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Breathword
Breathword is a podcast about breath as a tool for living and the ways life breathes back. Each episode explores the insights that come from slowing down, tuning in, and letting yourself feel. Through intimate conversations, poetic reflections, and grounded breaths, host Annie Janssen invites you into a more authentic, wiser way of moving through the world. This is a space for healing, humor, imperfection, and the quiet magic of being alive.
Breathword
The Return to Heart: Embracing Modern Masculinity
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Matt shares his transformational journey from burnout and disconnection to discovering true freedom through unconditional love and masculine wholeness. Through personal reflection and relationship work, he reveals how integrating masculine strength with heart-centered awareness creates a path to authentic power and purpose.
• Moving beyond hustle culture after years of entrepreneurial burnout
• Recognizing how childhood conditioning creates patterns of emotional suppression in men
• Understanding unconditional love as a path to freedom rather than a sign of weakness
• Using breathwork to reconnect with presence and emotional awareness
• Identifying how attachment styles (particularly avoidant) manifest in relationships
• Defining masculine energy as creating structure and feminine energy as creative flow
• Integration rather than polarization as the key to wholeness
• The five stages of masculine initiation through the Noble Beast Academy
Visit Unified Man to learn more about Matt's work helping men reconnect with their authentic power through presence, purpose and heart-centered awareness. You can also find Matt on Instagram at @unifiedman_.
Calling in the Healthy Masculine
Speaker 1How do we integrate and create wholeness, how do we unify these energies within us so we can be more complete and so we can show up with more presence, with more strength, with more honor, right masculine, but also with significantly more compassion, intuition, grace, forgiveness, Like these qualities maybe we don't look at as often as men and if we did we would would be stronger, more noble men.
The Quiet Becoming: A Poem
Speaker 2Welcome to Breath Word. If you've been listening along, you know the last few episodes have held a feminine energy strong but soft, intuitive nurturing. But today we're calling in something different. This episode is a doorway into the healthy masculine through presence, power and purpose. I'm joined by Matt, a friend whose life over the past year has been a living initiation. Together we explore what it means to walk with uncertainty into devotion, to reclaim wholeness and to integrate both the warrior and the heart. Welcome, matt, thank you for joining. I am very excited to sit down and talk, especially after our coffee chat. I had reached out to you because I've had a few females on the podcast great feminine energy but was hoping to have a little masculine energy and it sounds like it also just came at the perfect time for you. So looking forward to exploring more about your journey and takeaways for others around power and presence and purpose. So before we get in, let's take a moment to just drop into our bodies, close your eyes, if that feels safe, wherever you are, if you're listening, just feeling the weight of your body, solid, supported, feel the space in your chest open, receiving, letting it go, letting it expand, and then we'll just gently inhale through our nose for four, inviting in presence, holding at the top for two and exhaling through the mouth for six, exhaling any performance or pressure we put on ourselves. Holding at the bottom for two, inhaling for four, one, two, three, four. Holding at the top two, one, exhaling slowly, six, five, four, three, two, one. Hold at the bottom One, two and inhaling one last time to do the nose Sipping in that presence. Holding at the top for two and exhaling for six, fully, deeply, letting it go and release. And now I'm going to read a poem that will set the stage a little bit. I wrote this based on our conversation that we had about your journey. And yeah, it's called the Quiet Becoming.
Speaker 2A young boy with wide-eyed hunger, curious, unruly, wild by design. He roars too loud, he acts too much, he never quite does what is right. He feels it all, the winds, the wounds, but learns to lock it all up tight. Better to seem unmoved than show the storm that stirs inside. So he studies, performs, achieves, hides, the softness buried deep, sometimes rebelling against his will. A young wolf howling to be seen.
Speaker 2Still a man wears the armor passed down dreams stitched from inherited fears, a coat once worn by men before. But is it truly meant for him to wear? Is it strength or just defense? This armor he's been told to trust? Does it guard him from the world outside or simply wall him off from love? Even stone gives way to water. Even trees bend with the wind. Even fire needs a delicate spark, flickering soft, before it begins.
Speaker 2Where do we go from here? As the wild little boy inside, can we follow the ways of our curiosities, even ones we've left behind? Can we wander without shame? Can we play without a prize? Can we let our joy be holy? A compass, not disguise? Then speaks the rebel teenage heart, the one who raged to be seen. What if strength is not in silence but in saying what we mean? Can we strip the armor slowly, not to break us, but to be shown? Can we carry both the fire and the fear and not do it all alone? Then the man takes one long breath, deep enough to hold them all the boy, the rebel, the silence, the roar, the rise and every fall.
Speaker 2I am not just what I've endured. I am not any mask I wore. I am the questions still unanswer endured. I am not any mask I wore. I am the questions still unanswered and the courage to ask more. I am the calm within the chaos, the softness in the flame, the thunder learning it's okay to be accompanied by rain. I am not just strength but space to feel, not just power but the will to stay A noble, becoming a path reclaimed, the start of a different way, wow.
Speaker 1I feel deeply seen. You just took me on a wild adventure, and that is. I need a copy of that Of course I'm going to be printing that out and hanging that up.
