Team, welcome back. I've got a great guest with us
today. Today we have Johnny Miller.
Johnny is an exec coach, but which is the curious part for me
is that he runs a business called Nervous System Mastery
where he helps people master the nervous system.
Johnny, welcome in mate. It's great to be here.
OK man, let's let's go straight in with this.
Talk to me about what the fuck is a nervous system?
Yeah, what the fuck is the nervous system?
Good question. Well, I like to think of it as
your nervous system is the lens through which you view your
life. So if you are in a, let's say,
regulated, kind of grounded, calm state, then you have the
ability to be intentional with your life like you have agency.
And on the on the flip side, when your nervous system is in a
reactive state and could be fight, flight, anger, shutdown,
collapse, it is very hard to keep that level of
intentionality with what it is that you want to do.
And living from a reactive place, it makes it very hard to
follow through with, you know, your goals, who you want to be.
And so I like to share people, share with people, a set of
tools and skills that allow them to return to that place of
regulation and therefore to kind of have more agency in their
lives. Yeah, that makes sense.
I and I was scrolling you Instagram and you got a great
video on there and you talk about that if there's been like
3 areas that you can be in the the red, the green and the blue
and we want to be in the in the Green Zone.
Can you talk about those areas and describe them to the same?
Yeah, totally. So the red zone is a per arousal
HYPER. This is where our sympathetic,
the sympathetic branch of our nervous system.
This is like the activation branch.
This can go too far outside of what is known technically as
your window of tolerance. So some degree of activation is
great, but if you go too far, it can turn into, you know, anger,
anxiety, overwhelm, basically like beyond your threshold of
to, to hold stress. And then on the other side, the
Blue Zone is known as hypo arousal with an O.
And this is basically the parasympathetic nervous system.
You can, you can think of this as like like the handbrake in a
car. If sympathetic is gas pedal,
hypo arousal is the handbrake. And this is, you know, we all
respond to intense stress differently.
Some people go deep into red, some people go deep into blue.
And so a blue response would be something like where people
choking or freezing or shutting down or emotionally withdrawing,
disassociating, feeling numb, like those are all like
responses of hyper arousal. It's important to mention that
these are both basically adaptive strategies that we
learned as kids. They're kind of like hard wired
into our nervous systems. They're not bad, but it's very
helpful to know like notice the signs when we're moving in that
direction and then turn into, go back into the window of
tolerance, which is basically the Green Zone.
Green Zone is when when we are able to connect with other
people, connect with loved ones, connect with ourselves, when
play is possible, creativity is possible and we're just aware of
our physical sensations and and we feel grounded.
Yeah. OK.
So it's so let's just say that like we got in an altercation
and we're having a, a heated conversation and I can go one of
three ways. The the Blue Zone is that's my
essentially my freeze. All we're all, we're all going
to run off and it's and I'm emotionally detaching from that.
I don't know what to do and I'm shutting down all red.
I get hyper angry, maybe going to go from anger to aggression
into rage. You're right.
And it's and it gets very. Very heated, right and, and, and
interestingly in if you look at like long term couples,
typically one person's reaction will tend to be red and the
others will tend to be blue. They kind of play well together.
So let's say if you were the angry person and my response to
that would often be the kind of disconnection, the shutdown, the
collapse and this almost like that feeds into each other,
right. So there's ways in which these
can into play in human relationships as well.
OK, So yeah, let's just, let's just talk with that for a
second. Then just in in a relationship,
it's actually very, it's very worthwhile if we're in a
relationship with each other, it's like me knowing how you
react, like whether typically we get an altercation.
You do go to red and typically I do go to blue.
And so it's worth knowing that. So then we go, I know Johnny's
going to flip off the the lid here and I'm going to retrieve.
And how do we meet in the middle?
Beautiful yes and and the other piece of that is building the
skill of what of what is what's known as interception.
So interception basically allows you to identify what are the
somatic markers or the, the, the kind of early warning signs of
like what is a 2 out of 10 red or what is a three out of 10
blue. And once you're able to like, so
maybe like a A2 out of 10 red might be, I'm, I'm noticing my
heart rate's increasing slightly.
I'm noticing there's like a little bit of tension in my
chest. I'm noticing my palms are
getting a bit sweaty. And you know, typically if left
unchecked, unaddressed, that might end up in like an 8 or 9
out of 10. And the earlier that you can
catch it and then from there, you know, it might just be a few
breaths. It might be you go for a walk
outside. You know, there's, it's much
easier to kind of divert that when it's either two or three
out of 10 as opposed to waiting until like the full meltdown
when it's like it takes, it takes a while to come back from
that sometimes. Yeah, OK.
So like what would be a a good tool here?
I like I've got a bit, I've got an example.
Great. So this so this week I was
having a conversation over message was someone that I care
about and all of a sudden we quickly got into this
altercation over something very very small and it was very right
back and forth boom boom boom, boom boom boom.
We will definitely be here, the red and the blue.
What would be the best thing to do?
Like is there tools here to to down regulate and then to tend
to think like what? What would you suggest doing?
Yeah, yeah, man, totally. So there are, there's three
categories of tools that that I teach and I'll go through, I'll
go through 1 by 1 and and you can kind of ask me questions if
it's not clear. But the, the first category is
the interception I just mentioned.
