Today, we're diving into a meaningful conversation with Dr. Brad Boute, the executive director of SWIHA, the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts.

Our chat takes us through his journey of personal transformation and the importance of emotional intelligence in our lives. Brad shares his experiences with men's work and how it has shaped his understanding of vulnerability and connection.

We explore the idea that many of our emotional struggle’s stem from learned behaviors rather than inherent traits, challenging the notion that men must be stoic.

This episode emphasizes the significance of community and authenticity in healing and personal growth, reminding us that the journey to understanding ourselves is ongoing and deeply connected.

A Warrior’s Spirit can be found on all the major platforms at lnk.bio/daryl_praxis33

Be sure to like or subscribe so you never miss an episode

Alrighty.

Welcome back to another episode of A Warrior Spirit, where we let the inner warrior shine in their light.

Today I have the honor and the pleasure of having Dr. Brad.

But Dr. Bute is the executive director of Sweeha, which is the Southwest Institute of Healing Arts here in Tempe, Arizona.

Brad and I go back almost 30 years.

Quite a lot.

Yeah, 20, 25, 27 years.

Back to our days at Collins College, which was graphics Design school.

So, Brad, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy life to, to do this with me.

Yeah, no, it's a pleasure, Gerald.

It's so good to connect in this way.

Yeah.

Start back at Collins.

I was, I was there like in 98.

That's when I started.

98.

Yeah.

I started in the admissions.

Admissions, you were a teacher.

And when I actually enrolled in school, I didn't get the pleasure of having you as one of my instructors, but because I was in admissions, I knew of you and, and always respected you as a person and what you do and you know, you, you come from a heart centered place, which is hard to find, especially in academia.

So, you know, I always appreciated who you were and how you did your, did your classes.

Thank you.

Yeah, that heart centered thing has become more and more important for me.

I, I don't, you know, I don't know if I knew it back then.

I don't let everybody use the words back then.

Yeah, I would have used a little cocky back then, but, but you, but it still shine through.

I, I don't care how much a person tries to dim their light.

The, the heart centered comes through whether they want it to or not.

And, and you know, you definitely were one of those guys, so, you know, I appreciate that.

Where did you grow up and get your start?

Well, I grew up in Northern Illinois in a little town called Rockford.

I say little.

It's, you know, back then it was 138, 139,000 people.

I, I guess I call little because I still think it's about 138, 139,000 people.

No, it's probably East Chicago by now, right?

Yeah, I mean, it is kind of growing together so there.

Northern Illinois, you know, Midwest values and ethics in some ways.

And yeah, growing up in Iowa, we recognize those Midwest values.

What took you out of midlife?

Midwife?

Mid.

Midwest life.

Yeah, yeah.

What took you out of that?

Well,.

A couple of things actually, if I'm honest.

First, my undergrad university, which was all about theater.

My.

Well, my undergrad at my master's it's all about theater.

And that took me down to Decatur, Illinois, which is south past Champaign, Urbana.

So it's still Midwest, though.

Definitely Southern Midwest.

And when it came to finding my master's program, you know, I. I think I was at a very superficial level.

I was just done with winter.

Yeah, it just.

It was done with it.

And the other thing was, you know, there's a shift in mindset that I think I was seeking.

And I didn't know it.

I was.

I was looking for a different experience and different horizons.

Something a little bit broader is great.

There's a lot of things there, you know, but it's.

It was.

It had a very small town kind of feel, even though it was a little bit bigger.

Yeah.

Well, how did you decide on Phoenix?

Because that's much bigger and vastly different.

I mean, I came here because I don't shovel sunshine, but.

Yeah, so very different.

Yeah.

And initially, the choice was really one of the master's program.

Primarily it was the asu.

When I was interviewing schools, they had the program that was really felt right to me, and they also offered me kind of the best monetary incentive to come.

So I wound out here because of my master's program at asu.

I stayed because of the martial arts I was practicing at the time, and I knew I didn't want to go back to winter.

Sure.

It did take me a couple of years, though, to really catch the beauty of the desert, to really understand its power.

You know, coming from Northern Illinois, the Mother Nature is not hiding.

It appears very apparent, you know, between the differing seasons and.

And the storms and the.

The winners and, you know, fall and spring and all this.

You know, Mother Nature is very, very apparent.

And it took me a little bit to find her in the desert and to find the real power of Mother Nature in the desert.

It's a different.

There's a different way about it, you know, but it took me two, three years to really sit into that and feel it.

So what's that feel?

Yeah, people don't understand how diverse Arizona is.

They think it's only desert.

And, you know, when I came back in the 90s, it was.

You can go two hours and go skiing and then come back and sit by the pool in the same day.

You know, the high country has snow and trees and nature, and the low desert has, you know, the.

The cactus in the mountains.

But there is a beauty even in the.

Even in the.

In the desert here in Arizona.

And the monsoon season is intense, or used to be.

It's.

Yeah, it's now more haboobs and dirt.

But.

But back in the 90s, you could.

You could roll like clockwork.

The clouds would come in at 2, it would rain at 4, and by 4:30, it'd be done and rolling away.

But they were intense storms and power in there.

You know, you'd have seven to 10 a year.

And the microburst would, like, knock stuff down and.

Oh, man, I remember one of the times that microburst came through Collins and ripped up those benches and umbrellas that were bolted to the cement.

Remember those metal warm apart.

Yeah.

So how did you go from ASU to getting a job in an art school like Collins?

Design experience.

So my theater experience is all in scenic and lighting design for the stage.

