Emily Race-Newmark: [00:00:00] Welcome to This is How We Care, a podcast where we look at what it means to embody care, not as an individual practice, but a collective one, and to see what kind of world emerges from this place.

Thank you for being here. I am your host, Emily Race.

Today we are joined by Mike Sagun. 

Mike Sagun: Not all men are sexual assaulters, not all men are racist. Not all men are homophobic. Not all men are xenophobic.

The society has almost been lashing out at men, and I can see why. We all live under the patriarchy, and men also suffer from the patriarchy. We're seeing it hurt us today. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Mike is a teacher, a facilitator, and a certified professional somatic coach, as well as one of the founding members of EVRYMAN, the world's leading men's wellness organization, which has been featured on Men's Health, New York Times, and more. Mike's purpose is simple.

He helps men feel.

Mike Sagun: My name is Mike Sagun. I am a [00:01:00] certified professional coactive coach. I'm also in my final year at Somatic Experiencing, which is Peter Levine's body of work. It's his professional training program. Growing up, I experienced a lot of traumas in my life.

I don't know if your listeners are familiar with the ACE studies, but it's Adverse Childhood Experiences. It's this huge, huge study. There's a little bit of controversy around it because of the groups that they studied there. But what they found is that a child that experiences four or more of these adverse experiences—and these range from physical, emotional, sexual abuse, to divorce, to malnutrition, to abandonment, to bullying, to unsafe environments.

If a young person has experienced four or more of these experiences in their life, basically leads them to early death and to chronic illness. They started to study this because they were studying people who were obese. And so they started to study their mental capacity and what happened in their lives.

What the study also showed was that [00:02:00] if a young person has just one positive adult figure in their life—it could be a teacher, it could be a mentor, it could be a parent, it could be an aunt, an uncle, it could be an older cousin—as long as they have one positive adult relationship in their life, it changes the entire trajectory of their life. 

As I reflect back on my life, I've had four plus adverse childhood experiences in my life that range from divorce to sexual abuse. Where I am today because I had teachers in my life who really cared and loved me. And who I knew, loved and cared about me. And these were the adults in my life that really allowed me to step into my authentic self.

It was sharing with these adults about what was going on in my life, about the different traumas that I've had, that really led me into this space of like, "wow, I really want to help people."

So I went to school for education, and thought I wanted to [00:03:00] be a teacher. I wanted to work with young people. Third grade was like my dream job, I wanted to teach third graders. And then when I graduated college, it just wasn't available to me. It just didn't make sense for me to go into a classroom and teach. So I started to work for a healthcare organization called Kaiser Permanente and I was in their theater department.

And I was doing some really beautiful work in the communities. I was a teaching artist, and I was working with young people all around Northern California. Around the seven or eight year mark of working for Kaiser Permanente, I realized that I had a greater purpose. This was like in 2016, 2017, when a lot of men's mental health statistics were coming out. Is also when I was starting to go into coaching. 

I started to realize like, "Wow, my experience is so different from the majority of men."

I had mentors in my life. Yes, I've experienced loneliness, but I was able to heal from that loneliness. Yes, I've experienced trauma, but I've been able to heal from those traumas. I have felt what it felt like to [00:04:00] be isolated and alone, but I was also able to come out of that. I was wondering like, "Whoa, what is going on with the men in our lives?"

And I started to look at my friends. And my friends didn't have the father figures that I had in my life. They didn't have the mentors that I had in my life. Even experiencing the trauma of coming out, that was a huge trauma for me, where I felt complete abandonment and isolation from my family. I was still able to pick myself up and be resilient in those moments, and find or create a life that I wanted.

I got into coaching. After being a teaching artist, working with young people, I decided that I wanted to work with men because I know that there is a big desire for men and more spaces for men to heal, to connect, to come into their own, to feel what it's like to be a human being. I got into somatic work because the modality of coaching that I was taught just wasn't enough for me. It was a lot of purpose driven work and values work and I wanted to go deeper. [00:05:00] And so I found somatic work, and I hired a somatic therapist and I was like, "Wow, this is exactly what I've been looking for and I've been waiting for."

 In short, I am where I am today because of the adults and the mentors in my life.

Emily Race-Newmark: Mhm. And I can see that you are now that figure for, I'm assuming someone else, maybe directly or indirectly. But the role that you're playing, it's so beautiful that you're almost passing on that legacy. 

Mike Sagun: Yeah. 

