Coming of Age Rituals to Help Heal our World

In our modern device driven era, the year of the Covid-19 pandemic, what can we do to connect with each other in more meaningful and positive ways? How can teens who are growing up now find a positive way forward? On today’s show, Dr. Mark Schillinger, also known as the “Teen Whisperer,” shares the strategies he has developed for helping families connect and thrive together.

Dr. Mark Schillinger is the founder of Young Men’s Ultimate Weekend YMUW and Challenging Teenage Sons and was also voted “Best Chiropractor” in Marin County, California.
https://www.ymuw.org

Transcript

Osha Hayden
In our modern device-driven era, the year of the Covid 19 pandemic, what can we do to connect with each other in more meaningful and positive ways? How can teens who are growing up now find a positive way forward? On today’s show Dr. Mark Schillinger, also known as the “Teen Whisperer” will share the strategies he has developed for helping families connect and thrive together.

Osha Hayden
Dr. Mark, founder of Young Men’s Ultimate Weekend and Challenging Teenage Sons is a public speaker, community leader, and a chiropractor specializing in mind body wellness, an expert in stress management and family dynamics. He’s the creator of The Right Way, a method to help families enjoy more caring, and cooperative relationships. Mark’s wisdom draws upon the sciences of personal growth, neuroscience, mindfulness based stress management, and tribal ancestral family wisdom. His work with families will be featured on the CNN show, “This is Life with Lisa Ling”, November 29 2020. Mark lives and practices in Marin County.

Osha Hayden
Welcome to the show, Dr. Mark. So happy to have you here.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Thank you so much for having me. Happy to be here. Anything related to the Bay Area? Certainly North Bay, I feel like I’m home. So thank you.

Osha Hayden
I wanted to start out by talking about how your own teenage years influenced the work that you do now with teens? Because I know you have been termed as the “Teen Whisperer.”

Dr. Mark Schillinger
That is true. I haven’t termed that. And your question is actually very profound, like, who was I as a teenager? And how did that get me here. So let’s see how I can kind of get to that in a concise way. But make it as powerful as it really is, which is this. When I was a teenager, I was into three things in New York, in the 60s: I was heavy into music, which I still am, I was heavy into sports, which I still am. And I was really heavy already into exploring alternative lifestyle practices like natural foods and yoga and meditation, things like that. And when I got into college, I was heavy into comparative religion, I had this thing about looking up at the sky and going, Okay, if there is a God or whoever, whatever this is, I’m fine, I’m going to come find you. I really want to know what this is.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
So I had this thing about enlightenment and happiness and how people can get together and cooperate. And I was always sort of that ideal young guy. I was scared crapless of dating. I was mostly an introvert, I just love to meditate. And, you know, ponder. So all the way through college or went through my chiropractic college all the way through my whole life really, up until this moment.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Personal Growth and spiritual development are really, really important to me. And so the way that relates to how I got to be the teen Whisperer is this. When I finished college, I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do. But I knew I was going to be teaching people how to be enlightened how to be happy, healthy.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Early on, in my pursuit of that I realized, Oh, my god, there’s so many different ways to be enlightened, like, there’s no one right way. So that was a major insight for me in my early 20s. Like, I need to first create a way that’s right for me. And then if I’m going to help others, I have to help find them find a way that’s right for them. It’s not going to be my way.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
So that was my pursuit in my early years in my early 20s. Like, how am I going to come up with a way that can be right for everybody, even though it doesn’t have to be true for all of them? Right? Right. So the right way, basically, is five virtues: respect, intelligence, grace, humor, and true north. Because after studying with so many gurus, Masters, saints, lamas, shamans, Rabbis, you name it, I’ve been around this block a little bit. I really wanted to narrow it down to what was the core of their teachings.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
And so I came up with those five virtues. And, you know, that was 35 years ago now I’ve come up with many, many dozens of practices that allow people to be healthy, happy and holy in a way that’s right for them. But it’s based on these five virtues. So in my chiropractic office for the last 36 years, I’ve been a wellness doctor, as you said, specializing in mind body. Well, a lot of that is that I am a life coach to many, many of my patients. 20 years ago, when my son and my daughter were becoming teenagers, I was struggling. I grew up in a very tiny little apartment in Queens with an apartment building where you can hear everybody sneeze and talk. And I lived in this tiny apartment with my grandmother who spoke hardly any English, my parents, two brothers, and a sister – all very loving. And it was all very stressful too. And so that really helped me in my pursuit of not only spiritual enlightenment, but stress management.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Right, because I grew up in a family where there’s already, like a couple of suicides when I was younger. Depression and anxiety were huge. So I was determined not to take any medicine, I wanted to learn how to master my mind. So the reason why I bring that up is because in my life coaching, and in my work, as a chiropractor, I specialize in stress management, all these great skills. It went right out the window when it came to parenting my teenage kids, it was just like, I couldn’t practice any of that crap. But no, I didn’t want to know from it. I just wanted to yell and scream.

