. I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. And then that feeling that I had of the safety and the strength, a lot of that stuff felt really resonant. And then I think that gave me a picture of what I could see and look for in people in my life. If I was around another person and if I felt this, then I could be like, okay, I recognize this. And I can start to understand and feel into, okay, this person has some of these elements that I feel like it could resonate with because now I can recognize it. And so that for me has been very important. I think one of the things on the list is deep integrity and honesty and really clarity around that. Because for me, I saw... In my childhood, I saw words that were spoken about like, okay, I should do this or do this or do this by parent figures, especially father figures, and then they would do the opposite. Their actions were completely opposite. And so I learned as a child that words were different than actions, and so that created a misaligned integrity. So most of my life, whether it's small lies or things that I did, I... I didn't have a clear understanding and sense of integrity. And so up until, you know, like I think this is something I've been having to learn, and that's a big part for me of healthy masculine. Let's say if I say I'm going to do something, can I do it? Or if I feel very clear about something, can be honest and share it and then follow through with it? Or if, you know, like can somebody trust me? You know, can I be a safe person that somebody can be around? All of those things I think would... I would say there's something beautiful about being in that and embodying that. And so those are some of the things that I feel are what I connect to when I think about a healthy masculine experience for me. Yeah,
and it gets back to the container that you mentioned earlier about the bachata dance. They call it container, containing a safe space. For me and somebody else to be, to grow. So integrity, protection. Yeah, those are the beautiful aspects of what masculinity can drive for ourselves and into the relationship. Yeah,
and I think it's interesting because whether it's just you yourself, we all have masculine and feminine. But if I'm looking at a relationship, for example, and I'm in a heterosexual relationship and my partner is a woman, then I have this experience where I can hold as this container, as you know, that strong feminine energy of holding container that's flexible. And a lot of times as a feminine, there's a lot more emotion, waves, intensity, ups and downs. It's beautiful, it's fierce, it's also gentle at times. But being able to hold that and be a container for that and see the beauty in all that is really beautiful. And it's not just romantic, it can be friendships and all these things. But I think that that's something that... I started to see a better picture of because if we're able to do this and if we're not super rigid and we're not like oh like there's so much like if we give it gives more freedom and creativity and flowiness and we need that we need strength and we need stability we also need flow and need creativity and if we have this all together and this harmony then
I think that's when there's so much beauty that can be created it's very beautiful because back to what you just said about Finding to me a healthy masculinity is a, so we often refer energetically speaking to the yang energy as being the masculine energy and so the yin energy being the feminine. And as you said, we all have both inside of us. And to me, healthy masculinity for ourselves and for the rest of the world and relationships and everything is a masculine that actually finds and meets. It's Yin part as well, which would mean, related to what you just said, as a male identified person, the question of meeting our own emotions, which is huge in everything that I hear on masculinity today. So, you know, meeting, finding, feeling our own emotions and being fine with it, being OK with the fact that they are here. and they are here just because we are a person whether male female or non-binary person so just because we're human we have emotions and this yin part that you mentioned about being more about flexibility and ups and downs and movement you know all around um it it's very interesting to me healthy masculinity is a masculinity that kind of finds its feminine part but within myself, you know, not something that I'm trying to get from somebody else, even though many people can be very inspirational for me. And you are, you, Daniel, here, very inspirational for me. But I was more thinking about, yeah, I mean, I'm inspired by your yin, actually, your yin energy, as a, you know, person identified as a male. Yeah, I, that's one of the things that I was very, in French, we say we were touched. by this but I was touched by your this ability to meet and then very quickly share with me you know your path and your the different methods and experience that you've had to get the heck out of this toxic masculinity that you finally recognized at a certain age and that you wanted to get out of but nobody ever told you or asked you to do so like you did it because you wanted to do that you wanted to improve for yourself um and yeah thank you very much for having to share all that to me it made me feel even more confident to share with you about my own you know intimacy and path and stuff and so i felt like back to what we just said i felt like we we were meeting with our masculine and feminine inside of each other like you were meeting your own your both energy i was meeting mine so i like that um and yeah one more thing on that i think what i learned growing up and most of my life is feelings are
inherently bad as as a a boy growing up with a child when i when i was crying that was bad when i was angry that was bad All of these things, you have to start to learn how to disconnect from these feelings that are actually super healthy to have. And I think that's been a big part of the masculine journey too. How do we reconnect to our feelings? How do I reconnect to these feelings? Even anger. Like the anger is a healthy, healthy emotion. It's just we look at this emotion as like this is bad or negative and this is good. Okay, I can be happy, but I can't be too happy. Yeah. You know? Please don't. Yeah.
Actually, please do. Please be.
I can be sad, kind of. But if I get too sad from crying, that's not good.
That's inappropriate.
No, no. And so I think that's something I've been learning and processing is, you know, feeling in connection to my feelings and knowing how to hold them myself and feel into them and know, okay, today, like, I'm feeling sad right now. Okay, that's okay. And being there instead of what happens a lot of times, I think, with people is people feel a feeling. I will say from my own experience, I felt a feeling. And I did something to disconnect myself from that, to distract myself, whether it was through different ways of numbing that or whatever it is. And so that is…
And this is so easy to do today. Very easy.
So easy.
To find distraction or to blame somebody for the anger that I am feeling right now. Yeah. Like it's very different to say I am angry versus you made me angry. So yeah, it's all about taking back. Our own responsibility for the emotion that we feel inside of us.
Yeah. And then understanding and identifying there might be reasons why I'm feeling this way. And sometimes it's just, I feel this and that's okay. Maybe the moon is full and I feel more and more sad today.
There's nobody to blame for that. Yes. Cool. Do you want to share with me and with us your own... I mean tools and methods, you already talked about plant medicine ceremony in Peru. Like I figured that you and we on our path towards some kind of healthy masculinity, we kind of built up our own role model for that. So we were seeking for information and exemplarity and lectures, resources to blossom. the masculinity that we want for us um so can you share uh some resources that you uh that you met so internal resources that you tapped into you talked a lot about you know reconnecting with your emotions and feelings and be okay with that um but also external resources like i know you've done some retreats and people that you met discussions that you had yeah that you read yeah many many things so there's there's a
Man, there's so many things. So yeah, I definitely feel like it's this holistic approach of therapy. I think a lot of men could go to therapy. Go to therapy.
Go to therapy. Go to therapy.