So like literally you being aware that, oh, there is some
like charge in my system around this, this interaction.
That's like step one. And if, if people can't like
track that, then the rest are almost they don't matter because
you know, you're not even aware that you're in this reactive
state, right? So that's, that's the first
bucket and the second bucket are the, the, the kind of tool kit
for self regulation. Self regulation tools fall into
three categories, top down, bottom up, and outside.
In top down protocols, practices are things like mental reframes
could be meditation practice could be like like like I'm
actually angry because I really care about this relationship and
it's really important to me. Or it could be zooming out like
actually maybe next week this won't matter.
There's a bunch of different like cognitive reframes you can
do to to down regulate the situation.
The second bucket of bottom up tools, which are in my opinion
the most underutilized and the most effective using your
leveraging your Physiology to change your state.
So typically things I think breathing is the best way into
this. You can do things like box
breathing, 448 breathing, even humming is surprisingly
effective. It releases nitric oxide into
your system and you can hum with an extended XL for about 30
seconds and feel very, very different after literally just
30 seconds. You can feel the another
practice is like feeling your feet on the floor or like coming
into your senses. So some people use like a three
to one practice, which is like 3 things you can see two things
you can hear, one thing you can feel and something about coming
back into a senses also like a ground, some of that intensity.
So there's, there's various bottom up practices.
Well, I can kind of share more if that's of interest.
And then the third bucket is outside in which also includes
other people. So it's like you can change your
environment. Like we are constantly pro
regulating with our environment. And that's a fancy way of saying
like we are kind of in tune with the people and the stimuli
around us. So let's say you were, you were
kind of having this text message chain and you were like by like
a busy St. outside in London and there's like sounds and sirens
and like bright lights coming at you.
If you kind of walked into like a quiet cafe and sat down in a
comfy chair and like had a heartfelt conversation with a
friend, again, like your nervous system state would shifting
ground pretty quickly. So it's not about any of these
being better or worse. It's about like, what, what,
what do I have access to right now?
What, what's useful? And like, how can I stack these?
Like maybe you, you reframe the situation.
You do a humming practice and then you just like go into like
a slightly more chill space and like you know pretty quickly
your state will will downshift and then you'll be in a more
grounded place to then return to that conversation from a less
like triggered place essentially.
And actually notice what you, you said at the very start that
on self regulation, on the reframe, that the mental
reframe, actually the way that you frame that is quite advanced
in, in that you said, I really care about this relationship.
That's why I am feeling this way.
And I know this from my own experience and I know this from
many guys that I work with. It wouldn't be that it would, it
would be, well, she's fucked me off.
And because she's done this to me, I'm fucking pissed off at
her. And so it's, it's right.
It's like your point you're projecting and essentially
passing the responsibility back onto other person.
Whereas what you said there was very, it was a very tune because
it's not I, I because I care about the relationship.
This is I have made myself feel this way.
She hasn't done anything to me. Yes.
Yes, so, so that's another key step, which is implicit in this
is owning your own experience and choosing to believe you can
debate whether or not this is true, that you are 100%
responsible for your own experience and that no one else
can make you be angry, can make you be sad.
Like, yes, your system may be responding in a certain way, but
it's actually within your locus of control to shift how you
feel. And then I, I also want to add
like the third category of tools, I call emotional mastery
or emotional fluidity. And this is, this is the kind of
like level 10 set of skills, but to the degree to which you can
actually welcome and not resist the, the full spectrum of
emotional experience that's arising.
That is what ultimately creates freedom in, in people's lives.
So let's say, if, let's say, if anger was arising, like, can you
be with and, and welcome and feel and maybe express to some
degree the anger that's arising? Because, you know, sometimes I
see people get really good at the self regulation, like they
will like nail the breath work and every time anger comes up,
they just like self regulate it away.
And it's, you know, a lot of people, it's better than using,
say, scrolling on social media or, or drinking a beer or
whatever. Like it's, it's a healthy way to
self regulate. And at the same time, if you
don't eventually come into right relationship with your emotions,
then the intensity was just ramp up and ramp up and ramp up.
So ultimately the the real skill set is like being with and
expressing in a healthy way the full spectrum of these emotions.
Yeah, yeah. Rather than because, yeah, I get
that because breath, breath work is phenomenal and it's a great,
great tool. But rather than just completely
move the emotion out the way and ignore it is actually, well,
really feel that emotion. I actually, I've made-up a
recent practice. I made this up in the sauna and
but it's, it's been great. It's been a great tool for me to
regulate my nervous system. I didn't know I was doing this
until I thought about it afterwards.
But what I'd do, I sit in the sauna for six or seven minutes
and to the point where you now the sweat is dripping all over
my face. And normally I'd wipe the sweat
off, take, get it off, get it off because it's, it's
irritating. But I've started to practice
just letting the sweat drip down and then feel the irritation and
then enhance the irritation throughout my entire body to
really over exaggerate it. So I'm really, really feeling
that. And then zoom out and, and, and
completely zoom out. So I can see me, I can see the
sauna, I can see the the drips of sweat dripping off me and
know that I do have the control to agitate it or take it away
just with the power of my body, which has been quite a powerful
little thing. I might have been a solo about a
month ago. I love that, that, that's great.
