There are plenty of men's groups out there. Some focus on building emotional awareness, others on getting out into the wilderness to connect with the "inner masculinity". Some utilize a framework from Jung, while other's might look to DBT or other progressive methods.
Mindful Masculinity, was a group that I ran for years, which was focused on helping men build mindfulness skills. We got together, meditated, and then did some emotional work of holding each other accountable, and exploring topics that felt important to us. This was prior to the cultural shift, that began to acknowledge the ways that men, and masculinity, could be toxic.
Since that time, Mindful Masculinity, has evolved, both in it's offerings and in it's focus. We are now offering a group, that seeks to balance individual, with collective work. A big part of this group, comes from the science around interpersonal neurbiology. For too long men's group have done their best to acknowledge cultural conditioning of men, and ended up reinforning the same ideals they were working to unto. One form of masculinity, ends up just getting replaced by another form, and around and around we go, never getting to the core of what men's work could be.
Therefore in Mindful Masculinity, we take a different approach, one that seeks to help you discover your own attachment woundings, and how those woundings play out in your masculinity, but more importantly in your image of yourself and how you view the world, as well as the interpersonal relationships around you.
How do we do this?
Strangely enough, we do utilize the archetypes that Jung thought of, when talking about masculinity, but these are strictly to provide some structure to the discussion. Rather than promoting some sort of ideal around these archetypes, after focusing on one archetype, we do work to connect to the parts of our inner community that might hold some of these traits, their shadows, and even some burdens.
This inner journey work, and our 'felt experience' within the journey, then becomes the template for how the group discussion goes. The themes that arise, as well as the vulerability and the struggles that members hit on, then becomes the work that gets lead into the one-on-one journey work.
What is One-On-One journey work?
After the group meets, members are then asked to reach out to another member of the group, one time, before the next meeting. In this connection, both members are encouraged to hold space, while the other does inner journey work, and talks more in depth about their strengths, struggles, goals, and burdens in this area. These conversation then lead us into the following group, and so on we go in doing this work.
What do you mean when you talk about non-prescriptive masculinity?
By this we mean, that there is no one idealized version in being a man, and we believe that it causes harm to promote one idealized version.
I hope you found this helpful, in beginning to get more information on this group, it's structure, and the process we are exploring together. If you are interested in checking out this group, head over to the webpage.
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