In the chronically-online world of 2025, it’s almost impossible to avoid the saturating presence of podcasters, pundits, and social-media influencers in the “manosphere”—people who promise men admiration, health, and success, but who often have ideas of masculinity that leave men feeling even more wounded and isolated. Jon Macaskill and Will Schneider from Men Talking Mindfulness are devoting themselves to reaching men where they are, in their struggle, confusion, and longing for a life of meaning and connection. In this wide-ranging conversation with former Mindful editor Amber Tucker, Macaskill and Schneider offer a perspective on what mindfulness for men can provide in a world that needs authentic men more than ever. And they share a vision of what it is to be a man that’s less about the performance of manliness and more about being genuinely resilient, wise, and connected.
Two Paths to Discovering Mindfulness
Amber: I would love to start by asking about each of your paths to mindfulness. Jon, I know that you’re a retired US Navy SEAL Commander, and Will came from being a yoga teacher and a coach—two paths that a lot of people wouldn’t see as meshing naturally together. How did you personally discover mindfulness, and what did it take to integrate mindfulness into your lives?
Jon: My path to mindfulness, and I think Will and I have this in common, is that it kind of came out of necessity. I had struggled with some anxiety, with survivor’s guilt, depression, and then over and above that, as a SEAL, you’re trained to push through pain—I would love to say ignore stress, but I think sometimes we even bring stress onto ourselves and then just keep going.
But eventually, you know, that approach broke me. I wasn’t able to handle it anymore, physically, mentally, and emotionally. When I got to a point where all that was at a height—where I was struggling with the post-traumatic stress and sleepless nights—I had mindfulness introduced to me by a counselor. I first laughed at him because I thought that, being a special operator, I didn’t need mindfulness and meditation. He kind of flipped the script on me and he said, “Well, what if I had a pill that I could give to you that would change your performance?” As special operators, we’re always looking for something that’s going to improve our performance. And as you could guess, that pill wasn’t a pill at all. It was mindfulness and meditation.
So, because it was sold to me as a “performance enhancement,” then I tried it. And long story short, I tried for several months, and it did help me to handle the stress and anxiety better. I got that performance improvement that he had promised me, but I also was able to manage stress. At first I didn’t trust it, but it gave me a real shot at not just slowing down, but also being present. What I had perceived as a kind of weakness, practicing mindfulness and meditation, wasn’t that at all. It was a strength, and it gave me these tools to face what I’d been avoiding. It gave me the tools to regulate my emotions better. I wouldn’t say that I’m an expert on regulating my emotions, but I’m better. And then to reconnect: reconnect with my family, reconnect with friends. I think most importantly, the ability to truly connect with my authentic self.
To integrate that into my life, it took some discipline to do consistently. It’s easy to do mindfulness or to be mindful and practice meditation once or twice and then maybe a couple of days in a row and then drop off. But by staying consistent, making it a daily practice, it’s changed how I lead, how I father, and ultimately how I live.
Will: I really found meditation first, even before yoga, back around 2006. I was at a point in my life where I just moved to New York City, and I was pursuing life as an actor here in the city: auditioning, training, doing a lot of theater, I started doing television. I just wanted to be more present, and I also needed to manage the anxiety that comes with performance. I started with Transcendental Meditation (TM) and it started to help. Honestly, it was challenging to sit and meditate twice a day for 20 minutes with the TM on my own, not having a group that I’m meditating with, or not having the online opportunities like we do nowadays. It was very frustrating in the beginning. I’m having all these different experiences, my mind just keeps wandering, and I don’t feel like I’m doing anything. Then about a year and a half later, after the sputtering starts with trying to work with meditation, then I really became more consistent. It helped when I found yoga around the same time, especially yoga asana practice. There was this whole mindful movement inside of me, trying to take care of my mind. At the same time, I was taking care of my body. It felt like, This is my practice. It’s been an incredible benefit to me. It still is, every day that I practice. Now I’ve been with the [Men Talking Mindfulness] show, and the work that I do with coaching, and I incorporate all of these skills into what I’m teaching here now.
Starting the Men Talking Mindfulness Podcast
Amber: Let’s talk about Men Talking Mindfulness, the podcast that you co-host. It’s described as tackling difficult subjects like loneliness, trauma, addiction, the unhealthy elements of masculinity. Could you talk a little bit about some of the most transformative conversations that you’ve had? How have your guests or listeners highlighted the power of mindfulness and addressing those kinds of challenges?
