Transcription of Raising Good Men #40
Speaker 1: You are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland, Maine, and broadcast on 1310AM Portland, streaming live each week at 11:00 AM on WLOBradio.com. Show summaries are available at D-O-C-T-O-R Lisa.org. Download and become a podcast subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle through iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.
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Dr. Lisa: Hello. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, show number 40, “Raising Good Men,” which is airing for the first time on WLOB Radio on June 17th, 2012, Father’s Day. Today, we will be speaking with Roger Martin and Drew Wing, from the Boys to Men organization, and Dameron Midgette of Body Knowledge. Joining me in the studio today, as every week, is our cohost, Genevieve Morgan. How are you Genevieve?
Genevieve: I’m great, Lisa. How are you?
Dr. Lisa: I’m great. I love Father’s Day. It may be one of my favorite, sort of non-holiday holidays.
Genevieve: It sort of is the heralding of real summer.
Dr. Lisa: Yes. There is the summer. There is that sort of sun energy, which is the very yang energy from a Chinese medicine standpoint. Of course, men are yang. But, it’s a good time of year. I’m very happy today.
Genevieve: That’s great. Now, are you thinking of your dad today, Lisa?
Dr. Lisa: I think about my dad a lot. I think about both of my parents, and they both had such a significant influence on my … obviously my younger years, but also my role as a physician, and teacher, and parent. I didn’t get to talk about my mom that much during our Mother’s Day show, but she provided a very strong yin influence to my dad’s yang. My dad is a doctor. He’s in the community. He does family medicine. He actually won Family Physician of the Year several years ago. A lot of people know him. He’s Dr. Charlie.
My mom provided the balance behind the scenes while I was growing up. Before she became a teacher, she raised us as 10 children sort of almost singlehandedly while he was on call a lot. So, I’m kind of giving a shout-out to my mom, even though it’s Father’s Day, before I go on and just talk about what an influence my dad had on me. It was really always about the way he cared for his patients that made me want to be a doctor. Even though I don’t practice exactly the type of medicine that he practices, I hope that I’m practicing it in a manner that he would be proud of.
Genevieve: Was he supportive of your pursuits?
Dr. Lisa: Always was. He’s at the Family Practice Residency Program here at the Maine Medical Center, which is where I trained, and I trained as a family doctor, and then I got a master’s in public health. But, when I went on and did traditional Chinese medicine and acupuncture, he couldn’t have been more behind me. He is always about what works for his children, as individuals. Also, he’s always about doing the best thing for patients. So, when he saw that what I was doing for training was going to help patients, he was right there.
Genevieve: I think that’s what our show’s really trying to get to today, which is moving beyond what traditional gender roles and stereotypes might be inherited from our fathers and our grandfathers, into what a new idea of being a father and being that masculine energy could like for men who are raising children now. Because we are at a time when everything’s kind of moving beyond the envelope. It’s exciting, to me, that the guests that are coming on are really impacting change in our community on that level.
Dr. Lisa: Well, tell me about your father. I know that you … You have 2 boys.
Genevieve: I do.
Dr. Lisa: So, there must’ve been some influencing on your parenting style from coming from your father.
Genevieve: My memories of my dad really … I would say what I got from my dad is a sense of adventure. Even now, he’s turning 75, and in 2 weeks he’s heading off for the Arctic for 3 weeks. He is … has always, in his own way, modeled that for me to just take the blinders off and do what feels right. So, I really honor my dad for that.
Dr. Lisa: I have 5 brothers, as we’ve talked about before. They’re all younger, and several of them were very active and kept my parents on their toes. Then, when I had my son, who is 18 now, he was like all of my brothers rolled into one, all 5 of them. I did exactly what you did. I chased him everywhere. I remember we would go to concerts in the park and instead of listening to the pretty music, he’d be trying to run out in the streets.
This is a child that needed to be in every sport, every season, all the time. He had so much energy. He was so physical. We actually had issues, early on, because of the way he would interact with his environment, which I think is very common of boys, was to sort of push outward with his physicality. He didn’t mean to be rough, but he needed to understand that sort of being more pushy and more physical, that didn’t really work for everybody.
Genevieve: Well, I think boys tend to, in that sense of adventure, explore with their bodies. Girls have more of a tendency … and this is obviously a very wide generalization because, as you said, everybody has both … tend to explore verbally or are more comfortable exploring verbally. So, sometimes I think boys get pushed back when, actually, all they’re really doing is exploring. They don’t need a lot of negative feedback. They just need to have better channeling.
Dr. Lisa: Well, channeling and boundaries, and I think the best thing that we can do as parents, and specifically female parents, is just to understand what their innate natures are, understand what their personalities are like because, again, you’re right. Every boy is different. Some are more physical. Some are more cerebral. Just understand that and give children sort of the space they need, but also kind of fence off that space to make sure that it’s safe; making sure your kid doesn’t run out into the road or doesn’t fall into the frog pond or whatever that takes. But, also, give them the chance to be emotional, which we will talk to Drew and Roger from Boys to Men about, because there is an emotional aspect of being male that sometimes gets short shrift in our culture, and it’s something that’s very important, as boys grow into men, to learn how to access for themselves.
