tina (00:00:00) - On today's episode of the Soul Aligned Self-care podcast, we have a special guest on. His name is Nathan Simmons, and he is a rapid change therapist and leadership coach. And we had such a beautiful, powerful conversation. I can't wait to share it with you. Let's get into it. Hey guys, before I get started, I just wanted to come on here and share with you something new that I just created for all of you. And it's very near and dear to my heart because it's something that I wish I had when I started my healing journey. And it's called the Soul Alliance Self-care circle. And inside of the circle, I share with you all of the different deep level and surface level self-care practices that I had to add into my life in order to heal. I also share with you the mindset shifts that I needed to make, and how to make them, and all the self-love practices that I had to start doing in order to really connect with myself and start healing. And my favorite part of the circle is sharing all of the somatic practices that I use in my everyday life to help my body heal, and to help reduce stress and anxiety and to thrive in my life.
tina (00:01:27) - And so I'm so excited to share this with you and some of the things that we do. We have weekly coaching calls. We have a weekly self-care practice that you can implement into your life that week. So it's like usually easy to implement. There'll be weekly journal prompts on that topic, weekly meditations, breathwork sessions, somatic practices to help your body heal, and weekly affirmations. And I always add wallpaper to that meaning. I create a beautiful wallpaper that you could add to your phone with the affirmations on it in order to help implement those things. And so I'm so excited, to share this with you. And like I said, there's a ten day free trial right now so you can go on the inside and see everything that's been going on in there. So you could see if it's something that you want to add into your life weekly in the future. What I would like to do is also add guest speakers to come in to help us. and there will definitely be bonus masterclasses, workshops and challenges that we do throughout the year.
tina (00:02:36) - And lastly, I really want to implement this either. Probably next year is having like a group retreat where we can meet in person and not necessarily for like healing, but more for like connection and just fun. And so that's basically what's inside of the soul aligned self-care circle. Like I said, there is a free ten day trial right now, so check out, go look for the link in the show notes and come join me in there and see what it's like. Okay guys, now let's get into the podcast. You're listening to the Soul Aligned Self-care podcast. I'm your host, Tina Stinson, and I had a stroke at the age of 39 from stress and burnout that shook my world. Now I'm laying it all out. The deep level self-care practices and mindset shifts that I needed that kept me healthy, balanced, and thriving. Join me in this intimate space as we explore healing, resilience, and the soul's journey to alignment. This is where real conversations about deep level self-care happen. Let's get into it.
tina (00:03:56) - Hello. Welcome, Nathan, to the Soul Aligned Self-care podcast. How are you doing today?
Nathan (00:04:01) - Pretty good.
Nathan (00:04:02) - Thank you for having me on here. It's like an absolute joy and a privilege and a pleasure to be here. All wrapped up in one. Thank you.
tina (00:04:08) - Oh, yeah. Thanks for coming on. I always appreciate all the different perspectives when it comes to self healing and any type of modality that can help people heal themselves. to get started, could you tell us a little bit about yourself and then maybe go into your journey if you'd like to share that?
Nathan (00:04:28) - Yeah, 100%. So a little bit about me. I'm a qualified leadership coach. I've been, I'm trained 14, 15 years ago. I've studied NLP, I've studied psychotherapy, studied lots of coaching practices, and then in the last four years I trained in a modality of hypnotherapy called Free Mind Rapid Change hypnotherapy. And we spend about 80, maybe 90% of our stuff, of our time really looking at developmental trauma in a child work, shadow integration, talking to the parts of the subconscious mind that are running programs that really keep us stuck in certain ways and certain habits without us even realizing we're doing it.
Nathan (00:05:10) - So when I'm doing that, work, is really looking at anything that causes you damage, holds you back, causes someone else damage. These, for me, are real indicators that there's something else going on behind the scenes that needs to be looked at. So this is you know, this is kind of what I'm doing in a nutshell.
tina (00:05:29) - I love that whenever I talk to other coaches, I'm always like, yeah, I could use a little bit of that. Like I'm always I always feel a little like called out like I'm like, you know? And then at the same time I'm like, oh, I would like to do that. so share with us how you how how you went along this journey because you mentioned the leadership coach and then the help and then the psychotherapy. And you mentioned a lot of things there. And I would assume that what you're doing right now could be very helpful in leadership. But yeah. Tell us a little bit about your journey. Yeah.
Nathan (00:06:03) - just to kind of really punctuate that, really helpful in the leadership space for the leaders that are prepared to go into that place of vulnerability, honesty, transparency, self-awareness, self-respect and self-love.
Nathan (00:06:15) - because of the way that leadership is so masculine and so wonky in it's masculine. It's, you know, we we are led to believe as men, predominantly as men in the masculine that we can outthink our way out of these problems, that we can outwork our demons. And then we wonder why the world is in such a mess. As a result of that. So yes, it's really necessary. my journey to that, understanding those being long and windy on 46, I've got a little bit of experience and a little bit of water under the bridge. but there's lots of different aspects that have come into play that have given me this realization when I was around about eight years old. I woke up with severe abdominal pains and promptly rushed to hospital. And it turned out I had a perforated appendix. So at eight nine years old, they whipped out my appendix. It was a standard procedure. It was a routine operation with a routine amount of time to get better, and I didn't, and it just continued to get worse.
Nathan (00:07:14) - So the abdominal pains continued on going backwards and forwards to hospital and diagnosed with trapped gas and this, that and the other. But nothing was getting better. And this was going on for a few months. And then randomly and luckily I went into the GP, saw a doctor that we don't normally see and he said, you've got Crohn's disease, you need to get to hospital and get two pints of blood put in. You spent a year and this was huge. I mean, in the late 80s it was believed that only girls got Crohn's disease. It was a hormonal dysregulation. and to have found a boy with Crohn's disease was very random. the probability was really low. But this guy just took one look at me and said, you've got Crohn's, go to hospital, get checked in under a surgeon, get the work done. So I spent about a year in hospital going backwards and forwards, having abdominal reconstructions, having the infected parts of my intestine removed and my kidney deflated, had a pipe in the neck.