And I think that helped me a lot in connecting to my feelings and looking at the trauma and cycles and stuff like this. I think when I worked with some different plant medicines, including What's Your Mercy and Pedro, that uncovered a lot of things for me and patterns that have helped me kind of get up. clear picture of what masculinity, healthy masculinity could look like. And then I have a group of six other guys that we connect with every other week. And we talk and connect and we share what's going on with us. We're going deeper into our struggles and our hopes and our dreams and et cetera, et cetera. And so that's something that's really helped me and going and connecting with other men, because what I find is... In my experience, in my personal experience, I ended up gravitating towards more women. So like I would like have emotional connections with whether it's a partner, like a relationship, or I would just find emotional connections and trust because I would feel safer in those. So yeah, like connections with more, I guess, men in my life that I've really been able to build connections and friendships with. Like us connecting and being able to go deeper into our kind of like just... friendship. And then there's a book called King. warrior, magician, lover. And it's actually, there's probably just like any book, there's going to be stuff that you're going to want to throw away, but there's a lot of really interesting insights in it in terms of looking at historical information and talking about the patriarchy and toxic masculinity and where the archetypes of some maybe more of a healthy masculine could be and how we can emulate that in our lives. And so that was extremely helpful for me. And it's been. really helpful for me as a bit of a resource. And I think also in different places, I've been to some different retreats and finding retreats that are reputable and have been able to support men in learning how to connect more to themselves. In the past, I feel like there's a lot of resources for women, especially in, let's say, spiritual communities. And so there are more and more stuff. And I think more people, more... people are coming to connect with themselves and like there are more resources for other other guys but i think this is going to continue to grow so there's going to be stuff out there that i think is really helpful for for you to do maybe like a week retreat or something that you can dive deeper into this yeah
especially with people you don't know so it's easier to to not being afraid of the you know the people looking at you judging you and so that can be once again a safe spot where you can find yourself or where you can give yourself permission to be yourself uh even in the struggle that it is to go to such places because it can it can be you know terrifying sometimes to go to um to places like that but yeah yeah and
i also did i did this eight week group i i would call it a course but it wasn't really a course it was just live weekly calls with this this guy and I don't think it matters who he is, but the name of it was Emotional Mastery, and it was with about 15 other men. And we would go through pretty much two-hour time. People would share things, and then you would be connected with each other over those eight weeks, answering questions and supporting each other. And that was extremely helpful for me, and I think more of those type of resources are out there. So it's just looking for them and looking to see what can be discovered. I think there's a guy on Instagram called...
it's called man talks man talks man m-a-n-t-a-l-k-s and he has a lot of resources i i would highly recommend checking that out and it's very interesting thank you very much for for sharing this because you know back to um the difficulty that men can experience into taking the step towards those uh on-site retreat like uh getting to meet other men getting to open up uh you know in front of everyone and stuff uh that's what online courses and programs and stuff. That's the good thing about it. You can relate to some kind of community. You mentioned 15 men walking together on their path of finding answers to their questions or even getting access to all the questions that I did at the beginning of the walk together. So with this sense of trust, this sense of brotherhood, this sense of of confidence that we can grow collectively and that is going to nourish our own confidence into exploring our masculinity in in a different way than we that we did before because
we didn't have any any education on anything but what we saw like yeah yeah and we all i think a lot of times what happens is a lot of men even like myself in the past and i know people that I've been close to and I'm close to have found themselves pretty isolated, especially if they go in a relationship with somebody that's kind of their life. And then you find yourself isolated and you feel like you have no support. There's nobody there that can help you. And that can create a lot of issues. And so I find that the best thing to do is be intentional as much as you can. And there's people, it's wild. When you go into some of these groups, you're like, wow, all of these other men are experiencing the same issues that I am. And, you know, you feel like you're alone, but then you realize you're not. And there's so many things that people are going through that are similar. And it's really helpful to have that support and understand that you're not alone.
Nice, nice, nice. I'd like us to talk about touch. The way we give ourselves permission to think about and experience touch in something that doesn't have to be sexual or sexualized. I know that's a topic that we discussed a lot and we like to hug a lot.
well it's more cultural for you guys in the u.s to hug more than we we do in europe but still yeah so i think it's it is true that hugs are fairly normal in the us but touch yeah so much in terms of like being touch touchy or connecting like skin to skin if and i think what your hand yeah like even like if i held your hand for like five seconds that would be a little bizarre for some people For many people, especially many men.
Most of them.
For sure. And the thing that I've been learning, I went to this community, it's called The Garden, and it's a really beautiful place. And there is a lot more that is centered around openness and connection, embodiment, all these things. And touch is definitely something there where you're learning how to, first off, our bodies release a lot of oxytocin. serotonin and dopamine. It's a very, very beautiful thing for us to actually feel human touch. But what people's minds, you're really conditioned to think, if I'm touching this person, then I have this, I'm interested in them, they're interested in me, blah, blah, blah. But once you start to learn in some safe spaces about how to connect with people, through touch which actually can be very very beautiful and very special and it's not a central thing where it's it's really like i have a platonic connection with this person and it's really nice and maybe you of course express your boundaries and knowing that it's okay is this okay yeah
you just touch somebody who wants to be exactly for sure you want to make sure
Yeah, yeah. It's not okay. Like,
okay, well, that's not okay.
Yeah, consent. Consent is so important.
Consent, yeah. It might be okay in five minutes, but just let me, okay, yeah, land first.
Exactly. And so a place like this, there's a lot happening. So that's a culture where, you know, somebody comes in, they might not be comfortable initially just because it's not something they're used to. And eventually they're like, you see them like a week later and they're all, you know, touching everybody and connecting. It's beautiful. Yeah. But like for me. I think learning how to feel really comfortable with, wow, this is great. I have my hand over your shoulder, and we're connected, and this is beautiful.
And knowing— And I feel your presence here with me, Satan's presence.
Yeah. It's a beautiful—it's really—I think it's not only healing but grounding, and it feels connecting, and there's so many beautiful things about it. And I think it is something that— is not the easiest thing for many guys because it's like, oh God, what are they, like people are gonna think like I'm interested in this other guy or something and it's funny because like it's definitely doesn't, we could just connect like it's not that big of a deal. And for me I think the thing that I've realized is the more I am learning about myself and healing and the masculine stuff and all these other things, The more I care less about what other people think about me. So like being able to be okay with this and be really happy in this and not be worrying about X person who's like, oh gosh, what are they doing? I don't care really. I really don't, I don't really care at all. It's really, I'm here and present in my body and this is what I'm doing.
Who you are and yeah, who you're becoming or. Yeah. Yeah.
And that's a beautiful thing when you start to, start to go into discomfort and then it becomes comfortable. then you're able to embody more of who you are. And that's something that's actually really helpful for me is like, I think it's a practice in learning what are you not used to? Like I didn't grow up with touch in my family. We weren't touchy because it wasn't safe, A, in terms of that, and B, it was very just not touchy and there wasn't a lot of nurturing.
Yeah, and there were a lot of the influence of church and everything, right?
Yeah, for sure, for sure. And so... It's funny, like you'd think like a place, so like let's love each other, but love didn't equal like that type of thing, which is bizarre. So I had to learn what does this look like for me and how do I get out of my discomfort zone? And then once you start to have that, then you feel comfortable. And not everyone's going to want to be like, you know, get like a back rub or something. I would take a back rub any day. But I think... That's something that has been really nice for me and it's been it's opened up a part of me where it's like this is a beautiful thing and it's part of my human experience and I and I think a lot of humans would really enjoy that.
