{"id":26294,"date":"2026-08-04T12:14:35","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T18:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/resources2.soundstrue.com\/?post_type=transcript&p=26294"},"modified":"2026-08-04T12:14:35","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T18:14:35","slug":"michelle-wadleigh-i-demand-to-be-me","status":"publish","type":"transcript","link":"https:\/\/resources2.soundstrue.com\/transcript\/michelle-wadleigh-i-demand-to-be-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Michelle Wadleigh: “I Demand to Be Me”"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"image_print\"Print Transcript<\/span><\/a><\/div>

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> You have to want the freedom from the pain, and the stories, and the trauma more than you want to be right about it. You have to want it like your next breath, so that there is a self-determination that says, “I shall not live at the mercy of those stories. I can be free, and I can be free from all of it.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> In this episode of <\/span>Insights at the Edge<\/span><\/i>, my guest is Reverend Dr. Michelle Wadleigh. She holds a doctorate of divinity degree. She’s a retreat facilitator and a master teacher with over two decades of experience as an ordained minister in Centers for Spiritual Living. She’s the founder of the Planned Happiness Institute and the author of six books, including <\/span>Forgiveness: A Workbook for Emotional and Spiritual Freedom<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>Shadow Work: A Spiritual Path to Healing and Integration<\/span><\/i>, and a new book about being unapologetically who we are. It’s called <\/span>Dance Like Nobody’s Watching: The Soul’s Journey to Courage, Authenticity, and Self-Love<\/span><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle, welcome.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> Thank you. Thank you. Good to be here with you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Here at the beginning, and by way of a personal introduction of you to our <\/span>Insights at the Edge<\/span><\/i> listeners, tell us a little bit about your journey to becoming an ordained minister. What drove you?<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> Oh. Oh, that’s funny. I didn’t expect you to focus on that piece. So, I didn’t really have the impulse. It kind of was the next thing I did, believe it or not. I used to joke with my friends\u2014how many people have the calling? They hear the voice. Tami, I had completed training as a spiritual practitioner, which was deeply satisfying to me, and the next thing to do, and the only other place to go, was to be a minister.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I remember sitting there thinking, “I can do that.” And that’s what I did. I had a stunning spiritual teacher when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Her name was Reverend Dr. Rita Spurling, and she’s been gone a while now. But she was my inspiration. All the best parts of me came from her.<\/span><\/p>\n

And at some point she was ordained by a man named Dr. Ervin Seale in the Church of Truth, and you might not be aware of him. He was a powerful metaphysician. And I watched her touch lives, change lives, and I thought, “Hmm, I want to do that. I want to help people to learn how to love themselves.” So my whole journey has been about getting whatever’s in the way out of the way, and then helping people learn to love themselves, because the world is evidence that most people are walking around without a clue about how much they don’t love themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

So for me, being a minister gave me a platform so I could do that. That’s really what that was about.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> In your new book, <\/span>Dance Like Nobody’s Watching<\/span><\/i>, you say, “Forgiveness was my savior.” And I thought, well, this is a different way for Michelle to introduce herself a little bit\u2014to tell us the role forgiveness played in your life, such that you would call it a savior for you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> Oh, Tami, I’m going to attempt not to get emotional, because the subject\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> You can get emotional. That’s fine. You be yourself, unapologetically so.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> I came out of a classic broken household. And I say classic because it’s so common. So I don’t have to tell the story of abuse and alcoholism and all those things. But my spiritual teacher that I just mentioned, she was so radical that she had me sit in a room in a workshop setting, with a load of people there, sitting across from my father, who was an abuser, in conversation and working toward forgiveness in the most profound way.<\/span><\/p>\n

No therapist would ever have done that, but she was a risk-taker. And so I found at a very young age, I got to let go of those things, so that the incidents didn’t define me. I didn’t have to be defined, because I knew\u2014I believed in my soul\u2014that if my father could have managed to not do that, he wouldn’t have.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I had the luxury of forgiveness, because I found freedom. I’m not married to it. I’m not at the mercy of it anymore, because I took myself, and I took my heart, and I practiced forgiveness with him and every other individual in my life. So I can stand in my skin now and be happy in my skin.<\/span><\/p>\n

And forgiveness did that. Most people do not realize that forgiveness is the link to letting go of so many stories. And instead, they just repeat the stories. But practicing forgiveness\u2014it saved my life, and it continues. My ex-husband and I, we’re like best friends. We vacation with him and his wife. We have a clean and emotionally, spiritually clean relationship that then my sons got to see. My sons have thanked both of us at different times in our lives, saying to us, “Oh, thank you,” because they watched their friends’ parents go through horrible divorces.<\/span><\/p>\n