Osha Hayden
No one else has ever had that experience, I’m sure.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
In fact, I know so, because there’s thousands of parents who now send their sons to the Ultimate Weekend, because, they’re going through the same things. Right. So once I realized that, I had to own that I was having a hard time raising my children.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
I really decided to change my life, I knew that I could not get older knowing that I did not give my best to my children. And really to my former wife, because I had gone through a tough divorce years earlier, I had turned that divorce around, you know, became great friends with my former wife. And basically what happened is I decided to become an expert in family dynamics. I wanted to change my Right Way method of personal growth and spiritual development into what’s now called the Right Way Method for Family Unity. And so I started the young man’s ultimate weekend because I decided that rite of passage, the ancestral tradition of rite of passage was the first step. So I found a mentor, I learned a lot about rite of passage, we did our first rite of passage event in the year 2000. Here in Fairfax, Marin. And without any advertising or word of mouth, we had 205 young men show up, when I was expecting my son Gabe and his four friends who would sleep on the couch in the floor in my house, right? I knew those five had to be there. I had no idea there’s gonna be 200 more young men showing up. Wow. Right. And it was a signal, the signal that I was not the only father who was having a hard time.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Parents then called me after that. “We’d like, to know, Dr. Mark, what did you do? My son’s making his bed. He’s not yelling at me anymore. He’s like, he’s trying to calm his mind. But normally, he’d be punching a hole in the door.” And so that’s when I realized I really wanted to get on to this and create this method. And then 10 years after that, after having 1000s of young men successfully go through the program, I felt like I was the “Teen Whisperer”. Now, I didn’t give myself that name. Parents started calling me that. But it’s because with my highly trained mentors, mostly from Sonoma and Marin, we really did crack the code; we figured out how to motivate young men, what makes them withdraw, what makes them violent, what makes them angry, we really figured it out. And so then I realized 10 years in that I had to create a rite of passage for my parents.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
This is very groundbreaking. I don’t know anybody doing this, I’m sure somebody is somewhere. But so now when the young men are out in the woods, going through their rite of passage, and we typically hold these events in Sonoma, when I’m in a hotel with the parents, while they’re going through a rite of passage with me, learning how to let go of their son as a boy, learning how to communicate to him in a respectful way, as if he’s an intelligent being, how to use your authority and influence in a really healthy way that appeals to his biological desire to individuated. And not a whole lot of psychological overthinking of things.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
So long story short, here it is. 20 years later, now working with young men and parents, and the work has helped so many people here in the North Bay, that I’ve kind of accepted the name “Teen Whisperer,” because I am good working with families and especially young men. So I would end my long winded answer here by saying, my greatest joy now is doing what I call family mentoring.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
I’ve met with whole families, children, teens, parents, all using this method. And usually within six months to a year, they’re all having way more care. In cooperative relationships, they all know how to respect each other’s needs. And this can all be done without the parents losing any authority.

Osha Hayden
That’s amazing, actually. I mean, I studied Family Therapy and have a Masters in Psychology. And it’s difficult. So kudos!

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Thank you. Really. We have many therapists who come to the workshops to learn the technology, which is beautiful.

Osha Hayden
I know Lisa Ling came out and did an interview with you. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? And what got her interested in the work that you’re doing?

