May 27, 2024 • 57 mins
Have you ever felt a primal stirring within - a draw to the wild that seems at odds with our digital, modern world? If so, this episode is for you. The wild man archetype is important, and together we'll explore HOW TO INTEGRATE THE WILD MAN into our every day life. Including sex, business, relationship, community, etc...
🔴 🎥 You can watch the youtube version here.
EPISODE TIMES & TOPICS**
**(Add 2 minutes to each of these times because of the added intro clip describing my upcoming workshop).
0:00 Intro
2:32 The Wild Man Archetype Defined
9:20 What is an Archetype?
13:17 Wild Man & Work: Practical ExampleÂ
15:53 Wild Man & Sex: Personal Story from Taylor
21:36 There's a Rising Anxiety in Society...
25:58 Healthy VS Unhealthy Wild Man
34:27 Integrating the Wild Man into Sex & Relationship
38:35 Integrating the Wild Man into Work
39:53 Embodying the Wild Man AND King Archetype
41:07 Importance of Council in Personal Growth
48:38 The Importance of IN-PERSON Men's Work
51:59 The Importance of FUN in Men's Work
53:15 European Shamanic Traditions (Jeremy's New Book)Â
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🔶 CONNECT WITH JEREMY:
🔶 CONNECT WITH TAYLOR:
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Taylor Johnson (00:00):
Today, the topic is the wild man and I'm so
excited to welcome Jeremy backto the podcast.
Jeremy, thank you for beinghere.
If you're watching this onYouTube, you'll see that we are
in my front yard in Ashevilleand you might hear some birds,
you might hear some airplanes,you might hear some background
noises and it's thematically onpoint for this episode, because
(00:20):
I want to explore the wild man.
But specifically, how do weintegrate that into the modern
world?
And Jeremy has been leadingwild man retreats in Asheville,
for this is year 10, I believe,right now, and it's powerful,
powerful work, jeremy, welcomeagain.
Anything you'd like to say upfront?
Jeremy Schewe (00:42):
Great Thank you, taylor and it's great to be out
in your wild front yard here andabsorbing all the sounds of
mountain and suburbiasimultaneously, something that
many people have to sit withconstantly.
I mean, some people don't evenhave the benefit of the trees in
the urban centers.
So I really hope we can reachout today to all those men and
(01:03):
women who are also listening tothis and hopefully provide them
with some great cues into thedreaming of the wild man.
Yeah, I would say the one thingI would leave with that is
probably most important is likethat wild man.
Really that archetype reallyhelps to hone a sense of place
and belonging in this world, andI think that that's probably
(01:24):
one of the keys that we'llrevisit throughout our
conversation today really helpsto hone a sense of place and
belonging in this world, and Ithink that that's probably one
of the keys that we'll revisitthroughout our conversation
today yeah, and that's reallysomething that's missing for a
lot of people today too is thissense of belonging, this sense
of connection, this sense ofplace and this sense of
aliveness.
Taylor Johnson (01:44):
And I think it's worth mentioning upfront just
the context that we all live in.
Like we have smartphones thatconnect us to anything we could
possibly want to know, in ourpockets all the time they're
bringing notifications at us.
We have city noises, we havepeople who are just everywhere,
advertising and distractions,and there's a lot that's pulling
on our consciousness, there's alot that's pulling on our
awareness, and it takes actualdedication and practice to just
(02:07):
be, number one, a functioninghuman I think so in a modern
world but number two, like athriving human that's connected
to our aliveness.
So let's start off with what isthis wild man?
Is it a person?
Is it an archetype?
Is it energy?
How does it?
(02:28):
If somebody were to ask you onthe street, what's the wild man,
jeremy, what would you say?
Jeremy Schewe (02:32):
Yeah, I would say it's multifold, but the simple
answer that draws first to mymouth is the feeling of a sense
of belonging, connection tonature, the wild man.
Some people might refer to itas the green man in the irish we
have called a fire when, yeah,the green, the green forest man,
like the being who is anextension of of nature, and so
(02:57):
typically that's what mostpeople draw up images of when
they think of the wild man.
For myself personally, theconnection of the wild man is
the falling of intuition, thefalling of dreams, discerning
between dreams that areentertainment dreams, dreams
that are distraction dreams,dreams that are just me working
(03:17):
out sexual frustrations orpsychological frustrations, but
true dreaming that helps to leadus on into a deeper
relationship, not just withourselves but how that then
becomes an expression in ahealthy way with the environment
around us.
Taylor Johnson (03:34):
Yeah, so I'm really hearing there's a
connection piece like aconnection to nature and a
connection to the nature that'swithin, and from that place
there's almost a blooming ofaliveness or this this force
that, yeah, in inspires andgives life to intentional action
in the world.
Yes, yeah, and it's awesome andbeautiful to hear that, because
(03:58):
I think a lot of guys.
So men's work is one thingthat's sort of exploding all
over the place right now, whichis awesome.
And so men's work is one thingthat's sort of, you know,
exploding all over the placeright now, which is awesome.
It's great.
Like we need that.
We need places to gatheroutside of typical therapy
offices, you know, and I thinkthere's a lot of guys when they
think of the wild man, theythink, oh, it's just a bunch of
dudes just like screaming and it, and it's amazing and powerful
(04:18):
and liberating to experiencethat there's also this depth
that you're talking about.
Jeremy Schewe (04:38):
That's, yes, you can beat and pound your chest,
but also it sounds like there'sthis foundation of a spring
almost coming up from the earth.
That is aliveness inside.
Yeah, I think a spring is agreat way to describe it,
because it's more of this quietgentle bubbling up.
Great way to describe it.
Because it's more of this quietgentle bubbling up, it's a
sense of we've already spoken tothe belonging but just this
really strong sense of peace andnourishment and that there's.
There is this presence oflife-giving energy ever present
(04:59):
and that sometimes, yes, we needto raise the energy and beat
our chests, and how.
I mean that's our ancestral andgenetic memory of preparing to
defend our people or to defendour turf, or to go out on the
hunt and to get ourselves.
Kind of like what you and Ijust did before we started this
podcast.
We're doing push-ups andjumping up and down and making
noises and shaking our feet.
(05:20):
You know it's just like gettingthe energy and then we can
settle back into the quiet.
Taylor Johnson (05:44):
Yeah, yeah, you know, it's just like getting the
desert about a month ago andone of our tasks to do was to go
out into the desert and not dofor an extended period of time
and just sit there to just beand be with the quiet, and it
was really powerful and Irealized this is something that
(06:05):
I don't do very much of, but wealso prepped the whole
experience of doing that bydoing a lot of different
embodiment type exercises andthings that really got us in to
our sensing body into our senses, into our felt aliveness and
then from that place we went andwe sat and almost everybody
that did that got some reallyuseful message for their life,
(06:29):
whether that be their sexualrelationship or their work or
what they're wanting to do withtheir time in general or
something.
Almost always some kind ofinformation, if you want to call
it, came through thatexperience and, yeah, it was
potent and didn't plan to sharethat, but it just seemed
appropriate based on what youjust said.
Jeremy Schewe (06:45):
Yeah, and I think part of what brought that on
was, you know, yesterday eveningI went out to we have this
family of five screech owlsliving in the white oak behind
our house and so sometimes I cango out right at dusk and start
start calling to them and firstthe the juveniles will come in
and they just kind of scrock andthen the adults will come in
(07:08):
and it's this whole exchange andwe've gotten them to come
within a couple of feet of us,which is so beautiful.
But to just lay there in thehammock last night and watching
the twilight play on theunderside of the white oak and
the hickory and the poplar, andjust feel that, that liminal
space in my own mind that isable to soften when I let go of
all the planning and logisticsand structure and just soften
(07:32):
into allowing the presence ofnature to flow in and change the
expression of who I am, yeah,yeah, can you say for people
listening who don't know whatliminal space might mean, can
you just say a couple wordsabout that?
Taylor Johnson (07:50):
What does that mean to you?
Jeremy Schewe (07:50):
biologists professionally by trade.
One of the things that I likewhat is utilized for the term
liminal or liminal shelf, is aplace where several different
types of communities cometogether.
(08:11):
There's an overlap, so theliminal zone, where it's almost
aqueous or almost water, it'salmost terrestrial, it's almost
air, and so there's this wholezone where all these nutrients
gather, and so it's sort of thisspace in between, and so that
same utilization has beenbrought into consciousness and
psychology in respect to it'sthis place where many worlds
(08:34):
fold, or many wavelengths of ourmental or spiritual process
overlay, process overlay, and inthat space in between, and what
in also in ecology as well asin ancient greek, we call the
eco tone, the eco tone where themusic of many aspects of life
come together yeah, so the it'sthis where things meet, but also
(09:01):
it's that space where thingsmeet kind of like between
consciousness and sleep.
Taylor Johnson (09:06):
For most people that's an easily accessible
realm of.
Oh, it's different then.
Jeremy Schewe (09:11):
Yeah, it's different.
There you go.
Taylor Johnson (09:13):
Something is different than like I can go on
journeys, or sometimes I findmyself in all yeah, yeah,
different and there's a potencythere.
Jeremy Schewe (09:20):
Yes.
Taylor Johnson (09:20):
Yes, cool, thanks for that.
So just to briefly touch onarchetypes before we go forward.
I do want to talk about how thewild man can be incorporated
into sex and life and businessand relationship, and also just
to touch on, like, what is anarchetype too?
(09:42):
Cause I've heard a lot ofpeople talking about archetypes,
but I don't know that.
I've heard a lot of peopletalking about archetypes, but I
don't know that.
I've heard somebody say this isactually here's the function of
an archetype.
What would you say to that?
Jeremy Schewe (09:53):
As far as my understanding I mean again, you
spoke earlier to being in theinformation age.
Somebody could do a fact checkto all of these things.
However, the thing that I feelis, like, really important for
myself is the embodiment ofknowledge and how we carry it
and convey it.
So I'm going to speak from thatplace.
And so archetypes come fromFreudian psychology or Jungian
(10:16):
psychology, one of those twobranches of early 1900s where we
have an understanding, likewe're riding out of the end of
the romantic period, the end ofthe 19th century, where there
was all of this evolution andunderstanding that was coming
into the modern awareness,especially in the Western mind,
of these different ancienttraditions, whether they were
(10:39):
the Mayan glyphs that were beingdiscovered at that time the
hieroglyphs had been found inegypt and were, just around the
year 1900, were beginning to beable to be translated.
So there was this, all of asudden, this whole understanding
that there's these other worldviews where these, all these
ancient gods, where we're nottalking about a monotheistic
society like we had were in thewest, but a polytheistic.
(11:03):
And so the idea of the archetypeis that, from a scientific or
psychological perspective, ourconsciousness is connected to
various aspects of these ancientdeities, and then it separates
it from a religious context andbrings it into just a
(11:26):
psychological context, which iswhy, around at the same time,
like the Rider-Way deck, theTarot deck was created, like all
of this evolution of humanconsciousness and understanding
that there is more than onevoice that can presence itself
in terms of our inner councilthat guides us.
And so the wild man is, ofcourse, just one of those
(11:47):
archetypes, a very important one, because it's our primordial
root and it's our connection tothe world.
It's our connection to ourfellow men or to our partners,
our lovers, yet at the same time, it is a part.
So archetype is a aspect, afractal of the divine.
I sometimes like to speak to itfrom the sense of light is pure
(12:09):
when light waves hit a crystal,or a fraction, fractal or
fracture in a crystal I mean allthat works essentially gets us
to the same place a brokensurface that then the light
breaks up into these differentrays that we know as a rainbow.
We have all these differentwavelengths and then these micro
wavelengths that are in theoverlap between, and each of
(12:31):
those is part of the great light.
However, it's very obviouslyred, like we can just it's like
a fractal of the whole, so gotit.
Taylor Johnson (12:41):
I like that because it brings the esoteric
into the practical and into thefelt sense of the body, like
when I think of the wild menarchetype or any of the
archetypes, like some of themost are more familiar ones for
people in the men's work world.
You have the king, warrior,magician, lover, right, and this
it.
