Tony Rezac on Healthy Masculinity

We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf YEA, thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Tony Rezach, and author Men's Coach and the creator and host of the podcast base Camp for Men.

Base Camp seeks to be a resource for men looking to live more courageously, authentically and from the heart. Tony participated in the Mankind of Projects New Warrior Training back in May of two thousand four and has been a leader in the field of men's personal development ever since. Today, Tony and Eric discuss his book Body and Soul, The Essential Handbook for Men. Hi, Tony, welcome to the show. Thank you, Eric, it's great to be here with you.

I am happy to have you on. We're gonna be talking about a book you wrote called Body and Soul, The Essential Handbook for Men, And we'll also be talking about your work in your Base Camp for Men project. You've You've done a lot of work about, you know, what does it mean to be a man in the modern world and how do we do that more wisely and skillfully. So we'll get into that, but let's start

like we always do with the parable. There is a grandparent talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up at their grandparents, says, well, which one wins? And the grandparents says the one you feed.

So I'd love to start off by asking you what does that parable mean to you in your life and in the work that you do well. First of all, it packs a punch in a very few words, it says a lot. And you know, I think in the Men's work we talk about working with the shadow, and so the bad Wolf would really represent the shadow and men's work, and I think we're always feeding both in a way. I've been sober for nine years. Certainly prior to that, I was feeding the bad wolf more or

with my drinking, I was. I was feeding the bad wolf a lot of bourbon. Back then. Bad wolf loves bourbons. It's in its top three favorite drinks exactly, and you know, and so as you know, like when you're in a battle like that, the bad wolf's getting fed not just bourbon, but a lot of shame and guilt and just feelings of unworthiness. Am I ever gonna be able to get a handle on this all those different things? But I was also feeding the good wolf back then, I was

doing a lot of good work in the world. It wasn't like it was just one of the other. Just like today I'm sober, so I'm not feeding the bad wolf, the bourbon and all that goes. But I can still have moments where for me, like the bad wolf is is my self care? Am I taking good care of myself? Because I can junk out on food, which is feeding the bad wolf? Where I know this isn't really good for me, but let me just scarf down these potato chips.

Or gossiping, maybe judging a particular group that doesn't see things the way I do, could be feeding the bad wolf, not giving people space to makes sense of everything that's going on on their own terms. So you're always kind of looking at you know, how do I feed the good wolf more consciously? And where is the bad wolf sort of getting fed without me being that aware of it? Because a lot of times when we're gossipy and saying things about groups or people, it's kind of happening under

the radar, like other people will pick it up. Oh, he's got to me about his his brother again, or whatever the case may be, and you don't know. And I think that's part of what the bad wolf thrives on, is when you're not quite on the finger of what's going on. Yeah, as you're saying that, it made me think of this idea that I've heard before that you know, oftentimes on a spiritual journey, in some ways the road gets narrower. In some other ways, I think the road

gets broader too. I think it depending on how you're thinking about it. But in the sense that I think it gets narrower, certainly as you were describing is you know, the me of addiction years would look at the me of today and be like, that guy is an absolute angel, like an act, you know, But the me of today knows that's not true. The me of today knows, like you know, of course, I've still got areas that I'm continuing to grow, and there's ways that I'm not the

person I fully want to live into. And so I think it's really interesting how what feeding the Bad Wolf looks like changes for us as we move on, and if our journey is one where we continue to grow, we kind of constantly have to be looking at that absolutely. I mean, I I have a saying that each chapter of your hero's journey will require a different version of yourself. It's nice I'm like you and that sometimes I can't believe who I am today relative to when I was younger.

It's not like you know, wow, not from an ego point of view, like wow, look at what you're doing. Just how aligned I am with my mission and my speaking and just like not that there's no bad wolf, there's no self doubt at times or whatever, but there's times when I'm like, I can't believe I get to do this show, for instance, right, Like that's really cool. Like I would have never imagined I'd even be on

a podcast, let alone have my own podcast. Back in the day when I was drinking a lot, I was just trying to get my bills paid, and there was a lot of thought about what am I going to do creatively or as a as a life purpose. So I just feel super blessed and I just can't believe it. And it just seems like once you're tuned to it, like I can plan for what's coming, but I really don't know what's coming, and it's going to require another different version of myself. So I'm looking forward to it

on game and uh, it's been super exciting. It's kept me on my toes for sure. Yeah, I want to pivot into your work in a minute, and you know, you primarily do men's work, and so we're gonna orient in that direction as a podcaster who knows I've got people of both genders for sure in our audience. Is that you know a lot of what we're going to talk about, I can read it through the lens of being a man, and I can also go, you know what, you've got the same sort of thing going on through

the lens of women. And I'm thinking about specifically. The thing that brought this up was you mentioned somewhere in the book you were talking about shame, and you were you were mentioning some writer who says shame is clustered around these sort of core areas, and as I was looking at him, I was like, Yeah, those are definitely things for men, and then I went, wait a second, those are just things for you know, women too, you know, And so I think, you know, there there are levels

and there are ways in which being a man or a woman is different, and I think it's important that we know what those are and we nurture and connect those. And then there is a universality to human experience that lies under all that. Absolutely, I mean a lot of this stuff is universal. Hero's journey the word hero really isn't male. It's not a gender hero is men and women, and there's tons of women that are just absolutely heroic.

