From Addiction to Adventure—Wilderness Tools for Real Recovery with Jason Lyle

Jason Lyle (former pastor, founder of Adventures in Recovery and Sacred Grit) shares how cold water exposure, breathwork, and backcountry brotherhood help men break cycles of addiction, trauma, and emotional numbness to rebuild identity and courage. We explore nervous system regulation, triggers and the amygdala, and how intentional breathing can restore the prefrontal “steering wheel” in moments of stress. Jason unpacks pre-verbal trauma, attachment wounds, and why compulsions often masquerade as self-soothing. Featuring raw testimony, recovery tools, wilderness retreats, and powerful stories of sobriety and grief-to-purpose transformation—this episode is a practical path from stuck to present, honest, and resilient.

Jason's contact info:

Website - thesacredgrit.com

Schedule a call with Jason HERE

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Transcript

Welcome And Mission Of Hope Unlocked

SPEAKER_02 0:16

Welcome to the Hope Unlock Podcast. I'm your host, Kristen Kurtz, and I'm also the founder of New Wings Coaching. I help and empower wild-hearted and adventurous women of faith feeling caged and stuck, unlock their true purpose and potential, break free from limitations, and thrive with confidence, courage, and hope. If you're curious to learn more about coaching with me, head to NewWingsCoaching.net and be sure to explore the show notes for ways to connect with me further. Get ready to dive in as we uncover empowering keys and insights in this episode. So tune in and let's unlock hope together. Welcome to the Hope Unlocked podcast. I'm Kristen Kurtz, your host. I pray this episode is like a holy IV of hope for your soul. Please help me welcome Jason Lyle to the show. Very excited to have him here today. We had a chance to talk a little bit um before we got started here and hit record. And I would love for you to just share a little bit about yourself before we get into your story.

Meet Jason Lyle And His Work

SPEAKER_01 1:10

All right. Thank you. Um yeah, as you said, Jason Lyle, I was uh a pastor for 13 years and um left the pastorate in 2017. And since then, I've done all manner of things. I worked in on a farm, farming cattle. I, you know, worked in a wilderness therapy program. But uh since then I started Adventures in Recovery, which is a fraternal group for men where we all come together and practice spiritual practices together and go on adventures together and meet once a month and do all the manner of things. And then I have uh my business, which is Sacred Grit, um, which is coaching, retreats, and the Sacred Grit podcast. And that is me at the moment.

SPEAKER_02 1:54

So good. Well, when I when I saw you know your your information when it came through, um, there was a couple words that really stood out to me. And one of them was adventures. Um, because I love adventures. I don't think enough people, you know, just in Low Salife, um, you know, take adventures or, you know, step out of their comfort zone to do things that are um, I guess you could say wild and crazy, because I'm kind of a wild one. So um adventures and recovery, like tell us more about just even that name. Like what how did that come to be?

Why Adventure Accelerates Men’s Recovery

SPEAKER_01 2:27

Sure. So I came through a recovery program and worked with men in that program. But here's what I started to find. And the reason why I started adventures in recovery is the practices that I teach, which is cold water, immersion, yoga, breathwork, meditation as self-regulating tools and spiritual practices. I found that men gravitated toward those just fine. But if I could take them out into the woods, if we could go hiking, um, if we could go out and spend time around a campfire, and then we could jump in a cold river or and we could do breath work by fire. I started to see that men received that and they were able, or you know, to integrate is a good word. They were able to integrate that work with a little bit more ease in that particular setting. Because here's the thing you know, when you're sitting in your living room, you can go over and adjust your thermostat down. If you're hot, you could adjust it up if you're cold. You can go to the bathroom and get running water, you can go to the refrigerator, you can, you know, what you name it, whatever you need to do. But when you're hiking, you don't really get to do that. So there is no thermostat, and you know, there's a tent instead of a house, and the food is freeze-dried, and you're having to cook that over a you know, this little tiny stove, and you know, you're moving daily, and so all that separation from the daily comfort of life creates this level of discomfort, and discomfort produces resilience and spirituality for men is resilience. It's you know, I think one of the things I try to teach my guys is you know, what you do matters, and how you live your life matters. And if you think that it doesn't matter, then you can look at the outcome of your life and go back and track your choices and realize that your choices got you where you are. So, you know, to be aware of what your choices are, but resilience makes us very aware of our choices, and the outdoors makes us very aware of our choices. And so adventures in recovery is kind of a um you know a play on words because it you we use the word recovery, but what men start to find out is that we're just recovering their true heart. And the adventures part is exactly what we do. I mean, rock climbing, mountain biking, fly fishing, hiking, you name it, we go do it. And so through those adventures, we help men recover their true selves. And if they can live in that truest form of who they are, then they can find their way toward peace.

