John Wineland: [00:00:05] Ultimately, we have to be fucking adults. One of my pet peeves is this idea that we need to expect our partners or demand our partners hold all of us, it's a very entitled approach to relationship. No, it's a gift when your partner wants to hold space for you. It's a gift when she wants to listen to you pitch about your technology or your work, or dah, dah. She's giving you that kind of generosity. It's a fucking gift, and you should treat it as a gift. My name is John Wineland and you're listening to the Life Stylist Podcast.

Luke Storey: [00:00:44] I'm Luke Storey. And this is Episode 448, The Return of Noble Masculinity and Feminine Harmony: How to Thrive in Love with John Wineland. Get your fresh show notes at lukestorey.com/masculine. Or better yet, have every episode show notes delivered to your inbox. Just go to  lukestorey.com/newsletter. Enter your name and email and every week I'll send you the audio, video, transcripts, and links from every damn episode. Again, that's  lukestorey.com/newsletter. 

Our guest, John Wineland, joins us for his third appearance. He's an author, teacher, and speaker who for over a decade has been leading both men and women in the realms of spiritual intimacy, life's purpose, and embodiment. He teaches worldwide, bringing his vision for a new paradigm of masculine leadership and conscious relationships to those yearning to live in love with wide-open hearts. 

And if you listen to this podcast, that must be you. Here's just a taste of what you'll learn by tuning in to this one. Recognizing, understanding, and healing generational patterns to create more loving relationships; John's take on how men can best encompass the full range of masculinity; practical tips like making appointments for important discussions can make an unbelievable difference in relationship dynamics; how John has worked through the heartbreaking loss of loved ones and the important relationship between death and the masculine; the powerful lessons I've learned from participating in his events; how men can manage intense emotions; why breath is such a core part of his work; the key role of integrity in masculinity; why Most men value, purpose and freedom above all else; how to practice unflinching awareness to create intimacy and trust; why do women sometimes hold on to resentment even after a conflict has been resolved; the many ways in which men's mom or dad issues manifest in relationships; how a masculine man can love and respect his female partner and also ravish her sexually. 

And that, my friends, is just the tip of the iceberg. This dialogue runs deep and John is truly a master of his craft. Okay, let's all take a nice deep inhale-exhale. And prepare to get the codes we need to relate in the most powerful of ways with John Wineland on the Life Stylist Podcast. Here we are, John Wineland, let's do this. 

John Wineland: [00:03:08] Yeah. So good to see you.

Luke Storey: [00:03:09] Also so good to see you. I'm so happy that you moved to Austin.

John Wineland: [00:03:12] Thank you. Thank you. It's good to be here.

Luke Storey: [00:03:14] This is rad. Great to catch up with you. We just had about an hour-long conversation.

John Wineland: [00:03:21] Podcast before the podcast.

Luke Storey: [00:03:22] Yeah, which always happens, but you're on to some really good stuff lately--

John Wineland: [00:03:27] Thank you.

Luke Storey: [00:03:27] With your work and your life and I'm just super stoked for you. I was on your site this morning just looking at all your offerings. I'm just like, "Holy crap, dude, you are prolific." Where you've gone since I first met you and started getting into your work, it's just incredible. It's really inspiring.

John Wineland: [00:03:47] Yeah, that was really interesting time. I think your podcast was one of the moments that launched my fledgling career.

Luke Storey: [00:03:55] Really? It helped?

John Wineland: [00:03:56] Yeah, totally helped. It was after that talk I did on I think it's called What Men Crave. And I had a bunch of podcasts reach out to me and that's where I met you. And yeah, that was the beginning of what I'm offering now.

Luke Storey: [00:04:10] That's awesome.

John Wineland: [00:04:11] Yeah. So it's been a nice-- what? Was four or five years ago. Six years ago maybe.

Luke Storey: [00:04:16] Well, I'm glad to hear that that had some impact. It's interesting when you're on this side of it. You can look at your download numbers, but you don't really know your reach until I go out in the world and I meet someone like, "Oh, I love your podcast" and things like that. But it's very meaningful to me when a guest who is a teacher or one of the brands-- I interview a lot of brands, cool inventors that come up with neat products and things like that. And I love getting feedback when they're saying, "Oh man, we blew up after that."

Because to me, I'm like, I'm just sitting in my loft here having a conversation. It's hard to see the impact, so I'm glad that it did. I thought we might start the podcast today with a psychic reading. I know you're very famous on Instagram. Oh, man. Tell us about your impersonators.

John Wineland: [00:05:02] Oh, I don't know how this happened. Apparently a few people, but I had, I don't know, two or three just back to back to back people copying my account and then offering people psychic readings. And maybe they offered you one, too. And I just could not get Instagram to take it down. I had them reported. I reported it, and so I do not do psychic readings. I avoid any kind of coaching via Instagram. I can't. So there are people that give me these long relationship issues and I just can't even do those, let alone psychic reading.

Luke Storey: [00:05:35] Yeah, that's hilarious.

John Wineland: [00:05:37] Finally, fucking Instagram took it down finally. But I thought, oh, this is just life now, and it's going to have to be this way for four years. So something changed.

Luke Storey: [00:05:45] Well, it's interesting with social media platforms because they're very quick with censorship. If you step out of line and say something politically or about a perceived or real health crisis,  they'll take your shit down real quick. At the very least, shadow-ban you. Yet you can have impersonators that are actually disparaging you as a private citizen or as a brand, and it's just like, "Oh, sorry."

John Wineland: [00:06:10] Taking people's money. I have to say in fact, I cannot mention sex in any of my posts.

Luke Storey: [00:06:16] Oh, really?

John Wineland: [00:06:16] I get to shut up about it. They'll do a 10th or 20% of what I post that does not have sex the in either the copy or in the video.

Luke Storey: [00:06:27] Oh, that's interesting. I'm very flattered really. But I have an Instagram impersonator or maybe a couple of them and they DM people and they start off by like, "Hey Patriot," they're Super MAGA. They do their thing and I'm like, what? How did anyone get that for me? 

I don't like the government generally speaking, but I'm not a MAGA guy who's like, "Hey Patriot, I'm doing a quiz on this or that." And I noticed the first time it happened, I lost 400 or 500 telegram followers around the same time. I don't know if they could have DMd that many people, but I think there are probably a number of people that got that message and were like, hell, creep, don't call me a patriot. 

Incidentally, I guess I am a patriot, but just not in that way. I love where I live. Who have been three teachers that have had a huge impact on your work that you might share with us?

John Wineland: [00:07:23] Well, first, most people know which is David Deida. David was a teacher of mine for 13 years and basically introduced me to the concept of embodiment, to the concepts of sexual yoga, and spiritual intimacy. Just absolutely changed my life. So David is definitely number one there. The second one, almost nobody knows, but she is just one of these secret witches. And she was actually David's partner for many, many years when he was developing his teachings. And her name is Sofia Diaz. 

And she is like a straight-up Mayan priestess reincarnated. Spent tons of time in India and is just an absolute master, but hardly any he doesn't really teach. She's not out there pushing anything. She did a bunch for the women's movement, the women's embodiment movement, let's call it. Sofia was really one of the first women in the country to introduce that work. And she used to have this retreat every year in Creston, Colorado, that launched what we now know as the women's feminine embodiment work. And hardly anybody knows her. 

She's not on social media. You can't find her anywhere. Maybe she'll return my calls one time and then it'll be a year before she'll do it again. She's straight-up magic. And so Sofia Diaz. And the third was the first spiritual teacher that I was introduced to. I was seven, and my mom converted to Buddhism, and his name is Daisaku Ikeda. 

I didn't grow up with-- my father split. My grandfather died, and I didn't have a male role model. And so when I was seven or eight, he was just this light of inspiration. He's probably controversial now, I haven't checked in on him, but as a kid, to get that kind of download about what's possible in spiritual practice, specifically chanting and meditating and doing the Lotus Sutra, the things that I grew up doing, he was incredibly impactful. And it really the first not only spiritual teaching but mindset teaching and yeah, so [inaudible] Daisaku Ikeda.

Luke Storey: [00:09:47] Awesome. I think it's interesting how at various times in our life some of us have this auspicious luck to be around someone of high caliber and high consciousness, the imprint of that, the shock part of that experience. And oftentimes we don't realize it until later on. And not that it has to be a person of notoriety. Sometimes it's just someone who's tapped in and they could be in your family or a teacher in school or something. 

But I had the good fortune to go to Darshan at this man, Mukhtar Ananda Ashram in Oakland when I was eight, around 1978 or something. And I know now through all of the work that I've done that it had a massive impact on me just for the basic fact that I was just in that energy field and got imprinted by that consciousness. And it took many, many years, a few decades to start to realize what had happened. But that's interesting that you had a similar experience.

John Wineland: [00:10:46] Yeah, very much. And I think what it speaks to is just the power of transmission. Somebody that's cultivated a spiritual transmission through decades and decades of practice, if you're in their presence and you're open to all, you're just going to receive that transmission like sunlight or like rain, just a beautiful texture of energy that really does make an imprint.

Luke Storey: [00:11:12] Yeah, it does. Well, you mentioned that your dad split when you were really young, but as someone who now is such a champion of relating, did you have any relationships modeled by your caregivers that were at all functional?

John Wineland: [00:11:30] None. Yeah. And it's interesting because even now in my 50s, I'm still bumping up against that, that I know how to love. I have an incredible capacity to love and to even receive love and to practice and to create deep experiences and all that kind of stuff. But that childhood imprint of relationships doesn't last or people don't stay or all of that, that is part of the final frontier. I would say that's, if you were one of the things I often ask you guys in my men's group is to get into what would you need to change or experience before you die so that you can die complete.