And the reason that I do work that specifically for men is I just felt called by the divine to help men. I saw there was a need for men to open up conversations that were authentic, where men could speak the truth about what's going on. The women were doing that in spades. The women were growing and manifesting and being creative, and they're doing all this great work, heart centered work, and I saw a lot of really good men that were sitting on the sidelines, repressed, maybe

drinking too much, midlife crisis, whatever it was. So there was a part of me that said, you know, I just really felt that's where my work is. And I love women and children. It's not to say I'm going to do something for men. It's not for women. And on the show, on my show, you know, I do a lot of a lot of topics that are about consciousness and spirituality, and certainly those are for both genders. But I created it for men as an extension of

of what I was doing in the world. So the other thing that I'll say to your work in that way is that throughout the book you're certainly quoting and talking about leaders in the men's movement, but I would say there's an equal amount of wisdom in that book. Is it also coming from women, So it's it's definitely a very balanced thing. And like you, I found there were periods of time in my life where I did things as part of men's groups that I found powerful

in a very different way. And I'm not saying a better way, but in a different way than work that I did with females. You know, some some a a things that were men lated. There was a different poignancy there and and I know, you know, women would say the same thing. My women's group is different, you know, than our mixed gender group, and so I think there's a lot of benefit in finding our way into it.

And as you say, I do think by and large, a lot of the stuff that we talk about on your show my show women more naturally orient towards and men are a little bit more like I don't know about that, you know, and so we need help being pulled in. I'm going to pivot to a line from early in the book that I think is very powerful. You said, to be a man in the modern world is to live with ambiguity. In what ways do you feel like that's the case. Well, we get a lot

of mixed messages as a man. It's like, be tough. Women value toughness in a man, but be sensitive. Don't be too sensitive. If you get in a struggle, don't talk about it with your friends, like that shows weakness. I mean, this is kind of the man box that you and I were brought up. I mean I didn't see a lot of example until I got in the men's movement of men who were powerful in their expression of their inner life. I saw men that did not express that, even though I knew there was men around

me that were hurting. That was not the thing to do. And you know, I've made the point many times. Growing up men you know, they could get a cancer diagnosis and not share it with their best friend. Their marriage could be completely coming apart and nobody knows about it because he's so repressed, and he's like, I can't show that. That's not what men do. There was always this mixed

message of be tough. Then it was like be sensitive, right, So then it was like then you saw this whole other thing where it was like these new age men that are like, Okay, now there's going to be the sensitive man shows up on the scene. But there was problems with that. It's like, if that's all you're gonna do and you're not going to have any of men's natural strength and toughness and ability to handle yourself, then that's an issue. So there was always this kind of

like which way do I got to be? It wasn't until I arrived and I saw men that gave me examples at entered me, you know, and I correct Whenever I'm on a show and they say vulnerability, I say, men don't really like that word. We prefer authenticity. It's a more a masculine word for vulnerability, right, And so um yeah, I think I think authenticity is kind of that sweet spot between the natural strength of men and being available with your inner life and what's really going

on and be willing. Authenticity says I'm willing to speak the truth and the emotional undertones of what's going on, and I'm not afraid eric as you're my friend, to say, Hey, this is what's really going on. I really want to tell you this because it's gonna light my burden. And you you have natural wisdom that you might share with me, or I know that you struggled in your marriage, So what did you do? What did you find? And that's not weakness, that strength in in community and strengthen the

male tribe to be able to do that. Yeah, I think you make a couple of really good points there. I think that growing up, you know, and seeing that man box, I very strongly rebelled against it moving into my teenage years, very strongly like Nope, don't like that. And then you know, became maybe more of what you might say a sensitive man, right, But what came with that was a deep almost dislike of some of my more masculine tendencies, right and saying like, oh, you know,

you shouldn't be like that. And it really wasn't kind of like you until I met some developed mature men where I went, oh, wait a minute, these things coexist. That these are both false distinctions that don't need to be made. They are societies labeling of us. And I love the use of that word authenticity because it became about like, all right, let me really see what all is in here and be able to touch base with

the full range of possibility. Right, Yeah, absolutely, I mean I think that's for any man that's done some inner work, you're inevitably going to arrive at this place of Another way of saying it is including both the masculine and feminine aspects of yourself. Right, you could frame it that way. You know, men are so afraid of their inner feminine. But that's your heart, that's your care, that's your ability to say I love you, or I care about this,

I care about the planet and its people. Right, you have to have that or the wise, you're just a working machine, you know. Yeah, you've got ten base camp essentials in your book. We're going to move into those. But I really want to start by focusing on archetypes because we've never covered that on this show yet and I'm really interested in it, So I would love to first, you know, talk about when we say archetype, what do

we mean? You describe it from both a you know, mythological or literature perspective as well as a psychoanalytic perspective. So what are we talking about when we say an archetype? You know, it's used in the men's movements, specifically with the Mankind Project who created the new Worri. You're training using those archetypes, so anybody that went through is kind of steeped in that way of seeing things. It's tied

to myth. Joseph Campbell talked about it a lot, and then Carl Yung, the famous psychotherapist, really developed it, and it's kind of this lends this collective energies that men exhibit and you can be conscious of them are unconscious. So when you're unconscious, there can be shadow tendencies. So for instance, clean warrior energy is exhibited by a man or woman who can draw boundaries, is really clear in their speech, knows what their mission is. One of the

shadows of the warrior would be the victim. So whenever somebody's like always blaming everything else on their life, oh it's this, it's this, it's this, that's a lack of healthy warrior energy. So it's a diagnostic tool. You would start to say, you would point that out so it's not in the shadow any longer, and then start to work with a conscious expression of the warriors, saying what are the behaviors that we can do to bring that out?