SPEAKER_02 4:55

So good. Yeah, and I have you found too, like I I work with women in coaching. I haven't um ventured out to work with men in that in that realm yet. But as far as um that recovery piece, have you noticed that there's just uh I think the wording that I've used a lot is um like misidentified, like there's an identity crisis that's hap actually happening in our world right now. Have you noticed a lot that come to you and they're just like, I don't even know who I am?

Discomfort, Resilience, And Choice

Identity Crisis And The Comfort Trap

SPEAKER_01 5:22

Yeah, well, there's a there's an identity crisis, and the identity crisis comes out of a comfort crisis. So the thing is, you know, I think about this all the time because I get asked questions, but my master's degree is in international community development. I worked over in Uganda for you know 10 or 11 years in systems of sustainable economic growth over there. And so I kind of traveled in some forward thinking circles and some think tanks in Washington, D.C. and all these different you know, levels of development. But we started doing these studies around um and I'm this is kind of kind of a political statement, but transgenderism, and I'm not going in that direction, but we were studying the impact of transgenderism on the society, and I just remember having some conversations about this. Now we're talking about 2016, 2017. So this isn't when this was kind of as big as it is now. Right. And I just remember, you know, one of the guys that was sitting in my one of the think tanks, he was from Uganda, and uh I said, uh, you know, well, Eddie, what do you think about all this? And and he said, I think you Americans have too much time to think. You know, it's like he's like, y'all, y'all have too if this is what you're worried about, I don't know what you're worried about type idea. But I think a lot of our sociological problems, a lot of our spiritual problems, like 100% our spiritual problems, comes from this comfort that we have created for ourselves. It's this, to quote Jesus, it's this wide path that is comfortable and it's easy. And so when I take men out of the comfort of the recliner, their sofa, the front seat of their truck, their job, and take them out in the woods and put 30 pounds on their back and say, we're gonna walk five miles a day to our first campsite before we go to the second one tomorrow, which is nine miles away, they feel discomfort. And in that discomfort, they start to realize that there's more to life than just laying in front of the TV watching Netflix. Does that all make sense?

SPEAKER_02 7:23

Yeah, absolutely. It's you know, I I'm just imagining you like being this trail guide, right? You're you're out there. Um, how many have come into this experience in quote unquote adventures, getting out of their comfort zone, or is this like completely like a new concept for them?

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Yeah, I mean, it's been let's see, we started in 2022. Our first trips were March of 2020.

SPEAKER_02 7:50

So you're you're fresh still, pretty much.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

Yeah, yeah. There's probably been a hundred guys come through or more. It's uh it's a completely free program. Um, we don't charge anything for adventures in recovery. So, you know, men can come on the hiking trips. We supply everything. We have 12 tents, 12 sleeping bags, 12 cookers, 12 backpacks, 12. We have all of it. All they have to bring is their clothes. Um, it's completely funded by grants and donations because that part of what I do um is it's all about the community. Now, yeah, some of them give money, and we do big fundraisers every year, and we expect them to come be a part, all those things, you know. But that's free, you know. The coaching, the retreats, and all that, there's a cost associated with, but the adventures and recovery part is free. And so I'm telling you that because so many guys will sign up for these things and then not come. So those numbers, you know. Yeah, and they'll get scared and you know, not show up. But I can tell you this the ones that do come and stick, they are stuck and they come to everything we do.