But we didn’t do that. We were dedicated to them, and we both were practicing the same things. So they didn’t have to see hatred and horrific behavior. They got to see two adults falling apart\u2014and then we got to move on past that. That’s the beauty of this work, Tami. Oh, I want it for everybody. I want it for anybody who thinks they’re stuck.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> And I want to go into that for a moment. The person who’s listening who says, “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard a lot about forgiveness. I want this outcome too. I heard Michelle say, you know, with my father, if he could have done better, he would have.” That thought\u2014if this person could have done better, they would have\u2014gets me part of the way there, but it’s not getting me all the way. Michelle, you wrote a book on it. Help me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> A couple things. One, you have to want it. You have to want the freedom from the pain, and the stories, and the trauma more than you want to be right about it. You have to want it like your next breath, so that there is a self-determination that says, “I shall not live at the mercy of those stories. I can be free, and I can be free from all of it.”<\/span><\/p>\n

And that determination then starts the path. And then you start with\u2014I call it building a forgiveness muscle. So they start with little things, but then they build and build to the point when we get expert in this, both the forgiveness and the shadow work that come together, you get to a point where you look at things and you make a choice to not even pick them up.<\/span><\/p>\n

And there are so many aspects to it, Tami. There are so many aspects to it. But part of the thing to that person listening is, if they say, “Well, I’ve tried, and I’m still trying,” it’s because of two things, and now science backs this up: that so much pain lives in the cells of our body, and it lives in our subconscious.<\/span><\/p>\n

And most forgiveness practices have not taken in those two considerations. They haven’t figured out how to utilize and heal within the subconscious, which is something I go into in the book, and they don’t realize that they have to include the body, because the body holds on. The body is\u2014I don’t remember the name of the author, but the body doesn’t lie. I’m sure you know the name of that author more than I do.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> It’s fine, Michelle. What you’re saying about really wanting it, that moved me. That’s very helpful. I want to keep going, because I want to make sure I’m tracking what you’re saying. You talked about the connection between forgiveness and shadow work in the way that you see and teach, and I’d like to hear more about that so I can understand that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> So, when we’re young, something happens in life. Somebody yelled at you, you got embarrassed, right? You were little. You were a five-year-old and maybe you were being a brat, okay? So somebody in your life criticized you, and you felt horrified, and that goes in. But you don’t have any skill to deal with or heal that in the moment.<\/span><\/p>\n

You get up the next day, you go to kindergarten again, so what happened kind of gets buried. Now think of that as a series of things layering on top of layering on top of layering. And as an adult, we don’t realize that we have all these layers. The shadow exists because we have rejected the parts of us that we don’t feel good about, even though we’re not always clear about why we don’t feel good.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s because it’s been buried. We wind up being in relationships\u2014let’s say I came on the show today, and let’s say something about you triggered me. Well, when you do shadow work, you realize it’s not you, it’s what I carried into the room. It is very powerful when people\u2014my classes are filled with people, story upon story, of people who have learned it’s not the person outside. It’s not them. It’s what I carried into the relationship that is causing me this discomfort.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so the way the two things blend together is that when I start looking at the shadow and trying to identify the early influences, there’s usually someone or someones who were very involved in creating that original pain or trauma. And so we either start shadow work, we look at the source, we forgive the source, or we do forgiveness work and we realize that forgiveness work is necessary because the shadow has been alive in us. It’s a both\/and.<\/span><\/p>\n

And you’re watching this country destroy itself because of people that are not aware of these shadows. The pain, the discomfort, the horrific behavior that we witness every day is all because people are projecting onto others and thinking someone else is in charge of their pain and discomfort. Does that make sense?<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Yeah, yeah. And you’re talking about what we see in terms of divisiveness and polarization and blame. Okay. Now I want to, Michelle, connect\u2014you ready for this? All three of these books, these books that are part of your current, you could say, body of work of the past several years\u2014now we have this book on dancing like nobody’s watching, being your authentic self. How does the shadow work and the forgiveness, when we do that, create this opportunity for our authenticity to emerge?<\/span><\/p>\n

Especially\u2014and this is what I’m really curious about as I’m listening to you\u2014so often the ways that we dampen ourselves down, it is rooted in our unconscious beliefs. It’s not safe for me to be the outrageous… I mean, I’m not just, you know, dancing. Who knows what’s going on here? When all that expression that lives in people, the damping down part\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> Most of us, until we’ve had some kind of awakening… The simple word, as labeled by don Miguel Ruiz, is domestication. That’s just the simple way. Most of us are simply trying to survive. I call it functioning on top of dysfunction, because most of us are functioning. I function, and most people walking around, they look fine.<\/span><\/p>\n

They look absolutely fine. Until they stop and look inside deeper, and then they realize, oh, we have addictions, and we have an addiction to being nice. We have an addiction to being liked, and those addictions cause us to dumb ourselves down. And so when we finally realize that you and I, that we’re worthy of having an opinion, we’re worthy of being in touch with our value, then we start to come out of that conditioning and find a way to express ourselves.<\/span><\/p>\n

