Episodes

  • Selfed 51: Yoga Therapy is for Black Men Too

    Selfed 51: Yoga Therapy is for Black Men Too
    Oct 5 2024

    In Episode 51 of Selfed, I dive into the world of Yoga Therapy and explore why this healing modality is just as important for Black men as any other. I share my personal journey of discovering the transformative power of yoga therapy, the differences and similarities between therapy and yoga therapy, and why I believe this practice should be more accessible—both financially and psychologically—for Black men. This episode is for anyone curious about how yoga therapy can complement traditional forms of mental health support, or serve as a powerful standalone tool for emotional healing.
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    44 mins
  • SELFED 50: Exploring Vulnerability and Curiosity - My 8 Mile Episode

    SELFED 50: Exploring Vulnerability and Curiosity - My 8 Mile Episode
    Sep 21 2024

    In this milestone 50th episode of Selfed, I’m laying it all out. Vulnerability has been a challenge, but it’s time to step into it fully. Inspired by my therapist calling me out for hiding parts of myself, I’m diving into how I’ve struggled to find representation in unconventional spaces—spaces I feel deeply connected to, but don’t always see Black men like me. Whether it’s yoga, anime, running two nonprofits, or just navigating life as a Consciousness Seeking Black Man, I’m constantly searching for community.

    In this episode, I also announce the Black Men’s Emotional Wellness Symposium happening on November 30th, a space to connect with brothers who feel like they don’t always fit the mold. This is a personal reflection, my "8 Mile moment," where I set my intentions for Selfed moving forward. I’m building a roadmap for myself, and I know I’m not alone in this journey. Tune in, and let’s keep creating spaces for vulnerability and connection.
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    52 mins
  • Selfed 49: Proving i deserve to be here

    Selfed 49: Proving i deserve to be here
    Nov 4 2023
    Each year I get really weird around my birthday and I finally understand where that comes from. Over the past few years I've been deepening my understanding and it does stem from the major role my grandmother played in my being here today. Her funeral was on my 13th birthday and there's a story of her role that nobody wants to really tell me all the details of so I'm left with this burning feeling that while I may not have been planned, I was also not wanted. As an adult, obviously things changed, but my brain can't unsee that situation and it certainly impacts the way I navigate the world. But don't worry ya'll, I know I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing.
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Selfed 48: I’m My Own Opps

    Selfed 48: I’m My Own Opps
    Oct 10 2023
    Processing today's therapy session led to me recognizing I'm struggling with this duality of being overly humble versus actually arrogant. I talk about transparency being an extension of my own character and having a significant place in my values, but then I haven't been demonstrating that for myself. I've put much of my desires for my life into other peoples' hands out of fear of my own power of intentionality. I know that I want everything, but I won't just communicate that with people. Most important, I'm not truly transparent with myself. I am practicing creating a bigger picture for myself with intentionality and allowing my existing relationships to support that, and the ones that don't just won't.
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    42 mins
  • Selfed 47: Mr. Lonely and the decompression chamber

    Selfed 47: Mr. Lonely and the decompression chamber
    Oct 4 2023
    Someone recently asked me "Who do you vent to?" and I sort of laughed painfully as I said "Nobody.", On this episode of Selfed, I highlight various unhealthy expressions of loneliness and what can come of us if we take the energy behind that feeling and allow ourselves to be present with it. This morning at 3am I just couldn't sleep. I passed out early and was up at around 1am alone with my thoughts. As loneliness crept its way back in, I caught myself swiping on Tinder, feeling an urge to go to porn, text someone I have no desire to be with, and I just decided after sitting with these feelings for a while to just talk about it. I believe this processing as ugly of a process as it is, is necessary for a human to navigate the world. Unhealthy expressions of loneliness for me are highlighted within this podcast episode along with what I think it can lead to if there's no depressurization regularly happening. Selfed is my decompression chamber. When I come here, I know I'm talking. I know I hear myself say things out loud. I know that people generally suck at just holding space and being quite for an hour while the chaos that is the human mind begins its sausage making process so that it can be best presented and consumed. I have brought people into my unprocessed thoughts and that has ruined relationships in the past, so I'll just put it here as I always have been within the boundaries of certain things like name use. I feel really good about this and I crashed for almost 3 more hours after getting this podcast episode off my chest. So there's something there.
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    1 hr and 5 mins
  • Selfed 46: The Importance of mens’ intimacy

