Ep#36: Living Deeper Into the Master of Your Gifts

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The Uncorked Conversation

EPISODE #36

We can spend a lifetime searching for just the right words to define our core gifts. But truly understanding and embodying our gifts moves beyond words: It’s best understood and experienced as an energy frequency. In today’s episode, I chat with master coach Michael Trotta about what that means and how to develop a daily practice to liver deeper into our gifts.

Michael Trotta is a natural learning specialist, master certified coach, storyteller,  fly-fishing junkie, student of native traditions and the Hero’s Journey, a proud dyslexic, facilitator of rites of passage programs,  artist, ,community builder, and coffee lover. It’s a well known fact that he was raised by coyotes and is now happily raising one of his own; along with two cats, the occasional goldfish, and a small flock of chickens, somewhere streamside, in Westchester County, NY.

In today’s episode we explore:

  • How the modern world makes it difficult to access our gifts
  • Our gifts as an energy frequency, and
  • Developing a daily practice to connect to our gifts

Listen + Subscribe on iTunes or PodBean.

References & Resources:

  • Learn more about Michael at: https://www.sagefireinstitute.com/
  • Click HERE to join my private FB Group, The Uncorked Cabal
  • Click HERE to get the 4-Step Soul-Guided Business Planner to harmonious and high earning workweeks

The Uncorked Conversation Podcast with Allyson Scammell

Ep #36: Living Deeper Into the Mastery of Your Gifts

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Allyson Scammell: You are listening to the uncorked conversation podcast with Allyson Scammell.

Episode number 36.

Hello and welcome to the Uncorked Conversation, a podcast for soul guided passion filled women entrepreneurs who want to uncork big magic in life and business without burning out. We’ll get to the truth of how to uncork our core gifts, the ones we keep hidden inside, and how to infuse those gifts into our personal and professional life in a way that feels like magic. We’ll also uncover how to truly experience the joy of the journey through smart time management and planning. I’m your host, Alison Scammell, let’s uncork.

Allyson: Good day to you, Shanti Pax Nation. I am so excited about this episode. I am interviewing one of the people who has so far had the biggest impact on me as a coach. I can say that the person who drew me in most strongly into the coaching world is Martha Beck and once I got in side of the Martha Beck Tribe, I was lucky enough to meet Michael Trotta, who is this wildly amazingly gifted coach, artist, storyteller, writer.

Allyson: He and his equally talented wife, Lynne, run the Sage Fire Institute. And together they run one of the best nature based coaching programs out there. So it was Michael who really taught me how to identify my core gifts and really supported me and launched me on my own journey to exploring and developing a relationship with my core gifts and helping others to do the same. So Michael uses an expression called original medicine and we’re going to talk all about what that means. And there are slight nuances to the terms and slight differences, but it all points in the direction of our purpose, why we’re here, the unique abilities were born to share. And to introduce Michael Trotta, he is a natural learning specialist, master certified coach, storyteller, fly fishing junkie, student of native traditions, and the hero’s journey, a proud dyslexic facilitator of rites of passage programs. How cool is that artist, community builder and coffee lover. Yes. So am I. so this interview is a treat, enjoy.

Allyson: So I am so thrilled and honored to have Michael Trotta on this podcast. Thank you so much for making the time, welcome Michael.

Michael: Yeh, thank you.

Allyson: And I have to say, I want to say right here at the beginning that you are the person you were my mentor and kind of, even though we haven’t worked together recently have remained my mentor on my ability to discover my core gifts, which is really what this podcast is about. And so I am just so thrilled to have my mentor here to speak with us.

Michael: That’s very kind of you, pleasure.

Allyson: Oh, okay. So we’re going to shift gears. So people who have been listening to this podcast know that I talk about core gifts and I refer to them as unique abilities that were born to share. But really it’s so much, it’s so deep and it goes beyond and their different definitions that different terms that mean different things.

Allyson: So Michael, I know you talk a lot and have coached for years on original medicine, which I absolutely love. So can you define for us how you define original medicine and where that term comes from?

Michael: Sure. First, I think it’s very much, we were talking about this earlier, that these words are concepts, framework sway to understand who we are, where we come from, why we’re here. I was joking how you can’t cut one of us open and say, oh, there’s your core gift or there’s your original medicine. So I like to say that just so we don’t over literalize and put a huge grasp on the term but that said original medicine to me is similar to what you just said. It’s the thing we come into this world to share with the world.

