Mindfully Redefining Masculinity with Owen Marcus

Britt Hill: 00:00:00

Foreign. So welcome to this edition of the Mindful Coach podcast. I'm your host, Britt Hill. And this week we have a really special guest, Owen Marcus.

zation, began unexpectedly in: 1995

These ventures are dedicated to helping men pursue personal growth through science based, community oriented practices. And over three decades, he's created a powerful way for men to develop relational skills using the body's natural physiological responses.

So much to talk about with you, Owen. So welcome to the show.

Owen Marcus: 00:01:01

It's an honor to be here.

Britt Hill: 00:01:03

Well, I'm just delighted to have you here to talk about your journey and specifically also the journey in a way, kind of like a placeholder for men in the world, trying to connect to the issues and a better life being men in our culture, in our world. So tell us a little bit about how you wound up with that as your focus.

Owen Marcus: 00:01:26

I certainly didn't intend to. I graduated college, was traveling, ended up in Boulder, Colorado.

I had a roommate that was an attorney to given up his law practice 8 years, move out to Boulder to learn how to be a Rolfer. And Rolfing, a kind of body therapy where getting rid of chronic stress, realigning the structure by working with a soft tissue.

And Brett argued his case really well. I said, all right, all right. After a couple weeks, I'll just try it. If you promise to shut up, I'll try it. And, well, I got hooked.

I spent four years in Boulder learning Rolfing, learning psychosomatic therapies, learning mindfulness. You know, everything that Boulder had to offer, I was sucking it up.

And then in: 1980

And then I realized I healed a lot with myself, my body, a lot of my Asperger's, my dyslexia, my tight body, my uptightness. But my relationships really weren't where I wanted them to be, particularly, you know, with partners or women.

And I saw that I was a consistent variable and I needed to do something about it. And I thought, well, maybe, you know, doing a men's group or something like that would be good. I'm not going to do that. That's Weird, you know?

Britt Hill: 00:02:51

Right, right. Who wants to do a man?

Owen Marcus: 00:02:53

That's weird.

Britt Hill: 00:02:55

How unmanly is that?

Owen Marcus: 00:02:56

Yeah, exactly. I'm not, you know, I'm a man. I don't do that well. I go, well, if I have some so much resistance, maybe I should look into it. And.

And did a little training, ended up starting a men's group out of my clinic. It was mediocre, but was enough to get me intrigued.

I left Phoenix, moved to Northern California for a year, helped start the first real men's group in Sonoma and Napa County. That was a great group that inspired me, moved to North Idaho. I did a few little groups.

And then 20 years ago, almost to this day, I redesigned the model for men's groups and without men's work, based on mindfulness, somatic mindfulness, the connection of, of the body, emotions. All the things I sort of studied and was using in my clinic. I adapted to, you know, working with men.

I go, I don't know if other guys are going to go for this. They did. And that group is still going strong today. We've had over 500 guys in that group. We have currently over 60 guys in the group.

We have five groups and I'm in a zoom group for the ex. Some. Some of the expats. And we've had a, a film done on us. And many more things happen out of that, including three businesses.

And over those 20 years, I've really honed this model of how to work with men and yeah, teach them, but really give them back the skills that, that are buried in them or that they should have had taught them or never had taught them.

Britt Hill: 00:04:30

Wow. So, excuse me. So I have two questions that come up for me. One is like, you know, you started off and you said, well, I just really wasn't very good.

But then you kept doing it. It's like, was there some point where you felt like, this is really valuable and I need to up my game here and do more?

What was it that kind of, you know, helped you come to the conclusion that, yeah, I want to keep doing this and I want to do more of it.

Owen Marcus: 00:04:57

When I started this other group 20 years ago, I invited 11 guys. They all said yes. I said, wow, I gotta show up. And I did. And they kept on showing up.

So I kept on developing this and models and everything else, and they just soaked it up and I started training guys.

And after, I don't know, five years or so, the word got out and people are coming to us, really me and going, can you train Me, can you train my group? And so I started traveling throughout North America and training guys and, and then I go, well, I guess it's a business here.

So I started a part time business.

And then, and then I was a co founder in Everyman, started that business and did all, developed all the trainings, led all the trainings, and that was my part of the business. And the business went sideways.

So I just took my, all my material and all my men, my key guys, and left and started this new company just over a year ago.

Britt Hill: 00:05:53

I see. Okay, so how's that going? Great.

Owen Marcus: 00:05:56

You know, in one way we're starting over because it's a new company and we had a lot of publicity that we got from the work I created.

So I don't have that directly associated with this new company, but I have a personal reputation and a lot of contacts with, yeah, a lot of the top therapists in the country that are sending us people.

Britt Hill: 00:06:16

Well, that helps.

Owen Marcus: 00:06:17

Yeah, it does.

Britt Hill: 00:06:18

So how is it then that the work that you're doing, you're saying it's like physiologically informed and so what does that mean? Like, how is that different than like some other kind of support group?

Owen Marcus: 00:06:32

Well, there's a lot of kinds of support groups and I've volunteered over the decades of doing all the things I have done and spoken at them. And then we got the 12 set groups.

So what's unique is that, you know, we create in terms of groups, an emotionally safe space which is like the basic requirement. And then we work with, and we help train men to work with this model of getting connected to their somatic experience.

This is where the mindfulness comes in.

Britt Hill: 00:07:00

Just for our listeners. What does somatic experience mean?

Owen Marcus: 00:07:04

So we got, we know what mindfulness is. If you're listening to this podcast, somatic, you know, comes from the root soma, which means body. So anything oriented to the body.

So talk about or others talk about somatic therapy. And there's really two kinds of somatic therapies. There's somatic body therapies, which is like body work and Rolfing's one of them.

And then there's somatic psychotherapies like Hokomi, Somatic Experience and many others that really taken off in the last five years. So anything associated with the body and, and they all sort of make the body mind or body emotional connection.