Genevieve: I think, for men today who maybe grew up in a different, perhaps more stifling environment to realize that it’s never too late to model that kind of behavior for the boys in their community. They don’t even have to be fathers.
Dr. Lisa: Right. It’s also never too late if you grew up in an environment where you weren’t sort of enabled, weren’t given the chance to be physical, to have that physical energy, it’s never too late, as Dameron Midgette will talk to us about, to learn how to work with your body in a different way. So, we hope that … We know that listeners will be inspired in listening to our guests today on our Father’s Day show; listen to us talk about boy energy, Raising Good Men. We wish … Well, I wish my father, Dr. Charlie, the happiest of Father’s Days. I am wishing my grandfathers who are no longer with us, but also the happiest of Father’s Days. Genevieve …
Genevieve: Yes. I wish my father a very happy Father’s Day.
Dr. Lisa: Happy Father’s Day to all of you who are listening out there who are fathers yourselves or have father figures. For those of you who aren’t, then please give your nearest father figure a hug.
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Dr. Lisa: This morning, on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, we are speaking with 2 men who are helping us celebrate this very important weekend, Father’s Day weekend, by discussing a very important organization, the Boys to Men organization here in Maine. So, thank you for coming in today. We have Drew Wing, who is the executive director of Boys to Men, and we have Roger Martin, who is the chairman of the board of directors for the Boys to Men organization. Thank you.
Drew: Good morning.
Roger: Good morning.
Dr. Lisa: Well, let’s start by asking about your own children. Drew, your children, I think, must be a little younger.
Drew: A little bit younger. I have a boy, Guss, who’s 7, and a daughter, Lucy, who’s 11.
Dr. Lisa: Nice. Roger, how about you?
Roger: Yes. I have 2 boys. Brandon, who’s 22, lives right here on Congress Street in Maine. My son, Devon, who is 20, and is currently studying chemical engineering at Worchester Polytechnic Institute.
Dr. Lisa: So, you’re at very different ends of the spectrum.
Drew: Absolutely, yeah.
Dr. Lisa: Drew, how did being a father change you?
Drew: Being a father made me much more conscious about how I wanted to show up on a daily basis. I mean, you definitely start looking at the things that you’re doing, and how your children are looking at those things, and what they’re learning from how I am in the world. So, in some ways, it made me just think a little bit harder about how I was showing up and how I was modeling for my children.
Dr. Lisa: Roger, would you agree? Or, what has your experience been?
Roger: Yeah, and I guess I … What I would add to that, with what Drew said, is around watching your boys grow up, and allowing them to experience the different difficulties that they will go through, that all people will go through as they become adolescents, and then young adults. With my boys, they’ve been through all of that cycle. One of the things that’s interesting for me now is coming out of it on the backend, to be able to sit down and have a conversation with them around what it was like for them to have me as a dad, and then for me to tell them what it was like to be a dad to them and to share those experiences. I found … I’ve found that to be very rewarding over the last couple of years.
Dr. Lisa: Well, give me a few examples. Tell me what they said to you. What was it like to have you as a dad?
Roger: Yeah. I think they really appreciated the support that I gave them, the ability for them to take chances, to take risks, and also to ask for help when they needed it, and for me to be there to be able to provide that help and support. My youngest boy is very quiet and went through a time, that very difficult period in middle school, where he really struggled. He was a subject of bullying and had some difficulties making it through that time. Between his older brother, my wife, and myself, we really helped him through that. Today, he understands that, and he appreciates us for that. It really feels good to know that I did something really well to help him move along in his life.
Dr. Lisa: Give me some background on the Boys to Men organization. How long has it been in existence and what’s the mission?
Drew: Yeah. So, Boys to Men has been around for about 15 years now. We started out as a community coalition, and then became an official non-profit organization about 10 years ago now, which was started up by our founder, Lane Gregory. The mission was … We really came at it from the perspective of reducing interpersonal violence. The reality is is that a great majority of violence is perpetrated by boys and men in the world.
So, the idea was, “Well, if we’re going to stop this violence of male-to-male violence and male violence against women, we really need to work with boys and men,” because the work that had been done previously that had come out of the Women’s Movement was not really addressing or targeting that population of where the violence was coming from. So, that was the beginning, and then …
But, the underlying philosophy of Boys to Men is that despite the problems that we see going on with boys, and that’s not just male violence against women, but that’s a decline in academic performance. It’s emotional trauma. It’s a number of issues that are affecting boys in a way that doesn’t reflect how we want our boys to be and the health that we want to see for them. So, we acknowledge that there’s these problems going on that, statistically, we can look at and say, “Yes. This is true.”