And there's a fair amount of design process in all of that.

So the idea of being able to translate concept into visual art was part of what I'd been doing.

And so that was part of the way that got me in.

And, and part of what got me into was the, the credentials that I had because they were looking for people with bachelor's, at least bachelor's in a particular design area.

So I did a couple of graphic design things before I. I got the teaching job at Collins.

And how long did you stay at Collins?

I was there 10 years.

Wow.

Yeah, I.

It's funny because I was in admissions, you know, and, and selling the programs that you guys were teaching, and I just literally woke up on a couch one day and said, I think I'll go get my bachelor's degree.

Oh, I kind of like the school I'm looking at.

I don't know anything about design, but what the hell?

And I enrolled and finished top three in my class.

And, you know, it's not because I was the greatest of designers, but I had more heart than those kids because I went back at such a late age.

I was in my late 30s, you know, when I went back.

And it used to frustrate me because I would see these kids who had so much talent, and they were there just pissing it all away.

And, you know, I. I had to outwork every one of them and really work hard for what I.

What I got.

But, you know, the teachers there were really, really good at helping those that wanted to be helped.

You know, I. I don't.

I don't think they really.

I can't speak for you, but I don't think they really cared about the ones that wanted to just screw around.

I think they really cared about the ones that wanted to be there.

I think they definitely, you know, students who had a, a hard time really connecting in with why they were there and, and led to those kinds of behaviors.

And I think there was always a piece for me anyway, that was, you know, I wanted to be able to connect with them and to help them.

But you can only go so far.

It can only.

You know, the old phrase can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

And I also am not going to spend a whole lot of energy trying to force it to drink.

Right.

That doesn't work.

No, it's.

It doesn't.

And I went on later to work at Grand Canyon University.

I was helping people get their doctorate degree.

So, you know, doctor in front of your name.

I know exactly what it took to get that hard work and, and dedication.

So what prompted you to want to.

Because that's not as creative as what you were doing at ASU or at Collins.

So what made you want to go on to get your doctor?

Well, I think for me it would there.

It's still creative.

I, I think it's, it's interesting what I feel in that statement.

So initially my doctorate was to be in policy and education, higher education policy and politics.

And I had an intention of, of getting into politics and policy in education in order to help correct some of the things that I was seeing at the time that I thought weren't doing really well at state and national level in education.

That was the original idea.

And I went to ASU in person for that.

And I didn't make it through the first half of my first class.

I had a young daughter at the time, young by gosh, you know, maybe a couple of years.

I don't remember exactly.

It just didn't work out.

You know, we were young parents and trying to figure out how to balance it all.

And I realized when I couldn't even really get through the first sort of reading assignment, that it wasn't going to work.

So I actually unenrolled from ASU's program and came back to an online one a few years later.

And that one stuck.

And that was something that I, I started shortly after or in between the time Collins was ending.

And I came to where I am now.

And that started off with a focus on educational technology because I was in online education.

But by the time I got toward my dissertation, my focus had shifted more toward how people learn.

Not necessarily the nuts and bolts of technology or multimedia or anything like that.

And then it shifted dramatically into emotional intelligence.

And my My dissertation, my path was really looking at how do we teach and develop emotional intelligence?

You know, and is it, is it better online versus on campus?

Is there, you know, how does emotional intelligence get conveyed and, and how can we get there?

Because I, it just, it moved into something, became very, very important for me, especially as I started doing men's work and really trying to examine my own life and to help my own nervous system and my own regulation.

Learning how to do that so that I could help others do the same thing became, became really important.

So yeah, I ended up with a dissertation that's really on the development of emotional intelligence.

And how can we do that?

I love that because my, my master's is in psychology and, and I just love the way the brain works and, and how it all works together.

And it's interesting to me you started off wanting to do the, the, the administrative and the politics side, which in my viewpoint is what caused Collins to collapse.

You know, when, when we started, it was still a, you know, family owned type of company.

I mean, the guy used to work for Hugh Hefner and, and got retired because his wife, you know, needed to be medically better out here in the desert.

And so he just started teaching kids design and it became this, this school.

And when I interviewed there, I went around and, and talked to the other admin, you know, the, the admissions people, and they were still smiling and jovial and happy.

They were, they'd been there 20, 25 years.

And I'm like, okay, if you can still be in that job for 25 years and you're still happy, this is a place I want to be.

And then several years in, they sold it to a corporation out of Chicago.

Yeah, that owned, that owned a lot of other schools.

And suddenly it just became a business instead of, you know, what it originally intended.

And, and it just really went downhill from there.

So I find it interesting that that was your, that was your state at.

The government level, you know, state policy and national policy.

It seemed like that might be the place to go to affect change.

I'm glad I didn't end up in that.

You know, I, I find that I think my heart is definitely more in the place of helping individuals and helping people change and shift and, and, and work through what they, they need to work through.

So how long have you been at Sweeha?

16 Years next month.

Wow.

The time does fly, doesn't it?

Holy cow.

And, and did you start in admin?

Did you start in teaching?

What'd you start in?

I started, I got Hired on to create their online program because of my experience at the time and the program that I was going through.

So I came in to build their online program and that's, that's what I did is I built our online program.

I got us, I got the programs put together, got us accredited and got us approved and launched the online.

And so the first, I don't know, three or four years I was doing, you know, working with the online.

Within the online school.

You know, one of the things that's great about sweha, that I love about us, is that we, we help to right place the people who are here.

So we, we often move around a bit here and there until we find the really the right space for this, the person's gifts to really come forward.

