Masculine Arts for Asian American Men: Apprentice Program

As a professional coach, I recommend that my clients usually come with at least a year of individual therapy for most efficient progress. However if you’re an Asian American man who’s brand new to transformational work without prior therapy experience, it’s possible to work together through my Apprentice Masculine Arts Program, a crash course for beginners.

The Apprentice program is designed specifically for Asian American men just starting their journey and prepares you for the deep work of sex and relationship coaching in the Masculine Arts. The roadmap is detailed below.

The Challenge

Many Asian American men feel competent at everything they set their minds to. The one exception might be sex and relationships. Often the confusion starts in childhood with Asian parents who don't always support mental health or teach emotional skills around love and relationship dynamics. Easy scare tactics like “sex is bad” or “focus on study not girls,” followed later by simplistic male advice like “just be confident,” “man up” or “get rich” compound the disconnect between you and women. 

The conservative Asian American culture doesn’t always encourage seeking outside help with therapists or coaches unfortunately, though times are changing. Men often try to figure things out alone but get stuck. It’s hard to find answers without guidance, trust and community, things Asian American men need more of.

You might find that you feel lost when it comes to real emotions, especially if you’ve learned to deal with them through shutting down, distraction or addiction. You might find yourself people-pleasing, trying to give women what they want in order to get the love and sex you need, but nothing lasts. Like many others, you could feel stuck in your head and disconnected from your body.

As highly intelligent and sensitive men, something may not feel right about that. You may seek deeper answers and want to break patterns but don't know where to start or who to trust. You might secretly suspect that your masculinity and social conditioning has been impacted by growing up Asian in America - and you would be 100% right. But how do you deal with that?

What is a Coach? 

A coach’s purpose is to take you to the next level. Coaching provides a safe, private, low-risk space to redefine identity and learn connection skills with guided feedback. Masculine Arts mentorship, support and practice trains you to have solid deep relationships and fulfilling sex throughout your life. 

But dating without a basic emotional vocabulary or understanding of Asian American socialization can impact your confidence. It’s like not knowing how to swim when you're surrounded by water and all the women are in the pool. As your coach, I am here to help you swim in this ocean of emotion where love and sex await. 

Emotions like anything else can be studied, learned and understood with guidance. I’ll help you grow new muscles and navigate the laws of water as you begin to swim. That includes exploring patterns, blindspots and belief systems in a context of Asian American family, race and culture.

Our sessions function as practice labs where you safely experiment with new skills and behaviors until you’re ready to try them in real life. Each lab has its own creative games, exercises and play around masculinity, emotions, connection, race and family influence within an Asian American context.  

Seeing the bigger picture gives you a sense of wholeness and positive self-connection. This is a crucial turning point because when you can’t connect to yourself, others have nothing to attach to either. By connecting with yourself, you have the basic tools to connect with women. 

What is a Client?

You hire a coach when you decide that you are ready to do the hard and active work of growth. But sometimes inexperienced clients think their own role is passive, like a boss paying a consultant for secrets and shortcuts. Others think they’re hiring a service where the coach does the work for them like a housekeeper. Still others think the coach is the teacher and they’re a student getting graded, or the coach is a doctor and they’re the broken patient needing fixing. Fortunately none of these are true.

It’s important to understand that coaching is an active and evolving collaboration. Expect the relationship between coach and client to be the first trust-based relationship you successfully create that forms the model for relationships that follow. It sets the stage for romantic relationships, where growth happens when trust happens and intimacy follows. 

As client and coach, we co-create our sessions with the current events of your life instead of my agenda. Because we dive into emotion, sessions are often intense and full of rich epiphanies. We are always swimming towards connection, to yourself and to each other.

Beginner’s Mind

Novice clients progress fastest when they adopt a beginner’s mind, as Zen master Shunryu Suzuki describes in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. Beginner’s mind is the powerful quality of openness and vulnerability that looks and feels like this:  

1. Being in the moment with curiosity instead of an agenda

2. Speaking from difficult feelings with radical honesty 

3. Seeking good questions instead of right answers

To beginners, vulnerability may feel uncomfortable and disorienting at first as you build emotional tolerance for ever greater intensity. Vulnerability also means that you don’t need to be perfect. Good news because people get attracted to rough imperfect edges, not sharp perfect edges.

What is love but great intensity of feeling? Sex is great intensity of body sensation. When you unmask your vulnerable side, you train in the intensity of connection. 

As you see the big picture of who you are, you begin to feel whole. Wholeness, not perfection, is your journey. Wholeness, not perfection, is the paradigm shift.

Next Steps

Plan on the Apprentice Program taking around 4-6 months depending on your level of beginner. You’ll have full access to my team of coaches, books and educational materials. After you demonstrate skill in navigating your own nervous system, swimming comfortably in emotion, transitioning between head and body, and connecting to yourself and to me, you can begin training in the Masculine Arts.

At this point, you will feel comfortable stepping out into the world and start swimming among women. The sex and relationship coaching advances into developing strong connection abilities in flirting, dating, seduction and exploring your own complex sexual character and needs while maintaining your integrity and your partner’s. 

After you master ethical connection, you can explore higher level sex and relationship practices such as open marriage, polyamory and non-monogamy, kink/BDSM, fantasy/roleplay and relationship anarchy. Whatever your stage, we always explore relationship dynamics in a context of your social role as an Asian-American man.

Contact Sho-Sho for a complimentary 20-minute consultation to see if Masculine Arts is a good fit for you. I would love to hear more about your story and answer your questions.