Because you keep deflecting responsibility. That's a big problem, and you can make the case. I mean, I work with five basically warrior, king, lover, magician, and the hero. And there's just all kinds of processes and ways of talking about each arc type that bring a recognition in the men that I work with. And then there's often you know, a man will have strengths in particular arc types and

usually shadow or weakness. Um and that includes people that have been working with it for twenty years like myself. So I'm I'm really strong in warrior and magician, and I'm always at the edge trying to develop lover and king basically hero I'm fine on So there's two there. If I'm using my own methodology on myself, it's still lover where I'm like, am I expressing enough with a full lover? Is my self care good? And up? On the king? Am I really looking at the legacy of

seven generations? Am I blessing the younger man? Am I bringing younger men along as a king would? Am I making alliances? What's the vision for this or we sovereign? You know, there's always edges to each one with questions and processes that help the development of men. Yeah. You say in the book that you can think of arc types as inner potent realities, allies or guides that are always available to you. They can act as collective wisdom,

like living libraries that contained essential information. So you mentioned five archetypes there and you mentioned the Mankind Project. Did they develop those or those come from earlier work that they've just sort of codified, do you know? I think it's from earlier work, to be honest with you. There's a woman, Carol Pierson who wrote The hero Within and then she wrote another book I can't remember the title where she talks about twenty four different archetypes and Young developed.

I mean he was talking about all kinds. So I think when the Mankind Project, when they were forming it, they knew they wanted to bring arch types in that was going to be a mythological They were developing a hero's journey initiation for men, and they were saying, this is a really good way to frame it, to give them tools to create processes in all of these different archetypes.

So they grab those. It could have been different. You could have the trickster in there, for example, right with with that have worked, Yeah, it would have been a different processes for that, and the trickster has a different energy. So they brought those four, I think because there's kind of a yen and yang to the four. There's more forceful ones like the warrior, and then there's more yen ones like lover, almost like a masculine feminine balance with

what they selected. But you know, if somebody is working with arch types and feels really drawn to a particular other arch type, that's completely available. And Carol Pearson, to me, is is a master at sharing what archetypes are, what different ones are, and what they could maybe provide is benefit. And even though these archetypes were developed by the Mankind Project to be used on men, the idea of finding archetypes and using them in your life really transcends gender,

right absolutely. Yeah, Carol writes about that, and I think there's probably women's trainings where they do archetype of work and it wouldn't be king, it would be queen. They would probably still have lover and magician, but they may or may not have Warrior. They might have something else for that just depends on what their creators wanted to

emphasize as their edge of development. Yeah. In the Buddhist tradition, there is the Shambala lineage, which is a type of Tibetan Buddhism, and and there's a lot of writing in there about the peaceful warrior. And I know there's been a lot of women, Pema children being one, who have really written about that energy, you know. So I know some women certainly align with that warrior energy in that way without you know, trying to unpack the entirety of

the archetype world. Let's talk about these archetypes. So you've mentioned warrior, so obviously we don't mean fighter here. What do we mean? Well, I think warrior is the part of a man or a person who is principled. It evolves over time to it like myth, it evolves with you. So your idea of warrior maybe when you're younger, might be, you know, I don't have any mental toughness, and I'm going to develop that well at my age as a as a mid fifties guy. The warrior to me is

a symbol of putting first things first. So for instance, you know, I used to do a lot of fantasy football because it was fun and I was with all my football friends. But there was a point in I was doing a lot of work and leading men's groups, and I just felt like a fraud, Like wait a minute. The warrior test is is this putting first things first? Is this where my energy needs to be in the

answer to doing fantasy football? Not that there's anything wrong with doing fantasy football, but when you do archetype of work, you may look at something like this and go, is this an expression of warrior? Does it pass the warrior test? Is it helping the world? Is it helping my development? The answer to the question for me was no, So

I let it go right. Um, there might have been a touch of the warrior when I quit drinking where there was there was a little bit of fierceness there where it was like I had a dream of three of my closest friends who were not drinkers anymore, and I had a dream where they were sort of looking at me with their arms crossed from a hill and I was coming through this doorway with a suitcase and

I couldn't get through the doorway. And when I unpacked the suitcase, it was full of booze, and so I was not going to be able to go higher on the mountain without letting go of that. And there was a real warrior quality of what is your life going to be about because you can keep drinking and do

men's stuff and you can make that work. But is that good enough or do you want to live by the principles that you're speaking of, deep in your connection to spirit and be a true kind of agent of change and an agent of inspiration because that might take some letting go. And so there was definitely a warrior there. And I think also the warriors okay with saying no. Sometimes when I meet men that our people pleasers. I used to be a horrific people pleaser when I was younger.

