Awakening the Wild Man Within - with Jeremy Schewe

If you're watching this on YouTube , you'll see that we are in my front yard in Asheville and you might hear some birds , you might hear some airplanes , you might hear some background noises and it's thematically on point for this episode , because I want to explore the wild man . But specifically , how do we integrate that into the modern world ?

And Jeremy has been leading wild man retreats in Asheville , for this is year 10 , I believe , right now , and it's powerful , powerful work , jeremy , welcome again . Anything you'd like to say up front ?

So I really hope we can reach out today to all those men and women who are also listening to this and hopefully provide them with some great cues into the dreaming of the wild man . Yeah , I would say the one thing I would leave with that is probably most important is like that wild man .

Really that archetype really helps to hone a sense of place and belonging in this world , and I think that that's probably one of the keys that we'll revisit throughout our conversation today really helps to hone a sense of place and belonging in this world , and I think that that's probably one of the keys that we'll revisit throughout our conversation today yeah , and

that's really something that's missing for a lot of people today too is this sense of belonging , this sense of connection , this sense of place and this sense of aliveness .

We have city noises , we have people who are just everywhere , advertising and distractions , and there's a lot that's pulling on our consciousness , there's a lot that's pulling on our awareness , and it takes actual dedication and practice to just be , number one , a functioning human I think so in a modern world but number two , like a thriving human that's connected to

our aliveness . So let's start off with what is this wild man ? Is it a person ? Is it an archetype ? Is it energy ? How does it ? If somebody were to ask you on the street , what's the wild man , jeremy , what would you say

?

Some people might refer to it as the green man in the irish we have called a fire when , yeah , the green , the green forest man , like the being who is an extension of of nature , and so typically that's what most people draw up images of when they think of the wild man .

For myself personally , the connection of the wild man is the falling of intuition , the falling of dreams , discerning between dreams that are entertainment dreams , dreams that are distraction dreams , dreams that are just me working out sexual frustrations or psychological frustrations , but true dreaming that helps to lead us on into a deeper relationship , not just with

ourselves but how that then becomes an expression in a healthy way with the environment around us .

Yes , yeah , and it's awesome and beautiful to hear that , because I think a lot of guys . So men's work is one thing that's sort of exploding all over the place right now , which is awesome . And so men's work is one thing that's sort of , you know , exploding all over the place right now , which is awesome . It's great . Like we need that .

We need places to gather outside of typical therapy offices , you know , and I think there's a lot of guys when they think of the wild man , they think , oh , it's just a bunch of dudes just like screaming and it , and it's amazing and powerful and liberating to experience that there's also this depth that you're talking about .

Because it's more of this quiet gentle bubbling up , it's a sense of we've already spoken to the belonging but just this really strong sense of peace and nourishment and that there's . There is this presence of life-giving energy ever present and that sometimes , yes , we need to raise the energy and beat our chests , and how .

I mean that's our ancestral and genetic memory of preparing to defend our people or to defend our turf , or to go out on the hunt and to get ourselves . Kind of like what you and I just did before we started this podcast . We're doing push-ups and jumping up and down and making noises and shaking our feet .

You know it's just like getting the energy and then we can settle back into the quiet .

experience of doing that by doing a lot of different embodiment type exercises and things that really got us in to our sensing body into our senses , into our felt aliveness and then from that place we went and we sat and almost everybody that did that got some really useful message for their life , whether that be their sexual relationship or their work or what

they're wanting to do with their time in general or something . Almost always some kind of information , if you want to call it , came through that experience and , yeah , it was potent and didn't plan to share that , but it just seemed appropriate based on what you just said .

and it's this whole exchange and we've gotten them to come within a couple of feet of us , which is so beautiful .

But to just lay there in the hammock last night and watching the twilight play on the underside of the white oak and the hickory and the poplar , and just feel that , that liminal space in my own mind that is able to soften when I let go of all the planning and logistics and structure and just soften into allowing the presence of nature to flow in and change

the expression of who I am , yeah , yeah , can you say for people listening who don't know what liminal space might mean , can you just say a couple words about that ?

