So… About the Man Bun.

Men’s work has a branding problem. Let’s talk about it.

Let’s get something out of the way.

Men’s work has a branding problem.

You know exactly what I’m talking about. Close your eyes and picture it: a guy in a wide-brimmed hat that costs more than your first car. Linen pants the color of unbleached oatmeal. Some kind of necklace situation involving a crystal, and what appears to be a small animal bone he found “on a walk.” He’s burning Palo Santo in a circle of other men who are all about to take turns “honoring the space.” There’s a drum. Of course there’s a drum. There’s always a drum. Someone is going to howl at the moon before the night is over, and somewhere in Sedona, a shaman just got their wings.

And then there’s the language.

Oh god, the spiritual, the sacred, the personal growth language.

Everyone is holding space. Everyone. All the time. These guys’ arms must be destroyed. Just massive biceps, traps and delts on these dudes from holding so much space. Space for grief. Space for the masculine. Space for the feminine. Space for the space itself. Someone is witnessing your journey. Someone else is honoring your truth. The universe has a message. Spirit is moving through the room. Everyone’s guides are always so present. Mercury is, of course, doing something. We’re not in a circle, we’re in a sacred container. We’re not talking, we’re sharing. We’re not feeling something, we’re feeling into it. We’re not thinking, we’re dropping in. Everything is conscious, so god damn conscious. Conscious leadership, conscious masculinity, conscious parenting, and conscious sandwich-making

And…

Every single guy in the room is suddenly the most sacred masculine motherfucker you’ve ever met. He’s so deeply rooted in his sacred masculine that his sacred masculine is healing the divine feminine just by existing in the same zip code. His sacred masculine is so penetrating, so grounded, so present, that women across three counties are spontaneously ovulating. He’s holding the polarity. He’s anchoring the frequency. He’s a king now, apparently. Did you know? Greg, that dude I met outside, I think he said he goes by Skyhawk, hates his job in logistics, is going through his third divorce, and whose kids won’t speak to him, is now a king.  Because HERE, we’re all kings. Everyone is a king. There are no commoners in men’s work. Just kings, warriors, lovers, magicians, and one guy who thinks he might be a wizard but isn’t sure yet.

And his sacred masculine? Bro. Bro. His sacred masculine is going to heal her divine feminine so hard. It’s going to heal lineages. It’s going to heal his mother. It’s going to heal your mother. It’s going to heal women he hasn’t even met yet. The healing is just radiating off him in waves. You can’t even stand near him without getting a little healed.

Meanwhile, this man cannot, under any circumstances, cannot pay his rent on time.

I’m laughing. You’re laughing. We should all be fuckin laughing.

Because some of it is ridiculous. Some of it is theater. Some of it is grown men playing dress-up, learning a second language, crowning themselves royalty, and calling it a journey. And if we can’t poke fun at our own thing, we’ve already lost.

Here’s the part where I get humbled.

I have never in my entire life had long hair. Not as a kid. Not as a teenager. Not once. While I’ve changed my hair like 500+ times, seriously check the photos, I’ve never had long hair.

Then I started leading men’s work.

And now? Ugggggggg. I have a man bun.

(Is there an emoji, where there is a foot in the mouth)

I didn’t plan it like this. I actually did it in defiance. In frustration, after 3 miscarriages, I declared, “I’m not cutting my hair until Evin and I have a baby.” Oops. And then one day almost 16 months later I tied it back because it was in my face, and now here we are. Oh, but wait there’s more. And this is the part that really gets me, I say things now. Words come out of my mouth that past Alex would have roasted me for. I have, on more than one occasion, said the word “ container.” Out loud. I have told another grown man I was just here to hold space for him…ewwww. I have called other men “ brother” and meant it. I once said the phrase “what’s alive for you?” and didn’t immediately walk into the ocean. I have, may God forgive me, used the word “ masculine” as a noun.

I am the guy. I am the meme. I am exactly the dude I would have made fun of five years ago, and I have no defense except: it happened, I kind of love it, and I’m not going back.

So how do you tell the real ones from the cosplayers? Because they exist. The cosplayers, I mean. Guys who learned the uniform and the vocabulary the way you’d learn the dress code at a new job, and now they’re walking around in costume hoping nobody asks follow-up questions about what “anchoring the frequency” actually means.

Here’s how I tell.

You look at their actual life.

Not the Instagram one. Not the retreat one. Not the version of them that shows up when there’s an audience and a drum. The actual life. The boring one. The one with bills, a relationship, and a sink with dishes in it.

Is the way he teaches the way he lives? Or does the king disappear the second he gets home and the king’s wife asks him to take out the trash? Does he have integrity in his relationships, or is he healing the divine feminine on Instagram while ghosting his actual girlfriend? Is there money in the bank account, or is he running workshops on abundance from a Tesla he can’t afford? Does he talk to his mom? His kids? His brother (the actual one, born of the same parents, not Skyhawk, I mean, Greg from check-in)?

