Have you ever been in a group experience that should have worked, but somehow didn’t?

Good people.

Decent agenda.

Maybe a smart person up front with a microphone.

And still, the room feels dead. Or weird. Or unsafe in a way nobody names. People get distracted, suddenly very interested in when the bathroom break is coming or why someone keeps blowing their nose so loudly in the middle of the deep thing.

I have suffered through enough mediocre group experiences that I’ve become picky. Maybe you have too.

Because when a group is held well, there is a certain magic that happens. People feel safe, seen, and engaged. Something activates them. Something catalyzes them. Lives can change in the right room.

So what is that magic?

Much of it is guardianship (or the lack thereof).

The Art of Holding Space in Transformational Groups

I first learned this as a teenager at my Catholic high school, where I helped lead Teens Encounter Christ retreats. I was the school campus minister, and so enthusiastic to help lead events that created deep personal experiences of direct connection to the divine among my friends. (Some things don’t change much).

We were trained with roles, and the teenagers on the retreat team were often assigned as guardians of the tables. My job was to sit at a round table with a group of students and help them feel safe, included, and contained enough to actually participate.

I was supposed to notice the nervous person, ask the question that helped them come in, pray for the people at my table while sitting right there with them, and model authentic participation without taking over.

That was my first lesson in the secret art of being a Guardian.

And I did not fully appreciate it at the time.

I looked up to the shinier roles. Speaking. Teaching. Catalyzing the fun thing. Those roles are easy to recognize because everyone can see them.

The Guardian is often invisible.

The Guardian Archetype: An Ancient Role for Creating Safety

Years later, after I met my Apache mama and mentor, , the importance of this role got driven home in a much deeper way.

I remember talking with her about what we would need for a day-long event. I was thinking about teachers and facilitators. Maria said we would need at least three guardians.

Guardians?

She explained that in her family, the Guardian was one of the most important roles in ceremony.

The Guardian holds the vessel of the group secure, makes sure people have what they need, and helps everyone feel belonging and connection, so the group can relax inside the experience.

Because if people don’t feel safe, they can’t really listen.

It can sound trivial, like worrying about the bathroom or the snack table. But under the logistics is the energetic message: I’ve got you. You can relax. You don’t have to stay vigilant about whether your basic needs will be met while someone else is trying to transform your life from the stage.

We design meetings around the presenter. We plan retreats around the facilitator. We give credit to the person with the microphone.

Meanwhile, the person quietly tracking the room, noticing the one who has gone silent, catching the tension before it turns into drama, and making sure the group can stay connected often gets treated as menial labor.

Please.

That person may be the reason the whole thing works.

How to Recognize a Natural Guardian

My partner Tony is a natural Guardian. At a party, he notices when someone’s cup is empty. More importantly, he notices when someone is sad, distant, or slightly outside the circle, and he gently brings them back in.

That’s guardianship.

Conscious Leadership Means Honoring the People Who Hold the Room

If you lead any kind of group, please look for the Guardians.

Choose the natural hosts and grounded sensitives who can hold space without creating more drama. Give them authority. Acknowledge them. Pay them. Stop pretending it is just “being nice.”

And feel into yourself here.

Understanding Your Natural Leadership Archetype

Are you the Teacher? The Catalyst or Initiator? The Guardian?

You may carry pieces of all three, but you cannot effectively serve every role at once.

If you’re the one with the proverbial microphone, you probably can’t also track every nervous system in the room. I learned that the hard way when I was channeling and teaching without a Guardian present. People would get wiggly, anxious, distracted, and I could feel the room slip even when the information coming through was good.

The teaching was not enough if no one was holding the vessel.

Who is already guardianing your team, your clients, your family, or your events without being named?

And what would change if you honored that role as essential instead of invisible?

All hail the Guardians.

Thank you for doing what you’re doing.

With you humans, looking up at the sky
with curiosity, open-mindedness, and an unusual sense of welcome,
it makes it easier for us to come visit, to make contact, to connect.

Why?
See, the rules on this earth dimension are governed by humans’ free choice. It’s part of the game here.

Free Choice, Spiritual Connection, and the Invitation to Communicate

Extraterrestrial friends are not allowed to just pop in without some special arrangement or a big open consensual welcome.

They’re not supposed to interfere, but to respond when called. That’s the law of free choice.