But, at the same time, we believe that our boys aren’t broken. They weren’t born into the world this way. They didn’t come out wanting to be violent against themselves, against each other, to perform poorly in school, to not show up as the leaders that we really want them to be. They didn’t … They didn’t … They weren’t born that way. So, we believe it’s a culture … There’s a cultural issue in terms of how we’re defining masculinity through the media and the role modeling that boys are getting about what it means to be a man. That’s really a need of repair, in contrast to boys themselves.
Dr. Lisa: Roger, was your experience with your son’s bullying a key reason for either getting or staying involved with the Boys to Men organization?
Roger: The organization and its mission really hit home with me in terms of my emotions and my feelings and, really, how I wanted to … wanted my boys to be like and how I wanted them to grow up. I think you’re right. As I thought more and more about Boys to Men, I thought back to that experience of my younger son being bullied in middle school and saying to myself, “Boy. We need to do things to try to stop that so that young boys, as they’re growing up, can really act the way that we’re all meant to act, which is showing emotion, which is sharing feelings, which is building relationships with other boys and other girls, and not having to play this macho bully … bullying kind of persona.”
Dr. Lisa: So, Drew, how do you accomplish that?
Roger: So, our work is designed to … Coming from that … kind of that foundational belief that boys are not broken, but rather it’s a culture that’s in need of change, we view ourselves as a social change organization. So, we work within 3 spheres of influence in the lives of boys. We work with peers, the peers of boys. We work with parents, and then we work with educators, coaches to help them think about the culture and the messaging that they’re creating and the support they’re giving to boys. We work directly with the boys themselves.
But, it’s working on those different spheres of influence is the way that we start challenging these ideas that “boys can’t be emotional, that they have to be tough all the time, that the one emotion that’s okay to show is anger, and that masculinity is defined in terms of sexual conquest and violence and stupidity.” We work within those spheres to challenge the ideas that they’re sending the boys about masculinity.
Dr. Lisa: Is this done through educational programming?
Roger: Yeah. We have several different programs. So, with parents, we do a number of workshops, film series, book clubs throughout the year. We also have a program called “Boot Camp for New Dads,” which we run at Maine Medical Center and Mercy Hospital 2 weekends a month, where we have dads who are going to be dads for the first time participating with veteran dads who show up with their baby. They learn skills and talk about how their life is going to change when they have a new child. That program’s generously supported by Unum, I would add.
Dr. Lisa: We should just jump in here. Roger, you have a position at Unum. You want to just tell everybody what that is?
Roger: Sure. Thank you. I am the chief financial officer of Unum’s U.S. Businesses, and I work out of here in Portland, Maine.
Dr. Lisa: So, it’s interesting that Unum would feel so strongly about an organization such as Boys to Men that it would put financial support behind it. So, do you want to address that, Roger?
Roger: Sure, absolutely. We … At Unum, we’re very supportive of the community and also very supportive of enhancing and improving Maine’s education. If you think about one of the tenets of Boys to Men, it really is around respect and tolerance for each other. The programs that Boys to Men offer particularly in the schools, as it relates to reducing sexism and violence in the schools, is right up that sort of enhancing and improving that education … that educational experience. Our hope is, as we create young men and young women who are more respectful and have more tolerance for this environment, that will help us create better leaders. It’ll help us create students who will stay in Maine and want to work in Maine, and create a better workforce for the state of Maine as well.
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Dr. Lisa: Tell us more about the programs that are being offered, Drew.
Drew: Yeah. So, the Boot Camp for New Dads and just the parenting workshops we do is one aspect of it. Another piece of the work is the program that we do with peers, so going into the schools, and we have a program called “RSVP,” which is Reducing Sexism and Violence Program. That’s an intensive bystander intervention program that we deliver to high school students. We take them out on a 2-day retreat, and then there’s 2 followup days at school.
They learn value clarification, practical scenario … practical scenarios so that when they see harassment and simply incidents going on that they don’t think are okay, that they know how to step in safely and either directly intervene, find help from an administrator or a school teacher, or somehow interject … or put themselves into a situation where they can be an effective bystander rather than just letting the situation happen. Then, so that’s our … We have the parents, the peers, and then the educators we have an arm of our organization called “The Maine Boys Network.”
We do some … We do some research, and we also bring research forward about what’s going on with boys academically and what we can do to better support their learning and to help them do better in school. The other piece of what we’re doing there with educators and coaches, this year, is we’ll be launching a new program called “Coaching Boys into Men,” and that’s a program … It’s a national program that actually comes to us through Futures Without Violence, another great organization. We’ll be implementing that program in high schools across the state. The Maine Coalition for Ending Domestic Violence will also be working on that initiative.
Genevieve: Do the boys in your program express some sense of relief, or joy, or kind of a sense of understanding and being accepted once you support their values, these inner emotional values that perhaps might, in their school setting, be stifled? Once they’re let out of that emotional straight jacket, what happens?
Drew: Well, the program that we do directly with boys, particularly the RSVP program, we also have girls involved in that program. So, really, what we … We have the opportunity to create a dialogue. What the boys and the girls understand is they’re both experiencing challenges that are often based on the way we narrowly define gender and create gender stereotypes. So, in talking about that, they all feel liberated in a certain way and kind of raise up and say, “You know, we don’t have to … We don’t necessarily have to live this way. We don’t have to perform this way because none of us really want to.” So, that’s liberating for both the boys and the girls.