Well, those who, those who aren't familiar.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah, just before we were at Collins, so.

But it's been a staple in the valley for a long time.

A lot of people come for their own healing journey and to, to help, you know, pass it on to others.

And it's been really a great school for the, the modalities used to be kind of hidden, if you will, you know, Raiki and you know, energy work.

People were kind of always sideways glancing at that and now it's a little more mainstream.

So it's nice to see that, that it's an accredited school now and, you know, still booming the way it's supposed to.

What took you on your own healing path?

Because I know now you also teach various modalities and stuff, some shamanic work.

And, you know, I've seen you kind of in action a little bit and it's vastly different than the teacher I saw at Collins.

So what took you on your healing journey?

You know, I had some personal contradictions within myself that were beginning to show themselves as I was moving through my divorce.

And part of that process led me into men's work and into an organization called the Mankind Project.

I'd been working with a therapist for some time before the divorce and after the divorce just to try to help me through things and moved into some significant depression in and out through there.

And it was, it was getting in touch with the, the men's work that really started to help me.

I mean, the, the initiatory weekend was wonderful and it, it started kind of changing my life.

It was the weekly work with men.

We would meet every week, every Wednesday night from 6 to 9, and hold each other, work with each other.

You Know, do whatever what was needed.

And it.

That also really started to catapult my interest in emotional awareness and intelligence as well.

And, and that's been a journey that I will always be on, you know, both supporting the men's work and doing what I can to bring it out into the world, not just for men, but for everybody.

And what do you think's the key to getting through that process for a person?

Because men in nature or by nature are supposed to be, and I put that in air quotes, stoic and held off and non emotional.

And it's the downfall to most of our, you know, relationships because we don't know how to be vulnerable and embrace and, and you know, do all those things that are.

Are natural and that our women want us to be and we, we wall ourselves off.

So what do you think's a key to helping, you know, get a.

That well, key?

Gosh, I.

Maybe the first part is really recognizing that, you know, the phrase that you said that it's, it's in our nature to be stoic or to hold our emotions.

And I don't think that's true.

I think that's in our learned quote, unquote nature.

Yes.

Especially here in Western society.

I do not believe that that is inherently a part of who we are as men.

I think it's something that we learn to become.

And so, you know, the key, Gosh, the things that helped move me forward, one, were getting in touch with men who believed in me more than I did, who could see in me things that I was not aware of, who could see through all the stuff that I put on top of my heart and on top of who I was.

And it, you know, seeing all of them was the thing that was most important.

Sorry.

Somebody just came to my door and needed me.

That's okay.

Do you need to.

Do you need to help them?

Can we pause for a quick second?

And then.

Yeah, give me, give me a second.

Hey, sorry for that temporary pause.

We had some things that needed to be taken care of.

We're back now and, and Brad, I appreciate you, you know, coming back.

This is a beautiful conversation and I think it's one that needs to be had as many times as it can.

And I, you know, I.

Being in men's work isn't in any way to say that women don't have the.

Their own work that needs to be done in their own ways with their own support and that there aren't co.

Gender circ.

Are a beautiful way to do the work.

I think we need to have as many access points to allow people to really connect in with that still part inside of themselves that really kind of holds the truth of every, everything that they can be and get rid of all the things that we've put on ourselves that we've allowed other people to put on us.

And so, yeah, I mean, and warrior spirits, the right term for this.

You know, there's, there's time and time again when you look at, at current interpretations of old texts and the old text themselves that, you know, the recognition that the, the real battles, the true, most difficult battles, the ones that are within you.

Yeah, I think, I think, and I, I appreciate you correcting me on that.

It's not, we're not men stoic by nature.

We're stoic by training.

And I appreciate that distinction.

And, and it's frustrating.

I started a men's group for this very reason because there needs to be a place for men to come together where they can be supported and not feel like they have to bury every emotion, you know, and having been near suicide a couple times myself, and every person that I know has been touched in it, either by someone they know or themselves.

And it's a real disservice to think that men have to just wall off that part of their emotion and muddle through it, you know, and, and so it's interesting because you mentioned your karate and, and your, your background in the martial arts.

I would think that some of that training would have, in that emotional.

It did, yeah.

And you're very right about that.

And I often forget about it.

I, I did it for quite a while.

It got harder after my daughter was born and life happened and, and, and you know, and sometimes I think I, I probably use as an excuse because I could have prioritized it and made it work, but I practiced pretty regularly for about 10 years and it was a form of aikido, Aikijitsu, and then also more traditional Japanese martial art with stick and sword.

And it did teach me a lot.

In fact, I think some of the things that prevented me from really moving further in a maybe a quicker way was the stuff that was happening inside of me.

It was those things that were emotional blocks that were based on my own self judgments and my own beliefs of what others may be thinking about me, which is really, I know now just projections of my own crap, you know, but there, so there was definitely a, it was a different way to get to it, but it, it was definitely a way to get to it.

Yeah, I think the like for me, I I'm.

I'm 59.

I'm stepping into 60.

And I didn't fully heal until last year when I went back to my hometown and.

And released all the demons that had haunted me and all the traumas that I had endured as a kid.

And, you know, I. I thought, you know, for many years that I had addressed them because I had acknowledged them and, you know, but I just kind of set them aside and unknowingly drug them with me through my entire life until I really started to release them, forgive them and forgive myself, which I think was the hardest part.

Even though I didn't bring the trauma onto myself, I didn't forgive myself for what, you know, what occurred after that.

Was some of your situation childhood as well, or was it just adulthood getting in life, getting in the way?