And that that kind of speaks like another category of skills
or practices, which is I put it into the category of like, in
what ways can you expand your capacity for intensity, which is
the same thing as the window of tolerance that I mentioned
earlier. So if you by intentionally
putting yourselves in, you're putting yourself into stress
inducing situations that are within your control, you can
expand your capacity to be with that stress.
So you know, a classic 1 is like ice bath cold punch.
You like you are choosing to be in that situation.
You go in, your body immediately has this like intense stress
activation response, but you also know that you're safe and
you can use your breath to kind of self regulate and actually
relax into the intensity of the cold, which is the same skill
required when you're in an altercation.
You can like relaxed into the intensity that is the stress
response that is arising just as if it was a cold plunge.
As long as this is key, as long as you're not looped in and like
hooked into the story. Because if you're like telling
the same time, telling yourself the story that like she did this
blah, blah, blah and blaming that will cause this like shitty
loop basically. So you have to stay with the
sensations, both in the cold plunge and also in interpersonal
conflict. Yeah, yeah, that's super
powerful. Just going back to the the
relationship conflict again, I actually did have another
example actually the other day. And it wasn't, this wasn't
conflict, this was just a it was a strong conversation where we
were just going a little bit deeper.
They said something to me and I was like, oh, that's, that's
hitting, that's that's and my response was actually, can you
give me 10 seconds? I just need to breathe into that
because right now my brain is going with all these different
thoughts and I can't think properly.
But if just give me 10 seconds, I can just breathe into that,
I'll be able to think. And it that that really, really
helped. And actually just vocalizing
that to the other person as well, just letting them know I
just, I just need 10 seconds here.
I just need 30 seconds just to breathe.
So I think the communication part is just as strong to
communication about the other person is just as strong as you
actually doing the practice itself.
Yeah, totally. And what I noticed about that
type of that type of, I love that.
And when like when you took those 5 or 10 seconds to kind of
like breathe into that, I imagine that you also kind of
bringing your sense of like embodied awareness online as
well, which actually creates deeper connection in the
conversation as well. Because so often I do this
sometimes in podcasts where like I'm just up in my head and I'm
just like hanging ideas back and forth.
And I noticed and I, you know, I just had a podcast before this
where they got quite vulnerable and got into some emotional
territory. I noticed that like when I was
in my body and kind of speaking from like I'm aware of my body
and my mind and my head and the space around me that like it, it
felt like the connection was just more meaningful and, and,
and deeper and I, and I enjoyed it more.
And I, I feel like it's, you know, particularly in men's
relationships, we often, I, I always speak to myself.
I often will speak from a very heady place.
And it it for me, it like limits the depth that that relationship
can then can kind of go into. Yeah, what you just said there
about being able to be in your, in your head, in your body, in
the space around you, in your awareness.
Essentially it's it's like it's advanced levels of consciousness
to be able to do that. How, how have you been able to
cultivate doing because that's super advanced to be able to sit
because it's, and it's super, super attractive to, to the
opposite sex and it's, it feels very, very safe that he is able
to do this and and hold this space while this chaos going on.
What's been your practices around cultivating that?
Yeah, so primarily going through a lot of shit is is the the fast
track. So I'm let's see how to respond
to this. So one of the frames that I
think was most helpful for me was reading King warrior,
magician lover, which is a fantastic men's workbook on like
men's archetypes, like mature masculine archetypes is
basically the essence of it and connecting like I, I connected
those archetypes like head, heart and cock essentially.
So head is like the magician, heart is the lover hawk or like
belly area is the warrior. And I'm noticing when I'm like
connected or disconnected from each of those.
And then if you want to, for me, the king archetype, the
sovereign archetype is the one that makes sure they're all in
alignment essentially. Yeah.
So I'm, you know, noticing that when I was in my early 20s, I
had a very strong magician. I was in the startup world.
I was like, you know, did well at school, all that all that
shit. And my magician was like,
overbearing, but I was pretty disconnected from my heart and
my cock. And so through, you know, a
bunch of different internal practices, men's work retreats,
just like self inquiry, I was like, able to get curious about
like, OK, what are the barriers? What is getting in the way for
me like inhabiting my lover from like giving and receiving love
or vulnerability and then like my warrior, like, why do I feel
scared to express my anger or to set boundaries?
Why am I in these like people pleasing tendencies and
exploring that. And yeah, I mean, I don't think
you ever like get there. I think it's always like, it's
like increasing degrees of achievement and unfolding.
But I I like that. As a framework for kind of like
in any moment, I can kind of say like roughly where I'm at, where
I'm at, each of those different areas.
Yeah, yeah. That's strong.
I like how I use the archetypes and I yeah, I'm very much the
same. But for such a long time, I
just, I think I'd more, I'm more or less just had armor around my
heart area. So then it would be like, dude,
just so good at the business thing.
And I'm like, yeah, because this guy can emotionally detach from
all of this. But when it comes to the
relationships, it's like how we want to go deep with you and.
And. And actually to go to to go real
deep, you have to be able to take off the armor and
emotionally and, and get emotional.