It's almost like it's a flavorof reality, like a flavor of
(13:04):
consciousness that doesn't existoutside of us but like it
exists within us and in the restof the world and with some
practice and some attunement wecan actually enter that and
become that.
Does that?
Jeremy Schewe (13:17):
resonate with that.
Taylor Johnson (13:17):
Very much, so Very much so so, yeah, so before
we were filming this episode, Iyou know there's this whole
process of setting upmicrophones and cameras and
settings and apertures and whitebalance and sound levels and
dealing with the backgroundnoise and it's all this sort of
like heady type stuff.
And when we first started to sitdown, I realized like I am way
too much up in my head, I've gotto move, I got to get into my
(13:40):
body, and so when we were doingpush-ups, I was also tuning into
the energetic of that alivenessof the wild creature, like
doing physical motion, whilealso and I didn't have to like
scream, but I was just like likeif I were to slow it down, like
that's what was happeninginternally for me and it was
really helpful to then just landhere and what you just went
(14:02):
through there too, was a veryimportant part of our species,
natural heritage and history, avery important need when we
prepared ourselves inprehistoric times, all the way
up into the modern, to go on thehunt yeah there's an energy
change we have to go through inorder to make that hunt
(14:23):
successful.
Jeremy Schewe (14:24):
But then we have to integrate back in with our
wives, our lovers, our children,our elders, and we can't just
come back in.
You know blood covering ourfaces and everything Like.
We got to come in in a way thatcan be embraced.
We have to go and batheritually before we come home.
We prepare the meat so thatwhen we pack it back home it can
be open and accepted.
Taylor Johnson (14:45):
And I think that also translates into the modern
age and the historic era ofwarfare where traditionally
mostly men would go off to warand then they have to have some
sort of transition period backinto our secular world,
otherwise we get blindsided orwe're still mentally on the hunt
(15:08):
, still mentally in battletotally really crucial yeah and
I imagine so I'm I was not partof the military, I've not been
to war, but I imagine if we didhave more of an honoring process
around that we might have lessoccurrences of pts, ptsd and
other types of post-war likechallenges for people Like some
of my friends are veterans andthey've still yeah, they
(15:30):
struggle with that whole realmof stuff, you know.
So that seems like an importantpiece and I've got a list of.
I have an organized list oftopics I wanted to go to, but I
want to divert a little bit andI think that's part of following
the aliveness of theconversation too, um, the whole
stepping away to what is itrecent or reground, rewild or
(15:52):
then reintegrate.
I'm remembering a time where mypartner and I uh, and she's up
on the porch right now we weregoing into sexual intimacy
together and there was somethingthat just wasn't quite right.
You know like if you're inlong-term relationship,
inevitably there are times whenyou just like shit happens, and
(16:14):
sometimes it's about nothing orlike a very small thing.
And so it came up then, remember, like some sort of bickering
and I thought this sucks, like Idon't want to do this right now
.
This is.
But I also wanted to have theexperience of intimacy.
So I remembered oh, I can justtake some space, this is
probably about nothing.
And I went outdoors and I did abunch of push-ups and I did
(16:36):
jumping jacks and I growled andI just got in my body and I
tried to, like, let out whateverneeded to be let out and then
access that part of myself thatwas just raw aliveness, and then
stood there for a little bit,felt it and breathed with it and
went back in and from thatplace of grounding, from that
(16:56):
place of aliveness, was able to,you could say, just seed the
interaction with that energy.
Jeremy Schewe (17:02):
Then we had a beautiful lovemaking you know,
just seed the interaction withthat energy, then we had a
beautiful love making, you know,and it came from intentionally
going to access this kind ofenergy and bring it back with
practice yeah, I think one ofthe things that we forget about
in our modern day is theimportance of a threshold, the
(17:22):
importance of crossing from oneplace to another, whether it's
from the secular to the sacred,from the secular to the sexual.
However, we are crossing athreshold from one way of
engaging the world, one type ofconsciousness, into another.
And again, in the modern age,we also were constantly, like
you said earlier, like we'reinformation sharing modern age,
(17:44):
we also.
We're constantly, like you saidearlier, like we're information
sharing, we're jumping betweenmental portals that are
completely existent online.
There's all these ways that wecan just jump ship very rapidly,
and so we have forgotten theimportance of honoring when we
cross over into another space,and I think that that's
something that's reallyimportant, especially in respect
(18:06):
to the wild man archetype.
I had an experience You'llremember Ayla's mom and I years
ago.
We lived up in Cincinnati for awhile and I had a project out
in British Columbia and therewas this forest spirit that came
to me.
It was just like all theseancient cedars are being cut
down like.
Can you help us with this?
(18:28):
You?
know I was like sure, and thenall of a sudden, it was almost
like there was this like slightspirit possession going on and
it created this like reallyintense energy where I was just
like, all of a sudden, I'm likeI'm having a hard time being
present in the business worldand being present for what I had
actually gone to BritishColumbia to do, which was make a
presentation on ecologicalrestoration in the Southern
(18:50):
Appalachian mountains, and sothere was this like pool away
from, like aligning with thisancient, ancient energy, which
is really important, but forwhere I was engaged in my life
in that moment that was not aparticular aspect, a particular
archetype, a particular aspectof the divine and embodiment of
(19:11):
the wild man that I could fullyembody me.
And that embodiment is for thosewho are with earth first and on
the front line, for those whoare willing to let go completely
of the world and live out inthe bush like, do it please.
Some of us need to keep doingthat, to hold, hold that anchor
down.
And then some of us have to gothrough things like setting up
electronics and changing mentalstructures, because that's just
(19:33):
like when we were talking aboutearlier coming back to our
community with the hunt, witheverything that we've gathered.
We have to transition in orderso that now this will actually
feed the community and not besomething that's destructive,
like here you get to eat but I'mgoing to hit you over the side
of the head because I'm pissedoff inside at the same time.
Like that doesn't work.
Taylor Johnson (19:51):
Yeah.
Jeremy Schewe (19:52):
Honoring thresholds.
Taylor Johnson (19:53):
Yeah, I like that.
So I didn't ask, didn't tellyou.
I was going to ask you to dothis up front.
But people listening right nowand and for us here too, um, but
we all have access to thisenergetic, if you want to call
(20:15):
it, this flavor of realityinternally and I wonder if you
could speak to that part of theperson who's listening right now
.
Is there a way you can speak toor evoke, wanting to bring in a
felt sense of, because for somepeople this feels foreign, or
like a foreign language you know.
Jeremy Schewe (20:33):
So I'm going to open with saying in the last
year I've walked over a thousandkilometers on pilgrimage and
what I have found in the walkingpilgrimage is that there is a
way that we as humans, sedentary, not moving a lot yeah, maybe
we work out every once in awhile or something like that,
but we don't move a lot Thingsin our mind become so much more
(20:55):
complicated than they actuallyare Inputs, stresses, hurdles
when we're constantly in motionhunter-gatherers, constantly in
motion, pilgrim, walking acrossa sacred landscape, supported in
that there is a way that ourmind is able to quickly untangle
things or very quicklyunderstand when something is not
(21:16):
.
I'm the walker, I'm passing bysomething.
I could stop and help or Icouldn't.
It's either one or the other.
There's not a complex like well, society tells me this or blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
I am going to either stop andhelp or I'm going to keep
walking, like there are opendoors, there's closed doors.
We choose how we move throughit.
So I think one of the thingsthat a lot of us have been
(21:39):
feeling a rise of and I'mspeaking personally in this as
well, but from what I hear froma lot of other men and women as
well, is that, post COVID,there's been this like this rise
of a sense of like physicalanxiety inside the chest, inside
the belly, like all of us tosome extent feel that because a
couple of things happen.
We had the opportunity to stop,pause and be like are we liking
(22:00):
where we're going as a culture?
Are we liking where I am goingas an individual?
How am I going to continueengaging with the world?
And we had the opportunity tostart resetting that in a
cultural way that we just neverhave had, at least in our
lifetimes.
And so I feel that the mostimportant thing that we can do
(22:22):
when we start feeling thoseanxieties or those tensions, or
just feeling like the modernworld is just too much, is
emulate what our ancestors dothe go for a run.
I just did that yesterday.
I went for a two and a halfmile run because the, the that
energy was building up so much,and I went for a run and there
was just like uh, three hours tojust complete internal silence.
Like, yeah, run and there'sjust like three hours, just
(22:43):
complete internal silence.
Like yeah, it's not spendingtwo or three weeks walking on
the camino or walking on someother uh, pilgrimage, or I'm not
actually going on a on a boarhunt with you and a few other
men out in the forest, but whatI am doing is I'm getting into
the place where my body's notholding these complex
abstractions and entanglementsof the mind, and I'm breathing
(23:04):
it out, I'm sweating it out yeah, putting it back into the earth
.
So that's a doing.
A non-doing is to cyclicalbreathing, similar to like how
you and I started, also thisafternoon yeah, it's just taking
a moment to just really connectand become present.
Taylor Johnson (23:19):
Yeah, two great doors and that seems like the.
The crucial piece is presenceand taking a moment, and it's
not a mental concept that youcan like turn the mental switch
and then conceptually enter, butit seems like you have to do
something with your body tocreate a felt sense of it yes
(23:41):
I'm remembering.
Try to to make an analogy here.
See if it works.
Sleep is something that I usedto struggle with a bunch, and I
went to sleep therapy a whileago and learned some really
interesting things.
But one of the things that theysaid that stuck with me was you
can't think your mind into astate of ease.
You have to create that throughyour body or through practices,
(24:06):
through some sort of embodimentor laying down or something
right.
You have to generatively dothat.
And it seems very similar tothis.
I imagine even just takingthree breaths you could access
it.
You know you're standing, goingfor a walk barefoot on the
earth or something like that.
It's always right there, butjust making the choice to step
(24:26):
into it somehow.
Jeremy Schewe (24:27):
Something I've really noticed over the last
five years.
This started pre-pandemic, youknow, but just to give kind of a
context is in the last fiveyears I've noticed a massive
decline in terms of the humanability to presence itself to a
situation, in particular inrespect to programs and retreats
that I've helped to facilitateor participated in either way,
(24:48):
yeah, but, like in the contextof facilitating, I have noticed
that it's almost like I like 25more time needs to be added to
any program just to createdirect experience to allow
people to land in their bodiesand leave all of the
(25:08):
entanglements behind.
And while some of that wasneeded five years back and
further, not as much like it'salmost to the t.
Everyone shows up to some sense.
Yeah, pulled out, distractedinteresting.
Taylor Johnson (25:27):
Yeah, I mean that makes sense, you know, and
I I can resonate and relate towhat you're saying about pre and
post covid and I feel likesometimes, yeah, it seems like
just the overall level ofneurosis, even internally it has
been amplified through thatexperience just across the board
.
People seem angrier in theircars when they're driving, less
patience in line, just like allthe tiny little things that give
(25:51):
evidence to the fact thatthere's something else sort of
teeming under the surface thatisn't quite settled Right Right.
Jeremy Schewe (25:58):
And I feel like you know to pivot back into what
brings us here together todayis like that essence of the wild
man.
There's two variants of thewild man.
There's the healthy wild man,which is what we're seeking to
access, and there's the twistedwild man which, going back to my
story of the cedar trees, youknow it's like there's that
variant which is like, okay,you're connecting to this
(26:19):
essence of this deep nature, butthen is it twisting you into
conflict with those that youlove?
Is it twisting you intoconflict with the people that
you are surrounded by, theculture and the community that
you're in?
Can you reintegrate?
Can you untwist that to thehealthy wild man?
Right?
Taylor Johnson (26:38):
Yeah, which is a great segue into.
Yeah, because I wanted to talkabout is there an integrated and
unintegrated wild man?
Jeremy Schewe (26:44):
Yeah, this is certainly yeah.
I feel like this is a greatpivot into that, because again
we've got the extreme examplesof the healthy wild man who are
right now living in the bush.
They will never hear thispodcast, never watch this
YouTube video.
Maybe we'll never be on theinternet, except maybe to check
an email once every three monthsor something like that, and
(27:07):
hats off to them.
