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it’s that time again boys and babes it’s the magic hour a place where we navigate through life’s peaks and valleys with all the vulnerability and shamelessness we can muster with the help of world-class guests from all walks of life we uncover new truths and valuable tools for manifesting our highest potential i’m your host mercedes terrell along with my partner in shine jade bryce hey you guys and real quick guys before we get into the show i want to talk to the fellas listening to make it known that the

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days of tricking women into bed with you are so ten years ago guys no longer are independent women of today’s age looking for the man who can pay all the bills and buy them a fancy car guys the queens of today want to be seen as an equal and empowered by a man who is seated firmly in his throne as a true king as we like to call it and we’re here to show you the way to become genuinely undeniably attractive as a king would we’re offering a unique guide for your journey to the throne so to speak so that you can finally show up in this

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world as an awakened king yes and this journey is one we’ve helped countless men venture including our very own romantic partners and we’ve witnessed the power of our uncommon methods dramatically change the lives of the men in our sphere i’m sorry i didn’t know you’re in there um yeah guys many many of the men we have worked with have tried the old ways of forcing themselves into you know the stereotypical image of masculine success quote unquote or becoming the nice guy even that gets friend-zoned and dismissed or looked

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over with our exclusive proven approach men just like you listening right now have if they’ve been courageous enough anyway to enter this process process they’ve found themselves in alignment with their truth and steadfast in their direction full of confidence and purpose and i know fellas that that is what us ladies are looking for in a man so yes so invite you to join our workshop at awakeningkings.

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com if you’re ready to show up for yourself call in your queen and know how to be the king she’s been waiting for when you do yes all right jade so on with the show what do you have planned for our magic mobbers today yeah this year has been a really rough one for me so far and the way i get through tough times is finding something to look forward to kind of like when you’re doing cardio and you tell yourself just to make it to that house or that fire hydrant or whatever it is well today’s episode was one of those things for me i have been

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looking forward to interviewing our guest today ever since i met him at a friend’s christmas party last year yeah and his instagram account by the way has been such a light in my life i feel like we we really get to know our guests through their instagram accounts a lot of the time that’s the beautiful thing about social media it can be used for the good and the work he does with men gives me so much hope especially for our own workshop because we’ve used so much of that influence there and i know we have

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so much we want to cover with him so let’s not delay any further jade let’s get him on okay our guest today has been immersed in deep men’s empowerment work and the exploration of intimate and sacred relationships merging the best of eastern and western methodologies and philosophies to promote balance sacredness and power in life and love he describes himself as a relational alchemist international speaker and author who facilitates transformational growth through using integrative techniques and methods such as neural

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empowerment shamanic praxis holotropic and biodynamic breath work trauma release and integration western psychology eastern mysticism and more he has created programs models and systems to enhance the quality of your life your intimate relationships and in essence bring you closer to your potential having also traversed the depths of his own pain suicidal thoughts and fears profoundly he pioneers a way for other men to step into sacred masculinity we are so honored to know this man and to have him on the show today please help

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us welcome stefanos stefandos to the magic hour all right okay please help us welcome stefano stefandos to the magic hour yeah thanks for having me yeah we’re so excited yeah we discussed it a little bit at the top of the show but we are so excited to have you here we’re huge fans um and of course we’re always throwing your instagram posts back and forth to each other into our romantic partners so um glad to have you here and i want to just start off with you with really getting your story of how you

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got to be you know the man you are today and i know that’s a big question so maybe you can give us just the highs and lows of what led you to doing men’s work and to working what you do now with your wife um yeah hit the highs and lows of this i know you’re pretty good at telling your story already so i don’t need to walk you into that so much sure yeah i mean i think with most of us our stories or the places that we find ourselves in when we are or do feel that we’re in a place of empowerment

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it generally comes from um pain or suffering or having transcended through some aspect of self that has just been extremely challenging and there’s degrees of that right there’s shades of challenge and difficulty and pain and all of that but ultimately it’s breaking through an older version of self to to get into this new or current version of self and so i remember dr john d martini saying that our voids become our values and so for me as a kid i felt very isolated and very alone and i experienced a lot of abuse and

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violence and volatility in my in my household from the people that i loved and cared about and that were meant to love and care about me and look after me and so there was a lot of confusion growing up as well and i took that energy and that anger and that aggression that was suppressed and the fear and i brought that into my teenage years into raging hormones into my early adulthood became very aggressive and violent myself had broken relationships cheating unfaithful prostitution alcoholism getting involved with not healthy people

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and groups of people doing adrenaline spiked activities and i don’t just mean jumping out of planes but really getting involved in the darker side of society and and exposing myself to you know what most people probably don’t experience in life and you know gangs and so forth and everything that comes with that and i was just living this very confused life but on the surface it didn’t appear that way because i was holding it together i was wearing so many different masks to keep me in check and to make everyone

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think that i’ve got this i’m okay i’m i’m exactly where i need to be everything’s good nothing’s wrong with me including pretending i had way more money than i did or you know defining my my self-worth by status and the people i spent time with and the things that i would do and the risks that i would take and um you know how many women could i could i sleep with and be with and all of that and i was just i was spiraling out of control and then a number of years ago the partner that i was with at the time

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found out that i was unfaithful in that relationship and and that really became a catalyst for transformation and change for me just watching and seeing her pain and the shame that that brought up in me and all of the suppressed trauma and really just taking very very hard look at who i was being in the world and how i was being uh and really realizing that i just can’t continue this life and i was just i was scared i was scared i was a little boy trapped in an adult’s body in a man’s body and i hadn’t dealt with my

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past trauma and my past [ __ ] and i was either going to ignore that and continue the path that i was on which would have ended up i don’t think in a very healthy place at all if even alive because i was battling with demons every day fighting them it was it was i needed more and more pleasure short-term intense gratification and sex and pornography and all of that was my go-to and adrenaline doing things that would it were either illegal or doing things that were against the grain to feel something in but ultimately to avoid that pain that i

