Healing Trauma and Transforming Your Life with Michelle Chalfant

Welcome to True Grit and Grace, a podcast designed to empower you to claim your resilience and thrive through life's challenges. I am Amberly Lago, a mindset coach, fitness expert and bestselling author. Each week, I'll dive deep with the world's brightest thought leaders and elite performers to share tangible tools and practical advice to inspire you to keep your eyes on the prize and forge ahead. So get ready to conquer your fears, heal any trauma, lead with your heart, and elevate your life with grit and grace.

Hello and welcome back to the show. I have somebody so special for y'all today. She is one of my most favorite people in the world. Michelle Chalfant is here with us. She's a therapist, holistic life coach, author, podcaster, motivational speaker, and developer of the Adult Chair Model. It's a transformational model of self-realization that helps people across the globe discover who they are, become unstuck, improve their relationships, and develop self-love. She has over 25 years of experience in all areas of self-healing, and she has 2 million downloads on her famous Adult Chair podcast that I love, where simple psychology meets Grounded Spirituality, and where she gives people the tools and techniques needed to find their power and transform their lives. Welcome to the show, girl. I am so happy to see you.

I'm so happy to see you too. Thanks for having me on.

Oh my gosh, I just love you. And God, the world needs your message, your wisdom more than ever right now. So Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here. I can't wait to share your wisdom with everyone. First of all, can you please tell us a little bit about you and about The Adult Chair? Because The Adult Chair is changing lives.

Yes, of course. Well, thank you again for having me on, and you were on my show a few weeks ago, so thank you. It's a delight to be here with you. I love you to death, so thank you.

Sure.

I will give you just a little bit of my background and where this model came from. I grew up in an enmeshed family, to narrow it way down. Enmeshed meaning grew up in upstate New York in an Italian family, so we're all very much like glued together. So I'm talking grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins, mom, dad, sister. We were all kind of together all the time and in each other's business, and that's just how I grew up. But there was alcohol involved. My uncle didn't like my mom. We lived together every summer at this beautiful lake house. So I had really great childhood memories, but also a lot of drinking from the uncle, grandmother, and extended family. And it led to my mother and I being very codependent with each other. But also what I didn't know way back when, okay, because I'm 52 now. So what I didn't know as I was growing up was that I was living with anxiety. And by the time I was in high school, again, I didn't know what it was. Back then, we're talking the '80s, 1980s, there was no Google, there was no laptop, so I didn't know what was quote-unquote wrong with me. I thought it was kind of normal to, you know, go out and party on the weekends. All my friends were doing it and I felt better. So there was a lot of anxiety and depression, but I remember reading a term probably 10 years or so ago that was functional depression. I remember reading it and I was like, oh my gosh, that's what I lived with.

Yeah.

I was depressed on the inside. I had really ugly self-talk, hateful self-talk. But on the outside, I was going out with my friends. I looked very happy. I had a boyfriend all the time. I was in college getting decent grades. So on the outside looking at me, I looked normal and like a healthy kid. But on the inside, I had such negative self-talk. I slept all the time. I was down all the time. So that was what was going on emotionally and mentally with me.

It's like you were living a double life.

I really was, because I didn't want anybody to know. And back then, there was not a therapist on every corner. Again, there was no laptop or Google for me to go, what's wrong with me? I mean, we had computers, I think, when I was in college, but not in high school. Like, I didn't know what was going on. In our family, I remember my grandmother would say, like, you know, we don't air our dirty laundry to strangers. So not everyone went to therapy. It wasn't cool and hip back then like it is now.

Oh yeah, my, you know, the saying for my family was hide your crazy and be a lady.

Yes, same kind of thing. Yes, it's like same kind of thing.

Yep, you just look pretty, you know, just put your makeup on and do your hair.

Yep, that's what I heard. Okay, that's what I heard. It was all about what you look like on the outside. So I was like, but why do I feel so awful on the inside? Well, my parallel life was also very spiritual, meaning, I mean, I grew up Catholic, okay? So I went to Catholic school and Catholic church every Sunday, but I was also very spiritual. So I really wanted to understand more about God, and I could feel that there was something there more than what church was teaching me. So I was very drawn to that aspect of who we are as well. I'm going to make a very long story short. So over the years, like in my 20s, I started to learn how to meditate.

Hmm.

And I said, gosh, I feel a little bit better. And I remember really delving into— so of course I got an undergrad in psychology, a master's in counseling. I wanted to fix myself. I was very drawn to helping other people too, but I really wanted help for myself. So went on and did the counseling track for myself, but also again, the parallel path was I was learning all about energy. I was learning about meditation. I was learning all about those kinds of things, which again, back then were woo-woo. Now it's much more—

Yeah.