My First Experience Sensing Interdimensional Beings

I was atop Mauna Kea on Big Island of Hawaii the first time I noticed that observatories are like space stations for those eyes to see it.

I was just a tourist who happens to be psychic. But as we drove up this ancient extinct volcanic monolith of a mountain, I could sense interdimensional friends in little sort of encampments along the side of the mountain.

They were suddenly alert, noticing that I was noticing them.

I greeted these beings at the time, surprised to find them here on the barren lava sand at over 10,000 feet elevation above sea level.

I could sense many different sorts of extraterrestrial intelligence here and I allowed my imagination to give them forms and even outfits like friendly aliens so that I could relate with them by personalizing them.

By the time we arrived at the top of that extinct volcano, I was sensing throngs of these beings, moving all over the top of the mountain, completely unnoticed and unseen by the scientists going about their work, and the other tourists snapping pictures of the panorama mountain top view.

It’s funny, but at that time, I didn’t think to ask them the question I finally asked these other guys in Flagstaff a few weeks ago.

Now it makes sense to me, that answer I got in Arizona.

Spirit Communicates Through the Doorways We Are Open To

I’ve noticed that spirit arrives with help and messages and loving connection in whatever forms we are open to.

From Angels to Spirit Guides to Extraterrestrial Intelligence

When I was open to Jesus and the Saints, that’s how spirit showed up. As I’ve opened up my realm of possibilities, spirit shows up in a myriad of forms and helpful areas. Spirit guides, angels, interdimensional friends, extraterrestrial intelligences, fairies, tree spirits, and more. Whatever metaphor/explanation you like, it’s never going to be vast enough to embrace the totality of creation. So might has well choose your metaphor and go with it.

I’ve heard lots of people say “oh I used to sense ghosts and dead people, but I shut that down.“ And I respect that.

We each have the choice to close and open whichever doors align with our values and chosen faith ways. But I for one, I am fascinated and delighted to be open to the many forms of extraordinary intelligence that are available in alignment with the highest good, even aliens who like to hang out at observatories.

What forms of wisdom, support, and intelligence become available when we allow ourselves to stay open?

I’d love to hear from you. Have you ever experienced guidance that came in a form you didn’t expect?

A lot has been revealed about dark power being used in the upper echelons of the old boys’ club: sexual abuse, terror, vampiring other people’s energy for the hit of power. It’s shocking and gross to learn what has been happening under the cover of darkness.

But is it surprising?

I don’t think so.

And before anyone starts wriggling in their seat, explanation does not equal excuse. There is no excuse for abusing kids, terrorizing people, or taking from the people who trusted you.

If we refuse to look at the energetic reason these patterns keep showing up around distorted power, we stay in the cycle of being shocked every time the same rotten structure reveals itself again.

Projection Load: The Hidden Weight of Influence

One of the terms I use for this is projection load.

I work with a lot of leaders. Some celebrities, some extremely wealthy, many just very influential and all of them dealing with a lot of this projection load.

People care about the minutia of their lives. Where they were. What they said. What they had for breakfast, and especially what they wore (eyeroll).

They’re adored, hated, wanted, resented, worshipped, criticized — imagined into roles they never actually agreed to hold.

All of that carries energy. It lands in their field.

And when these guys become so big from the projection load, from the hero worship, from all the ego fluffery, their energy body can get puffed up with stuff that is not even theirs.

Hopefully that person has someone to check them - a mentor of integrity, a spiritual director or therapist, real truth talking friends, a strong spouse… someone they respect who can keep their ego from taking over. With grounded support, they can find their center, their wisdom, their integrity. They can learn to ground all that energy. They can surrender what is not theirs. They can let real life humble them before their field gets too inflated and distorted.

When Influence Turns Into Ego

But when someone starts believing the projection, relaxing into their fluffed ego, things can get dangerous.

They may start feeding on the worship, or even the disdain. They feel bigger than life, entitled to all the special attention, and then terribly desperately hungry for MORE. They grow to feel special in a way that starts separating them from humane accountability.

That is where the hunger takes over, becoming a desperate egoic search for energy to take, to steal, to harvest.

How Energy Exchange Shows Up in Everyday Life

It’s too easy to demonize this sort of vampiric behavior, imagining it only happens in the upper echelons, and in the most egregious ways. But it’s not completely unfamiliar to the best of us. We humans know more about feeding on the energy of others than we like to admit.