SPEAKER_02 8:55

I love that. So, do they are they usually local or do they travel? Like, what what's the farthest um distance somebody's come to do this?

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Let's see. Uh our furthest one is in Vermont. Oh wow, but most of them are yeah, here in Georgia or Alabama, they're pretty close by for the most part. But we have another chapter in Chattanooga, Tennessee. So there's a few guys up in Tennessee, North Carolina that go to the Chattanooga chapter.

SPEAKER_03 9:23

Okay, awesome.

SPEAKER_02 9:24

You know, I was wondering, so you said the people that have gone through it, they stick. Like they're they're in it, they're they're they're coming to all the things. Would you be open to sharing a testimonial of of somebody who's gone on an adventure with you guys and and kind of the fruit of of them stepping into it?

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you about Kyle. So Kyle came to us and um he was, I want to say when he came on the first hiking trip, he was 90 days sober and uh sober from methamphetamine and heroin. And by his own admission, he was you know waking up in the morning and shooting meth to get going and going to bed at night, shooting heroin to get to sleep. So he had a pretty heavy-duty addiction. And uh that was in 2023. Okay, and I had uh and and I Kyle sent me a text on his 33rd birthday. Yeah, and he had been sober for a year, a little bit over a year.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Wow.

Free Program Logistics And Community

SPEAKER_01 10:23

And the text said, Thank you for the first sober birthday I've had since I was 13 years old. So for 20 years, he had been you know doing meth, heroin, drinking. He was talking about riding his bicycle, his bicycle to school and making methamphetamine in a Mountain Dew bottle. Somehow you can do that by shaking it. But so yeah, and I had lunch with him a couple weeks ago at the Waffle House. He's married, has you know, three kids, all her kids, and he's raising them. He has a job and gainful employment, and yeah, he's turned his life around. Then there's another one, his name's Chad. When I met Chad, he he's an attorney. He had lost his son to an untimely death in an A TV accident, flipped over and killed his 16-year-old son. And Chad was pretty uh, I mean, he he his marriage was in shambles, his he's a lawyer, his law partners couldn't depend on him because he was just having to close the door and life just crumbled down on him every day. And uh that's been two years now. And Chad was up here with me on Friday. We were hiking before the snow came in here in Georgia, and he's found joy and peace, and he's learned how to live in honor of his son instead of wanting to die. And uh, so yeah, I mean, I could keep going. There's story after story after story I could tell you about Sam and Brian and Augie and you know, there's just tons of them.

SPEAKER_02 11:40

Yeah. I mean, you you kind of, I'm sure you do this, take a moment, you know, once in a while, maybe daily, to just like reflect on your yes and your step of obedience. And maybe it was, I don't know for you. Was it kind of like an abstract idea, or were you like, oh yeah, I'm doing this thing? I know for some people they might get a vision or a blueprint to create like a business or a ministry or something, and then they're like, I don't know how to do this, I can't do this, I don't have what it takes. Did you deal with any of that?

Transformations: Sobriety And Grief To Purpose

SPEAKER_01 12:10

No, I've always been kind of a go get it kind of guy. So I was 20 years old when I started my plumbing company. I grew up in a blue-collar family, and I was the youngest master plumber in the state of Georgia. I went and got my plumbing license on my 18th birthday, took the test. And so, I mean, 20 years old, started my own plumbing company. When I was 33, I planted the church. It was called the Open Range Church. It was a cowboy church. We met in a barn on Tuesday nights, and we specifically reached out to men on purpose because once again, just felt like men needed that medium. And so all of those times, you know, Kristen, even when I went to Uganda for the first time, and I remember standing in the lobby of the hotel in Uganda going, I don't know what I'm supposed to do, but I'm supposed to do something. So I started down that road and went and got a degree in international community development from Oxford. And then, you know, I I got ready to start Adventures in Recovery, and I'm like, nope, it's just what I'm doing. And same thing with sacred grit. So all of those things I know, you know, it's just like when I got saved when I was eight years old. It's like I just know that what some people call it God, some people call it the Holy Spirit, some people call it the energy, the divine, whatever people call it, that this beautiful, massive, unbelievably, I mean, unjust, I mean, it should bring us awe. This thing that we call God just gives us movements inside of our body. And if we say yes, yeah, we don't always know. I mean, sometimes it's like holding on to the rear end of a lear jet going 400 miles an hour through the atmosphere. But you know, and sometimes things fall apart before they get better. But if we just keep saying yes, good things happen. That's so true.