You're my heroes and I'mengaged in the world.
Yeah, and very much so, and soI feel that that's one extreme.
It's one extreme.
(27:32):
The other extreme is the brotherwho's sitting in an office in
Manhattan and is running abusiness, whether it's a
multinational or just a localbusiness, but is running a
business, and even thoughthey're fully engaged in the
world, they still touch thathealthy place of how they relate
with their employees, how theyrelate with their board members,
how they relate with thephysical world, and it's shaped
by a deep intrinsic value systemthat is based in being, in
(27:55):
relationship, respectfully, andin reciprocity with the rest of
the world.
However presents itself to us,I do not feel like the wild man
archetype is going to becomemanifest in each man, or even
even in women, or in it's liketheir expression is going to be
(28:20):
unique, like your expression.
Expression is unique.
My expression is unique.
We find these crossovers.
We cross over in music or wecross over in programmatic
things, like we're doing here.
We're both willing to take thatstep, to come to that watering
hole.
Yeah, at the same time, likewhat we're doing with her, I'm
out describing naturalcommunities and working on
(28:41):
conservation and preservationprojects around the world and I
come back.
You are really engaged in thisway with men's healthy sexuality
and how they engage in theworld.
Oh, really important flavors.
It's just a band of thatrainbow split by the fractal of
a fragment or a break in acrystal as the light is passing
through.
Taylor Johnson (29:01):
Yeah.
Jeremy Schewe (29:01):
So I feel like it's really important to honor
that and acknowledge thatthere's never going to be a
one-stop shop.
This is how you be a healthywild man, I think anybody that
ever tries to present that wellI would turn away immediately.
Taylor Johnson (29:19):
Yeah, for $777.
You can be a certified wild man.
My three hour workshop.
Jeremy Schewe (29:27):
Yeah.
Taylor Johnson (29:27):
That does feel really important to say, cause
it's.
There's one of the things I'vealso seen a lot, especially in
the social media world, ispeople.
I present ideas too, but peoplepresent ideas of like this is
the way that things are Right.
And then, because we're humansand because of our psychology,
like we, there's just so muchcomparison that happens Like, oh
, do I fit into that box too?
Do I fit their definition ofthis?
(29:48):
Is this the overall archingdefinition of this particular
thing?
Do I fit?
I don't know, and it's risky,you know, and it's tricky
territory.
The comparison thing, like youknow, they say, comparison is
the thief of joy.
But circling back around allthat is to say that it does seem
really important to honor thatthis wild man.
(30:08):
Energy is going to show updifferently in everybody's life.
And there might be somesimilarities here and there, but
yeah, it's going to be adifferent flavor of reality for
each person.
And then perhaps the measure ofintegrated or unintegrated
becomes the level of positive ornegative impact on a person's
(30:30):
community and relationships andfriends.
Like, what's the impact of this?
Like if you're a wild man lookslike screaming and yelling and
you know, flailing around andhaving a wild time and just
going nuts.
Great, you know, but is thatthen making people feel unsafe
around you, you know?
Or are you like making peoplewant to separate themselves from
you?
Or, on the flip side, are youdoing it in a context that
(30:53):
actually inspires other peopleto be that themselves?
Right, cause, that could be anamazing thing to do in the right
context.
So there's, there's a.
I've been geeking out about theword attunement recently, like,
and it seems really appropriatein this context too.
Jeremy Schewe (31:06):
Yeah, I think attunement and also, like what
we were speaking to earlier,threshold, like the difference
between that lab, like rollingaround and being chaotic, versus
someone doing it in a way thatwill help others to do it in a
healthy way is they're going tocreate a container.
They're gonna create a container, they're gonna connect
logically, mentally.
It's an effort, just likesetting up all this equipment.
(31:27):
You had to do that so that wecould get this conversation out
to the world, like that was achoice and now people can enter
into it at their own comfortlevel, listen to what they will,
and the same level.
So you go back to the guyflipping around versus someone
that creates a container andcloses a container, creates a
threshold.
Then people be like oh, here'sa context.
(31:49):
I can leave my own inhibitionsbehind or I can leave my logical
mind behind for a moment and Ican just roll in the mud and
ashes and wrestle with theseother 20 people, get wild,
scream, cry, beat our fists intothe mud, go, jump in the cold
waterfall and then come backtogether.
(32:11):
How was that?
Back out to the world?
Taylor Johnson (32:13):
Yeah, so do you see in the wild man retreats
that you do?
Do you see that most guys arejust so backstory?
I've attended also.
It's great.
But do you see that what youjust talked about is easily
accessible for most guys to justjump right into it?
Jeremy Schewe (32:32):
Yes, In the right context, in the right context,
because again, it's creating acontainer, creating barriers,
sacred barriers that men have tochoose consciously to step
across, because it's beingacknowledged as such.
You know, if we draw a linebetween us on the grass right
now and I said, okay, if youcross that line, then that means
this you know.
(32:53):
And so of course there's alwaysgoing to be people who just kind
of mentally do it, cross theline and step into whatever the
experience is, and it'll youknow, something will come from
it.
But for those who actually takethe time, like you did, before
going back into that, that sortof pulling apart of you and your
lover, like taking the time togo out, work it out of your body
(33:15):
and then come back in and enter, you did the prep work, yeah,
you harrowed the soil so thatthen you could enter in in a
really beautiful way and it'sprobably amazing sex after that.
Yeah, because she probably didsomething similar in her own way
.
And so, yes, with the, with thewild man, like that's very much
, the container is set up sothat we enter into these
(33:35):
specific moments with thesespecific rituals that are tied
to the elements, and thenthey're closed and then we move
back into social and communityand interaction, and so that
creates that space for men tofully enter to the best of their
capability.
Taylor Johnson (33:54):
Yeah.
Jeremy Schewe (33:55):
And then also, I think it's really important, you
know, to have examples, likeyou know, like myself or
yourself, as embodied men whoare willing to A do the thing
and then B embody it, so thatthen it sets a template, it
creates the permission forsomeone who might have more
inhibitions to be like oh yeah,I could throw all my clothes in
(34:18):
the fire and cover myself withmud and go walk through the
forest under the full moon for amile with no flashlight,
barefoot and and just trust.
Taylor Johnson (34:27):
Yeah, yeah.
So I'm going to make a littlenote here, because there's two
things that I want to touch onand I don't want to lose them,
and the first one is just to saythat you mentioned the
experience with my lover again,and I just want to say that most
people who have sex with men,some part of them really wants
(34:49):
to experience this wildnesscoming from the man.
People crave this.
Most guys and I fall into thistoo, and it's a practice.
But we can be very up in ourhead and we're very good at
calculating things andorganizing things and making
shit happen in the world, butthen again that threshold to
switch into the lovemaking spacecan be tricky and a lot of
(35:11):
times we'll end up there stillin our heads, or maybe afraid
even to unleash or to be thatwild, animalistic, attuned
version of ourself that, like,will drive our lovers wild like
they want that.
So just to acknowledge thatthat is a deeply desired
experience by my uh, by mypartner, by, I'm guessing, your
(35:32):
partner too, by peopleeverywhere, and then also to say
there, I recognize andunderstand and want to empathize
with the fact that a lot ofguys feel fear to go into that
space, like, yes, in lovemaking.
But then I imagine some guys,even in the wild man workshop,
there's still that little blipof like oh God, what is this?
(35:53):
Ok, you're like.
What will people think of me?
Or does this mean I'm an unsafeman?
Or does this mean I'm an unsafeman?
You know, I'd imagine at thein-person wild man event the
container is set to experiencethat thing specifically, which
is fucking awesome and sometimesneeded.
And I know, in sex sometimesthe fear is oh, if I become the
wild man, then I'm an unsafe,I'm the unhealthy, toxic,
(36:14):
whatever masculine.
I don't believe in that word,but I know it's like it was said
so much that it has gotteninfused into some people's
psyches, you know.
So I just want to acknowledgeand empathize with that fear and
also say that the world reallywants it Right and I think on
behalf.
Jeremy Schewe (36:31):
You know there's a lot of trauma in our culture,
both in women and men, some ofit, you know, coming from all
different places, and so forsome women or men, whoever you
know, whatever, this lovershipis related to.
There's a there's certainthresholds that can be that need
(36:51):
to be crossed before that beingcan be released, and so I think
that's another really importantpart of doing men's work.
You're just, you know, bringingthat back to your bed and your
lover or to your business world,but it's recognizing that that
wild feral energy, misdirectedor undirected, can be very
(37:12):
harmful, and that's where a lot,of, a lot of the the women's
deep traumatic experiences comefrom.
Taylor Johnson (37:21):
Yeah.
Jeremy Schewe (37:22):
And so I feel like it's really important to
have containers like what youjust did out West, what we do
with wild men here in theSouthern Appalachian mountains,
um, what they do with themankind project, like there are
all these amazing containersthat allow men that have been
buried, suppressed and crushedby their parents or other
(37:44):
authorities or however in theirmental construct that appears
like to be able to start tosafely come out and try to
express aspects of self, becausethat can also go really far
south, in the other direction,where it's like oh my gosh, I've
never touched this part.
And then they go home and theyhurt their partner right,
because, a their partner's notused to it, or, b their partner
(38:06):
may deeply want that, but she orhe may also be coming from a
place of sexual trauma, abuse,and so there's a lot of work
that needs to be done betweenthem, as well as individuals,
before that truly can come out,I mean so this is the
integration of the wild.
Taylor Johnson (38:27):
That's right, like that is the work.
To integrate this, like, ah,yes, with your lover, with your
work, in a practical way, yes,you know.
And then to make the jump towork like you're not going to
show up to a boardroom meetingor to a place with your
employees and be like all right,we're going to talk about the
ecological sensors and you know,scream, maybe you do, I don't
(38:47):
know.
Seems like it might freak somepeople out.
Could show up in those meetings, tuned into and tapped into
that place internally and thenchannel it through action and
presence and consciousness withthe people that you're with in a
generative way that positivelyuplifts people 100.
Jeremy Schewe (39:11):
Yeah, I think that that is the art of the
refinement of this particulartype of of archetype and it, you
know, in terms of playing withtwo major archetypes the wild
man and the king archetype, likethey can't exist without the
other.
A twisted uh, wild man willcreate a twisted king, a twisted
(39:31):
king will create a twisted wildman, or will twist the energy
that the current of belongingand place nature, nature,
thought, leadership can then getmorphed and turned into
something that is an abstractionfrom the true root of the
individual current movingthrough each man.
Taylor Johnson (39:53):
Yeah, let's pivot again, because you said
something that came up I forgetwhere it was recently I got into
this conversation and it seemsjuicy and it relates.
You mentioned the kingarchetype and there are a lot of
people these days who will usethat archetype and use the queen
(40:15):
archetype too, and refer likeI'm building my kingdom or I'm
building my queendom, and Ithink there's value to that.
And the conversation that washappening was could it also be
problematic to orient towardsthat?
I have what's?
How do I say this?
Like saying I'm in my kingarchetype before actually being
(40:39):
there, like what are theproblems that that creates?
And is there another way to say, like I'm working towards that
or I'm working on my likebuilding this thing, or do you?
You see what I'm saying?
Jeremy Schewe (40:49):
there there's a dissonance between I think I'm
just going to run with it whereit takes me instead of like
trying to pigeon my whole myselfinto like, the thing that comes
alive for me is is for everyonelistening to this, for you and
I to remember is that, if we'regoing to use the word archetype,
of course that sets up astructure in our minds.
Already we're talking aboutpsychology and so we're talking
(41:12):
about an aspect that we'realigning to and that there are
many voices there and that aking without a council exists in
a nebulous place that can bedestructive, no matter how
positively and tenfold thebeginning place of the root, of
where that concept of growinginto king grows from.
(41:34):
Energy is energy.
It doesn't just appear, I meanin the 21st century, you know,
with many people being removedfrom nature and the environment
and actual resources, like everydollar that is spent is in some
way connected to somethingtangible at the earth level
(41:54):
somewhere, somewhere somethingwas extracted, somewhere
something was lost so that itcould be gained somewhere else.