Even on the playground, we learn the tiny version. You sneak up behind a friend and scare them. Boo. They jump. You get a little hit, a little juice. They may laugh, but they also feel the loss for a second.

It is the tiny playground version, sure, but the body still registers it.

Now imagine that same power dynamic inside extreme wealth, fame, secrecy, protection, and ego fluffery.

Desperate hunger for energy paired with righteous entitlement and ridiculous amounts of resource to take from others.

That is where feeding can become abuse, and even communities based on this vicious harvesting of pure energy - of the young, the pure, the beautiful.

Evil. Yes. But not nonsensical. There is a process happening here energetically.

Conscious Leadership Requires More Than Success

This is why integrity-based leadership cannot just be about making more money, getting more visible, commanding higher prices, or becoming the name in your industry.

Because that appetite is real. And anyone who is adored on stage one day, who then feels depleted lonely and hungry the next day, can tell you the hunger for a new thing to fill us is real and surprisingly strong.

These energy transfers affect us all. You can be doing good work and still have an adoration-hangover after being in the public eye. You can be deeply gifted and still get puffed-up when too many people hand you their power. You can be spiritual as hell and still need a mentor or partner who can say, “Nope. Uh-uh. Come back to Earth, Fancypants.”

Staying Grounded When You Hold Power

Please have those people. And please, become one.

The leaders we need aren’t the ones hoarding all that projection until it curdles into overwhelm, ego, hunger, or harm. There are people who can hold influence without letting it inflate them, who can let all that extra energy open their channel of genius instead of puffing up the false self.

But that does not happen by accident.

It requires grounding and humility. It requires a relationship with spirit, earth, and body, and the willingness to surrender what is not yours instead of stuffing your field with other people’s fantasies and resentments. Dude, it’s a practice. And in a world where we are not tracking these invisible movements of energy, it can be hard to understand what’s going on. We have the wise words of “stay humble” and such, but I think it’s time to track the energy transfer and learn how to balance it out before it creates more damage.

Can we be done pretending power is neutral? Can we talk about projection load before it turns into ego fluffery, hunger, and harm?

And can we please help people with wealth, fame, visibility, and influence learn how to steward what is coming at them, instead of letting it overwhelm them or using it as permission to feed?

The Future of Leadership Requires Spiritual Integrity

The world does not need more giant egos taking from the people who look up to them.

It needs leaders whose influence opens their channel so they become truly genius, instead of inflating their ego until they become monsters.

This is the work I care about most: helping powerful, intuitive people hold more energy without losing themselves.

If you are stepping into bigger leadership, bigger visibility, or bigger responsibility and you feel the weight of what is moving through you, this is the territory I love exploring.

Reach out. Let’s make sure your genius expands faster than your ego.

Tingles up your spine.

A sick feeling in your gut.

Sparkles at the edges of your vision.

They mean three different things. But no one taught us in grad school how to translate subtle sensations. Honestly, even most intuitive training systems can’t tell you the difference.

Sensory Intelligence: The Forgotten Language of Intuition

When I met my Apache teacher, , I finally met a teacher who knows the difference. She learned the map of the eight atmospheric layers of your energy body when she was still a kid. She practiced using all eight of her sensory layers, growing up on the White Mountains Reservation, in order to track and hunt rabbits. She sat with her great-grandfather who used the eight sensory layers of the art of Ya’Odishido (sensual telepathy) as a part of everyday life - the best way to get things done.

Recently, I sat to have an inspiring conversation with her on this topic, which you can hear as a podcast episode on Channel Your Genius podcast. But I want to give you the low-down right here, because it’s important.

Mental telepathy, says Maria, won’t get you very far. It’s limited to the mind. The more useful perceptions for healing, for connecting, for finding what you need- these come when you can feel, track, and leverage the subtle sensations that your body uses to speak to you.

Beyond the Mind: Understanding Body-Based Intuition

A lot of us have general tags for this stuff: My intuition says this. My gut says that.

But what am I actually feeling?

What I love about learning this from Maria is that she is mapping the woo. Not dumbing it down or turning it into a cute little chart. Actually tracking what’s what.

Her family has been tracking these layers for generations, and the way she teaches is experiential. We learn through feeling (not just thinking) the body, the land, the sensation, and the relationship.

Intellect, Intuition, and Instinct: The Three Ways We Receive Guidance

Maria talks about the difference between intellect, intuition, and instinct, and she keeps correcting how most of us collapse instinct into fight-or-flight. It’s not that. Instinct is the body’s language. It’s primal, often subtle, sensation.