Nathan (00:08:13) - And then this is all before the age of kind of 11, ten and a half, 11.
tina (00:08:17) - My goodness.
Nathan (00:08:18) - So this was a lot, and this was the late 80s. And this is important to understand. This was kind of quite a while ago now. Now, in the grand scheme of things, we all think the 80s was just yesterday and bad music and bad.
tina (00:08:30) - Absolutely. It was just yesterday.
Nathan (00:08:32) - It was quite a long time ago. But it is. but then my mum did a load of research. This is before Google. This is really before the internet. So my main player here, my mum's more powerful than Google. She goes and does loads of research and she finds out all this information about what's going on for me. And we find a reflex ologist that's really switched on to this, who's also a kinesiology as well. So we did the allergy testing and she didn't treat Crohn's as a disease. So this is really important for a lot of people that experience autoimmune dysregulation.
Nathan (00:09:04) - Because I don't believe it's a disorder because nothing is disordered. Everything is completely ordered based on the experiences that we've had. So we have these dis regulations. And this woman didn't treat it as a disease. She treated it as a symptom of something else that was going on. And that's something else that was going on was actually a yeast imbalance, a yeast internal yeast infection. Candida all becomes. And this is also shown in scientific papers, that 70% of all the cases of colitis in the UK, colitis and Crohn's, showed a radical increase of Candida yeast infection in their bowel. Crohn's is an inflammation. Inflammation is actually a symptom. It's not a disease. So then I spent two years on a diet. I've got a really focused diet. No dairy. I was eating drinking live goat's milk yogurt. That was the only dairy I was having. No sugar, no dried fruits. All of these things to reset my microbiome. And I'm now 46. I've never had a flare up since. I'm not medicated.
Nathan (00:10:08) - I don't have Crohn's disease because it's not a disease, but so many people are told it is that it is incurable and they'll be back in hospital. And there's this this story that is proliferated. And there's a reason why I share that as the kind of the core thing. and I'll, we'll get to that with the, with the, with the hypnotherapy aspect. I then go to school, I then get back to school. I experience severe bullying. I then became a bully because I was bullied. I didn't know what to do with this. I thought at 13 if I told my brother that I was getting beaten up, that I would feel less of a man because he was the toughest kid in school and my dad was a police officer, and if I told him, I would feel emasculated. So I bottled it all up. And that anger then became my way of living. so when I became a bully, I became angry and aggressive to lots of other people and got myself a reputation for being this and that.
Nathan (00:11:00) - But then that then turned into drug use. so it started with marijuana and ecstasy. Quite a lot of teenagers were using. I went travelling eventually and had an amazing time. But then when I came back, it really I it's almost the way of coming back to the life that I had left and with all these fresh experiences became too much. The contrast became too, too poignant and too much to bear. And I went on an eight month, drug fueled bender and at the end of the eight months, overdosed and took over 16 ecstasy tablets and five grams of cocaine in one evening.
tina (00:11:39) - Oh my gosh. Yeah.
Nathan (00:11:40) - And my, my life took a radical turn at this point. The only reason I survived that was because my tolerance level had been building up over the eight months, but still psychologically, physiologically, emotionally, spiritually, everything just fell apart. and I just didn't see it coming. I just wasn't listening to the signals. So I separate I severed all my relationships with all the toxic people in my life.
Nathan (00:12:03) - I stopped doing drugs literally overnight. I just realized that this isn't who I am. This isn't my soul's path. It's not my purpose. I either carry on and I'll be dead or in prison. I had a cocaine deal on the table at the time. or a possible cocaine deal on the table. I was just like, okay, well, what path do I want to take in? and I knew it just wasn't for me. It just wasn't the route I was meant to be going down. and yes, there was lots of other life lessons and things to learn. But in truth, what was really happening is I was just struggling with life. I was struggling with feeling like I was fitting in, like I wasn't good enough, like something was missing the whole time. I constantly challenged authority on what I perceived as normal life and just didn't feel good about it. I felt like a square peg in a round hole all the time. and it just kind of ground me down And in between that, I'm also seeking answers.
Nathan (00:12:56) - I'm starting to study psychotherapy. I'm starting to study, eastern philosophy and the daodejing and kung fu and all these sorts of things and trying to explore and just aware that there's something else going on here. aware, aware that there's more to me for me to give, but then still trying to fit into a society that I don't feel like I fit in. So I'm working for different organizations corporate 9 to 5, working in banking and car insurance. I've lived in Amsterdam for four years with my partner, who we're now on. We're married and we moved back to the UK together. I was at one point even managing the customer services for Time and Fortune magazine and National Geographic while I was living in Amsterdam. So I was, leading their contact center there. So I've had some great experiences, but something was always off kilter. and when I came back to the UK, I really started exploring what was going on in business. And as I was starting to learn the coaching techniques around leadership and looking at leadership psychology, I was starting to see that to understand that there was a story, there was a theme that was running that was behind what was going on on the facade.
Nathan (00:14:07) - And with the coaching, I could take people to a certain point with the NLP and the NLP that I know and the bit of psychotherapy understanding, I could take them to a certain place, but I couldn't take them to that next layer deeper safely. In order to do that piece of work and really transform the habit or the behavior. So I'm kind of observing this while getting really frustrated with my so-called leaders and their incompetence and their inability and my frustration at me not being able to communicate myself properly because I was getting angry with the world constantly. And it's constant dynamic. And as I was exploring leadership and looking at, okay, what makes good leaders and how we communicate and where the gaps are and all of these things, trying to a phrase that I learned from one of my teachers is, the thing that you lack is the thing that you're meant to give.
tina (00:14:57) - Nice. Yeah, that makes sense.
