Episode 32 - Moving Through Wounded Masculinity, Understanding How Trauma Lives in the Body, & Decoding Unhealthy Relationship Patterns With Kevin Orosz

from. So other people know that the podcast is amazing and can also receive the frequencies. If you desire to go deeper into my work and get more intimate access with me and the teachings coming through me, you can go to my website, Colleen gallagher.co. And check out my monthly membership for $22 a month. We have one live call there with myself an amazing group of leaders and live q&a. Now, transitioning to this

conversation. This is a really, really special guest that some of you may or may not know yet, I'm going to share with you how he was actually introduced to me and I don't even know if he knows the story. When I was leaving New Zealand to start my company, Colleen Gallagher International, there was a woman I stayed within our house an Airbnb. And she showed me this man who did a major viral video on toxic

masculinity. And at this time, I had no idea what masculinity was or who this man was just stalking him and this cameras speaking about some very interesting topics, and sharing things that I really believed him but never put language to. And so soon enough, he became an ally and friend within my circle, and I was interviewed on his podcast, and so he's an amazing human being doing

amazing work on this planet. And just to name a few things, Kevin can be represented as a high performance coach, workshop and retreat facilitator, podcast hosts. He also is a performance philosopher, folk psycho psycho psycho logic. I guess I might have missed that word up psychologists very focused psychologist, spoken word poet, public speaker, our yt 200 yoga teacher freestyle MC and founder and CMO of a lifestyle brand

called mystic misfit. Kevin really plays between Eastern wisdom, modern philosophy, our modern psychology, philosophy, mysticism, and neuroscience. So with all of that, we're super honoured to have you on Kevin. And we'd like to just start the show off by asking you to share your story with us on where this journey really began for you and we'll just go from there. Awesome. Thanks so much for having me, Colleen. And I do remember I was in Boulder, Colorado when we first spoke.

And you had reached out to me and that feels like a lifetime ago is probably three years ago. I'm really honoured for that intro. So many words. And yeah, my story. I mean, I guess it really starts in Texas where I'm from where I'm born, grew up middle class suburbs in Houston, you know, and early things in my story. Like I was very shy as a boy like very intellectual like loved reading Excel that school pretty religiously and and I hated most of what the teachers are giving me.

But yeah, growing up, I didn't, I didn't have so many male role models that I could really trust. So that was a big part of that started that journey early for me masculinity. I was blessed to be an Eagle Scout. So I went all the way through Boy Scouts backpack and tracked all over the United States. Just very, very formative.

Flash forward to end of high school, I wanted to do law, I was studying like debate political science, I thought the main way I could make money and be successful as my mind my voice. And that would be true, but not in the way I thought got this got to school University and realise that that was just a dead end. So I'll never forget the day I walked into an intro psychology class and was just blown away by the study of the mind is like

this. This is it like, switched my major from political science and business to psychology and philosophy. And that really started my journey in a big way. Flash forward to a couple years into school. My high school sweetheart had followed me to college I thought I was gonna marry her hyper Catholic and like celibate and very repressed and I found out she had been cheating on me for months in our friend group. And that was like the first kind of like devastating blow and dark night

of the soul. So that sent me into like a tonne of insomnia, depression, anxiety, started heavily drinking, using drugs and had a full breakdown was applying for grad school wanting to do PhD psychology and that was like stressing me out big time I was having these like, basically, mild anxiety attacks and I finally met a friend who introduced me to kendo, so I found martial arts, started training on keto and then also found yoga through one of my philosophy classes.

I also did plant medicine for the first time around that time. These things like work together to like shake me out of this really like dead, like trying to force this academic existence. And so I sold everything moved to California, started working at another university and went through the same process again, another relationship went to Burning Man, more experiences, but still the same dead end feelings. I was still trying to go to grad school still trying to make it

work just in California. And this time, I really sold everything went full minimalist, started a blog, built a website and then backpacked through Asia. So I just bought a one way ticket to Bangkok, Thailand, and backpacked around that whole region, ending up in India, where I studied yoga and Osho, meditation, and then through Nepal, and the Himalayas, after Laos, Cambodia, Thailand and Malaysia.