Yeah, and it's part of us being human, back to what you talked about, the hormones and neurotransmitters, oxytocin, we need that. Like, there are, you know, scientific evidence that show that, especially the kids, that oxytocin is very related to growth hormones. And so the babies and kids need oxytocin to develop well, I mean, in health and everything. So it would be crazy to think that as adults, this is something that we don't need anymore because we you know i guess we won't grow anymore but uh definitely something it's part of you know those happiness hormones and everything so yeah we you know when i hear you i feel that uh developing some kind of healthy masculinity for ourselves and for myself i'm going to talk from my own space um has to go through um Finding my own, what I call, ecological relationship with touch, with me, like, you know, discovering the self-sensation that I can have when I touch my arm and my hair and the sensation with my own body, the sensation with another guy or friends or even family and everything. And so it's all about, to me, part of developing. a sense of healthy masculinity goes through questioning the relationship to touch, which is going to help in relationships as well. Because when you put consciousness on touch, there are some parts of other people that you just won't touch. Like, I'll be happy to hug you. I'll be happy to have, just as you said, my arm around your shoulder and staying here and maybe, you know, yeah, because it feels great. But of course, there are parts that I'm not going to touch. And it's, yeah, you set healthy boundaries for any kind of relationships with yourself and with anyone else. So that's interesting. Back to that. Back to, I mean, on this topic of relationships, I love this acronym that you shared with me the other day on setting kind of a consent space. Maybe that's how we build up this safe space that you mentioned earlier. Um, What is it? Like B, S, R? Can you tell us more about this? So that's... You didn't know where I was leading to.
So yeah, this is helpful in... I learned this in a boundaries and desires workshop. And it's helpful usually, I would say, especially if you're in some type of romantic situation where you are... Maybe you kiss somebody and it was great. But you need to understand a little bit more and clarify some things. And I think what happens a lot of times in these situations, and we're going from the platonic touch to maybe a little bit more of a romantic thing. Yeah,
but how do we get there?
That's the whole story. Yeah, and so I think there's a lot of communication that usually you would need to have with somebody, right? But when you get to a certain point when there is... A clear, obviously, consent on both sides. And then maybe you kiss or something. Then there's this thing called R-B-D-S-M. So R is relationship, so talking about where are you at, what's your situation. You could be, you know, I have two lovers in the south of France and blah blah blah, whatever it is. Or I'm single or I, you know, open relationship, all of the above, whatever it is.
Making it clear, right?
Making it very clear, yeah. B is boundary, so it's like what... What are my boundaries right now? What do I feel? And that can change in five minutes. It could change in ten minutes. So that's your boundaries. D is desires. What do I want? And you go back and forth and you're sharing those things. What do I want in this situation and today right now? S is if you're going to have maybe a deeper intimate connection with somebody. S is sexual health. And then M is meaning. What does this mean in this moment right now for me? Sometimes they add an A to it, which is aftercare. Let's say you would have some type of... intimate experience and you know what do you need afterwards and i think it's actually really helpful because you were able to understand and bring clarity around that connection and and i think what happens is you can there's been i've had some beautiful you know times when it's like this brings so much clarity and safety and i go back to the safety part like consent and everything it's like what feels safe and what feels not okay and how do you make sure that like everyone feels good about it or the you know the parties are involved feeling safe in that situation i like that thanks for developing on that too yes of course
So we're getting to the end of that episode. If you were to wrap it up like your own perspective on what healthy masculinity means to you, after everything we've been discussing, or maybe there's something that you want to add, and that's totally the moment as well. How would you describe, once again, not give a definition that anybody else should follow or anything, but... Your definition for you of healthy masculinity in the sense that the kind of masculinity that you want to keep pursuing for yourself, what would it be like?
Yeah, so I think for me it comes down to being full of integrity. So what feels integritous in your own life and how do you live your life aligned with it where what you say and what you think and what you do are all aligned. So that's the first thing. The second thing is how do you make other people feel? Do you make them feel safe? Do you help them feel maybe inspired or they feel like they're able to feel more uplifted around you? I think that's a beautiful expression of masculinity. And then how do you, do you have strong boundaries? Do you clearly define those boundaries for yourself? And how do you make sure that you uphold and respect the boundaries that are, you know, shared with you as well? Because I think that's really important. And then also, you know, is there an understanding and a feeling and experience of abundance? And I'm not saying like monetary, like, oh, like we're all wealthy if we walk into this. I'm talking about more so a feeling of abundance and expansion. And I think expansion and that container can create. a lot of beauty and creativity and all these things when you're walking that. And so for me, those are really, really beautiful elements. And then also we, as like our male anatomy, so like our, however you identify as a male, we create a lot of, we create seed or life. You know, that's a part of our, you know, a beautiful gift that we can, you know. bring that gift to the the creation of a human if we if we so choose and and i think that is so powerful and i think for me taking great care and honor with an understanding what that is and that's for me it's just part of healthy masculinity is connecting to the and we didn't talk much about the sexual part of of masculinity but it's honoring that part of us too it's Being very understanding, having a deeper understanding and relationship with that. It's our sexuality, our feelings, our emotions, and our strength, and the different parts of us. And aligning to that and being able to be integrative across the board and being clear with all those things.
And I would add to the list our behaviors. Like being internally aligned all the way to outside of ourselves and what do we do. Subtitles by the Amara.org community about it, and then behaviors. I feel like if we align what we feel, what we think, all the respect that we put into our own boundaries, the other person's boundaries and everything, and then it's kind of a guide for us for a healthy relationship, whatever it is, intimate or... even as you said friend or communication and so on so yeah i will add behavior to that wonderful list that you just draw yes i think that that's a really good image right and for you what what do you feel wrapping this up is your expression or understanding of healthy masculine well this discussion made me think a lot once again just like every time we we have conversation together and Back to, it made me think about yoga and yoga as being one with myself. And so back to what we were talking about at the very beginning of that podcast, putting consciousness on all the different parts of who I am, trying to put light and consciousness on the different parts of who I am. It is linked to putting light and consciousness about my path, my... journey as a human in this life at least to uh to know more about uh how I have been influenced directly or indirectly, I mean consciously or unconsciously, through the work with the therapist that you mentioned earlier, to make sure that I become entire or entirely one with myself. Like with all the shiny parts and all the shadow parts. And so to kind of be okay with who I am, with what I heard, with what I saw. all along my lifetime to be able to like make a strong choice for myself and for the kind of relationships that i want to develop with you know with friends new friends new persons that i that i meet in my life with a partner potential partner and even you know we talked a lot about new meeting new people but even transforming the the actual relationship that i already have Like the relationship that I have with the members of my family, the relationship that I have with my current friends that I've had for years maybe. Even to the point that it might transform also the relationship that I have with past relationships. You know, resentment and everything with exes or stuff. And so for me healthy masculinity is, yeah, kind of gathering together all this information. past and present to become entirely one with yourself and making sure just like you said that you are your behaviors and your intentions are well well aligned with uh what you feel what you know what you want what are your desires are uh and yeah being able to yeah to to act uh accordingly yeah that will bring way less violence i guess than what i've heard uh on my path yeah i like that amazing thank you for sharing thank you very much for sharing all that is there anything that you would like to add on i don't think so i think this was beautiful conversation about something that i'm grateful to be exploring and understanding more and i
feel like i'm just starting to scratch the surface of understanding it a bit better and so i'm grateful to have been talking about this with you and exploring more together. It's unraveled some interesting things for myself, even in this conversation.