Yeah, right. And be and be OK with that which
is the lover. And I want to like add that like
like it feels fucking good when that happens.
Like it's not for someone else in the relationship, like being
able to do that. It's actually like, it gives me
the sense of like, oh shit, like it feels really good to like
fully receive a compliment. You know, before I would just
like if someone said something nice about work.
I did. I it was just like, yeah, like,
yeah, great, thanks. Or like, no, someone else, but
like to let that fully land. It feels good.
I I guess I just wanted to like throw that in there as well.
Yeah. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're,
we're yeah, we're like preaching to the guys.
Yeah. I, I open up.
I got, I've actually, I got another, this is a question for
me because this is something that I'm going through at the
moment, right? And I don't know a lot of the
guys here fathers. So I have AI have a son.
He's he's 3 1/2 amazing. And and he's, you know, he's
growing so quick and a bunch of emotions and, and his, his
nervous system is all it's crazy.
It's beautiful. It's wonderful.
Yeah. And have you had experience with
guiding fathers with their children around how to help with
just to give them the tool set to help regulate?
Yeah, so I, so for context, my wife and I are, are looking to
start a family ourselves pretty soon.
And I, I was just on another men's work podcast with this
guy, Dan Doty, Our fatherhood unlocked.
And we specifically talked about the overlap between nervous
system regulation and fatherhood.
It's it's a big topic. I think what, what I'll say is
like a maybe an entry point to, to more like a deeper
conversation is that the degree to which you are able to kind of
regulate your own presence and not shame him in any way or make
any emotions wrong. That will be almost like the
best foundation that you can build for like having a healthy
nervous system that is able to have a lot like a wide window of
tolerance for most of us, you know, speak to myself again,
that wasn't modeled to us by our parents.
They typically punished or shamed or certainly didn't
respond well to like emotional outbursts often because they
were challenged by those emotions when they came up in
themselves. So first and foremost, it's like
doing the work to come into right relationship with those
emotions in yourself. And from that place, it's then
much easier to welcome it and love it when your kid goes
through these like emotional roller coasters.
And it, it's important to point out that like children between
the ages of like, like one and five really can't self regulate.
Like they don't have the, the like myelination in the nerves
to be able to ground themselves. So they need a, a father or a
mother to self regulate and to Co regulate with.
And that's how they learn, and that's how that wiring gets
built. Yeah, yeah.
Like I, I try with Leo and, and he has, he's good at this.
And I wasn't a while ago. This was like 18 months ago.
I was quite young. When he'd fall over or and he'd
start crying or something would happen, he would cry and I'd
start teaching him. Nice.
Yeah, cool. Who just like, let's just
breathe together, breathe in, breathe out.
And it's so cute when he first started doing it because he
didn't know how to breathe in and out through his nose or his
mouth. But now he's been doing it for
like 18 months as and he like he'll stub his toe or like even
he just won't get his way and he'll and he'll cry and let him
cry and I'm like, right, mate, let's let's breathe together and
he will. And you can just see him just
calm and he's 3 1/2 right. And he just and he just calms
down. So, so it's such a powerful
tool. Yeah.
And and so I, I love that. And the the other piece that I
think is worth mentioning is like kids are in some ways like
our teachers when it comes to emotional fluidity.
Like an emotion, the the life cycle of an emotion is somewhere
between like 10 to 20 seconds. And you see this with kids
because they don't have the stories or the layers or like
the judgement. So they'll go from like sadness
to like anger and then like joy and laughter in the space of
like 30 seconds. And that's, that is what is
capable or like that's what we're capable of doing as well
when we kind of get out of our own way and we like able to work
through the tension and resistance that arises.
That's a really great point. It's a really and and and just
saying that like we are capable and we are also allowed to do
that because Leo and we were like.
And we were and we, we, we did at one point, right?
Like we were all like, you know, 1-2, three years old.
And that's what we were like. It just often the conditioning
that gets laid on during school or in those like teenage years,
that's when the arm ring comes up to kind of protect to a
different point. And it's not that the arm ring
is bad or wrong, like I don't want to shame anyone for having
that. It's it was necessary for that
time. But learning how to kind of like
take it off and to soften is a skill that is required if you
want to have like deeper connection in your life.
Yeah, and and difficult for a lot of guys like I'm I remember
about 18 months ago someone said to me, Pete, you need to soften,
mate. I was once fuck off start time.
I'm all right, mate, where I checked up need to soften and
unless you a couple of months ago sell it to another guy.
But it that's that can that can be the opposite to what many men
are taught to do is we're not taught to soften and society
doesn't teach us to soften. It's it's like it's very much go
out, drive direction, certainness, you know, be be be
the warrior really, and and and to soften is to what do we, what
do we associate soften with? Well, soft, yeah, right.
Penis weakness and, and, and so it's like, no, don't want that.
There's a lot of shame around that, so we'll just avoid it.
Totally. And I think something that I
want to mention is that it's, it's not easy to say like soften
in the same way that like if I said to you like sleep, you're
not just gonna like fall asleep right now.