Michael: I use the word medicine because that’s what it’s like. And when we’re young, we use that medicine for ourself. And as we grow and mature into an understanding of what it is, as we’re initiated into what it is, we can then turn it around and use it as a way to heal and serve other people. I don’t remember us talking about it this way when we had worked together earlier, but I’ve come to start describing these core gifts, original medicine, genius. I mean, there’s so many words throughout history… Diamond, which was a Greek term for it. I’ve come to look at it now as a frequency. It’s kind of like each person has their own unique vibration or frequency. And the kind of goal in life is to become… The word be like coherent, but that frequency so that we can be in the fullest expression of who we are.

Michael: And when we’re in that vibration, that frequency, the people who need it come to us. And Ken almost attune themselves to what that frequency we have to offer because they need it. And so since I’ve been playing with that word I’ve been, I don’t know, I feel like it’s been helpful and for me in deepening my understanding of what I have come to know as original medicine. You asked where it came from, right?

Allyson: Yeah. I just want to say, you’ve told me this before and I find it fascinating. So I would love for you to share with others that are listening.

Michael: I wonder what I told you. What did I tell you? I’m curious. Give me a hint so I don’t say something different from what I’ve said 10 years ago.

Allyson: Well.

Michael: All right, I’ll say it.

Allyson: You say.

Michael: We’ll just pretend it was the same thing. I spent a lot of time, I went to school, I was a teacher. While I was teaching elementary school and Special Ed, something was missing and something was missing from how we were educating our kids. Something was missing from my own life and I knew that it was out there. I just didn’t know what it was. And for one reason or another, I found myself spending massive amounts of time in the natural world in nature.

Michael: And that led me to taking wilderness survival classes. I wasn’t even a hundred percent sure why I was taking them, except I was intrigued. And that’s probably the first place with my mentors in wilderness skills. And then mentors with native lineages and even native American elders and teachers. I had heard the term medicine a few times, referred to as like that all things in creation have their own particular medicine. So that was the first time I heard it.

Michael: And I used to use it a lot and I used to use it to understand how all these different things in the natural world have their own particular frequency, your medicine. And then later I heard, I think it was Gail Larson who’s a speaking coach talk about original medicine.

Michael: And I mean right away I knew what she was talking about. To my mind it’s the exact same thing, original medicine or medicine. So that’s the lineage of where I picked up the word from. But I really have taken it and worked it and have been defining it for myself in relationship to other mentors and storytellers and teachers and how they express it through different cultures and throughout history and practices and things like that. So and that’s why when we were talking earlier, I was saying how we all have our sort of own way of understanding it, but that’s currently how I’ve come to understand it and where I’m at with it.

Allyson: I remember the first time I heard it from you, I was doing my Martha Beck certification for life coach certification and I was just like, I just knew like I heard that and I was just like, this is me, this is it. Like I have to know more about this. And then you taught the class and you’re such a gifted teacher. And I was just like, oh, and I have to hire him by the way. So it just like, it’s something that I think if you’re called to go deeper, I don’t know. I have the bias and thinking that ultimately we all are, but-

Michael: Absolutely.

Allyson: … Yeah. But some of us are really ready to step up and take that calling. And when you are, it’s like, I don’t know, it’s the kind of term that really calls you towards it. So.

Michael: Well if I… Since this is conversation, I think I agree with what you said, I think we’re all meant to. And in fact a lot of where I’ve learned about original medicine or genius or core gifts or whatever you want to call it has come from story and there are literally thousands of myths and even fairy tales out there that talk about this saying that we almost like contract a very particular gift to share during our lifetime. And then what happens in a lot of the old stories as we pass through the waters of forgetfulness or somehow in the journey into this world while we have the gifts, we forget what they are or in a lot of stories when we’re born into the world with the gifts, the gifts had been taken and for safekeeping and will be returned to us at a time that’s appropriate.

Michael: And once all of culture was set up and designed to align people with their medicine or their gifts, because the old idea was if a person is not living there, their gifts, they’re not truly living. And the wellbeing and survival of the tribe depends on each person having a very developed relationship with those gifts. And so one of the ways culture was designed to support that was through ceremony, was through storytelling, was through rites of passage that would be facilitated by elders and by people who had built their own knowledge and understanding of these gifts like you’ve been doing. And the thing is these gifts are a part, some might even argue, and sometimes I see it as it is the soul, right?