And that's the one for me. That's the karma that I really want to change because I feel like it's lineage karma. My mom was married three times. My dad was married three times. Both of them don't have partners now. Do you know what I mean? It's a very deep karmic imprint in my family and I have the capacity to change it. And I am changing it and I will change it. But it makes the distinction between yoga, being able to do spiritual practice or yoga to create connection or intention or depth, and then really changing the karma. 

They're related. Those two are related, but they're not the same thing. And by doing the yoga, by doing the spiritual practice over and over and over again, you do start to move the wheels of karma. But sometimes those things are fucking lifetimes long and super deep. And that's the final frontier for me.

Luke Storey: [00:13:06] I'm right there with you. I've made a lot of progress in the past few years in that regard.

John Wineland: [00:13:11] Did you have that situation too, where your parents didn't stay together?

Luke Storey: [00:13:14] Oh yeah, they got divorced when I was, I don't know, I think three or four or something like that. But just the lineage on both sides of the family, just being so mired in dysfunction and alcoholism and addiction and abuse and just a perfect disaster. Now in hindsight, it's like, oh, man, just so beautifully orchestrated by God or my soul choosing those two people to come through. And I'm so grateful for them.

And they've also evolved tremendously in terms of my parents. But all of the years, overcoming addiction and then working on money stuff and sex stuff and just all the artifacts of unhealed trauma and all the things that people go through when you're a kid and how that imprints you and sets all these patterns, I really couldn't get to that last piece until a few years ago. I can't wait for you to meet Alyson because she's so stellar. I think you guys really, really enjoy one another.

But until I did a lot of healing work, for me, it happened to be in the realm of psychedelics and plant medicines where I could really get into that quantum space. Talk about shadow work, into the belly of the beast, of the most painful core wounds just sitting in there, moving shit around. 

And thank God I was bestowed with the wherewithal to do that. It took a while to get there, but I really feel like I don't know, I think that shit is healed. There's tiny fragments of it here and there that crop up, and I want to actually give you credit for your work in terms of relating. Healing a lot of the underlying issues and just really, really in a very visceral way, dealing with the trauma that I experienced early in life. 

But so many of the tools I've learned in your workshops, I use all the time in my relationship, and it's been so useful for me because the runway's been clear now, and I have someone there who's very receptive and open to deep love. I have someone that's very deep and is willing to go wherever I can take her. And I remember that I always talk too much in my goddamn interviews, but there's so much to say. I'll let you talk, I swear. I know people listening are like, "Shut up. Let John talk." I will. But there was one exercise we did in one of your workshops.

John Wineland: [00:15:38] Oh, that's right. You came to the loft.

Luke Storey: [00:15:39] My buddy Elliot and I came, I think because you needed a couple of male score to balance out the scale of the partner exercises and stuff. And there was so many beautiful experiences there. But I think the one that impacted me the most and this is the one I use all the time in my relationship is when you divided the males and females across the room and there was a dividing line of pillows or something between us. 

And then you instructed the females essentially just to emote the highest level of rage and every emotion in between that terror rage range at us. And instructed us, I do not remember the details of it, but I just remember like, this is fuck and scary.

John Wineland: [00:16:26] Stay on the side of the pillow.

Luke Storey: [00:16:29] Yeah, it was gnarly. Just multiple women, one after the other, just the lineage of the feminine being terrorized and abused, just that energy coming through all of those women and me just being instructed to keep my spine straight and to breathe and to hold that fierce love. I think that's the word that you used, just to be able to withstand that. And I do this all the time when my wife, Alyson, is experiencing some fire.

It's if I just breathe and can really be totally present to her experience, and not make it about me, it's incredibly healing for both of us to be able to do that. And I think that experience imprinted me in such a profound way because I realized this is just the storm. This is just colly. This is just weather. It's just weather. It's not that big of a deal when someone, a partner, anyone, feels the need to express deep and powerful emotions. It's not going to kill you, Luke.

And also you don't need to retaliate, defend, or evade. You can actually just be present to this. And the more present you are to it, incidentally, the faster the storm is going to roll through down. It's not actually going to be this way for very long if you can really commit a high degree of presence and love to it. 

So it's not like the present isn't to make her shut up because I don't want to hear this or it's too uncomfortable, the presence is because it feels so good to love that deeply. And the byproduct of that is that you move through it and then there's a deeper level of intimacy and trust that's built. So, thank you.

John Wineland: [00:16:29] Yeah. You're welcome.

Luke Storey: [00:18:16] Thank you. And so much more, which we'll get into.

John Wineland: [00:18:19] I will say in that exercise, the women also did the same for the men.

Luke Storey: [00:18:23] I don't remember that part.

John Wineland: [00:18:24] Wow. Yeah. No, y'all are going for it. I had the men hold the presents for the women. And then I had the women hold presents for the men. And then we did a whole forgiveness thing afterward where they came together and forgave each other. And it was really beautiful practice. I haven't done that very often, but that was a beautiful practice.

Luke Storey: [00:18:43] Thank you for filling in my memory because I totally blanked out the part where I got to return to the emotion.

John Wineland: [00:18:49] It was powerful to watch that. Because you hear a lot about women and men holding space for women's rage. But the women were ready.

Luke Storey: [00:18:57] Totally.

John Wineland: [00:18:57] They were there. They were more and more. They really wanted to feel y'all's hearts and they wanted to feel what was true. And it was beautiful. I remember women coming right up to the edge of the pillows and drinking it in and men, too. But it was that sense of leaning into each other's humanity. It was really beautiful. So thanks for reminding practice. 

Luke Storey: [00:19:24] Yeah, it was lasting. I'll never forget it. I think of it often when I'm in that same situation. It's like, no, no, no. Just breathe. Don't run. Don't shut down. Don't close your heart, Luke. This is the test of your love. True love is like being there through all of it, right? Yeah. But, man--

John Wineland: [00:19:46] Well, I will give a caveat to that based on what I've discovered recently, which is that the thing that makes those exercises work is that they're not projecting personal shit onto you. It was just pure, unadulterated rage and grief and anguish. I would say anguish, and that we can metabolize from our partners. It's when things start to get projections. You always, you never, you're this, you're that. 

It takes a saint to be able to stay present. And if you can do that, God bless you, man. It takes a saint to be able to stay present with rage and projection. And one of the things I'm noticing it's just, I want to tease apart and make that distinction.  Luke's talking about, this was like heart-centered rage without any, you always, you never, fuck you, da, da, da. It was just a pure source of anguish and rage. 

And that your partner has a much easier time metabolizing. In fact, they want more. They want more and more. I remember men going, "Yeah, more." And I asked at the end I was like, "Men, could you have taken more?" And almost all of you raised your hand. Maybe you were like, okay, that was 9.5 and that's as far as I can go.

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There was another one too that I remember vaguely, but it was also impactful and it was like we were partnered up. And so I think I did this with a number of other female participants and we were instructed to project love and then switch it to, I think it was fierceness or warrior. I don't remember the exact words, but essentially it was like, I will fucking kill you to I love you, or I have the capacity to kill you. Not like anger, but just someone who could kill for love.

John Wineland: [00:23:30] Yeah, it wasn't I would kill you. I would kill to protect you.

Luke Storey: [00:23:32] Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So it's basically lover-warrior energy. And it was so interesting to experience how tapped in the women were because they'd be instructed like more lover, more warrior, or whatever. And I was like, I was just doing full warrior. She's like, now weak source. I want more. You're thinking, God, I'm opening my heart to its utmost capacity here. And she's like, more love, more love. I'm like, "Oh, is there more love?"

That was also really instructive just to appreciate the feminine ability to perceive on a subtle level really good medicine in that and like, wow, maybe I actually have the capacity within my feminine to access that level of sensitivity. Super cool stuff.

John Wineland: [00:24:22] Yeah, I think you do. The thing about that that I love is that I like to mix archetypes and I think everybody knows the warrior and the lover as two separate archetypes, but actually, the blend of I would kill for you, I would ravish you if you wanted me to. It's a very beautiful thing to watch men's nervous systems get tuned up by the women going more lover, more warrior until the exact calibration of fierce love comes through. And watch that because once it's installed in your nervous system, it's now there. It's a program that you can access again and again and again.

But most people don't actually-- that's the thing about embodiment that's so powerful is that you can talk about that shit till the cows come home. But unless you have a felt experience and are being witnessed and encouraged by the eyes of love, it doesn't totally get established in your nervous system.

Luke Storey: [00:25:19] That's a really, really good observation. So you're hard-wiring it.

John Wineland: [00:25:24] Totally.

Luke Storey: [00:25:24] There's muscle memory to it.

John Wineland: [00:25:26] Very much.

Luke Storey: [00:25:26] That's definitely true because like I said, I used these things many years ago that I even had those experiences. Super cool. Tell us about your latest book, From the Core. What's the essence of this book? I was listening to one of your podcasts recently and heard you talk about it. I literally had no idea that that happened. So I want to get it and I read the synopsis of it, but maybe just break that down because it's a huge accomplishment and I just want people to know that you got it done. 

John Wineland: [00:25:54] Yeah. Thank you. Sounds true and all those who help make it. It's a culmination of my thoughts on masculinity and men's work. And so over the last 13 years, I've been teaching men's work first in 12 Step community and then in yoga community and meditative community. And so it's all of the things that I've learned teaching men's work. 