Will: We’ve really “attacked” mindfulness from so many different angles! And with Jon and I both being practitioners, we have a lot of great authors that come on the show. The whole show has impacted my life, because I’m a student first—the expert, if you will, of mindfulness who’s always learning. For me, some of the ones that really stick out were No More Mr. Nice Guy with Dr. Robert Glover. Reading his book and seeing what the whole “nice guy” thing is, and then deconstructing why this whole nice-guy approach to life is not the way to fully embrace all the power of your masculinity, was really profound for me.
And then we had Jon Eldredge on the show, New York Times bestseller. I loved his book, Wild at Heart. That conversation with him included understanding the three core principles that live in the soul of masculinity: always having a sense of adventure, having that relationship in your life, and having a battle to fight, having your mission. I just came back from a two-week trip to Peru, which is quite an adventure. I’m still working on the relationship part, but I definitely have the other two pretty synced up. I keep all the books that I’ve read for the show! One after the other of our guests have just been so helpful. A lot of them come back to the core principles of mindfulness, being present, allowing that presence to light up your biology, and the good biology that we have that really makes us, like, these wonderful human beings that we can be if we let go of the stress and anxiety.
Jon: One conversation that’s jumping to mind right now is our conversation with the two Eds, Dr. Ed Adams and Ed Frauenheim. They co-wrote Reinventing Masculinity, where they challenged the idea that men have to fit into this rigid mold that you’re either tough or you’re not a man. That stood out to me, and it struck a chord with our audience because we heard from men who said things like, “I thought I was broken because I didn’t fit the stereotype,” or “Now I realize there’s strength in being authentic and being who I am.”
We also had Jocko Willink on, fellow retired Navy SEAL. There were a couple of powerful moments in that talk about balancing intensity and presence. There’s a lot of people who think you can’t be intense and present simultaneously, and how mindfulness can actually make you a stronger leader. We’ve had Dr. Mark Gordon on. And Mark shared about all these different kinds of groundbreaking insights on the brain-body connection. He’s a neuroendocrinologist. We’ve had Dr. Rob Kelly come on three times. And he’s talked about purpose and recovering from addiction. We’ve had multi-time Olympic champion, Apolo Ono, come on to reflect about how mindfulness shaped his Olympic career and then his transition afterward. We just had Dan Millman on to explain The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, his book.
We’ve even had Congressman Tim Ryan on to talk about bringing mindfulness into politics. We’ve had Steven Kotler on to share how flow science connects directly to performance and presence, and how that is all underpinned by mindfulness. So sorry, a lot of name drop in there, but like Will said, this show has changed the lives of many of our audience, but it’s also changed our lives. We have learned so much about mindfulness, how it’s tied into leadership, how it’s tied into wealth, how it is tied into health, how it is tied into just about everything that we do and it’s changed us for the better. It’s my spiel.
Will: Yeah, we’re like the little guinea pigs for the show. We just try stuff on, talk about it. So it’s been quite fun to be the students and the teachers in what we’ve created.
Where to Start If You’re Curious About Mindfulness
Amber: That’s incredible. Thank you so much for both sharing some of the breadth of different voices and backgrounds and areas of expertise that you have on the podcast. Definitely many familiar names there for the Mindful reading audience, and also a lot of new names. So I think that’s pretty exciting. You were just touching on… what listeners have shared with you about how the podcast has helped them to discover mindfulness—maybe support for the first time, start to build a daily practice, strengthen relationships, even help to save marriages and a lot of other results that I’m sure you’ve heard from people. I wonder: Why do you think the practice of mindfulness is resonating so strongly with so many men, particularly in this moment in time?
Jon: I’ll go on that one first, Will, if you’re cool with that. What I find interesting is that mindfulness, if you really go back in history, it resonated with men. We had the monks who brought it into the world in multiple different ways, but we also had warriors, these warriors that men today read about.
We read about the Spartans, we read about samurai, and in some way they practiced meditation before they went on the battlefield so that they could be present, so that they could be calm. Rather than bumping chests and smelling these smelling salts before they went out, they calmed themselves down.
I think men are realizing that this playbook of suck it up or man up, it doesn’t work anymore. And men are realizing that we can show vulnerability and authenticity because suck it up or man up leads to broken marriages. It leads to mental health problems or challenges, and it leaves a lot of men suffering in silence.