Michael: And we have an innate desire to be in relationship with these things. But what’s happened is culture and education, they don’t support it the way they once did. We’ve become further, and I think it’s because we’ve become further and further removed from a relationship with the natural world. And in moving away, stepping away from that relationship, we’ve stepped away from the cultural structures that supported us being in our gifts so that we could live in relationship with creation and live in relationship with one another. I know that was a mouthful sore I’ll pause there.

Allyson: It’s so beautiful. Yes, yes, yes. I love that. So I would just want to hear more. So I coach clients on how to identify their gifts and I know you’ve been doing it for years, I would be interested to hear the range of responses that you normally get when you kind of get through that initial stage of naming the gifts. And as we talked about the words never really do it, the justice and I grew with you. It’s like an energy frequency and it’s hard to put an energy frequency to words, but I get that people have the aha moment and like, holy shit, like, wow, I have these gifts and they’re amazing. And I definitely experienced that when I worked with you. It was like I just felt like it was so aha and amazing. But then I get this other response from clients that I’ll get, well, yeah, I know that about myself already. Like because it’s, I don’t know, they get like almost disappointed by their own gifts. Like it wasn’t sexier or bigger or newer.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah.

Allyson: I’m just wondering, what kind of responses do you get?

Michael: It’s funny because I try to prepare the people I work with ahead of time with story with my own experience so that they get, because the thing about for me, one’s genius or one’s medicine, they almost always go wait that’s huh, It seems too simple. And there’s something about that is, it’s a very grounded sort of thing. And I think we’ve been taught to believe that if it’s not big and it’s not flashy and it’s not glitzy, then it’s not valuable. And that’s a tremendous disservice to it.

Allyson: Yes.

Michael: Nine times out of 10 though, I would say that when me and the person working on it really narrow in on it as a frequency, there’s that moment of this felt sense of coming home of immediate expansiveness.

Michael: And what is quite common is after the expansiveness, after ahhh, that is me, it’s like when you throw a pebble into a pond with little duckweed all over the top of it. And then like the duckweed, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this neutral pictures, little green matted kind of weed on top of a dark pond and it spreads out wide and then closes backup. And I think that a lot of the time that’s people’s initial response to naming or initiating for the first time, that experience of their medicine. It’s like yes and then no, that can’t be. That can’t be right. It’s got to be something else. Let me try a different word for that. No, and I tell them that that’s going to happen or at least to not be surprised that that’s going to happen. And I think that’s because at least the best way I can explain it or you’ve even had it explained to me is that there is our big self, our full self, which is in a line and believes and knows that medicine without apology.

Michael: And then there’s a smaller part of ourselves that then almost like [inaudible 00:16:17] telling your brain that’s like, who are you to think you’re that? Maybe that’s not even fair to call it that part of our brain. Maybe it’s more just our cultural grain that says, no, you’re not so important. You couldn’t be that thing. And which of those two sides of ourselves that we choose to be in relationship. I mean it is a choice that I guess is what I’m trying to say and noticing, oh, am I feeding… It’s like that old native legend of the dark wolf than the white wolf and they’re having a bat at all. And the one that wins is whichever you feed.

Michael: It’s the same kind of thing. If you know you’ve been grounded in that expansive energizing full feeling of who you are and what you do just by being you and your full frequency, well then you can either choose to feed that side or feed the voice that tells you who do you think you are to be that. I’m making it sound simple. And in some ways it’s completely simple. It is that simple. And in other ways I get it. If you’ve had 25, 35, 45, 55 years of being trained, not to think you’re anything special, this is someone training to do.

Allyson: Yeah. Gosh, the way you described it with your clients is very, very similar to what I have experienced with mine as well. I love how you described it. I love how you define it as this simple. It’s like, it is a simple grounding when you allow yourself, your full self, the stage to realize that these gifts are real and they’re powerful and there are people out there who really need them. They don’t want them, they actually need them. It is a simple yet profound grounding.

Michael: Yeah.

Allyson: Beautiful. So what do you say to people when they say, okay, I feel these gifts, I understand them and now I want to offer them up with greater intention.

Michael: Sure.