I tried to condense as much as I could into a book. It's hard and then give men a pretty hopefully straightforward path to what I would consider a new paradigm of masculinity, which is moving from the acquisition, dominate, acquire, win mode of masculinity, which is what we grew up with to the deep in, feel more and then lead from a deep sense of a core truth versus some strategy to win or acquire or control or dominate. 

And I try to give as many practices as I can. Some are the ones you're talking about in the book, but it was really just like, "Hey, this is my love letter to men. I'm a guy who didn't grow up with fathers. I got raised by other men, thank God. I got raised by some beautiful men throughout my life. And it's just my attempt to give back and create a direct line to what I do in my programs and my work and what's worked for me.

Luke Storey: [00:27:15] Awesome. I'm going to get it. Yeah. I also forgot earlier to give the caveat. I know you give this, but I'm going to steal it from you often. In the realm of this conversation because you and I are both heterosexual and I'm in a heterosexual relationship. I'm probably going to say, men do this, women do that. 

But I love that your work is just based on energetics and polarity of the masculine and feminine. So if anyone's a listener, this won't apply to me because I'm not that, then I would encourage people to listen and change the words where you need to for it to make sense.

John Wineland: [00:27:46] Yeah, really important caveat because of the energies, the structure and the flow. Fullness and emptiness. The polarities of the universe pretty much, we use the terms masculine and feminine, which have a whole fucked up history. 

Part of the book's attempt is to reclaim what masculinity is with a healthy masculine. But each human, no matter how you identify or what your sexual preferences are, you have the energy, there's a part of you that flowing and changing all times, and there's a part of you that's never changed and never will. And that is basically your masculine essence and your feminine essence, and that is not heteronormative.

Luke Storey: [00:28:27] Got it. I'm glad we covered that.

John Wineland: [00:28:28] Yeah, glad.

Luke Storey: [00:28:29] Keep it PC up in here. Let me see where I wanted to go with this. So, I think I am really-- in accordance with your book, even though I haven't had the opportunity to read it yet, I don't know that I've done a show really exploring masculinity. I know we've already been going for a while, but I think I'd like to go into there there's something that I quoted from your site that I thought was so beautiful and there are so many things to unpack within this. 

You said authentic masculinity is a transmission of love and freedom, not dominance. It invites us to feel deeply, disavowed numbness. Hello, Luke. I'm going to take note of that one. And turn away from ego-driven dogma that has harmed women, the planet, and men themselves.
So maybe we could start by you defining-- I don't know if you even use this in your vernacular, but toxic masculinity is a term that's thrown around a lot. What's your perspective on that? To maybe get what we maybe want to move away from. First and set that as a foundation and then look at the possibilities before us.

John Wineland: [00:29:39] Well, let me start with masculinity. Masculinity is a transmission. It's a transmission. Basically, it's just somebody walks into a room and you can feel that they have depth, stillness, ground, presence, and certain traits, I call them in the book currencies. They have these currencies that they've cultivated in their body. They occur as masculine. 

And just like femininity is a transmission too. And this, again, gender neutral. Somebody who flows beautifully and who is able to run energy or pleasure through the body, all of those things are basically transmissions that others can feel. So rather than think of masculinity as this stoic predefined state, static state, masculinity is a constantly evolving and amplifying capacity to be-- this is why the book is called From the Core to access the core truth of your body, of your heart, of your spirit, of consciousness, and then make it felt, literally transmitted into space. 

And those people who do that are felt as masculine. And I see this in workshop after workshop after workshop. So I like that definition. Other people may have other definitions, but I like that definition because it gives us agency. If I want to transmit the masculine through my body, here are some ways I can do it. I can slow my breath, I can deepen my gaze, I can feel the earth, I can get more still. I can open my heart and just let those things waft, let's say, into the space. And it will have an impact on people.

And so I think masculinity is a yogic meditative practice versus something that somebody acquires by being a great football player or smoking a Marlboro or you know what I mean?

Luke Storey: [00:31:38] Doing CrossFit.

John Wineland: [00:31:40] Yeah, doing CrossFit. Being buff. That's not masculine actually. Masculinity as I define it is a much deeper practice.

Luke Storey: [00:31:49] Cool. I love that. I'm going to go out of order here a little bit, but something that really had an impact on me was years ago I interviewed John Gray, the author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus. I learned a ton from him. And he approaches things from many perspectives, but he talks a lot about hormones.

John Wineland: [00:32:08] Yeah, biology. Yeah.

Luke Storey: [00:32:09] Which I find fascinating. But I remember him telling me something to the effect of we were talking about when masculinity goes wrong. And I was, yeah, the angry, violent guy that rageful outbursts that's dangerous and is hitting people and now and he goes, no, that's not masculinity. That's a man in his feminine energy.

John Wineland: [00:32:29] Exactly.

Luke Storey: [00:32:29] And he said that guy is high on estrogen and totally unable to control his emotions. So I think the public perception we have is this violent, angry, dominant male is toxic masculinity. But it's to me that made sense. It's really more one that does not know how to manage their feminine energy. Would you be in alignment with that perspective generally speaking?

John Wineland: [00:32:51] Yeah. I would frame it a little differently. They don't know how to shepherd their emotional body, which is a big part of the book of how to Shepherd your own feminine. So all of our emotions are feminine, all of our thoughts are feminine, all of our sensations. Anything that's moving, flowing, and changing is feminine, at least in the lexicon that I use.
And so there's a spectrum. The Stiller thinks of a black hole on the uber mask, dense gravity on the uber-masculine side of the phenomena, then a mountain, then an oak tree, you know what I mean? Then you start to get into bamboo, which starts to flow a little bit more. And then there is the wind, and then there's stars. So there's a spectrum in the natural universe that applies, I think, to masculine-feminine dynamics and makes it easier for people to understand. 

I think I would define toxic masculinity as, yeah is a man's inability to control his baser emotions or creates, let's not use the word control. Creates structure. So for example, nothing wrong with being angry, but if I have a strong spine in my heart is soft and I'm breathing and I'm actually emoting from a place of having the structure, structure is the masculine, the emotion being the feminine, I'm allowing my humanity to come through a structure that can be metabolized by my partner.

When I lose that structure and I'm just flying off the handle and flying off the rails, I've got no structure. I'm just a pure storm. And that's when I create damage when I when my desires and this is where I think toxic this is. I hadn't really thought about it like this, but this, I think is probably true. Toxic masculinity is a desire to dominate women, the desire for sex, desire for power, money, land, conquest, all the things that we men have been guilty of. That unstructured hinge desire is toxic masculinity. 

And that's how the patriarchy was born. The pope signed some decrees and said that men have all the power. Men can own whatever land, men can take slaves, men can dah, dah, dah. And it was all based on this conquest of masculinity. And I think we're at this place now where men are getting to redefine what masculinity is. And I'm hoping that my book will provide some possibility there. 

I don't claim there's going to be a lot of beautiful thoughts on this, I'm sure. So I think when you're moving out of all this, let me give three frameworks that I think might help people take it out of the esoteric. So toxic masculinity is basically using control and dominance to get what you want, manipulation, control, and dominance to get what you. 

Healthy masculinity would in a healthy way express what you want, what you need, what you want. I would want this from you and I would want this from you. And what would you want from me? There's this healthy exchange of expression, of desire. 

Sacred masculinity is already full, already so full of depth and consciousness, and breath, and connection to the divine that it liberates. So sacred masculine is about liberating, liberating your own emotions, liberating the emotions of the people you love, liberating hearts. It's not liberating the feminine. Women don't need us to liberate them. They're doing fine on their own. 

But in a moment of relational expression, your presence and your awareness can actually help liberate your partner's pain or a client's pain, or your child's pain. It doesn't have to be men and women, and that is a sacred masculine act, to liberate a heart, liberating love. And that's what sacred masculinity is in my definition.

Luke Storey: [00:36:51] That's beautiful. It feels so good to be able to do that. Something I've been learning how to do over the past few years brings to mind actually, it's very similar to the exercise I was referring to, wherein the women were just emoting that. And you said it's not really a projection. It's not personal. It's just universal rage. But I had a situation with Alyson downstairs here a few weeks ago. Essentially I don't remember what it was, but there was something about which I wasn't listening to her. Like, you're not hearing me. I need this thing. I really don't remember what it was. 

And then her emotions started to get stronger, and I was leaning in, "Okay, tell me how that feels. Tell me more. I'd like to know what your experience is." And I'm breathing. I'm practicing the shit that I've learned from you. And this evolves into her fucking unloading on me. I have never seen her, or maybe any women access this level of pain. 

And it was so strong that I knew that it wasn't about me. Even while she was doing it, I don't know that she did quite then. I think she unpacked it afterward and was like, oh, she's pretty quick to clean things up and see where things originated from. She's a very good observer of herself and her persona. But that's what it was like. And it felt so good to be able to do that. And I was actually so impressed with myself, to be honest, not in an egoic way, but just like, wow, I just loved the shit out of her and I'm fine. I'm fine.

John Wineland: [00:38:33] And she probably felt more free afterwards.

Luke Storey: [00:38:35] Absolutely. That's exactly what you describe it. And then she was able to actually-- having cut through the morass of that dense emotional body, she was actually able to, in a very quick and elegant way, dissect what it was that she was actually feeling it where it came from. And it was came from way back. Had very little to do with me. I was just the person in that moment that reminded her of something deeply painful in the past, and it was a really powerful healing moment.