In a world where we think every pain or pinch or tension is “wrong,” it’s a real turnaround to hear what Maria suggests:

Don’t run from your sensations. Find out what they mean.

Because we do run. We receive a sensation and think we are getting sick, spinning out, or becoming too much. We feel something move in the body and immediately want to manage it, explain it, or make it socially acceptable.

But what if the sensation has information?

If you are sensitive enough to feel the room, the client, the decision, and the stress-frequency of the humans around you, that’s a lot to be carrying around untranslated.

Sensing Energy Through the Body and the Land

And the land is part of the conversation.

Maria shared how, when she is out on the land, she may suddenly stop because sensation tells her an offering needs to be made for connection. Maybe there’s a snake on the trail. Maybe a layer of history wants to open and reveal itself in the landscape. She talks about rubbing your hands together, then finding a power spot on the land through feeling instead of your thinking mind.

And when you find that spot through feeling and not the intellect, you can sit there for hours and never get tired. As she said, it is like Mom says, “This is your place. I’m ready to hold you here. I got a spot for you.”

That’s a powerful co-creative relationship with the body, the land, the higher intelligence.

And it makes me think about stress differently.

Sensation Over Stress: Learning to Decode Your Body’s Messages

Life is supposed to be challenging, but it is not supposed to be stressful. - Ten Bears (Maria’s great grandfather)

I recognize how much stress I still hold in my body and field, even with all my practices. Ugh.

Maria notes that this world is vibrating on a frequency of stress right now. We humans are saturated in stress, overwhelmed with so much sensation.

When we collapse every sensation into one overwhelmed pile, we miss what’s actually in there. This one’s the stress one. This one’s a message. This one over here is just me needing a glass of water and lunch, because I’m still a mammal! It’s a lot to navigate when you don’t know how to map your senses.

Developing Intuition Starts With “I Don’t Know”

So how do we learn to map and track and use all these sensations in a good way?

Ironically, Maria suggests we start with “I don’t know.”

And yes, this requires humility.

The kind Maria gave us straight, with no fancy spiritual outfit on it:

Can you allow yourself to say, “I don’t know. Show me what I need to know”?

It’s easy to get arrogant thinking you know everything when you’re overeducated and people always say you’re smart and now you can ask your cellphone to do all the research you want.

But there are cosmologies, like Maria’s, that have been tracking and using the invisible subtle stuff of energy for thousands of years. And there are still a few teachers like Maria, who teach these arts to those who are ready to learn them. I will continue to sit at her feet and learn for as long as I can. Because the applications of this art of Ya’Odishido are endless. And there is a real danger that this modern world is forgetting the natural art of sensation that is most natural to us, most powerful for us, and most important in co-creating directly with spirit and earth.

I recently sat down with Maria for a conversation on Channel Your Genius about Ya’Odishido, sensory intelligence, and learning the language of the body. Listen to the full episode if you want to experience the deeper layers of this teaching.

https://channelyourgenius.com/blog/2026/indigenous-energy-healing

All the oracles say this is a BIG month.

The Energy of July: Intensity, Change, and Transformation

There's a stellium in the sky that mirrors the French Revolution. There's the heat of the summer compounding the rising heat on the planet and the heat in our frustrated hearts at the wild changes and control dramas that are getting quite destructive. Overall, it's hot hot hot.

How to Stay Centered When Everything Feels Uncertain

How do you keep your cool center in the midst of all this?

Meet the Specialist Archetype

The answer lies in this month's Archetype - the Specialist.

This part of you knows your assignment. This part of you stays in your lane, undeterred. This part of you accesses your deepest gifts to live in this intense time.

Your Soul Gifts Are Needed Now

You are special, indeed, as we all are. Learn how you're gifted. Clarify your path, your lane. Do what you came here to do, even as things heat up. We are all in this together!

If you’re wondering what your unique gifts are and how they are meant to guide your next chapter, start by discovering your Soul Gift Archetype here → www.soulgiftquiz.com.

Subscribe to Channel Your Genius for monthly energy forecasts and grounded spiritual guidance for intuitive leaders.

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You really are special.

And I’m sorry, because a lot of us were misled about what that meant.

They told you you were special because you got straight A’s and looked pretty in the pictures and made the touchdown and pleased some authority who adjudicated the rightness of your way of doing life.