Nathan (00:14:59) - Yeah. So when I'm looking at the world and pointing my finger at everyone else going, you're a crap manager, you're a rubbish leader, you're this, you're that.
Nathan (00:15:06) - It's like, well, so busy pointing my finger at everybody else. I'm not actually thinking, what can I do about this to make this better. And this is the route I started to go down and start to shift the perspective. And I got really into it. And then I started to explore the idea of psychedelics. And how could we use psychedelics for productivity and support growth and wholehearted leadership. So I started exploring this for myself as well. My own mental health, my own wellbeing. I thought this would be a great, great experience, a great experiment. And as I dropped into that space and I started doing some work with some of the psychedelic medicines and the technologies, I then found all of my trauma. I then found the stories that I hadn't dealt with on all the stories that have been running on loops in the background onto me in certain directions and certain habits, behaviors that weren't helpful. So I realized then that if we want to get to the productivity piece and we want to get to this novelty, this new possibility and leadership and, and how we're showing out that actually, we have to clear down all the clutter that's sitting in the back of the house, weighing us down.
Nathan (00:16:14) - and this became one new kind of this became my new paradigm and my new way of looking things. And then I trained in hypnotherapy with Tom versus Meyer, my teacher. And how he teaches hypnotherapy is very much like it's a psychedelic. He doesn't mean it to be like that. But he believes in oneness. He believes in unified consciousness, the unified field. He believes that you and I, you know you are, I am you. You are me. I am the lamp. You are the cosmic pineapple at the middle of the universe. All of these things, and we are all of that. And he that's the way he teaches it. So what he was explaining to us in a hypnotherapy space was what I had experienced in a psychedelic space. And as he was explaining, I'm starting to put all these building blocks together of bits of Gabor Mattei and Bessel van der Kolk. The body keeps the score and all these different dynamics, and what Tom's teaching about how to connect with the inner child in a really deep, really profound way.
Nathan (00:17:11) - All the building blocks just dropped into place. You know, auto immune dysregulation really is the result of trauma. How? There's a moment in our childhood that turns into a thought, which turns into a habit, which turns into a diagnosis, which turns into illness or incident, that we have all these people wandering around the world measuring their worth based on how they were treated. And we're running these programs using operating procedures written by five year olds to keep us safe. Yeah, yeah. And then wondering why our relationships keep falling apart. so this is the work that I really do with the hypnotherapy, and it's about really creating safe spaces so people can actually have a conversation with that part of themselves in a complete way. And I'm really heart centered way.
tina (00:18:03) - Yeah, I that was I never thought I was gonna learn so much about Crohn's, like, on this talking with you, but that was. I feel like that's, that is going to help a lot of people. you know, because and sometimes I wonder, you know, because so many people all over the world are.
tina (00:18:25) - I would call that, like, misdiagnosed, you know, from when you were little and think about everything that you went through, you know, and how different the world would be is if we were all on the same page, you know, if we were all, you know, diagnosed correctly and so that we could heal, you know, it's just amazing because I think of my mom always comes into my head because she actually had Crohn's, but she also had cancer. And some of the things that, you know, that she was told, you know, from the healthcare professionals was just ridiculous. So I always like, think about that, like if there was just a better connection and everybody worked together to help us heal correctly, you know, and when you said Crohn's is, it's not a disease, it's like a symptom of something else. And, I mean, that makes sense to look at anything that's causing inflammation in the body. You know, it is a symptom. But to go back into the hypnotherapy, because I'm very curious about this cause that you said it was rapid change.
tina (00:19:28) - So free mind, rapid change therapy. And so what's the difference between that and just regular hypnotherapy. Is there a big difference.
Nathan (00:19:36) - The clinical when flow in speech models I use this a lot because they're just this is the language that we use. But clinical hypnotherapy tends to be more. Tends to be more organised kind of towards the stopping smoking weight loss. And there's a set formula. And we're just going to switch this on and switch this off etc.. Now the way that we kind of look at it is everything has a root cause. And it's not necessarily that you need to go and relive or re-experience that root cause, but there will be a moment in time that has created a create. There's a choice moment which we don't even realize there is. It creates this pivot moment where we use something like an addiction in order to self-soothe, self-medicate, something that we're trying to avoid. And when we do this with the inner child work I use for me, I use my example of when I started smoking, I started smoking when I was 13 years old, and I was using it because I always felt like the odd kid out.
Nathan (00:20:36) - I wanted to be part of the cool kids. I wanted to be accepted. So very often with smoking it is about acceptance. But when we can go back to that moment of speaking to the 13 year old, part of me that wanting to feel acceptance or is still looking for acceptance, the part of me that still using certain things potentially and actually we can give that part of our psyche the reassurance that everything is okay, that it's over. You have everything you need, you that I am the safe person to be with my adult self. That I am the the, the, the safe environment and the safe container that that need or that perceived need to go and do something just downgrades and start to dissolve by itself. So more often than not, I'd say 99.9% of the time when we're dealing with habits, illnesses, behaviors, relationship dynamics, things that aren't quite where you feel they need to be. There will be an originating moment where we can just go and give that reassurance to that younger version of ourselves that still is, that is still holding that belief structure.
tina (00:21:44) - Yeah. So when it comes to leadership, so as you said leadership can be very masculine right. And so do you see the same types of things in women and men when it comes to leadership. Because even though like it's still no matter no matter who is in that leadership role, whether it's a man or a woman, it's still going to be very masculine. But do you see the same challenges between men and women?