Emily Race-Newmark: I wanted to interview someone who is working specifically with men because so often I feel like men are getting left out of these conversations, and even painted as villains, as we're imagining a world that centers in care. 

Even within this podcast, whether we're talking about a world that supports parents or caregivers, one re imagines health or prosperity. There's this strong reoccurring thread of the need to support women, mothers and feminine energy. 

And that is okay, right? There's something to be said for the bit of balance that's asking to be restored at this time.

And obviously I'm very conscious of whatever biases I may [00:06:00] hold, I am particularly sensitive to the women's issues that I experience and that I see within those around me. I'm very conscious of trying to both honor what those are while also being mindful and curious about how we create a world that doesn't perpetuate a new version of a hierarchy or separation that puts women above men, for example, but really comes from a place of partnership, of power with, and of inclusion for everyone.

Even though we want to focus on centering the most marginalized and historically oppressed, we don't want to create a whole new oppressed class in the process. In other words, I often sit with the question, how do we ensure that we are all getting free?

These are big questions and our guest today certainly won't be able to answer all of them. But from what I know about Mike, I knew he would be a great starting point.

Mike and I met about eight years ago through the co active coaching program that we each got certified in.

I remember doing a coaching exercise with Mike, and really connecting with his energy and discovering that the two of [00:07:00] us were in parallel, starting to create these experiments in our lives, Mike, bringing groups of men into nature. And for me, bringing groups of women into nature, both with a desire to reconnect with each other, with our community and ourselves.

I've stayed in touch with Mike over the years, always appreciating his perspective, and quite frankly, very intrigued by how the men's work was evolving and growing. While it's a space that I could never directly experience, I've known the power of bringing women together intentionally and could only imagine what this could be like, and how needed it would be, for the men of the world.

We'll talk more about the world of men's work and Mike's approach within this during our conversation. 

I will say that one theme that continues to come up for me in these interviews is the importance of the somatic, and I'm really feeling a curiosity for myself to dive deeper into this arena of study and practice. Mike's grounding practice, which is separate from this episode, is a great experiential of what that work might feel like if you're interested as well.

I believe regardless of how [00:08:00] you personally identify, this is a great conversation to listen to, whether you see yourself a part of Mike's audience directly or not. 

I'd like to imagine a world where we are all bringing more understanding to ourselves and more curiosity for one another's experiences.

And I believe that Mike's work is contributing to this vision.

With that, I'll pass it over to Mike to share more about his work. 

This conversation was originally recorded in January, 2024. [

Mike Sagun: today, men's work is an umbrella term for a lot of things that are happening. I think there's different spectrums of men's work. There's one side of the spectrum, I think it follows a lot of the tradition of where men's work was spurred from.

Men's work started in the early 80s and 90s through what we would call the mythopoetic era. This was started by authors like Robert Bly, or Joseph Campbell. They use metaphor to inspire self help. They use a lot of Carl Jung's work of the Jungian philosophy of how can we take these archetypes, and how can we bring it back [00:09:00] into our lives, and how can we create better lives through metaphor?

And this was actually started from men who felt like they were feminists, but didn't have the support groups that women had. Women had these large groups where they can be with each other and have female empowerment and share and do self help and self development work with each other. And men didn't have spaces like that.

It never has been an anti feminist movement. It's always been, "Wow, we are feminists here and we want to support women in our lives. And we also want to support the men, in our communities."

Today, there's guys like Sacred Sons who are doing really beautiful work, who still follow those traditions. There's a lot of native traditions, indigenous traditions that they do in those spaces.

There's also the other side of men's work, which is very focused on the physical aspect of it. Cold plunges and infrared saunas and diet and working out and getting our bodies fit. 

I fall in the [00:10:00] middle of both of these. I wouldn't necessarily consider myself a Jungian philosopher or someone who predominantly relies on polarities of masculinity and femininity, or even the archetypes.

I really rely on the science and the data. I like to consider myself someone who looks at men's work through the lens of the nervous system. 

Today there's so many varieties of men's work. And it's really about what's your flavor, right?

I would definitely recommend and encourage you to go check out different modalities and different spaces, and see what really lands for you. What really lands for me is, I really enjoyed the science and the data around trauma and healthy eating and taking care of our bodies. But I also really rely on the data on our mental health and what we need to do for our bodies in order for us to be better men in this world.

Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah, I guess like any kind of group, it's about finding that which aligns with what you're seeking in the moment. The values or the modalities that you're speaking to [00:11:00] that would reflect what you're looking for, and there's such a wide range, so thank you for bringing color to that.