Britt Hill: 00:07:42

The body mind body emotional connection. So let's, let's, let's fill that in a little bit.

What, how is it that like, okay, I'm my, you know, I'VE got a body part and it's feeling a certain way. How's that connected to emotions?

Owen Marcus: 00:07:56

We, you know, we've been trained in this culture, thanks to the Catholic Church, that car, this whole sort of dualistic model that, you know, I think therefore I am and that, you know, our existence is a mental cognitive phenomena. That's part of it, but it's not all of it.

And so what we're working with, I think in mindfulness in general, particularly with what we do with men, is getting them connected to what their body's experiencing.

So Stephen Porges, who we've had on our program, and he's the man that developed polyvagal theory, sounds real complicated, but essentially what it means is this big nerve, the vagus nerve, which is the 10th cranial nerve, the biggest nerve of our body, 80% of the nerve flow goes this way from your gut to your head, or really from your body, your heart, your lungs, your throat, your face and into your brain. And so what that essentially means is that what he calls neuroception, that we start to feel our body and what our body's response is.

And either unconsciously or consciously, it's telling us first, are we safe? That's the telling us and telling other people because they're reading our non verbals.

So we're having this nonverbal rapport without often even knowing about it. So as you become more mindful, you actually become more aware of your neuroception. What's your body saying?

And so one of the big things was sort of a joke when I, you know, had my clinic was guys would come in, they go, oh, my back hurts. Yeah, yeah, I know your back's done, but that's going to be easy. It's your neck. It doesn't bother me. It doesn't bother me.

So after a few sessions, you know, their back is like, oh, my back hasn't been this good in 20 or 30 years. Wow, wow. But you got to work on my neck and my shoulders. It's killing me.

And I go, do you remember what I said in the beginning, how they were tightening? Yeah. Well, here's the deal. They were chronically tight from stress from you holding them up.

And you were so, they were so tight, you were disconnected from it. You were disassociated. Then as your body relaxed, you became more aware of your body.

And the first thing you became aware of was the tension in your shoulder and that, you know, it's like your fists were always clenched and suddenly you start to realize it and you Go. Yo, my hand's tight. Well, the same with your shoulders. And then I said, this is good. Good. Yes, it's good. The because negative feedback.

Because you're going to teach yourself the only way you're not going to feel tightness or pain in your shoulders is to learn to relax them, which means you're going to be relaxing your whole body.

Britt Hill: 00:10:34

Yeah. So what you're here, you're saying is like, learning to pay attention to what's going on, like your actual tension, your actual experience.

There's a deeper connection there that, you know, it's like, I guess, sort of begs the question of, like, why. Why is it tense your whole life? Like, what's going on with people that they don't notice that earlier?

And particularly, I think, with men in this country.

Owen Marcus: 00:10:59

Well, we get into the physiology of stress, particularly trauma. And so all mammals, we have three choices, and we all know about fight or flight. When we're in survival, we're going to do one of those two.

er, like I was back in, like,: 1980

And so when a mammal can't fight or freeze, excuse me, fight or flee, they freeze. And so when I had my house in the woods of north Idaho, I had a meadow in front of my house and there'd be deer there.

And so if one of the local cougars came down and took down a deer but wasn't hungry and didn't want to eat the deer, it would leave. And a few minutes later, the deer would stand up, tremble, you know, literally shake off the stress or trauma and run away.

That deer had no ptsd, but because we've had trauma and what I call micro traumas or stressful events, that did not allow for us to physiologically release the stored tension and that freeze response. Because in the freeze response, which is like a shock state, we outwardly look relaxed or dead. You know, that's a survival response.

But internally, our nervous system is still wound up. Adrenaline or cortisol all is running through us, and we literally need to shake it off or it's going to stay in us.

And so what happens over time is we continue to disconnect, disassociate, which is what happens in the freeze response. So we don't feel it, which is one of the initial benefits of the freeze response, but it goes into our Soft tissue.

And the guy that wrote the book on stress, this physician named Hans selja, you know, 50 years ago, he called fascia, which is a connective tissue that Rolfers work on, which holds everything together, is the organ of stress. And so you can have a, you know, a blunt force trauma and, you know, you've had scar tissue, and we'd all expect that.

But I'll tell you that most of our tension or body is more stress or emotionally related. But the same thing happens. We end up getting tighter and tighter in that soft tissue. The fascia becomes.

It goes from supple, soft, stretchy sort of leather to shoe leather. And we literally store our emotions in our body.

Now we have a certain mental analog with it, but when the body starts to release its hold, it starts to release the charge and the emotion. And it could go the other way. We really have a true emotional release. We're going to have a physiological change.

And so that's the interface that we work with, with men is changing that chronic response. So we get rid of some of the chronic stress, but we also teach that body and that man to not replicate it.

So under a stressful situation, you know, how to stay present, how to. How to stay relaxed so that they're able to connect with people and with that feel safe.

Britt Hill: 00:14:09

Right. So that's a key thing. You ended there when. With that feel safe. There's a lot in kind of underlined in that particular piece.

It seems like in my experience with my own clients and my own men's groups that I've been parts of, there's a lot about. Once you start to kind of look inside, it's almost like you don't feel safe doing that. That it's like, oh, my God, I've got.

There's a lot going on here, and I'd almost rather not be in contact with that. So how do you help people kind of negotiate that?

Owen Marcus: 00:14:50

That's a good question. I think that's a function of a few things because you start to slow down. Sort of like my little story of the shoulders.

You start to feel your body and you, you know, you start to feel the tensions there. And that starts to activate. You start to feel uncomfortable.

But the other part of that is, particularly for men, we start to feel an emotional experience. And then all those old tapes of, you know, being vulnerable as being weak, showing your emotions as being a wimp.