Well, gosh, it's.

I guess it's all of it.

I don't think any of us gets out of childhood without some significant emotional impacts, you know, and if you believe someone like Erickson, it's kind of required.

Right.

There's these developmental stages that pretty much have to occur in order for us to find our way toward, you know, what Carl Jung talked about.

Individuation and getting there is a massive effort for most folks, you know, but it's this process of really figuring out if we can separate from our parents in a good way.

And.

Yeah, there.

I don't think any of us escapes childhood without some significant emotional challenges.

Whether they're traumatic or not is really what we're.

What we're knowing now is mostly up to the individual, you know, outside of those traumas that are near death or potential physical harm and those kinds of things.

We know that.

I like Dr. Bruce Perry's definition of trauma, and it has to do with, you know, what was the experience or the event, you know, and.

And what was the emotional impact of it based on that person, and then.

And then what was the ongoing experience after that, you know, and he's.

He's got a great story in his book.

He's got a wonderful book called what Happened to you?

By.

It's by Dr. Bruce Perry and then Oprah.

And they really do a good job of laying out that the.

The same event happened to two different people, and one person could become a debilitating trauma into another would be just fine.

So.

Absolutely.

There were parts of my childhood that have carried into my adulthood that I didn't integrate, I didn't resolve.

And it's not about healing.

I. I'm often challenged by the word healing.

Or healed, at least in the psycho emotional aspect, because it, it, there's no way to use the word healing without remembering the wound and bringing it to mind.

If I were to say, well, I healed that, I, my mind has to go through the that and to define it.

So for me it's about integration and that's what most of this is moving like, can we integrate the event as it was, accept it, forgive is a great word for it, and recognize that it's no longer our present, but it's, you know, it's happened and done.

Yeah, I, as a, as a life coach, I've talked to a lot of people about their traumas and things that have happened.

And I, I talk in pictures because I think people can understand imagery more than just, you know, straight words.

And so when I talk about that part, I, I talk about turning our scabs into our scars because scabs still bleed all over you.

They bleed all over everybody else.

They still hurt when you nick them and cut, you know, touch them.

But a scar like the ones on my neck and my legs, you can, you can rub them, you can touch them, and they don't affect you in the same way as a scab was.

So turning our scabs into our scars, to me helps with that quote, unquote, healing journey.

You know, too many people leave it a scab and still pick at it for their whole life and don't really, you know, heal it.

No, I mean, I was picked on a lot as a child.

I was very small for a boy.

I know now that my testosterone did not develop the way it ought to have for a long, long time.

I'm on hormone replacement therapy now because of it.

And there's an interesting correlation there between my ability to really start showing up for myself emotionally and regulating and actually getting my body the amount of test run testosterone I'm supposed to have because I was low my whole life and I just didn't know it.

I didn't know it.

How does one discover that?

Because that's a new thing that I have never heard.

I know people have low testosterone and that, but I've never really heard of actually doing hormone replacement to, to improve that.

How does, how does that become discovered?

You know, for me, it was by circumstance.

I ended up going to a different practitioner than I normally go to within the same practice.

And he was looking through my charts at some things and I've struggled with emotions for a long time and, and depression and sadness and it was a part of me.

And I was talking with him about, I think, had a cold or something.

It was just some random general visit.

And he was looking through my charts, and he started talking to me about some of my experiences without knowing that I had had them.

And I said, well, yeah, yes, yes, yes.

He says, well, I've been looking through your chart, and it looks like your testosterone is low.

And I think there's a common misconception that in men, testosterone is only for driving our body shape and our libido.

Yeah, it's not true.

A healthy amount of testosterone in a man regulates so many organs that it's difficult to count them all.

And primarily, it also helped regulate the way we manage our emotions and have access to.

To all of our full breadth of our emotionality.

And I hadn't had that my entire life.

And so at 43, I started hormone replacement therapy, and I got access to the full rainbow of my emotions that I had never really had, especially anger.

I had not had access to my anger for most of my life.

And anger is such a critical emotion for us in the right way, you know, in a.

In a healthy aspect.

Aristotle wrote it.

I'm paraphrasing, but he basically said, you know, to be angry is easy, but to angry with the right person at the right time for the right reason in the right degree, that's difficult.

That's.

That's another thing altogether.

And anger is one of the things that tells us when our boundaries have been crossed, when we've allowed someone to step over something that we care about deeply and it shows up in our body first.

And all of those different visceral reactions that we have, that.

That if we're busy and we're not in touch with them, we don't pay attention to.

And all of a sudden we're frustrated.

We don't know why I didn't have those triggers or if I had them.

They were so quiet, I couldn't hear them.

And so at 43, I basically started going through puberty emotionally in some ways, and physically, my.

My voice actually changed and dropped to the point where I had to learn to sing again.

My.

Oh, wow.

My whole register changed, but I got access to anger.

And because I'd already been in the men's work when it started, I was able to develop that in a generally healthy way.

It also gave me access to the qualities that support my leadership and support my ability to connect with other men and other women and people in general to do this kind of work.

So it's got a.

It plays a really key element in.

In Men, if the testosterone is low or not where it needs to be.

I mean, it was a life changer for men.

It completely altered my life.

It's interesting to me because my only emotion that I ever connected with my entire life was anger.

And not healthy anger, but rage.

Blinding, visceral rage my entire life.

And I had to work really hard to tamper that and learn how to control that.

So it wasn't my only connection.

So.

And societally, that's encouraged, right?

It's acceptable.