Acceptable now, right? Yeah, I was going to ask you. To go to an acupuncturist, right?

Because I had never even heard of med— we're about the same age, and I had never heard of meditation. And I mean, I grew up very similar to you, but how did you hear about meditation?

You know, Amberly, it was like people and mentors and books would truly just show up in my life because I just always knew it. I always had this intuitive sense that there's more than what I'm being taught in church. There's more than what I'm being taught in school. There's just more. And I craved it. I have been on my spiritual path my whole life. I think I popped out of the womb like that. I would say things to my parents and they're like, who's teaching you this? I'm like, I don't know. I just know it. I know that it's true. I know that there's another way to heal. I know it, but I don't know it. You know? And then like my mom's friend would come over and say, here, I think you might like this book, Michelle, you're into all that kind of stuff, you know, quote unquote.

Uh-huh.

When I was 20. And I'd read the book and I go, oh my God, this is meditation. This is law of attraction. This was, again, when I was— this is 25, 30 years ago that I was getting books like this. So they just magically appeared, you know, God put it in my life, whatever, the universe put it in my life. So yeah, and then in college, I remember I found people that were meditators. I'm like, oh, I want to do that with you, you know, teach me how to do that. They say, yeah, you know, energy and da da da. Okay. So I started incorporating and then I found mentors that would and teachers that would say, you know, you can do both. You can be a therapist and you can use your intuition or you can use that. You can use both. So throughout the years, I found myself getting certified in absolutely everything under the sun because I was chasing again for a way to fix myself. And what I felt like the core problem was. Is that I didn't love myself. I said, you know, the way that I'm talking to myself leads me to believe that I hate myself. So I need to figure out how to love myself. So I took so many, you know, again, certifications in everything from non-traditional techniques to traditional. And what I found along the way is I was getting a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better and a little bit better. And then I moved to Nashville about 12 years ago.

Hmm.

Again, I love taking classes. I love to work on myself and I signed up for a 3-year intensive with a small group of people here and it was there that I did a lot of chair work. I love inner child work. I've done that for many years and that's where one of my teachers had chairs out and we were working with chairs and which again, I'd done in the past many times with other therapists, but she had all these chairs out and there were 3 chairs that stood out for me. I was like, I like working with the inner child already. So she had this child, adolescent, and adult, and I'm like, boom. It resonated with me deeply that what we're all looking for is how to be healthy adults because most of us don't have training in that or modeling in being healthy adults. Of course, with my mentor's permission, I said, I want to take your 3 chairs and add everything that I've learned over the course of 25 years and create a model. And she said, go for it. So that's where the adult chair came from, and that's where it evolved to. So now it's become user-friendly model that you can plug into anything under the sun, codependency, relationship issues, you know, anything at all, and it starts to transform.

You say in your podcast, I love, when you have guests, you're like, are you sitting in your adult chair?

Yeah.

It's like, it's a good self-check for yourself. Like, where is this? Like a lot of times, especially now when, you know, I'm feeling a little more anxious or if I'm experiencing more pain, Yeah. Or feeling triggered, I will have to stop and ask myself, that's such a good question. What chair are you sitting in?

Yeah. Well, it wakes us up because what happens is, you know, we've got the child chair, which is the inner child. So age 0 to 6, then from 6 to 25, we've got this part of us that's the ego.

Mm-hmm.

And it's what I call the adolescence. So it's preadolescence, adolescence, and postadolescence all the way up to age 25. And then around 25 is when our Prefrontal cortex comes online and we have that executive functioning, that would be our healthy adult. So for me, living in our adult chair is having the prefrontal cortex online, which is the wise mind, with the higher self come down and then we live with presence.

Hmm.

We live with wisdom. We are more grounded. We may not know how to process our emotions, but we know that we're having emotions and we sit still and we allow them to come through us. When we're living in our adult, that's what we do. We set boundaries. We live with fact and truth instead of story and assumption. So we know when we say to ourselves, what chair am I in? It wakes us up out of that. It's like an unconscious dream state that most of us live in every day. It wakes us up and we go, whoa. Like I've been— sometimes I would binge eat way back when, and I still find myself, especially now during the quarantine.

Yeah.

I'm like, oh my God, I'm eating cookie dough. And I'll go, wait, what chair am I in? And I realize I'm in that adolescent because the ego is the part of us that Finds vices to numb us out, right? So if I say, what chair am I in? Boom, I'll go, crap, I'm in that adolescent chair, but it wakes me up enough so that then I can step into my adult and go, wait, I don't want the cookie dough. Wait, I don't want the wine. Wait, I don't want the fill in the blank. And then I can go, but what is true right now? Well, I'm really feeling scared. Oh, it's scary.