There's an overlap , so the liminal zone , where it's almost aqueous or almost water , it's almost terrestrial , it's almost air , and so there's this whole zone where all these nutrients gather , and so it's sort of this space in between , and so that same utilization has been brought into consciousness and psychology in respect to it's this place where many worlds fold ,

or many wavelengths of our mental or spiritual process overlay , process overlay , and in that space in between , and what in also in ecology as well as in ancient greek , we call the eco tone , the eco tone where the music of many aspects of life come together yeah , so the it's this where things meet , but also it's that space where things meet kind of like

between consciousness and sleep .

.

I've heard a lot of people talking about archetypes , but I don't know that . I've heard somebody say this is actually here's the function of an archetype . What would you say to that ?

And so archetypes come from Freudian psychology or Jungian psychology , one of those two branches of early 1900s where we have an understanding , like we're riding out of the end of the romantic period , the end of the 19th century , where there was all of this evolution and understanding that was coming into the modern awareness , especially in the Western mind , of these

different ancient traditions , whether they were the Mayan glyphs that were being discovered at that time the hieroglyphs had been found in egypt and were , just around the year 1900 , were beginning to be able to be translated .

So there was this , all of a sudden , this whole understanding that there's these other world views where these , all these ancient gods , where we're not talking about a monotheistic society like we had were in the west , but a polytheistic .

And so the idea of the archetype is that , from a scientific or psychological perspective , our consciousness is connected to various aspects of these ancient deities , and then it separates it from a religious context and brings it into just a psychological context , which is why , around at the same time , like the Rider-Way deck , the Tarot deck was created , like all of

this evolution of human consciousness and understanding that there is more than one voice that can presence itself in terms of our inner council that guides us . And so the wild man is , of course , just one of those archetypes , a very important one , because it's our primordial root and it's our connection to the world .

It's our connection to our fellow men or to our partners , our lovers , yet at the same time , it is a part . So archetype is a aspect , a fractal of the divine .

I sometimes like to speak to it from the sense of light is pure when light waves hit a crystal , or a fraction , fractal or fracture in a crystal I mean all that works essentially gets us to the same place a broken surface that then the light breaks up into these different rays that we know as a rainbow .

We have all these different wavelengths and then these micro wavelengths that are in the overlap between , and each of those is part of the great light . However , it's very obviously red , like we can just it's like a fractal of the whole , so got it .

It's almost like it's a flavor of reality , like a flavor of consciousness that doesn't exist outside of us but like it exists within us and in the rest of the world and with some practice and some attunement we can actually enter that and become that . Does

that ?

And when we first started to sit down , I realized like I am way too much up in my head , I've got to move , I got to get into my body , and so when we were doing push-ups , I was also tuning into the energetic of that aliveness of the wild creature , like doing physical motion , while also and I didn't have to like scream , but I was just like like if I

were to slow it down , like that's what was happening internally for me and it was really helpful to then just land here and what you just went through there too , was a very important part of our species , natural heritage and history , a very important need when we prepared ourselves in prehistoric times , all the way up into the modern , to go on the hunt yeah

there's an energy change we have to go through in order to make that hunt successful .

We prepare the meat so that when we pack it back home it can be open and accepted .

was not part of the military , I've not been to war , but I imagine if we did have more of an honoring process around that we might have less occurrences of pts , ptsd and other types of post-war like challenges for people Like some of my friends are veterans and they've still yeah , they struggle with that whole realm of stuff , you know .

So that seems like an important piece and I've got a list of . I have an organized list of topics I wanted to go to , but I want to divert a little bit and I think that's part of following the aliveness of the conversation too , um , the whole stepping away to what is it recent or reground , rewild or then reintegrate .

I'm remembering a time where my partner and I uh , and she's up on the porch right now we were going into sexual intimacy together and there was something that just wasn't quite right . You know like if you're in long-term relationship , inevitably there are times when you just like shit happens , and sometimes it's about nothing or like a very small thing .

And so it came up then , remember , like some sort of bickering and I thought this sucks , like I don't want to do this right now . This is . But I also wanted to have the experience of intimacy . So I remembered oh , I can just take some space , this is probably about nothing .