The book <\/span>Dance Like Nobody’s Watching<\/span><\/i>\u2014it was just the next logical thing, because when we started with the shadow work and then the forgiveness work, it was the deep, deep work. Well, as those layers of separation between our conditioned self and our authentic self, as those layers get melted away, we start to get to be who we are: the natural-born rock stars that we were supposed to be, brilliant and beautiful.<\/span><\/p>\n

So the first two books are preparatory for then saying, “Wow, who do I want to be in the world?” And then we get to look\u2014this book looks at just some of the habits that we don’t realize we have, the self-denigrating habits, talking to oneself in such a manner that the body responds. The mind and the body responds.<\/span><\/p>\n

So the purpose of this one is to help the individual reading it to get back in touch with their self-worth and to learn to love themselves. Does that fit?<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> It does, and it’s helpful. And I want to ask more. You mentioned how sometimes our pain and our shadow material will live in our body. It’s buried and it lives in our subconscious mind and in the body. How, in your work, do you help people release at that level?<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> Number one, I call it out, and I’ve been calling it out for years. Science now proves that these things are so\u2014all the new somatic studies, all the somatic healing work is the evidence that finally… I didn’t have the science to back me up then. I just knew it was so, and this is part of what I learned from my spiritual teacher.<\/span><\/p>\n

And in metaphysics, we have a belief that our body is the effect to the cause of our thinking. So if I am pondering hateful thoughts, violent thoughts, righteous thoughts, I cannot live outside of my thinking. And so it eventually lands in the body temple. This is why Louise Hay\u2014and I know you know Louise Hay\u2014Louise Hay, that’s what she was trying to tell the world. Get your essence in order so that your body can follow.<\/span><\/p>\n

And within the subconscious\u2014the subconscious, in our teaching, is directly connected to source, universe, the unified field. So we can’t heal without acknowledging that there is something there.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so I provide scripts in the book. The book is also recorded, it’s on Audible, so they could hear it. But I encourage people to record the scripts that I provide and to listen to themselves at night. When you go to sleep at night\u2014I’m sure you’ve gone through this with other teachers\u2014the 15 to 20 minutes before we go to sleep at night is when our brain waves start to slow down.<\/span><\/p>\n

They move into a theta state. At that theta state, our mind is very porous. And so whatever we bring into our mind at that time is going to sink into our subconscious. It’s why you were taught to not go to bed mad, why you should not go to bed after watching the news. There are so many teachings now that say, “Make sure you go to sleep on a recording or something that is inspiring and lifting.”<\/span><\/p>\n

So when we take care\u2014and I really mean take loving care\u2014of what we are ingesting mentally and emotionally, it moves into our subconscious, and especially that time at night. So when I do classes, I record them, and I encourage all my students, or my clients, to listen to that recording right before they go to sleep at night, so that’s the last thing that’s seeping into the subconscious, because that will affect dreams, that’ll affect your moods, that’ll affect how you wake up in the morning.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it’s just not considered enough in so much of the healing work that happens.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> What do you say to yourself\u2014not a recording, but just you and yourself\u2014in those 15 minutes before you go to sleep?<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> I’m a real nerd about this, Tami.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Well, I’m glad I’m asking a nerd about it. Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> I used to not be. I was lazy, and I was ill-disciplined. And so I used to go to sleep on the “oh, ain’t it awfuls.” And then I got it. I got, no, no, no, no. I’m taking this with me. I’m taking it into my sleep, and it’s multiplying. And over time, I became more and more meticulous.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m either going to sleep on gratitude. I’m going to sleep on a recording that’s uplifting. I’m going to sleep affirming myself. I’m going to sleep imagining my next day as perfect and complete. But I make sure my mind, which I know is plugged into universal mind\u2014I make sure that it is loving, affirming, uplifting, and inspirational.<\/span><\/p>\n

I call that time sacred. I will not waste that sacred time in my day. I am kind to myself, and I’ve had to learn to be kind. I have to teach my students to be kind. When they’re going through this journey and they’re trying to learn and they’re beating themselves up\u2014and I know, because they tell me. I’m in their head. And I’ll say to them, “Please be gentle. Please be gentle with yourself. Please be kind.” So while I’m doing this for other students, I’m doing it for myself all the time, because you can’t teach and not learn. So I use this as very creative time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> What about that person, Michelle, who says, “You know, I’m trying to do this before I go to bed, but I feel like I’m faking it. Like the fake it till you make it. It’s not really how I feel, these affirmations and things like that.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> Well, it goes back to determination, because you won’t feel the shift right away. It doesn’t work that you do this tonight and tomorrow, oh, all is well. We have to create new neural pathways in our brain. It requires specific dedicated discipline. And I hate to say it, but some of it is fake it until you make it, and then get up and do it again. Get up and do it again.<\/span><\/p>\n