Speaker 1That's beautiful and a perfect representation, such a poetic representation of our conversation, and I'm so honored to be in this presence to bring to the table a masculine part of the conversation, not for polarity sake, but really for wholeness and integration, especially at a time when I feel that the masculine is being called to evolve right now, and so this is a really exciting conversation. Thank you, because every piece of that resonated deeply with my heart and the armor piece. I feel like you just dismantled my armor even sitting here in the studio with you. So, thank you, I'm very excited to be opening up and to be talking about all these beautiful topics we have.
Speaker 2I honestly. I finished that poem late last night with the finishing touches on the last stanzas, and then I reread it this morning and I kept not being able to read it without crying because I, but I was like I cannot cry again on this thing because it's about masculinity.
From Hustle Culture to Sacred Pause
Speaker 2But I think that a part of it just touched me so deeply from I wrote it trying to think about your experience as a male and then other conversations I've had since with some of my male friends who sounded like they had a similar experience, whether the pressures put on them was from family or coaches or friends or just like societal pressures, and also talking about how the pressures that have been put on women a lot of times are a lot, a little bit more like outward and forward and magazine covers like that, and then the men's pressures are a little bit more silent and understated and just something that is experienced without being talked about a lot.
Speaker 2And but I think that the reason why the last part was resonating just with me and I guess, like my masculine energy, was just because of work, and I think that a lot of times women do have to, or don't have to, but live and work in very masculine, dominated roles, and so I was like, oh my gosh, I feel this and this is like where I'm at when it comes to my work life. So anyway, yeah, thank you too for just helping me to explore this and, like I said, it sounds like it came at the perfect time for you having this conversation, because you've been in a year of real reflection and just to also set the stage is the way that I know you is, through my brother, your friends, you live down the street from each other.
Speaker 1The reason why I live in LA.
Speaker 2Yeah, and literally he said when you. Every time I see Matt, it's like instant happiness and we just refer to you as one of the most optimistic, happy, bubbly people.
Speaker 1If you only knew. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2Yeah, but it's great to dig deeper and it just shows that everyone has a story and things that they're going through.
Speaker 1Yeah, so much and it's funny even touch on the not being masculine to cry and things like that, and we can definitely touch, touch on that.
Speaker 1But I think so much of what is being called forward right now for the masculine in anyone, because these are just energy and so we don't need to think about gender, male or woman, we don't have to think in those terms, just energetically even I really feel that the masculine is being asked to go deeper into its emotions and typically a lot of what I'm resonating with this poem because it's so well articulated around my life experience is I've had a lot of repression of my emotions.
Speaker 1I've had a lot of repression of going deep into understanding why I feel a certain way or my energy is too much as a kid, et cetera, et cetera, and so I would close it off and so my inner world became really repressed and shoved down and I became afraid of it being vulnerable and opening up. And this idea that crying is not masculine, I think, is any man who says that I think is actually probably one of the weakest men. A man who can't cry is probably one of the weakest, because they're not willing to go into their heart and their heart is truth. So the reason why that cuts so deeply for you and why I'm on the verge of tears hearing it, because it's so personal to me, is because that poem speaks of truth, and truth lives in the heart. It doesn't live in the mind. But as men we get so trapped in our minds and we ruminate and we think so logically about things, and that's a powerful tool.
Speaker 2This is a supercomputer in our brain.
Speaker 1We're only just learning how to tap into it and rewire it and all that kind of stuff and use it to manifest, to create in the world. But without connecting this supercomputer to a heart, we ultimately are living half-lies, we're living half-heartedly, and that is one of the biggest dishonors we can have in our life is living without heart. So I truly feel that this is a time that's very exciting. It's very chaotic in the world and it's a reason why men are being called to rise more now than ever and men are self-initiating themselves. It's happening globally and we can see the chaos, but we can also see this consciousness rising in men and it's so exciting.
Speaker 1But that's truly where I feel like is happening and that's what I want to talk about is the heart-mind connection and how to really unlock and lead men home to their hearts and to the feminine. And it's not either, or it's not, hey, be feminine or be masculine and whatnot. It's really the wholeness, the unification, the communion of the two, between oneself and another, and whether it's your brother, your sister, whoever, that to me is the paradigm which we're shifting and I'm like ecstatic to be a human alive in today's society because we get to see this great transition, this great awakening, this great initiation that we're all going under.
Speaker 2Yeah, exactly, Blending the best of both of those energies. So the past year just to walk it back, so you were working. It sounds like you were working prior to a year ago.
Speaker 1Really hard, I think a lot can relate to that.
Speaker 2Yeah, you had been consulting for a business and then brought on board and you scaled it massively, which took a lot of time and energy. But then also there were some damaging effects, it sounds like on your personal life that then, once you resigned a year ago, you were confronted with. Is that correct?
Speaker 1It's so true and I think a lot of people can resonate to this. Right Like I, was addicted to the grind and hustle culture. As soon as I graduated college, I knew I didn't want to go down the traditional path of working for a large corporation and not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just my path was clearly in a different direction and I was really interested in entrepreneurship and startups and creating your own path, and so for the last 13, 14 years, that's been my identity. When I was early graduate, I helped co-found a tech company. That's how I moved to Arizona and met your miraculous, legendary brother and how we connected and that journey.
Speaker 1I would never change anything about it, but it really led me down one of the most transformational paths, very spiritual path of awakening, of like developing self-mastery and going to personal development and using that as fuel in the tech world and my role as a leader in business. But I think so many people today can resonate with how neurotic it can be because we're so addicted to success and to making things happen and grinding and listen.