I mean, all these things that are sort of embedded in us starts to get activated. And so, you know, a guy even thinks about feeling some and he's scared.

He doesn't know what to do with it because, you know, he's been trained to hold it and at least not show it. So one of the great things about our groups, and you probably have in your groups, is that we create this emotionally safe space.

And when I do these trainings, one of the first things I say is we're changing the rules on engagement. And in this situation, you get coup. You get honored for your ability to be vulnerable.

And inevitably what happens is some guy takes a risk, he shows everyone that it's okay to be vulnerable, and then they all start being vulnerable, and then some of them get competitive. Well, I could be more vulnerable, right?

Britt Hill: 00:16:02

And that becomes a new identity in a way. It's kind of like the most vulnerable guy in the room.

Owen Marcus: 00:16:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm tougher than you because I can be more vulnerable.

Britt Hill: 00:16:11

I'm going to take you down with my vulnerability.

Owen Marcus: 00:16:14

It almost gets like that, you know, and if guys get really supportive and then we make it safe, they see it safe. And then, you know, a guy says something and he says, that's, you know, that was just like me and my father, and that. That brings something up.

So you get the. The reciprocal of what we have out there of shutting everything down to. Guys start talking, it starts really opening things up.

And, you know, they feel their bodies, they feel their emotions, and they feel their connections. All the three things that generally, as men, we do not have.

Britt Hill: 00:16:47

So how do you get guys. How is it that guys come to you and they're interested in this?

Because, like you say, the stereotypical kind of meme for men is kind of like, you know, quell your emotions, don't show weakness. Take no prisoners. Be the Superman. Persevere. You know, just. So what if you're. If your place is a catastrophe, you. You power through.

Because at the end of the day, you've got to be the king of the hill.

It all costs, you know, And I sometimes get pretty unhappy because what I call a Superman mentality is like, we even, you know, in business, it's kind of like you've got to work hard. You've got to do more than everybody else around you.

And, you know, if you're going to dominate and crush the competition, and, you know that there's a cost to that. And then the flip of that is, like, well, I don't want to be put, to use the popular vernacular these days, a snowflake.

And, like, kind of like cower every time I have a feeling or. And so there's a.

There's this, you know, neither one of those are clearly obviously healthy models, but that's kind of what's rattling around out there. It seems like you're right.

Owen Marcus: 00:17:52

Yeah, right on with that. We got the hyper and hypo masculine model. And it's where it sit in a duality, which in any duality, it's a no win or catch 22 situation.

And so what I say, there's a. There's a third point. And one of the aspects of that third point is what I call assertive vulnerability.

Because love that we've been trained in sort of more feminine model of vulnerability or emotionality.

And it's not a conspiracy, but what it is is that really ever since the Industrial revolution when men had to go to work, you know, leave the farm and, you know, just 40, 60 hours at work, women stepped up, raised us. The teachers were women. So gradually, the model for what it is to be emotional for a man has just skewed more choice of feminine, which.

Which is not entirely bad. That's part of like, we don't know how to do it. That's one. And, you know, we got to be macho. So.

So the guy goes, you know, you know, I think more and more men are realizing that that macho approach does not work. Does not work for them, does not work for women and society. But they don't know how to be vulnerable, how to.

How to be open and not be snowflake, not to be soft and not be a woman or whatever. But.

And because we have not ever seen men in this culture, with a few exceptions, behaving in this way, our model for generations has been by default this more macho model. But more and more guys are waking up and they're coming to us either intentionally or consequently saying, you know, there has to be a better way.

Can you help me learn something that was never taught to me? And they're often common because of two reasons. One, that the relationships aren't working like mine.

And they love their partners, they love their family, and they're really trying because guys don't do something. We don't go into something like a relationship or family unless we think you can win at it.

So their intent's good, but it's like being told, you know, I want to hire you to build my house. But you've never built a house. You don't have plans, you don't have tools, all you got is a hammer.

You know, you're not going to do too good of a job. And so These guys start to realize that really, I'm not the problem. It may be some trauma I have, but a lot of it's the system I grew up in.

We really saw this when we were running the other company, and we did all this stuff virtual right. When Covid came on.

So we did these big virtual meetings with guys literally from all over the world, and we put them in zoom breakout groups for 10, 15 minutes.

Britt Hill: 00:20:29

And.

Owen Marcus: 00:20:29

And they'd come back and go, oh, I just told these guys things I've never told anyone. I mean, I'm closer to them in 15 minutes than to any guy, because they got to be real.

Britt Hill: 00:20:41

Yeah.

Owen Marcus: 00:20:41

And so when we get to be real in an emotionally safe space, guys just open up naturally, because intrinsically or instinctually, we know how to do this if we are given permission and maybe have a little modeling or teaching around it.

Britt Hill: 00:20:57

Yeah, I love that, because it's really, truly about learning to create the conditions under which we can connect more authentically. And. And like you said, creating safety. So I'd like to come back to that particular topic now, in terms of creating safety, like, what.

What is it when you're facilitating a group or.

And this is, you know, for the coaches and other people out there when they're in groups, what are the kinds of things, you know, when you're leading the group, you. It's different because you can say, here are the rules for engagement.

But what are the kinds of things that you're wanting to frame in for the capacity to create safety in a group?

Owen Marcus: 00:21:33

Well, I think the first thing is we create those rules, which first is like, confidentiality, and you can participate at any level you want, and you can pass if you want. So the pressure's taken off. And then the next thing is.

And particularly if it's like a new group or training, I or one of the facilitators will model vulnerability. We ran out, out of the gate.

We say something that is authentic, vulnerable, that we would normally not say, that these guys can feel is a stretch for us. I've run out of things that I've never said. I hear what you're saying, but you get it. You say something that's a little scary.

Britt Hill: 00:22:12

It's a little bit of a stretch, like you said.