So a king functioning withoutthe voice of the entire council,
without the queen, without theprincess, without the sage,
without the wild man, withoutthe warrior, with, etc.
Etc.
We can you know, there'shundreds of archetypes.
(42:15):
Many of them are major, likewhat they would call in the
terrarium, the major arcana,like the major players.
But these major archetypes allneed to be a part of decision
making, and you know, plenty ofhistory has shown us that when a
, an emperor or king does notlisten to counsel, the amount of
(42:36):
chaos and destruction it bringsinto the world is exorbitant.
Taylor Johnson (42:42):
Yeah, huge, huge .
I like that.
Thanks for taking that, thatdirection.
Yeah, that's the.
Yeah, maybe, maybe that's thepiece, because, well, that is a
massive piece and there havebeen all these articles and I
think a big, even one of the Iforget which health medical body
or whatever it was like made adeclaration in the past few
(43:03):
years that loneliness andisolation is actually like the
big epidemic that's going onright now.
You know, like people just feeldisconnected, people aren't
having good communityexperiences, people have a hard
time finding friends andbuilding friends, and so there's
that like, where is the council, you know, and the importance
of that feels really, reallyimportant, both for this
(43:25):
archetype and for the world, youknow.
So thanks for bringing that inBecause, yeah, I've noticed even
in myself, playing with thoseenergies, that when, like I can,
as the trope goes goes, you cango very fast alone that's right
or you can go much farther inconnection with other people.
(43:46):
Yes, yes let's take a breath tothat yes.
I love the sound of those birds.
So let me consult my list.
(44:07):
We've really talked about mostof the things on my list, which
is great.
I'm wondering, just to givepeople an option, if you could
give we've already talked aboutit some, but like, what are
three things that you found arereally helpful for guys to
(44:28):
connect with this part ofthemselves?
What can somebody do afterlistening to this today in their
own world?
Jeremy Schewe (44:32):
Yeah, I think that the probably the most
important thing is the listeningto self and respect too is the
listening to self and respecttoo.
So, again, not isolatingourselves from the world, not
isolating ourselves from thevarious voices of reason or
excitement or illumination thatcome to us, but through
(44:57):
introspection, reflection,questioning the deeper why
behind things.
I mean I love Simon Sinek'swhole how, what you know like
talk that he gave on TED Talkyears ago, because it really
helps the focus in on, like themost important thing is why
you're doing it.
So, through introspection,developing a relationship with
(45:22):
the deeper, why, moving withpurpose, like when we do a
firewalk at wild man, likethat's one of the biggest
teachings behind it is like youknow, here's something that's
over a thousand degrees, yourfeet are made out of skin.
Taylor Johnson (45:38):
You know like does it make sense?
Jeremy Schewe (45:41):
You're going to.
You know, like, move withpurpose across, like walking a
pilgrimage was like an extendedversion of that.
I never thought walking apilgrimage would be as mentally
and spiritually challenging asit was, but like hot feet for
bricks or bricks for feet, likeare basically what I felt at the
end of the first few days andthat experience of having to
(46:05):
move through something andfinding that deeper purpose
through the discipline, throughthe introspection.
So I'd say that's probably themost important thing.
I think the second thing that Iwould bring is the willingness
to take risks.
I mean, everyone has adifferent risk tolerance.
Everyone has their differentfinancial plans and what types
(46:28):
of things they invest in.
The same thing goes for how weengage with the world.
You know, like you and I mighthave similar risk tolerances.
You know somebody else that I'mtalking to might have a super
low risk tolerance.
Like.
(46:48):
So, having again understandingof who you are and then, once
you have an understanding of whoyou are, what you're willing to
do with that is reallyimportant, because then that is
what will project us into theworld, bring us to the physical
experiences, the crossroads withother humans, to use a
hunter-gatherer terminology.
To use a hunter-gathererterminology, like we come to the
crossroads and we exchangeinformation and then we go out
more informed and able tocomplete certain tasks in a
(47:11):
different and a hybridized way.
So I feel like that's probablythe second most important thing.
Taylor Johnson (47:19):
Third, Just a note on those first two things.
Also, what I'm hearing is it'simportant to not just be all up
in your technology and phone andactually take a pause from the
input to be able to do thosethings.
Jeremy Schewe (47:31):
Sounds like Inhale, exhale.
We have to do both, and thesame thing goes with our minds,
and we might.
Unless somebody has has a, whatdo they call it?
Obviously I don't have it, youknow, like a photographic memory
, yeah, where they remembereverything that they ingest.
Very, very few people have that.
(47:52):
The difference of having accessto information constantly
allows most people to actuallynot know anything.
So my invitation is do what ittakes to embody it, become it,
memorize things, do certaintypes of do math problems,
practice memorization of poetryso you can practice the
(48:17):
memorization of patterns,because the same ways our minds
encapsulate and harnessinformation from our
surroundings, as well as theabstractions of just human
interactions or internetinteractions, information yeah,
awesome, thanks for that.
Taylor Johnson (48:35):
Yeah, and I'll add this one to really encourage
you listening right now too toalso consider going to some
in-person men's program, becausewe can do all kinds of stuff
alone.
I can walk barefoot, we canwork out, we can scream, we can
(48:56):
do all that.
But there's often a certainsort of capacity that we're
limited by with just being withourself, with doing this kind of
work in particular.
And then going to an experienceor a container where the point
is to explore this kind ofenergy and to cultivate it and
to become familiar with it andto have it be a generative life
(49:19):
giving thing Like that'sprofound, you know, that's
profound, and a lot of times weI'd say more often than we could
ever even think we need to bearound other people doing that
kind of work so that we canactually embody it ourselves.
There becomes this sort ofamplification effect or
resonance that happens where we,through the process of doing
(49:40):
the work, like we give eachother permission to go deeper
and then we go deeper, and thenyou give permission to somebody
else to go deeper and then theytake you there too, and because
you're in that in-personcontainer, it's just, it's so
potent and profound and I findthat if I go too long without
doing some sort of in-personwork around cultivating some
form of aliveness maybe that'sqigong or sexuality or men's
(50:03):
work or something I start tofeel like not great, you know, I
lose that zest, I lose thataliveness, I lose that certain
spark that, like the worldthere's, like the world can just
suck it out of us, you know.
So coming into in-personexperiences that are generative
for this kind of thing can bereally powerful.
(50:24):
Jerry's been leading one for 10years yes, and there are other
options too, like you mentioned,the mankind project there's a
bunch of other things, but Iwould say that should be really
highly up on the list toodefinitely embodiment yes so
when is yours coming up?
Jeremy Schewe (50:40):
September 13th to 15th September 13th to 15th.
So this is our 10th annual,very excited for that.
Taylor Johnson (50:47):
That's awesome.
And that happens here in theAsheville Mountains, in the
mountains outside of Asheville.
Cool, and can you say a littlebit more about it, or do you
want to keep it secret?
Jeremy Schewe (50:55):
I mean, I think I spoke a little bit to it
earlier, but you firewalk, yeah,so we have these.
You know we really embrace thefour five element model and so
it's.
It's, you know, multi-faith,like anyone can come.
We have all different types ofpeople from religious and
spiritual backgrounds, as wellas people who are agnostic or
(51:16):
Gnostic.
You know, like really important, Like there's so many ways to
engage, but we encapsulate it inthe sense of creating these
direct, embodied experiences inrespect to the four elements, or
often we tie in the spiritelement as well, With some time
for integration and processingand deeper embodiment.
(51:37):
Outside of those contexts, weusually have men come in and
share morning sessions withQigong, or how to make friction
fires or Kung Fu, foresttraining, et cetera, which makes
it really fun.
It gives everybody anopportunity to dive in yoga,
Qigong.
Taylor Johnson (51:53):
Kung Fu forest training.
Yes, I wasn't there the year Iwent.
That's not awesome.
No, that's true.
Jeremy Schewe (51:59):
It's good fun.
So, yeah, that's the essence ofit.
Yeah so, fireworks, liveburials, oath ceremonies
underneath waterfalls, crawlinginto caves, walking covered with
mud through the forest at night, like just things that really
invite us to connect to theearth and to share that
(52:21):
experience with our brothers.
Taylor Johnson (52:22):
Yeah.
So if you're listening and notseeing this on YouTube, I think
you just missed something reallyimportant.
That I want to highlight too isthat when Jeremy just started
talking about this, there waslike he smiled.
You know, there's a smilecoming up in this other sense of
aliveness, in the playfulness,and I know we've been talking
about all these serious concepts, but also just to name here at
the end like play seems like areally important part of it too
(52:45):
Like it's not just like you'reseriously like in the mud doing
like the deep hard work, andit's like arduous the whole time
, constantly.
There's also this element ofgrowth and learning through play
.
That seems really important, Imean.
Jeremy Schewe (52:57):
I have a blast the whole time.
Yeah, I'm at play.
Taylor Johnson (53:02):
Awesome, yes, cool, yeah, I just wanted to
name that because I can fallinto that trap too and I need to
remember.
Oh yeah, play is cruciallyimportant as a human to thrive
Like I need that.
Jeremy Schewe (53:12):
I need that the fool is a crucial archetype.
Taylor Johnson (53:15):
Yeah, yeah, totally so.
We'll put the links to the wildman retreat in the show notes,
links to your website too, andjust to name it too.
Also, jeremy, you just a bookof yours came out this year.
I'll show it on the YouTubeversion.
But yeah, I wanted to speak tothis too briefly, just because
it's really interesting to me.
At the workshop where I was amonth ago, it was a men's
(53:38):
workshop and one of the thingsthat one of the leaders spoke to
was hey, by the way, if youwant to connect with different,
deeper spiritual traditions orshamanic lineages, you don't
necessarily need to go to SouthAmerica and drink ayahuasca
nothing wrong with that.
But if you're of Europeandescent, there are actually
certain lineages of spiritualtraditions that were there that
(54:01):
went deep and were shamanic andwere buried and covered up by a
lot of colonialism and thechurch etc.
Not saying that to bashanything, but just to say that
there is, there are thesetraditions and it sounds like
this book is an exploration ofsome of those.
Very much so.
Jeremy Schewe (54:17):
So, as my relationship with the wild man
grew, or, as I said earlier inthe Irish, the man of the forest
, the green man.
As that relationship evolved inme, I very quickly came to an
understanding of like I hadstepped out of the social,
(54:39):
environmental Catholicupbringing that I had grown up
with and was finding answers inHinduism and Buddhism, in the
red path.
And while studying with uh, aHoshima woman in Flagstaff,
arizona, in my late teens andearly twenties, the door was
(55:00):
opened inside of myconsciousness, through this
woman and the work that we weredoing, to my own heritage, which
my heritage is from my mom'sside is Irish and German and
from dad's side is Swiss andGerman.
So there was this hunger to goback to, as Delfina, my first
teacher, said to me.
She said you need to go back towhere your people come from,
(55:22):
and this is the journey of theunfolding, of the discovery, the
remembrance and the teasing outof the modern Irish mind, the
depth of the traditions that arestill conveyed in contemporary
Irish culture that I think mostIrish don't even recognize as
(55:47):
being a continuum of those.
Many of them do, of course, butsome it's just a part of a way
of life, and so this book isthat exploration of, like
understanding a cultural andhistoric context, but also like
how are the different places innature and the ancient
megalithic complexes?
How have those been engagedtraditionally, how did they rise
(56:10):
in the ancient oral traditionsthat were transcribed into
written traditions in the earlyChristian era, and thus
presenting a template or a codexthat the modern mind can engage
with our Irish Celtic heritageand embrace that in a really
beautiful way.
Taylor Johnson (56:30):
I'm excited to dive into this, one because I'm
interested in that topic and twobecause I'm excited to hear
about your journey a little bitmore.
And just to close with anappreciation I really appreciate
how you're somebody who has afoot in the realm of the
spiritual and the wild and alsoin the realm of business and the
world, and that integration issuper important to me and I
think the world needs more ofthat.