Speaker 1I'm all for the doing. I love taking bold, strong action, especially towards something that my heart is in, and at the same time I was burning myself out. I wasn't aware of my patterns and shadows and even feelings of unworthiness and why I was doing certain things or why would I take on more work, more responsibility, when maybe really I wasn't the best person for it, maybe it's because of certain ideas, of not feeling good enough and I needed to do more, improve myself more, and that just continued to eradicate my boundaries and I wouldn't speak my truth and so I would just burn out consistently, and they call it founder fatigue. This isn't unique to me. I'm my own unique story, but it's universal for the most part. And so when I came out of that experience what you were alluding to at my last business I was a part of we scaled really quickly and I'm again super grateful for that experience. I know I did certain things in that position, in that company that looking back, I would do differently for sure. And that's the beauty of wisdom and redemption really right To come out of it with stronger awareness. Wisdom and redemption really right All to come out of it with stronger awareness and at the same time, I really came out of it.
Speaker 1I made a decision to resign at a time where it made most sense, just for all of us.
Speaker 1It made the most sense for me to leave and for basically, for me to have a sacred pause. That's really what it felt like. This last year was an opportunity to go very deeply inward and to start what feels like my path of initiation, my path of self-liberation, my path of self-leadership and ultimately coming out of it hopefully more whole, more integrated and more embodied in my mature masculine and ultimately allowing the fire to burn away and purify all that is false so I can step into my higher purpose. So it's been a year and I'm deeply grateful for it. I wasn't expecting the year after such a challenging period resigning and again, so many beautiful things came from that experience. I'm so deeply grateful for it and it was some of the most challenging moments of my life. I'm just so exhausted all the time not being emotionally available for myself, and if I can't be emotionally available for myself, how can I possibly be emotionally available for my fiance, for my dogs, for my family?
Speaker 1It's literally you're in survival mode 24-7 all the time and you're in that moment. Our business was 24-7. So it never turned off. We had employees globally, all over the world. It just never shut down, and so I was never able to reboot. It was just constant going to bed super late, waking up super early and all the nine. And I think so many people can resonate with this, and there has to be a point. This was like a crisis event that happened in the business.
Speaker 1And it was a natural breaking point for me. Oftentimes it takes a crisis to have that like awareness go OK, I need, I'm being forced to make a decision and I'm really grateful for it. But damn, this last year has also been challenging and I've been going through the fire, so it's you're never exonerated thing.
Unconditional Love: The Path to Freedom
Speaker 2Yeah, it sounds like you're confronted. Yeah, you confronted a lot. Two main things come to mind that we talked about a little bit and I thought was really beautiful to get into. Was you mentioned that you're just now realizing what the term unconditional love is, or that unconditional love in practice which I thought was interesting because we talked about, I think, of unconditional love a lot of times, like the default is family, and that's how we opened the discussion around some of the expectations, I guess, on men growing up and where love is sometimes more conditional and how that's been taught.
Speaker 1Yeah, it's an interesting concept because it's only been recent. In the past few months I've really been reflecting on it and it's created some of the biggest awareness, like evolutionary leaps, quantum leaps, life just from a psychological standpoint, but even just like a vibrational standpoint. And so what do I mean by that? I basically had a realization. I've been reading we talked a little bit about this by reading the gene keys, with my fiance for years and it's just if for anyone who's listening.
Speaker 1It's man, woman, whoever, the gene keys by richard rudd I highly encourage. It's just for anyone who's listening. It's man, woman, whoever, the Gene Keys by Richard Rudd I highly encourage. It's a beautiful book and it talks a lot about forgiveness, grace, transmutation. It's basically a book on transmutation right of shadow into your gifts.
Speaker 2And what really Quick definition of transmutation?
Speaker 1Yeah, transmutation is. To me, transmutation is the ability to shift energetic states. So if you're in a lower vibrational state, oftentimes we remain there because we're unconscious, and so we just repeat patterns. To me transmutation is then being able to become aware of it and then consciously shift into a higher state, and by higher state, by just choosing a more aligned reaction, response to the moment right so transmutation.
Speaker 1is not this like woo-woo concept? It's very practical and it's in every moment. You have an opportunity to practice transmutation. In the old days they called it alchemy, right, and you would think of, like alchemy, being turning lead into gold. What a beautiful analogy, right?
Speaker 1Really what they're talking about is how to turn shadows, challenges, pain, into your greatest gifts, and that's what this book is all about is how to turn your shadows, pain, suffering, into gifts and not just look at it as pain and suffering, getting stuck in the shadow of being like, oh actually, this darkness, it's not something to overcome, it's actually a gift. There's actually, if I just look at this thing and embrace it with unconditional love, oh my goodness, I can actually transmute this into a state of like bliss, something that can actually be good for me, a new form of awareness, a new energetic expression for how I show up in the world. So, again, relatively abstract, and we can talk about this more practically like unconditional love to me, like we shouldn't even have to use the word unconditional.
Speaker 1Talk about this and that was probably the biggest aha moment for me. I was like in the Gene Keys. They talk about the shadow of half-heartedness, and that shadow really broke my heart at one point, made me cry. Actually, I had a really deep realization of how half-hearted I've been in so many of my endeavors, relationships.