Owen Marcus: 00:22:14

Exactly. And. And the guys picked that up because we all know that. And.

And then they go, oh, with Owen or Joe or Brett saying something that's vulnerable and we're not making fun of them or maybe it's safe. And then, you know, guys just sort of ramp that up.

As we go through it pretty quickly, usually then we, you know, given some tools because a lot of guys, and I was one of them, if you asked me what I felt emotionally, I just couldn't answer it because I was so disconnected, so sort of stuck in that disassociation, the freeze response. And.

And as I became more aware of my body, or as these men became more aware of their somatic experience, they naturally were able to connect to their emotions.

For a lot of guys, we just put them right into an experience around their bodies, and then it gets a lot easier to go, oh, I'm feeling my shoulders up, I'm sort of clenching my hands, and my jaw's a little tight, and, oh, I feel this tension in my solar plexus. I guess I'm feeling scared. Wow. I've never sort of connected those dots.

Britt Hill: 00:23:23

Yeah, that's so powerful. Just what you named there, that example of my body feels this way.

And now that I'm looking at my body, that same neurology that's inspecting the quality of your experience can then sample the quality of your emotional. Your limbic system response, which, you know, you then realize, oh, these are associated sensations, you know.

And the key that I love here because my. My big, you know, thing I light up around is the languaging, right? Helping them give voice to that so that they can learn to express it.

Now it's relational, and everybody else in the room that has that same sort of thing going on can go, oh, me too. And now you've got connection, collaboration, authenticity, vulnerability. And that's. That's a beautiful way to. To set the frame.

Owen Marcus: 00:24:15

And you get this emotional synergy. And particularly for men, we want and need that. Maybe it's because we go out in hunting parties and just hang out together, but, you know, we had.

Most guys had that in school, maybe in the military, but most guys have lost that.

And you get a little of that maybe with teen sports, but to really be in a room with guys where they're just being vulnerable, real laughing, teasing, but in a, you know, in a fun way. I mean, just being guys is huge.

I mean, I've been doing these groups for 30 years, and I've always said if you don't leave the group with more energy, something's wrong. I've only had meetings where I didn't leave with more energy.

Guys will come on tired or low energy or maybe a little cold or stressed out, but just engaging with these other men, they, you know, they leave with more energy. And there was a, you know, probably still is the joke in my group, I started in Idaho, which, you know, is a small town.

And so I'd run into women that had men in the group that I didn't know, but they knew me, and they start really thanking me for how their husbands changed.

And the joke was, well, it was the best night for sex because these guys would come home and they were, yeah, yeah, they were like, yeah, they were everything. They were like, they were open, they were present, they were attractive. And their girlfriends, wives were saying, that's the guy I fell in love with.

That's the guy I want. And yeah, we just don't have places to have that experience and let alone develop it.

Britt Hill: 00:25:47

Well, that's such an important key to the fact that the stress in our lives is if you just think about it from a physics perspective, it's a high energy demand. And so our brains, our nervous systems are all kind of on. Lock into this on position.

And then when someone comes up to you and says, oh, hey, honey, how you doing? Somebody you care about, you're not even close to being able to feel the goodness of that appreciation of someone caring about you.

And that just takes or takes away from the relationship. It takes away from the quality of your life.

And then if you don't intend to, that the connection to those caring relationships will atrophy because it's not working for either of you.

So, and the, the second part of that is like the moment you begin to relax and that energy begins to flow, it becomes available for what it would naturally want to do. So that's how beautiful.

Owen Marcus: 00:26:47

I mean, yeah, and what it naturally wants to do is, is connect. I mean, we're hardwired for survival, but we're also hardwired for connection. And my partner is a couples therapist. We do intensives, retreats.

We're doing one in Costa Rica in a month. And, you know, so we work with couples and, you know, and I particularly work with the guys around.

What you just said is getting them down, regulated often by cheating, by getting them connected to their bodies. And, you know, one of the things I'll often do is we. We do a little teaching and they got. The couples go off and do a little exercise.

And inevitably a lot of the guys, you know, he's really trying to communicate around this exercise. And you could just see and feel that the partner, the woman or maybe a guy, the partner is getting more and more tense.

And he's picking that up and he's getting more tense, which makes him even worse. And so I sit next To John, I go, hey, John, can I help you? Yeah, yeah, please, please help me.

And so what I do, you know, when John, he wants me to help him, I just sort of start to feel what he's feeling and not speaking. And I start to communicate to his partner for like a minute these emotional expressions.

And she often starts to cry, and his eyes open up and jaw drops because he goes, yeah, that's what I'm feeling. I go, yeah, John, you're feeling it, but here's the deal. You're not speaking it. Some you know it, but you don't know it somatically.

You don't know it emotionally. And this is. This is the problem I had.

You're using emotional words, but when you really listen to it, what you're doing is you're analyzing, suggesting, judging, telling it. You know, it might sound like you're being emotional, but you're not. And you can't.

You can't create connection without an emotional expression that comes from an emotional experience.

Britt Hill: 00:28:37

So spot on in terms of the. The way that sometimes I lecture or teach about what are you connected to?

And so when you're connected to your feeling and you speak from that place, then you come across authentically. But if you're connected to. Well, I think. I think I'm kind of angry, but I'm not really sure, you know, it could be angry about this.

But you're not connected to your anger. You're reporting about something, and it's just a. It's just another abstraction.

At that point, when you really connect to it, it comes across completely different. Says, yeah, yeah, I think I'm. I think I'm kind of angry, you know, and it just changes everything.

And then people can connect with you in a real way because you're being more fully embodied. But it's such powerful work, and particularly for men who are uncomfortable with that and they need. They need guidance and support. So I like it.

He said, can I help you?

Owen Marcus: 00:29:30

Here was that guy. So I know.