I think, one of the things … One of the “ah-ha” moments that happens for the boys in our program is when they hear, from the girls, about the girls’ daily experience, in terms of the things they have to think about to remain safe, to not be sexually assaulted on a daily basis. We ask the guys the same question, “What do you do to remain safe? What do you guys have to think about, specifically around the scenario of being sexually assaulted?” The boys say nothing. There’s nothing they have to say other than, “Stay out of jail.” The girls will quickly fill up a sheet of paper, a poster board sheet of paper, with all of the things they have to do, “Carry my keys, think about where I’m going to walk, think about what I’m going to wear.” The list goes on and on.
At that point, I watch the boys and almost every time, their jaw drops. They didn’t realize that their friends … Oftentimes, these are girls that they’re best friends with are having a totally different experience. So, that’s morally kind of an “ah-ha” moment for the boys. When they see that, they’re like … They want to be part of kind of the change. They don’t like being lumped … They don’t like the idea that girls, girls that they like and that they care about are feeling unsafe around other boys and men, and they’re lumped into that. They’re like, “This is not good.”
Genevieve: I have a question that is directly related to that. You guys can choose who wants to answer it. But, I grew up in New York City in the 70s and the 80s, and I went to an all girls’ school. We were taught, from a very young age, to avoid any grouping of boys. So that if there was more than 2 boys on the street, you cross the street and went away because boys have a tendency to be fine on their own, but when they’re in a larger group, that that can change their temperament momentarily. I’m wondering, in terms of the bullying, Roger, or in terms of some of these peer groups, is peer pressure a part of this? That boys who naturally wouldn’t behave this way might behave in a more violent or aggressive way when they’re in a group?
Drew: We don’t really … I mean, we don’t really address that group dynamic. I mean, we’re talking … Most of what we talk about is the messaging that they’re getting about what it means to be a man, and then how they want to show up and how they want to participate when they see something going on that’s not right and that they know is not right.
Genevieve: But, isn’t that the hard part, to show up as an individual when 6 of your friends are misbehaving? It’s very difficult. If you’re 14-years-old, it’s very hard to rise up against 4 of your friends.
Roger: So, one of the things that I’ve noticed, in experiencing these programs and watching films of them and experiencing them myself, is that the boys sort of stand there. When they go through this “ah-ha” moment and they see the girls write the list down of all the things they need to worry about, and the boys go through that “ah-ha” moment, they take a moment and they look at each other. They see if they’re all going through that “ah-ha” moment. For the most part, you can see that they are. I think that’s a breakthrough, and there’s an understanding there.
The other thing I would add about, sort of, the moral behavior and the breakthrough for these boys is the other thing I have seen is what happens after we leave the schools with these programs. We have very successful programs, and there are some young adults there who will be the future leaders and have really been hit home with this program. They’ll keep it alive. So, we have schools where students have kept this program alive, and they’ve taken on and run programs on their own, whether it be for different classes or different kinds of events.
We just held a program, a couple of weeks ago, at the Portland Library, and we had a young man, a senior from high school, come and talk to us about how his life has been impacted by this program. It really was amazing about how it really … It hit home with him, and he will take that with him for the rest of his life. So, we know we’re making a difference there. That will help them, help these young boys and girls grow into more healthy adults on a go forward basis.
Drew: I think your question is right on. It is difficult. We don’t sugarcoat it to say that it’s not. I mean, one of the fundamental things that we talk about, in this program, is this is about leadership. What does it take to be a leader? One of the things that they identify, when we do this, is it takes courage. So, standing up to whether it’s your own peer group or another group and saying, “I don’t think this is right,” is challenging, and it’s challenging for all of us. That certainly doesn’t change for a 13 or 14-year-old student.
Genevieve: Well, that seems to be the essence of the new manhood, then, is to have that kind of emotional courage to stand up when you see something wrong happening.
Drew: Exactly. To kind of flip the idea of kind of the masculine idea of, “What does it mean to have your buddy’s back? What does that mean? Does that mean to cover up for him, to jump in when he finds himself in a physical altercation and fight with him? Is that what it means to have my friend’s back? Or, does it mean that I’m going to look out for his emotional wellbeing? That when I see him involved in a situation or acting a way that I don’t think he should or that he doesn’t think he should, am I going to allow him to do that or am I going to challenge him on that?”
Dr. Lisa: I have a question for both of you. What did you learn from your own fathers that has impacted your lives most significantly? Whether it’s just living life in general or whether it’s parenting your children.
Roger: So, my dad was a firefighter and a plumber by trade. So, he worked 60, 70, 80 hours a week. There were … He … My mom and my dad had 5 children. He put us all through school on his own on today, which would be a salary, which would be slightly above sort of poverty level. The most important thing that he taught me was around my feelings; to share my feelings; to cry when I needed to; to be mad when I needed to; but to do it in a respectful way; to have dialogue; to have conversation; and to not hold things … not hold things in and have that create sort of a problem for me.