Just I just wanted you to like me, Eric, and I would do any you know, I just didn't want to have any conflict. Well, the warrior is okay with uncomfortable conversation. The warriors okay with saying no to your requests. You're like, hey, let's go out and let you know, we're having a big party, you know, and and for me to just say that's not in my best interest. Thanks for the invite, but no is very warrior. It's drawing a boundary at saying that doesn't work for me,

and being a ka with that. And so yeah, I think that's my take on that particular arch time can't really see it, but you can see like, well actually you can. Right there there's a there's a statue, a little statue, and he's got a holding holding like that. That is man Juicerey who is a Bodhisatfa. And that thing that he's holding there is a flaming sword and

it's for cutting through allusion to find realization. So this idea of a fierceness is even in you know, someone like a Bodhisatfa who's dedicated to basically not achieving liberation until all beings are saved. You know, there's a deep love in a Bodhi Sotfa, and yet he's carrying a flaming sword, right, you know there's a fierceness. And I agree with you. I think there's a fierceness to stopping drinking and a lot of different things. Um, all right,

let's move on to magician. M hmm. Magician to me is the quadrant of working with the invisible realm and that sounds really woozi wu. Well, it's the MAGICI and so it is going to sound that way. But it's anything that you do to connect with the divine, like we did before the show started. Is very magician. So you have prayer, you have mysticism over there, things like ayahuasca even live over in the magician realm, anything where you're in direct communication with a dimension that's not the

concrete dimension. So even poets, musicians would be considered magicians. I know men that don't ever do work in this quadrant. Everything is in the material realm. It's just I'm just doing this and it looks to me and feels to me like a missing like if you're not going to access this deeper realm. It's right there. As you know, thousands and tens of thousands of mystics, musicians, poets have have said, and there's a reason that when we read poetry or listen to music, or read any of the

great books of mysticism. You you mentioned Buddhism, there's plenty

of mysticism there. There's a reason it resonates with our soul because there's there's ruth there, there's an inner knowing that grows as you work with that quadrant more where you become really confident in the soul's journey and become kind of a spiritual warrior of Look, this is super important to me and I teach it in my groups because it's so important to leave out that particular way of seeing things or creating accesses or portals for men

is super important because it's how they grow their inner knowing. I work with them for a short period of time, then they're going to have their whole hero's journey the rest of their life. So you have to give them tools like stuff around the Magician where they're going to be able to use that, whether it's a meditation practice or a contemplative practice, or they just take time to slow down with intention to feel these kind of deeper

mysteries that are happening all the time. There are two lines that you used in talking about that that I really like. In addition to the music and art and transformative and creative, was sees everything as a lesson and able to find multiple meanings in each situation. And I feel like those are such such valuable skills. That's the

area that my Magician works fairly well. I think as I read that, I was like, Okay, I guess like I have some of that going on, because that's one of my superpowers is that you know, multiple meaning kind of thing. Absolutely absolutely, yeah, beautiful. So lover, lover, Yeah,

the full spectrum of lover. There's sexual in there, but only as part probably less so I think men will commonly blow up the sex is that's what lover is, right, But I think that is where you get shadow cree aided, because I think the broader meaning of lover is just having your heart wide open, living with your heart right there for everybody to see. And I think for men there's a little bit an edge there is that men don't often like to say, I really care about what's

going on. I'm really concerned. I care. I care about the state of the world. I care about the seven generations. Are we doing the right thing? Who do we got that's in council to help us with this? You know, I I deeply care how you express yourself, how affectionate you are, Are you closed off all these different things. There's a collective with men where we've got work to do in there, because there's a lot of men that just aren't comfortable with affection and particularly around other men.

You know, they just don't want to hug another man. That means that means I'm gay, you know, like just there's some limitations there, and I think there's always an edge there. And I wrote about it in my book as well, that sexually, we're always developing our skill or our understanding of it. I think, to my detriment, I kind of stopped learning about X when I was in my twenties, and then I just said, well, I know

what I'm doing. I said in the book. You know, it was ironic that I was looking in all these different areas and then sex I was just kind of leaving alone. Is like, I don't have to do any work there, but I still have work to do in there, to be vulnerable, to be authentic, to be fully expressed. And I think that, you know, sex is such a loaded topic for men that it can be a you know, I don't want to talk about this. It's it's just

a very tender topic for men. You know, we get shown a lot of images about what sexual men are supposed to be like, but they missed the mark often about what it really means to be a mature lover. I think, so we've done lover Warrior, magician, King. Yeah, King, that's the one that I think collectively we have the

most work to do. It's funny Eric I would lead men's groups and we do four rounds in a men's group, we do lover, warrior, magician, and King, and there would be all these different creative processes and dynamic things going on in the first three processes, and we would get to king and there would be just kind of like this dot dot dot, Like we were taught, well, the king expresses gratitude, and the king right sizes his ego, and it's comfortable in silence and blesses other men. All

of those things are true. But I believe right now we're living at a time where this particular arc type is asking to be reinvented or rediscovered by the tribe of men, because I have a feeling that I don't really know what a full expression of the king is, and I don't think there's many men that I know that do have a quick answer or have a direction.

So I think that this is the one that gets fleshed out in men's groups as we meet, and it sort of needs to be co created by the whole tribe, or at least the part of the tribe that's willing to do the work. And I think it's the part of men that where we carry this kind of collective wisdom. You and I sharing conversations like this helps the archetypal king. But I also think there's there's something in groups that might emerge over the next few years or a few

decades where there's a reclaiming of that. I don't even know what that looks like, but I just recognize it as a need. I think that there's important work to be done there, and I'm I'm, for one, am willing to do the work. And it's gonna take all of us. It's going to take the ones that are leading into their development and leading into these conversations to sort of flesh that out. Yeah, a phrase that stood out to me was able to hold space for the voices of

the kingdom. And that's a really interesting idea because you know, we are in a place where there's a lot of voices these days, and there's so many there's so many perspectives and ideas, and how do we, from a place of strength allow for those voices and also seek wisdom. It is an interesting archetype at this point, and you brought up something there that you know, it's a very in the king quadrant to hold space for the different voices.

