Man (Un)Caved
Welcome to Man (Un)caved podcast where we explore the complex landscape of masculinity in men. Hosted by facilitator /life coach Shane Coyle, this podcast delves deep into the multifaceted nature of what it means to be a man in today's world.
Join us as we embark on a thought-provoking journey, navigating through topics such as societal expectations, emotional intelligence, mental health, relationships, and personal growth. Each episode features insightful discussions, personal anecdotes, and expert interviews, providing listeners with valuable insights and tools to navigate their own journey towards authentic manhood.
Whether you're a man seeking to understand and redefine your masculinity, or someone interested in gaining a deeper understanding of the male experience, this podcast offers a safe and inclusive space for meaningful conversations.
Join the conversation as we challenge stereotypes, celebrate diversity, and embrace the richness of masculinity in all its forms. Tune in to Man (Un)caved and discover a new perspective on what it truly means to be a man.
"Not until we are willing to come out of hiding, will we truly experience our greatest potential"
Need support? Our free recovery services and weekly support groups are here to help both individuals and families affected by addiction and mental health challenges. You don’t have to do this alone. Schedule a free, confidential call today and start the healing process for everyone involved.
www.manuncaved.com
Man (Un)Caved
(Un)Willing: Breaking Free From Overthinking - Cultivating Presence and Connection
Are you feeling trapped by constant overthinking? Discover how compulsive thinking keeps us from truly living in the present and learn transformative strategies to break free. In this episode, I illuminate the idea that being "lost in thought" creates a disconnect not only from ourselves but also from the world around us. This episode unpacks the habitual nature of our thoughts, driven by deep-seated anxieties, and offers practical tools to become aware of and interrupt these obsessive patterns. I share how to recognize when we are in a trance-like state and what can help us return to a life grounded in the present moment of wisdom and embodiment.
Explore the journey towards grounding and genuine connection through embodiment practices tailored to address trauma and build self-awareness. I discuss the significance of techniques such as meditation, Qigong, mindful walks, and breathwork in helping us to feel more grounded and present. Consistency in practice is key. I emphasize the importance of patience and dedication in mastering these techniques. By reconnecting with our true selves and those around us, we can emerge from hiding and foster deeper, more meaningful relationships. Join us for an enlightening conversation on how to cultivate a life of presence and connection.
Instagram: shanecoylehealing
Youtube: manuncaved
The intensity of our compulsive thinking is in direct proportion to the extent we are unwilling to experience our body in that moment. Hey, my name is Shane Coyle, so good to be back. I want to let's open up tonight's episode. Several years ago there was a spiritual teacher and this teacher was asked to describe our contemporary society. And now his response was lost in thought. And just really loving that. Lost in thought? Yes, I believe that I am. I believe there is a whole society that can tend to get lost in our thought. Now, when we get lost in our thought, we're really losing the embodiment or the wisdom of the present moment. So we're going to kind of dissect this a little bit and take a look at this idea of what is called embodiment. And when we drift away, is we're getting? There's a little siren in the background you might hear as it's going by. We're just going to keep going. Let's take a moment just to explore, just even for today, how much time was spent planning, fixing, trying to solve a problem or obsessing. How many moments did we drift into this cyberspace. Now, taking a moment just to recognize through the day, maybe even right now, we're just we're drifting into cyberspace, we're obsessing about the next moment. We're thinking about the things we need to fix or some problem that hasn't even happened yet. So when we attach to our thoughts, we're just really. We're lost in this trance. Back to what he was talking about we're just lost in thought, and when we get lost in this trance we are separated, and what I mean by that is we're just really separated from ourselves. We're separated from each other.