And kind of the rest is history, I moved back to the US and la met up the two brothers that were dear friends from the Bay Area and started a lifestyle brand. And that's where I got into coaching, teaching yoga, personal training, public speaking. And I just started really doing retreats workshops, and that's when I found men's work as well. I found mentors and started working with like deep bioenergetic trauma release breathwork and really started to understand the state of men in

the world. And a lot of what I was realising in my own journey was that I had never had these rites of passage, these initiations until then, and I missed that developmentally. And I looked around at them and in business all around me, many

were very successful. I worked for bulletproof nutrition, huge company, as it was like growing and got to be in rooms with like Tony Robbins, and, you know, Dean de martini, and like, you know, Lewis Howes, and all these legends, and was really inspired to step into men's work in a huge way. And also just really start my coaching, and event brand, which has kind of led to this moment fully transitioned to being a digital nomad living in Bali, serving clients all over the world building online

courses. And that was around the time I met you. Yeah, it's so funny. I feel like I've heard your story before. But hearing it this time, I haven't realised how similar stories. And it's funny even what you're saying, like my PhD I'm getting right now is in psychology, but it's focused on global leadership and

change. And it's funny, because if I would have done the PhD, any moment before, now, I would have been doing it for the wrong reasons, I wouldn't have had a real purpose, I would have been like, I'm getting this to find happiness, I'm getting this for achievement instead of like, I'm really there to experience a different type of expression in myself to build a certain type of company on a global scale for

education. And so it's interesting like even hearing you I could see myself like if I was in college, I would have went straight to like, masters or straight to PhD, I would have totally suffered. And so I love that you brought that up. And I, I know a lot of people listening to this podcast, I have a lot of

men in the audience. They are probably at that point, Kevin, where they have created success, it's there, they achieved it, they'd have the marriage to have the white picket fence, but they're just starting to see there's something more. But that confusion, I guess, or chaos is like going inside of them and like how to go through that. So when you were talking about rites of passage and initiation, I feel like it'd be a really great starting point of sharing us a story for you of how that

started to happen for you. And maybe when it was happening, you didn't even realise how important it was. So these people can maybe start to see in their own life where that shifting for them? Totally. I mean, what you got to understand about rites of passage is that you know, this has existed before writing in all cultures, and all ancient people, all of our ancestors did this. And the thing about women is that women kind of get initiated by the body in May.

So their moon cycle of pregnancy is a natural way of a process. And women still need other women to support them and elders, that's a big part of this is elderly leadership. But for men, it doesn't work like that a man can go from boyhood to adulthood without a transition. And so they keep the immature. Or really infantile traits. You see that with a lot of men running the world. They're just teenagers or boys

and adult bodies. And this is where all the abuse the violence the greed, the destruction the war is stemming from it's this unmet wound and and lack of maturity. Because a mature man as I understand it, a true like tribal village leader, core masculine that serving life is the protector, not a killer. He's a guardian, not a Pillager. And he treats the feminine and the Earth with respect. And this is not how the world is being run. So you have to ask yourself

what's going on? Why are men nine times more likely to commit suicide by prisons filled 90% with minority men from fatherless homes, dying, more likely a violent crimes, higher addiction overdose, you know, there's all these stats, I don't even need to go into all of them, let me but all of this is due to the loss of male leadership and the war on the masculine, which part of it is social and cultural engineering.

You know, there's all kinds of, you know, stuff that's not even conspiracy, but that men have been weakened through food, through culture, through sexuality through violence and war, creating soldiers, creating employees, not creating whole men. And so for me, you know, I did receive that rite of passage, like doing wilderness survival, camping, backpacking, in the wilderness, sometimes alone. And in this, this setting, growing up as a boy scout. So that was, that was my

first taste of it. But it wasn't until later going to very intense bioenergetic meditation, tantra retreats, where I got to meet and drinking Ayahuasca doing plant medicine ceremonies, that I got to actually experience like the full real and the existential terror that a lot of men, like you said, just are not even facing, they're just living life, like their dad live, like their dad before them, they're making money, they have the family, but inside they're feeling very

