For most men, the sobbing started earlier: the point when it felt as though our bodies and minds melted into a whole new dimension. For me, it happened on the fourth day, after a long session of intense, intentionally irregular breathing, followed by dynamic meditations that had culminated in a yoga room full of men swaying like seaweed – all self-consciousness evaporated along with the sweat. It was at that moment that Craig White, our flinty guru of masculinity, implored us to let our loved ones in, and something unfurled deep inside me. Suddenly, I felt as though I was enveloped in white light, and could feel everyone I’d ever cared about come thudding into my chest. When I lay on the floor, happy tears rolling down my face, I could see the serene, accepting eyes of my late stepfather in two scuffs on the ceiling. Whatever was still functioning in my brain was thinking: what is happening to me?
It had all started very differently. The Friday before, I’d arrived at Broughton Hall – an authentically grand Elizabethan pile near Skipton, on 3,000 acres of bucolic Yorkshire pastures that have been in the Tempest family since 1097 – racked with anxiety. I was there to greet 24 other similarly sheepish men; to make small talk, and to explain the socially acceptable reasons we were attending this Men Without Masks retreat – five days without mobile phones, alcohol, caffeine or meat, designed to shake us out of our “toxic man boxes” and into more authentic and embodied selves. We had sat in a circle under a giant chandelier and medieval oil paintings in the plush-carpeted drawing room, men from their 20s to 60s, every one of them silently pigeonholing each other: the white-collar boxer with the huge tattooed biceps; the softly spoken, esoteric looking engineer; the young shaven-headed guy wearing a hoodie and sliders, with a furrowed brow, crossed arms and legs planted wide. For me at least, there was not an obvious kindred spirit in sight.
“You’re probably wondering: what the fuck am I doing here?” said Craig, a curious mix of sinewy stillness and latent energy, scanning the room challengingly. The creator of Men Without Masks, he’s a former British Lions rugby performance coach, who had an epiphany in 2009 on a yoga and meditation retreat in Thailand, when he realised he’d had his priorities all wrong; had lived in a macho box created during his childhood on a Wigan council estate. Now a life and leadership mentor as well as a rugby coach, he has developed Men Without Masks over years of helping men to get in touch with their authentic selves. It’s an intensive programme, with a focus on embodiment and opening up, as well as an attempt to create a tribal-style brotherhood, with days of self-reflection and personal growth themed loosely along the lines of the Jungian masculine archetypes: Lover, Warrior, Magician and King.
Craig’s assertion that “these men will feel like your brothers” seemed unlikely as I scoured the room. I’ve tended to be wary of groups of men: chilly, socially brutal boarding-school rugby changing rooms; cultish football fans; even middle-class dads trading Fantasy Football banter on WhatsApp. I’ve tended to find defensive solace in irony and rolled my eyes at anything excessively yogic. But as the question of what we were there for was posed to the group, the circle started to ripple with touching stories about addiction, loneliness, loveless and thwarted relationships, suicidal thoughts and more. When it was my turn, I heard myself talking in a small voice, about being 40, and a bit lost: between future kids and my cherished freedom; in the fertility issues that make that dilemma doubly complicated; in a subtle but increasingly hard-wired reliance on caffeine, sugar, gin and mindlessly repetitive phone-scrolling. Stuff that has lingered from the pandemic and left me feeling stuck, vaguely frustrated and aware that I’m becoming older, less flexible, less relevant. I was surprised that my story sounded true; doubly surprised that it felt so good to say it to a series of faces that suddenly looked a bit warmer, and a bit more human.
The following days were a blur of experiences that encouraged each of us to “find our edge”, from an intention-setting 6.30am frigid dip in a pond in a beautiful corner of the estate to a cramped sweat lodge overseen by a shaman. There was almost an entire day of “noble silence” in nature, which for me involved meditating barefoot in a river and later terrifying a group of unsuspecting dog-walkers as I blissfully exited a forest covered in mud. Designed in part to echo male initiations of the past, activities were usually followed by small tribal-style circles, where we were encouraged to hold space for each other; to explore what had come up, with honesty and vulnerability encouraged. Unlike conventional therapists, the retreat’s leaders – including Matt Gunn, a gentle psychotherapist, breathwork and embodiment coach, and Rory Trollen, a yoga therapist with a Connery-esque burr – shared intimate details of their own lives and struggles, naturally enforcing what was often referred to as our “safe container”.
Beyond anything else – the vision-inducing breathwork, the unlikely ecstatic dancing, the meditations on life and death – this simple act of talking was perhaps the most profound aspect of the retreat. We discussed erections in school showers and the crushing loneliness of empty one night stands; absent fathers, addicted mothers, abused partners; all the guilt and secret shame that we hold in, because there isn’t always an outlet for it. We meditated on the suppressed feelings that so often turn to desperation and rage, and mean that Western men are almost four times more likely to die by suicide than women. We talked about the ways that so many people grow up without proper male role models, or can’t find meaningful ways to speak to their fathers, and end up lost, addicted or chasing empty hits of adrenaline and dopamine.
And we examined what masculinity can look like: deriving power from our presence, self-knowledge and ability to lift up others, rather than our bank accounts or conquests.
It was amazing to see the profound transformations in other men, who gradually began to appear to me like beautiful souls. I watched the scowling guy from day one change, especially while doing the “Hundred Club” – 100 savage hits with a baseball bat on a prone punch bag, designed as a controlled release of anger – as other men played the part of the parents who had abused or neglected him. Afterwards, he lay sobbing in the foetal position, then embraced his parents, telling them he loved them, before being literally lifted up by the group – a moment that seemed to fill the room with magic electricity. For the rest of the retreat, he seemed lighter, the scowl replaced by a big smile. Every time I looked at him, I felt deep brotherly pride and respect.
Brotherhood was a key theme. There were lots of hugs and eye-staring sessions that gradually shifted from awkward to deep, lingering and real. After one meditation that led us towards our inner child (me: grimacing kid with a bad haircut on the first day of mini rugby), we were encouraged to see each other’s inner child too. I found myself staring into the left eye of a 50-something hard-drinking, cigarette-smoking steel-business owner who uncomfortably reminded me of my first boss. Yet I felt simultaneously like his son and his protective father. I could see his first day at school and feel his chilly relationship with his dad, all sense of competition replaced by a new sort of empathy.
If any residual scepticism was left, it was blown away by a trauma-release meditation on the final day. Somehow, Matt the psychotherapist sent Broughton Hall’s Avalon yoga studio into great wave-like raptures of belly-sobbing and primal screaming, as the resident peacock peered in, possibly entranced or bemused. Some men reported hallucinations and out-of-body experiences. One rugby coach, who had arrived with a policeman’s manner of solid but stiff dependability, now had the air of a man who’d been left in a glade of butterflies with a bag of LSD.
Our final act was to take turns as King: to declare to the group who we were, and who we wanted to be, and to ask everyone: “What do you see in me?” I sat in that chair, with a plastic gold crown on my head, and looked around that grand drawing room as the hands raised. For someone like me, who prefers to deflect rather than confront, this should have been the stuff of feverish nightmares. But my voice wasn’t small any more. As I looked around the circle, all I saw was respect and acceptance; and all I felt was an alien sort of safety. In the gentle eyes of my new brothers, I had found an unlikely and wholly new sort of love.
Men Without Masks runs five-day retreats from Tuesday 16 May, Saturday 9 September, and Friday 1 December in 2023. Other services include a 10-week online group programme, one-day retreats and a 10-day retreat in Peru, as well as private coaching and mentoring. menwithoutmasks.com