And out of that, something you talk a lot about is the feminine need to trust the masculine. And there was an immense amount of trust that was cultivated in that moment that I wasn't going to leave. Emotionally shut down or physically run out of the house or whatever. Like, I'm here for it. However, I want to get your take on this, there are times when something like that comes up, I sense myself turning red and starting to boil, and I feel my nervous system entering into fight or flight. And I know that there is no way I will be able to space like that.

And so my move is to just go, I'm here. I love you. My heart's open to you. I really want to hear what you have to say, but I'm going to need to take a pause because I'm going to turn into that toxic masculinity and I'm going to say or do things that I don't feel good about that are probably going to not help the situation and maybe even hurt you. Do you think that's a viable tool to apply self-awareness? I just say, hold up.

John Wineland: [00:40:11] So good to the first example. You were able for whatever reason you were in a state, your heart was open, maybe you were grounded, your capacity that day was really high, which is great. For men to expect themselves because they'll hear this kind of talk and they'll think, oh, I've got to do this all the time, every day. If I don't, I'm a failure.
And it's just unreasonable to expect that when certain projections or insults or criticisms are coming at you that you're going to be able to meet it with equanimity and presence all the time. Sometimes you can fuck if you do it once or twice a week and you just improve incrementally over the course of a relationship. You're in the fucking Hall of Fame. 

But those moments where your capacity is not there, and you're able to sense because you're aware of your own body and mind enough that you say, baby, I'm not going anywhere. I'm here. I want to hear you. We're going to talk about this. But just give me 20, 30 minutes, an hour. 30 minutes is usually a good time. Just let me breathe, get myself settled, let me take a walk, and then I'll come back--

Luke Storey: [00:41:12] Jump in the ice bath.

John Wineland: [00:41:14] Jump in the ice bath. Perfect. Yeah. Again-- 

Luke Storey: [00:41:15] Literally, chill out.

John Wineland: [00:41:16] Yep. That is good leadership from my perspective. Whereas if you would have just said, oh no, I'm supposed to hold space, you probably wouldn't have been able to. It would have devolved into this screaming match. And I've been there, I've done that. I've made that mistake of trying to hold space when I knew I couldn't.

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John Wineland: [00:43:39] And so let me just say this to the men listening, and the women, too. If you know, you can't hold space and you're trying to hold space for some ego-centric reason like that's what you think you should be doing, you're probably going to end up exploding or insulting or resenting or something like that. So good masculine leadership in those moments is to know when you are able to hold space or negotiate. Baby, I'm totally willing to hear you. Just don't call me a fucking asshole.

Like to show me how you feel. Tell me how you feel. Try to keep it on you. I feel this when you did this, I feel this way. And so I think there's an art that's being negotiated here, specifically in relationships and hetero relationships where women are having to learn some skill sets. You can't just call you out on your man and expect him to hold space. That's just not fair. It's entitled, quite frankly, and it's not fair for a man to do that to a woman. I can't expect you to just hold my rage. That's not cool for your nervous system. 

But if I calibrate it a little bit and if I breathe, if I slow down, if I look into your eyes, if I'm aware of your nervous system while I'm giving you my emotional truth, then we can hold a lot. We can hold a lot as you talked about. You were probably able to hold a lot for her because your nervous system was ready that day. But it's not fair-- and I hear this a lot from men, and women too. It's not fair to expect that your partner, man or woman, is going to be able to hold your rage unabashedly all the time.

Luke Storey: [00:45:19] Totally. Well after that experience, because I think that was definitely the most pissed she's ever been in my presence and definitely directed at me. But I got a little overconfident, I think, from that, because it was so empowering actually, to be able to just be present to that experience that I thought, "Oh, that's just how I do it now." And it's like, "No, not every time."

And that's when I started to learn, oh, there are times I really need to tune in and know like, oh God, I wish I could be here for this right now, but I need to take a pause. I found something else to be true in my case, and that is, I'm much better able to hold that level of presence and compassion and receptivity when I have a heads up that something heavy needs to be discussed, that it could be emotionally charged.

What I find to be exceedingly difficult is when I experience what feels like an ambush. And this happened the other day actually. I was on my computer. Some super shitty stuff just came through my inbox. Legal stuff which was not cool at all. Frightened me a bit. And then there was like-- just before we watch the show, I just want to talk about this thing real quick. Not a fair warning, really. This could be gnarly. I'm really feeling some intense stuff. And that was one of those times I had to just say, I immediately started to fucking meltdown inside, and I'm like, this is going nowhere fast. And I just bolted. 

I knew I couldn't hang. And I think part of it, I just had a beautiful day, followed by a super scary, shitty email. Came in to let go of the day and spend time with my beloved. And she's like, "Actually, we have a problem to discuss." I was like, "Fuck." But it felt like an ambush. So I got actually very resentful, which isn't common in our dynamic.
So what do you think about either party building a practice of making an appointment and giving fair warning that, hey, when would be good for you to talk about something that could be a bit triggering?

John Wineland: [00:47:24] Yeah, I think that's crucial. I think that's crucial. And there's a difference between holding space and meeting your partner. Sometimes just being a rock of presence is not necessarily the best thing. Sometimes, actually letting her feel your heart or yeah, baby or touch or something that meets your partner is really important. 

And some tips to help set your partner up to win. One, yes make an appointment. At least give them a heads-up like, "Hey, I'm having some stuff come up and it's painful and I want to be able to share it with you, but I want to make sure you're okay with that. And then giving you five minutes or three minutes or a few minutes to just or tomorrow to work with it. 

So making an appointment is super important. Being aware of your own projections is incredibly important because when you do this, I have these feelings, I have this experience. It's a totally different communication than you always do this or you're an asshole or you're selfish or dah dah dah dah. 

And keeping it in and trying to keep it in your own experience is really, really helpful. The yogic piece of it, this is hard to explain, but I think you people will get it, there's a difference between a fire hose, which is often what happens in fights where there's literally a stream of energy going at your partner versus opening and revealing outwards to sides.

So one is for people not seeing me. One is I'm opening my heart to reveal the pain and anguish that I have, which is very much an invitation to see it and be with it versus I'm streaming my projection and my pain body onto you. And so just tweaking how the energy is being delivered is important, I think, for women in particular. Because if you want your men to be present, you've got to set them up to win.

And it's hard to be present when you're getting bludgeoned. And I think that the last thing I'll say about that is that if you can express how you're feeling without an assumption that your partner is trying to hurt you, so it's hard to make it blameless. But when there's really simple communication, when you do this, I feel I think I want to or baby, I can't even make words. I'm so angry. I can't even make words for it. Can you just hold space while I'm angry and then be angry without a bunch of words?

Just scream, stomp, cry anything. And men could and should do this too, right? Like, baby, I don't want to yell at you, so just stay back there and I'm just going to let this out without pounding you with it. And that gives your partner a chance to witness you versus combat.

Luke Storey: [00:50:23] That's great. I just thought of something super embarrassing, which I'll share here on the show just because I love being silly and vulnerable. When we were living in our apartment before we got into this house, I remember what I was pissed about. It was probably something having to do with technology not working. That's one of my biggest triggers is just I'm impatient. I just can't slow down. It's like fucking work. I bought this shit because I need it to do its thing.

Anyway, I was freaking out about something and this hasn't happened to me in a long time, but I got so pissed. It wasn't about her, it was something else. She was just present. I felt so guilty afterward because it was gnarly and or just so toxic energy. But I grabbed my computer keyboard and just fucking smash the shit out of it. And I just had to do it. There's just no choice. I was just so angry, I could not hold it in my body. And the keyboard was the closest thing that I could break without really wasting a lot of money or hurting another person or something.

But the cool thing about that was that it was a no party for her or she wasn't stoked, but she was afraid that like, whoa, you have that in you. But she was really good at not making it about her at all and observing that was my experience. And I think that's a really healthy goal. I'm not saying people should break shit and throw a tantrum. It was literally just I couldn't control it.

But what I find interesting and I want to get your take on this is, when you're in a relationship where two people are working on themselves and developing some degree of self-awareness and healing and doing all the things, meditating, whatever spiritual practices were inherent to most spiritual work, no matter what brand it is, is this concept of building this witness observer awareness, right? Wherein I'm sitting here right now and I might be aware that, oh, I'm sitting in a way, I think people are going to think I look silly. 

And it's I'm aware of what I'm saying to you. There's always this witness that's built over time from meditating and realizing that there is some awareness that is in observation of your thoughts and feelings and actions.

John Wineland: [00:52:42] Let's call it experience.

Luke Storey: [00:52:44] Okay.

John Wineland: [00:52:44] The whole thing, not just your thoughts and actions, but this room, the wind, you and me, the whole experience.

Luke Storey: [00:52:50] So what do you think about if you're fortunate enough to be in alignment in a mature, healthy relationship where you're both doing that inner work, wherein as a unit, you have the capacity for lack of a better term a dual awareness? Right? And it speaks to your communication recommendation wherein we're feeling these emotions come up.

And rather than saying, John, you made me feel like X, Y, Z, or you this, you that, but really like taking responsibility for my feeling and one could communicate it like, wow, this is really interesting. Can I share something with you? As I'm sitting here with you, I am feeling this rage experience in my body and I have a really strong sensation to pick something up and smash it up on the ground. I've experienced this where you both can actually play in that realm where you're watching your dumb little personas go through their mellow micro dramas.

And sharing about it from that perspective can be so productive because it takes all blame out of the equation and assumes all responsibilities for one's inner experience onto the one experience in them.