SPEAKER_02 13:52

Um, I love how you said, you know, it sounds like you don't, you're not one who hesitates. And I think that is kind of a rare, it's a rare gift in this world. Um, maybe maybe it's more with men. Like I said, I work with a lot of women. And I do have those that are very like, yep, I'm going in, I'm doing the thing, I don't care what it looks like. We're gonna build the airplane as we as we go. Um, you said, you know, it could fall apart, right? Have you had you know any of those moments where um just throughout your life? I know you mentioned like you went through recovery. So um what did could you just tell us a little bit about that experience for you? For like what what led you into needing recovery?

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Right. So I was adopted at birth. I was two weeks old when my my parents got me. Um, and throughout my and I knew that growing up, and throughout my entire life, I've just always had these attachment issues and you know, needing to be needed and needing to be wanted, and all these different things. And so that's there's always been a theme in my life, and I don't know that I would have known that when I was younger. I just, you know, knew what my own experience was. But as I say, I went down the aisle when I was eight years old, and I know for a fact that that was a moment where something larger than me, we'll call it God, made that movement for me. Yeah, and immediately got curious about the Bible, you know. I mean, I read it all the way through at eight years old. I somebody gave me a living Bible, and I yeah, I read it cover to cover when I was eight, very active in Sunday school, grew up Southern Baptist, and by the time I turned into a teenager, you know, we started learning the purity culture back then, and so anything to do with sex or sexuality was kind of made to be you know dirty. But I got married when I was 19. Um I told you I started the plumbing company when I was 20.

SPEAKER_00 16:23

Right.

From Pastor To Founder: Saying Yes

SPEAKER_01 16:24

Um, and you know, getting married that young didn't really know who I was, but we started having kids. And anyhow, fast forward, planted the church in 2004. And in 2006, I went to find out or find my biological mother um through some, you know, a series of events, and found out she had died, and then went to try to find my biological father, found out he had died. And to some people, they're like, Well, that's no big deal, you know, you didn't know him, but to an adoptee, it's a very big deal. And uh that and not that I had been perfect in my life up until then, but it wasn't long after that I just started having affairs, and I had one in 2006 that nobody knew about, and then I had one in 2010 that came out, and you know, as churches tend to do, we just swept it under the rug, and that I had one in 2017 and lost my job. That's the reason why, well, one of the reasons why I left the pastorate, and then you know, I went into recovery for a sex addiction, is what they told me. Okay, and uh through that process, you know, really thought I had it under control, but had another affair in 2020, and through that process, lost my marriage and lost another job and all manner of things, and my kids found out and just a whole it was just a very big deal. And I was ready to end my own life. And uh I had met a man named Rob Gent and uh when I was working in wilderness therapy between jobs and all that, and and Rob had talked about you know, nervous system regulation, connecting your prefrontal cortex to your amygdala, connecting your rational thought to your to your survival response. And so I was laying on the left side in my bed staring at the wall, making a plan on how to end my life. And, you know, in my mind, God had failed me, life had failed me, everything had failed me. I was just in this ridiculous victim mentality. But, you know, that's generally where folks in my situation get to. And I reached out to Rob and I just sent him an email and he said, Yeah, man, let's chat. So we got on a Zoom call, and Rob introduced me to cold water immersion. And strangely enough, Rob had a seminary degree too. So we kind of we hit on that, and that he had turned psychologist, and he was uh chief clinical officer of one of the biggest behavioral health organizations in the U.S. And he introduced me to nervous system regulation, which was cold water, breath work, meditation, and yoga, and just started teaching me how to you know find my body. And I read books like The Body Keeps the Score by Basil Vanderkolk, and I read books like Dopamine Nation and Widen the Window and started learning how to regulate myself and it changed my life. I mean, it it completely revolutionized my thought process. It helped me learn how to be in my body and be okay. It taught me how to see my thoughts. I always think about, I can't remember if it's Peter or Paul one who said, take every thought captive and make it obedient. So started teaching me how to grab those thoughts and to stop being a slave to my thoughts and my impulses and start being a slave to the truth and to honesty and to integrity. And it's been a beautiful, beautiful journey. And through that, that's what I do now through uh sacred grit as I coach men. And it, you know, I was on the phone with a client yesterday, adopted at birth, and you know, struggling with a lot of the same things. And uh I have others that are methamphetamine and heroin, others that are pornography, others that are food, others that are grief, anxiety, depression, attachment issues, you name it. I work with all of them, and we use the tools, and then you know, not only do we use the tools, we also use good conversation about helping men find their true self.