You know, um, the vaccinated, unvaccinated, the mass to no mass, the shutdowns and no shutdowns, the all the different things, all the different things that are being put out there for us to digest. And you know, there's been a lot of separation, and I think part of the king energy and men were sort of tasked with seeing through this and really being a stand for the unity. I'm okay if you're on this side, I'm on that side. I'm okay. If she's here and I'm here or they're here.

The King is like, I'm totally fine with it. This is where we have arrived at this point of our hero's journey. How do we get to the next spot? How do we get to the next base camp? Knowing there's been a lot of division, we can't keep bickering down here where we're at. We've got work to do, and we've got new chapters to create for humanity. How do we go about doing that? Excellent? Well, let's move on to something that you said, which is that I learned that as men are, emotional lives are at the

core of our power. This is a statement that most people wouldn't immediately think is obvious. Right. You know, as men, we don't often think that, you know, men are a known for their emotional lives and be if to the extent they have them, is it really the core of their power? From your perspective, what do you believe that? Well, I think that it's an untapped superpower for men. I believe I think many, many, many of our leaders. I mean, if you look at Dr King for example, you know,

full of emotional power. If you look at any you know, look at Tony Robbins. You might not be a Tony Robbins fan, but you can't deny his authenticity at the front of the room. He changes people, he directs him. He's using his emotional life. I think any man that has charisma and is committed to the tribe has to bring the emotional Jews Um, great athletes, Tom Brady, I mean, they bring something of their emotional life in there. Not flat.

It's hard to listen you. You're an emotional man, so you're speaking has those emotional undertones that make it very interesting and I want to lean in and find out what you know. The emotion is the attractor. That's why I'm there. That's why the the technologists they're they're not such charismatic leaders. They can speak about technology, but they're spending too much time with ones and zeros and not enough time, you know, expressing their emotions in a real

free flowing way. So I just I just think there's an attractor there. The the leaders in the conversation about where are we going will be emotionally astute, being able to speak from the emotions of the tribe, and both that in the trans personal sense and the personal sense. I can tell you what's going on with my inner life on a personal level, but I can also sense the emotional undertones of what's going on with the tribe,

and I can speak from that and to that. I think that's a really important, uh superpower that men possess and often don't claim. You describe five lessons that you learned from growing up kind of in some of these men's groups. I don't know if you're gonna remember them. I'm pulling something out of a book that you wrote years ago, but maybe i'll cue you as unless you remember what they are, I'll cue you as do what they are and ask you to sort of expound. The

first is that men are courageous. Absolutely. I think that's one of the things that I see in everyday men, we tend to think that courage is like Muhammad Ali is courageous. Oh, dr King was courageous. Gandhi was courageous. Right, Tony Robbins is courageous. But I'm I'm just an ordinary guy. I'm not courageous. But if you speak with any man and start to unpack some of his stories, you hear all kinds of courageous acts. Quit drinking. I was terrified of therapy, but I got in because I wanted to

save my marriage for my wife and my kids. Quit my job. It was really well paid, but I really felt compelled to start this business. Right, they diminished their own courage, And my experience of almost men universally is that we are a really courageous bunch. And I think part of what I do in the men's groups, part of the thing that I provide is a witness to men's courage that I'm a stand that they see their

own courage and own it. Because we're all eric, We're gonna need courage for the next chapters of our hero's journey. We're getting older. It takes courage to age, right, It absolutely does. There's a lot of letting go that takes courage, and so I just think I try to broaden courage as much as I can, because I think I'm blown away by the courage of our tribe and the courage of men, and I just want to magnify that as much as possible so that men understand. Yeah, yeah, I

got that too. I can own that I'm courage. Yeah, I'm gonna combine several of these remaining ones because I think they grouped together. But which is under sort of you can handle on us feedback from men you trust um or that you know men can be trusted. Right, And again, I think it's important that when we hear a statement like that, because I know, the minute I said men can be trusted, there's a lot of people out there they go, hang on a second, and you can bring up a long list of men who simply

cannot be trusted. That is absolutely true. So we're not saying that every man is trustworthy, but by no stretch of the imagination, right, what we're saying is that that capacity is really there. Yeah, And it would be naive for a man to think I can trust everybody that's not a mature warrior at all. Right, that's not that's not what we're saying. You know, when you get into men's work and men's groups, you know there's this kind of dropping of the guard, dropping of the facade. You

know that. You know, men come in there, I got all my ship handled, right. They got there like, oh, I've I've got everything handled. And then they start to see how authentic the sharing is, and all of a sudden, they're like, wait a minute. The way to be in this group is to tell the truth about what's going on. And all of a sudden, all of a sudden, you see the sharing like you were talking about in the men's a group, the sharing gets really deep and soulful,

and then that leads to other realizations. So to your point earlier when you said you can handle feedback from other men, most men have been brought up. They did not get constructive criticism in a good way. In other it is when we were younger, we usually got it with shame. Right, it was you dot dot dot dot right, it was from an elderly an older man that maybe didn't have our best interest or was acting out of

his own wound. And so we say, there's a difference between when you get sarcasm in criticism of a young man, it's like being cut with a rusty blade. It stays with the man and then he'll avoid criticism or getting feedback from other men because he's got that wound. But when you're in men's circles where the trust is there, we can call each other out with compassion. You know, I've been on the hot seat where I've got called out.