So thank you for being thatperson, thank you for leading
(56:53):
the wild man retreats that youdo and doing this work, and
thanks for being here for thispodcast Really interesting,
great conversation.
I'm excited to share it withthe world and if you listening
or watching have any questionsfor us, please leave a comment
under the YouTube video.
I'll get back to you.
That's a great way to keep allthe comments in one place.
You can also shoot me an emailif you don't feel comfortable
with that, for whatever reason.
(57:13):
And, yeah, I'll put a link tothe book in your workshop, in
your website and the show notes.
And thank you again, jeremy.
So much, this has been awesome,great.
Thank you, taylor nice.
Jeremy Schewe (57:25):
Yeah, man, thank you, that was fun.
Today, the topic is the wild man and I'm so
excited to welcome Jeremy backto the podcast.
Jeremy, thank you for beinghere.
If you're watching this onYouTube, you'll see that we are
in my front yard in Ashevilleand you might hear some birds,
you might hear some airplanes,you might hear some background
noises and it's thematically onpoint for this episode, because
(00:20):
I want to explore the wild man.
But specifically, how do weintegrate that into the modern
world?
And Jeremy has been leadingwild man retreats in Asheville,
for this is year 10, I believe,right now, and it's powerful,
powerful work, jeremy, welcomeagain.
Anything you'd like to say upfront?
Jeremy Schewe (00:42):
Great Thank you, taylor and it's great to be out
in your wild front yard here andabsorbing all the sounds of
mountain and suburbiasimultaneously, something that
many people have to sit withconstantly.
I mean, some people don't evenhave the benefit of the trees in
the urban centers.
So I really hope we can reachout today to all those men and
(01:03):
women who are also listening tothis and hopefully provide them
with some great cues into thedreaming of the wild man.
Yeah, I would say the one thingI would leave with that is
probably most important is likethat wild man.
Really that archetype reallyhelps to hone a sense of place
and belonging in this world, andI think that that's probably
(01:24):
one of the keys that we'llrevisit throughout our
conversation today really helpsto hone a sense of place and
belonging in this world, and Ithink that that's probably one
of the keys that we'll revisitthroughout our conversation
today yeah, and that's reallysomething that's missing for a
lot of people today too is thissense of belonging, this sense
of connection, this sense ofplace and this sense of
aliveness.
Taylor Johnson (01:44):
And I think it's worth mentioning upfront just
the context that we all live in.
Like we have smartphones thatconnect us to anything we could
possibly want to know, in ourpockets all the time they're
bringing notifications at us.
We have city noises, we havepeople who are just everywhere,
advertising and distractions,and there's a lot that's pulling
on our consciousness, there's alot that's pulling on our
awareness, and it takes actualdedication and practice to just
(02:07):
be, number one, a functioninghuman I think so in a modern
world but number two, like athriving human that's connected
to our aliveness.
So let's start off with what isthis wild man?
Is it a person?
Is it an archetype?
Is it energy?
How does it?
(02:28):
If somebody were to ask you onthe street, what's the wild man,
jeremy, what would you say?
Jeremy Schewe (02:32):
Yeah, I would say it's multifold, but the simple
answer that draws first to mymouth is the feeling of a sense
of belonging, connection tonature, the wild man.
Some people might refer to itas the green man in the irish we
have called a fire when, yeah,the green, the green forest man,
like the being who is anextension of of nature, and so
(02:57):
typically that's what mostpeople draw up images of when
they think of the wild man.
For myself personally, theconnection of the wild man is
the falling of intuition, thefalling of dreams, discerning
between dreams that areentertainment dreams, dreams
that are distraction dreams,dreams that are just me working
(03:17):
out sexual frustrations orpsychological frustrations, but
true dreaming that helps to leadus on into a deeper
relationship, not just withourselves but how that then
becomes an expression in ahealthy way with the environment
around us.
Taylor Johnson (03:34):
Yeah, so I'm really hearing there's a
connection piece like aconnection to nature and a
connection to the nature that'swithin, and from that place
there's almost a blooming ofaliveness or this this force
that, yeah, in inspires andgives life to intentional action
in the world.
Yes, yeah, and it's awesome andbeautiful to hear that, because
(03:58):
I think a lot of guys.
So men's work is one thingthat's sort of exploding all
over the place right now, whichis awesome.
And so men's work is one thingthat's sort of, you know,
exploding all over the placeright now, which is awesome.
It's great.
Like we need that.
We need places to gatheroutside of typical therapy
offices, you know, and I thinkthere's a lot of guys when they
think of the wild man, theythink, oh, it's just a bunch of
dudes just like screaming and it, and it's amazing and powerful
(04:18):
and liberating to experiencethat there's also this depth
that you're talking about.
Jeremy Schewe (04:38):
That's, yes, you can beat and pound your chest,
but also it sounds like there'sthis foundation of a spring
almost coming up from the earth.
That is aliveness inside.
Yeah, I think a spring is agreat way to describe it,
because it's more of this quietgentle bubbling up.
Great way to describe it.
Because it's more of this quietgentle bubbling up, it's a
sense of we've already spoken tothe belonging but just this
really strong sense of peace andnourishment and that there's.
There is this presence oflife-giving energy ever present
(04:59):
and that sometimes, yes, we needto raise the energy and beat
our chests, and how.
I mean that's our ancestral andgenetic memory of preparing to
defend our people or to defendour turf, or to go out on the
hunt and to get ourselves.
Kind of like what you and Ijust did before we started this
podcast.
We're doing push-ups andjumping up and down and making
noises and shaking our feet.
(05:20):
You know it's just like gettingthe energy and then we can
settle back into the quiet.
Taylor Johnson (05:44):
Yeah, yeah, you know, it's just like getting the
desert about a month ago andone of our tasks to do was to go
out into the desert and not dofor an extended period of time
and just sit there to just beand be with the quiet, and it
was really powerful and Irealized this is something that
(06:05):
I don't do very much of, but wealso prepped the whole
experience of doing that bydoing a lot of different
embodiment type exercises andthings that really got us in to
our sensing body into our senses, into our felt aliveness and
then from that place we went andwe sat and almost everybody
that did that got some reallyuseful message for their life,
(06:29):
whether that be their sexualrelationship or their work or
what they're wanting to do withtheir time in general or
something.
Almost always some kind ofinformation, if you want to call
it, came through thatexperience and, yeah, it was
potent and didn't plan to sharethat, but it just seemed
appropriate based on what youjust said.
Jeremy Schewe (06:45):
Yeah, and I think part of what brought that on
was, you know, yesterday eveningI went out to we have this
family of five screech owlsliving in the white oak behind
our house and so sometimes I cango out right at dusk and start
start calling to them and firstthe the juveniles will come in
and they just kind of scrock andthen the adults will come in
(07:08):
and it's this whole exchange andwe've gotten them to come
within a couple of feet of us,which is so beautiful.
But to just lay there in thehammock last night and watching
the twilight play on theunderside of the white oak and
the hickory and the poplar, andjust feel that, that liminal
space in my own mind that isable to soften when I let go of
all the planning and logisticsand structure and just soften
(07:32):
into allowing the presence ofnature to flow in and change the
expression of who I am, yeah,yeah, can you say for people
listening who don't know whatliminal space might mean, can
you just say a couple wordsabout that?
Taylor Johnson (07:50):
What does that mean to you?
Jeremy Schewe (07:50):
biologists professionally by trade.
One of the things that I likewhat is utilized for the term
liminal or liminal shelf, is aplace where several different
types of communities cometogether.
(08:11):
There's an overlap, so theliminal zone, where it's almost
aqueous or almost water, it'salmost terrestrial, it's almost
air, and so there's this wholezone where all these nutrients
gather, and so it's sort of thisspace in between, and so that
same utilization has beenbrought into consciousness and
psychology in respect to it'sthis place where many worlds
(08:34):
fold, or many wavelengths of ourmental or spiritual process
overlay, process overlay, and inthat space in between, and what
in also in ecology as well asin ancient greek, we call the
eco tone, the eco tone where themusic of many aspects of life
come together yeah, so the it'sthis where things meet, but also
(09:01):
it's that space where thingsmeet kind of like between
consciousness and sleep.
Taylor Johnson (09:06):
For most people that's an easily accessible
realm of.
Oh, it's different then.
Jeremy Schewe (09:11):
Yeah, it's different.
There you go.
Taylor Johnson (09:13):
Something is different than like I can go on
journeys, or sometimes I findmyself in all yeah, yeah,
different and there's a potencythere.
Jeremy Schewe (09:20):
Yes.
Taylor Johnson (09:20):
Yes, cool, thanks for that.
So just to briefly touch onarchetypes before we go forward.
I do want to talk about how thewild man can be incorporated
into sex and life and businessand relationship, and also just
to touch on, like, what is anarchetype too?
(09:42):
Cause I've heard a lot ofpeople talking about archetypes,
but I don't know that.
I've heard a lot of peopletalking about archetypes, but I
don't know that.
I've heard somebody say this isactually here's the function of
an archetype.
What would you say to that?
Jeremy Schewe (09:53):
As far as my understanding I mean again, you
spoke earlier to being in theinformation age.
Somebody could do a fact checkto all of these things.
However, the thing that I feelis, like, really important for
myself is the embodiment ofknowledge and how we carry it
and convey it.
So I'm going to speak from thatplace.
And so archetypes come fromFreudian psychology or Jungian
(10:16):
psychology, one of those twobranches of early 1900s where we
have an understanding, likewe're riding out of the end of
the romantic period, the end ofthe 19th century, where there
was all of this evolution andunderstanding that was coming
into the modern awareness,especially in the Western mind,
of these different ancienttraditions, whether they were
(10:39):
the Mayan glyphs that were beingdiscovered at that time the
hieroglyphs had been found inegypt and were, just around the
year 1900, were beginning to beable to be translated.
So there was this, all of asudden, this whole understanding
that there's these other worldviews where these, all these
ancient gods, where we're nottalking about a monotheistic
society like we had were in thewest, but a polytheistic.
(11:03):
And so the idea of the archetypeis that, from a scientific or
psychological perspective, ourconsciousness is connected to
various aspects of these ancientdeities, and then it separates
it from a religious context andbrings it into just a
(11:26):
psychological context, which iswhy, around at the same time,
like the Rider-Way deck, theTarot deck was created, like all
of this evolution of humanconsciousness and understanding
that there is more than onevoice that can presence itself
in terms of our inner councilthat guides us.
And so the wild man is, ofcourse, just one of those
(11:47):
archetypes, a very important one, because it's our primordial
root and it's our connection tothe world.
It's our connection to ourfellow men or to our partners,
our lovers, yet at the same time, it is a part.
So archetype is a aspect, afractal of the divine.
I sometimes like to speak to itfrom the sense of light is pure
(12:09):
when light waves hit a crystal,or a fraction, fractal or
fracture in a crystal I mean allthat works essentially gets us
to the same place a brokensurface that then the light
breaks up into these differentrays that we know as a rainbow.
We have all these differentwavelengths and then these micro
wavelengths that are in theoverlap between, and each of
(12:31):
those is part of the great light.
However, it's very obviouslyred, like we can just it's like
a fractal of the whole, so gotit.
Taylor Johnson (12:41):
I like that because it brings the esoteric
into the practical and into thefelt sense of the body, like
when I think of the wild menarchetype or any of the
archetypes, like some of themost are more familiar ones for
people in the men's work world.
You have the king, warrior,magician, lover, right, and this
it.
It's almost like it's a flavorof reality, like a flavor of
(13:04):
consciousness that doesn't existoutside of us but like it
exists within us and in the restof the world and with some
practice and some attunement wecan actually enter that and
become that.
Does that?
Jeremy Schewe (13:17):
resonate with that.
Taylor Johnson (13:17):
Very much, so Very much so so, yeah, so before
we were filming this episode, Iyou know there's this whole
process of setting upmicrophones and cameras and
settings and apertures and whitebalance and sound levels and
dealing with the backgroundnoise and it's all this sort of
like heady type stuff.