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had been avoiding for so long and so that had to stop and i had to then face all of that and that was an immense and intense right of passage that really went over a number of years and where i am today is a product of that but as a product of choosing every day or every moment that new version of me that was that was very possible that i had been ignoring which is ultimately the real version of me for so long god there’s so many directions that i would love to dig in deeper with you on that but i want to keep us on top

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because i know we have some limited time today um but that story of like when you’re digging into when you’re looking at the darkest places of yourself without looking so like how do i want to say this when you were going through your earlier life and you were dealing in places that just you shouldn’t have been and wearing a mask you wasn’t fit for you um creates the shame that you’re already running from right and we get stuck in this this shame cycle i know that’s something one of the main points that

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you work on with people is really um figuring out how to identify and then dissolve shame so maybe you can speak on how we get stuck in the shame cycle in the first place and how we get out of it um well both both are challenging so we we get into the shame cycle uh in often challenging ways and getting out of it is often challenging as well and for me personally when i when i spiral and i and i still often at times do and have spiraled into shame cycles it is it has always been a way of shutting the world out and protecting

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myself and a lot has to happen for us to go into those shame cycles we either have to interpret uh or perceive or actually experience immense amounts of pain or fear or abuse or violation of the self or the breaking of trust um that then moves us into shame that at times can act as a defense mechanism to protect us from the outside world and because we become so insular and so introverted and so in that for me i shame compound shame so i’ll feel that i am wrong i will make myself wrong i will find all the reasons and all the

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ways why i am wrong and sometimes it’s a very convoluted cluster of emotions right and part of that is i’m making myself wrong so i don’t make others wrong so i don’t get you know my nervous system doesn’t want to get pulled out of the in group but i’m suffering and at that point i’ve got so much energy so much stuck energy in me that has to come out so then i get aggressive and then i get abrasive and angry and volatile and so i’m just playing out familiar patterns that i experienced through my father and my

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mother’s dynamic and how they were with me and how they were with each other and at that point it’s it’s just spiraling it’s almost out of control yes i can have control over but there’s an element where i don’t have control now these days i have far more mastery over and awareness and i have techniques whether it’s breath techniques or mindfulness techniques or somatic techniques movement techniques you know whatever whatever it may be that can bring me out of that shame cycle and bring me into a

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healthier place within but then getting out of the shame cycle you know this is really it’s really simple to understand but really difficult to execute upon because many of us haven’t experienced this in our lives some have of course but many of us haven’t it’s meeting ourselves with non-judgment compassion loving presence and empathetic resonance and that means that we’re kind to ourselves we’re accepting of where we’re at we’re not berating ourselves our self-talk isn’t abrasive and harsh but

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also not just extending that beyond ourselves and not just within ourselves but also being surrounded by people that can see us having those fundamental human needs met being seen being heard being understood being accepted being appreciated being loved but though having people around us that can do that for us when they see us in those shame cycles they see us shutting down they see us isolating they see us not loving ourselves and being really harsh with ourselves it’s we need people around us that can do that whether it’s a counselor a

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psychologist a group of friends a family member you know a sister circle that you go to a men’s group that you go to whatever it may be we need those people around us to help us shift those same shame cycles so that we they can help us see the forest through the trees because we’ll often revert to those shame cycles because we think it’s keeping us safe but that’s not the case yeah there’s a i just wanted to say there’s a branch of this that i’ve heard you speak on and it comes up with that worthiness wound

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thing and i actually have a quote from you where you say um i think you’re speaking from someone who’s coming from that um that inner child place where they’re still acting through their shame and fear and you say i can act my worst and people still love me so that validates that i’m still lovable if we can if if we act as our lower self and our partner still loves us then we think we must be lovable instead of being in our own self love and so forth and that being a worthy name i think i paraphrased that from one of your

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another episode i heard yeah but that was a pattern i saw in my own life for sure yeah yeah um i wanted to talk about the importance of men looking at and healing their mother wounds um and um i’m i’m sure this is something that you work with in men i’m not sure if it’s particular to mother wounds and not father wounds but i wanted to touch on that with you sure um yeah so how i guess how do they how do they begin to look at that and how do they begin to heal it how do men heal the mother wound and be i guess begin to recognize that

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it’s there one of the ways that we can recognize that there is a mother wound there where and and there’s many components to the mother wound or there’s there’s many um aspects and extensions of it and and part of that can be we can look at there’s been a lack of nurturing care where the man hasn’t experienced that boy hasn’t experienced nurturing care from the mother there can be there’s an enmeshment and an entanglement with mother which means that mother’s emotional needs were projected onto that

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little boy and that little boy ultimately became a surrogate husband to the mother and these are unconscious projections right these are psychosocial psycho-relational dynamics that play out because the mother’s feeling a lot of pressure her husband the boy’s father’s unavailable whether physically emotionally both um or he’s abusive or they’re just disconnected in their relationship and those needs are then projected onto that little boy and then there’s other dynamics like is that boy the you know

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the youngest child the eldest child there’s other plays out back there but then what that man can notice and so what wow i have a mother wound is how is he treating himself when he’s in relationship with women and how is he allowing women to treat him and what type of relationships is he attracting is he attracting a relationship that reminds him of his mother is he wanting his partners to mother him per se is he entangled codependent with his partners noticing these things is very important does he have a hate for women because

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his mother was never there for him and therefore he uses women as objects and abuses women in different ways manipulates women and we we can start to notice these patterns in our lives like going into the relationships let me look back at all the relationships are there any noticeable patterns there i’m the common denominator let me let me look at that that’s where we have to start as men right if we’re wanting to be self-aware we have to start with our own life so looking at those patterns can be very