I think mindfulness resonates because it doesn’t ask you to give up toughness. A lot of people think that if you practice mindfulness, that you’re giving up toughness, and you don’t. I think it truly helps you to redefine what toughness looks like. It takes real strength to be present, to feel your emotions and to regulate those emotions. I don’t want to “control them,” but regulate them. And then it also takes real strength and courage to face your challenges without numbing out, without alcohol, without drugs. If you continually numb these challenges, then you’re not going to come out of them. And that’s why I think guys like the names that I mentioned before, like Jaco, Olympians like Apollo, these big-time thought leaders like Steven Kotler, and then congressmen like Tim Ryan—I think that’s what they’re finding value in this right now.
Will: I think the world is just experiencing a level of chaos that it’s not used to, because what I’m seeing, I’m sure we’re all feeling it, is because of the infiltration of technology in our lives, like everywhere, with social media, with the rate of messaging that you get through, whether it’s text or email or Instagram or whatever platform you’re on, it’s just like message, message, and message. There seems to be a greater demand for our attention in so many different places.
Mindfulness is this natural balance that’s coming into society, because everything has its opposite. If chaos is happening, then what’s the equalizer? I feel for human beings, a lot of it is mindfulness. How do we become not so easily triggered? How do we manage our feelings? And mindfulness is helping us to do that.
I think also for men in particular, the way that we’ve worked traditionally since the industrial revolution has changed dramatically, as well. It requires a whole other set of skills that we didn’t need to activate if we were just doing a regular nine-to-five in the factory. Also the roles in the family have changed. The family dynamics have changed. We have two working parents very often, and what does that require? That requires a lot more communication. How are we communicating? Mindfulness for men is helping men to understand themselves on a more deep emotional level. So they’re not a slave to their emotions, not so easily frustrated or anxious or stressed out, and really being more effective in whatever environment they’re in, whether it’s the family, whether it is work, whether it was with their kids, whether it is some sort of community event. So mindfulness is helping the world in so many ways, but men for sure, because these are skills that were not taught in school. I mean, some of them are now, but nobody over 20 years old or 25 has really been taught these skills in school, and people are looking for this place to learn these tools. That’s one thing that we’re doing, and it’s one thing that all the mindfulness teachers out there are doing—helping people to integrate these tools in their lives so they can deal with this new society that we’re in.
Amber: I really appreciate both of you speaking to that, especially with the predominance of tools like mindfulness and meditation seeming to be marketed toward women in this day and age. It’s good to have a reminder that that hasn’t always been the case. And actually mindfulness is a tool that’s for everybody, regardless of how we’ve been trained, our gender, or anything like that. It can benefit all of us.
Jon: I just want to jump in just with one thing. I’m glad you said that piece. Because the guests that we mentioned are all men. I think every single one of them that we’ve mentioned were all men and even more specifically, white men. We also have had a lot of women and folks of color on. Theresa Larson is a good friend of ours. We’ve had her on to talk about being a mindful mother, which doesn’t sound like something that would go on a men’s show, but we need men to understand what a mother is going through. We’ve had Ali and Atman Smith and Andrés González from the Holistic Life Foundation. We’ve had Uma Naidu to come on and talk about mindful eating. She’s a nutritionist. So I do want to make sure that we capture that the show is a men’s show, but we have a lot of women listeners, and we have a lot of women guests, as well.
Amber: Yeah, thank you for that. You’ve had Amishi Jha as well, I think, right?
Jon: Yes, she and General Walt Piatt.
Amber: That must’ve been a powerful conversation.
Will: Oh, yeah. They spoke so clearly, and it’s awesome to have such a decorated general, like really being a huge advocate for mindfulness, because it affects anything you do, regardless of what you’re trying to do with it, it has an incredible impact. And I’m glad more and more people are waking up to this.
Many Different Ways to Approach Mindfulness for Men
Amber: Yeah, bringing it into these contexts like the military where people both really need it for performance, and also just for mental health and all the other good things that mindfulness can help with. You’ve had a wide range of very influential guests, best-selling authors, Olympians, huge business leaders, politicians, many other people. And how do you think that these diverse voices are contributing to your mission of changing the narrative around masculinity and mental health for men? Some of the people that you talked with on your show may not be mindfulness teachers as such, but they’re still promoting knowledge and perspectives that could fit under the umbrella of mindfulness. Is that an accurate way of characterizing them?
Will: Yeah, I think the way we’ve approached the show is that there are so many different angles you can approach mindfulness. We bring on experts to help us solve a particular problem, or give us some insight into something, or to bring awareness to something that can be beneficial in our lives.