And I went outdoors and I did a bunch of push-ups and I did jumping jacks and I growled and I just got in my body and I tried to , like , let out whatever needed to be let out and then access that part of myself that was just raw aliveness , and then stood there for a little bit , felt it and breathed with it and went back in and from that place of

grounding , from that place of aliveness , was able to , you could say , just seed the interaction with that energy .

crossing from one place to another , whether it's from the secular to the sacred , from the secular to the sexual . However , we are crossing a threshold from one way of engaging the world , one type of consciousness , into another . And again , in the modern age , we also were constantly , like you said earlier , like we're information sharing modern age , we also .

We're constantly , like you said earlier , like we're information sharing , we're jumping between mental portals that are completely existent online .

There's all these ways that we can just jump ship very rapidly , and so we have forgotten the importance of honoring when we cross over into another space , and I think that that's something that's really important , especially in respect to the wild man archetype . I had an experience You'll remember Ayla's mom and I years ago .

We lived up in Cincinnati for a while and I had a project out in British Columbia and there was this forest spirit that came to me . It was just like all these ancient cedars are being cut down like . Can you help us with this ? You ?

know I was like sure , and then all of a sudden , it was almost like there was this like slight spirit possession going on and it created this like really intense energy where I was just like , all of a sudden , I'm like I'm having a hard time being present in the business world and being present for what I had actually gone to British Columbia to do , which

was make a presentation on ecological restoration in the Southern Appalachian mountains , and so there was this like pool away from , like aligning with this ancient , ancient energy , which is really important , but for where I was engaged in my life in that moment that was not a particular aspect , a particular archetype , a particular aspect of the divine and embodiment of

the wild man that I could fully embody me . And that embodiment is for those who are with earth first and on the front line , for those who are willing to let go completely of the world and live out in the bush like , do it please . Some of us need to keep doing that , to hold , hold that anchor down .

And then some of us have to go through things like setting up electronics and changing mental structures , because that's just like when we were talking about earlier coming back to our community with the hunt , with everything that we've gathered .

We have to transition in order so that now this will actually feed the community and not be something that's destructive , like here you get to eat but I'm going to hit you over the side of the head because I'm pissed off inside at the same time . Like that doesn't work .

Is there a way you can speak to or evoke , wanting to bring in a felt sense of , because for some people this feels foreign , or like a foreign language you know .

complicated than they actually are Inputs , stresses , hurdles when we're constantly in motion hunter-gatherers , constantly in motion , pilgrim , walking across a sacred landscape , supported in that there is a way that our mind is able to quickly untangle things or very quickly understand when something is not . I'm the walker , I'm passing by something .

I could stop and help or I couldn't . It's either one or the other . There's not a complex like well , society tells me this or blah , blah , blah , blah , blah . I am going to either stop and help or I'm going to keep walking , like there are open doors , there's closed doors . We choose how we move through it .

So I think one of the things that a lot of us have been feeling a rise of and I'm speaking personally in this as well , but from what I hear from a lot of other men and women as well , is that , post COVID , there's been this like this rise of a sense of like physical anxiety inside the chest , inside the belly , like all of us to some extent feel that

because a couple of things happen . We had the opportunity to stop , pause and be like are we liking where we're going as a culture ? Are we liking where I am going as an individual ? How am I going to continue engaging with the world ?

And we had the opportunity to start resetting that in a cultural way that we just never have had , at least in our lifetimes . And so I feel that the most important thing that we can do when we start feeling those anxieties or those tensions , or just feeling like the modern world is just too much , is emulate what our ancestors do the go for a run .

I just did that yesterday . I went for a two and a half mile run because the , the that energy was building up so much , and I went for a run and there was just like uh , three hours to just complete internal silence . Like , yeah , run and there's just like three hours , just complete internal silence .

Like yeah , it's not spending two or three weeks walking on the camino or walking on some other uh , pilgrimage , or I'm not actually going on a on a boar hunt with you and a few other men out in the forest , but what I am doing is I'm getting into the place where my body's not holding these complex abstractions and entanglements of the mind , and I'm breathing

it out , I'm sweating it out yeah , putting it back into the earth . So that's a doing . A non-doing is to cyclical breathing , similar to like how you and I started , also this afternoon yeah , it's just taking a moment to just really connect and become present .

See if it works . Sleep is something that I used to struggle with a bunch , and I went to sleep therapy a while ago and learned some really interesting things . But one of the things that they said that stuck with me was you can't think your mind into a state of ease .