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very useful yeah and something that uh i had told our couple’s therapist last week and he said i don’t have a couple that hasn’t said this before was that like uh often a complaint from a woman is that like she’ll tell a man something that’s like very um it can be very effective for his life or very powerful and then like three weeks later he’ll say like oh man at men’s group tonight i heard this from one of my brothers and it was just so it just really resonated with me and it can

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be verbatim what she said like three weeks ago but it just didn’t have that effect on him do you think that that is part of the mother wound as well like trusting um that a woman can like speak truth into your life oh 100 yeah if mistrust has been broken in in the the child mother relationship where the mother’s been unavailable maybe she’s been going through her own depression or she has a personality disorder or she’s had to step into this hyper masculine role because the the father’s been away so

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she’s had to caretake and provide and be absent herself because she’s got to meet basic economic needs and so forth there can be that well i can’t trust my mother therefore i can’t trust women there’s that projection then it works both ways right like when women experience sometimes that father wound of that unavailable man it’s like well now all men are unavailable and i will attract all the unavailable men into my life a because it’s familiar and b because there’s a part of me that wants to

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rectify or redo that relationship and re re-engineer that story within but the issue is that we don’t know that story exists so we just keep attracting the same same stories and it’s the same from with men here and so that mistrust then is projected onto that relationship and there’s no vulnerability and now there’s no vulnerability in the relationship there’s no sharing now that woman feels cut off and now depending on what her wounding is if she’s if she has a for example a codependent or insecure attachment style

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she’s going to latch on even more and she’s going to compromise herself and minimize herself and do less for herself and more for him which at some point he’s going to see what game is she playing now because he doesn’t trust women so it’s just reinforcing his mistrust so then he’s going to react in response to that and so there’s this domino effect in this again this cycle that’s just whirling down in this a descent into the shadow without being deliberate about that descent and it’s

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just causing it’s wreaking havoc absolutely god that’s makes it so it highlights how important it is to work with other ma men if you’re you know a man or work with other women if you’re a woman you’re having these these unconscious wounds that you haven’t dealt with that’s a great way to like at least get it reflected back to you by someone who you could hold the truth of like a man speaking to a man and then through your common experiences and sharing those openly and vulnerably

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getting to a place where you go huh maybe i need to look at something that would release that that resistance to holding what my romantic partner my woman says is truth or you know allowing her to be the oracle that she can be if you get there yeah men’s work men with men for sure it’s brotherhood is so important um so i want to pivot a little bit and talk about how we can access parts of our subconscious through breath work i know you and your wife a lot of um what i’ve heard you guys talk about is

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holotropic breath work i’m not sure if there’s other types that you guys work with but um i wanted to go into that how we can access parts of our subconscious through that how that how how we’re able to do that what methods there are things like that yeah so i use a combination of um breath technique it’s holotropic biodynamic transformational rebirthing and then you know over the years have it’s not so much developed my own technique it’s more the way the the sessions are conducted or the space

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that’s being held um and you know as more i do more research into breath science and and the power of breath and what that can access there’s a lot that we don’t know to be very honest i can’t necessarily give you a scientific uh or physiological explanation as to why or how the breath very specifically accesses unconscious parts of ourselves i mean i i can but so for example the an explanation could be this is that that a particular breath technique places our physiology in such a state that it can resend this is why it’s so

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imperative that there are safety precautions in place the contraindications are really explained i treat breath work like a plant medicine ceremony if i’m conducting breath well i do not i do not [ __ ] around with it it’s very it can be very intense the benefits of a breath work session is that that person once you know you’ve built that rapport and trust with them and they allow to they allow themselves to submit to the experience and surrender to the experience um they’re in control so if it ever gets

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too intense they can shut it down very quickly by simply changing their breath technique doing a number of different very quick things that within seconds to minutes we’ll get them into a into a more familiar state again whereas with plant medicine if you’re in it you’ve got to wait until the medicine wears off so it’s very powerful yet also very accessible and so i think one of the reasons why we’re able to access either unconscious memories or trapped emotions is because the breath literally changes our

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physiological state and the way that our molecular cellular cells are expressing and it also can resemble a very traumatic time and it gives us an opportunity to complete that trauma loop that we we didn’t get to complete at the time of or times of experiencing certain traumas and pains now that can be super useful and it can be super scary as well and we don’t want people to relive trauma that’s the last thing that we want to do we just want to be able to complete the feeling cycle of those feelings that

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weren’t felt and so breath can access that um you know specific breath techniques can access that um also the way that the carbon dioxide nitrogen oxygen levels are changing in the body again has an effect on our nervous system and what moves us into the parasympathetic or sympathetic nervous system then accompanying that with the knowledge that we’re safe in the space that we’re in and we’re very deliberate with where we’re taking ourselves there can be this almost paradoxical exploration of this unsafe aspect of

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self but being in a safe environment because again remember what i said earlier about meeting people with non-judgment and compassion that’s essentially creating a safe environment so if one’s new reception the way our nervous system perceives the world unconscious to us which is doing it on an unconscious you know just scanning the environment the brain and body are scanning the environment through the enderic system and through the vagus nerve that’s feeding information to the brain and so forth and telling us that we’re safe

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there’s an element of us that knows we’re safe yet our bodies feeling unsafe and that paradox is there’s an intersection there where we can complete that cycle of of trauma complete that loop and it can feel very empowering and very relieving for us and so that’s some of the you know the benefits of um of working with um pain and trying to shift pain um and trauma through uh breath work is that um so i purchased on your site or your wife’s site i’m not sure which one i’m like a 10 series of breath work

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is that the type of breath breath work that you’re talking about uh yeah it can be there’s there’s various techniques in in that series um literally there’d be not necessarily 10 different techniques but close to there’s some yeah there’s some different techniques to elicit different responses and each of those techniques are very specific to um emotions and and the activation and release of those emotions so the activation of those emotions and the release of those trapped emotions as