Oh yeah. This podcast is going to be a guide for ourselves. So we're going to listen to it again and again and again. Thank you very much for that. Can we hug to finish up? Of course. Did you just hear that? That was actually the sound of our two hearts beating together while we were hugging. Isn't this incredible? There was no way I would cut it off from the editing. You should have seen Daniel's face when I had him listen to it. Okay, thank you for listening this episode till its very end. Thank you for how you'll show your appreciation about it through the stars and comments that you'll leave on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Once again, if you want to join the Permahuman community and access more inspirational episodes, but also relaxing content like meditation, easy yoga sessions, blog articles, and more, just click on the link below in the episode's description. I wish you have a great day or evening and happy to meet up again with you soon. Bye.
Description
What's your masculine model ? What "healthy masculinity" refers to for you ?
Have you even thought about it before ?
More than trying to define what "healthy masculinity" is, or claiming what it should or shouldn't be, Daniel and I are sharing here our own perspective on what this term refer to for both of us.
Join the Permahuman community here for more inspirational episode and relaxing content.
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Transcription
A lot of stuff in my life has been impacted by an unhealthy relationship with a masculine. And whether it's with father figures or people in power or friends that I was close to and lost relationship with, my intention was to actually understand a little bit more about the divine masculine. What does this mean for me?
Welcome to Permahuman. Inspirational content about wellness and productivity, powered by nature. Human permaculture teaches us how to rewire the connection we have with our own self, with our relationships, and with the overall living world. The first step consists in growing self-awareness, questioning our personal ecology through sleep and stress management, nutrition balance, mental health, and overall personal organization. The second layer highlights our interpersonal skills and our capacity to switch to positive communication and overall mutually beneficial relationships. Then comes sustainability, our ultimate ability to build up projects that make us thrive while having a positive impact on the environment. Feel inspired by those topics? Well, take a comfortable seat and I wish you to fully embrace this episode. Find out more about the Permahuman project by joining our community through the link in this episode's description. Okay, let's dive in, man. Hi, Daniel.
Hello, hello.
Welcome. Thank you very much for being here for this. This is my first podcast episode in English, so I'm a little stressed out. thank you for being here deciding to do this in english yeah thank you very much for that um so what's your internal forecast how do you feel being here and now what brings you here yeah
so what brings me here right now is this wonderful conversation with you um currently in the sunny place of madeira which is nice and you hot and internally I'm feeling very good very at peace for with all the things a lot of things have been happening for me the last this last year for sure but
I feel very uh at peace internally so cool yeah how about you how about your internal forecast um yeah you just mentioned the external forecast in Madeira now that is the Sunny and hot and That's pretty much what I feel too. I feel grateful too for you to come here, take this time. And grateful for you, grateful for me and grateful for the topic. Because this is a topic that is important for both of us. And we figured this out together while talking about it and opening ourselves to it. And I'm very happy. About the idea that we might be sharing a bit of this with the rest of the world through that podcast. So yeah, this is the energy that I'm coming up here with.
Amazing.
Thank you. So as an introduction of the topic, a little, let's say, outline of the topics that I would like us to cover today on masculinity. So we hear a lot about, I mean, many contents on masculinity. whether toxic masculinity, healthy masculinity, what is even masculinity. And the objective of this episode is not to give any kind of universal definition of what masculine is or should be, but it's more a personal perspective that we already talked about, and our own perspective on masculinity, the struggles that men or us, you and me as men, or identified as male persons, might have gone through, through our history, our own path, solutions that we found, resources that we tapped into, internal resources, external resources, to try to figure out what kind of masculinity we want to develop for ourselves and for the rest of the world. Yeah, so that's the main outline of the... what I want to discuss with you today. But as I want to co-construct this introduction in this podcast, what is your own perspective on the topic and how, what kind of angle are you interested in taking?
Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like I for so so much of my life I feel like I really this wasn't something that I was able to explore because I don't think I was able to because I had so much other stuff that I was dealing with patterns and inner healing stuff that I needed to deal with and also just like avoiding anything that was uncomfortable so I think that for most of my life because I I really avoided a lot of the uncomfortable things This probably was something that I felt discomfort with, but I didn't really know how to approach it. So, you know, growing up, I grew up in a pretty broken family where, you know, my mom had three children with my dad and then they divorced when I was super young. And then she remarried to my stepdad. And there wasn't a lot of... stability and there also wasn't a lot of examples that I felt like I was able to see. And so I think for me, when I experienced growing up, I didn't have somebody be like, oh, this is what I want to be like, or this is how I want to be like. Am I, as I get older, like I had no type of like person that I could feel like I could say like, this is, this is what masculinity. is, and I really, this wasn't a concept for me as I was younger.
Until when?