I know how hard it is, and I know he loves her, and I know he's trying, but again, he just was never given the tools and never seen any guy do it.

Britt Hill: 00:29:43

Yeah, where do you go? Where.

Where is, you know, emotions for men 101 in the culture, you know, we're taught to compete, to dominate, to own, to, like, you know, you know, conquerors and not collaborators. And the truth is, we.

We want a little bit of both, you know, and we want to be able to kind of switch hit so we can put in the role that we wish to be in and be comfortable with that. That's really challenging in these worlds.

So we talked a little, we talked a little bit about a common denominator that we both had back in the day in Boulder, because I lived in Boulder too. And I think we, you know, crossed some of the same path probably many times. And one of them was your experience with Hakomi and Ron Kurtz.

So I wanted to talk about that a little bit because. Because it's something we have in common and because it, you know, it's about somatic work.

Now, if I got your story right, you had also been doing Rolfing in the same city, which is for those of you who haven't been involved with or know about Rolfing, it was really powerful, you know, hands on massage type of technique. I don't want to say it was massage because it was more than that, but it was hands on work with the fascia.

And I love what you said earlier, that the fascia is the organ of anxiety and fascia, for those of you that may not know, like the connective tissues around the muscles and, and the rest of our organs that kind of, you know, keep things lubricated, keep things sliding. It can get, like you mentioned, kind of like tight and not flexible. And that literally leads to inflexibility physically.

But it's also because we're organic systems can lead to kind of congestion in the emotions and in the mind even. That's the way I understand it. And from my work, I would totally believe that's true. Which is kind of a long winded way to say you were in there.

That was your, your free staging for getting involved with, to some degree with Ron Kurtz and Hokomi back in the day. And Hakomi is a somatic mindful psychotherapy approach. And I'd like to ask you, like, what.

What did you take away from that that kind of informed your process? Because he had some pretty unique stuff that he was doing.

Owen Marcus: 00:31:54

He did. We mentioned earlier that I was in his first professional training.

He, there was a few of us in Boulder he sought out and said, yeah, come train with me. And I said, hell yeah. He taught me about mindfulness. I mean, I didn't really know about it.

And, and so Ron, one of the ways I saw Ron work was he was like a, a monk or, you know, he would stand you up and he would just get into the state and, and, and sort of be your, your mindfulness coach or whatever where he would just, you know, guide you through being more Aware of what was happening in your body or your emotions that were. He could see, you know, feel that was there, but you didn't know.

And I remember, like, the first time he had this woman in our little group stand up and. And he asked her a few questions, and you could barely hear. I mean, he was just sort of being real slow, gentle and safe and.

And within a minute or two, she was sobbing on the floor. And it's like, what the heck happened here? And, you know, and so he got our attention, so we studied that.

And one of the things he did a lot of teaching about then, he didn't do later in his career was he taught about all the body types and evolution of these body types. And essentially what that meant, he didn't develop it, he just refined it.

It first came from Reich, then Lowen and Paracas, and then he added his stuff onto it. And I have his book that went out of print decades ago, and it's a manual with this, you know, very elaborate chart. And what would.

What the chart was about is that depending on when your most severe trauma or disconnection or whatever that impact was in your life, it's going to impact your body structure, the quality of your tissue, how you move and your emotions. There are like seven to eight different body types. Some are like subtypes.

And, you know, if you had a trauma before birth or within the first year, you had this one kind of organizing, or you would say disorganizing way versus the last one was, you know, right around puberty. And you could predict how someone would behave, particularly under stress, by their body structure. And it's never been not true.

There's a few times in my life I wish it wasn't true, and it proved to be true. And it's a. For me, it's always a great confirmation for my intuition.

You know, I get a feeling, and I'd step back and go, okay, yeah, he does have that sort of body type, and maybe I shouldn't trust him or that's how he's going to be oriented. And so that was one thing I got from Ron.

But what I really got that ended up in my work now was this ability to, as he would say, go below the radar, go beyond the conscious mind and go directly into your emotions through the body.

And so when I started my group 20 years ago, I quickly realized I needed to develop a process that would take these men really deep, really quick, because I wanted to help them and I wanted to do something was fun. So I developed what we now call the healing journey. And the core of that was some of Ron's work and then a lot of other stuff.

And it was essentially what Ron was doing, what I thought I would never do. A guy would stand up, and I've done it.

You know, in a room of 60 or more guys, some guy volunteers and everyone's standing around and I ask him a few questions. And then, you know, he suddenly, he's crying or he's angry and he's, you know, he's working out the trauma. He didn't get work, didn't.

Didn't get to work out or experience.

In other words, you know, my little story of the deer, you know, that when the deer got to run away or shake it off, run away, there was no ptsd, but say in this case, we're working with this man, maybe he's seven years old, some kids beat him up and he froze because that was really the only thing you could do. And it worked and it survived.

But that trauma became a seed for many other things and a lot of other symptoms that he's probably trying to deal with but not really able to deal with. So we take him back to that incident, and in this situation, he gets to do what he couldn't have done as a kid.

He gets to fight and, you know, and with pillows or whatever, he's fighting some guys. And he gets to physiologically, emotionally, verbally, relationally work this out throughout his body and his psyche where that seed that.

That was sort of dormant of, you know, having this ability to. To survive through a fight or flight, which is really taking action.

He gets to do that and that, you know, we've had guys where we've done that thing. Maybe it was a 20, 30 minute process, and it was life changing. And they've come back years later saying that.

And I forget what it was because I've done so many of them, but they course didn't. You know, what you did for me in that experience has changed my life. And let me tell you what it's done.

Britt Hill: 00:37:05

That's beautiful. Ron Kurtz used to call something like that the missing experience. And he would also talk about it.

And this is something I learned from lots of different trauma people, that a big part of trauma. Now, I want to be clear, if people are listening, that trauma is not your typical sort of emotional woundedness. You know, trauma is a.