I remember back having family discussions. So, it was 3 boys and 2 girls in my family, and having those family discussions. That was one of the things that my dad insisted upon was we would have family discussions and talk about whatever was going on in our lives, in the city that we lived in, in the nation that we lived in at the time. For that, I really thank him because having … Being able to share that emotion and that feeling in today’s world, I think, has really helped me be a better leader, a better father, a better friend to my wife and my friends that I have.
Drew: Very nice. I think … When I think of my dad and what I learned from him, he would always say this … I mean, this was repetitive … is, “I expect you to be a gentleman, a scholar, and an athlete in that order.” I think I’ve carried that with me a lot. Not that that’s the perfect model for everyone, but it ended up being a pretty decent model for me, and I reflect on that often and ask myself, “First of all, am I behaving here like a gentleman, and am I thinking critically? Have I thought through the issue?” The athletic part is, “Am I having fun? Am I living a healthy … Am I living a healthy life?” So, I think that was great.
The other thing I learned from my dad was … He worked for the community, and worked to support the community, and really put a lot of time into making sure the people around us were taken care of. That was a value that I took from my dad. Then, one final thing was … I always remembering him saying is, “Work with good, talented people, and then get out of their way and let them work.” So, that’s just one of the other things I remember him saying and I often think about.
Dr. Lisa: How can people learn more about the Boys to Men organization?
Drew: The best way to learn a little bit about our organization is just going to our website, the maineboystomen.org. There’s a lot of great information there. We’re also on Facebook, which gives you a lot of our current things that are going on. We’re always welcome to pick up the phone. Call us locally, and just ask us questions, and see how you can get involved.
Dr. Lisa: Well, thank you. We’ve been talking to Drew Wing, who is the executive director of Boys to Men, and also Roger Martin, who is the chairman of the board of directors of Boys to Men. Each of them, a father, and each of them, I hope, celebrating this Father’s Day with their children in a wonderful, wonderful way. We thank you so much for the work you’re doing in the community.
Roger: Thank you. Glad to be here.
Drew: Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: Sleepless nights, a feeling something being not quite right … Treat the symptoms with traditional medications. Feel better for a little while, and continue with your busy days. But, have you ever stopped to consider the “what” that’s at the core of a health issue? Most times, it goes much deeper than you think. When you don’t treat the root cause, the aches, the sleeplessness, and “not quite right” come back. They don’t have to. You can take a step towards a healthier, more centered life. Schedule an appointment with Dr. Lisa Belisle, and learn how a practice that combines traditional medicine with Eastern healing practices can put you on the right path to better living. For more information, call the Body Architect in Portland at 207-774-2196, or visit D-O-C-T-O-R Lisa.org today. Healthy living is a journey. Take the first step.
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Dr. Lisa: Our next guest, for the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, is Dameron Midgette, who I will turn over to my cohost, Genevieve Morgan, because she spent some time with Dameron, and I think that they’ve had an interesting conversation.
Genevieve: That’s true, Lisa. We have. Dameron and I met. As part of my job as wellness editor at Maine Magazine, I’m always on the lookout for people doing interesting things in therapeutics and healing in Maine. Dameron has had a long history, in our state, of really body awareness and kinesthetic movement, particularly in the fields of marital arts and structural reintegration. So, Dameron, welcome.
Dameron: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Dr. Lisa: Dameron, when we brought you into the studio or just before, you were doing some movements to work on, I guess, spatial awareness was what you told me?
Dameron: Yeah.
Dr. Lisa: Tell me what you were doing and why this was important. Why would you do this before you came on a show?
Dameron: Hmm. Well, we’re creatures of habit. This is how we … As you watch kids run around and do their thing, once they get to a certain point with something, they get good enough at walking. They’re not really going to refine that so, so much. It refines as they grow. But, we often don’t always have the best possible answer for what we’re doing at the moment as we grow into adults. You carry compensations and history from various things.
I love to sort of press the reset button on that, every once in a while, and remind my nervous system of the full range of possibilities, as opposed to what I normally use, so that I have a little bit more freedom and choice available to me. I find that that’s underneath most of the problems that people … that I run into when people come to me looking for a whole range of things, everything from athletic performance to freedom from this problem, that problem.
Dr. Lisa: So, you were trying to create an openness?
Dameron: Yeah, yeah. Most of what we accept as normal in this culture is a very small percentage of what’s possible for humans in our minds, our bodies. So, I would call it opening up the field, again, to a lot more of what I’m capable of at least in the physical realm.
Genevieve: We’re here talking about raising good men and your dad, and you and I talked a lot about boy energy. One of the problems that boys have, often, in school is that idea of boy energy and not being aware of space. I remember my eldest, when he was in fifth grade, got sent home from school because he backed into a teacher and stepped on her toe. She was really angry that she felt that he wasn’t respecting her and I was sort of like, “Well, he’s in fifth grade, and he’s not aware of his body in space.” So, how does relate to what you’re talking about?