One last question on this is, if you could just briefly underline why the gendered piece is so important? Why is it important for men, specifically, to come together? And also how does that work in a world where gender is now in question and we're moving away from gendered norms all the time?

Mike Sagun: Yeah, I think it's a really interesting question. I see a lot of female-identified communities. Female-bodied communities.

Emily Race-Newmark: Mm hmm. 

Mike Sagun: And then I see a lot of male-bodied communities, male-identified communities, and I see more trans men communities.

What I don't see right now are the communities, the intentional spaces for non-binary folks, or people who don't fall within the binary. 

I think we need a lot of work there. I'm not the person to start those groups. But there are people out there who desire to do that.

 I think it's important that we find these spaces that we [00:12:00] identify in because common experiences is what brings us together. For male-bodied, male-identified folks, we have a common experience, which is we're male bodied and we have the male experience. Female-bodied, female-identified folks have always been really good. And it's been culturally ingrained that it's okay for all of you to sit and chit chat and cuddle and be on the couch and be with each other. 

It's not so socially accepted for men to do that. However, when we look at the data and we look at young boys, and we look at the schoolyard, young boys tend to gravitate towards each other. And they tend to, we would call it rough house. I would also call that almost affection. There's intimacy there of roughhousing and being with each other and holding each other and maybe even wrestling a little bit.

We, as young boys, tend to naturally gravitate towards that kind of behavior with other boys. But as we get older and puberty starts to hit and our prefrontal cortex starts to develop and [00:13:00] these societal norms start to get ingrained in how we navigate through this world, we start to see the politics of what it means to be a man in the schoolyard.

What young boys are taught is that, maybe in the fourth grade it was okay to put my arm around my best friend and maybe say like, "I love you," in the sixth and seventh grade, that's not allowed. You'll get bullied for it. You'll get thrown homophobic slurs. You will be ostracized from this community. We then learn, "If I behave in this way, I'm not enough. Or I'm not a man." And I think that's really hurting men. It's hurt our men, for generations, and I think it's been hurting our men. And I think things are changing.

I really see things changing now. Gen Zers these days, the men that I know that are Gen Zers are like, "I don't subscribe to any of that." Gen Zers are more fluid in their sexuality and how they [00:14:00] see themselves than millennials, like us, or even Gen Xers, the generation before us. And definitely more than the baby boomers.

Emily Race-Newmark: Definitely. Thank you. I'm just reminded of one of my favorite documentaries on this topic, which you probably are aware of, The Mask You Live In. Is that one that you recommend? Are there others that if people want to dive? 

Mike Sagun: Yeah, The Mask You Live In. I know Ashanti Branch, he's a good friend of mine from Oakland. There's another one called The Work. Which is so powerful. It's basically men's work in prisons. And there's an organization called Inside Circle, and it's this organization of mostly formerly incarcerated men who go into prisons and they do men's work with men in prison, and it's transformative. When I watched it, I was bawling the entire time.

Emily Race-Newmark: Hi everyone. It's Emily. I hope you're enjoying this conversation so far. If you aren't already on our newsletter list, please consider signing up. You'll receive journal prompts and practices from guests like Mike that will help bring further reflection and playful experimentation [00:15:00] of these ideas into your own life.

To sign up, you can head over to our website, www.thisishowwecare.Com ,and enter your email. There's a pop up that captures that. You can reach out directly to me at emily@thisishowwecare.com, or the show notes of this episode also link to the newsletter, again, over at our website.

This whole project is a co creative one, and we want to hear from you. So please reach out and share what you're discovering, what you're wrestling with, and what you want to dive deeper into. 

Our newsletter is also a great way to stay connected as we continue to release more offerings within This Is How We Care.

I hope to see you there. Now, let's get back to Mike as he speaks to his take on the biggest challenge of our time right now. 

Mike Sagun: I think we've strayed too far from our nature. What I mean by that is, I really focus on the body and the wisdom of our body, and our body is constantly sending us cues of what we need and what we want and what we desire.

On an easy level to understand is, we know when we're hungry, when our [00:16:00] stomach growls; we know when we're thirsty, when our mouth is dry; we know we need to use the restroom, when our bladder gets full. 

We know all of these things, but do we know when we feel lonely?

Do we know when we're missing connection? Do we know when we need a hug? I know because I've practiced this work. I know that's what I need, but do we know what we need when there's pressure on our chest? Or do we know what we need when our foot is tapping or our fingers are tapping. Do we know these subtle cues?