And Sunny, that's exactly what you're describing is what I wrote about a little bit in a post that I did this morning. And I did not realize that my whole life I was keeping really busy. I was an overachiever for training. I didn't go just for your basic trainer certification. I had to get the top certification.

Oh yeah.

The hardest one to get. I had to train the most clients. I had to just keep myself busy. And that was my way of Numbing out, of deflecting, of not feeling the pain, of trying to feel worthy because I did not feel worthy at all. I didn't really love myself at all. And I was forced after my motorcycle accident to just be still and have to look at the trauma that I had experienced as a child and like be really gentle with myself as I let it rise to the surface. But I think what's going on right now with the world having a big pause button, it's like we came down and put a big pause button on the world.

Yeah.

It's forcing people to kind of be still. And I think a lot of people are probably binge eating or I did see on the news where alcohol sales are through the roof. And then my daughter and I went for a bicycle ride the other day and there's a pot shop down the street from us. Oh my God, the line—

What?

To get pot, to weed, or however, whatever you want to call it. I don't know what the cool term to call it is nowadays. Was down the street, down the street. And I thought, people are freaking out and they are not in the adult chair. They're like trying to numb out. By overeating, overdrinking, for me, overorganizing my closet or color organizing. All my books are now in rainbow-colored form right now. You know, it's like whatever we do.

Yeah.

And then I love what you say because yeah, we have to put ourselves in check. Are we in the adult chair? But that's not easy. That is one of the hardest things that I've ever done. And in fact, when I had to look at all that stuff, it drove me down a dark path before I was able to finally look at that stuff and be gentle with myself. It wasn't like, oh, okay, this is easy.

Let me do this.

How do you— what is one of the first things that people can do if they're in a moment right now where they're like, oh my gosh, I've been keeping myself so busy. Now suddenly I'm not so busy and I realize I'm not real happy with my life, or I'm not being very kind to myself, or maybe I don't love myself. What's one thing they can do right now today that can help them start to love themselves a little bit?

Yeah. And I love what you said. And this is what I recommend to everybody. And it's hard to go into your pain. You got to go into what's scaring you. You know?

And it'll always be there, pain.

It'll— you know what? You can have the wine. You can have the pot. You can have the cake. You can have the cookie dough. That's my thing, you know? It's gone temporarily because we can't process food or alcohol and emotions at the same time. You just cannot. So it's one or the other. So you're just prolonging it. You know, it's like I'm numbing it for like a few hours of the evening and then the next day it's going to be there. So I encourage everyone to go into it and I know that sounds horrifying. So you don't have to just go square into it. People think, well, God, if I start crying, I've heard this from so many clients over the years, like, well, if I start crying, it'll never end. It does end. I've never had anyone not be able to stop crying. Be gentle with yourself and get curious, maybe not about the emotion because there are a lot of people, we don't even know what the heck we're feeling, but we know we're cleaning closets like crazy or putting our books in rainbow colors or whatever you said. We know we're doing that, right?

Mm-hmm.

So what we want to do is slow down and get curious in little moments. So take 5 minutes. Can you take 10 minutes? Set the timer on your phone because the ego gets annoyed like, well, wait a minute. I'm not going to do this all day. Well, can you do it for 5 minutes? And that's when we get in our adult chairs and we go, wait a minute. I can do anything for 5 minutes. I'm setting the timer on my phone and I am going to do this because it's going to be good for me. So we set the timer for 5 minutes, sit down, close your eyes, and just get curious about what is going on inside the body. Oh, I feel tension.

That's so good.

You don't need to know, I feel sad, I feel grief, I feel this, I feel that. What's going on inside my body? Oh, and so many people, when I ask them to slow down and what are you noticing, they're like, well, I didn't even notice. Gosh, my heart's racing, my shoulders are tight, my stomach's in knots. I had no idea. Then when they slow down, I go, okay, one thing at a time. You got knots in your stomach. Can we just direct your attention just to the knots in your stomach? Okay, let's just put our feet on the floor. Let's breathe. Let's get clear. Breathe. Okay. And then they go, oh, it's getting worse. I'll go, just stay with it. I'm right here with you. Boom. Guess what? It goes away. It morphs and transforms every single time. I've done this 25 years, 30 years almost. Every single time it will morph and it fades. But we've got to be willing to be with it to be in it.

