What I learned at man camp, where men get in touch with their emotions

On a Friday evening in early March, two weeks before much of the US went into a coronavirus lockdown, I found myself standing in the California desert, screaming into another man’s face.

The next day, the smell of burning sage wafted through the air as I took my shirt off and wrestled a guy inside a metal dome.

Later, I was part of a group of more than 20 men, many crying, as we talked about our emotions – about moments from our childhood, about parents, about doomed relationships and fading hopes.

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This rollercoaster ride was part of an “embodied masculinity experience” hosted by a group called Sacred Sons, aimed at promoting healthy masculinity.

Courses like this – often dubbed “man camps” – have grown in popularity in recent years, as the #MeToo movement, and numerous other high-profile examples of toxic masculinity, have brought the misconduct of numerous men to the fore. They aim to teach men how to become, well, better men.

“Healthy masculinity was never taught to us, so now it’s time,” I’d read on the Sacred Sons website ahead of my trip.

“Through time-tested frameworks and psychological processes, we guide men to their emotional and spiritual edges so that every man who shows up and does the inner work will one day feel the full depth and breadth of their emotions, find and honor their purpose in life, and commit to embodying their truth.”

I felt the weekend had come at a good time.

After years of revelry and over-exuberance, I’d stopped drinking a couple of months earlier, and in the starkness of sobriety I was already thinking about the way I’d treated people in the past, about how I’d acted in relationships and friendships. This seemed like the perfect opportunity to rethink my version of masculinity.

As I did more research on my way to California, however, I became increasingly nervous.

The photos and videos on the Sacred Sons Instagram page documented almost the exact opposite of what I’m into.

‘Healthy masculinity was never taught to us, so now it’s time.’ Photograph: Tom Silverstone

There are pictures of men wearing ponchos and holding staffs, hugging each other and dancing, mixed in with motivational quotes like “Brotherhood is the medicine that can heal the world of disconnection” and “A man does not hide his shadows, he embraces them”.

The website has videos of men sitting in a circle, crying. Not tear-slowly-trickling-down-Liam-Neeson’s-cheek type crying, but sobbing uncontrollably, bodies heaving, faces contorted as men defy the concept of the stoic, “strong” male and face up to their emotions.

It had me racked with anxiety, but this is what I had signed up for.

I was at the embodied masculinity experience to do this properly. I wouldn’t be sitting in the corner winking at the camera, I was going to be in the mix – as the film shows.

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