John Wineland: [00:54:03] Yeah. And it's a very masculine perspective, right? Because the feminine is not thinking "Oh, I'm going to be aware of the emotion." And in men too, the feminine in all of us is not bound by the witness. Not bound, just like the river is not bound by the river banks oftentimes, but healthy relating requires the capacity to be able to do that. 

It's really hard to create trust when one of you is getting so disconnected from that awareness that you're now dangerous or you're now damaging another partner's nervous system. So one of the ways that I like to describe spiritual intimacy, the practice of spiritual intimacy is, there's three pillars. The first pillar is the intimacy piece. I have a heart. You have a heart. I'm human. You're human. I have a soul. You have a soul. It's that sameness that we all share as humans.

The second piece is the energetic arc of the polarity, the masculine-feminine polarity. When one of you is holding the masculine and the other is holding the feminine, there's the arc of energy that creates really deep sexual polarity. That's the juice. That's the fucking juice. You can be as spiritual as you want, but without that juice, you might as well be meditating zazen together. 

But the third piece which I've come up with recently is I would call devotion to your partner's nervous system. And this is where I think the rubber meets the road. And this is what we're talking about today, is to be aware of delivering the truth of your heart, whether it's anguish, pain, fear, dah, dah, dah, dah while also being devotional to your partner's nervous system. 

And that is where the deep, deep, deep healing starts to happen. And you put all three of those things together and you have magic. And in any couples that I work with, if one of those is off, it's having a three-legged stool where one stool is shorter than the other and so the chair will fall over. 

So you have to continually come back. And what I see more than anything nowadays is that people are really working with that third leg of the stool, which is how can I deliver? That hurt me, but I can do it in a way that Luke's nervous system does not go offline. So maybe I put my hands on your legs and say, "Baby, when you do that, it fucking kills me or I'm not leaving. I love you. We'll work this out. But we got to shift this."

But there's a simultaneous-- I'm using my body and my breath and my nervous system to calm your nervous system while I'm giving you information that's really important for you to have about my needs. That is a fucking art. And it's very difficult to sustain, but it is definitely doable. And in relationships that last a long time, they learn how to do that. And they do it, and that relationships where there's deep, deep, deep healing, they learn how to do that.

Luke Storey: [00:57:13] Absolutely. And also what I've experienced is there's a deepening of trust and safety. I never knew my whole life what I really wanted in a relationship was safety, because I always went for excitement. Safety? What? It's boring. 

John Wineland: [00:57:35] Well, excitement is sexual polarity.

Luke Storey: [00:57:36] Okay.

John Wineland: [00:57:37] Yeah, that's the excitement. She'll be calling tonight and then she'll be a wood nymph, whatever. The energy is the excitement, at least I'm talking from a man's perspective, is the sexual polarity piece. But the safety piece is so crucial for any longevity or true health. And this is where I think a lot of couples and a lot of people in the polarity world that I work with, they miss this piece and they go straight from intimacy, oneness, breathing together, and resonance. 

Great. We got that. Okay, now let's add sexual polarity. But then when the shit hits the fan and all of our childhood stuff comes up, if you don't have a partner that's willing to say like, "All right, your nervous system is my first priority, my content to share with you is the second priority.

Luke Storey: [00:58:27] That's good.

John Wineland: [00:58:27] That is really important. And that's the reason why I call it devotion, is because that requires devotion to say, all right, I'm freaking out. But I know Luke's nervous system can only take a certain amount of this. I'm going to chill him out first, or I'm just going to put my hands on his legs, vice versa, of course, so that I can deliver something that he can metabolize, even if it's really painful. If his nervous system is in its parasympathetic to go into a little more neurobiology, then he can receive my truth without going into fight or flight.

Luke Storey: [00:59:02] Totally. Yeah, because that's the other thing. And I don't know if this is true for females as much, but I know in my experience of being a male and knowing a few of them when that amygdala is firing, there is no rational thought or solution-oriented dialogue happening. There's a certain threshold and just things just go blank and just nothing makes sense. It just goes totally catty and pompous. 

And I think that's the thing when you go full sympathetic nervous system and you don't have an awareness that you just crossed that line, you're easy prey for all of your shit from the past to come up.

John Wineland: [00:59:42] Exactly. Exactly. And hopefully, you have a partner who recognizes that.

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John Wineland: [01:01:35] I'm sure that when you were talking about that moment where you gave Alyson permission to unload on you, I'm sure there was something you were doing in your breath, in your eye contact, in your body that was signaling her nervous system that you were there. You're not running. Probably your jaw was probably relaxed. You were breathing. Probably you were somewhat grounded. Your heart was--

Luke Storey: [01:01:58] Do you know the stuff I learned from work?

John Wineland: [01:01:59] Okay, great. But you were signaling her nervous system in a subtextual, subconscious way. I'm not going. I'm here. Which then allowed her nervous system to deliver whatever she delivered to you in a way that you could metabolize it. It's very magic. The real beautiful, not quite sex magic, but it's relational magic. And if you would have had shallow breath, if you would have been looking around, if you would have been biting your fingernails or anything like that, she probably would not have been able to do that. 

So part of the art of relating for both parties, whatever relationship you're in, both parties need to make that commitment that I'm going to honor his nervous system and her nervous system first. Then I'm going to deliver my content. And if it gets to a point where her nervous system never down-regulates, I'm going to withhold my content, and or I'm going to really modulate my content.

And that's the commitment that I don't see a lot of people willing to make. And that's where most relationships devolve into contempt and criticism. The Gottman work, if you know the Gottman work.

Luke Storey: [01:03:11] No, I'm not familiar.

John Wineland: [01:03:12] Yeah, Gottman basically studied relationships. And what they found were that the number one marker of whether relationship is going to fail is contempt.

Luke Storey: [01:03:23] Oh, I've heard that before. I didn't know where that came from.

John Wineland: [01:03:26] And criticism, right? The opposite side of that. So going back to just unloading on your partner, if you're sharing how you're feeling and giving feedback but your heart is open and there's not contempt in it, it's more revealing of the truth versus contempt and criticism, then great. Game on. I want your feedback. And one of the things I think that this whole being where I think a lot of men go wrong is they stop at just being the witness to her experience versus being a yes to her experience. 

So yes requires that you're actually in it with her or him. Doesn't matter. You're in it with your partner. You're like, okay, yeah, you're fucking up. Yeah, I did that. That was fucked up. That was unconscious, Baby, I'm so sorry. Or they did that or it's a meeting of. It's actually the way I describe it in the book, it's a synthesis of sensitivity and awareness. Just awareness can be a little to neutralize that. A little detached, right? I'm in a cave meditating, witnessing all phenomena. But--

Luke Storey: [01:04:32] What you're saying has no meaning.

John Wineland: [01:04:35] Exactly. I am a yes to everything. Right? But when you bring sensitivity to it and you're actually able to bring both your feminine, your capacity to use the body, your capacity to use the heart, your capacity to be sensitive, and your masculine awareness. Right? Then you're really able to meet your partner in both arenas. And that's when I think most people feel gotten, feel heard, feel, felt.

Luke Storey: [01:05:02] Beautiful. Beautiful.

John Wineland: [01:05:04] So if we take that the best practice and good masculine leadership is this combination of refined and developed sensitivity which can be cultivated by breath, by meditative practice, and by yogic practice. And awareness. In these moments of conflict, you're both aware, you're the witness in the witness chair, but you're also in the feeling chair. And that capacity, that integration, it's what I would call integrated masculinity. 

It's where your feminine and your masculine capacity is fully integrated. And then your ability to both express, empathize but also maintain a level of connection to consciousness or the infinite or depth. And that combination makes it much easier to withstand any of life's storms, whether it's business stuff, whether it's a tech fuckin issue, or a partner storm. 

And so I think that's one of the points I try to make in the book, is that you've got to cultivate your feminine capacity, your ability to flow and feel and emote and express along with your capacity to hold deep awareness.

Luke Storey: [01:06:17] That's beautiful. That makes perfect sense. Yeah, I can feel that in my body, actually.

John Wineland: [01:06:24] Then you make decisions from those places, feeling the space. Like you walk into the house and you feel the space. You're like, Ooh, Alison's she's overwhelmed today, right? Or my partner is overwhelmed and you're aware like, okay, what might be a good move to help free love, right? And then that is good leadership.

Luke Storey: [01:06:46] I've heard you talk about how it's often the case that if the feminine or a woman is upset with their partner, it's due to the fact that that partner has lost presence or awareness.

John Wineland: [01:07:01] Awareness.

Luke Storey: [01:07:02] Could you speak to that?

John Wineland: [01:07:03] Yeah. Most complaints when you boil them down are you're not feeling me, which is you're not aware of my body, my heart, and the fluctuations in my nervous system. Right? So you've lost awareness of me or you've lost awareness of this thing, or you've lost awareness of your word, or you've lost awareness of yourself or you break down virtually every complaint.

Luke Storey: [01:07:28] This is so true. Actually, that outburst that I was explaining, it was about not being heard. Like, you don't listen to me. 

John Wineland: [01:07:35] Yeah. You're not fully feeling me.

Luke Storey: [01:07:37] Not hearing. 

John Wineland: [01:07:39] Yeah. Yeah. So virtually most feminine complaints and this is just as true for a man and I'm not feeling hurt. I'm not feeling seen. You're not aware of me. You're not feeling me as a human or something that provides safety and trust in our world. So yeah, of course, there's the odd exception, but I'd say you can 99 out of 100, 95 out of 100 times, it's going to have something to do with your level of awareness, which is why meditation, breathwork, certain awareness practices, feeling awareness practices are so important because it makes you more able to be attuned. 