But what you can do is you can create the conditions for sleep
to arise naturally. And the same, the same with this
softening. Like softening is like the
natural result from a sense of like, oh, I feel safe and I feel
like seen in this space. I feel like I'm welcomed and
like all of me is welcome to be here.
And then like the softening happens naturally.
It's not like I don't do it. It's just like the natural
result of, Oh, I actually feel like safe to be here.
So I think like from the perspective of, of people who
are like, you know, trying to help friends or loved ones,
often it's actually more of like just fully welcoming them and
not needing them to be any different.
Because actually if we're saying to someone else, like, oh, you
need to be soft, we're kind of speaking to ourselves.
It's kind of like a projection. Yeah.
Because it's like a part of us that is like uncomfortable with,
with not being soft, you know? Yeah, going back to to Leo and
the ability to go from having a tantrum so happy as Larry in 30
seconds and he's forgotten about it and he's just getting on this
day where it was, you know, to talk about myself here.
It's like if there's something goes on with me, I'm, you know,
that is in my body. I'm thinking like, and I
actually feel if, like if I have a problem going on which I care
about, like I feel that in my stomach for quite some time
afterward. Like I might, there might be the
event may happen and then it'll be in my stomach for hours and
hours afterwards. No, I'm not the only guy who
experiences that. What do I do in that situation?
Yeah, right. So, so firstly I want to point
out that like you've already made the leap, the interceptive
leap of like, OK, this thing's happening.
It's not only a story, but I'm noticing this somewhere in my
body, right? So that's like the first step is
like there is a sensation here that feels like uncomfortable.
From there, the, the exploration or the, the journey, let's say,
is like, to what degree can I like get curious about this?
Like I, I like the frame of courageous curiosity that isn't
trying to fix it, isn't trying to change it isn't trying to get
rid of it. But just like, just like what's
here, like what does this feel like?
Is it, is it like hot and red? Is it, is it intense?
And like even just bringing your like presence to that area, it
will start to shift naturally. Yeah.
And generally the, the, the practices.
So I, I think it's, it's kind of a like maybe helpful to give an
example of let's, let's say it was anger, you know, just making
this up here often anger. I, I think of this as like, if
you imagine like a hose pipe and the hose has got like energy,
like running through it. The hose pipe can get kinked one
of two ways. If it gets kinked one way, it
gets repressed. And so then it might come out as
like passive aggression or like like like I'm not angry like,
but this is like again, like contracting away and probably
like a snarky remark or something sarcastic that comes
out. And if it gets kinked the other
way, it's like aggression. It's like the typical kind of,
you know, like fuck you energy. So the work is like, to the
degree that you can bring your, your presence and awareness and
just like allow it to move without tensing or contracting
or resisting against it, then it just comes out cleanly and
that's when it lasts 8 to 20 seconds.
So, and this is a really, this was such an insight for me was
like what I thought of as anger, as the emotion of anger was
actually my resistance to that anger.
And the same is true of grief and sadness and lots of other
like negative emotions that we, that we think of.
The negative aspect is the way in which we are like tensing and
contracting and resisting that feeling.
Because when, when that tension cut and resistance goes away,
the feeling lasts 1020 seconds and it actually feels fucking
good. That's like the, that's like the
ridiculous joke of, of this whole thing.
Like the way in which we suffer is like specifically the way in
which we're resisting that sensation.
And so then the art, the skill then becomes like, OK, in what
way am I like resisting this? In what way am I tensing against
this? And that's when, like the game,
the game is on basically. Oh, yeah, That's nice.
Yeah. So it's really, it's, well, it's
a kind of like exaggerating. It's delving into that feeling,
that emotion, whatever's going on, exaggerating it so you can
really feel that in your body and coming to terms with it
rather than ignoring it. Yeah, and it might want to, you
know, something might want to express or move or, you know,
maybe tears come, maybe there's like some frustration.
Maybe there's like I, I do what like guided breath work with
people one-on-one. And the, the incomplete reflexes
that get surfaced and completed are wild to witness.
Like I had a guy who had a near death drowning experience.
And while he was in this breath work journey, his entire body
recreated that drowning experience with all of the
movement because our, our bodies buffer these incompleted
experiences in I, I think it's literally in the smooth muscle
tissue in, in, in the vasomuscular system.
And so that's that's why you get people who are repressed.
You see the tension in their body, on their faces, in the way
they walk, in their posture, in, in their mental kind of
patterns. And so when there is sufficient
safety present, these these reflexes get to unwind and the
tension gets released and there's a sense of like, it just
feels so fucking good on the other side.
It's like, it's like a huge exhale.
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
And what you just said, though, actually when you're talking
about expressing emotions, you like, get it, get it out.
You might need to, you know, shout, scream, cry that there
like that emotional expression and then putting masculinity in
that emotional expression and masculinity.
How have in that and that could you work with ton of guys in
what when women too like how have you seen like modern
masculinity involving in terms of emotional expression?
Have I seen it evolving? Yeah.
Like how like have you seen more guys leaning into that and
evolving into it? Or is there still that like
Nope, not going there? Yeah, So I can, I can tell you
what, what I've seen and also, you know, you know, in myself or
maybe start with a personal story, which is I remember
specifically when I was, I was doing a training and I would
like anger was coming up for me. It was very clear it was anger
and I wasn't wanting to express it.