Now, you achieved some stuff. I’m not trying to put that down.

But your specialness is rooted in a much deeper place than the dumb-ass rubrics of what “special” required.

The Spiritual Awakening That Revealed My Real Specialty

I was a Stanford-educated lawyer before I had my big accidental awakening, before I fell into the gifts that made me an energy healer and a seer and a guide for people. I never thought woo was real until it happened to me.

That’s when my real specialty revealed itself.

I thought my specialty was teaching improvisation. I thought it was preparing cases for trial, processing depositions and evidence, and telling stories through trial briefs. I thought it was speaking the way I’d been trained in speech and debate. I thought it was drawing good pictures and playing guitar at church.

All beautiful gifts. Truly.

But those are all things I learned. And my natural specialty is something I didn’t learn in school.

Finding the Gift You Were Born With

So maybe the question is:

• What have I been intrinsically since the day I was born?

• What has been my unique effect on people just from being around them?

• What has been my gift to everyone in my life even when I wasn’t trying to do anything?

Hm… those questions are a bit more subtle, I know.

And some of us end up asking them because we HAVE to. Whether it’s the mid-life crisis, the crippling divorce, the unexpected physical challenge, or just your normal every-day nervous freakin breakdown… we finally get around to facing what’s been in us all along.

For us women around 50, it’s a common thing, especially with the joy of menopause in the mix. That’s when we stop giving so many F’s and we start asking a question we never stopped to ask before…

“So what?”

So what that I was school valedictorian? So what that I went to Stanford? So what that I traveled internationally teaching and performing improv?

Where is that now? What is happening now? What am I emanating now?

Because that happened. But what’s true now?

The Specialist Archetype and Your Unique Genius

Enter the Specialist, our archetype of the month.

And that’s important right now, in an age where the robots are copying everything and passing themselves off as humans. It’s more important than ever to touch into what makes you human, yes, but also what makes you distinctly, unmistakably you, you freakazoid.

• What of your gifts is an emanation?

• What of your gifts never leaves you, no matter what job you take or what relationship you’re in?

• What’s your essential juju?

That’s a lot more interesting than your résumé, and more powerful.

The people closest to you probably see this more clearly than you do, because when you’re the fish inside the tank, you don’t know there’s a tank. You’re just swimming around being yourself, while other people may be having an entire experience of your presence that you have not put words to yet.

So here’s a shortcut: ask them.

How to Recognize Your Intuitive Gifts

Ask the people who know you best, who love you and see you in your worst moments and your best moments:

• What are the qualities I emanate?

• What do I make you feel that other people don’t?

• What is the thing you receive from me even when I’m not trying to be useful?

And please, because I know this move, don’t swat the answer away because it sounds too simple.

Don’t knock it away because it seems boring and obvious or like “oh you always say that” or because your self-worth issue wants to protest.

Listen to their response. Record it if you can. Make a note.

Building Your Life and Work Around Your True Purpose

Once you hear it, know it, and acknowledge it, then you can amplify that essence through all the other masks and jobs and duties you may still need to carry as part of your work.

That is when your perceived value goes up, for you and for others.

Your effectiveness goes up too, because you’re no longer dragging your whole self through work while pretending the most potent part of you is irrelevant.

You also learn who balances you, who supports who you actually are, because none of us is a one-person show.

You are a specialist. Each one of us is!

So what’s your specialty?

Not because you went to grad school on a topic. Not because someone gave you a credential.

What is your effect intrinsically, in the quiet moments?

Pay attention to that.

Center your service in this world around that. Center your business around that. Let the genius that flows through you when you’re open become less hidden, less apologetic, and more available. People are already looking for exactly that thing in you.

And if you need help figuring this out from someone who can see deeply into you and put words to your valuable specialty better even than most of your friends…

Hiiiiiiiii! Reach out. This is exactly the kind of deep seeing we practice inside my work: naming the thing you have always carried, then learning how to actually use it.

Let’s talk about the magic of the menopassage - when a woman stops asking permission, stops giving the F’s, stops holding back.

It’s the moment we have been waiting for.

The Rise of Mature Feminine Power in Midlife Women

And also, look out. ;)

Because this flavor of feminine power that rises in mature women is not cute, compliant, endlessly available, or particularly interested in being chosen by the same systems that trained her to stay pleasing. Nope.