And that's something that's really hard for people. I mean, look, I know I have clients that their shoulders are up to their ears, all their tension is in their neck, or their muscles are tight. I see it when I'm working with them. Or now I'm even working with clients through Zoom, and I can actually And I can see, because there's more tension in the air right now, more tension with what everybody's doing.

Yeah.

I can see them start to physically relax and put their shoulders down. But it's really being able to get curious about it. And I'm sitting here taking notes while you're talking because I love that idea of instead of face your fears or whatever, get curious about it.

Yeah, yeah, you don't have to go in on it head-on. People go, oh, that really scares me. I'm like, okay, so you've got a knot in your throat, it feels tight. Yeah, it does. Okay, let's sit together and I'm just gonna be with you in it. Oh, oh, okay. Gentle. It's all about being gentle with ourselves and curious. You don't have to dive in. People think you've got to dive in and you'll cry forever. It's not like that.

Well, I have to say, like, I think a lot of times people think you go through something bad and then you just grieve a little bit, then mysteriously everything's all better.

No.

After my motorcycle accident, it took me— when I was talking about it, took me to a dark place. I was never a big partier. I never, you know, while other people were out partying, I was busy collecting their tips. I was working, you know, building my career from a young age. But this took me down because I realized I ran from all my problems. And then when I was stuck in that hospital bed, they were all suddenly right in my face. And that pain or sadness or shame, it never goes away. I was just busy deflecting it or running from it. Then it was in my face. So my solution was, okay, well, I'm just going to numb it out. And that worked a little bit.

Yeah.

But I started drinking every single day. When I decided to get sober, I did cry for— I swear, I think I cried every day for about a year because I was facing the feelings instead of trying to stuff them down or numb it out. And I think it's important for people to know to share their stories. I think it's Brené Brown who says, share your story. from a scar and not an open wound.

Yes.

And I really had to do a lot of healing and a lot of crying before I was able to share my story. I mean, there was a long time I had so much shame about drinking too much even that I didn't dare tell anybody. I just used to think like, how'd a good girl like me end up in a place like this?

Yeah.

Well, it was because I was Not dealing with my emotions. And it could happen to anybody. Adversity does not discriminate, you know?

No. And the thing is, is emotions, when we're willing to sit with them, in them, they will pass through us in about 90 seconds. The only reason they stick around is because the mind, or what I would call the adolescent chair, the ego, whatever you'd like to call it, gets us stuck. It's the mind that builds the story around the emotion. So let's just say for right now in this quarantine, I'm really scared. So if you were just to sit in, I'm really scared, and feel really scared, you'd feel it and it would move through. What happens is though, we go, oh gosh, I'm so scared. And then the mind kicks in and builds a story around it. And then we give it meaning. So we say, oh my God, I'm so scared. Oh my God, I'm so scared. This is going to never be over. When is this going to be over? I don't think this is ever going to be over. I'm never going to be able to go to the grocery store again and I'm so alone in my house and I don't like— and then we go, eh, eh, eh, and it's like this on and on and on.

And what if, what if, what if?

Yes. And then it's like, well, what happened to I'm scared? If we could just go, gosh, you know, I'm really scared, period. And then let it— and we can be scared about not being able to go to the store whenever I want or not being able to go to restaurants or not being able to see my friends. But leave it at that and feel it. Yesterday I went to the grocery store with my husband yesterday morning and I walked in and I realized how triggering it is for me to go to the grocery store, to walk in and see all I wanted was cashew milk, that's it. Yeah, we walked into Publix and it's like the whole darn milk thing, it's gone. Then we needed eggs, they were all gone and these shelves being cleared out.

Mm-hmm.

That triggers me. I'm like, wow. And I'm looking at everyone walking around with a mask on their face and I'm like, I feel like we're at war. And I found all these emotions coming up. I looked at my husband, I said, I think I'm gonna need to cry.

Uh-huh.

I said, I'm really overwhelmed right now. This is really freaking me out and I feel really scared. But more than anything, I'm feeling so overwhelmed with what's going on in our world right now. And I can't even go in and buy myself cashew milk. And there's—

and really, I'm so glad you're saying that because it is over something little, like, I just want my cashew milk.

Yeah, that's it.

Go in, and I had the same experience. I was going in to buy laundry detergent, and I went to Target, and I was like— I had my 11-year-old with me, and I found myself getting kind of short with her. I accidentally ran over her foot, poor thing. And she goes, Mom, you're in such a hurry. And I snapped at her and I was like, Ruby, this is serious. This isn't safe. We got to get out of here.

This is it.