And my, my teacher at the time said to me, he said, you are
loved in your anger. And I just like broke down
bawling just like tears streaming down my face.
And just this like shit, like I've felt unsafe essentially
whenever anger has arisen. And I, I think it was connected
to the fact that like I hurt someone in an like outburst of
anger when I was a kid. And so I was like, Nope, like,
don't do that again, that bad, wrong, etcetera.
But in terms of how like the evolution of, let's say, like
working with emotions, I think for a lot of a lot of guys
actually, like many guys are learning to kind of come into
their kind of like softness and to come into their heart, let's
say. And there is a beauty in that
because so many men, as you know, we've been saying have
been so closed off for a lot of their lives.
And at the same time, there's a way in which like there can
almost be if that, if, if they're only in their softness,
then there can be a disconnection from like the
warrior from like the power. And that's what a lot of women,
I think are like seeking that like they, they're meeting these
like very feminine, kind of like soft, like squidgy guys.
And they're like, like where like, where are the fucking men?
Right. And so it's, it's not that, it's
not like don't go into the, because we need that as well.
Like a warrior that's disconnected from his heart is
also bad that that's like what we've been kind of moving away.
But that's like the toxic masculinity that everyone talks
about. But the, the vision that like,
like I like to hold over kind of integrated masculinity is one
of, you know, a man who has the capacity to be in his heart, to
be in his lover, to be a father, to be, you know, loving for
loving for his son and also has the warrior and the power and
like, the, the like, the fuck no.
Or like, like, I will defend, like what I love.
I will defend the people that I love and I care about.
I will set boundaries. I will follow through with my
word. I will stay in integrity.
And that's like, that is also deeply necessary.
And the, the path that I typically see is like the
dearmering starts to happen, kind of come into their hearts,
start to build a relationship with their feelings.
And then the, the next shift is like, OK, like, where's the
warrior? Like, how do I, how do I show
up? How do I find my my fierceness,
my passion might like lust and like, in some ways there's
almost like darkness that there's like a there's like a
power in there, which can be scary if it's not also connected
to like the the king and the lover to use the archetypal
language. Yeah, yeah.
And I think 11, my experience and my experience of working
with plenty of guys is what guys need to be careful of is going
too far into the emotional expression because it does feel
fucking good, to be honest. When you start getting that shit
out, it feels good. It's like it's such, it's such a
release. You're so much lighter.
But if you go too far, it then becomes this like, I just want
to release everything. And you can fall into the trap
of emotionally dumping the people around you and they might
not want your emotional shit. And so it's, it's important to
actually have the right environments to be able to
express the, the right things, which is why I'm such a huge fan
of like men's groups and groups like what we, what we run and
the events that we run, because it's a, it's an environment.
We can get around other guys. You can get that out and then
you can don't have to emotionally dump on the actual
on the people that are closest to you.
Yeah, that's so well said. And having that, I mean, really
what we're talking about is discernment, right?
It's like what are the spaces and and who are the people in
which I can kind of take the armor off and I really can like
reveal to and men's groups are amazing for that.
And then there are times where like you might want to put some
of the armor back on. Maybe it's like at like a a work
like boardroom meeting or something or like you're showing
up like for work like I I don't think that you you need to be or
anyone should be that open all the time.
Like there's a, there's like an inherent intelligence to this,
but again, it's like responding appropriately to the situation
that you're in and noticing when you're over indexing on one of
the other. Like, I think for most men, as
far as I'm aware, that they actually could use more spaces
like a men's group or like, maybe it's their therapist or
maybe it's someone that they can really, like, open up to and
they can be seen in and the stuff that they wouldn't
normally reveal. But yeah, like for sure not
taking that to every area of your life.
Yeah, yeah, because it's just going on to the archetypes.
It's like the the lover archetype, which is what we're
talking about here. When we go into an emotional
expression, it has no boundaries that the lovers.
So if you feel too much and it's like, and it feels fucking great
because you, we, we essentially, we all want the love.
The lava has lower boundaries. So we have to, we have to have
the the magician and the king to Gianna go, Hey, hey, there's
some boundaries here to to not just reveal all and go head over
heels here and let everything go and then not see issues that are
there in front of your eyes. Totally.
Yeah, yeah. What's OK?
A lot of the, a lot, a lot of the guys and myself included,
where we, we love, we are building things like building
businesses, we love building careers.
We've always got projects going on.
How does nervous system regulation enhance that zone?
Let's, let's talk about the warrior side here.
Like how does that enhance that zone?
Yeah, totally. So I mean, your, your nervous
system capacity is essentially like how much energy and life
force do you have? And you can direct that, ideally
channel that energy and life force into like expressing your
gifts, whether that's business, whether that's art, whether
that, you know, whatever that looks like.
And so I'm really interested in how do we increase our I, I
think about how do we increase our capacity and how do we
increase our resilience? And I'll define those two.
So capacity is like the amount of intensity that we can be with
without losing our center. That's capacity.
And then resilience is how efficiently or effectively can
we downshift from being like in the go, go, go, getting shit
done to them like rest and recovery.
Because you know, if you look at like Olympic sprinters, they,
they've created an art out of how do we rest?