Yeah.

We're allowed.

Men are allowed.

Anger and lust.

That's the most part.

That's what we're allowed.

Yeah.

And, you know, the.

The level of discomfort that often comes from seeing a man in.

In what others would call an ugly cry.

You know, snot dripping down our faces and tears coming so much that it's hard to breathe.

It's.

And it's one of the most freeing things to be able to allow that grief and sadness and anything that might be driving those tears to come out, it's.

To suppress.

That is.

It's horrible.

Yeah.

When I went through my alchemist journey last year, I worked with a trauma coach, and she.

She calls it issues in our tissues because your body literally holds all of that stuff.

And.

And releasing it.

There was a connection to where, you know, I found myself just crying at the drop of a hat, like, for no apparent reason.

And.

And it was, like, so random and new to me.

I didn't know, you know, how I felt strained within myself to just be able to cry for no reason, you know, what's that?

You know, it used to get me that.

That Budweiser ad with a golden retriever and the horn.

Yes, I would.

The only thing that used to get me was a movie called Mr. Holland's Opus When.

When.

When he was listening to his son.

And.

And then at the end when they.

They came in and.

And played for him, those are the two scenes that I always cried at.

But everything else, it was all anger.

So at 43, that's a new experience for you to.

To find that.

How did it change your behavior and your life?

It's hard to quantify.

Gave me the.

It allowed me to feel and actually see the possibility of being whole, which I didn't feel until then.

I didn't have.

It was like, there's a part of me that was shut behind some door that, you know, I somehow knew was.

There,.

But I. I didn't have the key to it.

And even though I'd taken, you know, pharmaceuticals for my emotional challenges, my Depression and my sadness, and they didn't help really.

But when I started the hormone replacement therapy, I, you know, I saw the whole rainbow.

I was able to feel all of me.

I, I still have a lot of work to do in integrating, you know, and I can still tell when I'm in one of the arcs of my treatment cycles.

The first way I know it is I can feel.

I can feel some of the, the negative stories and the sadness starting to come back without real reason, without good reason.

And I find that I become out of balance in how I respond,.

You.

Know, and some of that is the psychological, soulful work of honoring myself and honoring my boundaries and being able to say, this is what I want or this is who I am and this is what I'm going to do and hold whatever the consequences might be.

I think people who go on a healing journey and actually face whatever it is they need to face to integrate with their rest of their life and their body have the misconception that it's some destination.

And it's not, It's.

It's a. I equate it to an excavator.

Like, some people can go in and they can throw dynamite and just blow up and it's done.

But to do the true work is like an excavator, where you just get one layer out of the way and then the next layer can come up and you can take care of that and, and throughout.

But it's, It's a neverending process to fully connect with yourself and to retrieve all of those parts of you that are scattered everywhere.

And as a.

Someone who studied emotional intelligence, do you find that to be accurate?

Oh, I think it's accurate.

I, I don't know that any of my book studies or my PhD studies in emotional intelligence led me to that.

What's led me to that is sitting in circles with people for the past 14 years and, you know, yes men, but when I started doing the, the shamanic classes that we teach here, you know, it's.

Some of it is definitely connected with and a part of indigenous practice across the world and actualizing that and what would it mean to walk this path?

But so much of that is the same work, right?

Because we have to be able to get out of the way in order for that work to happen.

And I can't get myself out of the way if I don't know what's in the way in the first place.

And, you know, it's this, it's.

I can't tell you how many times I'VE said, and I've heard other people say, damn it, didn't I already do this work?

You know, I thought I did this one last year.

Why is it back?

And it's like, yeah, it's, it's onion, and it's the same onion.

I've got a whole bushel or 5 or 20 full of onions.

And, you know, I can skin one maybe and say, okay, set that aside.

I'm done with that.

But it's still sitting over there.

Yeah.

And I think that's part of why integration is such a key thing for me.

And being able to find and live within that, the liminal space.

Right.

That's, that's in between.

That's, that's the key for me.

And I've been.

Ever since I read Victor Frankel's book Man Search for Meaning, I've just been enamored with, with trying to find my way into liminal space.

Well, the, the journey people think is linear, and it's not.

It's spiral.

And so that spiral does bring you back around, but now it's at a new level to do a new, a new version of it.

You know, it's not, it's not a linear, linear process.

When did you.

Because I, I, I've known you, like I said, for almost 30 years.

98.

Yeah.

So getting close.

I didn't always know you as a, as a naturalist or a nature, you know, but as I've followed you and, and be friends with you throughout the years, I, I've seen a lot of instances where you're in nature or communing with nature or being in nature.

And now this spiritual journey that you're doing with the shamanic work, what, what got you really in touch with that part of you,.

Boy.

I mean, I've been connecting with nature as long as I can remember, since I was a kid.

I found it more.

It felt safer than the other places, for lack of a better word.

And, and I used to have enough things stored in my car that I could just go pick up food and go.

But all the rest of my camping gear was in the car at a moment's notice, so I didn't have to do anything.

I went, I just, you know, grabbed food and left for the trees and left for the forest somewhere in the Midwest.

It was, it was different than it is here in Arizona.

But I have always connected with nature and felt its pull and, and, you know, in, in some circles, one of the biggest challenges, and I actually think it's a, it's a term now that's outside of sort of this, this alternative way is nature deficit disorder.

And it's really this recognition of, of how much we're harming ourselves by not being in connection with the world around us and insisting on separating ourselves from the actual natural world.

And the more we do that, the more we separate ourselves from our own nature because we, we are animals.