Does he do the practice when nobody’s watching? Does he meditate when there’s no one to post about it? Does he journal when no one’s going to retweet the takeaway? Does he sit with his own grief on a random Tuesday afternoon in November with no candles lit and no one there to witness him?

And, I believe this is the big one. Can he laugh at it all?

Can he laugh at himself? Can he laugh at the hat? Can he laugh at the language? Can he poke fun at the costume and the play and the whole sacred-masculine-king-warrior-lover-magician of it all? Or is he so deeply invested in being The Guy In The Hat that even a joke about the hat feels like a personal attack on his soul mission?

Because the real ones laugh. The real ones know the bit is a bit. The real ones know this whole fuckin thing is made up. We are making it all up, because unless we are actually God, we don’t know shit. The real ones are doing their best, know they are fallible, are doing what they can to lose their egos, own their mistakes along the way, and help others find their own paths, not preaching they know the path for everyone else. So the real ones can be in full ceremony, eyes closed, hands on heart, and still crack up when someone farts during the meditation.

The cosplayers can’t laugh. The bit is too important. The bit is the whole thing. If the bit falls apart, they fall apart. And so they protect the bit at all costs. They get serious about it. They get defensive about it. They make sure everyone knows just how deep their work is.

The real ones? They’re just guys. Guys who do the work, who live the work, who screw up and apologize and try again. Guys whose lives back up what they say. Guys who wear the hat sometimes because they want to and not because the room expects it. Guys who can sit in a circle and crack a joke about how ridiculous all of this looks from the outside, and also mean every word of what they share when it’s their turn.

It’s the same distinction underneath everything.

There’s a difference between performance and emergence.

Performance is when you put on the costume, and the vocabulary, because that’s what men’s work looks like. You buy the hat because the guy on Instagram has the hat. You burn the sage because that’s what’s in the photos. You start saying “holding space” because everyone in the circle says it, even though if someone asked you what it actually means you’d panic and say something about energy. You announce that you’re “in your sacred masculine” because you read it in a caption. You howl because someone told you it was Wednesday and Wednesdays are for howling. You help the other guys in the circle because that’s what good men do in circles, and you want to be seen as a good man in a circle. You’re cosplaying transformation. Wearing the uniform. Speaking the dialect. Doing the bit.

Emergence is different. Emergence is when something rises up in you that wasn’t there before and you allow it. A guy who never cried suddenly weeps in a circle of other men and feels lighter for the first time in a decade. A guy who never danced moves his body and discovers he’s been holding his entire life in his shoulders. A guy who would have rolled his eyes at “ceremony” three years ago lights a candle for his dead father and means it. A guy who used to make fun of the word brother finds himself saying it to another man who’s at his rock bottom at 2am and it’s the truest word he’s said all year. A guy who never thought about “the masculine” in his life finally figures out how to be present with his wife without trying to fix her, and quietly, without announcing it to anyone, becomes a better man. A guy in the circle sees another guy struggling and walks over and puts a hand on his shoulder, not because that’s what you do, but because he wants to. Because something in him moved, and he followed it.

That guy isn’t performing. That guy is becoming.

The hat, the hair, the howl, the holding space of it all, the sacred-masculine-divine-feminine-king-warrior-lover-magician of it all, none of that is the point. None of that is the work. You can wear every linen outfit, speak fluent Sedona, drum until your hands bleed, crown yourself king of seven different archetypes, and still be the same emotionally constipated guy you were before you booked the retreat. Or you can show up in jeans and a baseball hat, fumble your words, sound nothing like the Instagram guys, and have the most honest moment of your adult life.

The work is the work. The aesthetic and the vocabulary is just what happens to grow on you when you stop performing your life and start living it.

So yeah. Make fun of the man bun. Make fun of the container. Make fun of the brothers witnessing each other’s journeys while spirit moves through the room and Greg holds space with his enormous, jacked space holding arms, healing the divine feminine from forty paces. I will too. It’s funny. Men’s work is funny. Watching grown adults try to feel things in public, sometimes in matching outfits, using a vocabulary they learned six months ago, while crowning themselves royalty, is deeply funny, and I will defend that to my last breath.

Just don’t let the costume, or the script, fool you in either direction.

The guy in the linen pants saying “brother” might be the realest dude in the room. The guy in the suit who refuses to use the word feel might be the most lost. The guy who can’t laugh at any of this is probably still performing it. And the guy with the man bun who somehow now talks about “the work” with a straight face might be writing this article from his kitchen in viori shorts, and backwards baseball hat, wondering how the hell he got here.

(Hey that’s me. Hi)

Come find out what’s underneath all of it. It likely will be the best decision you ever made. 

That’s where the actual alchemy happens.

— Alex

 

Here’s a photo of us laughing about it, while sporting a bun, or as men like to call it, a man bun, because God forbid we use the same word women use. 

 

Interested in men’s work that can support you to improve life and relationships and also not take itself too seriously? Check out www.AlchemyofMenRetreat.com