That's why empathy, practicing empathy, this whole nervous system thing I was talking about, literally you're training your body to be empathetic and feeling of their nervous system. When they can feel that, it's a muscle. It's not something that most of us were simply born with. We have to cultivate. When they can feel that in you they're nervous system, it literally down-regulates their nervous system. 

So this is why I think masculinity and men's work should focus on these capacities to develop a deeper feeling of body and to develop a deeper awareness at the same time.

Luke Storey: [01:09:00] I love it. I've got another question for you here about this tendency that I've observed. Maybe it's just the women that I've been with in my life where things from the past are often regurgitated and put back on the table.

John Wineland: [01:09:19] I have no idea what you're talking about.

Luke Storey: [01:09:22] Man fucks up, has admitted his wrongs, atoned for his sins, done his time, amended the behavior, and literally stopped doing it, or at least a pretty good stab at it. Right? Taking the feedback. Listen to the feelings. Change that behavior, and move on. A year and a half later, boom.

John Wineland: [01:09:44] There it is.

Luke Storey: [01:09:44] We need to talk about that thing. And I experienced that as like, okay, I was charged with the crime. I went to court. I was found guilty. I was given a prison sentence. I went and served the time, I got out. I'm a reformed man. It's like throwing me back in court and then back in jail. I'm like, "What the fuck?"

John Wineland: [01:10:02] Double jeopardy. Yeah.

Luke Storey: [01:10:03] What the fuck? You said the thing, and then I fixed the thing, and now what is up with that phenomenon?

John Wineland: [01:10:10] Well, there's a couple of things from a trauma perspective. One of the things that I learned because I had a very similar situation in a relationship recently where something kept coming back. I gave the most sincere, heartfelt apologies and attempts at repair and yet there it was again, six months later for the fourth or fifth time.

Luke Storey: [01:10:30] So this is not unique to my life?

John Wineland: [01:10:32] It's not unique. No, no, no. And one of the things I had to realize, was hard to realize that trauma does not have time. So if someone is traumatized a year and a half ago, the trauma brain does not recognize it was a year and a half ago. So you may have repaired but they may not have actually done the work to remove the trauma from their body. Both things have to happen, right?

So if you do something that causes trauma in your partner and this is true for any partner and you repair it, you do your best sincere attempt to repair it. They still have to do the work to clear the trauma. Otherwise, it's going to keep coming up later on.

Luke Storey: [01:11:16] So good. That's it. That's it.

John Wineland: [01:11:19] If they don't, then it's going to happen. But there's one other piece which is that the masculine is always looking for things to end.

Luke Storey: [01:11:26] Right. We want completion.

John Wineland: [01:11:28] We're looking for completion. We're looking for an ending. Good. Are we good? Is that repaired? Is that good? Let's put it away. Let's move on. Right. That's the masculine.

Luke Storey: [01:11:36] The purpose, the next thing.

John Wineland: [01:11:37] Yeah, that's the masculine tendency. The feminine does not care so much about that. And again, this is the feminine in a man and a woman, in anybody. The feminine has very little understanding of the feminine and all of us is not bound by time. The masculine lives in time and space.

Luke Storey: [01:11:53] Hence the lesser value placed on closure.

John Wineland: [01:11:58] Yeah.

Luke Storey: [01:11:59] Because it doesn't bother the feminine to have things be open-ended. Incomplete, because everything's fluid anyway.

John Wineland: [01:12:05] Yeah, and there's ways to deal with that. One of them is, this would be a time for you to say, "Look, Luke, I really can't hear that same complaint for the fourth time. I can't work through that trauma with you for the fourth time. I've done my best attempt at repair, and now I really need to turn it over to you to go do what you need to do in order to heal that trauma because I've really given you my best."

And I think that's an important message to send when somebody keeps bringing trauma again and again and again and expects you to keep repairing it. It's abusive. You need to handle it. You need to go back and deal with what's underneath that thing that you keep bringing up. Chances are it's a family dynamic wound that you probably need to deal with.

Luke Storey: [01:12:52] Then this is, of course, provided that the person who's being charged with the transgression has amended their behavior. You know you're clean and you're like, wow, I'm not doing that thing anymore. This is an artifact of the past.

John Wineland: [01:13:05] You could try something. You could try, like, okay, baby this is still in your nervous system. How about this? I'm going to be here. Just take two minutes and whatever you need to emote express, just keep it clean, keep it above the bell. But anything, I'm going to be here and I'm going to hold it with you. I'm going to love the fuck out of you. And let's see if we can move this together. That's another way to try.

Luke Storey: [01:13:29] I like that.

John Wineland: [01:13:29] But ultimately, we have to be fucking adults. One of my pet peeves is I think this idea that we need to expect our partners or demand our partners hold all of us, it's a very entitled approach to relationship, right? It's a gift when your partner wants to hold space for you. Either partner, right? It's a gift when she wants to listen to you pitch about your technology or your work, or dah dah.

That she's giving you that generosity. It's a fucking gift, and you should treat it as a gift. It's just a pet peeve of mine that I think people really do need to take responsibility for what is theirs, what's old that's still in their body that they need to work with, and what is new and present that needs to be worked through in the partnership.

Luke Storey: [01:14:19] That's beautiful. It's like old school. 12 steps, four steps. Right. You write these columns, I'm pissed with this person because they did this or that. And then you go through a couple of columns and it's like, what's my part? Oh, man. I think that was very common for me when I was going through that process multiple times, this is not pertaining to the relationships we're talking about.

But one of those big ones that I discovered was I would put myself in harm's way through my selfishness and my self-seeking. There was something I wanted. And so I would sacrifice my integrity, put myself in a position that was compromised, get hurt, and then blame the other person for doing what was in their nature to do. Right. It's such a valuable thing. However, whatever model of self-inquiry.

John Wineland: [01:15:10] Yeah, it's a must for me. As you mentioned, that's something that your wife does really well. That's a must for me. The ability to self-inquire, just maybe it's just 20 somewhat years and 12 step work. It is a value for me that's really important and I'll hold virtually anything if I have a warning, if I'm consenting to it. We need to actually ask for consent before we dump on our partners. 

That's a very simple courtesy to offer your partner. And I see a lot of couples not doing that and I see a lot of damage being done because of that. I've certainly been guilty of it. I've been the recipient of it. But getting consent before you really nail your partner [inaudible].

Luke Storey: [01:15:52] Yeah. And the set and setting then you have an opportunity. I think it goes back to making an appointment when there's something potentially heavy that needs to get discussed. Right. It's like set and setting. Like let's calm down, make a tea, let's--

John Wineland: [01:16:08] Take care of the nervous system.

Luke Storey: [01:16:09] Yeah, exactly. There you go.

John Wineland: [01:16:11] Again, if they take anything out of this podcast, it's to take care of the nervous system, your partner's nervous system first, then deliver the content. And then constantly checking back in. Okay, baby, is this okay to hear? Do we need to take some breaths? Dah dah. I know this might be hard, but I'm not blaming you. I love you. I'm not going anywhere. You're the love of my life. Words of praise, words of affirmation. 

But you got to stop leaving the fucking toilet seat up, or I'm leaving. Whatever it is, it's so generous and it's so mature and it's so healing to be able to receive somebody's truth because we want the truth. We really want each other's truth, I think it's just that we don't quite haven't figured out how to deliver it in a way that is healing and soothing to the nervous system.

Luke Storey: [01:17:02] What about the masculine tendency to try and solve problems? Right?

John Wineland: [01:17:10] Because we want everything dead.

Luke Storey: [01:17:10] Yeah, because we're talking about that compassionate listening, and holding space, co-feeling, having that balance of masculine and feminine within us. But I noticed this, if I tell any of my girlfriends a problem I'm having, I'm not even done with the sentence. And they're like, Oh, well, call Joe, do you need to do this?  I'm like, "No, dude, you're stressing me out." We're not to the point yet where I'm asking, what do you think I should do? Right?
So maybe you could speak to them when feedback is appropriate or how to communicate, whether or not one just needs to get something out or they actually are looking for solutions.

John Wineland: [01:17:45] Well, I think that the masculine tendency to want to solve a problem is healthy. It's beautiful. And Pat Allen talks about it. Alison Armstrong talks about it. It's a beautiful part of masculinity. The problem is they think the problem is something else than what the problem really is. So for example, she might be talking about something that upset her at work or some friend or something like that. And we think that the problem is the content. The friend was shitty, Dah dah dah. You shouldn't be your friend anymore or you should go tell them. We'll give them that. That's not the problem. The real problem that she's feeling is unmet, unheard, and unseen. 

So solving that problem s the solution. Like, yeah, there's a problem. She wouldn't be upset if there wasn't something going on. But we tend to think the problem is content. It's actually what's going on in her nervous system. So I always like to tell guys, if that's the case, then be a yes to whatever she's feeling like so-and-so was so shitty to me, but she was all that sucks.

Like literally, like help her feel the feelings that are there more and help her be seen and felt and free. Again, we talked about the masculine gift is to liberation. So that's a good way to liberate whatever energetic emotional gunk is stuck. Is a really beautiful gift. Most women appreciate it.

Luke Storey: [01:19:13] What if it's a situation in which the woman feels stuck in a dilemma? And venting about a dilemma, but there is a decision at which she needs to arrive at some point in order to resolve the dilemma.

John Wineland: [01:19:26] Would you like my opinion on that?

Luke Storey: [01:19:28] Okay, that's pretty simple.