Jason’s Recovery Story And Hitting Bottom

SPEAKER_02 20:14

So much goodness. And and this is like you are like you are free of all of this, would you say, since 2020?

SPEAKER_01 20:23

Oh, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_02 20:24

So about six years, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Yep. I took my first cold plunge October 19th, and that changed my life. And it is uh, I do it every single day. I either get in a cold plunge or I take a shower. And here's the thing.

SPEAKER_02 20:37

Yeah, I want you to talk a little bit more about that because we were talking a little bit before we we got on, and I'm like, I live in Minnesota, like I want to be warm, like put me in like an infrared sauna. I don't I really don't want to be cold. Could you talk to some people who are like yeah, no? Tell us about it, tell tell us more about this experience adventure.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Sure. So here's the thing about cold water immersion, and I make the joke all the time that I think Jesus might have been baptizing people in ice water. But here's the thing that that happens, and so I'm gonna tell you the physiological response. Or let me just I'll stick with the brain chemistry and stay out of the the hormone chemistry. So we'll just talk about brain chemistry. So what happens to people who have experienced pre-verbal trauma, and that's what I experienced was a pre-verbal trauma by being adopted. There's a trauma in my body that I just cannot get to because I didn't have words to describe it.

SPEAKER_02 21:37

So okay, so that's pre pre-verbal trauma, is you just don't have words to describe it.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Okay, right. You you this trauma happened to you and you can't recall it because there was no you didn't have a vocabulary, but you can your body can remember it.

SPEAKER_00 21:51

Okay.

Cold Water, Breathwork, And Regulation

SPEAKER_01 21:52

I don't remember those instances, I don't recall those instances, but inside my body, I remember them. And it's where it's it really acts just like PTSD. The only difference in PTSD is you usually have a memory of who you were before the trauma. So if somebody has a wreck and you know they see their best friend get killed in the wreck, they have PTSD, and even though they've lost that friend, they remember what it was like to have that friend. So they have like this anchor point to go back to as they work their way through PT PTSD. Adoption's not necessarily not necessarily that way. And we don't see it only in adoption, we see it in foster abandonment, we see it in uh premature children that were taken from their mamas early on and had to spend long periods of time in the uh They we see it happen there. We see it happen. And uh, you know, most of my guys can point back to a mother who was, you know, not very active in their life, or maybe she went through postpartum depression and didn't want to hold them, and these different reasons that create this attachment need, but it can't be remembered. And so that goes into our autonomic nervous system because it can't be stored in our prefrontal cortex because we don't have a vocabulary. And we know that our prefrontal cortex runs off logic, which is determined by vocabulary. As you learn your vocabulary, your numbers, and all those things that we use to compute logic, the prefrontal cortex starts to develop. So when a man who has trauma, and this is the same with my guy who uh had grief, I was telling you the story a minute ago. When that trauma triggers him, it triggers inside of his amygdala where his fight, flight, freeze, or falling response comes from. When he gets triggered in that amygdala, he will start having behaviors that are meant to calm that amygdala if he doesn't know how to do it himself. And so for some, that's heroin, for some that's methamphetamine, for some that's porn and masturbation, for some that's sex, for some that's relationships, for some that's going to the strip bar, for some that's uh casinos, for something like every man will have their own expression of how they deal with that trigger when it hits in that that amygdala. What we do when we get into the ice water is we set that amygdala off on purpose so we're not being caught by surprise. We are learning what it feels like to be dysregulated on purpose. So I get in the water, I set that amygdala off, and scientifically it takes about 20 seconds for the for us to gain access to the prefrontal cortex. We do these deep breaths, we're just deep in and long out, and we're starting to access that prefrontal cortex. And so when you first get in the water, you get this feeling of I've got to get out, I've got to get out, I've got to die. Because evolutionarily we've been taught that we cannot live inside cold water. But through breathing, we bring that prefrontal cortex and it starts to communicate with the amygdala. The uh clinicians call that flipping your lid when you first get in the water, and we're closing that lid, we're bringing that prefrontal cortex back down and we're bringing it in communication with the amygdala. And after about 20 seconds, we get we can in our brain go, okay, um, I'm fine. And then we just sit there for just about I'm I ask guys to stay in somewhere between two and three minutes. And if we do that every single day, yeah, every day, there's a ton of physiological benefit. You can Google that all you want to. I mean, there's you know, brown fat loss, uh cardioglies.