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Yeah. When I was a teen, I got really into this whole spiritual personal growth thing; natural foods, meditation, yoga. I really had this, I’m saying this with goosebumps now. I mean, I really had this desire, I want to do something good in the world. I really wanted to make a difference. And I took this vow with a Buddhist teacher called the Bodhisattva vow, which is essentially a vow that says that I dedicate my enlightenment, through helping others become enlightened.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
So the last, you know, 50 some odd years since I took that vow when I was in my late teens, I’ve been working on that. Well, a year and a half ago, Lisa Ling, who I didn’t know, she called two very good friends of mine that I’m on a men’s team with, which is John Gray, who wrote the book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, and Warren Farrell, who’s written many books, including recently a book called The Boy Crisis, which is, in my opinion, the best book ever written about how parents and young men can get along better. And so Lisa Ling called them because they kind of co-wrote that book, The Boy Crisis, and wanted to do a story about the kind of problems that you know, quote, unquote, good kids who are challenging were, you know, why they’re having such a hard time in the world. So Warren Johnson told her, “You should speak to Mark, he’s actually in the trenches with these young men. He has a lot of good practical advice.” So she called me.

Unknown Speaker
And her staff did, and so we had amazing conversations. And they said, “Let’s include you in on this show that we want to put together with Warren, and one other person, Ashanti Branch, who’s in Oakland, and a good friend of mine, and Lawrence, who has a beautiful nonprofit called Ever Forward Club.” And she said, “I want to do a show on the three of you.” So that was amazing. Now, here’s the challenging part. We’ve never, ever, ever had a woman come to the young men’s ultimate weekend, because it’s a ton of adult male dudes, and a ton of young adult male dudes.

Osha Hayden
I can see how that would be an issue.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
It was an issue, not with everybody, but it was like, yeah, Doc, we shouldn’t do this, the young men won’t be able to be their emotional selves. And men won’t want to say stuff that they normally wouldn’t say to men with a woman around. And basically, it was like, “Listen, this is an amazing opportunity to get out good work here in the Bay Area, North Bay Area out into the world, maybe we can be the next big thing in the world.” So long story short, everybody agreed. She showed up. She was amazing. I like to say now telling the story, that there were about 175 males there and one woman and we were outnumbered. Her presence was so supreme. She knew exactly how to be; nobody ever felt like she interrupted.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
And she also came to the parenting workshop that I was teaching at the hotel nearby. At the end of the event, we do this goose bumpy ceremony where we reunite the parents with their sons. And she came up to me after that ceremony, she said, Mark, I don’t know how you do this, I cried 10 times throughout the weekend, watching these young men do insane things that they would never do and say, with their parents, you know, in any conventional setting, like a traditional therapy, so she really loved it.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
And now here it is, on Thanksgiving weekend, Sunday, November 29, at 10pm. Her premier show for this year is actually going to be our show where she’s featuring me and these other two fellows in the Bay Area. I feel so fulfilled that I am getting a chance to fill my lifelong goal of doing something impactful in a positive way in the world. It’s really tear jerking excuse bumpy for me.

Osha Hayden
That is truly fantastic. I mean, I think through through the manifestation and purity of your energy, you’ve drawn all this to you.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Yeah, well, it’s a lot of inner work. I mean, the little I know about you, I know we’re very much similar in our personal growth, spiritual development. Always comes out and all the great things I know you’ve done, like family work. So the inner work has been the key, like I’ve had to practice and hopefully perfect everything that I teach everybody else to do. Right? So I hear what you’re saying that it’s a manifestation of, you know, my own inner being at this point.

Osha Hayden
And I love the fact that what you’re doing is, you’re able to accomplish this goal of reuniting families without ever having to have them go to see, a quote therapist, which still has, you know, a meaning in so many people’s minds of, “You’re going to fix us, are you?” Right? And there’s a real difference between supporting the health of someone and “fixing” them because something’s broken. It’s a whole paradigm shift there. Absolutely. Okay. So I see we need to go to break soon. And that’s a good note to do it on. So we’ll take a quick break, and we’ll be back with an exciting conversation with Dr.Mark Schillinger.

Osha Hayden
All right, we are back. And if you’re just joining us, we’re here with Dr. Mark Schillinger, who is the founder of the young men’s ultimate weekend, and he’s known as the “Teen Whisperer.” So Mark, we were just talking a moment ago, and you were telling us?