I mean, I tell my students all the time if they need to put a Post-it on their mirror. I’ll give you an example. Because of what I went through when I was young\u2014my home, my bedroom wasn’t a safe place\u2014for years, I woke up angry. When I was first married, even though my first husband was a kind, gentle man, I always woke up just angry. And then when I started doing more metaphysical studies, I realized that my mind had been conditioned and my body was conditioned, and I had to remind myself that it was okay to wake up happy.<\/span><\/p>\n

So this is what I did. We had a canopy bed at the time, and I took notes and I hung them from the canopy, so when I opened my eyes, the reminder was, “It’s okay to be okay,” or it was okay to be happy, so that that was the first thing my mind saw in the morning. So I finally reconditioned my mind. It was awful waking up that way, because I was constantly protected, constantly guarded, and I had to find a way to recondition my mind, and that’s what I did.<\/span><\/p>\n

And to those who don’t believe it\u2014just hang in there, do it again, and get part of a group. There is something about group consciousness, a loving, safe community, that will hold you like a nest, so that you can dry your wings while you’re doing this journey, because it takes a village. Sometimes it takes a village.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Now, I know, Michelle, you’re speaking now and speaking to these topics in the midst of going through a challenging personal passage in your own life related to your husband’s health. And I’m bringing that up because sometimes people hear about things like affirmations and things like that, and the response is, “Well, you don’t know what’s going on in my life.” You know, easy for Michelle to say. “You don’t know what’s going on for me.” So I wonder if you can talk a little bit about how you maintain\u2014I guess I would call it your buoyancy, your faith, your practice\u2014during a tough passage.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> If one subscribes to a belief system\u2014and I mean no disrespect\u2014if one subscribes to a belief system of heaven and hell as zip codes, that fear will govern a lot of how individuals see dying and leaving. But if one subscribes to the belief that we are always just changing form… Nobody wants to suffer, and sometimes we leave before we want to. I get that.<\/span><\/p>\n

But we\u2014being my husband and I at this time\u2014we’re not fearful of the next chapter. So we have very honest conversations. I know what’s happening. I know grief is going to hit me, it’s going to knock me over, and I know I’ll move through it. To be funny, it’s the circle of life. And when we embrace what’s happening instead of fearing it\u2014the fearing things and objecting to it and trying to act like we can hold it at bay\u2014life is pretty damn unpredictable.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is unpredictable. We have no guarantees. So my husband and I stay in very healthy, beautiful conversations at times about… Sometimes it’s joking, because he’s a little bit of a comic, I meant to say. And so we face what we have to face. We face it together, and we don’t hold back any conversation.<\/span><\/p>\n

You know, one day\u2014I’m in therapy also. My therapist helps me get through this stuff, so yay, therapist. And she said to me, “You’ve got to talk to your sons.” I have three sons. She said, “You have to let them know what’s going on. They need to know this part of your journey.” And I went, “Okay.” So I came back and said to my husband, I said, “Neil, my therapist says I need to have this conversation with the boys.”<\/span><\/p>\n

And he said, very abruptly, “You do. You have to tell them I’m dying.”<\/span><\/p>\n

I burst into tears, because it was shocking to my system at that time. But then we stay in conversation, and after crying for a few minutes, I looked at him, I went, “Wow, that was unnecessary,” because we’re not willing to make it horrible. We’re not willing to make death horrible. It’s coming. It’s coming for him sooner probably than me, and we stay together and we approach it.<\/span><\/p>\n

And right now I want to suck the life out of every moment that I have. And because of my practices, because of the cleaning of the vessel, I look around in this world, and all I can see is beauty. I mean\u2014not in a spiritual bypass way. All I can see is beauty. There are sounds. I live on a hill above a little lake. And the winds, when the winds blow here, we’re surrounded by all these trees. Just that sound alone is so stunning to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so I’m always absorbing life. I learned from a shamanic teacher that beauty is a practice. Recognizing beauty, naming beauty is a practice. So I practice beauty by noticing it, and my soul gets filled. So when my soul is filled, I can manage these other kind of awful things that are happening.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> A very powerful sentence, and for me a personal takeaway\u2014you said, “I know I’ll move through it,” in referencing the grief. And I thought, yes, that is powerful, to know that you will move through that phase.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> I spend time, I walk through my house, and I’m like, “I’m going to be doing this alone one day.” My husband, about a month and a half ago, went to visit his family in California, and when he was gone and I was sleeping alone, I thought, “This is\u2014I’m going to be sleeping alone going forward. I’m going to be eating meals alone.”<\/span><\/p>\n