    Selfed 46: The Importance of mens’ intimacy
    Sep 6 2023
    Welcome back to Selfed . . . again. After a bunch of choices I've made recently and experiences reflecting the need for Men's Intimacy, I caught myself having a series of pressure building explosions occur. I learned that these series' of explosions have the power to really fuck up a lot of good things I have going on, and I'm thankful for the ways they were handled and the outcomes. I have developed a new found sense of gratitude for my ability to be present and prioritizing that since choosing not to drink for the month of July this year. While that has carried into today (as I'm leaving Las Vegas typing up this description), I got to experience myself in an environment that has its image and not allowing that to engulf my energy and influence me into anything out of alignment with my intention. I came here for Mr. Locario and Miles Cunningham's Game Kings Seminar 2: Definition of a Man, and I want to give these two men credit for validating my current beliefs and experiences navigating manhood in 2023. It's isolating, it's lonely, and I sought to alleviate that loneliness by leaving my environment only to realize that no matter where I go, there I am. Me being lonely has minimal to do with my environment, and almost everything to do with who I am because THAT influences my experiences in the environment. The need for Mens' intimacy was something I observed there along with hearing things I've heard consistently, but in a new way that helps me see my own lived experiences in a way that I'm able to learn from. I believe Mens' intimacy has been demonized as we navigate a world where our appreciation is omitted and it's even shamed to express gratitude and appreciation to men. This causes us to seek out appreciation, respect, and being needed for our instinctual drives in potentially unhealthy ways, giving us the illusion of intimacy. This often comes at the expense of women or sexual partners. What I'm learning is that there's a natural pressure build up men experience that NEEDS to healthily be released in the safety container of men and this is something only men can offer one another. That said, this is my accountability episode for me to create that space that serves as the underground locker room for Men to depressurize as man do. This is a space for a code to be lived by that I choose to only allow to exist intentionally out of the social media space. I'm giving myself a deadline of beginning this on October 1st this year and holding myself to that regardless of any hiccups or hold ups that may occur. This podcast will continue to serve as my identity expression and call in those who feel aligned with this mission of healing with purpose. Oooh Selfed - Healing with Purpose: The Underground Locker Room. There's something there I'll use, I'm just not sure what exactly yet.
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    48 mins
  • Selfed 45: Apathy is the symptom of hatred

    Selfed 45: Apathy is the symptom of hatred
    May 17 2023
    Lately I’ve really been challenging a lot of my resistances to life circumstances. I have been challenging how being involved with sex positivity has served me, and I’m realizing that much of what it’s about just doesn’t align with my core values. I think sex positivity perpetuates indifference masked as acceptance. I think it gives the illusion of a world void of realistic outcomes for unrealistic and unsustainable long-term behaviors. In this episode, I talk about my view on pop culture and how I’m maturing into myself as so many social media priorities conflict with real life priorities. I’ve had some conversations about misogyny and misandry and I was directed to a post where the comments were just blaming men, and there was nothing more to it. My argument for how women believe men show hate toward women is that when anyone hates something, they avoid it. If you don’t like meat, you don’t eat it. Don’t like blue, you don’t buy it. Don’t like women? Don’t talk to em. Logically this makes sense. Women hating men doesn’t look like avoidance, in fact it’s engagement AND manipulation. When women hate men, they’ll still go on the date, take the ride, drink his alcohol, eat his food, ride his motorcycle, even have consensual sex with him, and maybe even be in a relationship with him and abuse him over time. This happens and women sit idly by, which means there’s no accountability or responsibility among each other. There’s no real time consequence for that long-term psychological abuse of men. And arguably, men will tolerate it because they get their nature nurtured, which looks like having someone to provide for, whether or not that person is healthily receiving or toxically taking. With men, and Jordan Peterson said this, there is a real time threat of not only violence from OTHER men, but loss of respect of them as well. The hatred of men from women generates apathy toward women and I’d argue has a secondary impact of making men afraid of men as well, enabling the devaluing of a man’s code of honor to shut down the expression of harm or danger from another man. A man without purpose, without a code, without accountability is a lost man. We need other men to uphold us to these standards and whether we like it or not, we respect and honor the code AS MEN. What’s womens’ code? I was accused of sexual assault by a woman I never came within 1,000 miles of and not one person approached her about her psychological abuse. I got all this empathy from women who knew about it, but no one even told me what was going on until I took action to get someone in this space who loved/respected me enough to at least give me that. I dislike this person for what they did, and you know what I do, I’m not engaging to damage her reputation or manipulate her. I’m leaving her alone. I love women, and I know men love women as well. And I also know women love men. Elie Wiesel says “The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference. Indifference enables hate”. This campaign devaluing men is quite honestly making men not invest in what it has traditionally meant to be a man, honored, respected and deemed capable of in the moment consequence for any physical harm or unjust behavior toward women and what is just. This ain’t an argument of what’s worse between hating men or hating women. This is about apathy. Apathy from men is hatred expressed logically via avoidance. Apathy from women leads to apathy from men and is expressed emotionally through engagement. Thanks for reading & listening if you chose to. I want to have more of these counter-culture conversations with people on here. Email me Courtney@courtneybrame.com and we can have some cancellable conversations.
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    51 mins
  • Selfed 44: Keep the change

    Selfed 44: Keep the change
    May 8 2023
    After losing some recent friendships, I've come to realize sometimes you just gotta let that happen to free up space for new, fitting ones. I mean that's the cycle of it. People find their people and then kinda let everything else fall to the wayside . Proactively, we can trust our intuition to guide us, but sometimes we try and hold on to relationships because of our investments in them. Don't look at the loss as a cost, look at it as an investment to clear up space for what belongs to you in your space. Let THEM keep the change. You'll recover.
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    28 mins