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Well, I want to really pick up where you left off just before the break, because it’s so radically important what you just said. When people ask me like what makes our work different from maybe therapy, or other rites of passage, it’s essentially this. And by the way, when I say therapy, I only have the highest regard for therapists, like I said, lots of therapists come to my workshops and study with me.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
I am saying though, that in therapy, traditionally, young men are not the kind of people you want to sit down and say, “Okay, open your heart. Open your mind, tell me what’s troubling you. know, Young men usually sit there and go with these three famous words, “I don’t know.”

Dr. Mark Schillinger
So, I just want to be clear, therapy and young men, usually not a good match. Of course, there’s exceptions. So my point is this, unlike therapy, or some therapy, and certainly unlike some other programs, we begin with the fundamental underlying premise of the whole right way of family unity, or personal growth is simply this. No one needs to be fixed. No one needs to be saved. And there is nothing wrong with anybody. That’s the premise. That’s with some exceptions, this is a dual universe and there is always going to be some extreme the other way. But my experience has been now, after work with so many 1000s of young men and parents, very few people have to be fixed.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
The method focuses on what’s right about them, what’s right for them. And I’m very good at that as a personal growth life coach. And so the whole weekend is about how do we help them discover a few things, four key things. Number one, who are they authentically, we want them to first discover their own values instead of just abiding by the rules of their parents in the community. So we accomplish that goal. We want them to discover who they are. Right? So we have some authenticity, not just conformity.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
If you want to get a young man to conform to your rules, as a parent, or as a teacher, first make sure that they feel recognized for how bright and wonderful they are in their own cells, right? Mm hmm. Right. Because if you try to go for conformity over authenticity, then we say, then you’ll have anarchy. Young men will rebel, they’ll act out that anger and frustration really strong. So in the young man’s ultimate weekend, and now in work with families, number one is discover who you are, Authenticity. Number two: simultaneously, while discovering who you are, you are expected to have what we call Reciprocity. You have to give something back to your family, in the form of your physical and mental talents and skills, like taking out the garbage. When maybe you’re really good at math, maybe you help your mom with the budget. Whatever skills you have, they’re not just for you. They’re for your family, and you’re a team now. So you have to contribute to the well being of your family if it’s going to thrive. You can’t just be taking from them. Now you have to cooperate with them. Number three: we let the young men know that they have to develop certain things.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
They have a responsibility to their community to make it safe and prosperous. That’s the rule fundamental kind of, I like that. I like that a lot. And then so we have Authenticity, Reciprocity with their family responsibility to their community. And then the fourth one is Spirituality; helping young men discover what they believe to be the nature of reality, or the universe or God, whatever they want to call it, in a way that’s true for them, not what their parents say, not what their church, or their synagogue says, “What’s true for you?”, and we get them on the path. Because we use a sweat lodge at the young man’s ultimate weekend, we get them on a path, to really start trusting their intuition about what they think about these things which are bigger than them. And all that comes from not thinking that they’re wrong and need to be fixed. It’s about how do we draw out what’s really true.

Osha Hayden
You’re talking there about intuition and instincts, and basically leading them to trust more, listen more, to their own intuition, their own instincts, that inner wisdom, that is there.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Absolutely. And that’s powerful, very powerful. Because, you know, with all these devices that they’re sucking their minds into, through kind of losing this, it’s one of my basic premises; that when parents see “What’s happening to my son, he’s a good boy.” But what’s important is that they’re being dominated and distracted by digital devices.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
So they’re losing touch with their natural instinct to individuate and go, get out of the house and become their own man. They’re becoming overwhelmed with mindless endless entertainment in over-the-top commercial consumerism and all these things that keep them from being in touch with their own intuition, and their instincts. So we let them know that there’s a way to get in touch with them. We teach them simple mindfulness based techniques, of course, to relax themselves.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
So we define the word intelligence, which is part of the right way, you know, model of intelligence as applying your own intuition and your experience as the source of wisdom. So we’re always leading them inward. And simultaneously, we’re always letting them know, you can’t do like alone, you need to ask for help. So yes, you have intuition and instinct, and you have other primates around who want to cooperate with you, you just have to ask them.

Osha Hayden
So that’s where rope challenges and some of the other the activities you do come in, right, where teamwork is necessary?