Nathan (00:22:16) - Predominantly is the masculine and there is. It's not that the masculine is bad, it's just when it's out of balance, there's a need for men to bring their feminine, and there's also a need for women to bring their feminine in and vice versa, because it might make sure there is that balance. We need that feminine creativity. We need that creative chaos. Occasionally we need the emotional content. And then when we go too far the other way and we go too far into the masculine, it becomes too rigid, it becomes too fixed, it becomes too intellectual, and we lack some of that stuff.
Nathan (00:22:50) - And again, when we kind of looking at the what was missed in childhood and for men and women, it's, it's it's still the similar things. It's the is the mommy and daddy issues that we have there. So I did did mom see me. Did dad see me. Did I get what I need in that moment? Was I ignored? Did I feel I was it was I sent to private school. That's a great source of trauma for children. Was I sent to private school at five years old and and I've heard this categorically. The son was dropped off five years old and the doorstep of the thing. And the dad said, right, we need to go now. Got back in the car and drove off because from my interpretation of the story, the father was getting emotional and he didn't want his son to actually see him being emotional drove off. But then that leaves a completely different emotional imprint on the child. And as we grow up, we then carry that forward, and we then turn that into how we show up at work and how we succeed.
Nathan (00:23:48) - Please look at me, daddy. I'm a good little boy. I did everything you asked me to, but actually all I needed was a hug when I was five and I didn't want to be sent to private school. So it's coming up. It's, it's the same kind of root cause but it comes up in different ways and different stories of overall authoritative parents over disciplining absent parents, mental health challenges and our parents these sorts of things. And then for the women, they tend they feel like they have to bring their masculine to bear in order to be seen, heard. they have to do all the things that were done to them in order to not have it done to them, or to do it to somebody else. It's almost like that the bullied becomes the bully, and I have to get up the pecking order in order to survive.
Speaker 4 (00:24:32) - Yes.
tina (00:24:33) - Yeah.
Nathan (00:24:34) - But then we end up in this very, very masculine state again. Yeah. Lacking that, that necessary softness that that comes when we are in that creative space.
Nathan (00:24:45) - And it's not about women being completely soft. There is there was a, there was a, there was a gentleness that comes with that, that is necessary at times. And there's also the wild feminine when she goes fully into her dark moon Lilith kind of savagery. That is also necessary at times as well. So it's just finding the balance of that and allowing each of those components to come, to come to fruition.
tina (00:25:07) - Yeah, absolutely. Do you find that when it comes to men that, do you feel any kind of a shift where it's becoming more acceptable for men? by themselves and their thought process to be more emotional, to be more in the feminine, because I feel like, there is definitely a huge that is hugely out of balance right now where, I don't ever judge men this way, so I don't want to make it like everybody judges men this way, but I feel like that's how they're raised. They're raised, as you said, not to show their emotions. And and you're weak if you show your emotions and you have to be tough and you have to be this certain type of person that's almost always in there, masculine.
tina (00:25:52) - But I feel like I feel like there's starting to be a shift. But how do you see a shift?
Nathan (00:25:58) - There is a shift, and we're having this conversation less than a week after me, coming back from a men's retreat with 30 men, sat around fires talking about our emotions and climbing mountains and screaming at the universe and crying at each other and grief, attending and exploring the archetypes of our subconscious mind. So there is. There is that happening? There are men, including myself, that are kind of looking at their old habits and behaviors. Have they been complicit in what's going on in the world and in truth, all men in some way, shape or form. And I've been exploring this again over the last few weeks, have been complicit in what has gone on over the centuries. We feel it at a cellular level. We feel it in our essence. We're aware of what we have done generationally to women all the way through the the witch trials, all the way through and back and beyond that.
Nathan (00:26:51) - And we've been educated in certain kinds of ways to treat and mean keep them keen to show up in a kind of way to get girls and women and then objectified and become conquests. And we've heard friends of ours when we were younger telling jokes or saying things, and we've laughed along with it, so therefore we've become part of it. And sometimes we question our own behaviors and what we've done in our adolescence etc., because we didn't have those role models and things that are now coming up is things like the MeToo movement and those things. It then makes us put us a magnifying glass over our own behaviors. So it's really kind of how do we explore that without shaming ourselves? Yeah. Being able to to kind of honor the stepping forward and go, okay, cool. There's something that I need to own here. And it's it's very challenging for a lot of men. A lot of men are feeling called out rather than called forward. Yeah. And and they're questioning that if they do step forward and do something, is someone going to point a finger at something they did when they were 18, 19.
Nathan (00:27:56) - And that's not to this value something. If they've done something that is criminal or non-consensual, then that needs to be reconciled 100% and at the same time we need to hold ourselves to account where actually certain things I said or did in my teenage years aren't okay. And then and get more comfortable with that. So that actually when we see things happening around us we can say that's not okay. That needs to stop. Yeah. And and that requires a level of vulnerability to come forward for men as well to be able to do that. but on the other side of it, it's easier not to, but because of what we've been educated, it's less painful to do that. We can over intellectualize it. We can think our way out of the problem. We can push it down and depress that old memory, or that old thought or that old habit and not deal with it. But that's the thing that's actually going to kill us.
tina (00:28:50) - Yeah. It takes, it takes a lot of work I think for for men to step forward and call out a system that has been pretty much entitling them their whole, you know, their whole life.
tina (00:29:03) - And so and that's why they don't feel the discomfort. That's why it's so hard for them to be aware of it. But when they actually become aware of it, I don't know if you're familiar with the, the, kind of viral movement on TikTok, choosing the the bear over the man in the woods. Yeah, that was the perfect example. And and you see, you really mostly see two different type of men on there, and one is defending themselves. How could you say this about me? You know, and then there's the other man. Well, don't you realize that, you know, it's just like, you know, gun safety. You don't know who's going to have the gun if you're in the United States, you know. So you have to always be just just assume that everybody has a gun. And it's the same thing with the man versus the bear. And when I really thought about it, because I'm really terrified of bears, I don't want to run into a bear.
tina (00:29:56) - hold on. You know, I just don't want to. And there's bears where I live when I, where I walk and stuff like that. But when it comes down to it, would I rather come across a bear in the woods or a man? Definitely a bear like a man would be a lot scarier. And I was like, that's you know, I never really thought about it. It's kind of funny.