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well um but yes there’s some of the techniques that i would use for sure do you feel that uh do you feel that with psychedelics that psychedelics could almost be re-traumatization like you said um and then like do you feel that when we relive trauma on psychedelics there could be re-traumatization but do you think that there may be rewiring of the brain towards that trauma or do you think that there’s almost the integration is harder after because it’s almost like you revisited it in a different way than when it’s on breath

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work depe it depends on the individual um the answer is yes and and no uh it depends on the individual and depends on so many factors the environment the medicine where that person is i’m very i’m an avid um journey journey or yeah i’m a psychonaut i have no issues going there and i want to be very clear that the first um ceremony and first sacrament journey that i went down i had done a fair amount of shadow work and shadow exploration in familiar states of consciousness first and i think that is very necessary in

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today’s world when it comes to plant medicine there are too many irresponsible people stating and claiming that they’re shamans and they’re not um and we also in addition to that we also live in a very different world not only biophysically in terms of the toxins and pollutants in atmospheres and waterways and soils and so forth that’s affecting our physiology but also the complexity of our psyche as well um the impoverishment that we’re experiencing just just the disparity in socioeconomic

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culture and the values that we shared were very different to what it was a few thousand years ago hundreds of years ago even and so we have to take all of these factors into account and it’s really really important um again the complexity of family dynamics that it’s we are really able to explore our own consciousness in familiar states of consciousness and awareness first which is this right this is familiar we’re not we’re not um most people aren’t micro dosing or dosing lsd or analysis is not

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a plant medicine obviously but you know or psilocybin and whatnot on a daily basis this is a familiar state of consciousness so working with our emotions and the intensity of our own lives and histories this state of consciousness as a foundation before moving to more aggressive yeah more aggressive techniques more intense techniques and peak experiences can be very useful for not only managing that but it’s less about the management it’s more about getting actually getting the benefit and the integration

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have you ever oh sorry i was just going to say there’s a sense of autonomy when it comes to like doing breath work that you can access at any time right to be able to do that as opposed to plant medicine where it is very ritual and ceremonial and it has its place absolutely like you’re saying i do believe in myself um but like you’re saying having that safe place that you can create for yourself however however that looks i think is really critical because we do want to sometimes um in this culture take the

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silver well or the silver you know the silver bullet i guess or take the magic pill is what i meant to say um in order to just okay well i’ll just jump to that and fix this as a sense of bypassing i feel like that also happens there for a lot of people if they don’t come at it with the reverence or even you know if they don’t come at doing a plant medicine ceremony with the reverence for sure but even the breath work like you’re saying you could have you know like some sort of kundalini awakening some stuff can come

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up in her child’s stuff that you’re not ready for because you’re not doing it in a safer environment for that um yeah that makes sense to me though that having a modality that you can access at any time including not just breath work but even just a coach you know a therapist a men’s group or if you’re a man listening to this or women’s group um to explore those places where people are going to be able to hold you and say like oh don’t worry we’ve seen this before you’re not alone you’re not going

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crazy per se or you might be for a little bit we can bring you back online and i’m curious um with breath work i know like um the body keeps the score and i think it’s called waking the tiger is the other trauma book um with breath work do you ever see people maybe have some tremors or shaking to release the trauma um and i know you’ve talked about too um how powerful sometimes screaming can be and i was curious because you mentioned uh mercedes and i were really into dreams and dream journaling you mentioned that

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if you’re having dreams where you’re trying to scream while attack and no sound is coming out that it’s um maybe a repressed sense of self i often have dreams when i’m attacked i’m trying to punch the person to defend myself and there’s no strength in my arm and it just it’s like a limp you know noodle hitting the person um so do you think that’s the same thing a repressed sense of self it can be and i i very much have had those dreams in the past as well yeah yeah and it can be a repressed

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sense of self it’s a part of us that i was having a discussion with a friend of mine the other day um and he’s an amazing dream interpreter as well and we were talking about that and some other aspects of a dream that i had and not but we were i didn’t have that dream this time but i’ve had those dreams before and it could be i mean dream interpretation is so so broad so individual yeah we’re constantly going to eric garcia asking him yeah yeah that’s who i was speaking with the other day

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yeah and so the issue with that is though there are so many lineages of dream interpretation whether it’s vedic whether it’s western psychology every different tribe uh you know back throughout history will have their own way of interpreting dreams and what they actually mean then there’s what’s happening in the brain and how the the brain is processing the day’s events and symbolism in in a different way to be palatable to the mind that’s not so extreme as well there’s so many we still

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don’t from a scientific medical science perspective we don’t really know completely why dreams unravel we have some theories right but they’re not quote concrete i prefer to go to uh ancient wisdom and ancient culture anyway for that from just from a personal perspective um but yeah have you know that those dreams where you’re not making impact where you’re trying to hit or hurt someone or defend yourself but you can’t that could very well mean that there’s a place within yourself that you’re not

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speaking your truth or vocalizing or expressing or being your authentic self it could mean that you’re you’re feeling powerless or your power is being taken away from you in certain areas of life and and look you can start there and if that is true for you great you can look at that and say well a more desirable place for me to be because we it’s all about desirability and undesirability a more desirable place for me is to be in my power how can i be in that in the most healthy way so the dream acts as a

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symbol as a signpost to take you there and it’s a process and a journey too it may take you elsewhere and that’s okay but you know you can always you can always start there start with a framework that has been established whether it’s jung’s idea of dream interpretation whether it’s a vedic a vedic perspective whatever it may be start somewhere and at least that way you’re you’re just you’re cultivating a deeper sense of self-awareness yeah you’re just bringing up those things

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that your subconscious is trying to show you and putting making sense to it it only has to make sense to you at the end of the day uh i do want to ask you though about that sympathetic nervous response of that shaking and that tremoring that can happen when we’re when we’ve experienced trauma and that can needs to move through our body still and i’ve heard you articulate it so well just like what happens in our mind and body really and creates that type of response um to having even a past trauma that finally we’re