It's not comfortable, But when I know the other man has my personal development first and foremost, Tony, do you know you're doing this, you're avoiding this, You're saying this thing and you're doing something else. It stings. It's like being cut with a clean blade. It stings. It brings my attention to it, but it doesn't fester because there was no sarcasm, there was no snarky, there was no shame me. The man was simply pointing out, Tony, I gotta tell you this, This is this is important. Nobody

else is telling you this. When you receive criticism, that way you can be like, oh my, our feedback. That way you can work with it, and you're grateful to the man for showing you something that you weren't seeing on your own. In a semi recent podcast interview with a guy named Ethan Cross. He wrote a book called Chatter, all about the voices inside our head, the way we talked to ourselves. But he was able to articulate something that I've not been able to articulate well until I

hurt him. Read it, and I think you're going to relate with this. He talked about how when we go to someone else with a situation, we really have two needs, right, and very often we only get one of those two needs met right. One need we need is some degree of emotional validation. Man, Tony, that's tough. I understand. Jeez boy, I really feel bad, like, oh, that must have been really difficult, right. We need that, right, But a lot

of times that's all someone gets. The flip side is we also need kind of what you said, which is a little bit of help going. You know, it must have been really hard for you, Tony, and I know you a little bit, and I'm wondering if this might have been happening or I wonder if you see this part of it for you, right? And I've often seen this delineation be at the heart of a lot of

difficult conversations between men and women. I think John Gray probably first articulated this, at least in the popular culture, which was that women want emotional validation out of their conversations, whereas men just want to solve problems. And my experience is actually, and I was glad to see some studies from this guy that sort of show this like a mature conversation, one that integrates our masculine our feminine, gives

us both those things. It gives us the emotional validation, it gives us being seen, it gives us being heard, but it also moves us into solution in some ways. Absolutely. I mean, I don't know if you ever experienced this. I have experienced wanting my wife to be a sounding board but not be coached, where I just wanna vent and I just want to unpack, and I don't want her saying, well, I think you should do this, I

think you should do that. And sometimes I really do want the coaching piece because I might be like frustrated that I'm not finding the solution on my own, and so then I'm like, yeah, I do want to hear what your take is on that, and the same thing for her. So we we sometimes want one, uh, and sometimes we want both. It just depends where you're at, right, Yeah. Yeah.

And what I liked this guy was sort of saying, you know, looking at the studies about like, you know, who benefits from talking to other people, was the studies seem to point to if you only get one of those two, you actually don't make a lot of progress. You know, just venting is great, but it doesn't actually move you forward. My experience is it's a prerequisite for the second. I don't want to be coached by anybody who's not hearing me, listening to me and understanding me.

Once I hear that you understand me and you know how I feel, then I'm willing to listen. Right. But so many times, particularly men, were that you know, I'm this way, Like you know, someone will start sharing something that's going on, and I'll be like, I know the answer. Here you go, Here's what I think you should do as a coach, right, Like it's a constant tendency I have to sort of like just stop, slow it down,

slow it down, let's listen, let's listen. I also discovered that, like you said, in men's groups about sort of like having other men really say, Eric, here's what I see in you and that feedback being oftentimes difficult. But the reason I was able to take that feedback to your point, the reason it was a clean blade was because of their authenticity and vulnerability ahead of that, so that I knew they were trustworthy and they had my best interest. That I feel like it is the prerequisite for that

blade to be truly clean well. And and some of the greatest blessings inside those circles is men will hear what their gifts are as seen through the eyes of other men. So if you're in a men's group and you've been at it for even just a few weeks, your flavor, the things that you bring start to become

very evident to the other men. And just I mean I remember, you know, we did processes where a man would sit in the king's chair we called it, and every man would take turns telling the man a something that he saw that that was kind of his edge of development and done with compassion, but also the gifts that he brings to the group in the world. And man, those were some of the greatest blessings you'll ever hear because a lot of men they never were you know, a lot of us were never blessed. I had a

really good father. I was blessed. But there's a ton of men that never got seen by a mature man with a good heart saying I see you bringing so much heart, so much passion to the world. You're a good man, and you've got a ton of fire, and you know you're you're moving the needle and you're making a big difference. And you know, to hear that from men that you respect, Oh my god, I mean you leave their standing taller, going Okay, I've been seen, I've

been witnessed. This, this kind of part of me that never got seen when I was a boy and a young man is now seen and blessed for what I bring, and it kind of strengthens the things that you're already good at because you realize, Wow, I didn't know that was such a evident strength of mind, but it's evident that five of the men pointed that out when I was in the circle, so it must be true. I think that some of that is one of the reasons.

It's not. It certainly doesn't account for all of it, But why men are sometimes so sports obsessed, Yeah, because I feel like a lot of times that's the first time a man has ever gotten any of that from a mature man saying like great jobs, emmer, like all of us sudden and you just inside it's like, oh my god, like you know, it's a really powerful thing. And so if we look at sports from the outside, we go, Okay, it's a bunch of people running around

with a ball, like why is it so big? But I think it's because for a lot of men, that's where that first happens, and it creates this deep connection to this thing because it's like I know it's in there. You know. It's sort of like you know, me chasing Heroin. It's like I knew that at one point in their well being was sort of embedded in there. Now I know it wasn't truly there. But it's a similar, similar

analogy in some ways. Although I think watching football or even playing fantasy football in your case, is listeners better than Heroin just as a as a broad guideline, I'm gonna go out on a limb. Yeah that's a controversial statement, that's right, you know, Yeah, I think I can relate