Allyson: How do you advise people with that.

Michael: Yeah. Well, the first thing I say is and I go back to the historical context of these things. I say traditionally we would have been initiated into these gifts in adolescence. We would’ve been provided trials and initiatory experiences by ceremonial elders. The things that would test our grit and push our edge and put us face to face with these gifts so that we have an introduction to them and that the rest of adolescence and even early adulthood in really life would be about building relationship to them.

Michael: The contrast of our modern culture is such that says, well, I took the course and I have the certificate, so now I can, right?. I don’t think it works that way. And I don’t promise that to people. I say, this is a life long journey that you’re going to have to build relationship to it over time that as you change your understanding of it will change as culture changes your how it’s used and needed will change. So that’s where I start with them. For me that’s a very truthful statement and it doesn’t make any fancy promises that are going to mislead them. This is hard work. It’s not a one and done kind of thing of study. It’s a lifelong study.

Michael: And then I provide ways to things to do to help them practice building relationship to it. Because again, if we grew up in a culture where everybody was living in relationship to their medicine we would have support in doing that. It would be like our community or our tribe is like the place, the gym to go work, our medicine and get whatnot because everybody’s doing it. And so you find other people and ask questions and say, I need help with this and our culture doesn’t quite have that. We have a couple people like you and me who are trying to say, hey, here we are. We want to support you in this. But a lot of people aren’t even having the conversation fortunately more are. Yeah. But so it’s about helping people afterwards after they’ve named it practice building relationship to it. That’s the short answer right there.

Allyson: Beautiful. I love how you describe it as a lifelong journey and I love the idea of practice building relationship to it. So I’m very interested to know Michael, how do you define your original medicine?

Michael: How do I define it?

Allyson: Or I know it’s hard to sometimes hard to put in words, but if I asked you to kindly put them to words, what words would you use?

Michael: Yeah, I actually created a work for it.

Allyson: Oh yay.

Michael: And maybe I didn’t have that back when you and I are working together I have been trying to study this and understand this for a long, long time when I was teaching. One of the things that I knew that was super clear to me was that every single kid I worked with, there was something amazing about them. I don’t care what kind of grades they got. There were some, they had some sort of ability, your medicine, right? Whatever you want to call it. And so with that context and other things that I had done before, I really developed a definition of medicine.

Michael: I had this kind of overarching, like I knew it was this a certain kind of frequency. I knew it was related and initiated by things that had happened to me in my life when I was younger.

Michael: But I always just thought of it as a creating a space where people could blah, blah, blah, it was big. And then I found somebody who was really doing this, the same kind of work and had a similar background and working with them. I stumbled upon the word never land. I was thinking about Peter Pan and what that magical space, where that story took place in was like, and to my mind, it was a space where were youth stopped by to kind of turn a corner and grow up. And adults came to kind of re-engage with the sense and spirit of childlike energy. And so for a hot second, I was on to that never land energy, but I could not wipe from my mind the imagery of Peter Pan and green tights and things like that. So I changed it to the Bardo lands.

Allyson: Oh, yes.

Michael: Yeah. So the Bardos are mentioned in the Tibetan Book of the dead and they’re like these layers of in between space of liminal space. And that when I heard that it clicked immediately and I named it the Bardo lands as this kind of multilayered, multifaceted frequency or energy where people go to become, to initiate whatever it is that’s within them, that’s longing to come out. And it has all of these different attributes or faces to it. Anybody who knows me well enough knows I can be very loving and nurturing and empathetic. I can also be kind of sharp and harsh and edgy. And I can be playful and silly and goofy or it can be a little bit trick story. And there’s multiple layers to it, but it’s all in service of helping people bring that gift to the surface.

Michael: And it’s an initiatory experiences to my mind and I struggled with that when I was younger. I think I’ve told you I lost my dad when I was 12 years old at pretty much the exact age when a person would go into an initiation. Well, that served as my initiation. I just didn’t have initiatory elders to help me make sense of it. So I had to struggle with making sense of this for many, many years. And I was in a Bardo land, if you will, an in between space from the time I was 12 years old to my mid to late ’20s even. And while it wasn’t always fun it really shaped who I was and I managed to live through it and now use that same frequency or energy to help people who are kind of drawn to that space naturally because there’s something inside them that wants to be let out. Does that make sense?