We belong with all of the rest of our animal relatives that are all the way around us.

I mean, it's, it's, it's ridiculous to think that we are not part of nature.

We are, we always have been.

And, and it's our insistent separation from it that I think has led to so much of our disease.

So much.

I think you're absolutely correct on that.

And not that we're talking about the, the exterior or the, the spiritual realm, but there are so many realms besides the one we're physically living in, and people don't understand the power of connecting with those as well.

Like, you know, I, for a period of time, got fascinated by quantum leaping and quantum jumping and, and it's something you really have to practice, to control and, and to be a part of.

But to know that there's other realms and you can go visit and, and learn and, and go grow from.

This isn't the only dimension that we're operating on, you know.

Yeah.

In the shamanic work, we do a lot of, of movement and work in what's known as the lower world, you know, and it's, it's not specific to any tradition.

These are, you know, when we, we're talking about this, we're trying to talk about it from as much of a universal perspective as possible.

You know, our, our ancient hunter gatherer ancestors lived in a way that was in connection with the world that, that they had to, you know, it wasn't when our ancestors walked into the forest, it wasn't a human being walking into a forest.

It was an animal with two legs walk into a forest with a bunch of other animals that had, you know, four legs or six legs or eight legs or no legs or wings or whatever.

There wasn't, there wasn't a separation.

It wasn't until we intentionally thought that we could control nature that that separation really began.

So where do, where do we go from here as, as human beings trying to really reconnect with that part of our history?

Well, I mean, we all know the answer.

We just don't want to do it.

Put the phones down, turn off TV and get outside.

It's, it's not hard.

We make it hard.

We.

Yeah, we do, but it's.

It's not that hard.

I mean, get outside and spend an hour in the grass.

You don't have to necessarily drive to a forest somewhere, but just turn off the electronics and, and step away and spend some time remembering that you're not separate, that you're not other than.

We are connected.

We are a part of this entire journey of the world, and we're connected with each other.

We have to be.

I mean, you could talk spiritually about it.

We can.

We can talk in the metaphysical realm of all of this.

We can.

We can talk quantum philosophy about it, you know, as distinct from quantum physics.

They're two separate things.

Or we can go into.

We could talk about relativistic physics and the recognition that we know that from a physics perspective, no one thing exists without a.

Having relationship with another thing.

If you could imagine an object within the physical world that had no relationship to any other object, it wouldn't exist.

No.

So we're inherently connected with each other.

Not that I can read your thoughts or something like that, but if I sit down, I do not exist right now in this conversation without you.

So in your men's journey and in your own personal journey, where.

Where is the most astonishing thing or what's the most astonishing thing that you reconnected with other than, you know, finding your emotional anger, your balance with that?

Well, I'm still working on it.

And it seems simple.

The.

The deepest moments have been when I.

When I really got that I am.

That I'm good enough.

The way that I am, the man that I am, the person that I am, is good enough for this life and for my life and, and for others to be in connection with and want to be with me.

And, and it doesn't matter that I don't have this car.

And I, you know, I have a job that some people may not understand, and I don't go to the gym every day of the week, and I don't have that body, and I have a different hair, and I don't believe this thing or that thing and the other thing.

But regardless of all the things that I am told I am supposed to be by every screen on the planet and everyone who comes in contact with that, outside of all of that, inherently inside of me, there is a stillness that is good enough to deserve this life.

And, and knowing you, and especially in these latter years, as I've, you know, watched my wife go through swee ha and have kind of reconnected with.

With who you Are.

And seen that change.

I know that's for a fact.

100 True.

How has it changed your relationship with your daughter or your partner or, you know, those personal, deep relationships?

Yeah, I mean, with my daughter.

I have a beautiful relationship with my daughter right now that I'm grateful for every day, you know, and it was.

There are struggles in there at times, but I think, because I was learning this and exploring it as I was working to help raise her, she has a connection to some of this work that is.

Is deeper than I think I have sometimes.

And she can see things and connect with me and connect with others, and it's.

It's natural for her now, which is.

It's just extraordinary to me.

So it.

It does have an impact.

And, you know, and I'm.

I'm seeing that more broadly, not just with her, but.

But with others.

And I think there's some places where it's taken too far and.

And it's.

It's separating from reality, which is not good.

You know, it's in that space of spiritual bypassing, if you will, where people are forgetting that there's a world here that we're responsible for and there's people in this world that we're here to help connect with.

And she's grounded in this world in a way that just blows me away and.

And she brings me hope for this world, you know, that there's.

That change can happen.

I think one of the.

The gifts that we are giving our children as we heal ourselves is dissolving the illusion that we're infallible or that we don't make mistakes or that we're some kind of, you know, perfection.

We.

We're admitting our flaws and correcting our flaws.

And they're getting to see that process, so they get to hold themselves to a different standard about their own insecurities and their own flaws.

And I think we are really changing their trajectory by giving them the grace and the freedom that we didn't get in our generation.

We didn't have the technology.

Right.

We didn't have the language.

We didn't have the.

We.

We just.

We just didn't have the technology.

I could never have had the kind of conversations I've had with my daughter, with my parents, you know, they didn't have the.

They didn't have it as an awareness, you know, And I think that's part of the natural process of it all.

I just hope that.

I hope we get through the swings that we're in.

I hope we get through it.

Seems like in Some places we've recognized this connection and this lack of separateness that we've.

We've recognized that we're together.

And I think in other places, it's getting worse.

This.

This apparent division between us is just broadening, and it's horrible.