SPEAKER_03 25:24

Brown fat loss?

SPEAKER_01 25:26

Brown fat, yes, the fat that gathers around your organs. There's this idea of uh uh vascular dilation, so you get more heart health, you circulate the cold blood through your body, which creates resilience in your vascular system, all these different things that happen. But the biggest thing that happens is over and over and over, men learn how to feel that trigger to catch that trigger and to go, hang on a minute, I can stay here a little bit longer. Because it's the discomfort of being triggered that causes the addiction. It's not the addiction itself, it's that trigger. The addiction is just an outcome of uh a bigger symptom, and the symptom or the the trigger is in the amygdala every single time. If we could teach men how to access that, and I'll tell them uh very quickly, that's learning how to access God. God lives in truth, Kristen, and you know this. And not truth is written by some man somewhere in a house that's going, This is true. God is in the things that are 100% true for your life. Jesus called the Holy Spirit the paraclete, the whole it's the paraclete. You can remember that word by para alongside cleat, dig in. I tell my guys, think of a parasoccer cleat. It is coming alongside to help you dig in. Jesus says that's where God is, the Holy Spirit, the paraclete. So that help, that helper, that truth, that way, the truth, the life, we can access that when we can become a whole human. And we can't become a whole human by attaching the brain that God gave us to the body that God gave us and allowing that helper to teach us how to be disciplined in our actions. And when we bring all those parts together, we become unstoppable as men and and women. I see it work for women, I just don't work with women. So it seems like we we do have a few of the guys' wives who have done it and find a lot of uh comfort in it. But men, you know, it's a bit of an aggressive thing to get in freezing cold water at 5 a.m. So men tend to like it.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

Gives them something to attack, you know.

SPEAKER_02 27:30

Yeah, so I'm just curious, like how how soon is it that you go from your warm bed to the cold plunge, like time-wise?

SPEAKER_01 27:38

I get out of the bed, go to the restroom, and straight to the cold water.

SPEAKER_02 27:42

So you're just like straight at it.

SPEAKER_01 27:44

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I figure, you know, I tell my guys, I'm just stalk yourself awake. Yeah, if well, if I just figure if I can start my day doing that, I mean, that's about as bad as it's gonna get.

SPEAKER_02 27:55

It's all right. That's a great way to look at it.

SPEAKER_01 27:58

Yeah. I'm like, good lord, if I can hop out of the bed and go get in, you know, 40 degree water, then what else can happen today that's gonna be worse than that, you know?

SPEAKER_02 28:06

Right. So, you know, I'm curious. So you do that right away in the morning. Do you ever like head back there like midday night? Like if you're if you're triggered, is that like kind of a I don't know, think of it like a safe haven for you to get like re-regulated?

