S2E8 – Community Welcome & Unshakable Man Fundamentals Course Overview

Chris 00:00

Hi guys, welcome to the unshakeable man, podcast and community, a community for men who want to practice tools and skills to get out of our head. And to go out patterns and to get into our bodies. My favorite thing to do right now as always, to just take a deep breath in my nose and out my mouth. I’m joined today with community stewards, Mike Mazur, Smith and Lawndale Jackson, and today is our community a very special episode. It’s Our Community welcome episode, as well as the welcome episode for our fundamentals, training our four week fundamentals training. So this episode is for men who are curious about possibly joining our community. And also, you may just have joined the community and you’re getting ready to start the fundamentals training.

Chris 01:07

I’d love to just share with you men listening to this, that this community is a living, breathing thing, I am a member of this community, I might be the founder of the unshakeable man, but I am absolutely simply the leader. But within the community, the community itself is guided and nurtured and led by a group of men who have volunteered, who have had an experience in the community, the community has been there for them, and they have been a part of it. And over the past two years, these the role of a community steward has developed and what these men have done is they have volunteered their time to welcome new men into the community, and also to update our community guidelines, our practices, and to make sure that it’s always you. It’s me, and it’s them. So it’s the three of us that are really guiding this community, it’s not just a top down, it’s not just me, it’s really a team effort. And it’s a creative practice. And we’re changing all the time and growing just like a human being or a garden. So with that being said, I’d love to pass it on to one of you, whoever would like to go first to just introduce yourself. And I’d love to just all three of us to just share our stories of being a part of it, and how the community has helped you, and what the experience of being in the community is really like from your perspective.

Londell 02:30

Certainly. So again, my name is Londell Jackson, and I have been in the unshakeable man community for I want to say two years now or so this community has given to me several gifts, and I’m not going to try to name them all. So I will just, I will just qualitatively describe my experiences. As Chris has asked, I love to say this, apparently, I’m an audit. Because I love to say this, I’m entering my next half century of life, and I’m quite excited about it. I’m excited about it. Now, the reason for that is, in part because of what the tang community has allowed me to experience and what the tongue community has given to me and prepared me for I am a Afro Latino, gay man, here in Denver, Colorado. And I say that that way to express how isolated I have felt, most of my life unable to really make real connections with men in general and growing older. Over time, it’s been very isolating or isolating. For me, I’ve just been searching for spaces and places to connect with, with with people and especially man, it’s just been a vacuum your life in some ways, or this particular way. The lockdown during COVID was a blessing because it forced me to look for ways to connect with people. And it forced the world quite honestly, to look for ways to connect with people virtually all that to say that I stumbled upon Lindsey koloman community, you know, I search entered a cohort, I was terrified that I would not find connection with men because I have my own bias of what a man is. And that is the stereotypical sports loving, Uber masculine, hairy faced and paying no attention to Chris or Mike. Both of which I am not all of which I’m not. And so entering the community. There were some of that, those that stereotype and it forced me to look at my bias biases and how I project To my biases on and based on how they appear, and again, being a person of color, being a gay person of color, I instantly go in and guard myself with those biases and assumptions. This cohort, there was a man who I had created this whole story about, because he was a football coach, he was, in my mind this uber masculine guy. And by the end of the cohort, I grew such a fondness for him and such a closeness for him that I realized that none of that bias was true that he is just as tender and as vulnerable as I am. And sexuality doesn’t matter. He’s very heterosexual man. And I could have a private conversation with him on the phone or by zoom, and we could connect about intimate stories. And we can connect because we’re both meant searching for connection, then going forward from that cohort experience and moving into the larger community, I was less afraid to join community and be visible and community and be vocal and community because it wasn’t just that man. But it was also additional men from who I had to withdraw my biases, and realize that I was part of the problem in how I defined a man and masculinity. And that I think I said during the cohort that these men, I think they’re maybe 12 Or 15 helped me to realize that manliness masculinity and what it is to be a man, I get to define that for myself, regardless of what I see on television and a magazine or what have you. And I don’t, I never know another man’s story ever carry that every day. And I think about men differently, a lot less afraid of men, this community has really helped to enrich my experience of life. And, and it continually gives me a place to come be within community and be within brotherhood. And I don’t use that word, very lightly, because it’s always been a loaded term because I I’m an only child, and I don’t call anyone brother or sister even more for a reason. But there’s that kind of closeness that I feel with, with men. And that I feel that’s i That’s my story. I’m sticking to it.