And when we first started to sitdown, I realized like I am way
too much up in my head, I've gotto move, I got to get into my
(13:40):
body, and so when we were doingpush-ups, I was also tuning into
the energetic of that alivenessof the wild creature, like
doing physical motion, whilealso and I didn't have to like
scream, but I was just like likeif I were to slow it down, like
that's what was happeninginternally for me and it was
really helpful to then just landhere and what you just went
(14:02):
through there too, was a veryimportant part of our species,
natural heritage and history, avery important need when we
prepared ourselves inprehistoric times, all the way
up into the modern, to go on thehunt yeah there's an energy
change we have to go through inorder to make that hunt
(14:23):
successful.
Jeremy Schewe (14:24):
But then we have to integrate back in with our
wives, our lovers, our children,our elders, and we can't just
come back in.
You know blood covering ourfaces and everything Like.
We got to come in in a way thatcan be embraced.
We have to go and batheritually before we come home.
We prepare the meat so thatwhen we pack it back home it can
be open and accepted.
Taylor Johnson (14:45):
And I think that also translates into the modern
age and the historic era ofwarfare where traditionally
mostly men would go off to warand then they have to have some
sort of transition period backinto our secular world,
otherwise we get blindsided orwe're still mentally on the hunt
(15:08):
, still mentally in battletotally really crucial yeah and
I imagine so I'm I was not partof the military, I've not been
to war, but I imagine if we didhave more of an honoring process
around that we might have lessoccurrences of pts, ptsd and
other types of post-war likechallenges for people Like some
of my friends are veterans andthey've still yeah, they
(15:30):
struggle with that whole realmof stuff, you know.
So that seems like an importantpiece and I've got a list of.
I have an organized list oftopics I wanted to go to, but I
want to divert a little bit andI think that's part of following
the aliveness of theconversation too, um, the whole
stepping away to what is itrecent or reground, rewild or
(15:52):
then reintegrate.
I'm remembering a time where mypartner and I uh, and she's up
on the porch right now we weregoing into sexual intimacy
together and there was somethingthat just wasn't quite right.
You know like if you're inlong-term relationship,
inevitably there are times whenyou just like shit happens, and
(16:14):
sometimes it's about nothing orlike a very small thing.
And so it came up then, remember, like some sort of bickering
and I thought this sucks, like Idon't want to do this right now
.
This is.
But I also wanted to have theexperience of intimacy.
So I remembered oh, I can justtake some space, this is
probably about nothing.
And I went outdoors and I did abunch of push-ups and I did
(16:36):
jumping jacks and I growled andI just got in my body and I
tried to, like, let out whateverneeded to be let out and then
access that part of myself thatwas just raw aliveness, and then
stood there for a little bit,felt it and breathed with it and
went back in and from thatplace of grounding, from that
(16:56):
place of aliveness, was able to,you could say, just seed the
interaction with that energy.
Jeremy Schewe (17:02):
Then we had a beautiful lovemaking you know,
just seed the interaction withthat energy, then we had a
beautiful love making, you know,and it came from intentionally
going to access this kind ofenergy and bring it back with
practice yeah, I think one ofthe things that we forget about
in our modern day is theimportance of a threshold, the
(17:22):
importance of crossing from oneplace to another, whether it's
from the secular to the sacred,from the secular to the sexual.
However, we are crossing athreshold from one way of
engaging the world, one type ofconsciousness, into another.
And again, in the modern age,we also were constantly, like
you said earlier, like we'reinformation sharing modern age,
(17:44):
we also.
We're constantly, like you saidearlier, like we're information
sharing, we're jumping betweenmental portals that are
completely existent online.
There's all these ways that wecan just jump ship very rapidly,
and so we have forgotten theimportance of honoring when we
cross over into another space,and I think that that's
something that's reallyimportant, especially in respect
(18:06):
to the wild man archetype.
I had an experience You'llremember Ayla's mom and I years
ago.
We lived up in Cincinnati for awhile and I had a project out
in British Columbia and therewas this forest spirit that came
to me.
It was just like all theseancient cedars are being cut
down like.
Can you help us with this?
(18:28):
You?
know I was like sure, and thenall of a sudden, it was almost
like there was this like slightspirit possession going on and
it created this like reallyintense energy where I was just
like, all of a sudden, I'm likeI'm having a hard time being
present in the business worldand being present for what I had
actually gone to BritishColumbia to do, which was make a
presentation on ecologicalrestoration in the Southern
(18:50):
Appalachian mountains, and sothere was this like pool away
from, like aligning with thisancient, ancient energy, which
is really important, but forwhere I was engaged in my life
in that moment that was not aparticular aspect, a particular
archetype, a particular aspectof the divine and embodiment of
(19:11):
the wild man that I could fullyembody me.
And that embodiment is for thosewho are with earth first and on
the front line, for those whoare willing to let go completely
of the world and live out inthe bush like, do it please.
Some of us need to keep doingthat, to hold, hold that anchor
down.
And then some of us have to gothrough things like setting up
electronics and changing mentalstructures, because that's just
(19:33):
like when we were talking aboutearlier coming back to our
community with the hunt, witheverything that we've gathered.
We have to transition in orderso that now this will actually
feed the community and not besomething that's destructive,
like here you get to eat but I'mgoing to hit you over the side
of the head because I'm pissedoff inside at the same time.
Like that doesn't work.
Taylor Johnson (19:51):
Yeah.
Jeremy Schewe (19:52):
Honoring thresholds.
Taylor Johnson (19:53):
Yeah, I like that.
So I didn't ask, didn't tellyou.
I was going to ask you to dothis up front.
But people listening right nowand and for us here too, um, but
we all have access to thisenergetic, if you want to call
(20:15):
it, this flavor of realityinternally and I wonder if you
could speak to that part of theperson who's listening right now
.
Is there a way you can speak toor evoke, wanting to bring in a
felt sense of, because for somepeople this feels foreign, or
like a foreign language you know.
Jeremy Schewe (20:33):
So I'm going to open with saying in the last
year I've walked over a thousandkilometers on pilgrimage and
what I have found in the walkingpilgrimage is that there is a
way that we as humans, sedentary, not moving a lot yeah, maybe
we work out every once in awhile or something like that,
but we don't move a lot Thingsin our mind become so much more
(20:55):
complicated than they actuallyare Inputs, stresses, hurdles
when we're constantly in motionhunter-gatherers, constantly in
motion, pilgrim, walking acrossa sacred landscape, supported in
that there is a way that ourmind is able to quickly untangle
things or very quicklyunderstand when something is not
(21:16):
.
I'm the walker, I'm passing bysomething.
I could stop and help or Icouldn't.
It's either one or the other.
There's not a complex like well, society tells me this or blah,
blah, blah, blah, blah.
I am going to either stop andhelp or I'm going to keep
walking, like there are opendoors, there's closed doors.
We choose how we move throughit.
So I think one of the thingsthat a lot of us have been
(21:39):
feeling a rise of and I'mspeaking personally in this as
well, but from what I hear froma lot of other men and women as
well, is that, post COVID,there's been this like this rise
of a sense of like physicalanxiety inside the chest, inside
the belly, like all of us tosome extent feel that because a
couple of things happen.
We had the opportunity to stop,pause and be like are we liking
(22:00):
where we're going as a culture?
Are we liking where I am goingas an individual?
How am I going to continueengaging with the world?
And we had the opportunity tostart resetting that in a
cultural way that we just neverhave had, at least in our
lifetimes.
And so I feel that the mostimportant thing that we can do
(22:22):
when we start feeling thoseanxieties or those tensions, or
just feeling like the modernworld is just too much, is
emulate what our ancestors dothe go for a run.
I just did that yesterday.
I went for a two and a halfmile run because the, the that
energy was building up so much,and I went for a run and there
was just like uh, three hours tojust complete internal silence.
Like, yeah, run and there'sjust like three hours, just
(22:43):
complete internal silence.
Like yeah, it's not spendingtwo or three weeks walking on
the camino or walking on someother uh, pilgrimage, or I'm not
actually going on a on a boarhunt with you and a few other
men out in the forest, but whatI am doing is I'm getting into
the place where my body's notholding these complex
abstractions and entanglementsof the mind, and I'm breathing
(23:04):
it out, I'm sweating it out yeah, putting it back into the earth
.
So that's a doing.
A non-doing is to cyclicalbreathing, similar to like how
you and I started, also thisafternoon yeah, it's just taking
a moment to just really connectand become present.
Taylor Johnson (23:19):
Yeah, two great doors and that seems like the.
The crucial piece is presenceand taking a moment, and it's
not a mental concept that youcan like turn the mental switch
and then conceptually enter, butit seems like you have to do
something with your body tocreate a felt sense of it yes
(23:41):
I'm remembering.
Try to to make an analogy here.
See if it works.
Sleep is something that I usedto struggle with a bunch, and I
went to sleep therapy a whileago and learned some really
interesting things.
But one of the things that theysaid that stuck with me was you
can't think your mind into astate of ease.
You have to create that throughyour body or through practices,
(24:06):
through some sort of embodimentor laying down or something
right.
You have to generatively dothat.
And it seems very similar tothis.
I imagine even just takingthree breaths you could access
it.
You know you're standing, goingfor a walk barefoot on the
earth or something like that.
It's always right there, butjust making the choice to step
(24:26):
into it somehow.
Jeremy Schewe (24:27):
Something I've really noticed over the last
five years.
This started pre-pandemic, youknow, but just to give kind of a
context is in the last fiveyears I've noticed a massive
decline in terms of the humanability to presence itself to a
situation, in particular inrespect to programs and retreats
that I've helped to facilitateor participated in either way,
(24:48):
yeah, but, like in the contextof facilitating, I have noticed
that it's almost like I like 25more time needs to be added to
any program just to createdirect experience to allow
people to land in their bodiesand leave all of the
(25:08):
entanglements behind.
And while some of that wasneeded five years back and
further, not as much like it'salmost to the t.
Everyone shows up to some sense.
Yeah, pulled out, distractedinteresting.
Taylor Johnson (25:27):
Yeah, I mean that makes sense, you know, and
I I can resonate and relate towhat you're saying about pre and
post covid and I feel likesometimes, yeah, it seems like
just the overall level ofneurosis, even internally it has
been amplified through thatexperience just across the board
.
People seem angrier in theircars when they're driving, less
patience in line, just like allthe tiny little things that give
(25:51):
evidence to the fact thatthere's something else sort of
teeming under the surface thatisn't quite settled Right Right.
Jeremy Schewe (25:58):
And I feel like you know to pivot back into what
brings us here together todayis like that essence of the wild
man.
There's two variants of thewild man.
There's the healthy wild man,which is what we're seeking to
access, and there's the twistedwild man which, going back to my
story of the cedar trees, youknow it's like there's that
variant which is like, okay,you're connecting to this
(26:19):
essence of this deep nature, butthen is it twisting you into
conflict with those that youlove?
Is it twisting you intoconflict with the people that
you are surrounded by, theculture and the community that
you're in?
Can you reintegrate?
Can you untwist that to thehealthy wild man?
Right?
Taylor Johnson (26:38):
Yeah, which is a great segue into.
Yeah, because I wanted to talkabout is there an integrated and
unintegrated wild man?
Jeremy Schewe (26:44):
Yeah, this is certainly yeah.
I feel like this is a greatpivot into that, because again
we've got the extreme examplesof the healthy wild man who are
right now living in the bush.
They will never hear thispodcast, never watch this
YouTube video.
Maybe we'll never be on theinternet, except maybe to check
an email once every three monthsor something like that, and
(27:07):
hats off to them.
You're my heroes and I'mengaged in the world.
Yeah, and very much so, and soI feel that that's one extreme.
It's one extreme.
(27:32):
The other extreme is the brotherwho's sitting in an office in
Manhattan and is running abusiness, whether it's a
multinational or just a localbusiness, but is running a
business, and even thoughthey're fully engaged in the
world, they still touch thathealthy place of how they relate
with their employees, how theyrelate with their board members,
how they relate with thephysical world, and it's shaped
by a deep intrinsic value systemthat is based in being, in
(27:55):
relationship, respectfully, andin reciprocity with the rest of
the world.
