Exhale #3: Heavy bass, sex magic, conflict resolution and leadership
My entire life I’ve been obsessed with music.
When I was 16 and my dad passed his old F-150 down to me, the first thing I did was put ridiculous subwoofers in it. Within about 6 months I had put 2 x JW W3v2s (for those of you that know speakers) and a 15″ competition subwoofer with a custom box I made on top of the back seats.
I couldn’t turn them up over 25% without my ears exploding. Also, my nose constantly itched as I drove that truck because the bass was so heavy and shook my entire face. 🎶😤
I cringe when I think of all the silly ways I tried to be cool back then (and the ways I do now without even realizing it).
Anyway my friend Austin Brawner showed me a song on a road trip recently that I then listened to over 10x the next day. I’m listening to it as I type. 😂
Here it is: Rejoice by Steve Angello
My infatuation with that song (it’s basically a pastor’s sermon over the top of an EDM track) sent me down a rabbit hole to find more spoken word + EDM music.
A few other playlists I’ve listened to obsessively in the past couple of years:
Smoove by yours truly
Sex Magic Ritual by friend and sex coach Alexa Martinez
Kundalini Meditation Mix by me as well
Why you’re receiving this email
Next, I got some feedback from someone recently kindly asking, “Why are you sending me this?”
If you are receiving this it’s because you are a friend or at least someone I’ve known over the years that I thought might enjoy this new newsletter that I’m putting together.
Soon I will launch www.michaelcaz.com, and this will be the newsletter for that site.
If you don’t get any value out of these at all, you can unsubscribe at the bottom of this email. No hard feelings whatsoever.
Now…about sex
I’ve never considered myself a very kinky person or even very edgy sexually.
For instance, before meeting Adee I was terrified to talk dirty to a partner, and my idea of kink was changing up positions.
Adee and I made a commitment years ago to treating our sex life as one of the most important things in our life. To creating and maintaining an erotic life that would allow us to have great sex hopefully into our 80s. Oh the things we could do without teeth.
We read a lot of Esther Perel stuff early in our relationship, and we learned some really important things about maintaining a level of closeness and eroticism simultaneously. She sums it up well in this quote:
“Love enjoys knowing everything about you; desire needs mystery. Love likes to shrink the distance that exists between me and you, while desire is energized by it. If intimacy grows through repetition and familiarity, eroticism is numbed by repetition. It thrives on the mysterious, the novel, and the unexpected. Love is about having; desire is about wanting.”
What I think we learned is that humans crave novelty in the bedroom.
One way to get novelty is by “getting some strange.” Many people in committed relationships cheat or experiment with all forms of polyamory seeking eroticism with other partners.
We realized we could “get some strange” in our monogamous relationship by just trying new things all the time.
That realization led us to:
- Learn about BDSM from Om Rupani
- Become inspired to talk dirty after reading I Am a Dominant
- Have dozens of super sexy conversations about our fantasies
- Learn about something called sex magic amongst other things from people like Jamie Wheal
Sex Magic!?
A few nights ago we got child care and got a hotel room off of hotwire.com (you get a screaming deal during COVID and if you choose the roulette option).
We took a shower together then lit some candles and incense.
I led her through some progressive muscle relaxation where I had her focus on her breath and then as I touched different body parts imagining herself dissolving tension in that body part. Eyes closed.
Once she was completely relaxed I started whispering in her ear guiding her through a little exercise.
I invited her to bring to mind her biggest challenge in life. The thing causing her the most amount of worry and fear.
Then I had her take several deep breaths.
Next, I had her visualize how she wanted to BE in relation to that challenge.
I encouraged her to see herself moving through it with grace and ease.
I told her to keep that image in her mind while we had sex. And then we did. And it was hot!!
If I’m pretending to know what sex magic is then it’s something like bringing aspirations, challenges, or anything important into the bedroom.
Woo woo people have a way of making everything really hard to understand, but this is what I’m gathering so far.
If you think this sounds weird as fuck, you’re not alone. I did and still do. However, I was curious and we’ve done it a handful of times. I can say that it’s led to some incredible experiences and growth.
Other relationship stuff
I tweeted for the first time in about 5 years. It seemed to resonate with people.
On the topic of “how to fight” better, Adee and I just released a podcast to discuss a very powerful communication tool we learned from Gay and Katie Hendricks. They are the couple’s therapists that have been on Oprah over a dozen times and wrote “Conscious Loving,” “The Big Leap,” and more.
We’ve used things from this technique to seriously uplevel our ability to resolve conflict.
What I’m learning about leadership
Last week I held my first Soul Searching Adventure with 10 men in the mountains.
Every man on the trip had some significant breakthrough in their life. Outside of planning the trip, my main role was to hold space and create the context for people to discover new things about themselves.
Some concepts that were on my mind and that I felt were really helpful were:
Assume that people already have all of the answers they seek
Something I learned from my mentor Eben Pagan is that one of our roles as leaders, coaches or guides is to make other people the HERO in their own journey. To allow them to build their own self-esteem by coming to their own solutions and insights rather than me stroking my ego by giving them a bunch of wise advice.
I think I did a good job of this on this trip by
a. speaking less and asking more questions than ever
and
b. when someone was sharing something deep not immediately steering the conversation towards solutions.
Allow other leaders to step up
Another thing I tried to do was wait patiently at times when there was silence to give other men in the group time to speak up and support each other.
This led to some serious deepening of conversations. It also led to an incredible bond between the men by the end of the week.
Give direct feedback
I also believe that one of the greatest services we can do as leaders is to help people push the edges of their emotional comfort zone.
There were moments in the trip where I felt like people were not fully expressing themselves and keeping things surface level, and I tactfully called them out.
I did this by first acknowledging them in some way and reminding them how much I respect them. Then I gave them some piece of constructive feedback and an invitation to go deeper.
From my perspective this allowed people to feel safer even when receiving constructive feedback which led to them going outside of their comfort zones.
That’s all for today. If these emails are resonating with you, I’d love to hear from you. What are you finding most useful? Is there anything you’d love me to write about?
Peace,
Michael