Speaker 1And when you're half-hearted, you're disconnected. Right, you're not showing up in your truth, in your power. You're small, you're mediocre. Right, you're constricted. And I don't mean mediocre in a judgmental way, it's meaning in a natural way you're smaller.
Speaker 1And so when you're in that state, being able to shift into love the love frequency. Right, love or fear these are the two polarities of the world and the energies love and fear. Love and fear, unconditional love. Being able to show up with that means that you have full presence and acceptance of what is. So to have unconditional love for yourself is probably one of the most the best adventures you can go on is the inward journey of inner alchemy and inner transmutation and really seeing the parts of you that maybe weren't loved.
Speaker 1As a kid I certainly felt like I had parts of myself that I didn't love or maybe I felt projected weren't loved onto me, and we carry those things forward into our adult lives and this is becoming more talked about. Right, it's all over the place now. Everyone's talking about childhood trauma and internal family systems and parts play and even generational trauma. All these concepts are now surfacing and it's becoming more the norm, and that's beautiful. And I think, above all of that, the umbrella is just unconditional love, and having conditional love is not love. Like using conditional love, like that is the opposite of love, because basically what you're saying is I will only give love under certain conditions.
Speaker 1That's not love, that's something different but it's not love. And so for me in my life, I had to ask the questions like where am I being conditional? Oh, even the last year right, the last year has been challenging. It's also been beautiful. What a sacred opportunity for me to go inward and have time to contemplate, after 14 years of chaotic, just grind mode, hustle and like building companies, like amazing, and I needed a breather. So how am I showing up in this present moment? Am I loving the experience, even if it's challenging and maybe not what I thought it should be and not how things I thought how they should end? Or am I going to resist what's happening?
Speaker 1and show up with love and be more open to the gifts that are available to me in that moment.
Speaker 1So I don't know if that resonates but I'm happy to dive deeper into any area of that, but the unconditional love piece is just. It's just dropping me in right now to my heart, and I guess one final thing I just want to share on this is I was thinking the other day and it truly moved me to tears. I've been doing a lot of journaling and reflecting in the morning and it's just been transformational and I remember contemplating on unconditional love and like where it was showing up for me in my life and in my relationships with myself, even the present moment. And I thought to myself and I think this is really important for men to hear, especially because we tend to become slaves up here Our minds actually enslave us. We all talk about like self-mastery, but we don't talk about self-slavery, emotional mastery. What about emotional slavery? And I think we do this all the time, and I'm just speaking for myself at this point I felt like I'm a slave to my emotion, to my lower self and my impulses.
Speaker 1I was reflecting on this idea, like who would I be if I loved myself unconditionally, Like truly? Who would I be if I loved my fiance unconditionally? Who would I be if I love my family unconditionally? Who?
Speaker 1would I be if I loved my life unconditionally? Who would I be if I love this present moment unconditionally? Who would I be if I loved my life unconditionally? Who would I be if I loved this present moment unconditionally and the only voice that came up was a loud resonance, was free. I would be the freest man in the world if I just loved unconditionally. And this is not a new frequency, this is not a new idea. This is like what they talk about. Christ consciousness, like just unconditional love, is, I think, emerging and coming back.
Speaker 2it's the ancient echo that is coming back into our resonance and I'm so excited to practice this because by no means have I mastered that that is right next level, but to have the opportunity to practice, it is a gift the practicing part, because I guess a couple things are coming to mind for me, I think, when I think of unconditional love. Let's just take the example of just loving yourself. Okay, I'm not exactly the weight I want to be, or I'm not exactly, and then it's, do I just accept that? But then I guess, loving yourself too, it's like you have to identify the love or fear, like loving yourself is taking care of yourself at the same time, and so then it is coming out of love. But if you're looking at your body as something that's like just aesthetic or something like that, then that is fear, maybe like fear of rejection, and then in your one of the reasons why Can I just touch on that?
Speaker 1Because I think that's such a great example and I think we should make that distinction. I was struggling with this. Oh, just unconditional love, just accepting everything to live in denial essentially.
Speaker 1And no right. Self-love is definitely not accepting mediocrity, it's not accepting other people walking all over you and accepting right. That is not what I'm talking about. Unconditional love is definitely about taking full responsibility of your life and your emotions and where you are, where you're heading. Unconditional love in that example would be okay.
Speaker 1I'm evaluating myself right now and I I'm evaluating how I feel, how I look, how I want to show up my energy, how I want to express myself. Your body's a temple, beautiful. How would I want to treat my temple? How have I been treating my temple? So there is a reconciliation. It's okay for us to look at ourselves and go. I love myself and there's a greater version of myself that knows available to me, right? So the unconditional love would be an acceptance of who you are in that moment, where you are, and to also just love your past. Amor fati, right, love your fate, love where you are, love your body as it is and you're absolutely, totally allowed to go. And I want to treat my body better. I, because of unconditional love, I love myself so much that I actually want to be as healthy as I can. But that is a completely different frame of mind, a completely different like expression of helping your body get healthier than going I'm shaming my body. I'm going to start working out and eating well, because I'm judging my body. I'm comparing myself to other people. I don't feel worthy, I'm going to.