Allyson: 100%.

Michael: Cool.

Allyson: That is so, so, so beautiful. I love it. And as you, I think that there’s so much energy infused into the words Bardo lands. I almost feel I can access that energy frequency you’re talking about just like I can feel it or receive it, if that makes sense. I definitely see myself as a person who felt called called to receive your guests. So me being maybe an ideal client or customer or person who’s just going to be attracted to your message and your teaching and your gifts. Like I think I then just naturally receive it. Because you were talking about earlier, your ideal people are going to be out there waiting to receive your gifts.

Michael: Yeah. And so here’s the thing that I was talking about building relationship to your medicine or your gifts or this is why I like frequency because the deeper you are in relationship with your own frequency, some more clearly that’s broadcasted out there to the people who need it. So they find you.

Allyson: Yes.

Michael: If you’re not in relationship with it we’re only partially in relationship with it. The broadcast is either hard to hear or a little bit fuzzy or so when you apply this stuff to say business and you’re wondering why people aren’t picking up on your message, even though your website looks amazing, even though you did all the marketing stuff and your message may even be written out really clearly if you are not the frequency that you’re meant to be that’ll be a distortion and people will pick up on that.

Michael: So they’ll either be turned off by it or they realize that’s not really what they’re looking for. Yeah. And the other part of that is being in an energy that is not really who you are is not sustainable, just from a physical standpoint. And I knew that early on as an elementary school teacher. I was in the frequency of who I was as a teacher, but in an environment that wasn’t… I kept trying to make it something else. And I was like, to hell with this, I can do better and serve more people outside of this structure. But it was a nice stepping stone. So all of that is to say using our medicine, sharing it with other people, being in relationship to it.

Michael: The clear we’re in that relationship, the more the right people will come to us and the more clearly we’ll have an idea of are we in the right place? Do what I mean? And sometimes that can be a hard thing. Owning our core gifts is not the promise of easy living. I didn’t mean to go here, but we’re here. So I think some of us believe, oh, if I’m in deep relationship with my medicine or my gifts, it’s easy street. It’s not first, it’s a lot of hard work just to kind of stay in relationship with it. Second things often are not ready or willing to receive that gift. Or they might say, hey, I don’t know who you are. You’re not going along with the regularly scheduled program and doing, no because you’re living who you’re truth.

Michael: And sometimes people don’t like it when you live your truth because it just reflects back to them that they’re not living their truth. So those are hazards of the occupation of being true to yourself. But my hope is that over time the more of us that really are living in our truth the more willing we will, the more able we’ll be to accept other people living in their truth, whether it looks like ours or not.

Allyson: Yes, yes, yes. So the final question I want to ask you and then I want to ask you and what I’d like you to tell us how people can find you if they want to learn more about you and your coaching and your art, amazing artists that you are. Can you give us some tangible, practical ways that if you said right tomorrow I’m going to spend some time practicing building relationship to the Bardo lands, what would you do?

Michael: Great question. That I’m actually going to say that that feels now because I have this relationship with the Bardo lands, I have an understanding of it. I have practices that go along with it. But if we’re talking about people who are more like, I’m curious about what my gifts are and how to start to move towards relationship, that’s a different path and my hunches, that’s the one you really want to answer. And you tell me where I’m wrong.

Allyson: Can you give us a flavor of both?

Michael: No. You have to pick one.

Allyson: Okay. Well then you pick the one that you think is in most service to the listeners.

Michael: Okay. Now you see what I just did, that little bit of noxious Michael there. That’s the Bardo lands.

Allyson: I know, you are right though.

Michael: But that’s it, right? So there’s a display of my energy being playful. Make a choice, blah blah blah. I like acting like that, being like that. It’s fun. And the people who get it laugh and they’re like, oh, I like being around this. And the people who were like, no, this guy’s a jerk. I honestly do think what would be most in service is what I’m going to offer.

Michael: So a part of my understanding of building relationship and understanding of what our gifts are, what our medicine is can be seen in our natural evolution as human beings. And so I often teach and talk about how when we come into the world, we come into play, right? That’s our first natural gift as human beings, play. And traditionally for the majority 90% of human history, we lived in a deep and close relationship with nature. We were nature, we didn’t see ourselves as separate from it. And so the gift of childhood, which is play would start to be expressed and it would be expressed in ways that supported our human survival. So we might skip stones over water or build huts or shelters or forts. We might play games like tag which is kind of like a predator prey relationship.