It's painful to see and to watch and to hear the stories of it and to hear.

To hear.

I think how.

I don't know if it's intentional or not, but how many things are out there that are only meant to drive us apart instead of bring us together?

And that's, That's.

That's the stuff I worry about in the long, long run.

But if we can't figure out a way to get a grasp on that, I can worry.

Well, I think in my humble opinion, it comes back to doing what you said.

Turn off the tv, turn off the electronics, and.

And actually have a comp you don't have.

It's hard here in the desert to go out and find, you know, grass to walk in, but you can at least talk to somebody.

Like, you can.

You can at least interact with somebody on a level.

We used to be able to disagree and debate and share ideas and maybe expand our own minds with new information.

And now if you don't agree with me, now it's an argument.

Now we're a fight.

And now I'm just trying to be right and you're clearly wrong.

And that's, you know, my life.

And we did this many years ago, but my life started finding more joy when I turned off the news.

Yeah.

Used to watch the news every night before I go to bed.

My dad was in the paper business, newspaper business, a pressman, and, you know, the news was part of our life.

And when I shut that out, life started getting better, you know.

Yeah, it's.

It's hard, you know, to stay.

Try to stay current with what's happening without becoming.

I don't like the word, but I guess a victim to the filters that are out there.

And it takes effort to go and find the stories that are beyond the ones that were being shown over and over and over again.

To search out news outlets that aren't US News outlets, I think is a key thing of Ken and to.

To see.

It's interesting to see the perspective on our culture from outside of it, you know, and if traveling is great for that, international travel, if, you know, people can do that, I always recommend it.

To try to get a different perspective on what we have here.

Yeah, I find that to be.

My wife has been trying to heal from her poisoning, from her breast implants from over a decade now.

And any thing that's actually helped her has come from outside of the US Information.

She is a fantastic researcher because she's had to be her own advocate and her own doctor, if you will.

And she finds more information and better information from outside the US Sources than.

Than internally.

So can definitely relate to that on multiple levels.

If someone is listening to this and they're.

They're going through their own healing process or their own journey, having been through it for as.

As much and you kind of teach this spirituality, if you will.

I know it's a, it's, it's a class beyond that, but in essence it's getting back to communing with something outside yourself.

Yeah.

What, what advice would you give someone who's either just starting it or kind of part way through it and trying to figure out where to go?

We'll find your community that's super important is to find, find a community that is willing to see you and to hear you and support you.

Find a community that's willing to have discourse so that if, if that's something that challenges you now, that you can be mentored by people who could help you move through this challenge with recognizing somebody else's thoughts and ideas aren't threats and that we can have conversation around it.

I think the biggest thing is.

I don't know, Terrell.

You know, it's not a master.

I'm not a guru of this.

This is.

I just have my life and my experience and I haven't quit yet.

I wanted, you know, I'm looking at this warrior spirit behind you.

And I.

Think in some ways that's what it, it comes down to.

You know, the.

It's a, it's not giving up on myself.

Even though there's a hundred things outside of me that tell me to and there's a million things inside of me that tell me, me to quit, depending on the day and the circumstances, can find.

Find that thread within the self that is the center, that core of that warrior spirit.

And it's not, you know, warrior, which is typically the definition here in the world.

I suppose it's.

I'm going to fight for myself internally.

You know, I'm.

I'm going to take a hard look at the things I don't want to see about myself.

So they're not driving the bus when I'm not paying attention.

Now I can find people who are willing to hold me through that and to give me the reflection back that I don't want to hear.

Those are the people we need to find and to be with and to trust.

They're the ones who have saved me when I have been out of trust with myself, when I have been deep in the woods and in the muck and in the swamp and not wanting to come out of it because I know that place so damn well.

I know that swamp.

I know that darkness.

And it's comfortable because it feels safe.

In some ways it's not, but it feels like.

And I have people in my circles that will tell me that, that will say, hey, we see where you are.

We need to help you with some things.

You need to see these things.

You need to look at yourself like this.

Can you see this?

Let me tell you how I see you.

Here's your map back.

We will help you one step at a time to get back there.

I I Community.

It's community.

It's, it's being able to stay, to be resilient and have community.

At least one person, two people that no matter how deep I am, if they come and they tell me something, I'm going to stop and listen.

Even if I don't believe me, if I think they're full of crap, I.

Think that comes from being authentic and being around others who are authentic.

Because when you're just around false people, they're just gonna yes you to death.

They're not going to be honest with you.

They're not going to tell you, you know, the truth or what is visible to them.

Because, you know, our truth isn't always, you know, I used to hear all the time, you shouldn't believe everything you think.

We, our truth is filtered through our own mess and experiences.

And sometimes that's not a true reality of where our life is.

And, and we have to be around people that will call us out on our BS and be willing to tell us the hard, but love us through it anyway.

You know, 100, 100 I learned in the, in the martial arts practice, you know, that the, the samurai way, the way of the sword, the way of that warrior is knowing more about when not to use the sword than when to use it.

The same sword that takes life, saves a life.

And that, but that's a, that's a piece of it is being able to have that discernment.

I guess if I were to think of qualities that have become the most important for me to try to, to live in my life that have helped me carry forward, authenticity and vulnerability are huge.

One of my mentors talks about it as reckless Vulnerability and radical authenticity.

Just get out there with it and just let it be so that, that authenticity and vulnerability are huge.

Integrity is big.

Accountability is big.

I think if we could get back to a place as a society where the most binding thing on the planet was my word given to you, we'd be someplace new and good.

And I, I try to live that way.