Mike 07:39

That was beautiful Londell

Chris 07:41

Thank you so much Landau, for for sharing. I just, I wanted to also just check in with you on, like, how, what did you notice about the structure within the community, or how the community what we actually do that allowed this to happen for you, just because guys who might be listening to this don’t know what we do. And they’re and love to just hear what your your relationship is with the structure. And also you have experience you have a lot of experience outside of communities like this.

Londell 08:16

So my first reaction is to say, there is no structure, but there is structure.

Chris 08:21

Thank you for that. Because it perfect structure.

Londell 08:26

I mean, so there’s a defined container that we all enter. And the container is to be grounded, to be yourself and to be yourself and to be relaxed and to be vulnerable. If you feel called to be vulnerable. And always be supportive, the best you can have whoever else is in this container. And unless I’m missing something, that’s the structure. And so with someone like me who I can wax poetically about everything for as long as I want to, that’s the best place where it allows me to not feel judged. And that’s the one thing particularly in front of men, where I fear most fearful because men aren’t supposed to be emotional men aren’t supposed to have feelings. And so this container allows me to be emotional and what it also allows other men to respond to my emotions by either hand over your heart gesture, which means I can identify with what you’re feeling or this is touching my heart or just Somebody’s at the door. Dogs, okay, but that’s just about it’s love. It’s like I empathize with you. I sympathize with you. I feel you know, sometimes.

Chris 09:49

Well, that we’re gonna talk about this more as we move forward through the foundation’s fundamentals training, but what I will share is I will Die for Thea is beautiful in what your relationship with the structure is that the structure isn’t there. And I think that’s a sign of the structure being so, so beautiful and so simple that it really allows us to show up and to be ourselves. But I think this is what the fundamentals training is for. And also the facilitator training is to learn how to actually hold that container, right to allow this to happen, so that emotional contagion doesn’t occur. And so that we all have crafted an alliance together to be able to be comfortable to get uncomfortable. And so to any of the men who who are listening, there absolutely is a structure and there are a set of practices. And that’s what this will carry you through. But it just brought joy to my heart, in how your relationship with that here and now because it that I think it says everything right about this as the structure is there so that we can be ourselves. And so it really, you’ve said it better than I couldn’t. So Mike, I’ll give you an opportunity to get settled, and I’ll share my story. My relationship with the unshakable man, but I am I’m Chris Wilson, I’m 38 years old, I grew up outside of Boston and a family run Bed and Breakfast in I like to think of it as like a family farm, where you work every single day, all day all the time. And taking breaks is like what I think other people would have the relationship with a job, where it’s like, are you taking a break, but and I didn’t know what I didn’t know, as a young man growing up I the culture of manhood that I grew up in this, this predominantly the work ethic of the New England culture of hard people, and that masculine that, that traditional masculine culture, and the culture of manhood that I grew up in. And I also grew up with a an extremely abusive relationship with my mother who I didn’t know and I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And I put a lot of my energy and awareness as a, as a as a young man and to being an athlete and then to, I thought I was connected to my body. But it was really like a thing of trying to be safe. And I didn’t know that that is what it was, until 28 years old when I got what I thought to be my dream job. And I got into this environment and and felt just in in, in a space that it was the space where I was comfortable. And something happened in the environment that I was in that that was HR related, and I wasn’t allowed to talk about it. And it was related to someone else on our team. And I started to get hives, and I started to get itchiness on my body. I didn’t know what it was.