You have to create that through your body or through practices , through some sort of embodiment or laying down or something right . You have to generatively do that . And it seems very similar to this . I imagine even just taking three breaths you could access it . You know you're standing , going for a walk barefoot on the earth or something like that .

It's always right there , but just making the choice to step into it somehow .

This started pre-pandemic , you know , but just to give kind of a context is in the last five years I've noticed a massive decline in terms of the human ability to presence itself to a situation , in particular in respect to programs and retreats that I've helped to facilitate or participated in either way , yeah , but , like in the context of facilitating , I have

noticed that it's almost like I like 25 more time needs to be added to any program just to create direct experience to allow people to land in their bodies and leave all of the entanglements behind . And while some of that was needed five years back and further , not as much like it's almost to the t . Everyone shows up to some sense .

Yeah , pulled out , distracted interesting .

People seem angrier in their cars when they're driving , less patience in line , just like all the tiny little things that give evidence to the fact that there's something else sort of teeming under the surface that isn't quite settled Right Right .

There's the healthy wild man , which is what we're seeking to access , and there's the twisted wild man which , going back to my story of the cedar trees , you know it's like there's that variant which is like , okay , you're connecting to this essence of this deep nature , but then is it twisting you into conflict with those that you love ?

Is it twisting you into conflict with the people that you are surrounded by , the culture and the community that you're in ? Can you reintegrate ? Can you untwist that to the healthy wild man ? Right ?

Maybe we'll never be on the internet , except maybe to check an email once every three months or something like that , and hats off to them . You're my heroes and I'm engaged in the world . Yeah , and very much so , and so I feel that that's one extreme . It's one extreme .

The other extreme is the brother who's sitting in an office in Manhattan and is running a business , whether it's a multinational or just a local business , but is running a business , and even though they're fully engaged in the world , they still touch that healthy place of how they relate with their employees , how they relate with their board members , how they relate

with the physical world , and it's shaped by a deep intrinsic value system that is based in being , in relationship , respectfully , and in reciprocity with the rest of the world .

However presents itself to us , I do not feel like the wild man archetype is going to become manifest in each man , or even even in women , or in it's like their expression is going to be unique , like your expression . Expression is unique . My expression is unique . We find these crossovers .

We cross over in music or we cross over in programmatic things , like we're doing here . We're both willing to take that step , to come to that watering hole . Yeah , at the same time , like what we're doing with her , I'm out describing natural communities and working on conservation and preservation projects around the world and I come back .

You are really engaged in this way with men's healthy sexuality and how they engage in the world . Oh , really important flavors . It's just a band of that rainbow split by the fractal of a fragment or a break in a crystal as the light is passing through .

And then , because we're humans and because of our psychology , like we , there's just so much comparison that happens Like , oh , do I fit into that box too ? Do I fit their definition of this ? Is this the overall arching definition of this particular thing ? Do I fit ? I don't know , and it's risky , you know , and it's tricky territory .

The comparison thing , like you know , they say , comparison is the thief of joy . But circling back around all that is to say that it does seem really important to honor that this wild man . Energy is going to show up differently in everybody's life .

And there might be some similarities here and there , but yeah , it's going to be a different flavor of reality for each person . And then perhaps the measure of integrated or unintegrated becomes the level of positive or negative impact on a person's community and relationships and friends . Like , what's the impact of this ?

Like if you're a wild man looks like screaming and yelling and you know , flailing around and having a wild time and just going nuts . Great , you know , but is that then making people feel unsafe around you , you know ? Or are you like making people want to separate themselves from you ?

Or , on the flip side , are you doing it in a context that actually inspires other people to be that themselves ? Right , cause , that could be an amazing thing to do in the right context . So there's , there's a . I've been geeking out about the word attunement recently , like , and it seems really appropriate in this context too .

It's an effort , just like setting up all this equipment . You had to do that so that we could get this conversation out to the world , like that was a choice and now people can enter into it at their own comfort level , listen to what they will , and the same level .

So you go back to the guy flipping around versus someone that creates a container and closes a container , creates a threshold . Then people be like oh , here's a context .

I can leave my own inhibitions behind or I can leave my logical mind behind for a moment and I can just roll in the mud and ashes and wrestle with these other 20 people , get wild , scream , cry , beat our fists into the mud , go , jump in the cold waterfall and then come back together . How was that ? Back out to the world ?