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bringing back online yeah so when we when we register experiences we register them in the the mind brain complex but also in the brain body complex right so particularly very intense experiences they’re registered in our nervous systems and namely to protect us so we can notice because the brain is a pattern recognizing machine and so so that we can notice familiar aspects of that experience again so that we can avoid it or keep ourselves safe fight or flight essentially right at some level um and and so when we’re when we’re shaking or

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tremoring and what often happens in in so many people that are dealing with trauma whether it’s current uh you know whether they’ve just had a car accident or they’ve just come out of a war-torn country or they’ve just experienced a divorce or sexual abuse or whether it’s old stuff from when they were children that body is registering that traumatic event as well and it’s usually locking it in and locking it away and so you mentioned you know waking the tiger within and dr peter levine and in

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his story of how he started unpacking his own trauma and unpacking how we can actually deal with trauma in a healthy way was he was explaining that he was walking it was a beautiful sunny day and he was going to his um friend’s birthday and he got hit by a car i’m going to give you condensed version right and so that’s traumatic event of course and so in that he he had done he’d done enough work and he understood enough around trauma that he needed to shake and move because that’s what the body

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just wanted to do wanted to release all the adrenaline the neurochemicals that had been moved through the body he didn’t want them to stay stagnant and stuck in the body but when the medical personnel arrived they were trying to keep him rigid and locked in and this is part of the you know nothing wrong with western medicine it has its flaws like so many other modalities right but this is one of the flaws of western medicine is where we’re we’re very restrictive and and that’s very rigid in terms of the

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body needs to move the body needs to release that trauma for example if you’re a child and you’ve experienced physical abuse and your abs or sexual abuse and you’re absolutely scared you brace and you freeze yeah and everything is frozen and you’re trying to disassociate from your body but these things are still happening to your body whether it’s sexual abuse or whether it’s physical abuse even if it’s words penetrating your heart and so it becomes imperative that we’re able to move that energy because if the

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trauma loop isn’t complete and part of the completion cycle is moving the energy physically moving the energy through the body then that trauma is going to keep replaying itself in your body unconsciously and sometimes consciously when when a deer escapes a a leopard that is hunting it it will find a safe place go there and shudder and tremble and shudder and tremble until it releases what it needs to and then it just simply gets up as if nothing happened it is done with that it’s completed the cycle it’s over with

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doesn’t need to continue we have the the blessing and the curse of a prefrontal cortex that’s very adaptive and also overthinks and makes meaning wants to make meaning out of everything and one of the ways that we think keeps us most safe which in part is true but in part isn’t completely true is that we can think our way out of everything and that’s not the case because that’s not how we register trauma it’s not just in the thinking brain it’s it’s also in the body and so part of it becomes shutting down

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the prefrontal cortex and needing to quote unquote understand and more about just getting in the body and somatic release techniques surma is the greek word for body so somatics body based techniques that can really breath is one of them that can really release the trauma and complete the loop yeah god that makes so much sense and even with simple modalities like ecstatic dance or just turning on your own radio and dancing you know or just so that it gets you to get up and move stuff as your body feels free to do it however it needs to do it

37:19

or getting on the mat and just rolling and stretching and doing whatever comes up naturally allowing that with intention to just like move out whatever needs to be moved out so powerful so i want to discuss with you sacred sexuality because this is such a beautiful place that it seems like you and your wife play with when we’ve listened to your podcasts that you’ve done with other people um and i know you guys are teaching this information to people now so i don’t know how to break into this but maybe like how how can we have sex in a

37:51

way that gets us into these altered states of consciousness into that that delicious realm that we all want to get i’ve heard you talk about and i’ve i’ve experienced it before with my current partner um there’s times where you could have sex in a way where you feel like you’re like on mdma or something um so can you talk about maybe types of way to type ways to bring that into your intimacy yeah so it begins with trust you you have to be able to do your own inner work first and clear as much of your pain and

38:25

struggle as you can many of your inhibitions and your your vulnerabilities that you’re hiding from the pains and the fears and the traumas that you have and cultivating a sense of consistent trust in your relationship with your partner that ultimately opens up the the door to experiencing uh a sexuality a shared sexuality where it does feel like you’re cosmically traveling or it does feel like you’re an mdma or what you know whatever it may be one of the ways or some of the ways that we can build trust is being transparent

39:01

with each other we you know yes date nights are great but having weekly or daily check-ins where you’re sharing with each other it doesn’t have to be heavy sharing it just be just open vulnerable sharing find those places within that a little uncomfortable and purposely deliberately go there with your partner practice not okay non-judgment and compassion with your partner and so if they’re bringing something to you that is heavy for you maybe be honest with how that’s reflecting on you and be

39:30

honest with can you hold that right now or can’t you because often we don’t want to let our partners down and so we try and hold this immense space for them when we can’t and we end up causing more more harm than good because they then feel they can’t trust us we’re not holding we’re not honoring ourselves and it’s just it’s just intense right it just becomes intense and so being very proactive in how we treat each other is very very important and how we cultivate trust that then

39:56

immediately lays a foundation and transcends into sexuality and sexual exploration with each other you know sharing fantasies with each other being really honest about that again this can be really hard because there’s fears of rejection and abandonment and humiliation that comes up well i don’t want to share what my fantasy is i don’t want to share what i want to explore sexually or what my needs are because you may get upset or i may upset you and that’s going to hurt me or you may tease me or you may not accept that and so we

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have to begin to move beyond these fears and so start small start sharing with your partner things that don’t carry such a high risk sexuality can be very vulnerable and raw and open and scary in that sense and so if you want to create trans transcendental sexual experiences you have to be really honest with where you’re at what you want what you desire and what you’re able to also give as well and so that then you know you keep peeling that back it’s self-awareness it’s doing your own inner