unsafe, or they're feeling very unknown, that something's happening for them, that they don't have context for. Maybe they've shut down their emotions, maybe they're sexually repressed or deviants. Maybe they're in some kind of addiction pattern. And so what you have to have is a containment field. So you have to go into a container to cook, and you need an elder, a mentor to guide you, you can't do this

alone. So examples from ancient times are like the ordeal, the vision quest, fasting alone in nature, you know, a combat or deal the hunt, plant medicine during a very intense psychedelic experience. Going on a quest or adventure, you know, there's like in Europe, we have this initiation to the adventurer, the Grail quest, there's all different

flavours. But for the modern man, what it might look like is, yeah, going with no technology into nature, under leadership, and releasing, tapping into facing your deepest shadow and your wounds, usually around the mother and father, usually around massive rage or massive despair, grief that has been pent up for years, and will eventually manifest cancer will manifest abuse will manifest

violence. But if you need it in one of these containers in a ritual, and you go all in and you get off, so your ego will be you know, dissolved, it's it's impossible to carry all of your, again, these boyhood patterns, they have to literally die in these ceremonies. And the adult can come online with the actual man who's grateful and humble for life is a serve a servant of the earth, and the masculine and

feminine in harmony. And this is what you you can feel when you're in a presence of a man like this because you can feel safe and you feel you feel love and compassion, you don't feel like they're going to dominate or they're going to backstab you or like you know, this is the this is the norm, unfortunately, in the West and business relationships at the local bar sports events. Many men are living in this hyper predatory

mindset. And this is by design, unfortunately, with a lot of the institutions of culture that we have that are focused on death and greed, not life, and serving men actually healing men. So we have them, we have a mental health crisis in Alaska. And that's really what it comes down to. I love that you share this in so many ways. And there's a story I want to share with those of you listening because it was something that really changed my

life. So about a year ago, I got really, really curious and research around why men raped and I started doing a lot of prison work. And I haven't talked about this on here before but I I've probably spoken to over 500 men. And it was really

interesting. When I started doing this work, I would go into prisons and you you would have like this thing that they would do sometimes when you're volunteering that you would there be a line in the middle and the men who are incarcerated would stand in and we would stand on another side. And they asked us questions. And so they asked this question like Who here had more than five books growing up in their house? Who here like, has had this many friends died before the age of

16? Or like Who here has killed someone? It was like all these things. And then it was interesting. One question I started to ask at the end was Who in here has received more than five hugs and Our whole life, almost every single man that was incarcerated has received less than five hugs

in their entire life. And I remember like that thing when I like, I was like there and like I would like, it was just like the whole thing of emotions, I couldn't even feel because we have a world of people that are functioning in a toxic way, but they weren't really taught a right way. And then they're punished basically for a life sentence, or they're punished in a way that really isn't allowing them to rehabilitate or redesign programming that was placed on

them. And so I love that you brought up some of these things. And we have fun in this podcast before of there's programming, there's the way the world is designed to set you up to kind of function in this world not be creative. We can go into that. But I first want to go because we haven't touched on this that much on this podcast, masculine feminine

energy. So if you could maybe just give like an overview of what your perspective or your view as opposed to and how people can start relating that in their own body. Totally, I mean, masculine and feminine are beyond gender. So it's not just about what genitals you have, what kind of body you're in, you know, these are energy archetypes that exist in nature. So I look at it very, like metaphysically. And practically,

you know, we all have both. So we all have a side of us, that is more driven, it's more goal oriented problem solving discernment, it can be more mental, it can be based on logos or logic. It can also be more penetrative or direct, assertive. And it's light form and its shadow form, it can be predatory, dominant, manipulative, etc. And so most men, and I say most lightly, are masculine dominance. So they present the masculine energy. And the feminine energy is also

there. But most women, and I say that lightly, our feminine dominant, their feminine lead, and the feminine side is more Yin, it's more directive, it's more based on nurturing emotion patho. So ethos, it's based in love and spontaneity, it's a little more chaotic, it's more, it's more flexible, it has a flow state to it. And a lot of women have that energy as their leader. And we both have both. So unfortunately, a lot of men their feminine is very repressed or wounded.