Dameron: Well, I think that one of the reasons that boy energy is a problem, possibly more in this culture than other cultures, is that I think the world they are growing into isn’t really physically aware, but that’s such an emphasis of that growing process, and so it doesn’t fit. As they’re running around testing things physically, that causes problems because often the grownups around them aren’t that comfortable with physical exploration.
Or, there’s a person in that teacher who responded to something that didn’t have much intention and put a story on it. If somebody’s comfortable in their physical presence, they might be more aware that somebody’s coming at them or they might just go, “Oh! Well, that didn’t feel like it was aggressive. It felt like somebody stepped on my foot. Ow,” and then let it go. But, often, because we’re … We’re often at a little bit of arm’s length with the body. Then, we start making stories about what comes in instead of just feeling it.
I think … My baseline for a lot of things, I think, is awareness. That’s what boys need is … That’s what men need. That’s what people need, in general, is masculine energy. I think everybody needs awareness. Often, we sort, “Okay. Either you’re not aware or we’re going to teach you awareness for something.” It’s like no, let’s just make that a baseline so that we’re aware of ourselves and the tendencies we have, what we have around us, kind of the whole spectrum … a whole spectrum.
Dr. Lisa: Now, I don’t want to call you out, but you have this sort of “big kid” energy, and you’re a big person.
Dameron: Yes! Yes.
Dr. Lisa: So, I don’t know. How tall are you?
Dameron: 6’ 4”.
Dr. Lisa: Okay. So, you’re 6’ 4,” and you’re kind of a big kid, and I have 5 brothers, so I’m used to big kids and a big son.
Dameron: Yeah.
Dr. Lisa: So, how do people take your kid energy and your boyishness and your … Yeah.
Dameron: I have a great story about that. My dad was a very, very big person … very passionate. When I first … One of my early jobs was in outdoor sales. I worked at a outdoor equipment store in Los Angeles. I was going to school there. Very passionate and interested in what I was doing and helping people out, but my manager called me inside one time and he said, “You know, I love your enthusiasm, but you scared a couple customers, so can you work on toning that down a little bit?” At that point, I had this … I couldn’t not project. It was just … My voice was loud, and I wanted to be near people. For some folks, that was a little bit too much.
Dr. Lisa: It strikes me that this may be an issue for more than just you … again, having the 5 brothers myself. How do you learn to channel that energy?
Dameron: The first … The introduction, for me, was martial arts. At right about that time, I had started training in a fairly aggressive style, and that was the first point, in my life, where I had had a lot of … My father was close, but he passed away when I was young. I hadn’t had a lot of physical, sort of intense physical contact … one older sister, no wrestling, none of that.
I remember, distinctly, the sensation of leaving a class having spent an hour or 2 beating the crap out of some really good friends and feeling so deeply satisfied by the contact. I remember the sensation of fists, and part of me … Part of my mind is going, “What?!” and scratching my head. I had no real way of understanding it at that point, but feeling happy and relaxed and content … satisfied, at some level, with that contact. That was the beginning of it. Unfortunately, there was also more … There was a story around that kind of training, which often happens with martial arts, where there’ll be, tai chis, “It’s about relaxation. So, if you want intensity, sorry. There’s martial arts that are about intensity. So, if you want relaxation or subtlety or some balance for health purposes, not so much.”
I had to find my way to something that has that for me, and sort of developed my own perspective on it. But, so there was a lot of … There was more aggression to that, and it was keying me up. Eventually, even though I was quite successful in it and doing very well and good relationship with the whole school, I had to move on because I was treating everything in my life as a potentially threatening interaction to defend myself against, to be wary of … hypervigilance, which isn’t a healthy state.
So, that was … Learning how to deal with that, I think, takes awareness and acceptance of things that we traditionally sometimes judge in the culture intensity. Sometimes, discomfort, the things that we’re not happy with about ourselves … Learning to accept all those different parts, particularly if they’re physical, and then from there we can begin to look around and go, “Oh! Well, this is what this needs. This is what that needs.” I think, for boys and men particularly, it’s … It has to be … Or, it feels like, for me, it’s been largely a physical process.
Dr. Lisa: Men and boys have a need for that physical expression, that kind of vitality and, like you said, the wrestling and boxing. How do you find a useful expression for that, in today’s society, for all of those boys and men listening today?
Dameron: I think it’s important to find a foot in the door. Eventually, I would hope that it wouldn’t be something separate from the normal process of living. But, often, we need something to introduce us to that. For me, the thing that’s found the most richness … Recently, I’ve been teaching, for about 5 years, something called “Systema,” which is a Russian martial … a training system; not really an art. It doesn’t have a particular look. The purpose is more to help you … The original translation of what it’s known as in Russia often is “posznai sebia” or “know thyself” or “learn yourself, discover yourself.” So, most of the training is focused on self-awareness, particularly in intense situations. So, the idea being that if you can be calm in the extreme, the normal will be easy.