40:51

work um you when you both bring that to the relationship the relationship can grow and you can grow together and you can do your work together as well and work is just another word for exploration that’s really what it is it’s it’s a it’s a clearing right like we’re trying to create spaciousness in our lives in our beings in our bodies in our souls in our relationships because it’s in that spaciousness that we’re able to explore with a greater sense of safety so if you don’t help

41:17

your partner feel safe with how they need to feel safe there’s some fundamental stuff like be consistent in your behavior don’t be volatile um you know meet your partner’s needs meet each other’s needs uh create a sense of safety trust don’t lie be honest yeah the more you’re able to create safety the more you’re able to go to these exotic places within your relationship that may feel very foreign but will feel safe enough for you to explore which you know pushes the edges like in in trauma work we we have a

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window of tolerance we have an edging exercise where you’re just edging very safely you’re taking yourself to your trauma but then you’re pulling back grounding and anchoring and you’re constantly doing that or regularly doing that where your edge is getting wider and wider bigger and bigger it’s the same with the relationship build that trust keep building keep building keep building that’s going to be super useful god yeah that’s so important and when you think about you know we end up getting back in

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the same type of relationships over and over and uh calling in the same people when we’re not healing our wounds and doing our inner work uh then we don’t ever really get the chance to create that foundation in order to then go on the exploration of what is next and what’s the full spectrum you know ability that we get during this one very short life yeah and some people may mistake what we’re talking about for that like beginning chemistry like oh i felt that like in that that very beginning but

42:40

we’re what we’re talking about too like can be had 10 years into a relationship when this work is done absolutely yeah so now this is a bit of a shift but we know that the numbers of sexual assault with women is very high and i’ve heard you talk about um like six or seven out of ten men in your workshops have uh also had sexual abuse so i wanna know you know from your experience there why do you think that we don’t talk much about sexual abuse in men in the first place in our culture i mean there might be some obvious answers

43:14

but with your own personal experience there and how do we help men move into a space that they can be held there yeah and i’m also curious possibly if i know the men in my life i’ve if i’ve asked them if they’ve had sexual abuse they honestly answer that they don’t remember and i’m curious why maybe men it becomes like a repressed memory more than more so than women yeah um if that’s true it’s a human that’s a human construct more than anything else we were pressed because it’s a defense

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strategy it’s a coping strategy it’s we’re suppressed because it’s too intense to deal with at the time i mean a child being raped or being molested or sexually abused or being violated or being taken advantage of is very intense for that child’s very young depending on the age underdeveloped or very immature nervous system and so suppressing that memory and shutting off that part and disassociation occurring in the body is very natural and normal it’s the body doing what it needs to do

44:14

to survive unfortunately that pattern becomes a habit and a norm and so we’ll tend to disassociate in any area of life that’s difficult or if we’re having a hard time at work or if we’re having an argument in our relationship or if we uh lost a running race or you know we just start to disassociate and so we start to numb and so maybe we go to drugs maybe we’ve got alcohol whatever it may be and so we develop these patterns off those foundations and that’s a human construct anecdotally you know in the workshops

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that i’ve conducted and i’ve conducted many i’d say it’s at least at least uh five to six five to six men that have been that have experienced that they’re claiming to have experienced um sexual abuse of some sort and when i say claiming i’m just it’s their their truth being spoken i can’t verify that of course but that’s i mean i can verify from what they’re saying i can’t verify whether that’s actually happened or not um but i would believe that to be true um

45:05

statistically uh empirically what the evidence is it’s less than that but we also know that statistics can be skewed and there are many variables that feed into accurate the accuracy of statistics but again anecdotally through the workshops that i’ve experienced um yeah five or six men and often seven to nine seven to eight women um it you know depends it varies of course um but yeah there’s some intensity to that right and so yeah how do men begin to heal from sexual well let me go to answer your question as to

45:36

why why why is it more taboo for men to be sexually abused or to speak about their sexual abuse very simply put it’s we live in a culture of you know you’re a boy don’t cry big boys don’t cry i mean that sort of that sort of sums it up to some degree um there’s a shame that comes from that like you know men are meant to be tough boys are meant to be tough it’s they’re not meant to this is not meant to happen to them there’s no real outlet for them to do that it’s mainly the

46:03

perpetrators of sexual abuse are mainly men and there’s a deep shame um that comes from a man uh molesting or hurting sexually a boy as well there’s also then a deep mistrust that comes in that man and he’s not taught how to really emote and so not only is he not taught how to emote the shame around and the shame around expression there’s also i can’t trust anyone if i was hurt by my older brother or my parish priest or my father or the babysitter or you know how who can i really really trust i can’t trust anyone or yourself

46:41

at that point or self that’s right and so it becomes very very difficult for a man to express in that way um where we can support men that have experienced sexual abuse i’m just going to come back to the simplicity of what i said earlier compassion and non-judgment that is going to create the safety because safety is the healing yeah and in that safety it is non-judgment and compassion that’s going to and you know continued compassion the application of patients and so forth that’s really going to help

47:12

that man break free of that trauma speak to it more openly be more in touch with it et cetera et cetera so yeah that’s that’s important absolutely yeah and that’s it you know it’s it’s such a it’s such a sensitive thing for anyone to talk about and i do believe men are even more repressed in that like you’re saying in our culture they just already have this layer of shame that they have to try to break through to even touch that topic at all um so creating these safe spaces is so important i do want to uh ask you before

47:45

we jump into our little lightning round here um you said something about not everything needing to be a process and not everything needs to be turned into spiritual work so maybe you can just touch on why how you what you feel about that yeah just have fun play create spaciousness in your world you know the the source of all activities is from passivity so we can’t always be in our stuff we can’t always be in a [ __ ] process in a plant ceremony journey we can’t always be doing the breath work we can’t always be doing the

48:17

journey but you can like it’s okay but carefully just don’t become addicted to the process and you don’t become addicted to having to do something or the only way that you’re going to see yourself as something someone that’s worthy is when you’re doing the work and you’re applying the effort part of that is also being able to pull away from that and create homeostasis in your life and create spaciousness for integration and reflection we’re always quite unquote doing the work and it’s