And I was like, same. Oh my God, stop. I am putting all of my fear onto her. Like, we teach our children how to be resilient or how to live with fear and panic. And I like, I had to catch myself, take a deep breath. I stopped and gave her a hug and I'm like, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, baby. I was having a little bit of a moment where I felt anxious and this just doesn't feel normal and it's not normal and I'm sorry. But it is. It's like I kind of get in my little bubble here at the house where, because I work online so much anyway and everything feels kind of normal. And then I go out into the real world and I'm like, holy cow, it does feel like a war zone.

Yeah.

But now when someone is feeling scared, say you have a client And they're like, I'm really scared. Do you sit and ask them, okay, what is it that you're scared about? Or how do you go through that process with them?

No. I don't ask them what they're scared about because I don't want to engage their mind anymore because really what we want to do is— I call we're either living chin up or chin down. So when we're chin down, we're in the body, we're in the inner child, we're in the unconscious mind, which is where I want them to go to find out where that emotion is. It's in the body. When I ask them, tell me about, you know, I'm bringing them chin up, which is getting them more stuck. So I'll say, okay, tell me again, where do you feel scared in your body? And they'll go, oh yeah, it's a knot in my throat or a knot in my stomach, let's say. Oh, okay. Let's be in that together. Okay. And then if they sit in it and they go, yeah, I feel that, I might say to them, does it have a color? It's an energy. We're all energy beings. We are. And emotions are just energy. So I'll work with that energy, that part. I believe we're just a bunch of parts made up, okay? It's like we're a big puzzle. So there's a part of them that feels scared, let's say.

Mm-hmm.

So I'll say, what does scared want us to know? What color is scared? What purpose does it have? How old does scared think you really are right now? I want to work directly with scared. I don't care what you think about scared. I want to work with that. scared part. There's such rich information in working with that one part.

Hmm.

And then by the time we're done just really exploring that one part of them that feels scared, they'll go, oh, well, it's gone. I don't feel it anymore. Oh, okay. Or the color that was green has now turned purple and now it does— I don't even see it. That's so weird. Where did it go? I'm like, all that our parts want— you got to think about, okay, if I'm in my adult, it's like I'm the CEO of a big Corporation. Let's just say I've got 100 employees. My 100 employees are all my inner parts. So what I want to do as a CEO is to sit and witness what's going on inside of me. I'm not changing anybody. I want to hear from you. So Amberly, you know, we have a Monday morning meeting. What do you want to say? So-and-so, what do you want to say? That's how I work with the inner parts. When they get to speak up and they're known, they morph and transform.

Oh, it's so true.

We want to sit in them. We want to sit in it and be in it just like you did. You said for a year you cried. You've got to be in, you got to turn toward your parts that are quote-unquote acting up, because guess what? Every time I've done this, most every single time, like 99% of the time, those parts think that you're like 4 years old. So you're scared, you might be triggering scared, but your original scared goes way, way back in time. Does that make sense?

It totally makes sense and it really made me think about with my leg, I was diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome, which leaves me in constant chronic pain and And so most my, you know, some people have it full body. I feel fortunate, and it's crazy to have this pain disease and I feel fortunate about it. I feel blessed because I only have it in my right leg. I used to try to completely be disconnected from it and ignore it, and the pain would get worse and worse and worse. And that's another reason I was trying all different kinds of pain medication and treatments and very invasive procedures. Nothing was working. And it wasn't until I acknowledged— and I remember I had somebody say to me, I think that leg needs some extra love.

Yeah.

And I realized that I hated it and I was only showing it hate. I hated that it was deformed. I hated that it didn't work properly. I hated that it gave me so much pain. And it wasn't until— and I still do this now—

Mm-hmm.

When it's starting to hurt more. Instead, I just acknowledge it and go, I hear you, I see you, I love you, what do you need?

Yes, it wants your attention. It wants your attention for what— we don't need to know why. But then when you ask what it needs, it's beautiful. I also love doing inner child work. That is like such a foundation for the adult chair. So many of us, if not most of us, I would say, disconnected from our inner children, our inner child part. And that is where we have emotions, our true emotions, our true needs are coming from the inner child. That's where play is, fun, passion, spontaneity, vulnerability, and intimacy are all in the inner child. So I love directing people back to their inner child and teaching them. How do you connect back to that part? People are blown away all the time by the inner child. I'm like, yes, and then they start to feel different on the inside. They go, well, gosh, I'm starting to feel emotions I never knew I had. I'm like, they've been there the whole time, but we disconnect from that part of us unless we had parents that nurtured us and really sat down with us and said, okay, sweetheart, I noticed you seem a little bit off. You know, what's going on? Well, Mommy, I feel sad. Tell me about that sadness. I want to know about your sadness. Is there anything I can do for you? Most of us grew up with like, oh, it's not that bad, or here, have a cookie, or let it go. You shouldn't be that sad. Your brother didn't mean to hit you. Get over it. That's how we grew up. But true healthy parenting, which again, I didn't do that with my children when they were small. I didn't know because that's not what I received, is sitting in the emotions with our children. So unless you got that, Then our inner children, we just sort of tuck them away. We tuck our true emotions away and our true needs. A need is different than a want. Like, a true emotional need is like, I just want a hug. I need you to tell me that I'm loved.