Speaker 1:Poet and author Don O'Donohue stated our bodies know that it belongs to life and spirit. It's our minds that makes our lives so homeless. So I just want to repeat that one more time, because it is so beautifully written Our bodies knows that it belongs to life and spirit. It's our minds that makes our lives so homeless. Much of our thoughts are just so derived on our own negative bias. There's this hypervigilance waiting for the next eruption. Vigilance, waiting for the next eruption, waiting for the next invalidation, waiting for the next abandonment. So there is this continuous undercurrent of anxiety that lives in our thoughts and this undercurrent of anxiety leaves us to experience an emptiness or loneliness within the present moment. It just continues to perpetuate over and over again. And if it's continuing to perpetuate over and over again, this emptiness and this loneliness, we can feel separated from our own bodies and we start to get shut down. We are separated from each other, we're just offline. If we can't connect to ourselves and feeling so separated again, going back to this homeless experience of our own self in the present moment, and we're lost in the obsessions of the mind derived from the past and or the future, then we're separated from ourselves and we are really separated from each other. We're just offline. We're separated from connection, connectedness. We're separated from empathy. We're separated from compassion.
Speaker 1:I once heard that it's about approximately 80 and 98% of our thoughts are the same thoughts that we had yesterday or months ago, even, for that matter. And, of course, anything that you do over and over again becomes a habit, and so we just become habituated to living with great anxiety and worry because we're worrying about the next problem that has that hasn't happened yet. We're we're worrying about fixing something that isn't even broken yet. We obsess about a situation in the past that we would have done differently or we should have done differently, and so we stay in this looping pattern, this continuous looping pattern that causes us to feel such deep homelessness in this experience that we're having and this obsession and these obsessive thoughts that keep looping around and around and around. Our obsess and our thoughts are really just greatly derived off of assumptions or interpretations and projections from our own subjectivity. So it leaves us again separated from the gift of now, the wisdom of what this moment is teaching us now.
Speaker 1:So how do we get from this trance? How do we awaken to become more aware and notice when we are locked within this trance? Well, first, it's first is we must become aware that we are in this trance, that we tend to live our lives in such a subjectivity and we only see about 10% of reality, because 90% of it is derived from our own perspective and our own interpretation of what we think is happening in the moment. So again, we get locked into a narrow glimpse of this present moment which, again, if we're not able to see it in reality and we're running interpretations or assumptions or projections from our own subjectivity, it's going to cause us to collide. And where we can collide a lot of the times is we're colliding with people and we're colliding with things and we're colliding with life itself, because we're not getting the whole frame of what is happening in the moment.
Speaker 1:So what are some tools and some red flags to notice when we are locked in this trance, to help us with the awakening. Well, one is notice the obsessive thinking patterns, notice our need for compulsive thinking around and around. The intensity of our compulsive thinking is a direct proportion to the extent of our unwillingness to experience our body in the moment, the angst that is driving our thoughts, and so, instead we exploring the angst we keep looping in our thoughts. I'll repeat that one more time the intensity of our compulsive thinking is a direct proportion to the extent we are unwilling to experience our body in the present moment, and so we are driven by this angst of our thoughts. And instead of exploring the angst, we loop in our own thoughts around and around and around. And the idea to transcend or come out of this trance-like state.
Speaker 1:Intervene on this process to as much as possible. Intervene on this process to as much as possible, as much as we can intervene on this process, and to notice what am I unwilling to feel, what am I unwilling to feel in the present moment, whether that be sadness, whether that be fear, and see if we can intervene on that by intervening on the behaviors, by diving into that, even if it's just for a that, even if it's just for a moment, even if it's just for a moment, we intervene on that experience where we're unwilling to feel, feel that feeling underneath and then pick up right back in our own thoughts. But even though that one minute, and practice and practice, and practice. It goes back to what I say. What is your practice? Whatever you are practicing, you become, that, becomes part of your habit. So if you're practicing deflecting, if you're happy, if you practice, keep going back into your thoughts and avoiding what you should be, what is underneath and feeling that, then that becomes your pattern. So that's one of the flags to notice is our obsessive thinking pattern.
Speaker 1:Another obsessive thinking pattern is judgment. We can tend to judge ourselves, we can judge others, we can judge life. And way that we can notice that, when we are in our judgment patterns again in our trance, lost in thoughts, is we start to apply shoulds how things should be, how this person should be, how life should be, how I should be. And if there's an implied should maybe it's covert, not as overt pay attention to that, not as overt. Pay attention to that, open up a space for that, and that could leave a little bit of room for you to explore what is underneath. So some of the red flags to be aware of obsessive thinking judgments.