Speaker 1So you're coming at it through fear. Right, it's either fear or love. I think like we don't have to overcomplicate this at all. You're either showing up in fear or you're showing up in love and you can oscillate between the two. So even in that example, the unconditional love is operating from a place of expansion, excitement, joy, truth. The other side is coming from a place of contraction, falsehood, limitations, all it's fear.
Speaker 1And so I think for anyone listening, it's a really important distinction, because unconditional love does not mean that you just accept what is by any sense. You should take your life super seriously and not seriously the oscillation, but you should take especially your health very seriously, your body very seriously. But you need to make a decision on how you're going to show up and how you make changes in your life. Is it coming from a lower vibration, a lower energy, a fear, or is it coming from a place of excitement and expansion? And it's okay that it's coming from fear? But look at it and see if you can move it into a higher expression. You're going to have much better success long-term and short-term from that place than the fear place. So I think it's a perfect example, like from a conditional love and unconditional love standpoint.
Relationship as Mirror: Attachment Styles
Speaker 2Yeah, it's a personal journey for me right now and then a personal journey of yours, and it sounds like one of the reasons why you have been doing so much reflecting is because of your relationship and soon committing and marriage and if you feel comfortable sharing a little bit about that, it sounds like you've been doing some work identifying both of your attachment styles and, yeah, and that's one of the practical ways that you've been exploring, I guess, unconditional love in a practical sense. Yeah, Love.
Speaker 1I know you're listening to this, so I'm going to share from my heart. Being in a relationship is one of the most sacred things you can participate in, and that starts with yourself, and I've definitely learned that being in a relationship, that the journey towards a really successful marriage, family and that's just so everyone knows. Like my frame, I just think that the most rebellious thing you could do in today's world is to start an incredible family, to be the best man, woman, father, brother you could possibly be and to create a legacy for other children to follow in and to end the cycles of suffering.
Speaker 1That's the frame that I'm trying to operate out of as much as possible, and so when I think about the container of my romantic relationship with my fiance and what we're building together, I view it and everyone talks about this. It's not me saying this uniquely it's a mirror, and I didn't really understand what that meant when I first heard it. I was like, interesting, I'm just going to, it's a mirror. And I didn't really understand what that meant when I first heard it. I was like, interesting, I'm just going to, it's a mirror, okay, okay cool.
Speaker 1And what I've learned is, once you get through the honeymoon phase that just built such a beautiful foundation, the next natural phase is to face all the fears and to literally have it be an opportunity for you to look at all the ways in which you're still a hurt little child and how you're carrying that into your relationship. And for me, boy, was that humbling. I thought that it's like you think you know but you don't know what you don't know. And, boy, I thought I knew a lot. And once I got into the most mature relationship I've ever been in, it really mirrored back to me how I was still very much in my little boy prince energy, often, not all the time, and I think that's why my fiance fell in love with me, because she saw what, who I am at my best and what I'm capable of doing.
Speaker 1And yet I had not looked at those lower patterns and programs and ways of being, these limiting beliefs, these fears, these feelings of unworthiness, all these things that as a man I just completely suppressed and pushed down and really I distracted myself.
Speaker 1Let's just be honest I loved building my businesses but I literally during I think seven or eight years of building my first business, I didn't even allow myself to date anyone. That's crazy, right. I was just so married to my business and that's all I thought about, and so being in relationship was a fear for me. So the emotional side of being in a relationship, I think for a man is the hardest thing to go through, because we have to actually confront our biggest fears and take full responsibility of our lives and learn how to talk about attachment styles and we can definitely chat on that. But even this is something I'm still trying to really deeply understand and master, which is just even the concept of holding space like that has blown my mind and my heart open, because you know what I'm learning about the masculine, the feminine is all about flow and creativity, intuition.
Speaker 1It wants to flow and I think the analogy a lot of people have heard is feminine energy is like a river it's just water flowing, and masculine energy is like the riverbanks it creates the structure, the container for it to flow in. And so I think that's a beautiful analogy and when I think about challenges and triggers and things coming up in relationship that mirror back to you, like one of my triggers was feeling blamed or criticized in relationship. So if I ever felt blamed or criticized, I would feel immense shame instantly and I would go into survival mode. I would go into really not even flight definitely flight that's the avoidant behavior but I would go into, more specifically, freeze. I would actually, in my prefrontal cortex, feel a massive dense ball and it actually felt like my brain was turning off and I couldn't. I couldn't think, I couldn't respond. I actually had to like take myself and put myself in my bedroom and just sit an hour and let it thaw out.
Speaker 1It was like frozen Right. And so for me, going into these experiences of learning how to understand my own emotions and what's coming up for me in these things basically, I'm having this experience in real time with my fiance, where I'm feeling triggered and feeling shame because of a situation that actually is very small between her and I.
Speaker 1It's my body remembers this experience when I was a kid and it's triggering me to go back into the spider flight experience as a kid. So now I'm operating from like my little kid's side and I'm like projecting her as my mother.
Speaker 2Yes, and then yes, and talking to other male, this is something that was coming up. Yeah, it's an acid trip. You're just like what is going on? You don't understand it.
Speaker 1And then we'll. We'll talk more about the definitions of like, avoidant and the anxious attachment style. I'm the avoidant in my relationship, for sure. Then I shut down, I don't communicate, so I'm having this experience, and then I leave and I shut down and it leaves my fiance going like what the hell is going on.