I think that's one of the hardest things right now is— and I have to remind myself of this every single time my husband drives me batshit crazy. Yeah.

I'm like, you know what?

I'm just blessed. That I have my husband, who is an incredible guy, don't get me wrong. But you see that chair sitting behind me? I'll be sitting here working, he likes to come sit there behind me.

Uh-huh.

And it's sometimes hard having somebody peek over your shoulder while you're trying to work.

Yeah.

But I remind myself how blessed I am that I have him to hug.

Yes.

That we have each other. Because I have a lot of friends right now who are single. And they're completely isolated, and we need that human connection. It makes such a difference in your day.

It really does.

To have somebody pat you on the back or give you a hug. And thank God that we can see each other through Zoom and connect through social media.

Yeah.

So many, you know, it's my daughter's— it's going to be her birthday this week, and I thought, well, What can I do? I can give her a Zoom party where we can at least see each other, you know. But what would you suggest for people who are alone right now that need a physical hug?

I hug myself. I get a pillow and I hug the pillow. I don't know if you're referring to doing inner child work or just in general, but that is what I do whether it's working with my inner child or just in general. Like sometimes I do just sit like right now, I'm like Okay. And if I'm working with a client on Zoom, they'll say, I just need a hug. And I'll go, just go ahead and do it right now. We've got to learn how to become our best cheerleaders. We have to learn how to self-validate.

Exactly.

Because if we didn't get it when we were younger, we've got to do that for ourselves first. Then we're not dependent on other people to do that for us. I'm not saying that we shouldn't want hugs, like that's a wonderful thing, but learn how to connect with yourself first. There are many people in the world that only want it from other people because they didn't get it when they were younger. So it's really important that we learn how to do it for ourselves. So I give myself a hug. I connect with my animals. I mean, I have 2 dogs. I connect with those dogs. I give my dogs hugs. I tell people, pet your cat, love on your cat, love on your horse, love on your whatever. You can get it from other people or animals.

I think exactly what you said though, we have to not rely so much on other people to do that. I know, but in today's world, Yeah. Where so many people are on social media, whether it's Instagram or now TikTok.

Oh yeah.

Holy cow, I can't keep up with it all. People are so reliant on how many likes did that get? Well, how many comments did it get? Did somebody reshare my post? Do they like it? Do they— yeah. And I think it's so, so hard. What would you say to the younger listeners who are maybe on social media and they are craving that attention or that validation from the likes or the comments, what would you suggest they do to kind of break away from needing all those likes and comments on social media to just being okay with themselves and not having to be dependent on that?

This sounds massive, but I would love to teach all kids how to meditate and be with themselves. Because when you're with yourself, then you know what you're feeling on the inside. And then you start becoming aware of, wait a minute, I'm needing that. So I don't know how young you're talking about. Are you talking like teenager young or 20-year-old not young?

I think even younger, actually. I mean, my 11-year-old— well, she'll be 12 this week. I'm blown away that all that she has learned. And I'm like, where do you learn? And she's not somebody that's glued to the internet by any means. She loves running around and riding her horse. But she's learning. You know, these kids are like sponges.

They are.

And they're learning so much. So I would even think about somebody as young as 11 years old because, you know, do you think that they could learn to meditate? And I mean, I'm still learning to do that. I actually just saw how many meditations that you have on YouTube. Y'all, I'm telling you, Michelle's amazing. Your podcast can teach so many people so many valuable lessons. I really admire all that you put out there. I remember the first time I talked to you, you had said how you were in Europe and somebody stopped you on the street and was like, oh my God, it's you. Like, people know you globally now thanks to the internet and thanks to your YouTube videos. But you actually do meditations on YouTube and have a YouTube channel that teaches people that. Do you have one that's specifically for children? Are all your meditations something that children can use?