John Wineland: [01:19:29] Yeah. Would you like my opinion? Do you want me to just listen to you? Because I'm totally cool to just listen and vent with you, and we can just talk shit about those people and blah, blah, blah. I'm totally cool doing that. Or if you want my opinion on what you should do, I'm happy to give that.

Luke Storey: [01:19:43] Yeah, that's my method. It's a disaster if you just are trying to fix it without making sure that that's in fact what they want.

John Wineland: [01:19:53] Because masculine values piece above almost everything else.

Luke Storey: [01:19:57] Oh, God, that's so true. I've heard you say that. Say that again.

John Wineland: [01:20:01] The masculine values piece above almost all else. And so we're constantly trying to get to peace.

Luke Storey: [01:20:08] Oh, my God. So true.

John Wineland: [01:20:10] That's just like, so we can chill, buy some candles, breathe together, whatever peace means on that day. The impulse to get to peace is very similar to the feminine impulse to get to connection. The two are often in conflict.

Luke Storey: [01:20:28] If awareness often underlies what's troubling a woman, of course, we're totally generalizing here, but you have a lot of years working with probably thousands of people by now on this stuff. What's typically underneath a man's angst with a female partner or feminine partner?

John Wineland: [01:20:46] Well, in life in general, almost always I was just talking about this to my men's group the other day. It's almost always you're feeling bound or trapped by something. You're bound in a dynamic, you're bound in a purpose, you're bound in some financial situation. You're bound in some emotional turmoil that feels so the masculine gets super grumpy like you're bound by your technology not working. You feel bound, you feel trapped. You don't feel free. 

So the masculine impulse is for peace and freedom above all else, a feminine impulse for love and connection above all else. And again, this is non-gender specific. This is in every human. Almost every masculine pain boils down to the I'm not free and we will strategize as we will strategize in all kinds of ways. We'll take trips, we'll do medicine journeys, we'll do all these things to fix the freedom issue, but not feeling the pain of not being free, the pain of just being bound by time and space.

So there's two solutions. One is feel the pain of being bound in general, and that's something we'll have guys do a lot of. And the second piece is found what true freedom is, which is usually meditation, feeling, awareness, and practice. This moment is stretching out to the end of the cosmos. What's more free and unbound than that?

Luke Storey: [01:22:16] That's so true, because that's my ultimate favorite place to be.

John Wineland: [01:22:22] Yeah, the mass killing craze.

Luke Storey: [01:22:25] That you hit that theta zone and meditation or however you get there, just like in a float tank. That's a great example. I wonder if floating is more popular for males or females. I wonder if there's any data on that?

John Wineland: [01:22:37] Imagine there.

Luke Storey: [01:22:38] That to me is just the ultimate. Just nothingness.

John Wineland: [01:22:44] Unbound. Unbound by thought. Unbound by sensation. Just unbound. I'm expanding. Is the infinite space that is. One with the universe. Come on. And the problem is, is that men will chase superficial solutions to the freedom problem versus spend more time in that space we were just talking about and maybe having o go back to that place for three minutes at a time, five times a day is what men actually need in order to regulate their nervous systems. 

And most guys will consider scrolling through Reddit, relaxation. It's not true relaxation. So part of what I try to get to in the book is to take responsibility for your nourishment, and being unbound is the greatest nourishment. Play with other men, time, and nature being unbound as consciousness. Those are the three beautiful practices that men can pick up.

Luke Storey: [01:23:46] This is probably the reason Man Caves came to be, right?

John Wineland: [01:23:52] Totally.

Luke Storey: [01:23:52] That's what came to mind. I was like, Oh yeah. Sometimes I just have to be by myself and it has to just be quiet. Thankfully, I'm in a relationship where her needs seem to be met. Sometimes I'm shocked because I need that a lot and I kind of come out of my cave, whatever that is, just figuratively speaking. 

And sometimes I'll have that nervousness like I was probably caving out too long and I come back. She's just always receptive, there's never I don't know, there's never any communication where her needs aren't being met. I think there's an understanding that she knows that that's how I come back as my best self and able to.

John Wineland: [01:24:27] Time of no demand.

Luke Storey: [01:24:29] Yes.

John Wineland: [01:24:29] And when she can sense that it's a time of no demand, which is different than numbing out. So if you go and you numb out for two hours playing video games or scrolling whatever it is, and you come back and you're not really in your depth, she'll feel it and she'll probably be pissed. But if you go and you're actually getting nourished by the space of no demand and you come back. It's probably received well.

Luke Storey: [01:24:54] That's so true. You know your shit, brother. You're a good man.

John Wineland: [01:24:58] Thank you. Really.

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Couple more questions here. How can an evolved masculine man who has access to the masculine and feminine is well rounded and well-balanced and deeply honoring and respectful of his partner? Also, access is animal-based nature and ravishes a woman. It's like this dilemma I hear from a lot of guys and I've experienced it in my life at times, too, is that when you really love, honor and respect a woman, even though there's a part of them, that really wants that right. But it's difficult to treat them in that way because it feels dishonoring, and you've done a lot of work.

John Wineland: [01:27:48] This is a whole workshop. And like, that's a whole workshop. I'll give you a couple of pieces. So the first one I think you'll get right away is accessing your root, access your root chakra. So that part of you is in the lower triangle. For the yogis, they'll probably get this. Some people would be like, "What the fuck are you talking about?"

But in your root chakra and the base of your body, that's where your subconscious primal energies are so you can do breath practices. I have a bunch of them on my virtual workshop if you want that, but you can do breath practices that really bring breath down into the lower part of your body, which activates those energies, right? For a second chakra. So there's one. I'll give one example. One is I'll have people lock their perineum sit in a way that their perineum is plugged into the earth and then breathe and rock on it for five, 10, 15 minutes and really wake up. And what'll happen is you'll start to feel a lot of heat and your genitals just start to feel it in your perineum and your rectum. You'll feel that part of you come alive. And that's the energetic gateway to your primal nature. 

The second thing is so simple. It's intended to ravish her. Just be the possibility of ravishing her into dust and make that intention and bring energy. So the two pieces of that are this is the way that we should approach any endeavor. It's the strength of our intention and the quality of our energy. So if your body is open and you're full of breath and you're in your body and your intention is, I'm going to ravish the fuck out of her tonight.

I'm just going to ravish her into dust, into a puddle of love. Whatever it is, choose your own language, and you bring that to her. And then, of course, you check-in. Yes, baby. This yes feel good. Feel good when I pull your hair. Pull hair if you maybe pull her hair. I don't know. Please don't try this at home. You pull her hair and you're like, Yeah, baby, you check-in. What's even better is if you can tell it's a yes.

But it's good to check in, if you're not used to it or you don't have that dynamic in your sexuality, then check in like this. Yes, baby. It's cool that I hold you down. It's cool I hold your hands down? Is it cool? You just keep checking in as you go just to make sure that you're not pushing her past a boundary. But most of that gets cleaned up when your intention is really pure. I'm just going to love the fuck out of her. She's going to feel like the most loved and ravished woman on the planet tonight. 

And if you just take that intention into lovemaking with some breath, with some openness in your body, you're going to elevate your sex. It's just inevitable. And then the rest of it is just communication. Checking in, really feeling. Was that Yes, baby? Is that yes or no? And women today are pretty tapped into their own bodies and their own capacity to know what's good and what's not. But not all. But most of them are.

Luke Storey: [01:30:57] That's great information. I've observed as men in my community and my world evolve out of their immaturity and start to embrace real growth it's like there's a mismatch of the way that things used to be in the way that things could be, right? And so we're, myself included to some degree like, Oh, how does this new thing work? There's no road map of like conscious, uplifted sexuality.

John Wineland: [01:31:29] Well, there was before the church.

Luke Storey: [01:31:32] Right.

John Wineland: [01:31:33] Quite frankly. There was all areas of the world, Egypt and India, and China. And who knows what was going on? Asia, before they migrated down into South America, there was a lot of conscious sexuality going down.
And then the church came in, there's a lot of one of many teachers of this stuff. And there's a lot of great ancient practice and wisdom that's coming back now. It's like any new skill like you said, it's like, how does this work? 

And any new skill requires practice, your capacity when you were talking about coming to the workshop and finding that tune between warrior and Lover, that's practice, right? And then the more you practice it at home, the more it gets installed in your nervous system. So you can't bypass practice. A book won't give you an embodied experience.

Luke Storey: [01:32:26] Yeah, yeah. The application.

John Wineland: [01:32:28] The application. But the thing I think that's super important is the intention. Most of us just float into sex without a really deep intention. And I think just taking a moment to set an intention, I'll give you one more piece, which is to create a ritual space. 

So for me that looks like lighting a bunch of candles, putting specific music on, like literally lighting candles and just making the acknowledgment, may love to be served, may all beings be served. Just elevate the space that you're going to make love in and it'll show up in how safe the space is and how safe you both feel, etc..

Luke Storey: [01:33:09] Awesome. Before we get out of here, you've experienced in the past couple of years here some significant loss in the passing of your daughter, Claire, and then your ex-guru Jagat, who many people will be familiar with. She's been on the podcast, too, incidentally. 

I think I have a curiosity around how people work through grief and loss, largely because I have not really had that experience in my life. And I also get a lot of questions from listeners that do obviously have that experience, as many do, and I'm sure I will have plenty of it. But it's not really a topic I've addressed a lot and I would like to start leaning into it for the benefit of the listeners. So when you walked in today, I haven't seen you in a while. You look healthy and happy and, it's impossible for me to even fathom not yet being a father, and losing a child. 