That's how I live.

My father was huge on your name is your bond.

And, you know, you.

You have it cleaned.

Once you tarnish it, it's hard to get clean again.

So, you know, he was huge on your word as your bond.

And, and it's a pillar of my own standards.

And it, it, you know, it burns me a lot because not everyone lives to my standards.

But, you know, if I, if I tell you something, it's with integrity that that's how the truth is going to be and how it's going to play out.

We could have a handshake deal on anything, and I'm going to hold up my end of that handshake.

Yeah.

I think contracts are just written to try to put loopholes that we can get away from the handshake.

That's true.

That's true.

Well, I certainly don't know what I want.

More authentic, vulnerable connection.

I want to see more of the magic and joy in the world and to balance that with the work that I do for the school, for the men's work, for, you know, teaching within the shamanic stuff.

To be able to balance that.

Really.

It's about finding and maintaining that still point in myself and expanding it and really living into liminal space.

Liminal presence.

It's the name of my personal company for a reason, you know, and, and if you haven't read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning, go get it.

Go read it.

It's a short book, and you only really have to read the first half of the second half is his, you know, psychological approach to logotherapy that came out of it.

But the first half, that story,.

You.

Know, that moment between stimulus and response, that space no one can take from us, no one can.

The space in between what has happened and what I make it mean, that's mine.

It will always be mine.

And I. I guess I want to dance in that space more consciously than.

I do now and more comfortably.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

No.

My sensei would say that the dojo is a dilemma rich environment intentionally knowing he'd make a joke about all the protozo and the single celled organisms that were in the primordial soup of life.

And, and he'd always ask the question where do you think the ones are that wanted to stay comfortable?

Good point.

They didn't go through the process of stretching themselves.

They didn't go through the pain of splitting themselves in half to become something new.

They're back there as a single celled organism.

Well, you are an amazing individual whether you know, you hear it enough or not.

But you are and I'm honored that you took time to come on this.

You touched on it just a moment ago.

But it's a question that I asked at the end of every interview, so give you chance to expand upon it.

What does a warrior spirit or having a warrior spirit mean to Brad Butte?

It means it's a warrior spirit requires practice.

It's, it's never done.

Practicing a warrior spirit doesn't have an end of the day or an end of the journey.

It's, it's something that, that has to be always walk, You know, setting down the proverbial sword.

I think can happen temporarily to rest.

And I think that's, it's important to rest.

We can't, we can't be in the work all the time.

We need to rest, you know, and, and yet it's, it's always going to be there.

I, I don't like how trite the analogy has become because it's, it's really powerful and important and, and it's, you know, the idea of the red pill and this, this philosopher, that matrix brought forward, which is really old, old philosophy from Aristotle or Plato's allegory of the cave.

You can't unsee it once it's been seen.

You can't go back into the matrix, so to speak, you know, and Plato's allegory of the cave, if the, the person who escaped the cave and made its way, made his way her way out into the real world for the first time.

You know, in, in that story, which I don't know what BC that is, I don't remember off the top of my head, but in that story that person goes back into the cave to try to convince everybody else, oh my God, there's this amazing three dimensional colorful world out there for you to go see.

You know, the response of the people in the cave staring at the shadows on the wall wasn't oh, hey, let me go join you.

It was, you're a charlatan you're disturbing our world and we're going to kill you.

Once you make it out, once you stop and recognize.

Once I stopped and recognized that.

The.

Meaning of my world is my choice.

And that's both the gift and a curse.

There's no way around it.

Once I realized that was the case, I've tried to fight against it and rally against it and, and say, no, no, no.

Other people make me feel this way.

Other people made it mean this.

This was their fault.

It's not true.

And I know it's not true.

I know it isn't.

My life and my meaning is my choice every moment of every day, whether I want to see it consciously or I fall into letting myself define it unconsciously based on the patterns of my life that have been put in place.

Maladaptive.

Now more than anything, I, I.

A warrior spirit, I guess, for me is to try to, in every moment possible, consciously determine the meaning of my life.

I absolutely love that.

And I.

You are my 100th guest and I've asked that question 100 times and that's the first time I've had it answered that specific way.

So I, I love the newness, even a hundred times hearing it.

So thank you so much for being the gift that you are.

And you are changing my life by helping the people I love change theirs.

And I thank you for the.

That.

Well, thank you for the invitation, Daryl.

And I'm.

I'm so pleased and grateful to know you and, and you know, we talked a little bit before this started about how you started this.

And I want to thank and honor you for listening to that voice and for continuing to listen to that voice and to say, you know what?

No, I'm gonna, I'm gonna let people be heard who haven't been heard before and I'm going to get their stories out there.

We are nothing if we're not our connected stories.

And so I really honor you for all the effort that it takes to do that, all the behind the scenes work to make this happen so that stories can get out there into the world and in some way, hopefully change it and shift it.

I really appreciate that and I firmly believe that everyone has a story and if we just stop and listen to it, we can better understand who they are as a person.

And, you know, we're.

We're all connected by our stories and, and by the life that we're walking.

You know, we all think we're individual on this path, and we're not.

We're all connected and we just need to remember that we're all connected.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's harder to be hateful and hurt someone when you recognize that you're connected to them.

Absolutely.

And.

And you realize that it is okay to disagree without hating them.

Yeah.

So I appreciate that.

Thank you, my brother.

And if there's anything we can ever do for you, because you've been so generous to us, just let us know.

I will.

All righty.

And thank.

Thank you so much.

All right.

Bye.

Bye.

Bye.