They're also all on theadultchair.com, like they're all on my website too, but thank you for that. I would say this, the first thing is people are— they don't understand what meditation really is. Meditation— and because I'll say to people all the time like, hey, you know, why don't you start meditating even 2 minutes a day? Who can't meditate for 2 minutes a day? They go, no, no, it stresses me out because I can't stop my thoughts. Meditation is not about stopping your thoughts. It's about learning how to witness thought. It's not about stopping. I would say with kids, because I have 2 boys, one is now 19 and one is 22, I think. I forgot how old he is. But they both started meditating. And my younger one started meditating when he was a junior in high school because his friend— of course, mom and dad tried to get him to sit with us and they would sit sometimes. So then his friend started. And noticed that his anxiety was less. So now my son and both of my sons meditate every single day, at least once a day. But yes, I have meditations on my website. Anyone, any age can listen to them. But if you've got a little kid at home, this is the thing. People ask me all the time, how do I make sure my kids are learning how to live in their adult chair? And I'll say this, make sure you're living in your adult chair because we as children, we model ourselves after our parents. So if your parents, if you sit and meditate, then your kids are going to see you in a meditative pose or whatever throughout the week. Then they're going to want to know, what are you doing? Why are you doing that? Talking to your kids is so important, but sit with your kid outside. Here's a great one for like a younger kid, even with your 11-year-old. Sit outside with them because meditation does not have to mean closing your eyes in silence or watching your thoughts. You can sit and I remember doing a bird feeder meditation many, many years ago. And I was like, let's just sit and watch the birds. Meditation is about being in the present moment, right? And getting really present and noticing what's coming up. So I would just have my kids sit with me and go, hey, look at this bird. What do you notice now? Oh, there's another pretty bird. Mom, do you hear that music? It's teaching them how to be present within themselves. Sitting outside, you can do walking meditation. So there's so many things you can do with kids.

I don't know if we do that in the barn.

Yes, I would guess you do. When you're on a horse, you've gotta be really present. That's a meditative state. So it's not just sitting for an hour quieting your mind or watching your thoughts, but yeah, guided meditations are great. There are tons of them all over, you know, on YouTube, not just mine, but you can do any of them with your kids for sure.

I love that. Yeah, I actually, and I'm in no way affiliated with Calm or anything like that, the app, but I use the Calm app Every single day. Because even at night when I'm going to bed, we have a night routine and, you know, we take a bath or, you know, and last night we took a bath bomb bath with salts and candles. And I know that my 11-year-old, she still will take a bath with me. I'm sure that won't last for long, but she still will take a bath with me. And then, you know, we have cuddle time with our little 3-pound dog and then we have a gratitude glass jar and we write down what we're grateful for.

So good.

And then we use the Calm app and it has— not that I have tried to get her to do some meditations on there because they do have those and it really takes you— for me it helps because there are some on there that will take you into being aware of what's going on with your body.

Yeah.

But a lot of times, and now my family's used to it, every night I have ocean waves going and it calms my mind.

Music is huge for calming. Yeah, whole energy field. Like, music is so important that we have on. I chime. I use the bowls that you can chime. I love that.

You did a video, I think, on your Instagram.

Yes.

And you'd had sage, and I didn't know that you did all this the first time we talked, and I was like, oh my God, no wonder I love her. We do all the same stuff. I was like You had your sage, you were like, another way is you can do the chimes.

Yeah.

And I love that. I didn't realize that. And you know, I made my own little wind chime out of all the broken— I had broken a lot of titanium in my leg. And so the pathology department was just going to throw that away. But that was $62,000 worth of titanium. I was like, no, I want that titanium, dang it.

Yeah.

I had planned on making bracelets, one for me and both my daughters, but the jeweler said he couldn't bend it. Titanium.

Wow.

He didn't have the materials. It's too hard. And so what I ended up doing was I made a wind chime. And those little chimes during the day when I can hear it, it reminds me of all the things that I'm grateful for and that out of adversity and sometimes your hardest situations Beautiful destinations are possible. And I think that we need to be reminded of that right now with all we're going through with this pandemic, that this can lead us to such a beautiful transformation. I feel like we're all in our cocoon and just rebuilding and sprouting our wings, ready to take flight.

I agree 100%. But we've got to be still.

That's the thing. And it's hard. I'm not going to lie.

God, still. No.

And I know I'm like you, like nothing's changed for me. In fact, I think I'm busier than ever because I work from home. I work from home. I do everything on Zoom. I'm in my home office all the time. But I found myself working every weekend. I'm like, whoa. I've been doing that for a few years. And I just recently stopped doing that because I was like, there's no Start and stop to my week. You've got to slow down and get in touch with what's going on. I'm like, why am I working every weekend? No, that, that was awareness. We got to raise our awareness to all of it.