Trauma, The Amygdala, And Daily Practice

SPEAKER_01 28:22

Is that I am I have guys that I'll have do that. I use a little bit of a breathing technique sometimes if I do get dysregul dysregulated during the day, but I've pretty much got my nervous system under control. There's there are days when I can, but you know, a lot of times triggers are retrospective. Like you, I don't know that you necessarily know you're being triggered in the middle of it. It's like you get in the middle of dysregulation and go, uh-oh, I know where this is, you know. So sometimes I'll use breath to, and and so I do use the Wim Hof method with men, which is another autonomic nervous system hack. But that that stopping to just pay attention to my breath for two or three short, you know, seconds generally brings me back into the present moment. And the thing about the present moment, you know, that's I think that's what Jesus meant when he said if you want to see the kingdom of heaven, you have to be born again. I don't think he meant walk down the aisle and say a prayer. I think he meant no literally, you have to be willing to remove everything that you think is real, like a brand newborn baby, and step into the next moment as if you've never seen it before. That's how you regulate yourself. You go, wait a minute, all this stuff that I'm worried about are constructs of my mind. And Jesus says, don't be born again. Have the faith of a child. You know, if you really want to see the kingdom of heaven, let it all go. And then Paul says, don't conform to the patterns, but be transformed by making your mind new. So this idea is woven throughout the Bible. It's just we turned it into a commodity that the church says, come down the aisle, say a prayer, you get saved, you get to go to heaven when you die. But most men are living in hell right now. So to learn how to go, no, I can choose right now to hold this moment and to go, okay, what is really happening right now, in all honesty, what is happening in front of me? It's not what I think is happening, it's not what might happen or has happened, what is happening right now. And then going, and what can I do about my situation? That's truth. That's honesty. That's a way, that's truth, that's life. We can choose to be alive. And then what happens when we die? I mean, that's up to God. I don't know that I need to be 100% certain about that, but I mean, I do know that I can be a hundred percent certain that if I make a good decision right now, if I find the capacity to make a loving decision back toward myself right now, my future will look a lot brighter.

SPEAKER_02 30:35

So much goodness. You are you're a wealth of information. I love it. There's so many uh resources here that you've mentioned that um I think it would be great to um maybe add to the show notes as well. I know Body Keeps the Score, it's a big one, it's a big, thick one. It is for those of you who are like, you know, more curious about this. Um, and for the men out there, I just want to make sure that we capture like how they can get a hold of you, how they can um potentially take part in your adventures and recovery and um sacred grit. What would be the best way for them to contact you?

SPEAKER_01 31:10

That's great. Yeah, if they go to thesacredgrit.com, Kristen, everything is there. Okay, and here's what I tell guys you you they can hire me as a coach, I'd love to have them, but everything I do, they can access for free. Podcasts, YouTube videos, blogs. I've been on a lot of podcasts. I, of course, I need money to live, but this is all about the information for me. And if men get healed, that's all I care about. I believe that the power that is greater than me will take care of me. You know, the birds of the air and the lilies of the field are taken care of, and so will I be. So they can do that, and they can go to uh thesacredgrit.com, access everything there. Recoveryadventures.org is how they would go to the adventures in recovery website. And uh yeah, man, Adventures in Recovery is completely free. We have a trip coming up, I think it's the end of March, 23rd through 25th or something like that. They can sign up, come on into Atlanta, fly, we'll get somebody to pick them up at the airport, take them out in the woods, and throw them in a cold river. Love to have them.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

I love it. So on your website, you you share quite a bit about like what the experience is like, and you know, obviously you've shared quite a bit here too. Uh, if somebody is like wondering, um, what's the next experience gonna be? What are you guys doing in March?

SPEAKER_01 32:29

Oh, me?

SPEAKER_02 32:30

Yeah, and the next adventure. Where's the next adventure for adventures and recovery?