A deeper wound than that. And so. But often.

And he told these amazing stories about how trauma would happen to people, but they almost all involve not being able to complete the natural Organic action that would want to occur. So you get held down while someone beats you up or you're in a car wreck and you can't move while somebody next to you passes away.

And these things can leave very deep marks on people because you are inhibited in some way from moving through what would naturally happen like running up and getting away or, or you know, going to get help and, or no one coming to help you. Those are the kinds of things that you would that can help a trauma not happen in the exact same circumstances.

So helping people through those experiences is exceptionally powerful work.

Owen Marcus: 00:38:18

And that sometimes it happened organically in the Rolfing session or sometimes like with me it happened in like the third to my ninth month after my Rolfing. I mean I'd have micros of those as my body let go. But you, you know, that's the freeze response.

We stay in that freeze response, we stay disassociated, we're frozen in inaction. But the stress is still there. And then it gets stored in our body and then we can't. Yeah, we can't understand where we're tight.

We, you know, like one quick little story I had a many decades ago and a gentleman that was in special forces was leading his platoon into ambush a village behind enemy lines and they got ambushed and he had this chronic hip problem that no one could fix.

So I'm working on his adductors, which is the upper muscles on the inside of legs and he starts to have this trauma release, shaking, crying, trembling, you know, moaning. Everything comes back next week, hip is completely fine. Always it stays fine.

And he tells me this story that he, he's, you know, going to get ambushed this village and they get ambushed and he had to break the neck of a 12 year old boy.

Britt Hill: 00:39:30

God, that's horrible.

Owen Marcus: 00:39:31

But he couldn't deal with it because he, you know, he had to take care of his men and do everything else.

So it stayed in his body and actually went into his, you know, adductors and then went into his hip and until it got released, he had these chronic hip problems. It's like I teased him beforehand. It was like your leg, your leg or your hip was in there backwards.

And after the emotional charge got to release, after as you said, you got to complete it, it was done.

Britt Hill: 00:39:58

Yeah. So after he got to complete that. So this, I mean I'm imagining that the 12 year old was like part of the assault.

Like the, it was a life threatening scenario and he had to like protect himself.

Owen Marcus: 00:40:08

Yes.

Britt Hill: 00:40:08

So he really. Oh my gosh. Yeah. What a horrible situation to be in.

Owen Marcus: 00:40:14

And many of us have been in horrible situations, but most of us have had micro situations. So you can have a minor situation that gets repeated and have the same or more trauma from it than one incident.

And so often, you know, guys think nothing much happens. We've worked with special ops guys and, you know, and everyone knows that they've seen trauma and they've, you know, given it, received it all that.

And they'll often say that the other guys, you know, just because you weren't in combat doesn't mean you weren't traumatized. And sometimes the biggest traumas are the ones that are the subtlest.

And now with attachment theory, we often talk about the trauma of not having connection. We don't think about that.

But when you don't have secure attachment or connection that is stressful or traumatic, and your body and your mind or your emotions adjust to that, and you do what you have to as a kid, but then you keep doing it. And that's the limitation of it.

Britt Hill: 00:41:12

Right? It can become just part of your.

Or you organically adapt to your environment, and that adaptation helps you get through your situation, but it doesn't work for you later on. But still you have that adaptation. And so consequently it's. It's a. Becomes a limiting factor in your life.

Owen Marcus: 00:41:31

Yeah, exactly. And, you know, you got a coping mechanism which was a survival response. And I said, look, it worked. No shame, it worked.

But right now you're still using the same tool, and it's not the right tool, but it's not your fault.

Britt Hill: 00:41:45

Yeah, I tell that to myself because. And other people as well. It's kind of like whatever you did to get through your crappy childhood or your stressful situation, you got through.

And the fact that you're talking to me now and that you still have this part of you that wants to be a good person, a whole person in the world, shows that you got through relatively intact, that this good part of you is still alive and wants to thrive. And so, yay. Now it's a matter of, you know, how do I reinform?

Update the files of the computer where you say it to kind of like say, you know, hey, I've got a new system scenario now.

But their nervous system just associates certain stimulus with certain experiences, whether you like it to or not, because that's what the nervous system does. And so consequently, you wind up with inappropriate responses to current stimuli based on past learning.

So pretty, pretty powerful sense of understanding there. So let me ask you this.

It's like whenever the, the, the men who come to your group, what are the kinds of resistances that you might encounter and how do you kind of help them or do you kind of help them kind of like learn to do this more authentic turning inward?

Owen Marcus: 00:43:01

Well, part of what we've done is that we can sort of give them a model because as guys, if we have a, an intellectual model that accommodates these new experiences, it makes it easier and safer. So we use, you know, what I call the Somoare model, which I created, which is essentially emotional physiological model.

And a lot of it comes, comes from the polyvagal theory. And so they go, okay, that makes sense.

And sort of like we're saying now, okay, I've had stress and trauma and it's gone into my body and you know, and this, that physiology affects my emotions and all right, that all makes sense. So that, that just sort of loosens them up, it sort of tenderizes them.

And then we just start really slow and gentle, often with the somatic meditation. And I, I'm often surprised how powerful that can be for some men, you.

Britt Hill: 00:43:55

Know, meditation meaning like notice what it feels like. What do your feet feel like on the floor? What's it like for you to breathe? Like those?

Owen Marcus: 00:44:02

Yeah, or a body scan, you know, just, you know, slowly walking through their body. Because one of the things I've done over the years was another business and a partner in this business.

We were the John Cabot Zinn's first company ever doing his course, which is the mindfulness based stress reduction course. And yeah, it was hugely successful and it was down huge.

Britt Hill: 00:44:25

It's the goal, it's the gold.

Owen Marcus: 00:44:26

My partner's still ex, partner's still doing it.