From the masculinity point of view, we’re taught by our fathers, our coaches, our uncles, our brothers, just to be tough. But the 21st century is demanding greater skills, and really that big skill is being more emotionally intelligent. So we’re trying to open that conversation and show how incredibly powerful it is when you become more aware of that whole, your mind, your emotions and your actions, how you can really start to change things. It just takes a little bit of practice. The goal for us is just for men to have happier, healthier, more peaceful lives because of what they’re learning from our show.
Jon: Yeah, and I’ll add to that in…we’ve got this swath of different guests coming to talk about different approaches. I think men often look at these guys, or maybe they look at me and Will and other men that they look up to, and they say, This guy has it all together. What’s wrong with me? And then they hear these high achievers admit that they struggle, too. It normalizes the conversation, shows that mindfulness is for everyone. No matter your background, no matter your definition of success, we’re all human beings and we all have struggles. And no matter what your struggle is, mindfulness is not necessarily going to relieve that struggle, but it’s going to help in managing it.
Will: I mean, one of the principles of compassion is common humanity. We create a space for common humanity so people can connect to other human beings that have been struggling, as well. One thing I’ve seen with all the great leaders we’ve had on the show is that in order to access that greatness, vulnerability and authenticity are essential. You have to take a true inventory of yourself in order to access and unleash that next level of greatness.
What’s Ahead?
Amber: If we look ahead, what do you hope that the long-term impact of Men Talking Mindfulness will be?
Jon: My hope that we help to shift the culture so people see vulnerability, presence, and compassion as strengths, not weaknesses. Let’s say in 10 years, more people are teaching their kids mindfulness. More leaders are leading with that emotional intelligence. Maybe companies are hiring more people based on their emotional intelligence and not just their resume. And then fewer people are suffering in silence. Then I feel that we’ve done our job. Every person who listens and changes, even in a small way, impacts their family, their workplace, their community. Over time, those ripples add up to maybe changing a society, maybe changing the nation, changing the world.
Will: I don’t have much more to say than what Jon has said. It’s exciting to see the impact we’re already having. If we’re able to have this kind of ubiquitous impact with the men that are plugging in now, it’s exciting to see where it can go. It’s just a matter of amplifying this platform and sharing our platform for other people to plug in. We’re just still holding space for people to travel through, get what they need and go out there and be more mindful and live more compassionately and be better leaders and be responsible for how they’re showing up in the world. I see my relationships in my immediate family and my immediate friends changing. I think we have something to do with that, it’s nice to see that impact.
Amber: Well, I think if you’re actually starting to change minds and lives within your circles and your family, that’s almost as big as changing the world, really. In my view, that’s deep change. Those are people who wouldn’t fake changing in front of you.
Will: Yeah, that’s true.
Amber: I think it’s really powerful and really valuable how much you’ve grown what you’re doing and all the people that you’re reaching. So thank you for all the work that you do. I’d love to finish off on a note of helping maybe a few more people, a few more men to discover mindfulness. When you’re talking with other men who might be new to mindfulness, might wanna give it a try, is there a number one practice that you have, like a type of practice or an exercise that you recommend just to give them a first taste of what that feels like and help them get started?
Will: Yeah, we’ve been leading this meditation course through Men Talking Mindfulness for the last year and a half. We’re actually gonna launch a new course coming soon. What we’ve seen from all the stuff that we studied from men is the first thing that you can really do to help or have a significant impact on your life is finding your breath and slowing down your breath and getting to know your breath. I cannot believe the incredible impact in just a few weeks of getting to know your breath and working with your breath a little bit through different breathing practices. The light bulbs start going off, because when you get calm and you begin to use your breath as a tool to get calm, you start to see: Oh my God, that’s anxiety. Why do I have so many expectations? Oh my God, I’m a perfectionist. The whole world starts to change.
We talk about the biological impacts all the time about mindfulness, but getting to calm drops us into who we are, our biology, the moment, and then we can start to find a new path forward. And it’s simple and it’s free, and you can do it all the time in as little as 30 seconds or a minute, or you can do it for an hour.
Jon: I would add on with the breath—absolutely fully believe that’s a great place to start—but I will say, with his yoga classes, and men will come in there and they want to be perfect on day one. And I think a lot of men do the same thing with meditation. I did the same. You have to start simple. One of the biggest mistakes men make is thinking that they need to meditate for an hour a day on day one, or have some perfect setup, right? But taking just five slow conscious breaths, like Will said, whenever you feel stressed out or overwhelmed, that can help you to get to calm. That alone can shift your nervous system from that fight-or-flight into that calm and clarity. Then from there, you can explore longer, more in-depth meditations. And we’ve shared some of those on our show. We have some on our YouTube channel. But start small and then stay consistent. It’s very much like the gym. If you go into the gym, and you crush a two-hour workout and then you don’t work out again for two weeks, that two-hours workout was for naught. If you sit down and meditate and you meditate for an hour and then don’t meditate again for weeks, that meditation was for naught. You stay dedicated and you do 10 minutes, even five minutes a day. You stay consistent with it. You’re gonna get more from that. So I say start small, start simple, and then stay consistent.