And so of course there's always going to be people who just kind of mentally do it , cross the line and step into whatever the experience is , and it'll you know , something will come from it .

But for those who actually take the time , like you did , before going back into that , that sort of pulling apart of you and your lover , like taking the time to go out , work it out of your body and then come back in and enter , you did the prep work , yeah , you harrowed the soil so that then you could enter in in a really beautiful way and it's probably

amazing sex after that . Yeah , because she probably did something similar in her own way .

And so , yes , with the , with the wild man , like that's very much , the container is set up so that we enter into these specific moments with these specific rituals that are tied to the elements , and then they're closed and then we move back into social and community and interaction , and so that creates that space for men to fully enter to the best of their

capability .

cover myself with mud and go walk through the forest under the full moon for a mile with no flashlight , barefoot and and just trust .

So I'm going to make a little note here , because there's two things that I want to touch on and I don't want to lose them , and the first one is just to say that you mentioned the experience with my lover again , and I just want to say that most people who have sex with men , some part of them really wants to experience this wildness coming from the man .

People crave this . Most guys and I fall into this too , and it's a practice .

But we can be very up in our head and we're very good at calculating things and organizing things and making shit happen in the world , but then again that threshold to switch into the lovemaking space can be tricky and a lot of times we'll end up there still in our heads , or maybe afraid even to unleash or to be that wild , animalistic , attuned version of

ourself that , like , will drive our lovers wild like they want that .

So just to acknowledge that that is a deeply desired experience by my uh , by my partner , by , I'm guessing , your partner too , by people everywhere , and then also to say there , I recognize and understand and want to empathize with the fact that a lot of guys feel fear to go into that space , like , yes , in lovemaking .

But then I imagine some guys , even in the wild man workshop , there's still that little blip of like oh God , what is this ? Ok , you're like . What will people think of me ? Or does this mean I'm an unsafe man ? Or does this mean I'm an unsafe man ?

You know , I'd imagine at the in-person wild man event the container is set to experience that thing specifically , which is fucking awesome and sometimes needed . And I know , in sex sometimes the fear is oh , if I become the wild man , then I'm an unsafe , I'm the unhealthy , toxic , whatever masculine .

I don't believe in that word , but I know it's like it was said so much that it has gotten infused into some people's psyches , you know . So I just want to acknowledge and empathize with that fear and also say that the world really wants it Right and I think on behalf .

There's a there's certain thresholds that can be that need to be crossed before that being can be released , and so I think that's another really important part of doing men's work .

You're just , you know , bringing that back to your bed and your lover or to your business world , but it's recognizing that that wild feral energy , misdirected or undirected , can be very harmful , and that's where a lot , of , a lot of the the women's deep traumatic experiences come from .

mental construct that appears like to be able to start to safely come out and try to express aspects of self , because that can also go really far south , in the other direction , where it's like oh my gosh , I've never touched this part .

And then they go home and they hurt their partner right , because , a their partner's not used to it , or , b their partner may deeply want that , but she or he may also be coming from a place of sexual trauma , abuse , and so there's a lot of work that needs to be done between them , as well as individuals , before that truly can come out , I mean so this

is the integration of the wild .

, you know . And then to make the jump to work like you're not going to show up to a boardroom meeting or to a place with your employees and be like all right , we're going to talk about the ecological sensors and you know , scream , maybe you do , I don't know . Seems like it might freak some people out .

Could show up in those meetings , tuned into and tapped into that place internally and then channel it through action and presence and consciousness with the people that you're with in a generative way that positively uplifts people 100 .

A twisted uh , wild man will create a twisted king , a twisted king will create a twisted wild man , or will twist the energy that the current of belonging and place nature , nature , thought , leadership can then get morphed and turned into something that is an abstraction from the true root of the individual current moving through each man .

You mentioned the king archetype and there are a lot of people these days who will use that archetype and use the queen archetype too , and refer like I'm building my kingdom or I'm building my queendom , and I think there's value to that . And the conversation that was happening was could it also be problematic to orient towards that ? I have what's ?

How do I say this ? Like saying I'm in my king archetype before actually being there , like what are the problems that that creates ? And is there another way to say , like I'm working towards that or I'm working on my like building this thing , or do you ? You see what I'm saying ?

a structure in our minds .