I think practices that give people a chance to explore all of the different states that might be comfortable or practical or needing of expression, needing of feeling in a way that doesn’t push them farther away or keep them at a distance, but that brings them in so that we can learn more about them. Most physical intensity has a pretty particular … It goes over here. This is what it’s about, and we’re going to leave it there, and then they … It’s boxing. It’s MMA It’s team sports.
Dr. Lisa: Weightlifting.
Dameron: What?
Dr. Lisa: Weightlifting.
Dameron: The weightlifting, which can be, yeah, very much a, “Let’s get harder, stronger, bigger,” a lot of that idea. Just changing the question or the purpose of training into, “Why do I want to do this?” Okay. It might not … A lot of time, stuff like that, it can be intense. It can hurt. As a culture, we don’t often to like to … We’ll sort of revel in it, but we don’t necessarily get comfortable in it. Even the people I know who have done really extreme things weren’t comfortable in themselves.
Genevieve: So, you’re really talking about redefining strength into a kind of supplement.
Dameron: Yes, yes. Being able to bring your … all of your energy, as intense as it may be, physical, mental, and emotional energy to bear on whatever it needs in a way that doesn’t lose you being able to listen and being able to respond to everything that’s happening in the situation. In Systema, we talk about … a lot about calm under stress. If I do … If I punch with a rigid arm, I can’t feel what’s on the other end of that. I’ve desensitized myself physically. If I am able to make contact with somebody in a relaxed way, then I’m still listening. I can feel their body. I can feel what’s going on for them. I’m open and receptive, even if I’m doing something that’s possibly fairly intense, fairly direct. Keeping those channels open, being able to remain aware while we exercise these parts of ourselves and let them out, I think, is the key.
Genevieve: Well, that kind of responsiveness and awareness, how has that affected your own fathering?
Dameron: I would say … I mean, when I first started training in Systema, the thing that really sold me on it … Because the training, some of it’s intense. Some of it’s very intense. Some of the folks that train it are ex-military, current military. I have a little more of health focus because that’s what I’ve been doing for a long, long time. But, the thing that really sold me on it was I came back from first long intensive and noticed, immediately, the difference in my ability to be present with my kids.
That something would come up, and there would be a 3-year-old tantrum, and I would take that in breath of, “This is driving me crazy,” and then go, “Oh.” (breathes out) and just be able to find space in that moment, and take a breath, and let my body let go of any responses … emotionally, any kind of response that I was sort of going to react with as opposed to actually respond, to be present. I mean, sometimes, the intensity isn’t even something … In the moment, it could lose us. Our sensitivity isn’t even something we ask for. It’s just something that’s there, where we’re particularly sensitive to something.
Genevieve: I’m thinking of road rage.
Dameron: Yeah. Exactly! Exactly! That kind of thing. Then, we’re actually a prisoner to that because we have this place that can get pushed on, and we’re going to respond a certain way. We have no ability to make a choice about it. So, beginning to be able to make more and more choices and better choices, have more of our resources available no matter what the stressor is … yelling kids, somebody cut us off, somebody threatening us. It’s all the same pathway in the body.
Speaker 1: We’ll return to our interview after acknowledging the following generous sponsor … Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine; makers of Dr. John’s Granola cereal. Find them on the web at orthopedicspecialistsme.com.
Dr. Lisa: What kind of commitment do you have to have to maintain this ability to stay present in the moment? It’s easy to say in the abstract, but from a practical standpoint as a parent, how do you do that one a day-to-day basis?
Dameron: Part of it … Ugh. Well, I’d say a lot of it is making … is trying to make sure that it doesn’t take a lot of mental commitment. There’s a commitment to establishing different habits, to being willing to feel actually. Because there’s this idea, I think, in our culture about parenting and a lot of other things; that if things are going well, this is how it’s supposed to feel. It’s supposed to feel nice, and maybe orderly, and like we’re good, and all this stuff.
But, actually, in a world that we don’t have fundamental control over, being in the best place often doesn’t feel very good. So, a willingness to embrace that idea and say, “Oh. It may feel worse for me to embrace my desire to respond to something because I have to actually tap into that.” If I don’t, it’s just going to come flying out. It’ll fly by and I’ll go, “Oh. I feel better now.” But, because I kept it at arm’s length and I’m still not gaining … I’m not gaining the ability to sort of have a relationship with it and have some choice about how I express it. So, that decision, up front, can be tough.
However, for me being kinesthetic, I love being able to work it out physically. It’s amazing how when you get into a physical arena … The way Systema trains, often they say, “You know, you can tell somebody something 100 times. But, if they mess it up once and they get bopped in the head, they’re going to remember.” Making sure that we do things that create different habits so that the … that basic, the thing that arises is different than it was before. So, it’s not a mental exercise of, “I’m going to do this right.” It doesn’t work because by the time that kicks in, it’s already done. So, we need to retrain our … a lot of our deeper feelings, say our autonomic nervous system, so that we have a different response to things.