And a lot of women vice versa, their masculine is maybe repressed or wounded, or it's acting out in the shadow. And so a lot of the work in tantra that we do is to balance these sides. And it corresponds with the hemispheres of the brain. It corresponds to the mind and the heart, or the mind and the body, however you want to look at it. And a healthy relationship is between two people, no matter what gender that have a masculine and feminine polarity.

And if they sync that up and created a dynamic equilibrium, that's not stable, or it's going to change all the time, but it's in equilibrium. So that's, that's the key is, we want to create this inside of ourselves. And a lot of the mystical doctrines of the world and esoteric religions talk about uniting you know, EDA, Pingala, Schumann, Shakti, Shiva, you know, whatever you want to call

it, this inside of us. And that's how you can actually create a whole healthy human being, who can show up to work to purpose to love to parenting, and have both sides that can be it can be assertive, and direct and nurturing and empathic. And we ideally want both in harmony. And unfortunately, a lot of people have completely shut down one side of the other for various reasons, usually trauma, and then some other people are

reversed. So some men are trapped in their feminine and are actually feeling very weak

or lost in life. And they can benefit from these rites of passage to actually re awaken and in state the masculine The same is true for women who may be stuck in masculine paradigms and business and their social circles and are actually feeling burnt out or suffering and manifesting dis ease when actually their feminine needs to come online and actually lead so I see all kinds of this in my client work and yeah, that's that's the most basic layer of the the masculine feminine dance and there's

obviously tonnes more you could go into. Yeah, so I want to go into something with this and I want to touch on trauma with you. So I'm doing a 31 Day Live series. It was in October 2020. So now but when you're listening to this for the launch of my third book and uncompromised life and it's all about how I compromise my character for love in many ways, because I was higher quote, spiritual codependent coming out and I checked it a

narcissist with that. And so a lot of messages men are messaging me right now actually, like real time is that their partner like They're their wife, it's mostly men is asking them like they want to be open or that they're not happy or that they just want money. Or, like they're saying, like really kind of crazy things. These men are coming to my inbox like calling, what is it that I do? What is it? I say like, I feel like I've devoted my life to this woman, like, I have no idea what's going on.

Like, I don't get it. And so from your perspective, what you said, when you have like your first time when the like a woman cheated on you, or when that happened to you in college? What was your thought process? Or what was your movement through that? And it's like, share that with people listening. Yeah, I mean, at that time, I was highly codependent and just collapsed in my power. So I created that situation, I co created it with this person,

as a as a massive awakening. And I'm very grateful for it, because it set me on my path, that level of pain actually woke me up in a lot of ways. But how I related to it as I mean, it destroyed my identity, because my identity was bound up in that relationship and all these expectations. And all this sexual repression was another kicker there. So it really destroyed me. And it forced me

to remake myself. And so that was my experience, I think a lot of men if they're not tracking and aware of their partner, and just living in assumptions, or living in these patterns, and not very aware and checking in highly communicative, gotta be a good communicator, because relationships based on that these things can happen. All of a sudden, your wife of many years may cheat, have an affair want to open, become gay, like, there's all these different

versions of that. And it was probably because, you know, there were lots of warning signs or lots of things in the way of your relationship, but they were just brushed over because well gotta go to work, well gotta keep up the status quo. And so this, this is one of the hard things for the modern man is to be hyper present and aware in relationship in a way that their parents probably weren't. So there's no but no one taught us

this stuff. And these generations, if you're, you know, if you're in your 20s 30s 40s, right now, like, your parents probably don't know this stuff, and you got to learn it. And you have to step up and do this. And if you have kids, it adds a whole nother layer of complexity. But the core thing is, really is that you know, the feminine is the weather. So the feminine is like a storm, it's like a cool breeze, it can be sunny and bright, or it can be a

hurricane. And that's, that's just the nature because the woman is life itself. Nature and life is feminine. You know, it's why they call it the ocean law modern, it's feminine, and Mother Earth, you know, it's very like, it's shifting, the masculine likes stability, and solidarity and planning and organisation. So if you're the masculine, you've got to relate to the weather. So there's a storm coming, and you don't see it coming and you don't have your sails rigged, you might go