48:42

always meaning we’re in it but we don’t have to be so active in it all the time give yourself reprieve because sometimes you need to step back enough to see and acknowledge the work that you’ve done you know i equate this to like a video game life is like a video game you’re only able to progress from level one to level two when the game life acknowledges that you have done all the things you know you’ve you’ve beaten the big the last enemy you’ve cr you’ve accumulated the the new weapons and and

49:13

and all the gold and all of that and now you can move on to level two right but new level new devil big bigger challenges now right but you’ve got to give yourself hey you’ve got to acknowledge that pat yourself in the back take a moment to celebrate and sometimes that moment is a few seconds sometimes it’s a few days sometimes it’s a few weeks being that and then cycle back through life is cyclical don’t be so linear because then you’re going to just identify and define yourself by being in

49:36

intensity all the time and that can be too much for certain so many people and too much for you yeah yeah i know it’s something mercedes and i really struggle with is always looking for we’re always in our magician archetype we’re always looking for the hidden meaning behind you know what’s going on and what’s really at the root of something so yeah it’s nice to just sometimes just let it be something simple have fun play be childlike i i read something the other day um it was you know we were all looking

50:04

for someone to grow old with but what we really need is someone that we can continue to be a child with a child like with you know i’m paraphrasing but that’s that’s sort of where life’s at be a kid for as long as you can as often as you can yeah that play time that reprieve that rest is so important and just i need to write it on my mirror like rest and integrate like stop all the seeking it does become a bit of an addiction all right steph so we need to jump into this lightning round with you real quick and

50:33

the first question i have is if you could hug your younger self right now what would you say um you keep keep listening to keep hearing that that voice within that is telling you it is different because it is different if you could have the whole world read one book which would it be um gee that’s a great question it’s always the hardest one yeah i really don’t know um [Music] i mean one of one of the books that really changed my life was um living with the himalayan masters by swami rama so you know that was a and i read that

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when i was like uh i must have been 19. it was a pretty profound book for me back then maybe it’s something worth mentioning here yeah absolutely if it came to you then it’s worth mentioning for sure all right if you could whisper one phrase to everyone on the planet or at least everyone listening right now what would it be uh be willing to go where your heart is calling you to go yet you know there’s a fear there just be willing yeah that’s good before we let you go where can people find you online

52:11

yeah sure uh at stefano stefanos on social media and uh stephanosofandos.com love that we highly highly recommend your work um we have just been absorbing as much as it of it as we can ourselves like i said earlier and we hope our listeners go and do the same but i will write on my mirror rest and integrate some of it because otherwise i’ll just live in there like say that send that to you but thank you so much for the work you’re doing steph and being such a light in the world and we really appreciate uh what you’re bringing here

52:51

so grateful for your advice thank you so much talk to you soon thanks thanks so we will send you all this stuff uh we’ll send you a promo we’ll make for this and of course um we’ll let you know when this airs which is coming up in just a couple weeks jade the schedule for this uh next monday okay right right yeah just general jill she’ll promote through all the networks yeah okay great thank you so much appreciate you guys so much thanks for the time glad you made it bye bye let’s see are we still

53:24

all right um i i like when he talked about like finding someone you could be a child with i had heard on uh something i’d listen to of his that when he is arguing with his wife and he realizes that he’s just like not being who he wants himself to be he’ll like jump into plow position oh yeah yoga position to like which is like your butt is like literally upside down in the air it’s the most vulnerable position you could be and it’s not like down or dog it’s like the reverse of downward dog right

53:59

like but yeah it’s like overhead so it’s like becoming all of a sudden like okay here i am i am being a fool like my butt’s in the air yeah whatever literally i just i love like i was trying to think um first of all for all of our listeners someone’s edging their grass outside so i’m sorry for the noise that you’ll experience in the last 10 minutes of this show but um i i was trying to think of myself when i am being an ass to my boyfriend i’m so caught up in that when it hits me that i’m being an ass then i get caught

54:31

up in the shame of it and there’s no way that i could then get in that position because i’m already so embarrassed of myself so i i i wish i had asked him about the process in his head but i guess it’s more just first of all humility and yeah humility not caring yeah um well caring so much you know about the the the factor of the relationship not caring about being a fool in the moment you know like for the sake of love it’s like the biggest test you could give to yourself to show up in that moment you know like the biggest

55:00

challenge you give to yourself like can you show up for yourself so much that even though it feels like there’s a big uh barrier of shame in between you and doing that silly pose or you know making yourself vulnerable in the middle of shame if you can break through that imagine what that proves to yourself like holy [ __ ] hardly like to it’s a very matty moon like practice i would really like to be able to do it and if anyone listening knows my boyfriend it would work very well for him so if i’m gonna do it with anyone he’s the one

55:32

because he’s someone who would actually do that himself um i’ve talked about how you know when we’re both in a rut he’ll grab me and tickle me and tell me say you’re sorry and you know we’re both laughing so instead of the trigger yeah stage yeah um but anyways those were not the magic tricks my actual magic it was pretty magical though yeah but the one that i have planned is um it’s a practice that stefanos and his wife lead couples through that i heard him heard them share before where

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you are first of all you do you know one of the breath works that you can purchase on their site um or you can just do breath work together and then you answer these questions um one at a time so the question is when i look at you i see and then you answer so when i look at you i see my forever or my family my home whatever it is when you look at me i think you see and this can be really vulnerable for people because it can be where your low self-worth comes out when you look at me i want you to see and then when i feel most oh and by the way the

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partner’s not saying anything they’re just holding space they’re just eye contact eye contact’s really important here and matching the breath okay so then the last three is when i feel most alone is maybe when you storm out of the room after an argument when i feel most angry when i feel most sad and the important part is that the partner is being the partner listening is having empathy through stillness not through replies but through stillness because it gives the partner permission to fully go there because they’re just