Maybe they're not even that subtle, but maybe they're really explicit. Do we know what to do when that happens? And I think we've strayed too far from trusting our body to know what it needs to do and what it knows how to do on its own. 

I was listening to this podcast and the speaker was saying, that ourbodies are older than our prefrontal cortex. Our bodies are ancient type technology. It's been with us for generations and generations, and [00:17:00] so it knows what to do. It knows what to do when it's sick. It knows what to do when we're out of breath. It knows what to do when we're hot. We don't often slow down enough to acknowledge that.

For those of us that grew up in the United States ,and those of us that grew up in public education or even private education, we were taught to be in a classroom to sit down in our butts and to learn math, to learn how to read, to learn history, to learn all of these things. I'm 37 now. And as I look back, I'm like, "That's not actually what my body wanted to learn. What my body wanted to learn was like, what's my relationship to my body to the world?"

right? And so In Scandinavian countries, what they do is they spend 90 percent of their time outside. Not really learning in front of a classroom, but outside like experimenting and getting their hands dirty, climbing trees and being in the grass and feeling the earth below them, because that is our natural state. 

We've strayed away from, I think this is a testament to like the innovation that we see in the [00:18:00] world, but we've strayed away from listening to our bodies and we've really come into our minds and said, "this is what our priority, how do we think better? How do we develop and how do we prioritize? Or how do we become more productive in this world?"

And I think there's a balance to that. I think what the world needs is just to come back to themselves a little bit more. Coming back to their emotional state, what they feel. 

"Oh, when I feel that there's some tingling sensations in my sinuses and maybe there's water welling up in my eyes. I'm going to let that happen and I'm going to cry."

Or I'm watching my friends play or I'm watching my kids play and it's bringing this giggly sensation and I want to laugh. Yeah. I'm just going to let myself laugh. That's one of the things that we can do, but also what we put in our bodies. Are we eating whole foods? Are we drinking enough water? Are we getting enough sun in our bodies? Are we getting enough sleep? 

I wear barefoot shoes now. They have a wider toe box and they [00:19:00] have little arch support. So my feet are flatter on the ground. And I have bunions on my feet, and it's made me have lower back pain. But since I've used barefoot shoes, I don't have that lower back pain. I feel healthier. I feel more energy in my body. And it's because for generations, we've had shoes with smaller toe boxes. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Right. 

Mike Sagun: And when I go to countries where sandals are the main shoe that they use and I look at their feet, they're wide, the toes are spread apart. And that's what we want. That prevents lower back pain, that prevents body pain, all of that. Because that is our nature. Our nature is to be barefoot on the ground.

Emily Race-Newmark: Mhm. Mhm. I'm seeing the parallel back to the beginning of this conversation around the constriction. It's like all of these ways that we have normalized the constriction, whether it's our feet or our breath or other parts of our physical being. 

Can I ask you now to just share more about your vision? This is again tied to the work that you do with men. What is your vision for men in the world? Where would you like to see [00:20:00] that go? 

Mike Sagun: My vision for men is that they first learn how to take care of themselves—their emotions, their emotional body, their physical body, their spiritual body—before they go off and be purposeful and provide. I desire for men to do deep personal healing work for themselves. 

Healing work is not just like sitting in a men's group, but healing work is also really healing their bodies. Cutting out alcohol, stop smoking cigarettes, being outside more, exercising more, getting more sleep.

Oh, that's a huge one. Drinking more water, all of these things. I desire for men to just take care of themselves in that way more. And I think the physical body is like the easiest thing to tap into because it's most accessible for us. But then the next step further is like taking care of our emotional bodies.

So that's hiring a therapist, going to group therapy, hiring a coach, sitting in a men's group. [00:21:00] Or even having a guys night where you sit and play games, but you also ask provocative questions. So I want men to have more spaces where they feel like they can be okay being a human being and being a man with other men. 

Emily Race-Newmark: How as a society can we care for men or hold them in that vision?

Mike Sagun: Yeah. I think a big thing here is like a lot of men are feeling attacked right now. There are a lot of men who are being clumped into a box and so many men are saying, "I'm not in that box." Not all men are sexual assaulters, not all men are racist. Not all men are homophobic. Not all men are xenophobic.

The society has almost been lashing out at men, and I can see why. The patriarchy exists. We all live under the patriarchy, and men also suffer from the patriarchy. We're part of that. We're seeing it hurt us today.