Speaker 2What's going on in his mind and then maybe feeling rejected too.
Speaker 1Yeah, 100% rejected confused. It's often said that it's more difficult for the anxious attachment style partner than the avoidant, because they're the ones on the receiving end of it.
Speaker 1They at least want to confront it and talk, whereas avoidant is just I need space and time and I can't even talk about this. So this mirror and these relationships, these moments that are really challenging, this is what transmutation is. It's the opportunity to take what seems like a really shitty thing, a really terrible experience, something you want to run away from, especially as a man, like shoving it down. I don't want to confront my emotions, I don't want to think about trauma, right, all these things. The second, that you just flip the switch and go. This is an opportunity for me to transcend this, to learn from it. Then you have awareness and you can show up in relationship and talk about what's going on and ultimately, that's taking full responsibility. Like I think right now and I'm just going to speak for myself and for anyone who resonates with this man or woman like taking full responsibility of your life is foundational, it's number one. Like you have to take full responsibility and oftentimes we live in just unconscious patterns, so it's hard for us to take responsibility.
Speaker 1So it is a evolutionary process. You got to start with unawareness that's part of the process and then you become aware. But once you become aware, like they say, ignorance is bliss. Once you become aware. But once you become aware, like they say, ignorance is bliss. Once you become aware you're in the fire, you're being pulled through. If you're in your own hell, yeah, you want to go to paradise. The only way out is by going through the fire, burning it away. So that, to me, is what being a relationship, and this and this sounds so negative right so many like euphoric and beautiful moments. I have the most fun and loving relationship with my fiance, but what it really did for me is give me a really hard look in the mirror of where I was not showing up with integrity.
Speaker 2Where.
Speaker 1I wasn't creating safety for her or for me.
Speaker 2Which are masculine type of values, for me, which are masculine type of values, or yeah, I guess just we were talking about even defining what we're talking about with masculine and feminine, beyond gender, because you and I listen to similar podcasts and like talking about masculine and feminine and I'm not the best at articulating it, but I know their archetypes, their energies and, yeah, if you were just to quickly define what, just like some attributes of sure, what we say by masculine and feminine, sure, and this won't be an exhaustive list, and right, it's just anyone who wants to share, and all that good stuff.
Speaker 1To me, masculinity is about creating order in the chaos, right, and a lot of that is showing up with integrity presence awareness it's creating containers for the feminine to flow in.
Speaker 1So my personal belief is that the masculine is here to actually serve the feminine I truly believe that yeah and what's interesting about that is that doesn't always necessarily mean serving women I mean it from a gender standpoint but it certainly is and can be. So I really again like I view the feminine being in the heart and the masculine being in the mind interesting so that's how I think about this, and I live so much in my masculine, and I haven't lived in my heart.
Speaker 1I've cut it off, I felt like it's unsafe, I've been disconnected, and so the heart, though, is where virtue lives. To be a virtuous human being, this is where, like being noble, is critical right.
Masculine and Feminine Energies Defined
Speaker 1The thing about the ancient times being a nobleman, all they talked about was virtue, strength, honor, integrity, presence, protection, right. Masculinity is about protection. It's not about domination. But we live in a world where the masculine thinks it needs to dominate the feminine, that the mind needs to dominate the heart. I need to tell the heart, or shut the heart up so I can go do the thing, and that's not how nature works. It's not natural for us to beat to the march of the masculine. It's more natural to beat to the heart, to the pulse of the heart, to the feminine, and this is abstract in a sense, but that's what I think. It's up to each person to feel into that and to see what resonates for them. Everyone needs to figure this out on their own in terms of how they want to show up, but there are archetypes and you can learn more about it. It's all you need to do is go on ChatGPT and ask the question.
Speaker 1First principles. Tell me about masculinity and femininity and polarity. It'll give you a beautiful rundown, better than I ever could. But that, to me, is the most important piece here is it's the return home, and our home is our heart. Woman, womb of man, that's what this is, and it's about synarchy, creating, co-leading together masculine and feminine. Everyone's talking about I need to be more masculine, I need more feminine. We would be able to serve more profoundly, we would be more aligned with our purpose. We would actually be participating in the co-evolution of the human species at a more significant rate.
Speaker 1I truly believe that if we connected more of our heart and our minds together but that takes courage, because we've learned to disconnect from our hearts, we've learned to disconnect from the feminine, to think that we are superior, the mind is superior to heart, that the masculine is superior to the feminine, that it's not okay for men to cry I'm not talking about crying out of weakness, because something bad goes wrong and now we're weak and let me cry and complain about it. That's not what I'm talking about, but being able to feel into your truth and your raw emotions. There's nothing more masculine than being able to do that Like truly. There's nothing more masculine than a man who can create his own masculine container for himself to allow for his own feminine energy to flow through naturally and in a safe, nonjudgmental way. So example me sitting down and just contemplating on unconditional love is me creating a masculine container for me to feel safe, to allow myself to contemplate and reflect on these topics.
Speaker 1That I never would have done if I didn't create a masculine container for it. My feminine wouldn't be able to flow in that sense. So it makes it really practical and not, I think, so many men get caught up because I'm going to speak for myself. I used to get caught up in oh, like you're talking about feelings and emotions and like crying Like this is so lame and I don't have time for that, let's go play sports. And when I think that's that's if anyone is resonating with that energy that I just shared you're. It's not a judgment, it's not shame, it's just recognition of where you are on your journey.