to the sports thing. It's really where I first It's where I was first blast and seen for what I could bring to the world to your point, you know, it was it was a safe place to be a young man, to be a boy, because men are you know, we're we're rough and tumble, We're not women. There's things

about us. We're kind of more canine than feline if you get us in a group or like a little pack of wolves, right, especially when you put a bunch of boys on a sports team, you know, it's it's kind of got that that kind of rough and tumble feel. And yeah, it gave me a taste for maybe what my life was going to be like as a man, and that some of the men's groups kind of feel like an extension of the bonding and the acceptance that I felt when I was first there in those in

those early sports teams. Yeah, and it's one of the few places again, the world is changing but not fast enough, but it's one of the few places that most men get some it's okay to show some degree of affection and love for another man, is you know, on a team. You know, like, you know, I'm not gonna do that with your best friend, but you know, so, I think there are reasons why that it is the thing. It is your podcast US is called base Camp for Men.

What's your program called your newest program? You find it at base Camp for Men dot com. It's all part of the same kind of brand, but it's the Life Renewal Program for men. And the tagline is eight weeks, eight modules, one big reset button for men. And you know, it's really four a number of different kinds of men. It could be a young man, let's say, in his twenties or thirties, that's never really had a mentor. Or it could be a middle aged guy that's hitting a wall.

You know, maybe it's just like I've worked hard and I don't feel great, I don't feel inspired. It's kind of this reset button along the ways that we've been talking about, and men will come out of it with a lot of new tools. We work with the five archetypes that you and I have been talking about. One thing that I'm decent at is creating a mythical kind

of context for the men. So treating everything as a hero's journey and getting them ready for the next versions of their themselves in the next chapters is really what the program is. And it's a comba nation of one on one coaching. There's also an opportunity to do group work and some of my men's groups, which opens up a lot of other things. I just love it. I love doing it. Um. The first session that I do

is free. So if you are interested, there's a forty five minute call that's really a discovery to call to see if you're ready, if it feels like working with me is a good fit and all that, and so yeah, I just I try to share that as much as I can, just because I know that there's men out there that are feeling isolated and feeling like, you know,

what do I do? And finding programs like yours and programs like mine where they can get out of their comfort zone and start to create forward movement and upward movement on their hero's journey is super important right now. Excellent, And we'll have links in the show notes to that. But if you want to give people the U r L, that's that's fine too. It's base Camp for Men dot com. Okay, so back to that name, base Camp for Men. You know, your Body and Soul book we've been talking about has

the ten base Camp Essentials. Your podcast is called base Camp from it? Why that? You know? It's funny? I got hired to do the show a men show by the Epoch Times way back when, and they said, we want to do something specifically for men. So I'm like, Okay, that works well for me because that's a lot of what I do. And the subtitle of the show is Men Myth and the Hero's Journey, and it was just kind of the divine wanted it to be named that.

So when I was looking over all my journals on a journal or I was looking back, I'm like, looking, what do we want to call this thing? We were kicking the tires on all kinds of stuff. Base Camp for Men kept coming up. The team kept saying, I like base Camp for Men. It kind of indicates a hero's journey, and it just ended up being the one. You know, it just felt right to me. And then then it was like, yeah, no, let's let's go with that. I like the way that sounds, I like the way

that feels. You know. It's funny that I look back eric on my journals two years prior before I even had a podcast or even knew what a podcast was, I was writing base Camp for Men in my journals, So it was it was in my creative thinking already in The Magician. You know, in The Magician, our type was already dropping clues as to what I might be

doing in the next versions of myself Excellent. You know, I think the idea of being right that a base camp be in a place you set off from right, Yes, yeah, absolutely, place that you set off on your hero's journey from. I want to just hit a couple of these essentials before we wrap up. We've we've talked on some of these, but I'd love to talk briefly about base camp essential

number six, which is manage your energy. Talk to me a little bit about you know, in your mind, what does this look like, and you know, how do we go about doing it well. I think framing a particular lens when you're looking at self care is does this increase my energy or does this decrease my energy or

my chy as they call it right in Asia. And I think when you're really kind of looking at it through that kind of contemplative lens, you'll see there's some things that you're doing that add energy, whether you know, for me, like it's if I'm playing, if I'm playing out anything that's play oriented, throwing the football around, kicking, the soccer ball. That increases my energy. It's really good for me if I'm not in nature or if I'm skiing. I noticed this is really great for my energy. Eating

junk food tends to deplete me. Right, And there's some sneaky ones in there. I think, um I did an episode on porn. I think porn is a really bad depletion for men in their energy department, and men will do it on the sly. It's there's this shadow aspect, this kind of addictive quality to it, and I think if men were honest about it, they would say that is a no go. That doesn't help me. Really, I'm just getting my ya yas out. But if I'm honest,

doesn't deplete heck yeah, it deplete your energy. It doesn't. It doesn't lift you up. You don't feel better afterwards. We're like ready to conquer the world. So it's like, being really honest with does this help? Does gossiping? Talking about you know, people that you don't agree with in a negative way. Is that uplift my energy? No? It doesn't. I don't feel really good. I feel disconnect it from the tribe when I do that. That's a clue. I

don't want to do that. So it's like cultivating this habit of It's not like you're never going to feed the bad wolf, but how do I keep feeding the good wolf to the point where anything that's depleting my life force becomes very very evident. Even thinking about it, I go, ah, that doesn't sound that great, So yeah, does that help? It does. In that section, you talk a little bit about body work. You know, massage is one type of body work, but you actually go into