And I didn’t even connect it to that this was anxiety. And I had a massive, massive anxiety attack in the environment that I was in, in the office. I mean, I thought I was going to die I thought I in that moment. And it it wasn’t. It was a it was like a three wave recovery an hour, a month, a year of coming back to who am I like after this occurrence had occurred and coming back into my body, and learning to build a relationship with my body, and learning to discover and discovering what my relationship with my body as a man who as a young man who was taught that to be a man was to be tough, which was to harden, I didn’t even know my identification with this was constructive. I thought it was good. There were so many signals in my life that I had received that congratulated me for this. That toll sent me messages of affirmation for being the way that I was with myself that I felt so deeply alone within this experience that even I didn’t even think I could connect or talk about it with other men. And I see myself through your explanation share Londo and how it was me judging other men. It was me withholding myself from other men. It wasn’t it was discovering that in a workshop with Dr. Yee Beckman died right down the street. So serendipitous with 30 practitioners in the space, we all had to take our shoes off, I was very uncomfortable coming into this space. And I looked around the room and it looked to me that there were probably only two other people in this space that look to be like they identified as male, and everyone else was that their PhD and they’re in psychology or, or somatic experiencing. And I didn’t even know what that was at that time. And I remember she looked around the room and she said all of the people who the women in here are told that you should be good at this. And the men are told that you shouldn’t do this. We’re all deeply alone, and we’re all poorly trained. If You don’t, you’re the only person that can report on your experience. No one can tell you what you are feeling. No one No test, no study, no person, no one can tell you what you’re feeling. If you can’t report on it, you’re simply poorly trained. And it just blew me up. It just it just absolutely rocked. My world in terms of this is I don’t know how to say her to define or to even put words to how I’m feeling. My emotional vocabulary, my emotional spectrum was so rigid, undefined, and I didn’t have that awareness until then. And then I was invited to host a men’s retreat, I was working in a social emotional learning program for high school students, where we ran circles with 18 and 19 year olds. And and this man invited me to host a men’s retreat with him. And I didn’t even know what men’s work was. When we walk into the men’s retreat, I have this men’s retreat about three months later. And lo and behold, a group of men and men’s retreat were men that I had previously worked with that I didn’t invite that I didn’t want to come. But they had arrived in the space, and I realized I had been withholding from them. And from that day, on, seven years later, we are now here with the unshakable man. And for me, it is it is the structure. It is the structure, and it is training men, that on the ability to discover, and to appreciate this structure that allows our protective parts to trust us enough to relax, and to settle. And these protective parts are so much a part of our experience of being a human being and being a man, that for many of us, we don’t even know that they aren’t us, right. Like if that was my identity, I held so hard onto it. And but it’s not me I am I was that which was experiencing through it. But I didn’t have a concrete tangible container, I didn’t have a physical relationship. And now sitting here today, that is what the appreciation is for me of this community is realizing that it’s really not about the intellect. It’s not about what were the information that we can read in a book. It’s about the a conversation like this, that inspires some curiosity, or some fear, and some interest because of the fear, like wow, I would be scared to do that. I want to do that, or right, whatever it is, and then coming into this space to have an experience. And it’s the experience that changes who we think we are. And now taking that experience out into my life, and seeing myself in a different way, and showing up in a more open hearted way. And then having a group of men, a group of human beings who have this shared experience to reflect on that width is just all it’s not up here. It’s here. Right? That’s me, that’s my story. And I’m sticking to it to go by Londo. And I’ll pass it on to Mike.

Mike 18:11

So a little bit about me and how I came to this work. I grew up on a ranch in Northern California, you know, growing up on a ranch a very manly environment. And as Chris mentioned a minute ago, you know, having the vocabulary to discuss things and talk about things that wasn’t present in my youth. And I left the ranch when I was 18 and went into the Air Force and I spent 35 years in the Air Force, again, a rather manly occupation, or vocation, if you will. So again, there was no room for talking about feelings for discussing vulnerabilities for having these kinds of conversations. So my life was, was basically spent conforming to something that we’re going to talk about in a later episode called The Man box. I had no idea until I came to this work what the man box was, but now I know it was firmly planted inside of it. But always knowing throughout my life that I wanted out of it. But I didn’t know what I wanted out of. I had no idea that I was confined and so I didn’t have any tools. I didn’t know where to go. I didn’t know what to do. I just this is the way it’s supposed to be. This is the way I was trained. This is the way I was taught. This is right, but I knew somewhere deep down that it really wasn’t for me. And so I remember as a couple of years ago, and I was out mowing the lawn and I just got this feeling of overwhelming loneliness and I felt it. I mean, I felt this heaviness and it was just it was literally pulling me down again, I had no idea what somatic practices were, I didn’t know that I that emotions were actually felt in the body, but I was feeling an emotion. It was just enormous. The wait. And so I walked in the house, and I was talking to my wife and I said, I need something. Beyond this, I said, I need a community, I need connection, I need something, what can I do and look through all kinds of stuff, and all kinds of seminars, and retreats and all these things, and nothing was really resonating. And then so I came to I came to shakable man, and I was looking for connection, I was craving it. And you know, coming in, and I really loved what Lawndale said about the structure, how there is a structure, but it’s not really, it doesn’t feel confining. It doesn’t feel like structure that I’m that I was used to being in the Air Force for 35 years, there’s structure, there’s hard structure there. And I was not looking for that. I had lived that for so long, that I was looking for something different. And, you know, the unshakable man has allowed me to, to open up to be vulnerable, and to be held in that vulnerability and not be ashamed. Because there, there’s always been a lot of shame around not being manly enough or not, not being tough enough or whatever. And so being in a community of like minded men, that can hold you in that vulnerability, and there be no shame there. There’s nothing like it. And, and as long dosa, that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