And I just get present to what is. And I will tell you, walking the path of someone dying is a master class in presence. Because when I’m present, I can manage almost everything. When I fall off of my presence and I move either into worry or fear, that’s when it gets hard.<\/span><\/p>\n

Even this morning\u2014my husband went to the hospital this morning, and I looked at him, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to go. And I asked him if he was done with life. And he said, “No.” I said, “If you’re not done, then we have to get you to the hospital.” And he went, “Okay.” But that’s because I was present at the moment, and I wasn’t in my fear or my sadness. I was present for him. So presence is an incredible gift. And I call it a master class in everything that’s going on around me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Thank you for sharing all of that, Michelle.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> You’re welcome.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> You, earlier in our conversation, talked about your own spiritual mentor as someone who took risks. And in <\/span>Dance Like Nobody’s Watching<\/span><\/i>, you talk about that being who we are authentically requires that we take risks. And I wonder if you can talk more about that, and maybe share with us your guide for risk-taking.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> It’s kind of funny. My mind goes in a couple of different places. I’m a true believer in\u2014to the best of your… I will probably never ice climb, climb mountains with ice. That’s probably not what I’m going to do. But a number of years ago, I had an opportunity to walk on fire.<\/span><\/p>\n

I flew down to North Carolina for a conference, and it was happening there. And on the way down, I’m like, “Oh, hell no. No way.” I worked in a kitchen for years. I don’t like getting burned. Don’t like burns. So I said, “Oh, hell no. I’m not walking on fire.” And then I got down there, and there was this sacred practice, this ritual that we all participated in, and as we moved through the stages of the ritual, I went, “Oh, I’m going to walk on fire.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Like, I allowed myself to shift. And I got it, and what I got was: fear is a choice. Fear is something we entertain. It’s not an automatic.<\/span><\/p>\n

And recently, to the opposite end, I have a little thing about being very cold. I find it a little intimidating. I’m a little fearful about being cold. So in my town, they have a fundraiser every year for a very good purpose. So they were doing a cold plunge. So I didn’t sign up because I was looking forward to the plunge. I signed up because I’m tired of being run by my fears. So I signed up, and I did it, and I felt like a million dollars.<\/span><\/p>\n

I believe that it’s important for us to recognize fears to the best of our ability, move through them, and that might be having a hard conversation for some people. It might not be jumping off of a cliff. You know? It might just be being willing to recognize that you have something to say, and it deserves to be said. Even that is a risk.<\/span><\/p>\n

But if we succumb to habitual thinking and habitual patterns, we go to sleep. Habits cause us to go to sleep. So in our waking up, we find beauty and life and exuberance and creativity that we don’t see if we’re always doing what we’ve always done. So for some, a risk might be telling the truth, showing up, making an apology. It could be anything. As long as you can feel that edge of your body saying, “Oh, I need to move through this.” And you gain a little bit of freedom at a time and a little bit of self-expression at a time, and we move toward being fully\u2014just fully expressed. And how beautiful is that?<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m going to turn the tables, if I may. You said yes to a call. I love the story about that call, and I wrote it down, because it was moving to me. Disseminate spiritual wisdom. Someone else would have heard that and said, “Oh, get out of here. No,” but you followed it. And I believe that some of us get these whispers, but we don’t listen to them. We don’t honor them. So the more we honor them, life gets beautiful and juicy.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Just to share: that calling in my own life to disseminate spiritual wisdom came when I was just 22 years old, more than 40 years ago. Now I’m hearing whispers to take a whole new set of risks. Those instructions to a certain extent ran their course. They’re continuing as an umbrella in my life, but now I’m hearing a new thing, and I am afraid.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I want to try this on you, Michelle, because I was talking to my wife recently. I was telling her, you know, I’m both excited and afraid. And she said, “You know, I think you’re just going to have to walk with fear. You’re just going to have to have it be your companion, because we can’t stop. We can’t stop, Tami. And I don’t see you not getting afraid anytime soon. So you just hold fear’s hand and keep going.” So what do you think about that approach?<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> That’s brilliant. I’m sitting here talking to you as the end result of a very uncharted, chaotic path. I’m literally here, Tami, because I was so stubborn and was not willing to not keep going. I have failed so many times at things, and if I had let that failure determine my path, oh my God, I would be working at a McDonald’s. And I have been fearful, and I talk to myself, and I show up.<\/span><\/p>\n

I used to\u2014it’s still there a tiny bit\u2014I have this thing about comparing myself to my colleagues, and the thing I know about comparison: you compare, you lose. You can’t win and compare, not in this instance. And I started learning how to recognize what my wants were, what my needs were, and walking a little taller a little bit at a time.<\/span><\/p>\n