Nathan (00:30:15) - Let me just take you to that for just two seconds, because I've been analyzing this from a little bit of a distance, and there's been certain things I wanted to write and share about that whole conversation. Okay. There's something that I'm observing even more on a bigger scale when When we experience trauma, and it's also remembering what Gabor Mattei says about trauma, trauma is and what happens to you. It's what happens inside of you as a result of what happens to you. And it's something that changes you psychologically and physiologically and causes you to change a habit or behavior in order to survive.
Nathan (00:30:47) - It's a survival mechanism. But when we are in that trauma state, it's it's it's like a huge amount of fear. We in that moment of trauma, we don't believe we're going to live. So the brain of the mind does everything it can to look after you. So we feel like we're going to die but you can't exist like that. So it then puts the habits and behaviors in place in order to give you some capacity to keep moving forward, but maintain that awareness on the inside. And what we actually when you boil it down there is actually only one trauma. And it doesn't matter whether it's physical, sexual, emotional or whatever. There is just one trauma that that sits underneath it or over it or depending on how you look at it. And that trauma is abandonment is like the innate human trauma of we think we're going to be pushed outside of the clan, outside of the tribe, and left in the wilds and eaten by sabertooth tigers. And when you speak to people that have been, victims of crimes and have been abused or whatever, when you boil it down, they just wish their mum or dad was there or someone there was there to help them and they weren't.
Nathan (00:31:55) - So when we go into that and we experience that separation and that severance that we have, we actually have four wounds. We, we filter our world through. And those four wounds are rejection, humiliation, betrayal and injustice. So what we end up doing is we end up rejecting people before they reject us. It's like, you know, when you go on a summer holiday and you and you have like one of those summer romances and, you know, you're getting to the last couple of days before the end and then you start getting all surly and moody with them so that, you know, so it's not you breaking up with them, it's them breaking up with you. So you got to. But yeah, it doesn't matter. We end up rejecting people so that we don't get rejected, but we end up feeling rejected. So the thing that we don't want, we end up getting. So we humiliate people before they humiliate us. We betray them before they betray us, and then we end up pointing our finger at the universe going, well, how unfair life is.
Nathan (00:32:48) - And that keeps us focusing outwards rather than inwards, where the actual pain exists, where the wound is. So when you look at the reactions of these men, what do you mean? What sort of bear? What are you talking about? This is a joke. Bah bah bah bah bah bah. And then you can start to hear them. Kind of the the the emotional intent behind the choice as a word, whether they're starting to humiliate the opinion of someone because they feel attacked, they start to reject the consensus that women would rather be, you know, meet a bear in the wild and a strange man. Yeah. And then they're starting to betray someone's opinion, and then they're starting to point the finger at the whole world and saying, well, this is really unfair. This is an all men and borough, and they're starting to get angry about it. I was like, okay, cool. So you really starting to see this flavor of this masculine wound starting to come out in this self-protective behavior.
Nathan (00:33:44) - About a hypothetical quandary about whether you'd rather meet a bear or a man. I mean, yeah, the ramifications are huge. And at the same time it's a hypothesis. And there's 100,000 men out there getting really upset about it. Yeah.
tina (00:33:56) - Yeah. You know, very telling. Unfortunately it is very telling. And but I think what I think what most men don't realize, and this is at least how I look at it, is how many experiences that women have had over their lifetimes, you know, whether they're young or old, that prove prove that the bar is safer over the man you know. And and even when you do run into a bear, most of the time, it turns out okay, you know, but it's, you know, what? Could we have so many experiences in our body holding on to, in our body that tell us that it's not safe to be around a strange, strange man? And I could I can't even count on my two hands how many terrible experiences that I've had with men.
tina (00:34:45) - And I feel like that's not abnormal. Like my experience is very common. And I don't think men realize, like if they sat down and talk to the women in their lives, whether it's their their mother, their sister, whoever, you know, their partner, that they they would I think they would realize how many experiences we've had because those experiences have never also been safe to share because they're not acknowledged, they're also not punished, you know, when it comes legally. And so and back in the day, like if you talk to your mother, for example, back in the day, you don't say anything like it's just kept quiet, you know, and, and most of the time still today. And so I think that if men just for a second could just take a step back and start asking those questions and becoming aware of how, how common it is to for women to experience this, that they would actually begin to understand a little bit more. And you know, when they say not all men, it kind of is all men.
tina (00:35:50) - Because if you're the type of person who knows you have that one friend who always acts like, like an imbecile and is disrespectful. And even if he's not doing anything legally wrong against women just the way he treats women, but you're not doing anything about it. You're like, oh, that's just Bob. You know? That's just how Bob is. You know? That's being a part of the problem, even on that small, minuscule level, you know? So but to like flip it over a little bit, talking about like, women and leadership roles and how I think what I was, I understood what you were trying to say earlier is when women feel like they have to almost like, overcompensate when they're in that masculine role where they have to treat others the way they they have been treated or the way they think they've been treated, or the way they feel they've been treated. And I've seen that over and over again, like they have to prove themselves. And I've run into that. When I actually used to work in when I wasn't self employed and I used to work, then that was back like a long time ago, like when I was in my 20s.
tina (00:36:52) - so how how does that how does that how do you work with that when you're working with leadership skills with women, how do you get them out of that? That's a tough one.