Speaker 1:Another one is addictive behaviors, and this is the big, big umbrella that we like to discuss. Of course, drugs and alcohol could be a way of avoiding what needs to be felt underneath, but a lot of people don't understand these behaviors lie in many other directions Food, getting lost in social media it's a big problem. Our devices, screen times, computers, iphones, and just getting lost in cyberspace Shows we can just binge watch shows. Now, look, these aren't bad things, quote unquote. Bad, it's to notice when we get lost there and really what we can be doing is avoiding what we are feeling underneath. So again, when we're lost in that and we go into this TV show screen times or social medias, we can be avoiding what needs to be felt underneath. So drugs, alcohol, food, social media work could be a great distraction piece.
Speaker 1:We're staying busy all the time. Staying busy all the time and so, or shopping, and really what? These are just really quick dopamine fixes. So when we understand addictive behaviors, there's really only one addiction All that the mind is chasing is the dopamine hit, the reward system that gets ignited. So people, I think, struggle to understand this. You know they tend to just see the drugs and the alcohol, but it's wherever the dopamine gets ignited, wherever the reward gets. Sex could be one where we just use sex to not feel. Shopping, to not feel work keeps us distracted and these can keep us in a trance, and that trance continues to be a habit and we contend to chase that habit the speed, speed of life, racing, restlessness.
Speaker 1:You know there's always this saying that you know I don't have enough time, I don't have enough time, I don't have enough time. Well, what do I not have time? I don't have enough time to be in my own body, I don't have enough time to nurture this relationship. I just don't have enough time to be in my own body. I don't have enough time to nurture this relationship. I just don't have enough time to slow down. Now, that's an unfortunate event. I mean, it's our culture too. Our culture just creates racing. It's the human race. We are racing closer to our graves because no one wants to slow down.
Speaker 1:And I think when we start to slow down and I work a lot with this in the healing is when people start to slow down and they have to be still. They get a glimpse at what's been underneath the whole time and all these emotions start to rise. And then we struggle with emotions and we get lost in our own thinking. Again, we disconnect or disassociate from our body, from the wisdom, the embodiment of the present moment. And slowing down what I found from my own practice and working with people is slowing down appears to open our lens. It opens our lens of perception, and so these are some signs and some flags to become aware of that we might be locked in a trance and so, connecting to the angst underneath, what am I not willing to feel in this present moment, what am I not willing to experience in this moment? And every time we can do that, we interrupt the behaviors and we create this space. And now remember that space empowers us. It empowers us and it gives us more access to our inner wisdom. At the moment we get out of our thoughts and again it's a practice. So even if it's one moment, then it's two moments. The more that we can practice to interrupt the behavior of getting looped in our own thinking and separated from our awareness and our bodies in the present moment, the more that we can catch it and the more that we can become aware and notice when it happens and to get back rooted again. Get back rooted again.
Speaker 1:So some of the embodiment practice that I've discussed and I work with in my courses and I work with my clients too, as we're working on narratives and trauma and somatic work is also the practice of meditation or Qigong or mindful walks. Breathwork techniques are always helpful to explore the body and the wisdom, what is happening now and then building a window of tolerance. How do I sit in this awareness? Can I sit in this awareness and just noticing when the mind starts to move and shift and move away from it? And again, it is a practice. You're not going to get this overnight. So I hope this was helpful.
Speaker 1:Again, practicing embodiment exercises help us to feel more grounded when we're feeling ungrounded and it gets us back into the present moments. It opens up a space of perceptions, it brings us back to connection with ourselves and it brings us back to connection with ourselves and it brings us back into connection with others. Again, my name is Shane. This is man, uncaved. We need to come out of hiding. If you did enjoy this quick episode, please share it, please rate it, give me some feedback, let me know it helps people find their own awareness and you just spread the message of love.