She has lived too much for that game now. She has lost a lot, created a lot, been underestimated by people with louder microphones and worse instincts. She has watched the old games up close - sometimes from inside the boardroom, sometimes from inside the marriage, sometimes from inside the spiritual community… - that still managed to recreate the same power nonsense, but with a soft haze of bypass bullshit.

In the meno-passage, our tolerance for even well-meaning bullshit disappears.

Menopause as a Leadership Initiation

In the spirit of no-bullshit, I recently recorded a FemWisdom with Ma episode for the new podcast. This is where I straight-channel the Big Ma and then she/we have a conversation with a Feminine Wisdom Leader about the stuff that really matters. In this case, I was channeling and talking with my BFF, founder of Priestess Presence, .

We shared real-talk about midlife, perimenopause, and the great evolution of the mature woman. Elayne Kalila has guided women in the feminine mysteries for decades, and recently she’s sort of on fire sharing about The Change as a rite of passage, a chrysalis, a metamorphic journey - not just a set of symptoms to manage while everyone politely avoids saying the word “menopause” at lunch. (If you’re not already following her on Substack - go get it)

Anyway, we were in this session, and Ma came through and said something I could feel in my whole body.

Menopause, Voice, and the End of Self-Silencing

The End of Self-Silencing

So many of us women spend the first half of life translating ourselves into acceptable versions of ourselves, making our truth softer, our needs smaller, our visions more palatable for people who benefit from us staying manageable.

Then, we grow up. And BAM - we speak truth, without apology, surprising everyone who’s ever known us.

Sure, our bodies change. Yes, our hormones change. Oh hell yah, our tolerance changes too, which may be the most delightful medical mystery of all.

It’s not that we don’t care anymore. It’s that we now care too much to hold back the Truth.

The Menopausal Maven Archetype

Elayne Kalila has coined the term Menopausal Maven. She says we need a new archetype. And I agree. Because this powerhouse - she’s neither the mama nor the crone.

The Maven cares deeply. She cares about truth, children, the earth, integrity, money, medicine, legacy, and whether the room is lying to itself again. She simply stops confusing approval with safety. And she has the accrued wisdom, the inherent power, and the fearless voice to move mountains in an age where some of these mountains just need to go.

Why Women’s Power Expands With Age

Oh yes. Women become more powerful with age, not weaker per the common story.

We become harder to hypnotize.

We move through the reckoning of the Change, and emerge seasoned, devoted, and speaking the truth.

Yet this power has been hiding in plain sight. Many folks have been looking right past the elder leader women in the room for generations. Our image-worshipping culture can’t even register the power of mature women yet. But they won’t be able to ignore her for long. She is rising up into power. Big time.

The Coming Wealth Transfer and the Rise of Women’s Power

Let’s do the math. There is about to be a massive transfer of wealth from Baby Boomers and the Silent Generation to heirs over the next 20 years — estimates range from roughly $84 trillion to over $120 trillion in the U.S. alone. Women live significantly longer than men, so, um, who do you think is going to be holding this transferred wealth? Some forecasts estimate widowed women alone may inherit around $40 trillion over the next few decades.

And this power transfer is already underway, much to the dismay of the Old Boys’ network, or the archetype of the Old Emperor type. The old Emperor, high on his own importance, often fails to see the mature woman coming because he has already dismissed her. She is done playing maiden, seductress, endlessly useful mother, and professional nice lady. So she doesn’t really even exist as a player on his game board.

Perfect.He overlooks her, and she slips under the fence.

She gains ground while the old structure is busy admiring itself in a cracked bloody mirror.

But the move to the Maven is already afoot. Mature women are already holding more resources, decision-making authority, and spiritual credibility than many institutions know how to acknowledge. Money is moving. Old hierarchies are wobbling in public like poorly assembled patio furniture.

Meanwhile, the Maven is remembering her voice. (you really should listen to the full episode with Elayne Kalila)

That should interest anyone who cares about the future of leadership. Because mature feminine power changes what gets valued and what questions get asked around money, power, land, children, creativity, and truth.

The Return of Grandmother Leadership

My Apache teacher Maria says it used to be the Council of Grandmothers who were always the top authority in decision-making. That’s because they would ask the important questions.

• Who benefits from this decision?

• What is being extracted, and from whom?

• What is being hidden, not spoken?

• And how does this affect All Our Relations - creatures, lands, waters, people?