57:27

receiving um so yeah that’s my magic trick pulled from stephanos and his wife i love that so you sit eye to eye and then you you deliver those after doing some breath work where your breath is matching yeah okay and then do you swap yeah then you swap okay yeah so then you swap and go through the same thing and both just hold space and afterward do you know if they recommend like replying at all because you know i’m sure you can but in that container uh the the in that set container the purpose is to just hold space through stillness they

58:04

okay they like strut they um emphasize stillness and and just receiving yeah um okay so my magic today is relationship green sorry one second because even uh basically i wanna to uh clarify even a face expression can cause the partner who’s relaying the message to hold back some of their truth i see so it’s stillness just breathing no wincing of the eyes no curl of the lip nothing just perfect stillness it’s because that’s what makes the partner feel they can go as far as needed you know okay okay so go on to yours that is a

58:48

bit of a challenge i suppose yeah i know but a good practice okay so my uh magic today is also coming from steph and this is um specifically taken from his instagram actually and he he kind of delineated red flags relationship red flags and relationship green flags but he did it in a way i mean we’ve all heard of relationship red flags of course but probably not many green flags um he did it in a way that i feel like is much more articulate and concise than some of the places you might see this type of information so

59:21

the relationship red flags is where i’ll start and he says here are here are some of the red flags to look for can’t stop telling you how perfect you are highly judgmental of others are highly sarcastic complain a great deal can only see the negative in challenge is challenge averse back-to-back relationships has an unhealthy relationship with parents is selfish of their resources like time money and wisdom too intense too quick addictions are present so like pornography alcohol love sex drugs etc and unwilling to do the work together

1:00:12

so with the red flags he says that um it’s all about really consistency and that it can kind of consistency is a thing that can reinforce the sense of calmness and safety or it can fortify undesirable behavior and but these red flags i thought were like whew like i was reading them i was like damn i still have some of these but i definitely had a lot of these moving into my most you know my most recent relationship my marriage so it was interesting to see that and then of course like obviously you’re gonna go and look through and go like

1:00:43

did any of my partner have any of these do they still hold any of these you know are we working through stuff together and on our own as well okay and then relationship green flags which was also nice to have this as the positive highlight you can see where you balance i’m sure we all resonate with one of those red flags sure i know for me my humor can be very sarcastic so i need to look at just the maybe the attitude behind it is it playful or is it pacific aggressive yeah that’s the important thing for sure

1:01:13

okay and then green flex so he says here’s the green flag list practices self-care and hygiene introspective and thoughtful has healthy boundaries self-sufficient demonstrates gratitude with ease consistent in their word has rich meaningful and open friendships financially adept healthy in body ability to listen intently to those with a differing opinion demonstrates a capacity to be vulnerable so these green flags are essentially they mean that you know there’s a feeling of safety to proceed here right to explore and to to create deeper

1:02:01

vulnerability and openness and curiosity within the relationship those green flags is what makes it apparent that your guard is down or the partner’s guard is down and um we’re ready to not only show the better parts of ourselves but perhaps even um be able to accept all the good from the partner and the bad so that they can work through the bad too so green flags red flags hopefully you have been able to identify some of those in yourself maybe even in your partner but you know you can only work on your side of the

1:02:35

street y’all if you listen um and if you’re not in a relationship yet those are always great to know what you’re bringing to a relationship and what someone might be bringing to a relationship if you choose you know deciding to enter one with them and if you are listening and you hear the red flags and think like damn that describes my relationship have hope because i would have felt that way almost my entire 20s and you know half of my 30s and now i can honestly listen to what mercedes is saying and and my

1:03:06

relationship makes up the green flag so um yeah it did take switching it did take switching my partner but just have hope that you know you’re not stuck there yeah i think one of the biggest ones on the green flag or i think it’s actually on the red flag list it says is not willing to do work together you know if you guys are able to do work together you’re going to be able to turn a lot of those red flags into green flags but if that is not in there then you might want to reconsider what’s the situation and that’s goes for

1:03:41

yourself as well if you’re listening this and you’re like i don’t want to do the work i don’t want to see a therapist i don’t want to you know look at any of these modalities that might help them fine then maybe check out the definition of narcissism and speaking about doing the work guys as a reminder um if you’re interested in joining our men’s workshop awakening the king within where we give you all the insights for how to integrate into a true king where we teach you how to attract women to

1:04:06

your life and know how to fully turn them on and where we get you clear on your goal life direction and purpose please go to awakeningkings.com to register for the course and to learn more about it if you’re intrigued yes and by the way i also want to confront a question we’ve been getting asked about um about our private one-on-one or i guess two-on-ones this jade jade and i with one of the call the sessions that we’ve mentioned offering in conjunction with our men’s workshop so these private sessions with

1:04:35

us will only be offered to the kings who graduate our awakening the king within men’s workshop and um just wanted to yeah i wanted to make that known because we’ve been getting a lot of questions about it but also we’re so thrilled about the men joining us for their journey to the throne and i hope if you’re listening to this and it calls to you that you take the invitation and join us for that make use of the invitation we are so we’re ready and we have open arms so let’s do it together kings

1:05:07

yeah all right magic moppers thank you so much for tuning in and taking this journey with us if this episode held some magic for you please share it with your friends and family this would mean so much to us and don’t forget to join us on our instagram page at the magic hour and let us know what your favorite episodes have been so far we appreciate all of your feedback and want to know what’s lighting you up yes and don’t forget to rate and review us like jade said if you leave us a review that always lights up our day we send it back

1:05:34

and forth to each other uh these reviews when they come through and of course the five stars is what helps apple podcast know to show this episode to others um and increase our reach so we release a new episode every monday so you can catch us again next week or go listen to some of our past episodes in our podcast library we’ll meet you there until then bye