Already we're talking about psychology and so we're talking about an aspect that we're aligning to and that there are many voices there and that a king without a council exists in a nebulous place that can be destructive , no matter how positively and tenfold the beginning place of the root , of where that concept of growing into king grows from . Energy is energy .

It doesn't just appear , I mean in the 21st century , you know , with many people being removed from nature and the environment and actual resources , like every dollar that is spent is in some way connected to something tangible at the earth level somewhere , somewhere something was extracted , somewhere something was lost so that it could be gained somewhere else .

So a king functioning without the voice of the entire council , without the queen , without the princess , without the sage , without the wild man , without the warrior , with , etc . Etc . We can you know , there's hundreds of archetypes . Many of them are major , like what they would call in the terrarium , the major arcana , like the major players .

But these major archetypes all need to be a part of decision making , and you know , plenty of history has shown us that when a , an emperor or king does not listen to counsel , the amount of chaos and destruction it brings into the world is exorbitant .

Yeah , maybe , maybe that's the piece , because , well , that is a massive piece and there have been all these articles and I think a big , even one of the I forget which health medical body or whatever it was like made a declaration in the past few years that loneliness and isolation is actually like the big epidemic that's going on right now .

You know , like people just feel disconnected , people aren't having good community experiences , people have a hard time finding friends and building friends , and so there's that like , where is the council , you know , and the importance of that feels really , really important , both for this archetype and for the world , you know .

So thanks for bringing that in Because , yeah , I've noticed even in myself , playing with those energies , that when , like I can , as the trope goes goes , you can go very fast alone that's right or you can go much farther in connection with other people . Yes , yes let's take a breath to that yes . I love the sound of those birds .

So let me consult my list . We've really talked about most of the things on my list , which is great . I'm wondering , just to give people an option , if you could give we've already talked about it some , but like , what are three things that you found are really helpful for guys to connect with this part of themselves ?

What can somebody do after listening to this today in their own world ?

So , again , not isolating ourselves from the world , not isolating ourselves from the various voices of reason or excitement or illumination that come to us , but through introspection , reflection , questioning the deeper why behind things .

I mean I love Simon Sinek's whole how , what you know like talk that he gave on TED Talk years ago , because it really helps the focus in on , like the most important thing is why you're doing it .

So , through introspection , developing a relationship with the deeper , why , moving with purpose , like when we do a firewalk at wild man , like that's one of the biggest teachings behind it is like you know , here's something that's over a thousand degrees , your feet are made out of skin .

I never thought walking a pilgrimage would be as mentally and spiritually challenging as it was , but like hot feet for bricks or bricks for feet , like are basically what I felt at the end of the first few days and that experience of having to move through something and finding that deeper purpose through the discipline , through the introspection .

So I'd say that's probably the most important thing . I think the second thing that I would bring is the willingness to take risks . I mean , everyone has a different risk tolerance . Everyone has their different financial plans and what types of things they invest in . The same thing goes for how we engage with the world .

You know , like you and I might have similar risk tolerances . You know somebody else that I'm talking to might have a super low risk tolerance . Like .

So , having again understanding of who you are and then , once you have an understanding of who you are , what you're willing to do with that is really important , because then that is what will project us into the world , bring us to the physical experiences , the crossroads with other humans , to use a hunter-gatherer terminology .

To use a hunter-gatherer terminology , like we come to the crossroads and we exchange information and then we go out more informed and able to complete certain tasks in a different and a hybridized way . So I feel like that's probably the second most important thing .

The difference of having access to information constantly allows most people to actually not know anything .

So my invitation is do what it takes to embody it , become it , memorize things , do certain types of do math problems , practice memorization of poetry so you can practice the memorization of patterns , because the same ways our minds encapsulate and harness information from our surroundings , as well as the abstractions of just human interactions or internet interactions ,

information yeah , awesome , thanks for that .

really encourage you listening right now too to also consider going to some in-person men's program , because we can do all kinds of stuff alone . I can walk barefoot , we can work out , we can scream , we can do all that . But there's often a certain sort of capacity that we're limited by with just being with ourself , with doing this kind of work in particular .