Speaker 1That's boy energy, and what we want to do is start tapping into man energy and not like masculine energy, but mature, masculine, because even the masculine the mature masculine can have shadows and you can fall into being a tyrant or a weakling. There are different archetypes and shadows, even with your higher self. So it's a very fascinating world and once you start going into it you're like I can't stop. This is too much fun.
Speaker 2Yeah, it sounds like you've definitely been on this journey of awareness and now you're in the integration and practicing and building some frameworks for other people, which I do want to jump into, and also just in terms of modalities to be able to access, I guess, the feminine energy we're talking about, how breathwork is a great way to do that and you have had amazing experiences from that.
Speaker 1And I would encourage men I've been getting the question from male friends just about, yeah, releasing emotion or their intention to be able to tap into their emotion more, and breathwork is a great tool for that's like the supreme tool, right, the supreme tool, like, we don't need, doesn't need to be hierarchy, but it's, yeah, your breath, right, ancient's new, it's prana, it's your life force, and it's so fascinating that with your nervous system, you've got your autonomic nervous system and your breath is so natural you don't have to think about it. And so when you go into survival mode, your body instinctively cuts your breath short, and so you go into survival, and that's very helpful. When there's a saber tooth tiger, you're about to die, there's some crazy, you're being invaded, something's happening. You have to go into fight or flight. Your body literally mobilizes to do that, and men are created to do that.
Speaker 1We're here because we went through that in our history, right? And yet today, I think, we're learning how to transcend the natural impulse to go into survival, and what that means is connecting back to our breath. Our breath is our source of power. Our breath is our source of presence, right, being present. And so in any moment as a man, you're feeling angry, sad, resentful, disturbed, disconnected. We're up here and we're allowing our emotions to your emotions again, it's energy, so it's meant to flow.
Speaker 1Emotions are feminine. They're meant to flow and they get stuck in our bodies. They get stuck. That's not natural. You look at an animal, they get scared. A fawn gets scared of getting chased by a lion or whatever. It shakes it off, instantly shakes it off, and keeps going. It doesn't have trauma. We hold on to these things. I think it's important for us to be able to learn techniques that ground us. So, as a man, what does that mean? Presence?
Speaker 2I think every man would agree and I think every human and I don't want to be just talking about one gender here but as a man I can speak to this as something I've really struggled with.
Speaker 1And I resonate with the stories of the other men you're talking about. I've really struggled with being present, surrendering to what is, being able to discern should I fight or should I surrender, and being able to understand my emotions, being able to choose better responses in the moment instead of reacting in the moment and then having to lead the repair afterwards and constantly have to do that At some point. We have to learn. The way I'm reacting is not appropriate. You can do that through breath. I think that's it's free, it's completely available. You don't need to go study at Harvard, it is available to every human. And when you simply just reconnect to deep breathing, what we did in the beginning, I feel like every leader in the world should start every meeting with how you did Ground everyone into presence, into awareness, into their hearts. Very powerful In terms of breathing techniques and my experience yeah, I've had, I know and I know you have as well. It's called breath word. Right, I'm curious.
Speaker 2I just as you're saying that, though I am very, a little bit embarrassed to admit, but this is real life and I yesterday went to a beautiful inner feng shui meditation at Mudwater Gather that my friend Elizabeth hosted, and I was so excited to make it out, ride my bike down Main Street Sunny day, beautiful After a client meeting that I had really been prepping for I get out of the leaving Mudwater and I get a Slack message triggered.
Speaker 2I knee jerk response back to it. I'm just like all the bliss and all this centeredness just flew out the window and I now have to do what you were saying, where today I'm crafting the apology and all this stuff and it's like I was beating myself up about it. But even before that happened, when I was still at MedWater Gather and talking to Elizabeth, we were talking about how it is just these tiny micro moments, the 0.01% advancement of how you react and respond and evolve as a human, and it's not always these like exponential leaps, it's those tiny little day by day, just like incremental changes and the awareness like we keep talking about. And so it's easy to beat yourself up like you're like oh, I've done all this work, I've done this, whatever, and then I still act this way, but it is a slow, forever evolving. We have to have grace, we have to have compassion for ourselves, like we're human, and that's what's so fun is.
Speaker 1If we were perfect, life would be so lame and boring. So we need the oscillation. We're never, you're not gonna be the first perfect human being. I I won't be.
Speaker 2There never has been.
Speaker 1It's all good and I think that's also important to note. We have to be okay with failing. We have to not shame ourselves, and this is something I've struggled with so much, and probably the deepest wound that I've been reflecting on and working through the past year is shame. I didn't realize how much shame I stored in my genetic body and how it still shows up and how I am addicted to shame actually.
Speaker 1So even in new scenarios that come up. I will shame myself and it's so time to get over that. I hate using the word get over.
Speaker 2It's like something we got to like even that's shaming it, right.
Speaker 1But to just love, right. To be like, hey, cool, like this is something that's coming up for me that I did. It wasn't what I needed. We don't need to add more, it's just look at it, it's enough to just be like cool. I see that this is how I want to show up. I need to take full responsibility. I need to lead the repair and I'm gonna go now apologize. I'm gonna take ownership for that. That that's a beautiful thing. 99% of people ain't even doing that.