Michael: And so all of these different games that we played were deeply linked to our survival. So we were playing and learning about survival at the same time, but it was fun. So it was this really cool sort of self-sustaining loop of taking care of our survival needs while having a really awesome time and even more than added a layer deeper is that while we would be doing those things, we would be building a relationship to a sense of self, an identity. This is what I’m really good at. Out of all of these things I do, this is what makes me have the most amount of fun and this is what fun feels like in my body. When I do it or when I do this with others, I get an understanding of my place in the whole group of people who are playing right.

Michael: And my judgment, especially with my experience even as an elementary school teacher or when I was a child growing up myself and learning disabilities, we don’t demonstrate the same value for play that we once had. We try to educate children as if they were in college, the young children and the amount of time and opportunity for unstructured play and specifically unstructured play in relationship to nature is incredibly limited. Right. And if we get to do it at all. And while we become adults, just to kind of all of this is to say we’ve been developed that sense of self and our relationship to the frequency of play and what we’re good at. And that begins us on the journey towards knowing what our core gifts are in my worldview.

Michael: And I always take people who are interested in learning this stuff back to play and back to our relationship with nature. And we don’t play tag or we don’t we don’t do the forms of play necessarily that we would have done as children, but we do try to engage with them in childlike forms of play. Not Childish but childlike. What does it feel to be in that childlike joyful, playful energy? How does that feel in our bodies? Because that is the most direct route to building relationship to our gifts in my experience and my opinion. And I’ve tested it over and over and over again.

Michael: And so that is what I would suggest to the people who want to deepen their relationship to their gifts or even know what they are. It’s find the thing that put them in that feeling state of play that they were in as a child and engage and notice them and naturally without having to teach you anymore about it now, it’ll lead you in on a path toward knowing what your gifts are, and what you have and want to share with the world.

Michael: And people both love that answer and they absolutely hate it. And the reason they hate it, Allyson, is because often when we reengage with play, we reengage with the wounds that happened when we were playing, when we were younger. And that’s another place that people like you and I come in to kind of help them work through those wounds and see that it is safe to play or it is okay to play. And it’s not shameful to play in. And in fact, it’s incredibly healthy and necessary both for them as an individual, but for their families, for their communities, for the world. Imagine if we would put down the guns and start playing. I have a feeling that things would go the other way pretty quickly.

Allyson: Yes. Wow. Do I love that answer? I’m glad that you went that route. I’m glad you picked that door. That is so beautiful. And I have a two and a half year old and I often marvel like she just gets up and plays all that’s like her raise on [inaudible 00:37:29] eat, sleep, go to the bathroom and play. And I’m just like, I try to ask myself this question, remembered asking myself this question. Like what can I be learning from Freya today? Like the two and a half year old has so much to teach me-

Michael: Totally

Allyson: … That I have forgotten. And so I try to ask myself that question. What can I learn from her today? Her endless curiosity, her endless fascination about every new thing. And I think that as you pointed out that kind of gets almost beaten out of us as we get into adulthood and into our work, work, work mentality.

Michael: Absolutely. And the old idea is that we don’t leave that in childhood. We mature it and bring it with us into adulthood. The best elders in my experience and judgment are the ones who still have a connection to that frequency of play, not the ones who are like knock it off. Like it’s the difference between an older and an elder. An elder understands, he shows the life stages and the frequencies and the gifts that come with it and they still possess a capacity. This is another reason why I like the word frequency. So they still possess the ability and capacity for the frequency of play and their physical bodies might not be capable of play, but they are capable of the frequency. And that’s a kind of like for me, a clincher about when we tried to name our gifts and understand what they are, we should be able to engage with them in all parts of our life. Right. They don’t go away just because our physical bodies go away. We still are that frequency. We have a relationship to it. The expression of it might change, but the frequency is still there.

Allyson: Yes, yes, yes, yes. Wow. This has just been absolutely incredible. I’ve learned so much. I have a page full of notes and I am so grateful, like really beyond grateful for your time, your wisdom, your sharing, so generous. We didn’t really talk about your art, but you’re also an amazing artist. I am a client of you as a coach and an artist happily and so tell us how people can find you, all the various parts of you.