Being here with you\u2014I wasn’t fearful, but there was something. It was meaningful to me. But I wasn’t going to say no, because I know there’s a bunch of people around people like you and I that are afraid, and they need us to hold their hand. Like your wife said, for you to hold the hand of fear. Well, some individuals need us to hold their hand. They do.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I want to live this life being all used up. My teacher died with her book still in her, and I wasn’t going to do that. So I didn’t have time for fear, to be honest with you. I was too busy driving myself forward. I’m from New Jersey. I’m a Jersey girl born and bred. I’m stubborn and determined. I’m an Aries. I’m a hard-headed woman like that. I think that’s the thing that’s saved me\u2014with having some wonderful influences. I was just determined, determined, determined. And I wanted to walk this path for my boys. I wanted my boys to look at me and say, “Mom kept going. Mom did it.” That mattered to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> I feel that in you, your determination\u2014even when you said, you know, how committed are you to forgiving? How committed are you to have a discipline before you go to bed? And I also recognize, just to reflect this back to you, because it’s powerful to me, that you’re doing it out of love. I hear it when you talk about wanting to bring what’s inside of you to other people. It’s this expression from your heart of wanting to give.<\/span><\/p>\n

And all of that, Michelle, just to say to you: in the book, you have this interesting affirmation, and I thought, “Huh, I don’t know if I connect to this or not. I want to understand it more.” “I demand to be me without excuses.” And I thought, “Okay, this is really interesting.” Demand. I demand… Who\u2014I’m demanding of myself to be me? Help me understand this.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> I have it at the end of every chapter. Yeah, I gave affirmations, and that was the last thing. I wanted that to be the thing. That comes back to the determination. I demand this of myself\u2014not myself, the little personality of me, but the self that is connected to the… I do believe in a unified field of consciousness. I do believe that you and I are reflections of each other. Absolutely, right?<\/span><\/p>\n

So that demand is not just me, the personality, Michelle Wadleigh, that was born in New Jersey. It’s the “I demand” of the greater source, the larger of me, the part of me that is connected to the all that is, the undifferentiated self. I demand that this be my reality. And I wanted it bold, Tami. I wanted it… And I’m so glad you picked up on it, actually, because I wasn’t sure if it was being appreciated. And if it rattles somebody a little bit, then I say go for it. Use that. Use what rattles you, because it means that something’s waking up.<\/span><\/p>\n

But demanding is about calling forth a reality that I know and I believe in my heart and soul that is within us. It is that connection to all that is.<\/span><\/p>\n

There’s so much love available. We have to figure out how to mine it. The world is crying for love. I’m so enjoying the World Cup. I’m so enjoying the celebrations. I’m so enjoying watching people come together in ways\u2014and that’s available to us. And I hope that anybody who reads this book, if they have children or grandchildren, that they immediately start shifting their essence so that their influence is felt right there within their family.<\/span><\/p>\n

I have grandchildren, and I want to be that. I want my grandchildren to look at me. I want them to feel safe and loved, no matter what. So I demand more of myself, but it’s not for myself. It’s for them. It’s for my students. It’s for my clients. Yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> One thing I want to question you about, and this is a little\u2014well, it gets a little personal. I notice I’m more comfortable with spiritual practices, and this is just me personally, that require a sort of letting go of obstacles, like letting go of resistance, letting go of whatever I’m holding on to, versus asking for something positive to happen, like “I demand to be me without excuses.”<\/span><\/p>\n

I’m more drawn to the, like, “I’m going to let go…” I demand that I let go of. And it’s interesting, because as I’m talking to you, I’m wondering, maybe we’re going for the same place from different directions. And then I’m like, “Well, why do you like the direction that you take, Tami\u2014the letting go of resistance versus the calling in of, you know…” Anyway, so I’m curious what you think about that.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> I think it’s both\/and, because I will tell you, in my own spiritual practice, I love silence. And this is a book I wrote, and I wrote it for a large audience.<\/span><\/p>\n

Letting go and allowing and making room for and surrender and alignment\u2014that’s juicy. That is so absolutely in my nature now. Now. It wasn’t always. So I’m with you. And when I need to be jolted, I might speak in this way. But I know that most people are walking around tiptoeing, playing small. So this has everything to do with my reader more than even my personal practice.<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the things that we’re working with\u2014my community, my spiritual community, which means my students, my coaches that I’m training\u2014one of the things that we’re working with is the concept about, what if it’s all okay?<\/span><\/p>\n

What if it’s okay? What if it’s okay that your son doesn’t call you every week? What if it’s okay that you didn’t get the job you wanted? What if it’s okay? Which requires letting go and allowing, right? It requires that. So I don’t think we have to choose. I think today you’re eating vanilla ice cream. Tomorrow you’re eating chocolate or coffee.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Very good. I like so many different flavors of ice cream. The older I get, the more flavors I like.<\/span><\/p>\n