I think most of what I heard in my life, and I'm sure it is the same for you, is toxic masculinity. I heard a lot about toxic masculinity. I heard eventually as I got older, especially in different parts of, like, I lived in Toronto for a while and some very liberal places, a lot of people talk about the patriarchy. And so I think for me, my perspective on masculinity was very negative. So it was like, oh, like toxic masculinity is really bad, which we would agree it is. And then the patriarchy is also this terrible thing. And it was all kind of like, I felt like put together in this, like, all of this is bad. And there was never really a conversation around, well, what's good? And so until I actually got to the point where, as of late, I've been diving into my own relationship with masculinity, which... began when I was in Peru and I had a plant medicine ceremony and my intention was to actually understand a little bit more about the divine masculine like what does this mean for me and When I asked that question it was kind of something I never had asked before and I never explored and that brought me through this journey, especially the last several months of unraveling how much A lot of stuff in my life has been impacted by an unhealthy relationship with a masculine. And whether it's with father figures or people in power or friends that I was close to and lost relationship with and so on and so forth, me learning the hard way of what maybe a healthy masculine isn't and then now starting to kind of heal that. and now have better relationships with other men in my life and understanding what does this look like to step into a healthier place for me. And I think it's different for everyone. For me, when I understand masculinity, I, and of course, it's not the definition, but for me, it's really being true to myself and being strong in who I am and being really, really happy about my inner self and also expressing myself, you know. in a real and honest way. And so, yeah, I think like in the end, those are the elements that feel really resonant with that for me. And it's also me learning every day. Like, for example, I did a bachata class a few weeks ago. And this was something that was completely new for me. I'd never done a bachata class. And you essentially have to be a container and you have to hold this container as the leader. And I would see bachata as like leader. follower and usually the man is leading and women is following but like obviously you can interchange that for the man to or the leader you you hold this container and you're leading and you have to really hold it it's for that other person to know what's going on and also has to be strong but also open and I feel like it's such a good reflection I'm starting to see these these different patterns of like okay that's something to take and maybe understand a little bit more about what I feel like the masculine can be outside of like and if you're really rigid or if you're too like you don't have any any control or you don't have any you know freedom and openness then then that really constricts the other person and so how does that reflect in in the you know experience of understanding the masculine better for me i think that helps me understand it more so how about you like what what are you like how have you experienced the masculine and what has that been like for you
Thank you for that. Well, I was still in that bachata class with you right now. I'm going to answer the question. Thank you for that. So masculinity today in the way that you see it, I heard the words strength, like being strong for yourself and for the other person and other persons. Like strongly holding a space of freedom and of of relationship with somebody else in a healthy way, meaning that it takes some strength to be ourselves while being in connection with somebody else and giving the opportunity for the relationship to freely happen somehow. I don't know, that's what I heard from that end. Yeah, and so I also took a bachata class, it wasn't the same as yours because I'm a very beginner, but For the first time, I remember the teacher telling us to, like, as I was the leader, and as you said, essentially, I mean, culturally, I guess, men lead in bachata, but it can be the other way around, but in that case, I was the leader, and I was the man dancing with the woman. And the simple fact, back to patriarchy that you mentioned earlier, the simple fact of leading slash controlling, The woman in her own movements, in the directions that she had to take because I led her into those directions. I felt so bad about it. It wasn't good for me because I was like, okay, what space for freedom does she have right now? I'm leading her to the left, but what if she wants to go to the right? And what if she wants to... to do this movement instead of the movement that I'm trying to guide her through. So maybe guiding, I like that word more than leading. But yeah, back to your question, my own perspective on masculinity. I grew up in what I can say, broken family too. I didn't know the term. My parents got divorced when I was young as well, maybe five or six or something. And all I can remember of the relationship, especially from my father's side, because we talked about having role models and exemplary, I saw a lot of violence. I saw a lot of violence, mainly in the words, in the communication, or non-communication. What I happen to understand as being non-communication or wrong communication. very violent. And so the way I grew up with that, personally, from a very young age, I always saw my father as a man, a type of man that I didn't want to become. That's rough. That's interesting. But at the same time, yeah, it's, you know, it doesn't feel very loyal to him, but it's... That's the thing. And that's, I think, a kind of a protection that I kind of developed for myself to grow up healthy, I guess. And I gave myself the opportunity to connect with other male, identified as male persons, you know, grown-ups, adults, that I would like to look like more. you know people who could have values that would resonate inside of me that would act a certain way talk a certain way relate a certain way yeah so just like you i grew up with this topic of masculinity not even being a topic and when you mention toxic masculinity for most of my lifetime i didn't make until very shortly I didn't make the difference between masculinity and toxic masculinity.
You kind of like mashed them up together. It was kind of like the same thing.
Yeah, exactly. Because the masculinity that I've seen all along my life, a lot of it was toxic masculinity, whether between my own parents, whether between uncles and grandfathers and family, extended family and everything. So... I just like you and never really had a role model of what healthy masculinity is. And so I guess that's pretty much what we are going to build up together today. Once again, for us, you know, we are not here to say or to design what healthy masculinity is. We are just two men reflecting on their own path and connection with masculinity. So you started with what is healthy masculinity for you. Can you develop more on that?
like yeah yeah so i think when i talked about the plant medicine ceremony with a plant medicine called fochuma and i asked to experience what the divine masculine is and this is my own experience like you said so i experienced this feeling of this it was like a grandpa energy that was like super warm and loving and keep in mind like i don't i never really experienced this type of experience with any like familial father, grandfather type of experience just because it wasn't something that I had in my life. And so I felt like this beautiful, warm, loving, just like kind, but strong, safe, and secure energy. And it was very, very clear in this experience that this also included, there's this verse in the Bible. Some people, you know, like I used to, when I was a child, we went to church and I would sing these church songs. And one of the songs that literally came up in the ceremony was the verse that people read a lot of times during weddings. So, love is patient, love is kind, as everything does not boast, etc., etc. And if you read through these, the second half of these terms about love are very interesting. Because the first half is very like, love is kind and patient. etc, etc. But then the second half is it always protects, it always trusts, it always perseveres, it does not delight in evil, it keeps no record of wrongs. And it really centers around what I would say is a little bit more connected to the, what I would say, masculine love and masculine energy. And I think when in my life, in terms of a lot of the healing work and stuff that I've gotten deeper into my own spirituality, A lot of stuff points back to love, and I think anything is connected, whether it's masculine, feminine, or whatever it is, goes kind of connected to love. And so for me, that is what I found. Like, that was kind of the first one. I was like, oh, that makes a lot of sense. And then that feeling that I had of the safety and the strength, a lot of that stuff felt really resonant. And then I think that gave me a picture of what I could see and look for in people in my life. If I was around another person and if I felt this, then I could be like, okay, I recognize this. And I can start to understand and feel into, okay, this person has some of these elements that I feel like it could resonate with because now I can recognize it. And so that for me has been very important. I think one of the things on the list is deep integrity and honesty and really clarity around that. Because for me, I saw... In my childhood, I saw words that were spoken about like, okay, I should do this or do this or do this by parent figures, especially father figures, and then they would do the opposite. Their actions were completely opposite. And so I learned as a child that words were different than actions, and so that created a misaligned integrity. So most of my life, whether it's small lies or things that I did, I... I didn't have a clear understanding and sense of integrity. And so up until, you know, like I think this is something I've been having to learn, and that's a big part for me of healthy masculine. Let's say if I say I'm going to do something, can I do it? Or if I feel very clear about something, can be honest and share it and then follow through with it? Or if, you know, like can somebody trust me? You know, can I be a safe person that somebody can be around? All of those things I think would... I would say there's something beautiful about being in that and embodying that. And so those are some of the things that I feel are what I connect to when I think about a healthy masculine experience for me. Yeah,