Michael: All the parts of me, well I think probably the best and easiest place would go to sagefireinstitute.com. S-A-G-E-F-I-R-E, Sage Fire Institute. And then from there, all roads lead to Rome.

Allyson: Okay. Yes. Okay. And I will include that link in the show notes, so no worries there. And again, just beyond grateful for your time and do you want to leave our listeners with a challenge? I always like to leave them with a challenge.

Michael: Hear you. Let me think.

Allyson: I wish we challenge them.

Michael: Ah, on the spot.

Allyson: sorry.

Michael: Oh, it’s okay. Just didn’t see it coming. Challenge well, I think I left them with one, it goes to reengage with play is often more difficult than most people think, but so I’m going to make it more specific just in case it’s not difficult enough.

Michael: The challenge is to think of something you did as a child when you were in nature and then go do it. It might be just wander through the woods barefoot or skip stones or make a mud pie. I don’t know. And to the second part of that challenge if you can, is to do it with some kids if you have kids in your life or nieces or nephews or the neighbors or whatever, and just watch and see what you notice about the specific frequency of that energy. And then if you want to go to layer three, se if you can shape that energy with the group that you’re with. Bring the energy up, bring the energy down, make it quiet, make it loud. Those are simple ways that you can start my experience asking because you’re going to do the same thing with your gifts, I guess is where I’m going with this.

Michael: And if that natural gift is a great way to practice so that when you have a deeper understanding and relationship of your unique core gifts or your original medicine, you can do the exact same with it. So there’s the challenge.

Allyson: That was an awesome challenge.

Michael: Cool.

Allyson: That was a layered awesome challenge. And I’m going to accept that challenge. I think about the first thing that popped into my mind when you said it was writing course. I spent so much, oh my gosh, I’m going to get teary eyed. I know. Damn you Michael. I spent so much time on horseback as a kid. Like every day I was lucky enough to grow up on a family farm and I was on a horse every single day begging my brother to ride with me and he never would.

Allyson: And man, do I miss that? Holy cow. So I need, I need to find a horse.

Michael: So just in that example to help the listeners and maybe even you take it a layer deep, there are so many little threads and fibers of connection between you and that experience. See if you can unpack some of that like name what those different. I mean, sure, it might have been like the feeling and connection of powerful animal beneath you and in relationship with you so that you worked together and kind of shared thoughts almost if it went that far. There’s also just the freedom that comes with knowing that you are in control of where you’re going and like those sorts of things.

Michael: See if you can name the elements that went along with that experience that brought you to that place of almost tears just a second ago. And you’ll start to have a deeper understanding of your specific frequency of play.

Allyson: Love, love, love, love, love, love. Thank you so much. Oh my gosh, gosh.

Michael: Welcome.

Allyson: Wow. All right, well I’m just like losing gratitude right now. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Michael: Welcome.

Allyson: Thank you. And please for those listening checkout Michael’s website, get on his mailing list, get on his… I think it’s Bardolands.com.

Michael: Bardolands.com, yeah.

Allyson: And he’s a storyteller just like he has the multitude of gifts. He has many so become part of his tribe and everything will be in the show notes. So Michael again, thank you.

Michael: All right, pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Allyson: Ah, for me that was such an inspirational conversation. After we chatted, I blocked out a good hour to walk in this nature preserve by her house and really connect to that playful energy that I felt as a child on horseback. And I recalled a time when it had been raining a lot, I suppose I was 10 years old and I was with my sister and we were chasing cattle and we were racing our horses through the water and through the puddles and through the creek, which we would have called a crick where I come from.

Allyson: And I really tuned into that memory and that energy is, I walked and guess what? I definitely felt like I was in communion, in conversation and connection in doing that with my core gifts. So the challenge worked for me. I want to see if it’ll work for you, and if you loved this episode as much as I did, I would be so grateful if you gave it a bit of love, shared it with some friends, gave it a rating, and review. It truly is how more people can find this podcast. And until next time, stay uncorked.

Allyson: Are you ready to create, earn and delight in your business without feeling drained or disappointed. Then download my free guide that reveals the four steps to planning the perfectly productive, harmonious, and high earning business work week. Get your free PDF at my website, Shantpax.com/gifts. That’s S-H-A-N-T-I-P-A-X.COM/Gifts.