Well, yes, because when we rest, that's actually when the muscle
is repairing. And it's the same with, you
know, the same, the same with business.
Like it's, it's in the recovery, the down shifting periods when
like the good ideas come and it's when we, when we recharge.
And so having resilience in my mind is like, how can we retrain
how to relax? Because many, many of us men
especially really struggle with relaxing, particularly without
relying on exogenous substances like alcohol, weed, drugs,
whatever it is. And so treating relaxation is
actually a skill to be cultivated and knowing that
there are practices like non sleep, deep breaths, breath
work, there's a bunch of different things, tools which
allow us to effectively downshift, you know, once the
work day is done, we're coming home.
We don't want to be that like kind of warrior magician, go,
go, go. We actually want to soften and
like relax and getting really efficient in that cycle is I
think what what creates sustainability and it's also
what creates create creativity as well.
So that's, that's how some of this nervous thing work ties
into I think what you're speaking to.
Yeah, yeah, that that actually I'm just, I'm just in the in the
trenches of building a planner, the heroic man planner.
So it's a physical, it's a fun planner.
I've been working on it for a while and it's everything that I
ever wanted in to, like plan my life and just consistent, just
be real consistent with just constant growth.
But it also incorporates like state priming and regulation and
like things to go into your masculine, things to go into
your feminine. It's got everything that I've
been learning over the last few years and the last 10 years in
business. But and what were you just
talking now about? Actually, when you get home from
work or you're you're shutting down for the day, it's you you
want you do. You don't want your your
warrior. You don't really want your
magician. You want us.
You so actually like incorporating tools that down
regulate in your like evening rituals.
Yeah. And then on the flip side, in
the morning to incorporate tools to ramp yourself up to prime
precisely super important and how, yeah, so.
Totally. So maybe I can give a little
plug here, but I've just released an iPhone app called
State Shift that is specifically for that use case where it has
upshift practices and downshift practices.
The upshift practices, things like Breath of Fire, stuff like
that really get you juiced and charged in the morning so that
you can focus, you can like bring your full energy.
And then the downshift practices mostly for kind of like that
evening wind down, but maybe like you want to do an NSDR
after lunch so you can then get a second winds to get more stuff
done. That's precisely what this is
for. And it's kind of like my like my
like easy, like if this then that approach to just
incorporating this into day-to-day life.
Yeah, yeah, just making a couple of notes there.
I was like, oh, Chuck it in as they are after run.
Yeah, yeah, the old breath, breath of fire.
That's like do it's like called ego ego eradicator.
OK, that's fucking. Horrendous every morning and you
need to have to eradicate your ego, but it incorporates
throughout the far. But Dan, does it wake me up
afterwards? Because you go, you go through.
Pain, it just breaths go through you incredibly powerful.
What's your what's your experiences around breath work?
I mean, they could could probably be a separate podcast,
but I, I think if breath work in, there's two main camps, like
1 is shifting of state. So like what we've just been
talking about like breath of fire or turning off to breathing
or humming where you're deliberately up shifting or down
shifting your state. And then the second category is
loosely speaking, transformational breathwork.
Yeah, and this is holotropic breathwork, conscious connected
rebirthing. There's a bunch of them, right?
And this is essentially where you're looping your breath to
create an also state of consciousness where unprocessed
emotions can tenderize the surface.
Now, I think there's a there's a kind of nuance here in that
often, let's say someone's doing holotropic breath work, there is
a danger of blasting through your window of tolerance,
disassociating, and someone might look like they're having a
cathartic experience, but they won't actually be in their
bodies. And so in my experience, it
doesn't get integrated. And so it looks like this huge
powerful catharsis, but then nothing actually changes on the
level of the nervous system, so. Let's just let's just set back
a. Second there.
Sure. Yeah.
Because because you're you're you're clever guy and and what
you're talking about there might just go over the heads of what
are you talking about there? So when you say someone's going
through like a holotropic breathwork session, which is
essentially it's very, very deep somatic breathwork and they
might miss what's going on in their body, what do you mean by
that? Like where are they going?
Yeah. So the experience that someone
might have will be the. So it's a forced inhale and a
forced exhale is kind of what the breath looks like.
Often a sign that they are approaching the window, their
window tone into their nervous system is that they get what's
known as technique, which is like, I call it like T Rex
clause. So like you'll sometimes see
people with like hands up like this sort of his tingling and
then it'll get like cramps and it's not comfortable.
And typically when that happens, they will also be either in
their head or their mind or they will have like that their
awareness will have like left their body and the body may
continue to convulse, to emote, to go through.
I, I processed, but what I've seen and you know, I don't have
research studies to back this up because they haven't been done
yet. But I've, I've seen that when
that happens, whatever the emotions are typically don't get
integrated. And so nothing changes.
So it might have been a powerful experience in the same way that
like, you know, going to a concert, taking LSD and it's
like, it's a, it's a wild ride, It's fun, it's a good
experience. But if you're going into it from
a perspective of like, I want to heal my nervous system or
whatever the intention is, I actually think it could be
counterproductive and in some cases re traumatizing people if
something comes up, but it's not fully integrated.