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Yes, yes, yes, that’s a great point. For them to practice cooperating with their parents in their community. The whole weekend is involved in goal setting with others. Definitely team building, leadership skills, learning to think for themselves, problem solving. So yes, they have to cooperate with others. That’s a really big part of the weekend. And the whole agenda is designed to help them start developing their prefrontal cortex, that part of the brain that helps them with decision making, and not just only coming from, you know, their instincts, or their limbic system, their fight or flight system.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
So one of the things that we do that’s very radical at the young man’s ultimate weekend that cannot be done in a talk therapy setting is we have a grieving ceremony for them. And it happens on Saturday night, after they’ve already been with us for 24 hours, they show up on a Friday night. And by Saturday night, they’re really trusting us because they’ve gone through ropes courses, we have a hip hop studio, where they get to make beats, they do drumming circles, they do yoga, they do rope, they do a lot of things.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
But the highlight is Saturday night, where they get blindfolded. And all the young men go on a trust walk. And then they have to climb up some steps to get onto a big platform one by one. And then they’re told some very special instructions about how they’re going to be initiated into being a young man. So we give them the instructions, and they’re blindfolded, right? We tell them these words, grab your balls, lock your knees, fall straight back.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
And they do a trust fall. And they’re caught by 10 or 12 men. And then they have their blindfolds taken off. And they’re told to walk alone on this tiki torch lit path through the woods. They come to a big clearing where there’s tons of men from the community, not just the volunteers, but lots of men from the community. Sonoma men come to these events. And so these young men see all these men there. And once all the young men go through this trust fall, then they do this grieving ceremony. Where one by one, they get a chance to push up against six adult men and those six adult men represent all their past pains, hurts, disappointments and frustrations in life. With the understanding that when they’re pushing against those men, it’s not a fight, we’re not pushing back. Like we’ll backpedal if they can push six men, but we want them to very physically, you know, like a Gestalt type of experience, scream, cry, whatever they got to do, they got to get it out.

Osha Hayden
Mm hmm. Because it’s in stuck in the cells of their body in some way. And so through physical activity, you’re able to release an emotion, something that is stuck in a way that you can’t do, you certainly can’t do it by talking.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
And it’s a very primal ancestral setting, because this is how it used to be done. At least for the men, the grieving had to be quick, had to be deep, and it had to be scarred over, the wound had to be scarred over because we got to get back to the hunt, we got to go protect those women and those children back in that village. So yes, we may have lost somebody who fell over the cliff, we got to grieve, and we got to go. So young men really do this program, you know, this takes about an hour or two. And they get to do it with the men, the adult men do it too, because we have our own stuff, we gotta let go.

Osha Hayden
And then at the end?

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Oh, sure, it’s beautiful. It takes about two, three hours, it’s usually one in the morning, and they look cleansed, they look happy. They look like they’ve shed a layer of skin that was just so constricting for them. And then when that event is over, we let them know that you no longer should be blaming your parents or anybody else for your unhappiness, if you want to really be the man you want to be, it’s on you. That’s what it means to be a man. It’s on you, you don’t blame anybody, you don’t beat people up over your own unhappiness with yourself, you’re responsible for moving your life in the right direction. And then the very next thing they do after that grieving is most of them will stay up that night, they’re really kind of psyched up. But then they go into a sweat lodge at 6am.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
And that is very beautiful after they’ve done this deep cleanse, to hear them praying in their own way, about what they want for themselves and their parents in the world. And it is tear jerking, to hear these young men who are often seen by their families, or certainly their communities, as troublemakers or whatever. And please remember, this program is for normal kids. This is not for like, you know, bad kids that, you know, do harm in the world. But they’re not always seen by their parents, in their communities, as the wonderful loving guys that they are. So in the sweat lodge, they pray, they cry, they sing songs, they get that they have a way now to go check out their intuition, by learning how to be quiet.

Osha Hayden
So they dig deep into their own authenticity, and their intuition and their instincts and that place where you can be still and quiet. And have the answers arise within you.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Absolutely. Absolutely. Like if you, you can ask other men or your parents for help. And sometimes they’ll have nothing. So you have to ask for that which is bigger than you and is already inside of you, and includes you. And so you don’t have to suffer alone, you can just pray or just put your mind on that which is bigger than you. And just by getting out of your own contraction reaction and expanding into that which is bigger than you and developing a relationship with that, you’ll see as the years go by that you’ll be able to find answers that nobody can help you with, because it’s already within you. And yet you have to kind of look up, so to speak, to find out what that is.