We didn't make a lot of money on it, but we, we helped a lot of people and we, we were getting a lot of referrals from the hospitals and doctors that were, were saying, look, we can't help you, but these guys can. And it was really slowly getting them aware of the body. And one of the geniuses of John was, it was like a 45 minute tape.

Back then it was cassette tapes that had to listen to him. And for it was eight weeks, but for at least four or six weeks it was a body scan.

So all they were doing was just listening to my voice or his voice talking through the body. Really simple, really passive.

But I was surprised at how powerful it was for these people because as they got connected to their body, they downregulate, their emotions would come up. I remember I had one guy who was a VP for a big company in Phoenix.

And he was this Irish guy, you know, a great sense of humor, high stress, heart conditions. Because of his stress, his doctor sent him to us.

And then like halfway through the course, he comes back in one day and he says, yo, this morning I was so pissed, I ripped the buttons off my shirt because I was buttoning it wrong. I was. Got pissed and I tore the shirt. I said, great. And he went, what? What great?

I said, yeah, John, you've been holding that anger, that stress and frustration in you and your body for years. That's why you're hypertensive now. You're starting to feel it and release it. So, yeah, you ruined a good shirt. Better your shirt than your life.

And he went, yeah. And that was like the turnaround for him.

And so, you know, particularly guys, giving them some kind of experience of that connection to their body and their emotion is always a door opening experience.

Britt Hill: 00:46:12

Yeah, that sounds really powerful because the disconnect is so huge that just the fact that you invite people to do that is a neurological invitation to, for the brain to kind of like, to rediscover what it used to know. Because, you know, as children, we're all pretty somatic.

You know, we're all pretty hardwired to that, but we get, you know, we get talked out of it or injured out of it.

I know myself, I had to get pretty, pretty hardcore because I grew up in a pretty tough world where, you know, I could be beat up and people could abuse you, and you were kind of at risk all the time of running into the wrong people. And so you learn to kind of be hyper vigilant and, you know, you kind of bulk up because you need. You might have to fight your way out of something.

It was tough and. And it leads to a level of kind of disconnection.

Because it wasn't until I was in college that I realized I was hypervigilant about just walking down the street. You know, I noticed one day I was like.

Because I had just taken karate and I noticed that this guy was coming down the sidewalk on him on a bicycle, just minding his own business. But in my mind, I'm like, okay, I need to be over here, because if this happens, then I can throw him this way.

And I'm organizing around a conflict that's completely, completely imaginary. And I thought, I don't want to live like that. You know, I don't want to be in a world of imagining every passerby as a fight.

And that was a Big turning point for me.

Owen Marcus: 00:47:41

Yeah, that would be.

And, you know, and yeah, you probably felt a connection to your body and you realized that you out, as you said, out of your survival necessity ever, you had to see everything as a threat.

Britt Hill: 00:47:54

Yeah, yeah. And that worked. You know, I managed to live and get out of there. And it was helpful because after.

After a certain point in time, you know, that wasn't an issue, but I was still living in that world, even though I wasn't there anymore.

Sometimes I like to think about what if for men, but in the culture, what if we grew up in a culture where we had each other's backs instead of teaching each other to be at each other's throats? You know what I mean? Like, it really. I have. I have somatic sadness about just speaking that I'm like, what a huge missed opportunity.

And I just, you know, appreciate the work that you're doing so much and the people that you're helping. You know, just what's where. What's next for you? What are you. How can people reach you? And what's your vision of where you're going with this work?

Owen Marcus: 00:48:43

Well, yeah, like I said, I didn't think this would be my mission, but it certainly is now. It found me. I didn't find it.

Britt Hill: 00:48:51

What did you think was going to be your mission?

Owen Marcus: 00:48:53

Well, you know, I had a very successful clinic and practice, Rolfing practice. And then, yeah, I thought that was because I felt really fortunate.

I fell into that at an early age, really loved it, went home every night, you know, really appreciative of what I was doing because it was making a huge difference in people's lives. So I thought that was it. And I thought, you know, I had it. Well, you know, this sort of grabbed me and it just keeps sucking me in, which is great.

So what we're doing with Meld and it's, you know, M E L D community is, you know, we're really changing the model of, you could say masculinity. That's a word I don't usually use and the culture uses or media and academia does, but guys don't use that word.

But really what it is to be a man, and we're giving men tools that they never had and, you know, without a model and giving men an opportunity to support each other, to have each other's backs, because guys will come to our experiences or groups because they have a challenge, an issue, maybe a relationship, or they want to change their purpose or what's next in their life, and they get the Traction with that, but they stay in the group or maybe with us because they want to keep connecting. They're really tight with these guys and they realize that showing up for this group every week is a contribution that they give to get.

They get to give to other men that they don't have that opportunity in any other place in their life. Just being real and authentic is a contribution for someone else. So that's huge. And no, and I didn't realize that too in the beginning. So it's a.

To support all that and to really further propagate this whole mind, body connection and just give people in general that awareness and those tools to really use our stress physiology not as a way that harms us, but as a way that heals us and connects us. You know, sort of get out of the battles that we have of dualities and disconnections.

And you know, he's right or he's wrong, I'm right, and getting people just more connected on a more fundamental level. And what I had a teacher once say that the ultimate battle we have is between the sexes. And maybe that's true.

That, you know, we, when we can start to connect to ourselves and connect to the people close to us, as you said, like, have our backs, so many of these other problems start to dissolve away.

And so we get guys in our trainings or groups from all different ages, professions, educations, political, religious orientations, and none of that comes up. None of it matters. We don't have those discussions. We're just guys.

And you know, if we could have all that in our communities, we wouldn't have all the strife that we have and it wouldn't be so easy for media or anyone else to propagate further disconnections because we would be connected.

Britt Hill: 00:51:58

Yeah, yeah.