It's one of my biggest fears. Even probably has something, if not quite a bit to do with why I don't have a kid yet. That's even a realm of possibility at any point in my future is just unimaginable. I know we don't have a lot of time, but where are you with each of those experiences and what were some of the things that you've done or doing to work through that?

John Wineland: [01:34:22] Yeah, happy to share. First of all, there's no sugarcoating it, man. Losing Claire was brutal. Brutal, even though I knew it was coming, even though we knew her life was short, there was nothing. Nothing to prepare me for the different kinds of grief. It's not just the grief of losing her, losing the love of my life. Literally, she's the love of my life. And thus far. 

But then there was also the grief of all of the trauma that I endured during her illness, watching her in pain, watching her in the hospital, watching her go into a coma, watching her with half her skull cut open, watching her not being able to breathe. And so I literally had to go through and I was guided by a teacher of mine, a man in Hawaii, to go through these things.
So I had to get into not only the just loss of not having Claire in person but also really going back over all of the trauma leading up to her death and her illness. It's not the same for everybody who might have lost. But that was my journey. And the thing, the real change the first year and a half or two years was really hard. I made silly decisions. I just did not. I was so lost. 

I didn't realize that I needed like, here was this person, this human that I took care of so dutifully and felt so connected to and so tethered to. And then she was gone. And I had this tentacle that needed to take care of people. So it showed up in relationships that probably weren't right and it showed up and just not great decisions. And about a year and a half in one of my teachers, a man named Cassie Phelps, who lives in Hawaii, he's like, "You need to get off the road."

And coincidentally, my business doubled. So Claire died, my business doubled, and I thought I was grieving, but it realized that there was a pool of grief I hadn't felt. And so Cassie was like, "You need to get off the road for two months, three months and come here, come to Hawaii, and we'll just work with it." So I literally created a container to just grieve.

Luke Storey: [01:36:30] Wow.

John Wineland: [01:36:31] And I also did that on a daily basis where I would create a couple of hours in the morning, I wouldn't schedule any calls until later. And those were my two hours to just grieve. I'd look at pictures of her, I'd listen to music, I'd write some posts. I do whatever felt like grief wanted me to do a couple of hours a day for a good first part of the year. And then I went to Hawaii and I did all this very deep embodied work. I spread her ashes in the waterfalls above Michaela, and talk to her and just had this really deep container for grieving.

So I guess if I was going to give some advice to somebody who's going through grief is it creates a space that honors your grief where there's nothing else but you just grieving, even if it's 20 minutes a day, if you have other kids or something, and you only have a little bit of time. But that's your space to honor your own heart's process. And that really helped. And I can tell you that I'm a total peace with it.
I miss her sometimes. I just miss her because I loved her so much, but I really feel she's in a beautiful place. I'm in a beautiful place with good jagged. We'd been separated for over a year when she died. And so we had made our parts. She was doing her own thing, which was a whole other episode. And I was doing mine. And it was deeply sad. And I remember having some really beautiful experiences with her in a ceremony, in a medicine ceremony where I could really feel her. And we had this really beautiful exchange and I was able to let her go.

And that felt really good. But Claire, it took a long, long time. And it's just recent, really in the last six months that I've got a year that I've really felt like, Oh yeah, it's all good. 

Luke Storey: [01:38:24] Wow. It's the opposite of checking out, right? That's it. That's the great--

John Wineland: [01:38:32] I did some of that, too.

Luke Storey: [01:38:33] Of course. But making time for the grief and to go integrating the experience and the loss in Hawaii, it's counterintuitive, right? The way around things is through them. Right? And all of that stuff. There's a great book by David Hawkins called Letting Go, and it's like his most easy to read, just simple thing he ever wrote. But it's so powerful. 

And the whole premise of it, really it's about surrender, right? But he talks about how you can diffuse painful emotions by just having the courage to actually just be there for them 100%. That's lost to me. That is like core wound shit. That's a huge punctuation point in one's life journey, right?

John Wineland: [01:39:20] Yeah, it's like you didn't even know that there were depths of pain available. And I will say that the practices that I've learned over the years and I mentioned Sofia Diaz, helped me a lot. She gave me some beautiful practices to go out into nature and give my grief to the earth. So there was a lot of actually embodied, I didn't just cry, I wailed. I wailed. I tried to expand my body so that every cell could grieve and not just cry and close.
We close up when we cry. We normally go into a ball. And made the effort to open my body and let it really come out my center column, the center of my body, my heart, my liver, my solar plexus, my genitals, my throat, all of it. Just give it to the earth. So the practices that I've learned and I put much of this into the virtual workshop, that's the workshop of content and practice that I have. But the embodiment helped a lot. The embodiment work helped a lot.

Luke Storey: [01:40:30] Right. Because how could you even have space to process something of that depth unless you had practiced doing that with other things in life? It's just incredible. It's inspiring, man. I appreciate you sharing about that. As I said, I can't imagine. I think that's my curiosity around it is like, man, be great for me and people listening to learn some of this before it actually happens because it's going to happen for all of us, right? We're all going to experience great loss and grief. It's part of the deal that we signed up for.

John Wineland: [01:41:02] We all have it. And let me just give, if anybody wants to know about my daughter, who is an absolute fucking rock star in the world, her name is Claire Wineland. You can just Google her. You'll see there's two documentaries written about her, we made about her. She's got millions of views on YouTube. She was an absolute, just a force of nature. And I try to keep her legacy alive with a foundation and just to honor her in a podcast like this. So thanks for asking. I appreciate that.

Luke Storey: [01:41:34] Yeah. Thank you for sharing. All right, man. Well, I think we did it. I did a little trick today. I ask my ending question, which is three teachers. I did at the beginning of today. I thought, "What the hell?" I mix it up.

John Wineland: [01:41:46] Yeah. And that was good.

Luke Storey: [01:41:47] The last thing I'll ask you then is where can people access your work. I went on your site, you have so much to offer for people who want to dive into this in any capacity. It seems like you've got live events and online things and the Netflix of embodiment thing. So give people a little outline of, we talked about the book, but just all the other stuff that you're doing in the world and how people can interface with you and your work.

John Wineland: [01:42:11] Thank you. Well, I run a men's program and a women's program every year. The men's program is sold out. The women's program we just launched starts in January. So if you want to do a deep dive into this work, it's called EWR, and it's on my website. I run a teacher training every year, this year's full, but next year we'll start again for people who want to get into learning deeper. It's a three-year program, so it's a deep dive. It's not just like a weekend. 

And then there's that for people who just want to take nibbles, there's the virtual workshop, which I learned actually footage I get taught me this. She's like, film everything. So I did that. I filmed every workshop I've done and we've compiled all that and put it on to like a Netflix of embodiment. And I'm really proud about this, we put a ton of the practices there. So there's 32 different breathing practices.

Luke Storey: [01:43:02] Really?

John Wineland: [01:43:03] Yeah, 32 different breathing practices. There's all masculine practice, feminine practice, and couples practice. It's all on there. And it's a great way for people to access the work from their own homes and then I got a book.

Luke Storey: [01:43:14] Awesome, man. Johnwineland.com.

John Wineland: [01:43:18] Thank you.

Luke Storey: [01:43:18] And we'll put it in the show notes. The show notes, by the way, today guys are going to be lukestorey.com/masculine. Even though we talked about a million other things, there's hopefully some overarching theme there.

John Wineland: [01:43:30] Well, I loved it too. I loved that we got into real-world relationship issues. I think that's really great. I'm glad you went in that direction. So thank you. Because I think that's what ends up, people end up wanting to know, how do I deal with it when they do this or when I'm faced with this?

Luke Storey: [01:43:46] Yeah, the practical tools. Yeah.

John Wineland: [01:43:49] For sure.

Luke Storey: [01:43:51] As I said, I demonstrated so many of the things I've learned from you and so many other people. I give it a shot and see if it works. And holy shit it does. You take a fundamental truth or a principle and apply it. It has a pretty much-guaranteed result that's going to be at least positive. Well, thank you so much.

John Wineland: [01:44:10] It's a blast. Good to see you again.

John Wineland: [01:44:11] Yeah. I can't wait to spend some more time with you here. I'm so stoked that you and everyone else in the world have moved to Austin, Texas.

John Wineland: [01:44:16] Pretty much. Yeah.

Luke Storey: [01:44:17] People from Austin, Texas. Maybe not so much, but I'm glad you're here, man. It's great to see you.

John Wineland: [01:44:25] And I am a brother.

Luke Storey: [01:44:25] Well, we did it, family. We made it through another Earth School lesson on the Life Stylist Podcast. Now, if you gained as much insight as I did with John, I highly encourage you to grab a copy of his book, From the Core: A New Masculine Paradigm for Leading with Love, Living Your Truth, and Healing the World. You can find it @lukestorey.com/fromthecore. 

Next week's episode will take a turn back into natural healing with the topic I've been wanting to cover for years, and I finally tracked down the perfect guest with which to do so. So make sure you tune in next Tuesday for Episode 449, Nature's Best Medicine: The Science and Secrets of Colloidal Silver Revealed with Steve Revelle. And until then, do your best to integrate what we discussed today into your relationship with the one you love. 

And if you're not presently in a relationship, now is a great time to start practicing the principles we outlined here today. In closing, thank you for allowing me to share my passion and my mission with you on another episode of the show. It truly means the world to me that you take the time to tune in and commit your time to this podcast. And make sure to go to lukestorey.com/newsletter so I can email you next week's show the moment it's published.

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