overboard. And a lot of people experience this in marriage, because they weren't trained, or they didn't pick up on this stuff. Or the man is repressing his true nature. He's repressing his primal stuff. So it might come through the woman first. He actually wants to express himself in a new way sexually, financially, whatever,

spiritually. And so you have to as a man, I believe the man is the primal leader of the relationship doesn't mean the woman won't lead, but the man is in a primal leadership position. So you have to be on your shit, you got to be on point on mission. And a lot of men, when they go off their mission and get lazy or they look, they look away, that's when the partner will shift and they won't notice. And then it comes as a surprise, but nothing comes

unannounced. So there's a way you can track it before it gets to that point and have the difficult conversations. And it's still my end in a separation. But the difference is you have choice. This is really beautiful. There's a couple of things here that you said I wanted to touch on. I was just reading something I was in a course. And it talked about this that women predominantly cheat because they feel unseen, where men cheat because they

feel seen by someone else. And so I thought this was a really interesting shift in perspective for me, and it goes with what you were saying. And the other thing for the men listening that I talked about this a lot, but I think it's relevant for here is money. Cash is actually a feminine frequency. It's something that's called Cash Flow. Like it's always moving, it's always flowing, you can go out and grab it or you can create a landing place for it.

And if you think about it, what's why we keep cash protected in wallets that's why it's protected and being so you have vaults it's always been protected. So money is a feminine frequency and that's a huge shift for a lot of men or people in business to think about it that way because usually don't it's like in this realm of power, which is not The real truth of the frequency. And so I love that you shared

some of these things. I think for the men listening to go deeper in this, I definitely suggest reaching out to Kevin and also look at a lot of his YouTube videos because he has so many, and like so many different perspectives on this. But the other thing I wanted to shift into that you've brought up a couple times is trauma. And so,

Dr. Peter Lavonne. I don't know if you've ever heard of his work, but he's studied trauma for like 40 years, I think and I found this definition of trauma really interesting when it first came into my awareness that trauma is anything that emotionally destabilises you. So when you think of bad people are emotionally destabilised, like when there's someone honks, the horn, like someone like is in a car, and like they slam on their brakes, or like your card is lost, and people like don't know

what to do with that. That is emotional instability. And that's not probably the core of a trauma. There's a reason that a certain thing happens in emotional instability. But I'd love for you to touch on that and go into that a little bit deeper. That's very trauma and human body, then when you're too destabilised, emotionally, you manifest dis ease, because you're not at ease. If you're emotionally stable, and in your zone and your centre, then you're at

ease. But if you have this he is disease, then the trauma has become too much for your nervous system. So a lot of us just didn't learn how to respond to trauma instead of react, reactions to trauma like addictions, abuse, violence, acting out, you know, all these things avoidance, which again, is just you your mind, your nervous system, your unconscious, trying to protect you, because you're being destabilised. A lot of people just use these coping patterns.

But if you look at an animal, right when it gets zealous, chased by a lion, super traumatic, it's about to be fucking eaten. If the gazelle gets away, it discharges the trauma, it'll sit there and just shake and froth at the mouth. And just like you know, it'll, it'll have this full kind of freakout. And it's actually physically moving the trauma out of the body and the nervous system, and then it'll get up, drink some water, and just go

about its day. And it's chill, not because I will live on happy life, until the next time, maybe the lion comes after it. But this is what we're not taught a lot of people clamp down on drama, like they want to defend themselves more armour, more avoidance, more addiction, food, sex drugs, it's like, you have to move it out through the body that trauma wants to move, it's if it's emotional, based than emotion, emotion is energy in motion, so you have to

move it. And so most people aren't just taught how to move it because it's not proper, or it's not safe. And this is where a lot of therapies, meditation styles, and, you know, my favourite is bioenergetics we look in the work of Wilhelm Reich, Alexandra Bowen, you know, these guys were students of Freud, and they realise that you can't just talk about trauma, you actually have to move it through the body. And a lot of this involves catharsis and involves healing, traumatic

release. And there's many ways to access that. But that's at the core is it lives in the body, the issues are in the tissues. So if you can physically move it, and then emotionally express it, it'll leave. It wants to move. It's just when you store trauma and you repress it. Now you have an issue that's chronic. I love that you're sure this and let's say someone has we all have had trauma in our body when we're unaware of what's going