and it gets back to the container that you mentioned earlier about the bachata dance. They call it container, containing a safe space. For me and somebody else to be, to grow. So integrity, protection. Yeah, those are the beautiful aspects of what masculinity can drive for ourselves and into the relationship. Yeah,
and I think it's interesting because whether it's just you yourself, we all have masculine and feminine. But if I'm looking at a relationship, for example, and I'm in a heterosexual relationship and my partner is a woman, then I have this experience where I can hold as this container, as you know, that strong feminine energy of holding container that's flexible. And a lot of times as a feminine, there's a lot more emotion, waves, intensity, ups and downs. It's beautiful, it's fierce, it's also gentle at times. But being able to hold that and be a container for that and see the beauty in all that is really beautiful. And it's not just romantic, it can be friendships and all these things. But I think that that's something that... I started to see a better picture of because if we're able to do this and if we're not super rigid and we're not like oh like there's so much like if we give it gives more freedom and creativity and flowiness and we need that we need strength and we need stability we also need flow and need creativity and if we have this all together and this harmony then
I think that's when there's so much beauty that can be created it's very beautiful because back to what you just said about Finding to me a healthy masculinity is a, so we often refer energetically speaking to the yang energy as being the masculine energy and so the yin energy being the feminine. And as you said, we all have both inside of us. And to me, healthy masculinity for ourselves and for the rest of the world and relationships and everything is a masculine that actually finds and meets. It's Yin part as well, which would mean, related to what you just said, as a male identified person, the question of meeting our own emotions, which is huge in everything that I hear on masculinity today. So, you know, meeting, finding, feeling our own emotions and being fine with it, being OK with the fact that they are here. and they are here just because we are a person whether male female or non-binary person so just because we're human we have emotions and this yin part that you mentioned about being more about flexibility and ups and downs and movement you know all around um it it's very interesting to me healthy masculinity is a masculinity that kind of finds its feminine part but within myself, you know, not something that I'm trying to get from somebody else, even though many people can be very inspirational for me. And you are, you, Daniel, here, very inspirational for me. But I was more thinking about, yeah, I mean, I'm inspired by your yin, actually, your yin energy, as a, you know, person identified as a male. Yeah, I, that's one of the things that I was very, in French, we say we were touched. by this but I was touched by your this ability to meet and then very quickly share with me you know your path and your the different methods and experience that you've had to get the heck out of this toxic masculinity that you finally recognized at a certain age and that you wanted to get out of but nobody ever told you or asked you to do so like you did it because you wanted to do that you wanted to improve for yourself um and yeah thank you very much for having to share all that to me it made me feel even more confident to share with you about my own you know intimacy and path and stuff and so i felt like back to what we just said i felt like we we were meeting with our masculine and feminine inside of each other like you were meeting your own your both energy i was meeting mine so i like that um and yeah one more thing on that i think what i learned growing up and most of my life is feelings are
inherently bad as as a a boy growing up with a child when i when i was crying that was bad when i was angry that was bad All of these things, you have to start to learn how to disconnect from these feelings that are actually super healthy to have. And I think that's been a big part of the masculine journey too. How do we reconnect to our feelings? How do I reconnect to these feelings? Even anger. Like the anger is a healthy, healthy emotion. It's just we look at this emotion as like this is bad or negative and this is good. Okay, I can be happy, but I can't be too happy. Yeah. You know? Please don't. Yeah.
Actually, please do. Please be.
I can be sad, kind of. But if I get too sad from crying, that's not good.
That's inappropriate.
No, no. And so I think that's something I've been learning and processing is, you know, feeling in connection to my feelings and knowing how to hold them myself and feel into them and know, okay, today, like, I'm feeling sad right now. Okay, that's okay. And being there instead of what happens a lot of times, I think, with people is people feel a feeling. I will say from my own experience, I felt a feeling. And I did something to disconnect myself from that, to distract myself, whether it was through different ways of numbing that or whatever it is. And so that is…
And this is so easy to do today. Very easy.
So easy.
To find distraction or to blame somebody for the anger that I am feeling right now. Yeah. Like it's very different to say I am angry versus you made me angry. So yeah, it's all about taking back. Our own responsibility for the emotion that we feel inside of us.
Yeah. And then understanding and identifying there might be reasons why I'm feeling this way. And sometimes it's just, I feel this and that's okay. Maybe the moon is full and I feel more and more sad today.
There's nobody to blame for that. Yes. Cool. Do you want to share with me and with us your own... I mean tools and methods, you already talked about plant medicine ceremony in Peru. Like I figured that you and we on our path towards some kind of healthy masculinity, we kind of built up our own role model for that. So we were seeking for information and exemplarity and lectures, resources to blossom. the masculinity that we want for us um so can you share uh some resources that you uh that you met so internal resources that you tapped into you talked a lot about you know reconnecting with your emotions and feelings and be okay with that um but also external resources like i know you've done some retreats and people that you met discussions that you had yeah that you read yeah many many things so there's there's a
Man, there's so many things. So yeah, I definitely feel like it's this holistic approach of therapy. I think a lot of men could go to therapy. Go to therapy.
Go to therapy. Go to therapy.
And I think that helped me a lot in connecting to my feelings and looking at the trauma and cycles and stuff like this. I think when I worked with some different plant medicines, including What's Your Mercy and Pedro, that uncovered a lot of things for me and patterns that have helped me kind of get up. clear picture of what masculinity, healthy masculinity could look like. And then I have a group of six other guys that we connect with every other week. And we talk and connect and we share what's going on with us. We're going deeper into our struggles and our hopes and our dreams and et cetera, et cetera. And so that's something that's really helped me and going and connecting with other men, because what I find is... In my experience, in my personal experience, I ended up gravitating towards more women. So like I would like have emotional connections with whether it's a partner, like a relationship, or I would just find emotional connections and trust because I would feel safer in those. So yeah, like connections with more, I guess, men in my life that I've really been able to build connections and friendships with. Like us connecting and being able to go deeper into our kind of like just... friendship. And then there's a book called King. warrior, magician, lover. And it's actually, there's probably just like any book, there's going to be stuff that you're going to want to throw away, but there's a lot of really interesting insights in it in terms of looking at historical information and talking about the patriarchy and toxic masculinity and where the archetypes of some maybe more of a healthy masculine could be and how we can emulate that in our lives. And so that was extremely helpful for me. And it's been. really helpful for me as a bit of a resource. And I think also in different places, I've been to some different retreats and finding retreats that are reputable and have been able to support men in learning how to connect more to themselves. In the past, I feel like there's a lot of resources for women, especially in, let's say, spiritual communities. And so there are more and more stuff. And I think more people, more... people are coming to connect with themselves and like there are more resources for other other guys but i think this is going to continue to grow so there's going to be stuff out there that i think is really helpful for for you to do maybe like a week retreat or something that you can dive deeper into this yeah
especially with people you don't know so it's easier to to not being afraid of the you know the people looking at you judging you and so that can be once again a safe spot where you can find yourself or where you can give yourself permission to be yourself uh even in the struggle that it is to go to such places because it can it can be you know terrifying sometimes to go to um to places like that but yeah yeah and
i also did i did this eight week group i i would call it a course but it wasn't really a course it was just live weekly calls with this this guy and I don't think it matters who he is, but the name of it was Emotional Mastery, and it was with about 15 other men. And we would go through pretty much two-hour time. People would share things, and then you would be connected with each other over those eight weeks, answering questions and supporting each other. And that was extremely helpful for me, and I think more of those type of resources are out there. So it's just looking for them and looking to see what can be discovered. I think there's a guy on Instagram called...