Osha Hayden
Yeah. Wow. Sounds like an incredible program. Now you usually do this out in nature, like under the stars?

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Yeah, we’ve you know, I mean, it’s different during COVID. We can talk about that in a minute. Yeah, so up until COVID, most of the weekends took place outside of Napa. There’s a Girl Scout camp there. We’ve done some events on some private property just north of the town of Sonoma. Our next live event, God willing, will be in July and August of 2021. And that’ll be in Sebastopol. And we have done some events down in the Santa Cruz Mountains where I used to live.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
So everything is outdoors. And it’s very intense for some of these young men because they’ve never been away from their digital devices for more than maybe a few minutes. And when they show up at that event, the first thing they have to hand over is their digital devices, which really does freak them out. There’s no tents, there’s no buildings, we sleep outside in a sleeping bag under the stars, which a lot of young men have never done.

Osha Hayden
Right, looking up at the stars is one of the most important things that you need to do in life, to see what is bigger than you to see your place in the universe.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
And there’s tons of studies that show that when you get children, especially boys and young men out in nature, they learn so much better. Because, you know, young men are really, good adult males are good at being spatial. They love spatial. They love space. They love room to roam. They like to check things out physically. That’s why they don’t do well sitting in a classroom very well. You get young men out in nature where they can start running, they can start, you know, just moving about freely. It’s amazing to see how attentive they are, because they’re not constricted by being in their bedrooms the whole time. So being out in nature is a huge part of what we do. Absolutely.

Osha Hayden
Yeah. And I think trees have to be a part of that, as I mentioned to you earlier. You have to climb a tree, you just have to get up into a tree and climb it.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Yeah, absolutely. And you know, what I find also is that one of the secrets to the young man’s ultimate weekend, and I say this proudly, is the North Bay guy. Most of our volunteers are from Sonoma, Marin, most, not all of course, some of them South Bay, of course and great guys. But these are men who’ve gone through their own adult male rite of passage initiations. Okay. There’s lots of organizations out there that do rites of passage for government, right? So these young men are being led by adult men who have the endurance, because it takes a lot to – what we call running with the bulls, these young men, they have a ton of testosterone, trust me.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
So having initiated adult men who have the endurance, the desire, the ability to fulfill what we call their obligation, to initiate the younger generation. That’s a very impressive thing for 40 to 80 young men to see that all these men know how to cooperate with a no problem attitude. They have tons of fun while they’re getting stuff done. But we model for them how men can do things without having to fight or argue, and that’s a big part of the initiation that they’re around adult men who know how to get things done.

Osha Hayden
That’s fabulous. So we’re going to go to a short break. And we’ll be back with more from Dr. Mark Schillinger. So stay tuned.

Osha Hayden
Thanks for staying tuned. In case you’re just joining us. We’re here with Dr. Mark Schillinger. And he’s talking about the young men’s ultimate weekend and the work that he does with families. And as the “Teen Whisperer, that’s what he’s been called. And I think he’s earned that moniker. So thank you, Dr. Mark, for being here with us today. And we were just talking about the young men’s ultimate weekend and being in the outdoors and the adult men who are also trained and have gone through their own rites of passage in order to work with and mentor these young men and initiate them into their manhood from their boyhood.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Yes, I know one of the things I want to say too, is that when we started the program, the story about how I was having a hard time raising my own son, right? All the while I was raising him after the first event’s opening weekend to this current day, he’s now 37. He was 16. I think when he went to the first weekend, many of those same men who, also are my close friends, they still mentor my son, Gabe.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
So if I can help him with some issue about real estate when he was looking to buy his condo or, you know, financial stuff, I’m not a good investor. I’m not a money guy. I’m not a businessman. So I have so many friends that I can send him to when he has questions about this or that, I have a whole pool of resources, where I don’t have to raise him. My community is still raising my son with me, just like other men will call on me and say, Hey, Doc, my son, blah, blah, blah, blah, well, my daughter this and this, what do you think? So this is how communities should be operating. Right?