However presents itself to us,I do not feel like the wild man
archetype is going to becomemanifest in each man, or even
even in women, or in it's liketheir expression is going to be
(28:20):
unique, like your expression.
Expression is unique.
My expression is unique.
We find these crossovers.
We cross over in music or wecross over in programmatic
things, like we're doing here.
We're both willing to take thatstep, to come to that watering
hole.
Yeah, at the same time, likewhat we're doing with her, I'm
out describing naturalcommunities and working on
(28:41):
conservation and preservationprojects around the world and I
come back.
You are really engaged in thisway with men's healthy sexuality
and how they engage in theworld.
Oh, really important flavors.
It's just a band of thatrainbow split by the fractal of
a fragment or a break in acrystal as the light is passing
through.
Taylor Johnson (29:01):
Yeah.
Jeremy Schewe (29:01):
So I feel like it's really important to honor
that and acknowledge thatthere's never going to be a
one-stop shop.
This is how you be a healthywild man, I think anybody that
ever tries to present that wellI would turn away immediately.
Taylor Johnson (29:19):
Yeah, for $777.
You can be a certified wild man.
My three hour workshop.
Jeremy Schewe (29:27):
Yeah.
Taylor Johnson (29:27):
That does feel really important to say, cause
it's.
There's one of the things I'vealso seen a lot, especially in
the social media world, ispeople.
I present ideas too, but peoplepresent ideas of like this is
the way that things are Right.
And then, because we're humansand because of our psychology,
like we, there's just so muchcomparison that happens Like, oh
, do I fit into that box too?
Do I fit their definition ofthis?
(29:48):
Is this the overall archingdefinition of this particular
thing?
Do I fit?
I don't know, and it's risky,you know, and it's tricky
territory.
The comparison thing, like youknow, they say, comparison is
the thief of joy.
But circling back around allthat is to say that it does seem
really important to honor thatthis wild man.
(30:08):
Energy is going to show updifferently in everybody's life.
And there might be somesimilarities here and there, but
yeah, it's going to be adifferent flavor of reality for
each person.
And then perhaps the measure ofintegrated or unintegrated
becomes the level of positive ornegative impact on a person's
(30:30):
community and relationships andfriends.
Like, what's the impact of this?
Like if you're a wild man lookslike screaming and yelling and
you know, flailing around andhaving a wild time and just
going nuts.
Great, you know, but is thatthen making people feel unsafe
around you, you know?
Or are you like making peoplewant to separate themselves from
you?
Or, on the flip side, are youdoing it in a context that
(30:53):
actually inspires other peopleto be that themselves?
Right, cause, that could be anamazing thing to do in the right
context.
So there's, there's a.
I've been geeking out about theword attunement recently, like,
and it seems really appropriatein this context too.
Jeremy Schewe (31:06):
Yeah, I think attunement and also, like what
we were speaking to earlier,threshold, like the difference
between that lab, like rollingaround and being chaotic, versus
someone doing it in a way thatwill help others to do it in a
healthy way is they're going tocreate a container.
They're gonna create a container, they're gonna connect
logically, mentally.
It's an effort, just likesetting up all this equipment.
(31:27):
You had to do that so that wecould get this conversation out
to the world, like that was achoice and now people can enter
into it at their own comfortlevel, listen to what they will,
and the same level.
So you go back to the guyflipping around versus someone
that creates a container andcloses a container, creates a
threshold.
Then people be like oh, here'sa context.
(31:49):
I can leave my own inhibitionsbehind or I can leave my logical
mind behind for a moment and Ican just roll in the mud and
ashes and wrestle with theseother 20 people, get wild,
scream, cry, beat our fists intothe mud, go, jump in the cold
waterfall and then come backtogether.
(32:11):
How was that?
Back out to the world?
Taylor Johnson (32:13):
Yeah, so do you see in the wild man retreats
that you do?
Do you see that most guys arejust so backstory?
I've attended also.
It's great.
But do you see that what youjust talked about is easily
accessible for most guys to justjump right into it?
Jeremy Schewe (32:32):
Yes, In the right context, in the right context,
because again, it's creating acontainer, creating barriers,
sacred barriers that men have tochoose consciously to step
across, because it's beingacknowledged as such.
You know, if we draw a linebetween us on the grass right
now and I said, okay, if youcross that line, then that means
this you know.
(32:53):
And so of course there's alwaysgoing to be people who just kind
of mentally do it, cross theline and step into whatever the
experience is, and it'll youknow, something will come from
it.
But for those who actually takethe time, like you did, before
going back into that, that sortof pulling apart of you and your
lover, like taking the time togo out, work it out of your body
(33:15):
and then come back in and enter, you did the prep work, yeah,
you harrowed the soil so thatthen you could enter in in a
really beautiful way and it'sprobably amazing sex after that.
Yeah, because she probably didsomething similar in her own way
.
And so, yes, with the, with thewild man, like that's very much
, the container is set up sothat we enter into these
(33:35):
specific moments with thesespecific rituals that are tied
to the elements, and thenthey're closed and then we move
back into social and communityand interaction, and so that
creates that space for men tofully enter to the best of their
capability.
Taylor Johnson (33:54):
Yeah.
Jeremy Schewe (33:55):
And then also, I think it's really important, you
know, to have examples, likeyou know, like myself or
yourself, as embodied men whoare willing to A do the thing
and then B embody it, so thatthen it sets a template, it
creates the permission forsomeone who might have more
inhibitions to be like oh yeah,I could throw all my clothes in
(34:18):
the fire and cover myself withmud and go walk through the
forest under the full moon for amile with no flashlight,
barefoot and and just trust.
Taylor Johnson (34:27):
Yeah, yeah.
So I'm going to make a littlenote here, because there's two
things that I want to touch onand I don't want to lose them,
and the first one is just to saythat you mentioned the
experience with my lover again,and I just want to say that most
people who have sex with men,some part of them really wants
(34:49):
to experience this wildnesscoming from the man.
People crave this.
Most guys and I fall into thistoo, and it's a practice.
But we can be very up in ourhead and we're very good at
calculating things andorganizing things and making
shit happen in the world, butthen again that threshold to
switch into the lovemaking spacecan be tricky and a lot of
(35:11):
times we'll end up there stillin our heads, or maybe afraid
even to unleash or to be thatwild, animalistic, attuned
version of ourself that, like,will drive our lovers wild like
they want that.
So just to acknowledge thatthat is a deeply desired
experience by my uh, by mypartner, by, I'm guessing, your
(35:32):
partner too, by peopleeverywhere, and then also to say
there, I recognize andunderstand and want to empathize
with the fact that a lot ofguys feel fear to go into that
space, like, yes, in lovemaking.
But then I imagine some guys,even in the wild man workshop,
there's still that little blipof like oh God, what is this?
(35:53):
Ok, you're like.
What will people think of me?
Or does this mean I'm an unsafeman?
Or does this mean I'm an unsafeman?
You know, I'd imagine at thein-person wild man event the
container is set to experiencethat thing specifically, which
is fucking awesome and sometimesneeded.
And I know, in sex sometimesthe fear is oh, if I become the
wild man, then I'm an unsafe,I'm the unhealthy, toxic,
(36:14):
whatever masculine.
I don't believe in that word,but I know it's like it was said
so much that it has gotteninfused into some people's
psyches, you know.
So I just want to acknowledgeand empathize with that fear and
also say that the world reallywants it Right and I think on
behalf.
Jeremy Schewe (36:31):
You know there's a lot of trauma in our culture,
both in women and men, some ofit, you know, coming from all
different places, and so forsome women or men, whoever you
know, whatever, this lovershipis related to.
There's a there's certainthresholds that can be that need
(36:51):
to be crossed before that beingcan be released, and so I think
that's another really importantpart of doing men's work.
You're just, you know, bringingthat back to your bed and your
lover or to your business world,but it's recognizing that that
wild feral energy, misdirectedor undirected, can be very
(37:12):
harmful, and that's where a lot,of, a lot of the the women's
deep traumatic experiences comefrom.
Taylor Johnson (37:21):
Yeah.
Jeremy Schewe (37:22):
And so I feel like it's really important to
have containers like what youjust did out West, what we do
with wild men here in theSouthern Appalachian mountains,
um, what they do with themankind project, like there are
all these amazing containersthat allow men that have been
buried, suppressed and crushedby their parents or other
(37:44):
authorities or however in theirmental construct that appears
like to be able to start tosafely come out and try to
express aspects of self, becausethat can also go really far
south, in the other direction,where it's like oh my gosh, I've
never touched this part.
And then they go home and theyhurt their partner right,
because, a their partner's notused to it, or, b their partner
(38:06):
may deeply want that, but she orhe may also be coming from a
place of sexual trauma, abuse,and so there's a lot of work
that needs to be done betweenthem, as well as individuals,
before that truly can come out,I mean so this is the
integration of the wild.
Taylor Johnson (38:27):
That's right, like that is the work.
To integrate this, like, ah,yes, with your lover, with your
work, in a practical way, yes,you know.
And then to make the jump towork like you're not going to
show up to a boardroom meetingor to a place with your
employees and be like all right,we're going to talk about the
ecological sensors and you know,scream, maybe you do, I don't
(38:47):
know.
Seems like it might freak somepeople out.
Could show up in those meetings, tuned into and tapped into
that place internally and thenchannel it through action and
presence and consciousness withthe people that you're with in a
generative way that positivelyuplifts people 100.
Jeremy Schewe (39:11):
Yeah, I think that that is the art of the
refinement of this particulartype of of archetype and it, you
know, in terms of playing withtwo major archetypes the wild
man and the king archetype, likethey can't exist without the
other.
A twisted uh, wild man willcreate a twisted king, a twisted
(39:31):
king will create a twisted wildman, or will twist the energy
that the current of belongingand place nature, nature,
thought, leadership can then getmorphed and turned into
something that is an abstractionfrom the true root of the
individual current movingthrough each man.
Taylor Johnson (39:53):
Yeah, let's pivot again, because you said
something that came up I forgetwhere it was recently I got into
this conversation and it seemsjuicy and it relates.
You mentioned the kingarchetype and there are a lot of
people these days who will usethat archetype and use the queen
(40:15):
archetype too, and refer likeI'm building my kingdom or I'm
building my queendom, and Ithink there's value to that.
And the conversation that washappening was could it also be
problematic to orient towardsthat?
I have what's?
How do I say this?
Like saying I'm in my kingarchetype before actually being
(40:39):
there, like what are theproblems that that creates?
And is there another way to say, like I'm working towards that
or I'm working on my likebuilding this thing, or do you?
You see what I'm saying?
Jeremy Schewe (40:49):
there there's a dissonance between I think I'm
just going to run with it whereit takes me instead of like
trying to pigeon my whole myselfinto like, the thing that comes
alive for me is is for everyonelistening to this, for you and
I to remember is that, if we'regoing to use the word archetype,
of course that sets up astructure in our minds.
Already we're talking aboutpsychology and so we're talking
(41:12):
about an aspect that we'realigning to and that there are
many voices there and that aking without a council exists in
a nebulous place that can bedestructive, no matter how
positively and tenfold thebeginning place of the root, of
where that concept of growinginto king grows from.
(41:34):
Energy is energy.
It doesn't just appear, I meanin the 21st century, you know,
with many people being removedfrom nature and the environment
and actual resources, like everydollar that is spent is in some
way connected to somethingtangible at the earth level
(41:54):
somewhere, somewhere somethingwas extracted, somewhere
something was lost so that itcould be gained somewhere else.
So a king functioning withoutthe voice of the entire council,
without the queen, without theprincess, without the sage,
without the wild man, withoutthe warrior, with, etc.
Etc.
We can you know, there'shundreds of archetypes.
(42:15):
Many of them are major, likewhat they would call in the
terrarium, the major arcana,like the major players.
But these major archetypes allneed to be a part of decision
making, and you know, plenty ofhistory has shown us that when a
, an emperor or king does notlisten to counsel, the amount of
(42:36):
chaos and destruction it bringsinto the world is exorbitant.
Taylor Johnson (42:42):
Yeah, huge, huge .