Nathan (00:37:05) - I think it is and it is. And it comes back to that vulnerability piece. And it's like, how safe do I feel to have my emotions? And I think there's a the slight difference with women is women in leadership positions in kind of the corporate space will separate that. And yet there will still be a level of emotional shit when you get them into an environment where it's easier to talk about emotions and things like that with other women. And there won't be that. It won't be so strict as men. Men just don't talk about it. Very rarely. Yeah. But the key thing is, is what is the belief structure that leads you to believe that you've got to be like that in that environment. And how do you find that balance. What part of you is is trying to prove something. What part of you is trying to get love and respect and acknowledgement.
Nathan (00:37:52) - Trying to create that significance. I think there's a Tony Robbins model. He talks about a couple of kind of teeter totters that they have the seesaws and on one end is love and connection. The other end is significance. And people tend to try and do one or the other, and they think in order to get love and connection, they have to give up their significance in the relationship or in order to get a significance, they have to give up on love and connection. And you hear so many people saying things like, well, I'm not here to make friends, and that's just not the truth. That's why it's called a company. Because you are in company with a bunch of other people and you're creating relationships and your business is built on relationship. So it's really stepping into that, that awareness of what's the story that's running part of you feels like they need to do that. How can you bring the strongest aspects of the masculine and the assertion and the get shit done God of behaviors? And also, how can you bring the best bits of wild, creative, feminine and the emotional content and the emotional awareness, and either bring them both together so that they're satyr lighting each other in harmony, or that you're able to switch them on and off as and when you need them.
Nathan (00:39:06) - Yeah, but if it's too much of 1 or 2 months or the other, you're going to end up with the same disc regulations that we often see in, in the wonky masculine in men, let alone in women.
tina (00:39:17) - Yeah, yeah. And I see some really beautiful examples of, you know, women leaders that are really bringing the feminine into it. And so I have I have some role models that I could look at of women that are doing that successfully. but until, you know, women that are in leadership roles can step into this, nothing's going to change. So the the system that they're fighting with, you know, or trying to portray, it's just it's they're just being a part of the problem. Also, if they're not willing to step in to to try to balance that and, change things for the better. I could definitely feel a shift of things changing, which feels really good, but, not fast enough as far as I'm concerned.
Nathan (00:40:02) - Because we saw, I think, one of the kind of the, the nearest points in historical reference that I have in is was with witch hunts and with the witch trials, where you had women being, drowned and dunked for being witches, and actually you had other women ousting other women in order to keep the spotlight or for them.
Nathan (00:40:25) - And you had men turning against women because their wives were nags, and then you had women turning against women to kind of make them, to make sure they were safe so they wouldn't. And then you had this perpetuation of potential drownings and burnings and these horrendous acts, etc., where everyone was turning against everyone. Yeah. So it's in those moments it's like, well, how do I want to show up for somebody else? How do I how do I step in in a different way and actually support this person? And yes, the masculine is massively wonky in business and kind of over, over activated. And now we've got women and we've got equal or we're trying to get kind of, more women into kind of the leadership space, more cultural diversity, etc. and we need all of those things. And what we actually need is and there some businesses are going too far the other way where they're trying to put too many women in there and put too many kind of cultural, too much cultural diversity in.
Nathan (00:41:24) - But then they're losing the leadership skills. But then actually what we need is we need men that potentially have got some of those leadership skills to start mentoring or to step aside to teach these skills in, to actually create a better dynamic and sharing their experiences of what they learn, not necessarily of the so-called toxic masculine behaviors, but nurturing different relationships inside that organization and nurture and encouraging and inspiring women to be women, to be in their feminine, to be in their masculine for different cultures and different diversities, to bring their viewpoints of the world. So actually they can create more inclusion in business because the biggest killer that we actually have is loneliness. That's that's the pandemic the real pandemic of this century.
tina (00:42:14) - That's interesting that you say that I, I was interviewing another a doctor yesterday and we went into loneliness and so I would love to I would love for you to say a few things about that because, I think it is a big problem. I think that we're we're at the end of like a cycle, like we're going into, like we can all feel it, like everybody in the whole world can feel that we're at the end of some kind of a cycle, and we're at like the worst part of that cycle that.
tina (00:42:45) - But I feel like it's going to change into something really beautiful. And at the worst part of that cycle is this extreme loneliness. Even though there's so many people in the world. it's almost we've almost been trained, through societal expectations to, to be like, oh, look out for yourself, to be alone, you know, to be alone. Not to think of yourself as a whole, connected to all these other people and as a whole connected to community at so many different levels, you know? And I feel like the more you could start to shift your focus into realizing that we're all connected and we're all the same, we all, most of us also all have the same wants and needs. You know, we all want to be safe and secure. We all want to have a roof over our heads. We all want to just be able to feed ourselves. We all want our to be happy and to enjoy our lives. We don't want to be bothered, so to speak. Right? So it's like we have all the same wants.
tina (00:43:46) - But at this weird time in history, we're all like pinned against each other on all these really silly, insignificant things. Like when you really think about how silly it is to just judge another person by their type of religion, or their ethnicity, or the color of their skin or their sexual preference, which is absolutely none of anybody's business, you know? And so it's it's, once you can start like, thinking of, really connecting to that and realizing that, like, we're completely connected and our thoughts, I believe. And tell me what you think. I believe that our thoughts are all connected, you know? And so, like, on a whole, the more people that are shifting into this, more positive outlook where if, you know, if you're if you're thinking that you're all connected, you're obviously going to be more supportive of all the people around you, you know, and have an understanding to all the people around you. And when you do that, it automatically shifts the vibration or the energy of the life that you're living, and it changes the lives of all the people that you touch on a day you know, like even if it's just a conversation with you or the conversation you have with whoever's selling you your coffee in the morning, so do you.
tina (00:45:10) - Do you feel that way? Yeah.