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Like back in the day, the ancestral model when we were hunters and gatherers, we were egalitarian, families had to share, especially if they were nomadic, because you couldn’t have a lot of things. So everybody required everybody else to be at their best and share everything so everybody could survive and ideally thrive. So here I am now with my son Gabe, who is 37. When we started the MS weekend, I didn’t even barely know how to speak to him without him just kind of tuning me out, even though I loved him more than anything in the world.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
So now that weekend, first weekend 20 years ago, not only to begin us on the steps to climb to having a great relationship, but it also turned my relationship around with my former wife, Suzanne, because I realized that I had to take responsibility for my partner fighting, we remembered that one of the reasons we fell in love was because we support each other and our personal growth and spiritual development, and that we decided that our children were way more important than any differences we had. And so that combination of having a community of men raise Gabe, and having Susanna and I united in this bigger purpose of raising my daughter, Becca, and my son, Gabe, so that they can have happy and fulfilled lives like we were pursuing, that turned everything around, that combination of my relationship with Suzanne, my former wife, and having all these mentors, it has meant so much. So to the point now, where when Gabe was 17, or 18, or 19, he went to college for one year, he dropped out and said, “Dad, I want to get into the music business,” because I was a musician, I’m a musician. And I was like, “Oh, I’m scared. I’m freaked out. Like, it’s hard to make money in the music business.” And then I wanted to enforce my model, which is I want to support him his authenticity.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
So now here we are, all these years later, not only do we own a recording studio together, but he now has become a public speaker in front of 1000s of people, this introvert that you would never guess could do this 20 years ago. And he teaches; he’s been in front of 1000s of people on stage, he’s opened up the stage for Tony Robbins at some events, where he teaches people now how to make hip hop beats, how to produce hip hop artists, and how to make money doing it. He’s very successful at it. So I’m very proud of him. And I’m so thankful how our first year men’s ultimate weekend really worked for us. Our relationship is so loving and so cooperative.

Osha Hayden
So tell me about your daughter. I mean, I know daughters are generally easier than than sons, perhaps, but how is all this affected your daughter?

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Thank you. Well, as I said early in the show, I came from a very loving family. And I have two brothers and a sister and all my brothers, all my nieces, and all my nephews are amazing, loving people. The way my parents were, the way my brothers and sister are, like they, my brothers and sister, are responsible for me being on the show with you. You know, we’ve always shared our love and resources. So my daughter Becca grew up in that kind of environment where everybody loves each other. So my daughter went through a difficult divorce about six years ago, she was living in Southern California. So of course, I invited her to live with me.

Dr. Mark Schillinger
It is the most loving, supportive, respectful relationship. She has a degree in Fine Arts. So she works for a company, I think it’s called workshop SF, where people go to learn how to become artists. So she works there. And she loves being authentic, which is teaching people how to do paint. You know how to paint, how to do macrome, how to do all sorts of different things. She’s always been supportive of me getting my relationship together with Gabe. And because we live together, and even when she was a teenager, she always listened to my spiritual personal growth philosophy. So she has her shit together. When I’m down in the dumps, sometimes, she knows how to mentor me in my own method. So she’s a beautiful, wonderful person. And so having her and Suzanne and my son Gabe, and myself, you know, we all live within a few minutes of each other. I like to call us the happiest divorced family. So we’re all healthy and happy together, all four of us.

Osha Hayden
Well, I have another question for you. And that is, what is your own routine? Because I know you work with a lot of clients in your practice as a chiropractor, and you’ve been voted best chiropractor in Marin, I should mention, so you’re working with them on wellness and stress management and all of these things. And so what kind of a personal routine do you do? How do you manage your own fitness and wellness?

Dr. Mark Schillinger
Yeah, thank you. When I’m coaching parents, which I do a lot of, one of the main things I work on with them and their sons and daughters is wellness. Because when I teach people how to relax their mindsin 15 seconds or less, which I’m a black belt at that; I’m really good at. When I teach people families how to relax, which I do with my patients as well when I teach them how to live a healthy and positive life, they have way more desire and ability and energy to help each other have a wonderful household and it’s all based on having healthy routines or rituals, which I like to spell rich-uals, rich rituals. They have to be rich, they have to be meaningful. They have to help you. . . .

Transcribed by https://otter.ai