The, the way that this looks in a, in a healthy example is when
the exhale is relaxed and effortless.
So the inhale is like the activation, the exhale is the
relaxation. And when you can loop your
breath in this way and actually stay with your experience to
stay with your emotions, to stay with the sensations, and then
the catharsis happens and then there's relaxation and rest
afterwards. That's actually when the stuff
shifts. That's when the transformation
happens. And I, I get quite angry,
frankly, when I see breath work practitioners, particularly
those that teach online. And they're, they're not like
there in person to kind of create safety and they really
open people up in a way. And then, you know, shit comes
up as it does. And then there's no, there's no
one there to kind of hold it and be with it.
And it's too intense for most people because most people have
a narrow window of tolerance because we live in like a
dysregulated world. And so I think what what people
need if they're going to engage in that type of breath work is
the more gentler, nourishing, slower, hyper breath work where
they can stay with themselves in in the experience.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you're right.
And I too get angry when things aren't people facilitate things
and then there's no integration or it's nice, there's no real
safety or there's no real thought, thought process about
what might come up and help to handle that.
And yeah, because it can be, can be very traumatic.
And if that's not looked after or integrated or processed
properly, can just go home worse than when you came into the
thing. Yeah.
And I, so I've, I've worked with many, many students who have
done some form of philosophical, even Wim Hof, and they've had
intense anxiety, like been unable to sleep for weeks, even
months afterwards after some of these experiences.
So I actually think that it's very irresponsible and to some
degree dangerous not giving people sufficient context as to
like how powerful these experiences can be.
Yeah, and to and I've got just going back to what you were
saying earlier about being out of body like so recently.
So we on some of our events, we do breath work.
I have a facilitator that comes in and does that.
It's amazing. But the last session that we did
actually, which was in September, I did had that, that
what you're talking about that out of body experience.
And I got actually, there was Jesus and then there was this
goddess. And like it was, I was, I was,
that wasn't another paradigm in another world like I was on
plant medicine. It was crazy how vivid and just
and divine, how beautiful it was.
But it and it was an out of body experience.
I was, I'd left my body. So and that's what I wanted to
explain to this. Like when you're talking about
out of body, this is what can happen.
But you can stay out of body for a long time.
And if you're not, and and what you're rightly saying is that
being out of body, you're not actually processing the stuff
inside your body. It's you're not.
You're just having this vivid lucid experience. 100% Yeah,
Yeah. Thank you, man.
That's that's yeah, that's powerful.
Right. One, one last one last thing,
actually. So if you forge forge guy, most
of the guys that are in my in our world very much very much
like me very much, you know, the, the the family man, they
may have been in self development for a few years,
right? This whole like emotional
expression, nervous system regulation, breathworks, all
super new or they've done little bits of it.
If you were to give one piece of advice that to get them going to
go, Hey, just like just do this. And I promise you man, if you
stick to this like you will, you will see quantum leaps over the
over the course. Where would you?
Where would. You tend to go it's.
A great question. I would actually say getting
into the practice of designing and running experiments for
yourself because you know, you can hear me, me talking, you
like you talking and the information was like, go through
be like, oh, that's interesting. But unless you like actually
design and create an experiment to test it for yourself, like it
won't land and integrate in your life.
So starting with the the premise of like, I want to be like a
scientist of my own experience, like an end of one.
And then following like following your curiosity, like
of everything that we talked about, there's like tons of
stuff here that you could explore, whether it's waking up
every morning and doing a state shift practice, doing an upshift
or down or doing a downshift practice in the evening.
Like that as a very simple starting point.
An experiment might be, I'm going to see if there's a, a
men's group that I can join and just like commit to that for two
weeks, see what that's like that if that, you know, sticks that
could, that could kind of change your life.
So I, yeah, I would really recommend like taking agency for
yourself and designing experiment, running it and then
like reflecting on it and being like, did it work?
Did, did I actually feel more, more relaxed or, or better or
were they just bullshitting like, and it's, and then it's
like finding, finding what works for you and then continuing to
iterate. And then that pro honestly, that
process doesn't really end, but you fall in love with, with the
process of experimentation. Or at least I did.
And that's why I'm still doing doing what I'm doing.
Yeah, yeah, I like that. Be a scientist experiment.
Yeah. Thanks man.
What was the name of your app again?
So the the app is called state shift should be available on iOS
and Android stores. And then I also teach A5 week
course called nervous system mastery.
The website is NS mastery.com and that is essentially my
attempt to like distill all of the theory and practices and
protocols that we've talked about today and, and much more
into a kind of like 5 week boot camp that will get people kind
of firmly on this journey of like experimenting for
themselves. Nice.
Thank you man. I'll link those in the in the
description. Johnny, appreciate you man.
Thanks for the wisdom. That's been great.
I've really, I've really enjoyed this man.
Thanks for reaching out. And yeah, this is super fun for
me. Cool.
So man, TuneIn. Next week we'll be in it with
another episode select team. Hey guys, almost forgot.
Check out heroicman.com, the website.
If you want to join Heroic Man's membership, you can just do that
immediately on there. Super easy.
Or if you want to apply to join the Awaken Man program and go
deeper, you can do that there too.
Cheers man, see you next week.