SPEAKER_01 32:35

So we will be going to a little hiking trail right not far from my house. It's called Long Creek Falls on the Appalachian Trail, and we're gonna hike about uh three miles in, and we're gonna set up a base camp and have dinner that night around the campfire. And then we get up on Saturday morning, take our time, being a little bit lazy, and we climb up to we don't climb up, we hike up the top of this mountain, this beautiful little field, and we do some yoga, we do some breath work, we do some meditation, then we hike back down the hill, we get in a cold river together, um, and we just talk about what it means to be a man. We talk about all the things about being a spiritual man, about how to access truth in and of ourselves. Um, that's for adventures in recovery. Sacred grit, we have a men's retreat, April, I don't know, it's on the website, 23rd. It might be the same kind of dates where I might be getting those mixed up. They come to the men's retreat at the retreat center, a little bit more structured there. So when we're at the retreat center, I teach nervous system regulation on Friday night. And then on Saturday, I teach week honesty, where are you for real? Not where you think you are or where you might be. Curiosity, what can you do right now to change your current situation and self-love? Can I love myself enough to do it? And so the retreats are they do come with a cost, that's sacred grit. So that's a little bit different level of uh interaction. But and then there's the one-on-one coaching, you know, people can book a consultation, and I that's on the website, and I'll say it's a 15-minute free consultation, but I don't think I've had a single consultation that was 15 minutes, and I don't run a clock. So, you know, call me up, book a consultation, and hold me on there as long as you want to. I'll give you all the information you want.

SPEAKER_02 34:19

So much goodness. Well, I would love to hear. Um, I just feel like because you're taking men into the uncomfortable, what what do you feel like is maybe something that God's bringing you into this year that's a little bit stretchy and uncomfortable for your next leg of the journey?

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Oh, releasing a book. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 34:36

I was wondering.

Present-Moment Faith And Renewed Mind

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Yeah, I've been writing a memoir for three years now. And I told my partner the other day, I said, you know, it's you used to have dreams when you were a kid about you know getting up in front of the class to work a math problem and you realize you're naked or something. You know, that's the way writing a stinking memoir is felt. And it really it releases here. Yeah, I don't know, in a couple weeks. We I filled out the book production form last night, and so yeah, that's the big adventure, you know, it's just putting it out there for the world to see. And Sacred Grit just started last January, so we're really officially launching this year. Yeah, the the podcast was called phrology for the longest time, and I rebranded it in January as Sacred Grit. So yeah, that's the big adventure right now.

SPEAKER_02 35:21

That's exciting. So this is like literally hot off the premise.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Hot off the premise.

SPEAKER_02 35:27

Coming in, have it. I love it. Well, you have been a joy to be on and so much uh wonderful information. I'm so thankful for the way that God has just led you on your path to then set others free. As we close today, um, I just as I mentioned earlier, like I I do this for the one and I always believe that there's um I I just imagine one person listening in. So as you're um, you know, thinking of that one person, there's is there anything that you would want to just share of that one, encourage them? And then would you pray us out today?

SPEAKER_01 35:58

Yeah. So for the one, there is hope. Um, if you've tried everything and you still feel hopeless, there is hope. Um, there's brotherhood uh and there is a way. There's a way to embody your faith and not have to look for it in other people or in books or in anything else, but inside your own self. And uh if you will just wake up in the mornings and do one loving thing toward yourself, you'll start to find that thing that lives inside of you.

SPEAKER_03 36:30

Yeah, so good. Yes, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

You're welcome. All right, let me pray for us.

SPEAKER_03 36:35

Yeah, thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

God of everything, how beautiful it is to have a time to discuss these things that change lives. And I know that that's what you want to do is change lives. And sometimes changing those lives don't look the way we think they should look. It looks completely different. Sometimes it looks like getting in cold water or having a hard conversation. But God, I know you're there in every person's chest if they just access you to awaken that spirit inside of them that will lead them in all truth. And I pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

SPEAKER_02 37:11

Amen. Well, thank you so much, Jason. Sure. Uh thank you so much for being a brave voice who's setting many free. I'm gonna close with the Hope Unlocked anchoring verse, which is may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. And that it's Romans 15, 13. So I will be back with another episode next week. Thanks, listeners, for tuning in.

unknown 37:34

Bye bye.