TRAUMA, EROS & MASCULINITY - Michael Jeffrey on Healing, Presence & Power | 20
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This conversation changed something in me. Michael has one of the deepest understandings of trauma, masculinity and embodiment I've encountered. Rather than offering techniques, he offers a different way of seeing what it means to be human. Trauma isn't what breaks us. It's the brilliant adaptation that helped us survive. In this conversation with somatic counsellor Michael Jeffrey, we explore healthy masculinity, embodiment, trauma, eros, leadership, ecopsychology and why presence is the path back to life. Michael is a brilliant ally in his deep work with offering healing presence to men, and I feel blessed to call him a lover and friend. Continue reading to find out how we met, why our work feels so deeply aligned, his take on masculinity, power and sexuality.
THE STORY
Michael grew up in grey Calgary, Alberta, and as soon as he turned 18, he left. He traveled west, and met people who've been on the road for four years. So he vowed to himself, he'd be traveling for five years. Ultimately, he spent the next decade in a multitude of places, all over the world. He even chose to be ordained a Buddhist monk, and then followed the seed which was planted as a small boy to become an environmental educator and later on a somatic therapist. His understanding of healing is deeply shaped by ecopsychology. During his travels, he was exposed to a multitude many different perspectives and ways of being to orient myself to. One of his childhood memories is going to outdoor school. He and his class went out to this wilderness camp and it was such a profound deep experience for him, of all this learning about ecology and how we're all deeply interconnected and how we impact each other and impact the natural world and driving away from that on the bus, he remembers weeping so deeply after not touching into this deep emotionality very much that he remembers as a child. It always pinned something for him- a desire to exist with community in nature. He made this dream reality, and currently lives outside Nelson, BC, on an off-grid land co-op in community. So the interconnectedness of life touched him at a very young age and during his journeys, his travels, he picked that up again and created a life following those threads and weaving those threads to the point where he is in his life right now. Interconnectedness feels very much at the core. Michael even has a marking on his body that's a circle to represent that cognitively, academically, emotionally, relationally, and ecologically, how deeply he is oriented towards interdependence and integrity and integration.
And this is how we met: Michael was hosting a backcountry wellness retreat for some clients at helicopter access lodge and he was looking for a yoga teacher to compliment the experience. He put this request out there on his social media into his friend network to see if there's anybody around and numerous people pointed him towards me. From the first moment he met me at dinner, he was just like, "Oh, there's some power in this woman." He continues, "As time has gone over, I got to see deeper and deeper layers of that power embodiment and where that light behind your eyes comes from. I see a deep connection with Eros, deep connection with your body. You also have broad experience culturally living in different places and seeing different ways and perspectives of being where you can orient. I see this sense of centre or self admit whatever the environment is offering. So there's a sense of knowing yourself, and your center and your beingness that is beyond many people that I meet."
When I saw those friends connecting us, I was a full body yes. I followed that, and we got to co-create this amazing experience for folks in the mountains at this helicopter hiking lodge in the Purcell mountains in British Columbia, Canada, and really connected from the beginning. There was such deep curiosity and respect. We soon became lovers and dear friends and allies. Our shared passion for empowerment and sexuality and making the world a better place in that sense deeply connects us.
A few weeks ago, we were so surprised to discover that we share similar birth story, and he wonders how much that inspires our similar line of work. Both our mothers gynaecologists wanted to go to private events, and therefore induced both our births, which obviously were brutal and traumatic, and we were put into ICU for weeks.
Michael notes that he has some theories about that, "You know, our work feels very aligned in certain ways. I often see in my work people's deep traumas orienting us towards our unique gifts in the world and I wonder if there's a similar trajectory of this birth trauma, this place where we entered the world, having a particular sort of stress and impact in our ways of life. How we have been forced to adapt to to an early trauma that has landed us on a similar trajectory. I don't know if you can see anything like that but that's a little bit of the meaning I make of it in my head."
THE PATTERN
He mostly works as a somatic therapist for men supporting with sex and relationship issues, specialized in helping guys deal with circumcision trauma. Before that he was an environmental educator for many years. That sort of intersection of psychology and ecology has always been a fascination for Michael. Some strong experiences of deep grief in his 20s pointed him towards how much he loves the world that we live in, the larger ecology, and how modern culture is deeply impacting it. This brought him to focusing on working with men, particularly because we carry an imbalanced amount of power. He finds the most leverage comes from helping men to do their trauma and healing and transformational work to make the largest influence on a civilization but also ecological level.
Trauma creates disconnection because the nervous system is protecting life. Most of Michael's work is in trauma, he see a lot of disconnection. Trauma itself in the nervous system is disconnection. Something happened that was too much, too fast, too soon, caused a lot of pain. This sort of disconnect happens and it causes a lot of problems down the line. Within that response to the trauma, it's really an adaptation that's trying to move towards life.
So on one level, the disconnect itself is part of Eros trying to figure itself out. There's some disruption to the flow of life and the disconnect is a way to adapt and shift and then if we get below that, having a discourse around disconnection is part of life itself trying to figure out how it can express itself better. Like the awareness of the disconnection itself, having discourse about it, finding ways to serve the life below it is life itself figuring that out. So disconnection isn't necessarily a problem, but it is a problem depending where you're looking at it. And it's useful to look at it as a problem as life is trying to figure out the way to move towards more connection. This is what I like to call Erotic Intelligence. It's our body wisdom. It's on the one hand it's our survival mechanisms and the armour we put on so we can survive.
Healing is reconnecting with life force. Presence increases capacity. Capacity naturally creates choice. Choice naturally creates different outcomes. The right pace is crucial, healing cannot be rushed.
To learn more about Michael's take on power, life force and masculinity, go deeper:
Talk has it that people, men in particular, need more discipline. Michael suggest care and love to expand nervous system capacity. Achievement without embodiment creates disconnection. Leadership without presence becomes performance. Power without relationship becomes domination. The deeper work isn't becoming stronger. It's becoming available.