And I think other communities—non male communities—I think what we're asking for is just [00:22:00] some patience and some compassion.  We're asking for understanding. And we're also asking to like, give us forgiveness when we mess up. If we call you the wrong pronoun, or we get your gender wrong, or we let a homophobic slur slip out. Yes, call us out on it and let us know in like a loving way, but also let us learn without attacking us. I think men have been shamed for generations for feeling emotions, and then now men are feeling shamed for being men. We didn't ask to be put in these bodies.

Give us some time to really heal. And then also give us some patience and understanding that we're trying here. Many of us are trying here to be different. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Hm. What's coming to mind is, just on a personal note, I was recently at a dear friend's wedding and to be straight was the minority at this wedding. And my husband is a best friend of one of the grooms and he gave a speech. He was crying [00:23:00] during the speech, and after the wedding, our friend shared that all of his gay friends were, like, "I actually have more acceptance now for straight men after seeing how kind and emotionally aware your straight friends could be."

 It really raised something for me. I'm like, "wow, I think there is like this collective trauma that we are almost associating with straight white male or whatever that like the patriarchy, you know, all those layers of oppression. 

Mike Sagun: I think for those of us that are men and also cisgender men, my encouragement to you is go hang out in different communities. Go find your non-binary friends. Go find your gay friends. Go find your trans friends. Go find your friends that look different than you, and have had different experiences than you.

I grew up in the Bay Area where I was lucky and privileged to be surrounded by different communities all the time, right? But I also have friends that grew up in white suburbs. around cisgender people their entire life, went to schools and [00:24:00] private schools with the same kinds of people who still live in those kinds of communities, right? Go and experience what other communities are like. 

 Last summer, me and two gay friends facilitated a men's retreat, a breathwork retreat. And I think because the three of us as facilitators were queer, and because we were close to the Bay Area, we had half queer men and half straight men. 

Post retreat, closing circle, so many of the men—gay, queer, straight—were like, "Whoa, just being in the community for four days, being community with different kinds of men, completely changed how I see straight men or how I see gay men."

For many gay men, our bullies growing up were straight men, cisgender straight men. And so sitting in a circle with them for hours at a time gave them a new perspective. It healed a younger part of them. And same with straight men. Where some of these straight men [00:25:00] don't have any gay friends. And so it was an opportunity for them to go, "Oh, wow, I see you as me, like we are equals here. There's no hierarchy here."

Emily Race-Newmark: That again connects to the beginning of this conversation where I'm hearing the balance of seeking out spaces where we see our identity reflected in that of the other, but then also seeking out spaces where that's not the case. It's like there's a need for both, and they each serve different purposes.

Let's talk about things that folks can take away from this conversation. I wish we could keep diving in more, but I'd love to leave everyone with something to take on in their life right now if they were to pause this podcast. 

Mike Sagun: Pause more, take more intentional deep breaths, and feel into your body. 

And what I mean by that is, if you don't have clear interoceptive skills, interoception means matching awareness with bodily sensations. See if you can place your hands on your lap and squeeze your lap and feel that. Or feel your butt on your seat, like really learn how to take a timeout more throughout your [00:26:00] day and pause and ask yourself, ask your body, what am I feeling right now? 

Emily Race-Newmark: Mhm. Beautiful. 

Mike, thank you so much for all that you are, all that you're leading in this world, and for sharing a bit of that with us today.

Mike Sagun: Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Take care. 

Thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this conversation with Mike and want to support this podcast, join our Patreon. You can access bonus content from the interview, including reflections from Mike's grounding practice, including how to work with certain discomforts in our bodies that may be difficult to sit with. The role that our physical environment plays on our energy. And how to be with other people's emotions that are more difficult for us to be with.

If Mike's messages spoke to you and you want to dive deeper, you can check him out on Instagram @mike.sagun. You can visit his website, mikesagun.Com. Mike is also the co founder of a men's organization called MELD: Men's Emotional Leadership Development, which has a free community with free [00:27:00] resources, If you're male identified and want to connect there. 

All of this is linked over in the show notes of our website, thisishowwecare. com

 Lastly, if you think the messages from this episode will speak to someone in your life, please share it with them. 

And of course, leaving reviews, engaging with us on Instagram, joining our newsletter, and contributing to our Patreon are all other ways to help us keep co creating a world of embodied collective care through spreading these messages, these practices, and these new ways of being.

This episode was produced by me, Emily Race, co produced by Kimberly Anne, with editing by Andrew Salamone and music by Eric Weisberg.