Speaker 1They're just repeating the pattern. They don't even care. They're again stuck in their head, or stuck in survival, and so they don't care necessarily.
Speaker 2We only have a few minutes of this has flown by. I want to make sure that we get to the noble beast, what you're doing there and any tools and takeaways that yeah.
Speaker 1Thank you, yeah, thank you so much for the opportunity to even share what I'm working on. I'm really excited about this is like the outcome of the last 13 months is exciting and, even before that, everything I've been doing before. It's called Noble Beasts Academy and it's really a rite of passage. It's an initiatory framework for men. It's a system of transformation that I'm mapping out and inviting men into this container for, and it's basically a five phase, five stage program and I'm deeply honored to be able to bring this to fruition with men who really resonate with the struggles I've had.
Speaker 1The poem that you shared Again, that's just such energetic truth in there that I think a lot of people are going to resonate with. And what it is basically goes from an unconscious, unintegrated, ununified man through the hero's journey heroic journey that we all must go on to becoming a unified man, a noble beast, right. And so what does that look like? Stage one, and I'll go through this very quickly. Stage one is basically the unaware man. Right, they're uninitiated, they're drifting through life. This man is someone who is still ruled by their lower behaviors, seeking external validation, so looking for status, money, all the things. They're unaware and, like we said, sometimes, ignorance is bliss, because they can just keep doing that, and they're not necessarily. They are definitely deeply suffering inside because they're not getting to where they want to be. But they're not even really aware that there's a new world. It's the old world, classic hero's journey, archetype stuff.
Speaker 1Stage two is really the acknowledgement, it's the awareness and it's understanding that what you've been living in, what you've been doing, is only a fraction of who you can be. You've actually been living in lie. You've been conditioned to be addicted, whether it be to vices like porn or food or whatever vice you want to consider. It's ruling you. And so at this point, through awareness, men start suffering even more. Actually, it's like a paradox because through awareness there's this cognitive dissonance. They're like whoa, I see the behaviors and the patterns where I've created distrust and dishonesty in my own life and I now see also who I'm capable of being and who I want to be, and it's this oscillation between the two.
Speaker 1So this is one of the. It's the call to initiation. Every man hears it, every person hears it to initiate themselves into their higher essence. But most men will hear they'll step in, they get afraid and they go back. They go back to the old world because it's safer, it's easier, it's more comfortable than showing up and walking through the fucking fire that burns away. All that is false and that's what we're talking about is really the path of initiation into a higher self. That means you got to strip away all that's false. Drop the armor. That shit ain't protecting you anymore.
Speaker 1You don't need the armor. So phase three would be the trials of the warrior. This is when a man actually goes through and starts doing the discipline and learning how to show up daily, building more integrity, doing the work, facing his shadow, getting into brotherhood. I don't think we talk about this at all really in today's world, but not only do we not have rights of initiation anymore for men to step into their higher self, we don't even really have brotherhood. We have like lower brotherhood, which is like about beating each other up and calling each other names. We don't have brotherhood that helps support each fellow man and move them forward.
Speaker 1So that would be stage three. Stage four is the death and rebirth. This is like when you actually go through the process of the alchemy and you've done enough work. You're going through the process and usually this could even be through a really intense experience, whether it's like a major crisis in your life or doing some sort of plant medicine, whatever it might be, that can help really strip it away like that deep immersion and of stage five is coming out with a more embodied version of yourself.
Speaker 1We're never perfect, we're never going to be pure right. This is where we get to really strip everything away and we're more embodied, we're more in our divine masculine right, we're more. We're really more there to protect, to serve. We're no longer there to take and to compete and be distracted and drifting, actually have purpose and clarity and we're moving together with the natural flows of life. And so that is in a nutshell. The program which I'm here to take men on is just leading them back to their hearts, which is the most courageous thing they could possibly do, and as a man who is on that journey, is walking that journey, I can tell you not only is it the most terrifying thing you could do, it's the most liberating thing you could do, and so, therefore, it's actually the most loving thing you could possibly do is to go on this path.
Speaker 2The freedom of unconditional love. Like you were saying, full circle, full circle, full circle Perfect. Yes, completion, reconciliation, yes. So where can people find out more about this?
Speaker 1Yes, so they can go to my website, they can go to noblebeastacademycom, and so I'll have resources there for them. They can join, they can meet up with me. I'll be doing some local meetups here in LA and I'll be launching some programs. Yeah, again, women, if you've got men who you think would resonate with this, men, if you're resonating with this, I would love to chat. That's what it's all about.
Speaker 2Awesome, I'm excited to see how that progresses and, yeah, I'll be sending some referrals here.
Speaker 1Thank you.
Speaker 2Awesome. Thank you so much, matt, for the conversation today. Thank you, thank you for being here, for witnessing, for breathing and for feeling with us. If Matt's words resonated with you, I invite you to explore the path of the noble beast, his modern day dojo and brotherhood for men, stepping into legacy, leadership and love. You'll find a link in the show notes to download a free initiation meditation and begin your own journey home. And if you would like more stories about reconnecting with yourself, come say hi on Instagram at hey breath word. Until next time. May you keep living like breath is poetry and life a poem unfolding.