on. But when someone maybe is unaware that there's trauma in their body, what would be a step you want to just have them becoming aware of it? Yeah, I mean, if you have repeating patterns, or something that's happening for you, that feels like it feels out of place, or like you're feeling stuck, there might be trauma there. And, you know, some of this stuff. I mean, it goes beyond this life, even for some people. So there's, there's like multi dimensional trauma as well, which is a whole nother

podcast. But the first step is really to build awareness and how you build awareness is a type of meditation. It doesn't have to be sitting in full lotus humming or oming. It can be walks in nature, it can be surfing martial arts, it can be sexuality, it can be poetry, you know, there's many pathways but you have to get still enough and get into a flow enough and be in nature enough nature is a key to actually feel a notice and you'll start to notice things and it's also really hard to

access some of it alone. So this is where mentorship and therapists and various containers will help because you'll have a mirror someone who's versed in this to start helping you unravel it, and you can get it out in front of you where you can see it and then you can respond and release. Yeah, I love that you're sharing this. And it's funny because in my third book that's coming out, we have a whole chapter on dis

ease. Yes, he is he because for those of you listening, I know I've said it before, but I had an unplanned pregnancy. And from that I chose to let it go. But the name Ella came to me to three different ways. One was through a little girl and her real name was Leila. The mom told me, the dad gave me this toy unicorn that was named L. And then I'm calling my mom to tell her the story, like I don't

know, four months later. And two things that were really important right before the day before I knew I was pregnant, my mom and I were on the beach. And my mom looked at me and she said, The only reason that I had a daughter calling was so that I wouldn't be alone with your dad and his family. Because my dad has all brothers. And so the next morning I woke up and I knew I was pregnant. And when I went to the doctors three days later, they're like, we can't tell if you are not Yeah, I'm

like, No, I know. Like, I definitely know what it was like the day after my mom said that. And so I called my mom to tell her this like a few months later, and she was you know, whose name was Ella? I said, No. And she goes, my Mom's best friend's name was Ella and she had no kids and never married. And so what Kevin brought up, which was really interesting is that there's something called generational lineage or

generational trauma. And so there's a big lineage and my family, especially with my mom's side of people pleasing and suppressing ourselves to be successful. Like my mom's mom, she was had the highest LSAT in the state of Michigan, and Michigan would have been like an 8 million population at that time, and no one would hire her she was a woman. So it was like a very interesting way of what

Kevin sharing them. So I always knew that the pregnancy that happened, it wasn't just about me, it was a huge shift happening for my lineage. But for those of you listening to this, I would have never known that or had the awareness. If I wasn't around mentors, I started doing therapy Ed, or EMDR, which is like you have these two things in your hand and it goes

in there. And then I start doing Neurofeedback therapy where you hook your brain up and literally some neuron frequencies back to your nervous system based on what's firing in your body. And so what Kevin sharing here, it's like, and I feel my own life, I can share it, it's things happen. And then as you become open to a shift in perspective, as you become open to discovering answers to questions that are haunting, you like things just align, like things just become available to you.

And I feel like coming that probably happened a lot. Even when you went backpacking and Southeast Asia and Nepal, like there was probably a lot of answers you were maybe not even knowing that you were having these questions, but these things just then appeared for you to be like, Wow, that makes sense. Oh, my gosh, this happened and the trauma of being growing up in Texas, which is for those of you who are international, very conservative part of America.

And growing up in that place, and then you having also like this very open mind of wanting to experience things, but it's kind of very repressed, like it would have been like, inner chaotic for me, it would have been like this thing of like, I have no idea what's going on. And so when you did that, there's like trauma built up over years as a child that you didn't know. And then like, as you're there, that's probably when some of these things

started happening. But I'd love for you to maybe share one of your stories with it. I mean, totally, I mean, there's, I'm a big student of Osho Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, which has a lot of controversy around him, but the man's teachings, I mean, I think some of the best in the 20th century. He talks about children born into affluence, which I was, I mean, he was middle class, but very affluent compared to most of the world.