That's so powerful, what you just said there, that it becomes, once you discover the power and authenticity of authentic connection that other people, it becomes something you defend. You know, it's kind of like, I'm not going to let people distract, take away the value of that because this is the real deal. This is what matters.

This is what's true.

That's really important because there are a lot of forces in the world that would seem to encourage us to kind of be less caring and be a little meaner.

Owen Marcus: 00:52:30

Right. And with that, they keep us in a stress state which allows us to be manipulated.

But when you're relaxed and connected, you know, the stress often just sort of washes off of you. And because, you know, where you can get connected or re. Or down Regulate and re reset yourself. So yeah, what we do with Mel, we have several things.

We have a really powerful and fun 10 week introduction course that they did a two year study with these scientists or researchers and that was recently published in the big APA American Psychological association journal. Nice analyzing and just sort of deconstructing this whole training and seeing the value of it and the difference it makes for men.

So that's a great introduction of guys to get into some of the things that we talked about. And guys are amazed at how easy and how much fun that is. And that's a 10 week course that I, I started, I first designed 10 years ago.

But I don't lead and the guy that leads it is actually better at it than I would be then I have a 12 week all hands dive group coaching that I do.

It's unique method that I developed that has been proven to be real powerful and guys really get the power of my coaching which is always more powerful in the group. But my other groups are just peer to peer, peer to peer. So it's a different kind of setup.

And then we have our, what we call prime retreat, which is this retreat I first developed probably eight years ago that you know, I've done, you know, just short of 20 of them all over North America. And it's what I realized in all my work with people.

There's a general arc or change and it can show up in one of these healing journeys in the course of 20 minutes or it can show up over a course or a couple years. But it's a natural progression that I think it's intrinsic in all of us. So I sort of extracted that out.

And what I do or what we do is we go through that progression, we learn one step, we teach a little, we demo it and then you're there with two other guys and you work on each other and one after another and it's this natural progression and we do that over a course of a long weekend.

And it's life changing for some guys because they get to not only get this healing but they realize that in using this technology they can have this impact on someone else. Plus they get really connected because it's such an authentic experience and it's in a natural or beautiful and comfortable setting.

And you know, and then guys go, hey, yeah, I want to take this work to my community and do a group or I want to study this more. And so we have a professional training that when we teach coaches, so we have a little everything.

And then yes, because we started with Groups support men in developing what they need to, to have a successful group. So we have a free membership and free things that we give guys to help them with a group. Yeah.

And we get, you know, we got guys that have been in groups I helped start directly, indirectly for, you know, as long as I've been doing these things and, and had a guy I spoke to a couple hours ago that did some of my trainings. It was life changing for him. And he, he had a startup, he did a ten million dollar fundraise for that startup.

His clients were things like companies like Apple. And he said what he learned from me ended up changing his life. Going to all this ways of how. But that, you know, and helped him be more successful.

Yeah.

And, and now he teaches or coaches guys and, and any, you know, other, you know, startup entrepreneurs and shows them what you were saying before about, you know, it's not about how hard or how fast or how much you can go because you, you know, he says he gives his stories of how he was his worst enemy, all the mistakes he made in his business because he was stressed out, he was scared, all the things that he wouldn't be now, but he had no support and he was worked hard and he's a bright guy, but he was sabotaging himself and he now helps guys not do that. But again he didn't have that training but wants men have that training.

Britt Hill: 00:56:47

And so you know, that's, that's a super powerful way to like take what you've, the work that you've done on yourself and that translates into the organizations that you're part of and then that therefore is, helps the people that are part of that. And in that way it gets amplified and spread. So this is the way we save the world. In a way it's kind of like helping people in powerful ways.

It's one of the reasons I do this podcast is to help people hear about this work, like the work that you're doing.

And many of the coaches that we interview are doing powerful work, touching people one person at a time, leading to a giant thing sometimes I call it, I say together we are a mighty force.

You know, and that's, that's, that's one of the things that I really want to leave people with is there's a lot of powerful work going on and we need that work now more than ever in these crazy times. So I just wanted to say thank you Owen, for showing up and being a part of this.

The work of helping people become better people and specific focus on Men's issues. Really powerful. And kudos for all the success that you've had and the many, you know, the many people that you've helped on along the way.

So we will put all your notes into all these connections and links into the show notes so that people can reach out to you. And so just one final question. It's like, if some guy is out there listening and he, what would you say?

Like, how can you begin to really come to terms with the impact of the messaging about, you know, you've got to be the dominant paradigm everywhere you go, and you realize that that's just kind of crushing you. What's a takeaway for that person that you're good enough.

Owen Marcus: 00:58:28

We did a study, a big study, several years ago with the guys, you know, in our network. And. And what the researcher found was the most consistent thing, pretty much with every guy, was that. And I can relate to this, that, you know, I.

Or we don't feel good enough, which is one reason that we work so hard and, you know, spinning our wheels and so that you're good enough. And the other one is that you're not alone or you don't need to be alone. Like I said, you know, Covid.

And we get these guys coming on from all over the world realizing that they weren't the only one that, you know, because guys start saying their experience and then they realize, oh, I. Me too, me too. So we all, we hold on to this.

So you're good enough and you're not alone and you don't, you know, and go get some help and you can turn it around. I mean, it's. You're hardwired. Not only are you to survive and connect, but you're hardwired to heal.

With the right support, your body has the intelligence to be able to do that.

Britt Hill: 00:59:29

So thank you, Owen. It's great talking to you. So people, reach out to him, find out about his work, connect, go to the retreat. It's going to be amazing.

And then if you're interested in, you know, tips and tricks and insights and practices of mindful communication, go over to the mindfulcoach.com and check out my new offering over there as well. So thanks once again. It's been great talking to you. The Mindful Coach podcast is a service of the Mindful Coach Association.