I like that.
Thanks for taking that, thatdirection.
Yeah, that's the.
Yeah, maybe, maybe that's thepiece, because, well, that is a
massive piece and there havebeen all these articles and I
think a big, even one of the Iforget which health medical body
or whatever it was like made adeclaration in the past few
(43:03):
years that loneliness andisolation is actually like the
big epidemic that's going onright now.
You know, like people just feeldisconnected, people aren't
having good communityexperiences, people have a hard
time finding friends andbuilding friends, and so there's
that like, where is the council, you know, and the importance
of that feels really, reallyimportant, both for this
(43:25):
archetype and for the world, youknow.
So thanks for bringing that inBecause, yeah, I've noticed even
in myself, playing with thoseenergies, that when, like I can,
as the trope goes goes, you cango very fast alone that's right
or you can go much farther inconnection with other people.
(43:46):
Yes, yes let's take a breath tothat yes.
I love the sound of those birds.
So let me consult my list.
(44:07):
We've really talked about mostof the things on my list, which
is great.
I'm wondering, just to givepeople an option, if you could
give we've already talked aboutit some, but like, what are
three things that you found arereally helpful for guys to
(44:28):
connect with this part ofthemselves?
What can somebody do afterlistening to this today in their
own world?
Jeremy Schewe (44:32):
Yeah, I think that the probably the most
important thing is the listeningto self and respect too is the
listening to self and respecttoo.
So, again, not isolatingourselves from the world, not
isolating ourselves from thevarious voices of reason or
excitement or illumination thatcome to us, but through
(44:57):
introspection, reflection,questioning the deeper why
behind things.
I mean I love Simon Sinek'swhole how, what you know like
talk that he gave on TED Talkyears ago, because it really
helps the focus in on, like themost important thing is why
you're doing it.
So, through introspection,developing a relationship with
(45:22):
the deeper, why, moving withpurpose, like when we do a
firewalk at wild man, likethat's one of the biggest
teachings behind it is like youknow, here's something that's
over a thousand degrees, yourfeet are made out of skin.
Taylor Johnson (45:38):
You know like does it make sense?
Jeremy Schewe (45:41):
You're going to.
You know, like, move withpurpose across, like walking a
pilgrimage was like an extendedversion of that.
I never thought walking apilgrimage would be as mentally
and spiritually challenging asit was, but like hot feet for
bricks or bricks for feet, likeare basically what I felt at the
end of the first few days andthat experience of having to
(46:05):
move through something andfinding that deeper purpose
through the discipline, throughthe introspection.
So I'd say that's probably themost important thing.
I think the second thing that Iwould bring is the willingness
to take risks.
I mean, everyone has adifferent risk tolerance.
Everyone has their differentfinancial plans and what types
(46:28):
of things they invest in.
The same thing goes for how weengage with the world.
You know, like you and I mighthave similar risk tolerances.
You know somebody else that I'mtalking to might have a super
low risk tolerance.
Like.
(46:48):
So, having again understandingof who you are and then, once
you have an understanding of whoyou are, what you're willing to
do with that is reallyimportant, because then that is
what will project us into theworld, bring us to the physical
experiences, the crossroads withother humans, to use a
hunter-gatherer terminology.
To use a hunter-gathererterminology, like we come to the
crossroads and we exchangeinformation and then we go out
more informed and able tocomplete certain tasks in a
(47:11):
different and a hybridized way.
So I feel like that's probablythe second most important thing.
Taylor Johnson (47:19):
Third, Just a note on those first two things.
Also, what I'm hearing is it'simportant to not just be all up
in your technology and phone andactually take a pause from the
input to be able to do thosethings.
Jeremy Schewe (47:31):
Sounds like Inhale, exhale.
We have to do both, and thesame thing goes with our minds,
and we might.
Unless somebody has has a, whatdo they call it?
Obviously I don't have it, youknow, like a photographic memory
, yeah, where they remembereverything that they ingest.
Very, very few people have that.
(47:52):
The difference of having accessto information constantly
allows most people to actuallynot know anything.
So my invitation is do what ittakes to embody it, become it,
memorize things, do certaintypes of do math problems,
practice memorization of poetryso you can practice the
(48:17):
memorization of patterns,because the same ways our minds
encapsulate and harnessinformation from our
surroundings, as well as theabstractions of just human
interactions or internetinteractions, information yeah,
awesome, thanks for that.
Taylor Johnson (48:35):
Yeah, and I'll add this one to really encourage
you listening right now too toalso consider going to some
in-person men's program, becausewe can do all kinds of stuff
alone.
I can walk barefoot, we canwork out, we can scream, we can
(48:56):
do all that.
But there's often a certainsort of capacity that we're
limited by with just being withourself, with doing this kind of
work in particular.
And then going to an experienceor a container where the point
is to explore this kind ofenergy and to cultivate it and
to become familiar with it andto have it be a generative life
(49:19):
giving thing Like that'sprofound, you know, that's
profound, and a lot of times weI'd say more often than we could
ever even think we need to bearound other people doing that
kind of work so that we canactually embody it ourselves.
There becomes this sort ofamplification effect or
resonance that happens where we,through the process of doing
(49:40):
the work, like we give eachother permission to go deeper
and then we go deeper, and thenyou give permission to somebody
else to go deeper and then theytake you there too, and because
you're in that in-personcontainer, it's just, it's so
potent and profound and I findthat if I go too long without
doing some sort of in-personwork around cultivating some
form of aliveness maybe that'sqigong or sexuality or men's
(50:03):
work or something I start tofeel like not great, you know, I
lose that zest, I lose thataliveness, I lose that certain
spark that, like the worldthere's, like the world can just
suck it out of us, you know.
So coming into in-personexperiences that are generative
for this kind of thing can bereally powerful.
(50:24):
Jerry's been leading one for 10years yes, and there are other
options too, like you mentioned,the mankind project there's a
bunch of other things, but Iwould say that should be really
highly up on the list toodefinitely embodiment yes so
when is yours coming up?
Jeremy Schewe (50:40):
September 13th to 15th September 13th to 15th.
So this is our 10th annual,very excited for that.
Taylor Johnson (50:47):
That's awesome.
And that happens here in theAsheville Mountains, in the
mountains outside of Asheville.
Cool, and can you say a littlebit more about it, or do you
want to keep it secret?
Jeremy Schewe (50:55):
I mean, I think I spoke a little bit to it
earlier, but you firewalk, yeah,so we have these.
You know we really embrace thefour five element model and so
it's.
It's, you know, multi-faith,like anyone can come.
We have all different types ofpeople from religious and
spiritual backgrounds, as wellas people who are agnostic or
(51:16):
Gnostic.
You know, like really important, Like there's so many ways to
engage, but we encapsulate it inthe sense of creating these
direct, embodied experiences inrespect to the four elements, or
often we tie in the spiritelement as well, With some time
for integration and processingand deeper embodiment.
(51:37):
Outside of those contexts, weusually have men come in and
share morning sessions withQigong, or how to make friction
fires or Kung Fu, foresttraining, et cetera, which makes
it really fun.
It gives everybody anopportunity to dive in yoga,
Qigong.
Taylor Johnson (51:53):
Kung Fu forest training.
Yes, I wasn't there the year Iwent.
That's not awesome.
No, that's true.
Jeremy Schewe (51:59):
It's good fun.
So, yeah, that's the essence ofit.
Yeah so, fireworks, liveburials, oath ceremonies
underneath waterfalls, crawlinginto caves, walking covered with
mud through the forest at night, like just things that really
invite us to connect to theearth and to share that
(52:21):
experience with our brothers.
Taylor Johnson (52:22):
Yeah.
So if you're listening and notseeing this on YouTube, I think
you just missed something reallyimportant.
That I want to highlight too isthat when Jeremy just started
talking about this, there waslike he smiled.
You know, there's a smilecoming up in this other sense of
aliveness, in the playfulness,and I know we've been talking
about all these serious concepts, but also just to name here at
the end like play seems like areally important part of it too
(52:45):
Like it's not just like you'reseriously like in the mud doing
like the deep hard work, andit's like arduous the whole time
, constantly.
There's also this element ofgrowth and learning through play
.
That seems really important, Imean.
Jeremy Schewe (52:57):
I have a blast the whole time.
Yeah, I'm at play.
Taylor Johnson (53:02):
Awesome, yes, cool, yeah, I just wanted to
name that because I can fallinto that trap too and I need to
remember.
Oh yeah, play is cruciallyimportant as a human to thrive
Like I need that.
Jeremy Schewe (53:12):
I need that the fool is a crucial archetype.
Taylor Johnson (53:15):
Yeah, yeah, totally so.
We'll put the links to the wildman retreat in the show notes,
links to your website too, andjust to name it too.
Also, jeremy, you just a bookof yours came out this year.
I'll show it on the YouTubeversion.
But yeah, I wanted to speak tothis too briefly, just because
it's really interesting to me.
At the workshop where I was amonth ago, it was a men's
(53:38):
workshop and one of the thingsthat one of the leaders spoke to
was hey, by the way, if youwant to connect with different,
deeper spiritual traditions orshamanic lineages, you don't
necessarily need to go to SouthAmerica and drink ayahuasca
nothing wrong with that.
But if you're of Europeandescent, there are actually
certain lineages of spiritualtraditions that were there that
(54:01):
went deep and were shamanic andwere buried and covered up by a
lot of colonialism and thechurch etc.
Not saying that to bashanything, but just to say that
there is, there are thesetraditions and it sounds like
this book is an exploration ofsome of those.
Very much so.
Jeremy Schewe (54:17):
So, as my relationship with the wild man
grew, or, as I said earlier inthe Irish, the man of the forest
, the green man.
As that relationship evolved inme, I very quickly came to an
understanding of like I hadstepped out of the social,
(54:39):
environmental Catholicupbringing that I had grown up
with and was finding answers inHinduism and Buddhism, in the
red path.
And while studying with uh, aHoshima woman in Flagstaff,
arizona, in my late teens andearly twenties, the door was
(55:00):
opened inside of myconsciousness, through this
woman and the work that we weredoing, to my own heritage, which
my heritage is from my mom'sside is Irish and German and
from dad's side is Swiss andGerman.
So there was this hunger to goback to, as Delfina, my first
teacher, said to me.
She said you need to go back towhere your people come from,
(55:22):
and this is the journey of theunfolding, of the discovery, the
remembrance and the teasing outof the modern Irish mind, the
depth of the traditions that arestill conveyed in contemporary
Irish culture that I think mostIrish don't even recognize as
(55:47):
being a continuum of those.
Many of them do, of course, butsome it's just a part of a way
of life, and so this book isthat exploration of, like
understanding a cultural andhistoric context, but also like
how are the different places innature and the ancient
megalithic complexes?
How have those been engagedtraditionally, how did they rise
(56:10):
in the ancient oral traditionsthat were transcribed into
written traditions in the earlyChristian era, and thus
presenting a template or a codexthat the modern mind can engage
with our Irish Celtic heritageand embrace that in a really
beautiful way.
Taylor Johnson (56:30):
I'm excited to dive into this, one because I'm
interested in that topic and twobecause I'm excited to hear
about your journey a little bitmore.
And just to close with anappreciation I really appreciate
how you're somebody who has afoot in the realm of the
spiritual and the wild and alsoin the realm of business and the
world, and that integration issuper important to me and I
think the world needs more ofthat.
So thank you for being thatperson, thank you for leading
(56:53):
the wild man retreats that youdo and doing this work, and
thanks for being here for thispodcast Really interesting,
great conversation.
I'm excited to share it withthe world and if you listening
or watching have any questionsfor us, please leave a comment
under the YouTube video.
I'll get back to you.
That's a great way to keep allthe comments in one place.
You can also shoot me an emailif you don't feel comfortable
with that, for whatever reason.
(57:13):
And, yeah, I'll put a link tothe book in your workshop, in
your website and the show notes.
And thank you again, jeremy.
So much, this has been awesome,great.
Thank you, taylor nice.
Jeremy Schewe (57:25):
Yeah, man, thank you, that was fun.
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