They actually seek silence and stillness, because my parents were like, control control control, like they gave love, but it wasn't what I needed, I actually needed to be allowed to create and like, I was very introverted when I was young. And I didn't get that. So as soon as I broke free, and I started to dissolve all these

patterns, I sought silence. And it's opposite actually, for kids that are very growth very poor, or very, like in a chaotic, like poverty situation, because they actually seek friendship and community because they might have been alone a lot or the home was very unsafe. So they go towards love or the floor and go towards silence and they all meet back in the middle anyway, but it's pretty interesting when I heard that it was like an epiphany.

So that's I went super deep on to the yogic path and was obsessed with, you know, becoming a yoga teacher becoming a meditator. Going to these holy places, these temples and these, these countries, Nepal and India, which are the birthplace of a lot of the spirituality in the east and yeah, the questions I was trying to answer was like, Who am I because I needed to tune out all the noise and break ties with a lot of this old past stuff, and community because I was I was feeling being dead there.

I didn't feel alive. I felt like I was going through the motions. I was a cog in this set up this machine. And so that was that was really the major questions I was I was asking myself going on that hero's journey and letting go. Minimalism you know, vegan, I wasn't vegan, but vegetarianism, like, very strict disciplines to like, let go and cut off this old energy. And it

works. But uh, not in the way I thought it's not that I became a guru in the mountains are yogi, like, I've moved to LA after that and went fully into like events and public speaking and personal empowerment and coaching and still keep these practices. But now they're holding very lightly. Like, now I feel very connected to who I am. And that was just a part of the journey. It wasn't the end goal. Yeah, I love that you said this, because one thing people listening to this, most people,

they have a lot of stuff. What I mean by that is like that, I think of the Colleen and Kevin probably before you like let go or anything like I was definitely probably worse than you were. But I had like three walking closets I had like 200 pairs of shoes, I would write down what I would wear and I could not wear the same thing again. And within 90 days, like

I was out of control. And it was like this whole ordeal and I remember, I was like going to give away my clothes like Red Cross and I was moving to New Zealand and it was like 37 trash bags of clothes. Like I literally had to do it and like I was putting my clothes in like shaking with executive that was traumatising. Like, give this away. But it was like when I look back on it, I moved to New Zealand with four suitcases. And I started travelling the world full time and I was doing it for

a year I had two suitcases. And I remember like, I never in my life, that would happen. And it's it's a beautiful thing. I think to those of you listening. You don't necessarily do that, like as an intention, like I'm doing this because I feel like I'm going to be better I'm gonna have this thing. It's like you just you're doing that action because you feel like there's just a calling and a knowing that something's meant to

change. Like, I didn't do that because I wanted to like I do it because I knew that if I was gonna die like I literally why I'm gonna die. But like I couldn't, I couldn't live with myself, if I didn't go after these things if I didn't do these things. And I remember like, that was the that was the core of my being of like, that are how painful this is like, if I die and don't try this, it's gonna be more painful. And that

was like my real thing. And so I love that you said that because I totally agree that when I started on the journey that I'm on, there's no way I could have even imagined myself being here. Like, even with have been a mom like and knowing that I'm gonna adopt my daughter. And like all these things now that even if I tried to dream it even like my PhD and the work that I was doing this stuff like I couldn't

have imagined it. I couldn't even dream that if I tried, I'm sure you might feel that way in a more masculine way of like, how could I have even tried to put those pieces together? But in that whole process, there was like letting go. And there was pain, but it all brought you back this beautiful merging of energies of just presence, I think. Totally, I mean, the beginning place is the ending place, and then we just keep feeling the cycle. It's part of the human

experience. I mean, the core question people Yeah, say on the deathbed is, you know, I wish I'd let myself enjoy life more and spend time with the people I love. It's never I wish I'd worked harder and made more money, more sleepless nights more like, you know, drugs or addiction, it like life is actually about coming home to yourself with other people. And that's all there is to it. And that is a great degree of presence. And it's a dance with the question,

Who am I? I think that's the most powerful question you can ask is Who Am I? And it's not personality or ego based, it's a core instead of or question existential validation. So like, playing out a dance and his body as selling so, but it's much bigger. There's no There's a much bigger thing happening here. And that's part of living in the mystery. So your relationship to the mystery, and the unknown, is where all the gold is for me.