You mentioned that your own practice is silence, and as an appendix, as part of <\/span>Dance Like Nobody’s Watching<\/span><\/i>, you include instructions for how to engage in self-guided, at-home silent retreat time. That was very interesting to me, and I wonder if you can tell me more, if someone’s listening now and saying, “Okay, you know, fire walking, well, that’s not that easy, and the cold shower thing, I’ve done that. Okay, I’m going to try this silence thing.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> Well, a long time ago when I started going to retreats, I couldn’t bear to be quiet. And then I became comfortable, and then I started facilitating my own retreats. And what I found, and what my students or my attendees found, is that if you can be silent long enough\u2014and people do silent retreats for all lengths of time\u2014one of the very first things is that you get a sense of relief from your own personality.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most of us don’t realize how much it takes to be our personality. And sometimes, to cope, we had to learn how to be the smart one or the funny one or the spiritual one. But when you’re silent and you’re not engaging another at all, and you’re just there in the presence, either alone or with others, and you’re not having to be your personality\u2014now there’s freedom to think and to feel and to allow.<\/span><\/p>\n

I’ve had major, major shifts in my life purely from either silence or being in community with others in silent meditation. I mean deep, profound. Learning to understand things about the human ego that I never studied, completely downloaded because of my dedication to silence.<\/span><\/p>\n

Inspiration for some of the books came from silence, being still, really still long enough that you allow wisdom to find you. So often we’re moving targets. So when we can become still and open that space, genius will find you right where you’re sitting. You have to listen.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so silence\u2014we think it’s silent, but it’s rich with inspiration and creativity and beauty and ideas for things. And learning to love yourself, because you get to, “Oh, I like being here with me,” and that’s another one of the rewards. So yeah, I think silence is a critically important thing\u2014especially if people have struggled to be quiet, I think it’s especially important.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Michelle, can you share with us your guidelines, your general guidelines, for how a person would start to experiment with silent retreat, silent practice?<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> Yes, I do, and the first thing is to learn how to be in… Even if you don’t put your phone away, just start with one thing. Shut your television off. I mean, I’ve been in people’s homes that have a TV going all day long, or a radio, or Pandora, whatever it is. Shut it off. Like, literally shut it off and just walk around your house doing your life in there.<\/span><\/p>\n

Get into your car. Shut off the radio or the device in your car. So start with just a short ride and see what you notice. Oh, and with shutting off the radio in the car, slow down by 10 miles an hour. Slow down. Pull back. Because what happens is\u2014I don’t know, maybe not everybody’s as fast a driver as I can be on the highway, not on side roads\u2014but when you’re driving fast, you’ve got to focus here. But when you slow down, you get to say, “Oh. Oh, look.” Right? And so slowing down and listening come together so that you’re noticing richness that you wouldn’t have noticed before.<\/span><\/p>\n

So the other thing is, use your phone. Set an alarm on your phone for whatever intervals you’re comfortable doing, maybe twice a day. Start with 30 minutes: no talking, no picking up the phone, no listening to anything, and just sit, and start there. I’m pretty sure, and I’ve seen this time and time again, that once you get the taste for that silence and the sense of relief, you’re going to want more and more of it. You’re going to want more and more of it. It feels fantastic, more than what somebody might think it does.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> You mentioned that you had important discoveries, downloads, realizations from being in silence, and my mind got curious: I wonder what she’s referring to. Can you give us an example, Michelle?<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> Well, I had this thing that happened. It’s going to make me sound a little weird, and I don’t mean\u2014<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> You’re in good company. You’re welcome here.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> It was actually\u2014before Michael Beckwith got to be Michael, he used to come east to do these smaller retreats, 35 people maybe. And we would sit for hours in silence, and we were in this deep meditation, and pfoof, I was plugged in. And he’d always have either Rickie with him at the time, or this other musician whose name I can’t remember, and they would strike a single note on the piano just to make sure that you hadn’t fallen asleep, or to get you to tune back in.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I’m sitting there in this profound silence, and he struck a note on the piano, and all of a sudden, for the first time in my life ever, I felt the vibration move through me, and it kind of shook me up a little bit. And then it happened again. Something happened, and there’s a word for it, and I can’t remember what it is. My auditory senses and my kinesthetic senses suddenly merged. So I don’t just hear sounds, I feel them. I feel the plane going overhead. I feel it down my spine.<\/span><\/p>\n

And so that was a stunning reward, because suddenly I had a sense of people. As a minister in the pulpit\u2014while I’m not a musician, I had a sense of how to use music to create a greater experience. And the musicians I worked with were like, “Yeah, somehow you know what you’re talking about,” even though I don’t know how I knew what I was talking about.<\/span><\/p>\n