Genevieve: For someone’s who so responsive, you’ve really watched your kids. When we’ve spoken before, you had insight into what you feel you needed as a boy growing up and what you’re trying to give your son and daughters growing up. What … Can you just tell us more about that?
Dameron: I think that awareness piece is huge, and it shows up differently for different … for girls and boys. That’s … It’s energy. Every kid is a different mix of masculine and feminine, those archetypes, those sort of ways to be in the world. But, for boys in particular, it feels like … and I’m in the middle of this. He’s 4 … No, he turned 5 today. So, and then I have 2 older … He’s got 2 older sisters.
But, I’m calling it respect, which is this sort of a physical awareness of, “I’m here, and this is where I am, warts and all. This is sort of how I feel in myself, whether that’s good or not,” and there you are, and how you’re feeling, and all of it, and accepting it. “Oh, it’s not right. That’s not …” That’s where you are right now. Being able to allow that … not try to sort of change who they are, but particularly physically say, “Look. This is your body, and here is … and I respect your authority, sort of your ability to make choices over some limited thing,” a small kid … not too much authority. That will grow as they get older.
And, giving him a sense of physical contact that’s real, that has meaning, that has my awareness behind it. It’s just not rough housing. Usually, when it gets too much, it’s because people have just … They’ve gotten angry. They’re no longer there. So, contact that has awareness is, I think, deeply respectful. It’s a meeting, and that feels like the best way, I think, that I can think of to talk about giving that respect specifically.
Genevieve: So, seeing him as other, not only in his …
Dameron: His own person.
Genevieve: … mental state, but in his physical state, and keeping those physical boundaries yourself. So, with the hugs, and the wrestling, and the sports, and the this and the that that you, as a man, kind of prescribe his boundaries with respect to him.
Dameron: I help show him where they are, I think, and I do that by … hopefully by having my own clear because that’s … They imitate, more than they do anything, for years, the first years of their lives. So, hopefully, I’m a good model of that. I have no idea because I don’t have a mirror of that kind in the house. But, when I am around him, particularly physically, being aware with my touch, being aware physically so that he … Because then that’s going to … We get a taste of somebody’s state when we touch them no matter how that touch is, whether it’s body work or martial arts or a loving touch in a family or whatever.
So, really, the more that I show up, the more he’s going to go, “Oh! I feel that,” and, “Oh, I can … I feel … I feel myself.” It’s the beginning of sort of shaping that, so it’s sort of teaching … trying to teach it from the outside or just giving an example of it that he can fill into. Then, the rough housing is fine because it feels right. It’s not, “Oh, I’m supposed to rough house with my boy,” and maybe he doesn’t want to then or at all. Some don’t.
Dr. Lisa: Dameron, if you could go back to yourself as a younger person and give yourself assurances that everything was going to be fine and that you didn’t need to act a certain way, what would you say to yourself? What … How … Would you do anything differently? Or, what advice would you give?
Dameron: Hmm. That’s a very good question. I, pretty much throughout my life, have always wanted to understand. I would be 12 in the middle of various 12-year-old angsts. I would look up at the stars and say, “I just want to figure this out!” which I don’t know. I mean, looking around, from the outside, it looked like other people had different questions they were asking, but who knows … and talking about it in the biggest sense. I think I would go back and tell myself that I don’t need to, that that’s not the point. It’s an interesting goal. It carries you a lot of great places. But, that it’s much more interesting, more worthwhile, more rewarding to just feel what’s happening, to just show up. Then, the rest of it may actually get answered easier than you think, but it’s not … You’re not going to get there that way necessarily. So, I think I would say that.
Dr. Lisa: Sage advice to yourself and to those who are listening to your program. Thank you so much for coming on our Father’s Day show, Dameron Midgette, body worker and martial arts trainer and so many more … so many other things.
Dameron: Yes.
Dr. Lisa: Thank you for being here.
Dameron: Thank you very much for having me.
Dr. Lisa: Hello. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, and you’ve been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, show number 40, “Raising Good Men,” which is aired for the first time on WLOB Radio on June 17th, 2012, Father’s Day. Our guests today included Roger Martin and Drew Wing of the Boys to Men organization, and Dameron Midgette of Body Knowledge.
We hope that this week, as every week, you will be inspired by the words of our guests to go out and live your life more fully. Thank you so much for being a part of our world. Happy Father’s Day, everyone! May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine; Mike LePage and Beth Franklin at ReMax Heritage; Robin Hodgskin at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney; Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmounth, Maine; Booth; UNE, the University of New England; and Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is recorded in downtown Portland at the offices of Maine Magazine on 75 Market Street. It is produced by Kevin Thomas and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Editorial content produced by Genevieve Morgan. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain. Our assistant producer is Jane Pate.
For more information on our hosts, production team, Maine Magazine, or any of the guests featured here today, visit us at D-O-C-T-O-R Lisa.org. Tune in every Sunday, at 11:00 AM, for the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour on WLOB Portland Maine 1310AM, or streaming WLOBradio.com. Show summaries are available at D-O-C-T-O-R Lisa.org. Download and become a podcast subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle through iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.