Nathan (00:45:12) - Yeah yeah yeah, yeah. And it's all about connection. Like 100% human. The human experience is a full contact sport. And it's you look at nature and you look at how the trees connect to the earth, and the mycelium connects them to other trees, and that connects them to this, and the birds that live in the tree and the bugs and everything's going on. Everything is interconnected. And it has to be complex and it has to be interwoven. So it stands to reason that when you look at a human being. We are 35 to 40 trillion single celled organisms all connected together, to create this complex entity called a human being. So everything is about connection. It's about how the little cells kind of transfer energy and turn a banana into Nathan and all of these things by by these bodies, these processes. And then we look at the world around us. And because of the experiences that we've had over however many thousands of years, the more and more disconnected we are, the easier it is for us to be kind of herded and moved around.
Nathan (00:46:24) - Yeah, I've been doing this for millennia and it started when my one of the big understandings I had was pretty much around the Roman army, and how the Roman army became so big they would attack a village and the people that survived were given two options. You either die now or you become part of the Roman army, and we'll send you somewhere else and you'll fight for the Roman army. And a lot of them would say, I will fight for the Roman army. So they'll give up their culture, they'll give up their language, they'll give up their traditions, and you'll take people from wherever, from Russia, and you'll take them to Portugal, and they'll fight in Portugal, and then they'll be given lands there as entitled and free slaves or whatever, and get given land. And then they would take the people from Portugal and they would take them to England. And, and then it end up like sending all these people all around the world. So you broken all this culture up. It's now completely diluted.
Nathan (00:47:10) - And the only thing that I now know is Roman and the Roman culture and the Roman legion and that's it. So since that time predominantly with the way that the Empire has broken that up, everyone is just trying to find their way home. Everyone's trying to reconnect to their piece of land. Yes. Our genes and our DNA is completely spread out now. I'm probably 5% this, 10% that, 2% that did it. Yeah, but we feel that we feel this culture and but we feel that loss to our lands. We feel that loss to our to our to ourselves, to our sovereignty, to our sense of purpose. So we're constantly trying to reconnect. So but then that's an echo that's echoed in our lives as well. So as kids when we have our developmental moments and our childhood traumas and that breakdown of, of whatever of consciousness, that's just the echo of what we've been experiencing for 100,000 years. And all we want to do is just feel connection. We want to feel like we're in community, that we're in right relation with the world around us, with nature, with our partners, right relationship with our children, with our friends, with the men in our lives, with the women in our lives.
Nathan (00:48:21) - And that we can come back to that connection. But everything that we've been done has taught us how to disconnect from it and stay disconnected. Because if you are confident, healthy. you're ungovernable. So they want you a kind of a low level of confuse. They don't want you to believe that you're an expert in your own health and well-being. they send you to school to learn a bunch of stuff. In the majority, you don't actually need.
tina (00:48:48) - I feel like, yeah, school is a little bit of a waste of time. Not total waste time. But, like, I mean, that could be a whole nother podcast.
Nathan (00:48:55) - So it's not what it's designed to be. I mean exactly. School in Greek and Egypt, they were talking philosophy and the arts, etc. and then you kind of fast forward a little bit and you get to the post-industrial, we'll get to the Industrial revolution. You've now got a factory model to create factory workers, which is exactly childcare. Yeah. Mum and dad can carry on working and we can tell you what the job market is going to look like in ten years time.
tina (00:49:19) - Yeah, Yeah.
Nathan (00:49:20) - So again, with disconnecting from the wonders of the universe, the knowing, the philosophy, the arts, the creation, the mathematics, the things that we really need to be to be inspired thinkers. And we're not we're taught not to ask why. Yeah. And something I teach to a lot of people. If you when I asked him is what was the first person you remember asking you a question beginning with why? And the answer? Nine times out of ten will be a parent. What's the reason? Because I did something wrong. Yeah. And then. And then outside of your family, what's the next person you remember asking you a question beginning with Y. And they'll say teacher. Teacher. Yeah. What's the reason? Because I've done something wrong. So what you're actually doing by this choice of questioning this language and this emotion and this, this, this white that comes behind it, you're teaching children that it's bad to ask questions beginning with why? If you get if you ask a child question beginning with why they get defensive, they'll validate what to do, then make excuses.
Nathan (00:50:21) - And we hold on to that. Because for the first 16 years of our lives, we learned that a question beginning with why is dangerous? But then what are we all looking for as adults? We're all looking for our sense of purpose. We're all looking for our why, but we don't know how to ask the right questions in order to find it. So we disconnect from it. Yeah, but we've disconnected from ourselves. We disconnected from who we are, and we're looking out there for validation. Justification. We're looking for cheap dopamine hits to make us feel better because we've lost. We've lost our sense of home inside ourselves.
tina (00:50:50) - Yeah. This is it's an epidemic, too. And I feel like there's a lot of people waking up right now and starting to questioning the the system that we're all living within, which to me is just a, a system of slavery, basically. But a good question, and I hate to put you on the spot, but I'm going to do it anyway. So what what do you think is the answer to loneliness? What what could people do to start to step out of that besides start to realize that we're all connected? What would be a good action step for people.