And then going to an experience or a container where the point is to explore this kind of energy and to cultivate it and to become familiar with it and to have it be a generative life giving thing Like that's profound , you know , that's profound , and a lot of times we I'd say more often than we could ever even think we need to be around other people doing

that kind of work so that we can actually embody it ourselves .

There becomes this sort of amplification effect or resonance that happens where we , through the process of doing the work , like we give each other permission to go deeper and then we go deeper , and then you give permission to somebody else to go deeper and then they take you there too , and because you're in that in-person container , it's just , it's so potent and

profound and I find that if I go too long without doing some sort of in-person work around cultivating some form of aliveness maybe that's qigong or sexuality or men's work or something I start to feel like not great , you know , I lose that zest , I lose that aliveness , I lose that certain spark that , like the world there's , like the world can just suck it out

of us , you know . So coming into in-person experiences that are generative for this kind of thing can be really powerful .

Jerry's been leading one for 10 years yes , and there are other options too , like you mentioned , the mankind project there's a bunch of other things , but I would say that should be really highly up on the list too definitely embodiment yes so when is yours coming up ?

You know , like really important , Like there's so many ways to engage , but we encapsulate it in the sense of creating these direct , embodied experiences in respect to the four elements , or often we tie in the spirit element as well , With some time for integration and processing and deeper embodiment .

Outside of those contexts , we usually have men come in and share morning sessions with Qigong , or how to make friction fires or Kung Fu , forest training , et cetera , which makes it really fun . It gives everybody an opportunity to dive in yoga , Qigong .

You know , there's a smile coming up in this other sense of aliveness , in the playfulness , and I know we've been talking about all these serious concepts , but also just to name here at the end like play seems like a really important part of it too Like it's not just like you're seriously like in the mud doing like the deep hard work , and it's like arduous

the whole time , constantly . There's also this element of growth and learning through play . That seems really important , I mean .

.

At the workshop where I was a month ago , it was a men's workshop and one of the things that one of the leaders spoke to was hey , by the way , if you want to connect with different , deeper spiritual traditions or shamanic lineages , you don't necessarily need to go to South America and drink ayahuasca nothing wrong with that .

But if you're of European descent , there are actually certain lineages of spiritual traditions that were there that went deep and were shamanic and were buried and covered up by a lot of colonialism and the church etc .

Not saying that to bash anything , but just to say that there is , there are these traditions and it sounds like this book is an exploration of some of those . Very much so .

As that relationship evolved in me , I very quickly came to an understanding of like I had stepped out of the social , environmental Catholic upbringing that I had grown up with and was finding answers in Hinduism and Buddhism , in the red path .

And while studying with uh , a Hoshima woman in Flagstaff , arizona , in my late teens and early twenties , the door was opened inside of my consciousness , through this woman and the work that we were doing , to my own heritage , which my heritage is from my mom's side is Irish and German and from dad's side is Swiss and German .

So there was this hunger to go back to , as Delfina , my first teacher , said to me .

She said you need to go back to where your people come from , and this is the journey of the unfolding , of the discovery , the remembrance and the teasing out of the modern Irish mind , the depth of the traditions that are still conveyed in contemporary Irish culture that I think most Irish don't even recognize as being a continuum of those .

Many of them do , of course , but some it's just a part of a way of life , and so this book is that exploration of , like understanding a cultural and historic context , but also like how are the different places in nature and the ancient megalithic complexes ?

How have those been engaged traditionally , how did they rise in the ancient oral traditions that were transcribed into written traditions in the early Christian era , and thus presenting a template or a codex that the modern mind can engage with our Irish Celtic heritage and embrace that in a really beautiful way .

And just to close with an appreciation I really appreciate how you're somebody who has a foot in the realm of the spiritual and the wild and also in the realm of business and the world , and that integration is super important to me and I think the world needs more of that .

So thank you for being that person , thank you for leading the wild man retreats that you do and doing this work , and thanks for being here for this podcast Really interesting , great conversation . I'm excited to share it with the world and if you listening or watching have any questions for us , please leave a comment under the YouTube video .

I'll get back to you . That's a great way to keep all the comments in one place . You can also shoot me an email if you don't feel comfortable with that , for whatever reason . And , yeah , I'll put a link to the book in your workshop , in your website and the show notes . And thank you again , jeremy . So much , this has been awesome , great .

Thank you , taylor nice .