Chris 21:51

Wow, gentlemen, thank you just thank you so much, I feel just this creative explosion of just how awesome it is to get to share this together and having not actually had because we don’t have conversations about our stories in the group, right? Like, we actually part of our training is to learn how to drop out of the story in our head to get into our body, and to express what’s happening for us in that moment. And I find that oftentimes in the community, right that like, I feel like I have this deep heart connection with another man, I feel very close to him in his life, but I don’t know what he does for work, or I don’t know where he lives or right and but we’re connected on a subject we’re connected on through something that’s deeply relevant in our life. So hoping that we won’t lose either one of you again, and no one will spill a giant full Nalgene water bottle on their meditation pillar, like I just did. So I’m sitting in a pool of water right now.

Chris 22:50

So what is the four week fundamentals training, and when does it start? So the way we’ve designed this is it’s on a rolling cohort base start. So we start the fundamentals training on the first week of every month, and we open enrollment on the last week of every month.

And then we move through four themes over the course of that month. And those four themes are the power of being present, and how to check in survival, the man box shaman belonging, that’s the second theme, assertive vulnerability, going deep. And using the space. That’s the third theme. And the final one is celebration, appreciation and commitment. And on that final week, what we do is we celebrate with all of the men in the space that have made it through attending to their first four men’s groups. And then we give you the opportunity to choose for yourself and to appreciate what you’ve learned in front of the men in this space. And to either make a commitment to be a part of the community and to continue practicing, or to end and it and to leave and to burn that hidden contract to acknowledge what what you’ve learned and discovered. But then to boldly and openly acknowledge that you’re, you’re finished, you’re ready to go. And you’re no longer going to be in the community, which is something that a lot of men in our lives have had a hard time getting to practice. And so we give you an opportunity to do that.

Chris 24:19

Let’s talk about the learning style, because this course has been designed with that in mind with with your learning in mind. And then we’re just going to give a brief overview of each of the the course curriculum sections for the course itself. But before I do that, I just want to give the experience right the the how you’re going to make this transformation or the path to completion. And so when you first of all, the course starts at the first week of every month and we open up enrollment the last week, and this is because this is a live group experience. We’re all going to go through this But if you go through it at your own pace, you’re more than welcome to you could take four weeks, and you could go through it in four weeks with the group with the stewards, because we do it on that pace. Or you might take two months, or you might take three months, because you you go, you’re you have other things to do in your life. And that’s completely okay. So you’re more than welcome to do that. Because when you join the course, you’re a member of the community you’re joining, but you don’t yet belong, okay. And so what happens is, after the course starts, we then will see when you enroll in the unshakable man, we will see that you’ve enrolled in the stewards go through everyone who is enrolled, and we know who has joined the community and who is enrolled for the course. And we match you with another steward, and you in that man can set up a 30 minute community welcome call, if you want to have it, it’s totally up to you as a new enrollee. And that’s just about what brings you here, and to connect with one other man in the community who’s volunteering to welcome you in. And then we move through these four themes. And so each week, you’ll listen to this podcast, you’ll listen to an episode, and then you’re going to go to a group, you’re going to listen to an episode and then you go to a group to practice what we talked about in that episode. And then in the community, that week, we have a third piece, which is a bonus, where we have a community check in a group session live with a steward or myself or both of us. And we talk about what we reflect on what happened in after going to that group or after listening to that episode. And that’s how we get the view, the practice and the result. And so we move through those four stages over those four sections. And you might do this in a month, or you might do it in two months, you might do it in three. And when you get to the end, we celebrate that you did it simply to honor and celebrate the accomplishment of going from joining to belonging within the community. And then we do an appreciation session where we appreciate everything that we have discovered or learned. And this is like a learning review. And you get to do this in the face in front of another group of men. And then we honor the commitment or we burn the hidden contract we ask, do you want to stay. And if you don’t want to stay, that’s totally fine. It’s actually really beautiful, and awesome to show up in the space. And acknowledge and appreciate what you’ve done and the experience that you had. And then to let the other men in the space know that you’re going your own way. It’s very, very powerful and Integris. And it’s a great practice. It’s an amazing masculine practice, to confront the unsaid and to honor when there’s a difference, but to stay open hearted in that. And so that is the course overview, if you will, and how long the course takes to complete and how to enroll in the course. So I guess I just talked about all of it.