it's called man talks man talks man m-a-n-t-a-l-k-s and he has a lot of resources i i would highly recommend checking that out and it's very interesting thank you very much for for sharing this because you know back to um the difficulty that men can experience into taking the step towards those uh on-site retreat like uh getting to meet other men getting to open up uh you know in front of everyone and stuff uh that's what online courses and programs and stuff. That's the good thing about it. You can relate to some kind of community. You mentioned 15 men walking together on their path of finding answers to their questions or even getting access to all the questions that I did at the beginning of the walk together. So with this sense of trust, this sense of brotherhood, this sense of of confidence that we can grow collectively and that is going to nourish our own confidence into exploring our masculinity in in a different way than we that we did before because
we didn't have any any education on anything but what we saw like yeah yeah and we all i think a lot of times what happens is a lot of men even like myself in the past and i know people that I've been close to and I'm close to have found themselves pretty isolated, especially if they go in a relationship with somebody that's kind of their life. And then you find yourself isolated and you feel like you have no support. There's nobody there that can help you. And that can create a lot of issues. And so I find that the best thing to do is be intentional as much as you can. And there's people, it's wild. When you go into some of these groups, you're like, wow, all of these other men are experiencing the same issues that I am. And, you know, you feel like you're alone, but then you realize you're not. And there's so many things that people are going through that are similar. And it's really helpful to have that support and understand that you're not alone.
Nice, nice, nice. I'd like us to talk about touch. The way we give ourselves permission to think about and experience touch in something that doesn't have to be sexual or sexualized. I know that's a topic that we discussed a lot and we like to hug a lot.
well it's more cultural for you guys in the u.s to hug more than we we do in europe but still yeah so i think it's it is true that hugs are fairly normal in the us but touch yeah so much in terms of like being touch touchy or connecting like skin to skin if and i think what your hand yeah like even like if i held your hand for like five seconds that would be a little bizarre for some people For many people, especially many men.
Most of them.
For sure. And the thing that I've been learning, I went to this community, it's called The Garden, and it's a really beautiful place. And there is a lot more that is centered around openness and connection, embodiment, all these things. And touch is definitely something there where you're learning how to, first off, our bodies release a lot of oxytocin. serotonin and dopamine. It's a very, very beautiful thing for us to actually feel human touch. But what people's minds, you're really conditioned to think, if I'm touching this person, then I have this, I'm interested in them, they're interested in me, blah, blah, blah. But once you start to learn in some safe spaces about how to connect with people, through touch which actually can be very very beautiful and very special and it's not a central thing where it's it's really like i have a platonic connection with this person and it's really nice and maybe you of course express your boundaries and knowing that it's okay is this okay yeah
you just touch somebody who wants to be exactly for sure you want to make sure
Yeah, yeah. It's not okay. Like,
okay, well, that's not okay.
Yeah, consent. Consent is so important.
Consent, yeah. It might be okay in five minutes, but just let me, okay, yeah, land first.
Exactly. And so a place like this, there's a lot happening. So that's a culture where, you know, somebody comes in, they might not be comfortable initially just because it's not something they're used to. And eventually they're like, you see them like a week later and they're all, you know, touching everybody and connecting. It's beautiful. Yeah. But like for me. I think learning how to feel really comfortable with, wow, this is great. I have my hand over your shoulder, and we're connected, and this is beautiful.
And knowing— And I feel your presence here with me, Satan's presence.
Yeah. It's a beautiful—it's really—I think it's not only healing but grounding, and it feels connecting, and there's so many beautiful things about it. And I think it is something that— is not the easiest thing for many guys because it's like, oh God, what are they, like people are gonna think like I'm interested in this other guy or something and it's funny because like it's definitely doesn't, we could just connect like it's not that big of a deal. And for me I think the thing that I've realized is the more I am learning about myself and healing and the masculine stuff and all these other things, The more I care less about what other people think about me. So like being able to be okay with this and be really happy in this and not be worrying about X person who's like, oh gosh, what are they doing? I don't care really. I really don't, I don't really care at all. It's really, I'm here and present in my body and this is what I'm doing.
Who you are and yeah, who you're becoming or. Yeah. Yeah.
And that's a beautiful thing when you start to, start to go into discomfort and then it becomes comfortable. then you're able to embody more of who you are. And that's something that's actually really helpful for me is like, I think it's a practice in learning what are you not used to? Like I didn't grow up with touch in my family. We weren't touchy because it wasn't safe, A, in terms of that, and B, it was very just not touchy and there wasn't a lot of nurturing.
Yeah, and there were a lot of the influence of church and everything, right?
Yeah, for sure, for sure. And so... It's funny, like you'd think like a place, so like let's love each other, but love didn't equal like that type of thing, which is bizarre. So I had to learn what does this look like for me and how do I get out of my discomfort zone? And then once you start to have that, then you feel comfortable. And not everyone's going to want to be like, you know, get like a back rub or something. I would take a back rub any day. But I think... That's something that has been really nice for me and it's been it's opened up a part of me where it's like this is a beautiful thing and it's part of my human experience and I and I think a lot of humans would really enjoy that.
Yeah, and it's part of us being human, back to what you talked about, the hormones and neurotransmitters, oxytocin, we need that. Like, there are, you know, scientific evidence that show that, especially the kids, that oxytocin is very related to growth hormones. And so the babies and kids need oxytocin to develop well, I mean, in health and everything. So it would be crazy to think that as adults, this is something that we don't need anymore because we you know i guess we won't grow anymore but uh definitely something it's part of you know those happiness hormones and everything so yeah we you know when i hear you i feel that uh developing some kind of healthy masculinity for ourselves and for myself i'm going to talk from my own space um has to go through um Finding my own, what I call, ecological relationship with touch, with me, like, you know, discovering the self-sensation that I can have when I touch my arm and my hair and the sensation with my own body, the sensation with another guy or friends or even family and everything. And so it's all about, to me, part of developing. a sense of healthy masculinity goes through questioning the relationship to touch, which is going to help in relationships as well. Because when you put consciousness on touch, there are some parts of other people that you just won't touch. Like, I'll be happy to hug you. I'll be happy to have, just as you said, my arm around your shoulder and staying here and maybe, you know, yeah, because it feels great. But of course, there are parts that I'm not going to touch. And it's, yeah, you set healthy boundaries for any kind of relationships with yourself and with anyone else. So that's interesting. Back to that. Back to, I mean, on this topic of relationships, I love this acronym that you shared with me the other day on setting kind of a consent space. Maybe that's how we build up this safe space that you mentioned earlier. Um, What is it? Like B, S, R? Can you tell us more about this? So that's... You didn't know where I was leading to.