some different types and the different benefits of each. Is that a conversation we could wait into for a second totally? Yeah, I mean I think there is a ton of different modalities. I used to be a body worker for twenty years. I was a structural body worker. They call him roll Thing back in the day, which had a weird name. But it's really deep tissue work and there's just tons of benefit from it. I think that men, you know,

they can get disconnected from their body. That might sound really weird, but whenever I've gotten skilled body work, and it could be direct like stuff that's kind of painful actually, but you work through it over time. Really, it's almost like going through accelerated yoga working with somebody that's skilled at deep tissue work. And then on the other end of it, the subtle body works, something like cranial sacred. It's got this kind of magic quality to it. It's

it's definitely over in the magician quadrant. But you know, I've gotten results from getting subtle body work. Whether it's cranial sacred, whether it's body mind centered. There's a ton of modalities out there, and the people that practice this they feel called by the divine to serve the healing of people, so they're in service to us. And my experience with body workers, there's some of the most tuned in, intuitive, sensitive people and they've just got a knack of putting

their finger on what's really bothering you. Sometimes you're like, I just can't seem to you know, my shoulder and my shoulder, and they start talking to you. Realize, wait a minute, this is called my dad in six years here whatever, you know, whatever, right, whatever it is. I'm being a little exaggerating it. But there's this kind of wisdom to body work. I think that is right there.

I I highly recommended as a way of healing. I think it feels good and I think that you know, it's it's always good to feel good in your body. I think it gives you a sense of youth and energy. When you feel your best, you look your best. So yeah, yeah, it interested me because I love massage, but I haven't really explored anything beyond the you know, the basics like walk in okay, deep tissue massage, Okay, that feels good, you know, but I haven't explored any sort of where

it combines to something deeper. I think if you ask around your community, there's almost always a few people that people are talking about, like if you've done a session with That's how it always was with me. It's like, oh, have you've done a session with so and so? Oh my god, it's transformative, it's I can't you know. That's when they start talking that way about a particular You don't have to know what the modality is. Just know the person is an artist and they've got a craft

that they've developed over probably decades. Right, So, yeah, have you heard of something called the Alexander technique? Are you familiar with that at all? I've done a ton of Alexander Technique sessions. In fact, that was the first foray into that Alexander technique is really subtle but very powerful. Um it's used a lot with performers, So actors use it a lot because it helps free up the voice

and free up the instrument to be tension free. But um, I probably did maybe ten sessions over my life with probably three different practitioners, always big thumbs up. So yeah, maybe in the post show conversation you and I can talk about that a little bit. Because I just started nice, I'm interested. I am still in the like, I don't know what to make of this. Yeah, but we'll we'll, we'll get to that in a minute. Let's talk about the last piece before we wrap up, which is your

base Camp Essential nine, which is about embracing forgiveness. Talk a little bit about why that is important and where you see the biggest barriers to that. Well, the biggest barriers are sort of ego, wanting to be right, not letting your loved ones off the hook. So I had a piece that I wrote in there. I love my dad and I get along with him fabulously. But I had a piece in there, as I wrote about where we just weren't on the same page and I needed to forgive him for you know, now, I can see

it was just he was just being himself. He wasn't trying to cause me any harm, but there was a lot of wound there for me. And you know, there's a forgiveness peace waiting to be gotten when you don't call your brother or sister for years on end, when you have not forgiven somebody for being themselves. I mean I did a lot of stupid stuff when I was drinking. You know, none of us are perfect, and it's like embracing forgiveness. And I put a forgiveness process in there.

There's a number of me you can do. It just restores sanity, It restores unconditional love. I mean, everybody is fighting a soul battle. Everybody's got baggage, everybody's got wounds to deal with. And when you're unforgiving, it's almost like you're standing above somebody going, you know, I forgive everybody else, but you for you know, for wronging the I mean,

people have done some stupid things to other people. I'm not saying they haven't, but at the point when you're still holding onto it, the shadow, it lives with you. It's like if you can forgive the perpetrator, the person that your ex wife, whoever it is when you think about where have I lost affinity? When you can put your finger on some people and it's an ongoing thing. I've got a thing with my brother in law right now. I have to work with it as an active principle.

It's not a one time thing and it's done. I have to circle back around and say, I'm starting to think thoughts of him that he's not so great and and that's that's where I'm starting to get in that judgment mode. And so it's a dynamic piece, but it's so powerful. Almost everybody has at least one person, and often you'll have a few. You know, a best friend from twenty years ago that you had a tough breakup

and you just never you never did the work. And you don't necessarily have to have a conversation with the person. The forgiveness can be done in a meditative process where you just send them love and say I'm sorry, I love you, I forgive you, Please forgive me for for not talking to you for so long. It's just like this conversation you're having almost with your higher self to their higher self, so that you don't carry that resentment, because that's a type of poison that doesn't help you

on your hero's journey. Excellent, Well, Tony, thank you so much for coming on. You and I will continue for a little bit in the post show conversation and talk about the Alexander technique. We might talk a little bit about sobriety, maybe a little bit about depression. But thank you so much for coming on. This has been a real pleasure listeners. If you'd like to get access to that post show conversation, you can go to One you

Feed dot net slash Join. There are ad free episodes, I do a bunch of special episodes, and there's all kinds of great stuff there when you feed dot net slash Joint. Again, Tony, thank you so much for coming on. Eric, thanks for having me. It's always a pleasure to talk to you. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One

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