Many men struggle at being in tune with their bodies or listening to the rhythms, sounds, pains and signals their body sends them. This lack of connection with the body has allowed dis-ease to invade their bodies as well as their psychologically landscape. When men are out of touch with their bodies it can damage [...] Read more »
What a crying shame….
In a relatively recent book by Brene Brown ‘I thought it was just me but it isn’t’ she explores shame and vulnerability. Her research is related to women and very insightful. At a conference she was approached by a man who said , “ we have shame, deep shame, but when we reach out and share our stories, [...] Read more »
‘Movember’ to look after your health
Are you growing your ‘Tash’ to raise awareness for men’s health? ‘Movember’ is a fantastic innovative, fun idea beginning in Australia seeking to bring attention and raise awareness of male health needs. Find out more here at their website http://uk.movember.com/ The statistics around men’s lack of self-care physically and emotionally are on this site and [...] Read more »
Man or Mouse?
Below are some of the phrases used to shame men and their masculinity - Are you man enough? What are you – man or mouse? What sort of man are you? Call yourself a man? You’re not a real man! Man-up! Grow some balls? What a pathetic excuse for a man Stop being a girl – and any other [...] Read more »
Being a ‘Real’ man is bad for your health
Catherine Bennett recently wrote an article in the Observer entitled ‘It’s time we ditched this bogus notion of real manhood. In this article she refers to the results from a recently published report from the Samaritans entitled “Men, Suicide and Society” which suggests that societies expectations of men leads to high levels of depression, lack [...] Read more »
From boys to men
Following on from my last post called the ‘Male Emotion’ this post seeks to examine what happened to men’s normal broad range of feelings. Male infants and female infants equally express the full spectrum of emotions, in fact the majority of research would recognise that male infants are more emotionally expressive then female infants. So what [...] Read more »
The Male Emotion
To express the full spectrum of emotions is normal. However, what I have experienced in working with many men and women is that often the range of feeling responses are reduced leaving just one feeling to dominate. Where one emotional expression is overly pronounced it ends up dwarfing and distorting all the others. It could be any one of [...] Read more »
How colourful are your emotions?
There are a whole spectrum of emotions that we could engage in and express and this grid introduces us to the core five emotional states. One way I have developed my emotional fitness work with men and boys is by using the feeling grid. The grid is interactive, it is physical and it allows movement [...] Read more »
The six most common words men use to describe their feelings!
If you ask the majority of men either – “How are you doing?” or, “How are you feeling?” You will get one of the following six words. Alright | Good | Not Bad | Fine | Okay |Normal. (Can you think of anymore?) Now I know for myself that if I am asked one of [...] Read more »
Feelings are like a foreign language
Many men have no idea what they are feeling and often no idea what others are feeling. Men talk the language of the mind and like dwelling in the rational, cognitive and thought processes. Many find it very difficult to communicate using the language of feelings, it feels uncomfortable and almost like a foreign language. [...] Read more »
Building Emotional Muscles
Many men are emotionally flabby and unfit, they rarely take time to exercise and have never consulted an emotional fitness coach. Some men will occasionally give anger a good workout increasing its muscle tone but will give little attention to their more subtle emotional muscles. This can often cause imbalance problems as anger becomes pronounced [...] Read more »