Yeah, and that was me too. And I mean, it was Sunday. I worked all day yesterday and I didn't get something out that was supposed to go out yesterday. Yeah, you know what? It's okay.

Yes, I've had to say that statement to myself. It's okay.

It's gonna be just— it's gonna be okay.

Yeah.

Well, I want everyone to be able to learn more about your adult chair and your adult chair model because I think it's life-changing.

Oh, thank you.

I really do. And I know that you have some events coming up. You've got an event in Nashville and in New York.

I do. Well, I did have one that was supposed to be last weekend, but we moved the adult chair workshop What's in July? We have an adult chair workshop now in July in Nashville, and then we have one in New York in October.

Hey, what is the date in July for that one?

July 30th.

July 30th. Maybe I can come to that.

Oh my gosh, that would be amazing.

Oh my God, it's on my bucket list to meet you in person.

Yeah, come on.

I've always wanted to go to Nashville. I am not kidding you. Maybe I should get my ticket now. They're probably a really good price.

Oh my gosh, plane tickets are so cheap right now. I swear I'm gonna— Southwest, because you can always get a refund. on Southwest. Just buy it now.

Okay. I'm writing this down.

Okay. July 30th. It's 3 days, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Yep. So we've got Nashville and then we've got New York is in October, 22nd, 23rd, 24th, I think. And then I started because I have so many people from all around the world that hit me up and say, is there an adult chair coach in Australia, in Canada, in LA, in wherever? So I am launching the first ever adult chair coaching certification. That's in December.

I love that.

I can't do it all. I can't work with the whole world. I said, we need more people out there that know this. So I'm doing that in December and for right now, one thing that I love, Amberly, is journaling. I love journaling.

Mm-hmm.

Journaling for me, you know, whether I'm working with my inner child, I just love— I have this journal and I journal every day. It's like my therapy journal because it's like going to therapy. Do you not agree? It's such a great way to purge, purge, purge. So every year we do a 30-day journaling challenge, but now I said, you know what, I want to create just 14 days of journaling right now to help to transform people because they're home anyway. So we're doing at theadultchair.com/14days— it's the number 14 days. It's free. It's 14 days of journaling prompts so you can help—

Oh, I love that.

Continue to work with these emotions that are coming up and continue to find your adult. So that's what we're doing. That starts, I think, next week. So, oh, but that, that is available year-round. Like, that'll never end. It'll be on the site forever.

So, okay, awesome.

Yeah.

So tell us your site again, just in case somebody missed it. And y'all, I will have all this information for your upcoming event because I want to go to that. I'll have all that information. So in the show notes, so if you're listening, go to the show notes and check out her website, her podcast, I love your podcast.

Thank you. I love yours.

Thank you.

Oh, thank you.

I do. Thank you.

Everything is just at theadultchair.com. Everything you need. I've got an inner child resource on there. So if you want to learn how to do that, I've got 2 meditations that take you in to connect with your inner child. I've got journaling. It's all at theadultchair.com. Everything is right there.

Okay, awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here. I just love you. Thank you for sharing your wisdom. And I sure hope I see you in Nashville soon.

Oh, I would love that. You can come and stay with me. Oh, serious? Anytime? Of course. Of course.

What a treat. You're amazing. And also, I love that horse picture behind you.

Oh my God, Amberly, you see that?

I can't stop looking.

I saw that horse picture. I was like, it is like powerful to me, but also saw I have horses All over my whole house. You would laugh. You would think I love—

Well, you gotta come out and stay with me.

I love horses.

And visit our Reddy. You know, Ruby and Reddy are a good team, but come out to the barn and hang out with us and be around all the horses. I would love that.

I love the horses. Oh my God.

That's my daily reprieve is going out there to the barn. So—

I love it. Thank you.

Thank you for being on. Thank you.

I've loved every minute of it. Thank you so much. So much. Thank you.

Thank you so much for joining us this week on the True Grit and Grace Podcast. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button, and it would be so awesome if you rated and maybe left a review. That would help too. And also, I have some exciting news for you. If you are ready to learn a mindset that will get you through any challenge, ready to really transform any limiting beliefs, and finally find the wellness routines that work with your lifestyle and keep your body healthy and thriving, you're in the right place. You're hearing this for all the right reasons because it's your chance, your chance to join right now. It's a 12-week course. It's so much fun because we're gonna go live in a webinar with plenty of time for Q&A. It's called Your Unstoppable Life Mastermind, and there's gonna be a daily mantra and a like-minded community to support you along your way to reach all those goals. So head over to amberlylago.com/mastermind and sign up now. Okay. Have a great week, and I hope to see you in the Mastermind.