Will: We talk about change and transformation, and the C word comes up every single time. Every guest says: Be consistent. Pick one thing. And repeat that thing for weeks. Get the confidence and the courage. It’s been a lot of fun to be able to do that and be able do it effectively and see lives transform.
The MTM Origin Story + Final Thoughts
Amber: Is there anything else that you wanted to say or just briefly talk about that I didn’t mention before we close things up here?
Will: I think to help anybody that’s like reading this article and wants to start somewhere or has been mindfulness-curious for a while, or maybe they’ve tried and dabbled and struggled. I want to say: Get around other people that are doing it or join a group. That group energy around mindfulness is very powerful and very encouraging and you’re more likely to show up. Again, that common humanity is very helpful for people because you don’t feel so alone. You don’t feel stupid or unaccomplished or unsuccessful. You’re like, Oh, well, you’re struggling with that, too. Okay, this is just how it is sometimes. So I think that’s one thing I think people should know as they go on this adventure.
Jon: I’ll throw in there just kind of the origin story of the show. We have a mutual friend, a military member who introduced us to one another. He heard that I was into the mindfulness space, and he had just done a retreat with Will. What was it done in Peru, Will? I don’t know.
Will: No, I was in Bermuda, his name is Scott Tucker. We got to give a little shout out to Scott Tucker but yeah, we’re in Bremuda, but go ahead, Jon.
Jon: Okay, so Scott had just finished this retreat in Bermuda, comes back, he’s like, Hey, you’ve got to meet this guy Will, introduces us. I’m going through my military transition, so I’m getting introduced to a whole lot of people in different industries. Scott introduces me to Will, and I have a phone call with him and at the end of the conversation, Will says, Okay, well, when are we going to talk next? And every time we spoke, Will would say, Hey, when are we going to talk next? So we were having these phone calls once a month about mindfulness and meditation, talking about our revelations, our challenges, new practices that we’ve found, whatever, and then COVID hit. I was watching Will on Instagram, and because Will is a yoga instructor, a lot of his work had to go virtual. So I reached out to Will, I was like, Hey, man, what if we started a meditation and mindfulness Instagram Live where we basically just have those same phone calls that we were having, but we have them on Instagram Live? So we tried it, and we had like, six people tune in for the first few shows. Then we figured out how to rip the Instagram Live audio off and create the podcast. We thought maybe we’d get more listeners as a podcast. So if your readers go back and listen to some of our first shows, you will hear that the audio is way worse. Now we record with professional mics and headphones and somewhat of a studio. Our rooms are set up like studios, but it started really rough. It started as an idea that spawned from COVID essentially and has been going on for five years since then. It’s gone through multiple iterations of different audio software and producers and different video software. But we’ve come a long way, and in and of itself, the show is a mindfulness practice. We pay attention to changes. So that’s a quick down and dirty dump of our origin story, if you will, if you want it to include the story at all.
Amber: Thank you for filling in that gap, Jon. I think there were thousands of podcasts born during the pandemic, and you’re one of the ones that has survived, and I’m sure that all of the mindfulness that goes into it is a big factor in that.
Will: Yeah, and I think it’s also one thing that’s really helped us keep the torch lit is us working together. I don’t know if this would be tough to do alone, because it’s a long haul to get where we are. Jon and I inspire each other, keep each other in the arena. Now we are five years later having a broader impact. We have a team that’s helping us to grow, as well. So it’s just awesome to see where it is today.
Jon: According to Feed Spot, which is a ranking of types of podcasts in the category of mindfulness for 2025, we were ranked number three in the world by iHeartRadio. We were listed as one of the top 10 mindfulness podcasts in the country. And then globally, we are in the top 1.5% of podcasts worldwide. So pretty proud of that. We’ve come a long way, and we haven’t arrived. We’re gonna continue to press.
Will: Yeah, thank you so much, for real. It’s a big help to get this out there.
Amber: Thank you both. It’s been so wonderful to collaborate, wherever we can over the last couple of years. I’ve really enjoyed it and appreciated it when we get to do things together. I can’t wait to see what’s next for each of you and for Men Talking Mindfulness.