So yeah, this is helpful in... I learned this in a boundaries and desires workshop. And it's helpful usually, I would say, especially if you're in some type of romantic situation where you are... Maybe you kiss somebody and it was great. But you need to understand a little bit more and clarify some things. And I think what happens a lot of times in these situations, and we're going from the platonic touch to maybe a little bit more of a romantic thing. Yeah,
but how do we get there?
That's the whole story. Yeah, and so I think there's a lot of communication that usually you would need to have with somebody, right? But when you get to a certain point when there is... A clear, obviously, consent on both sides. And then maybe you kiss or something. Then there's this thing called R-B-D-S-M. So R is relationship, so talking about where are you at, what's your situation. You could be, you know, I have two lovers in the south of France and blah blah blah, whatever it is. Or I'm single or I, you know, open relationship, all of the above, whatever it is.
Making it clear, right?
Making it very clear, yeah. B is boundary, so it's like what... What are my boundaries right now? What do I feel? And that can change in five minutes. It could change in ten minutes. So that's your boundaries. D is desires. What do I want? And you go back and forth and you're sharing those things. What do I want in this situation and today right now? S is if you're going to have maybe a deeper intimate connection with somebody. S is sexual health. And then M is meaning. What does this mean in this moment right now for me? Sometimes they add an A to it, which is aftercare. Let's say you would have some type of... intimate experience and you know what do you need afterwards and i think it's actually really helpful because you were able to understand and bring clarity around that connection and and i think what happens is you can there's been i've had some beautiful you know times when it's like this brings so much clarity and safety and i go back to the safety part like consent and everything it's like what feels safe and what feels not okay and how do you make sure that like everyone feels good about it or the you know the parties are involved feeling safe in that situation i like that thanks for developing on that too yes of course
So we're getting to the end of that episode. If you were to wrap it up like your own perspective on what healthy masculinity means to you, after everything we've been discussing, or maybe there's something that you want to add, and that's totally the moment as well. How would you describe, once again, not give a definition that anybody else should follow or anything, but... Your definition for you of healthy masculinity in the sense that the kind of masculinity that you want to keep pursuing for yourself, what would it be like?
Yeah, so I think for me it comes down to being full of integrity. So what feels integritous in your own life and how do you live your life aligned with it where what you say and what you think and what you do are all aligned. So that's the first thing. The second thing is how do you make other people feel? Do you make them feel safe? Do you help them feel maybe inspired or they feel like they're able to feel more uplifted around you? I think that's a beautiful expression of masculinity. And then how do you, do you have strong boundaries? Do you clearly define those boundaries for yourself? And how do you make sure that you uphold and respect the boundaries that are, you know, shared with you as well? Because I think that's really important. And then also, you know, is there an understanding and a feeling and experience of abundance? And I'm not saying like monetary, like, oh, like we're all wealthy if we walk into this. I'm talking about more so a feeling of abundance and expansion. And I think expansion and that container can create. a lot of beauty and creativity and all these things when you're walking that. And so for me, those are really, really beautiful elements. And then also we, as like our male anatomy, so like our, however you identify as a male, we create a lot of, we create seed or life. You know, that's a part of our, you know, a beautiful gift that we can, you know. bring that gift to the the creation of a human if we if we so choose and and i think that is so powerful and i think for me taking great care and honor with an understanding what that is and that's for me it's just part of healthy masculinity is connecting to the and we didn't talk much about the sexual part of of masculinity but it's honoring that part of us too it's Being very understanding, having a deeper understanding and relationship with that. It's our sexuality, our feelings, our emotions, and our strength, and the different parts of us. And aligning to that and being able to be integrative across the board and being clear with all those things.
And I would add to the list our behaviors. Like being internally aligned all the way to outside of ourselves and what do we do. Subtitles by the Amara.org community about it, and then behaviors. I feel like if we align what we feel, what we think, all the respect that we put into our own boundaries, the other person's boundaries and everything, and then it's kind of a guide for us for a healthy relationship, whatever it is, intimate or... even as you said friend or communication and so on so yeah i will add behavior to that wonderful list that you just draw yes i think that that's a really good image right and for you what what do you feel wrapping this up is your expression or understanding of healthy masculine well this discussion made me think a lot once again just like every time we we have conversation together and Back to, it made me think about yoga and yoga as being one with myself. And so back to what we were talking about at the very beginning of that podcast, putting consciousness on all the different parts of who I am, trying to put light and consciousness on the different parts of who I am. It is linked to putting light and consciousness about my path, my... journey as a human in this life at least to uh to know more about uh how I have been influenced directly or indirectly, I mean consciously or unconsciously, through the work with the therapist that you mentioned earlier, to make sure that I become entire or entirely one with myself. Like with all the shiny parts and all the shadow parts. And so to kind of be okay with who I am, with what I heard, with what I saw. all along my lifetime to be able to like make a strong choice for myself and for the kind of relationships that i want to develop with you know with friends new friends new persons that i that i meet in my life with a partner potential partner and even you know we talked a lot about new meeting new people but even transforming the the actual relationship that i already have Like the relationship that I have with the members of my family, the relationship that I have with my current friends that I've had for years maybe. Even to the point that it might transform also the relationship that I have with past relationships. You know, resentment and everything with exes or stuff. And so for me healthy masculinity is, yeah, kind of gathering together all this information. past and present to become entirely one with yourself and making sure just like you said that you are your behaviors and your intentions are well well aligned with uh what you feel what you know what you want what are your desires are uh and yeah being able to yeah to to act uh accordingly yeah that will bring way less violence i guess than what i've heard uh on my path yeah i like that amazing thank you for sharing thank you very much for sharing all that is there anything that you would like to add on i don't think so i think this was beautiful conversation about something that i'm grateful to be exploring and understanding more and i
feel like i'm just starting to scratch the surface of understanding it a bit better and so i'm grateful to have been talking about this with you and exploring more together. It's unraveled some interesting things for myself, even in this conversation.
Oh yeah. This podcast is going to be a guide for ourselves. So we're going to listen to it again and again and again. Thank you very much for that. Can we hug to finish up? Of course. Did you just hear that? That was actually the sound of our two hearts beating together while we were hugging. Isn't this incredible? There was no way I would cut it off from the editing. You should have seen Daniel's face when I had him listen to it. Okay, thank you for listening this episode till its very end. Thank you for how you'll show your appreciation about it through the stars and comments that you'll leave on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Once again, if you want to join the Permahuman community and access more inspirational episodes, but also relaxing content like meditation, easy yoga sessions, blog articles, and more, just click on the link below in the episode's description. I wish you have a great day or evening and happy to meet up again with you soon. Bye.
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