Definitely what I said about understanding the ego\u2014I just suddenly understood, and I understood how… Because I used to hear people saying, “You’ve got to get rid of your ego.” You remember those days? About 30 years ago everybody was saying you’ve got to get rid of it. You can’t get rid of your ego. And I realized my ego’s working for me. It’s creating aspects to help me cope. So it’s not something to get rid of. It’s something to befriend and celebrate.<\/span><\/p>\n

I gathered some really deep understanding about human emotions, about emotions and how they land in the body. There were many things. There were some things\u2014in my teaching I’d be saying something and someone would say to me, “Well, did you study so-and-so?” And I hadn’t, but I had downloaded it, and it was just bits and pieces of information. It came from stillness. It came from being willing to listen and to hear the whispers.<\/span><\/p>\n

And I didn’t even know what I was getting, Tami. It took me years to appreciate, because then eventually I saw things show up in books or spoken by other people and I go, “Oh, I knew that,” but I didn’t know how I knew it. It was just known in my being-ness. Silent meditation\u2014that was the gift.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> It’s so interesting to me that in a book on being yourself and being courageous and being more self-expressed and self-loving, that silence, being in silence, would be the appendix for the book, to support other discoveries. And I wonder if you can make that explicit\u2014why you think silence is the field.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> When you said before that you have a sense of letting go, right? I also have that, but I also am willing to say, “Damn it, this is my life.” It’s living in the paradox. And holding any kind of paradox in place takes a certain amount of skill and a steadiness and a confidence.<\/span><\/p>\n

So I’m not who I am now when I walk in a room because I walk around out loud affirming myself. It’s because through the silence, I found out who I was. I now have a confidence about creating a safe space with my students, that I know when they come to me, I know why they came to me. I know they come to me because I am safe.<\/span><\/p>\n

My safety came from learning to know and love myself, and learning to know and love myself\u2014most of that came out of surrender and silence, the combination. So I’m happy and yet not: I wind up attracting people into my classes and courses often that have been pretty abused. And while I wish that wasn’t so, and I don’t always feel mentally prepared to deal with as much of it as comes to me, if I wasn’t grounded in that silent place within, I wouldn’t be able to do the work.<\/span><\/p>\n

But I can, because I am grounded, and I can listen to them and have profound compassion. And the compassion is\u2014well, it’s born from many places, but it’s the space I can hold for these individuals. And if I was all in my head, I couldn’t do it. I mean, if you were to meet me in person, you know, I’m not the loud one in the room, unless I’m really comfortable.<\/span><\/p>\n

So it is\u2014I walk softly, carrying a big confidence. Not that I think I’m all that. The confidence of intelligence in me. I’m confident in principle. I’m confident in spirit. I’m confident that love lives inside of me, and those things are connected through my silent practices.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> I’ve been talking with Reverend Dr. Michelle Wadleigh. She’s the author of the new book, <\/span>Dance Like Nobody’s Watching: The Soul’s Journey to Courage, Authenticity, and Self-Love<\/span><\/i>. Michelle, as we come to the end of our conversation\u2014you’re a reverend, Reverend Doctor\u2014will you lead us in a concluding prayer? I know you refer to prayers as mind shifts. Can we have a mind shift together?<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> Oh my God, with great pleasure.<\/span><\/p>\n

Oh, what I know is that there is this space, this essence, this ebb and flow that is loving and generous and beautiful, and it shows up in and as each one listening, each one viewing. It shows up as Tami, as Michelle. And what I know about this: it is infinite in its nature.<\/span><\/p>\n

It is stunning in its effectiveness, and I bless each individual who can hear to remember who they are, that we each remember that we were born with a divine birthright of beauty and brilliance. And as we say yes and accept it, it becomes our reality. It becomes who we are. Oh, and it is a beautiful thing to celebrate.<\/span><\/p>\n

So from a place of total alignment, I surrender this word to love that reigns over us. I surrender this word to the principle that acts upon it, and I surrender to the awe of life itself in all of its beauty. Let this be our reality now. I let it be so, and so it is.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tami Simon:<\/b> Reverend Dr. Michelle Wadleigh, <\/span>Dance Like Nobody’s Watching: The Soul’s Journey to Courage, Authenticity, and Self-Love<\/span><\/i>. Thank you so very much.<\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Wadleigh:<\/b> Thank you for asking me to do that, and thank you for having me here. Thank you.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"template":"","meta":{"_expiration-date-status":"","_expiration-date":0,"_expiration-date-type":"","_expiration-date-categories":[],"_expiration-date-options":[]},"class_list":["post-26294","transcript","type-transcript","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nMichelle Wadleigh: "I Demand to Be Me" | Sounds True<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Michelle Wadleigh: "I Demand to Be Me" | Sounds True\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Michelle Wadleigh: You have to want the freedom from the pain, and the stories, and the trauma more than you want to be right about it. 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