Correct. And this is something that this took me a long time and I feel like probably just embodied the last five months even more. I always had really challenging feelings of anxiety and I feel like one thing that I started to realise as I was getting anxious anxiety and some of the men listening to this could be relevant but definitely more for the woman but um, I would get anxiety like some Would statements into me and it

would make me freak out. And the reason like I had no idea why like I would have all these things going on and what I realised that it was actually because I was psychically seeing what this person said to me happened in the future. And it's something I didn't want to

experience. And I didn't know how to say no, or how to not people, please and how to like transition, this psychic ability of seeing what this person just said in the future happened that I didn't want to happen I didn't want to be part of, but I would like freak out emotionally and like control it or, like, I just didn't know how to be okay with the unknown, or how to say like, I see that I hear what this is. And I say no to that. So let me choose different choices. So I

don't freak out. And I don't like have this anxiety about the unknown, that didn't actually feel like the unknown, because I already saw something happening that I didn't want to experience. I feel like that was a whole mindset work for me, understanding that second belief in xiety, related in a lot of ways, and that I could choose something differently, to feel less anxious about the future, and to feel more in love with the unknown. So I love that you

brought that up, as well. I feel like it's such an important topic, I don't know, from a man's point of view, if that really relates or how you would see that. I mean, yeah, relating to anxiety in the unknown or core things with the masculine as well. That's where planning and direction and purposeful intention discrimination come from. And, yeah, it's obviously different for the masculine, but I can very much relate to what

you're saying. And, you know, being an empathic man, being a sensitive man, is is not easy in the current paradigm of men. I don't like the word toxic masculinity, but it's it's wounded masculinity, like, wounded men have toxic traits and behaviours, because they're

compensating. So in that culture, if you're a sensitive psychic, empathic man, which many young men are now, call them Starseeds, or whatever, the new wave of humans, you know, you have to learn boundaries, definitely have to learn how to protect yourself, and discriminate discern between reality and your body, which everything's okay in the present. Like, you're here, you're alive, you're breathing, and other people's energy, the future the past. And so that's a big part of the training for men

as well. Yeah, so I love that. And so I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to share, Kevin, or where people can find you. I think you just had a book release as well. But any details or anything else you want to say as we close out? Totally. I mean, that's the most exciting thing is my new book, two co authors who are PhDs. It's very philosophical, psychological. And very deep in all these topics is called Sex masculinity, God, three of the most taboo topics, and it's a

trialogue. So it's a it's a conversation between three philosophers, 10 chapters, some of it's very academic, so it's very relatable and experiential. And so you can find that at sex masculinity, God, calm, it's on Amazon. I would love for you all to check it out. It's really a labour of love, and we're going to have a sequel coming out, that's more of the same. And yeah, you're going to find me on all social, it's my name, Kevin aurus. Kevin Oris comm o r o s,

z is my last name. And I'm actually an interesting phase, because I just finished my mastermind and just finished my men circle. And I have a lot of clients finishing their packages, I have a lot of open space. And what's emerging now is more comedy. So comedy, sketches, skits, improv, as content is what I'm going to be working on. But I also have another online course coming

out. My second one, my first one is all about building your custom morning routine to really create the strength to do a lot of the stuff we're talking about in this podcast. And that's, you can find that out at flow state mastery.com. So that one's really great, have a global tribe in there that are crushing their morning there for crushing today? Perfect, and I will make sure that everyone knows I'll leave this in the show notes.

And then also, when I put this on social media, I'll leave the link to your book so that people can get it. Because yeah, it's definitely a book people are gonna want to get and I feel like Kevin is kind of like, what's it called? Like a not by him, but like, you're an honorary PhD. Like, you don't even think about it. Yeah, so um, so thank you so

much. We're super grateful for you to be on here and have the conversation and then I definitely recommend anyone just reach out to Kevin, any questions, especially the men in my group because really initiation into manhood can't be done from women. It has to be done from a man's perspective and from men so I can only share teachings are things so far man are the one that really can get you there fully. So make sure to reach out to him and check out his stuff. And thank you so

much, Kevin. Thank you so much calling really grateful