Nathan (00:51:25) - To get over the loneliness? I mean, even coming into the men's circle spaces is finding safe spaces to connect and have conversations to acknowledge that it might feel uncomfortable, to acknowledge that you might be held account and made, and you have to hold yourself account for things that you did or didn't do, but it's creating those safe relationships that we've never had. So it's really, really vital, especially for men. the other part of it is kind of exploring, okay, why why are you holding yourself back? Where are you holding yourself back? What is it that's causing you to hold yourself back? What what logic are you using to kind of maintain this perceived status quo, which actually probably isn't doing you any favors psychologically, physiologically, and starting to do that internal work. So I actually getting a support mechanism to reconnect with yourself, excuse me to actually see the parts of you and to hold the parts of you that you don't want other people to see. So we end up defending those parts of as the five year old, the three year old, the 13 year old.
Nathan (00:52:32) - That thing that I did when I was eight years old, it was really embarrassing and I don't want anyone to know about it. It's just like, whatever it is and some of those are horrendous and some of them are just amusing. But at the same time, we don't want people to see them or touch them or do anything with them. It's just like, it's okay, because actually there's another 100 million men out there or whatever that are feeling exactly like you. I talk about it's predominantly from the men's space, and it's the same women are out there feeling exactly the same way, wishing that they could have a conversation about exactly the same thing. Yeah. You know, you know, at that time when you were at a dinner party or you meet someone for the first time and they tell you that thing and you're like, oh, you two. And they're like, yeah. And I was like, I thought. I thought that was just me. And there were a million people waiting to have that conversation with you.
Nathan (00:53:17) - Yeah, yeah. Your your story might be unique to you. The origins of that story are not. It's the same story that we're all carrying. Yeah. And actually, by talking to different people with different parts of the jigsaw puzzle, it helps you to. It helps you to see the bigger picture. Yeah. And in doing so, then that builds a relationship which creates the connections, which actually gives you what you need to stop the horrendous numbers of male suicide, which help us to kind of resolve the emotional dialogues in our own heads that we try to over intellectualize and run away from as men or and as women. And we come together and we, we come together and we create, create community, we commune together, and then we refind ourselves, which then makes it easier to talk about emotions. Actually, I'm feeling like this today, and that's okay. We got you.
tina (00:54:05) - Yeah. I think that, almost every every time I work with a client and maybe you could say the same.
tina (00:54:12) - There's always a portion of, you know, stepping into your true, authentic authenticity. And I don't even want to use that word. I feel like it's very overused right now. But like your true self, just accepting exactly who you are. Because the way I usually put it is, there's only one of you and you're absolutely unique and you're it's a disservice to the world if you're not really showing up 100% as yourself, because you have this place in this hole, as you said, organism of human beings. You know, you have this, this place. And if you're not stepping into your true self and you're not like living into who you are, you know, letting your freak flag fly, as I say it, you know, just being yourself and really not caring what other people think because, you know, when you do this, when you actually step into this, you, you attract the people that are supposed to be in your life and you kind of disperse the people who aren't, you know, and it's and it's it's a very it's not a very shocking or it's not like this big event that happens, just something that gradually happens as you start stepping in your to your trueness, you know.
tina (00:55:19) - And so I feel like that is part of a really good first step to, you know, stepping away from loneliness, you know, and being able to connect. Because when you are stepping into your trueness, then just the perfect people that are supposed to be in the space with you will be there, and you will feel so much more connected in that space. So I feel like that's a beautiful way to think about it. So how can people connect with you and work with you?
Nathan (00:55:51) - Yeah. you can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on. if you look, just search Nathan Simmons. the leadership coach on LinkedIn. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook.
Speaker 4 (00:56:04) - Okay.
Nathan (00:56:04) - At Deeper healing and Beyond.
Speaker 4 (00:56:07) - Okay.
Nathan (00:56:10) - yeah, I'll just check out. There's two different portions to my business and kind of I say portions. One of them is one of a little bit more spiritual and a bit more esoteric. And I'm doing using the hypnotherapy to do New Moon and Full Moon Journeys, kind of just creating these beautiful stories where you can just dip into these journeys and just really explore your subconscious mind in really gentle, energetic, beautiful way.
Nathan (00:56:33) - So it's a little bit more spiritual to it. And the other part of my work, which is then the leadership development piece, which is I mix these things between the 1 to 1 coaching, the group experience, but it's the cerebral tools to build better relationships, to communicate in better ways, to ask the right questions of yourself and of your team. To understand the psycho dynamics of your relationships. And at the same time, then using the hypnotic states as well for leaders to actually explore. How am I holding myself back? What does the future look like? What are what are my values? So it's a more so my 1 to 1 work is leaning more to that masculine space. Yeah, really kind of talking to people that have had challenges with men in their lives or are challenged by their own manhood, and stepping into that vulnerability by using the the conscious, cerebral, practical, pragmatic tools that actually a really, really useful and also using the subconscious tools to actually really embody that stuff so we can come back to the feelings and create the safe spaces.
Nathan (00:57:34) - So if people want to find me, at the moment it's Nathan Simmons coaching.com okay. Website. All right. Or they can come and find me at Spirit Medicine World.
Speaker 4 (00:57:47) - Okay.
tina (00:57:48) - I love that the masculine and feminine. I love it. I was going to ask you about your moon planning. Like you're. You're because I do that. Also, I love doing like I do journaling sessions with a group that I have. So it's like new moon journaling sessions, full moon journaling sessions. But, actually reading a book right now called Lunar Living, which is really. Yeah, it's. Yeah, I really like that book. It really works with my brain. The way she describes things, it really makes it really clear I love it. So I love that you do that. So I'll put all those links in the show notes that people can connect with you. It's been such a pleasure. What a great conversation. Thank you for coming on.
Nathan (00:58:30) - Thank you. Really? Yeah. Absolute privilege and honor.
Nathan (00:58:33) - Thank you very much.