There she is. Grandmother. Maven.

Winged throat open.

Elayne Kalila calls the new archetype Maven.

Take the Quiz

What FemWisdom Leadership Looks Like in Practice

And I call the new leadership style FemWisdom: mature, embodied, collaborative feminine wisdom that has no interest in becoming another guru show. The power lives in conversation, in shared truth, in the tapestry of women, men, elders, kiddos, earth, spirit, and the strange little magical child who has been hiding under the table waiting for someone safe enough to say, “Come play.”

Finally we are waking up from the old Emperor’s dream.

The world does not need older women to become younger, quieter, smoother, or more palatable.

For Women Moving Through Perimenopause and Midlife Change

If you are in this passage, maybe it feels messy. Your body is changing, your voice is changing, and the old rules are starting to look like a very boring costume you no longer wish to wear.

You are welcome here, FemWisdom leader.

The wings of your throat are opening.

Speak.

I was sitting there thinking, “I’m doing nothing.”

Uh oh. This client paid me a lot of money, flown in for a private retreat in this luxe AirBnB on the river she’s rented for us to do this work. She’s laying on the sofa, receiving a deep clearing of the old patterns we’ve been mapping and tracking for months. And I’m… doing nothing.

Is it really OK that I’m sitting here, tingling, feeling waves of power coursing through me? Isn’t that too easy?

Truth be told, it felt GOOD. Effortless for me. Obviously deeply relaxing for her. But my lawyer brain was like, “um, nothing is happening. I’m doing nothing.”

My guides were giggling at my mental chitter chatter. “Mellissa. Relax. Hold the door open.”

The Leadership Skill No One Teaches About Holding Space

That was my job.

Hold the door open. Let the Mystery pour through and do the rest.

I’m a responsible person, you guys. I wanted to make something happen. I’d deposited her check. I’d promised her a healing. She had come to release something that had held on for a very long time, and my personality needed this healing to work. My Stanford-trained attorney self was somewhere in the back of my mind, sweating over a legal pad, tabulating the efforts, the proposed benefits, searching for something remotely billable.

Meanwhile, the actual guidance was maddeningly simple.

Hold the door open.

You guys.

Intuitive Leadership Feels Different Than Performance

This is one of the great initiations of intuitive business leadership.

Yes, this happened inside an energetic clearing. But regardless of what you do… if you lead clients, teams, strategy sessions, or any conversation where the real issue is hiding underneath the agenda, you already know this moment?

What It Means to Channel Your Genius in Leadership

I call this Channeling Your Genius - and it’s the reason I named my business that.

Your best leadership is supported by your skill, preparation, discernment, etc. But your GENIUS channels through when you’re able to let something larger than your own ego participate in the work.

In your best moments of channeling your work, your brain might say “I’m doing nothing.” But your Genius knows you’re giving your best stuff, by “doing” nothing.

Tons of conscious preparation, education, experience, skill, yes. And then? “Hold the door open,” and get out of the way!

Why Preparation Matters in Energetic Leadership

That day, we’d already done the outer work. We’d identified what was being released. She’d done the hard work of facing her demons, her patterns, her dearly held habits. We’d made the preparations to be here in this safe space, uninterrupted by the thousands of people who tug at her every day. I”d done my work, too. The years of preparation with my mentors to hold this kind of space. The personal work I’d done to be able to hold space for some of the same patterns I’ve held in the past. I had drummed over her, moved energy from her field, burned propolis from my beehive until the air smelled like medicine

Then, we entered that empty space. We opened the door.

The signs were there. Serendipity was moving. We felt it.

She was deep on the sofa, almost completely out. I was sitting nearby, tingling, breathing, holding steady as this stream of light moved through me and toward her. At one point her eyes fluttered open and she said, “This is a big one.”

Then she dropped back down.

The signs kept coming. Nature was responding. We saw it.

The blue jay swept in so close, sitting by the window, watching us. The Sea Eagle cried overhead, punctuating the peak of the release. And a red fox appeared on the deck near us, looking up directly to where we were working.

Seemed like nothing was happening. But everything was happening. And we were doing nothing.

Holding Space Is a Leadership Skill

There’s an art to holding this kind of charged space. I had to develop this skill with the help of my mentors - to learn how to stay out of the way without abandoning the field.

That’s leadership too: being steady enough to stop performing expertise when the person in front of you needs space, not more words.

That was a hard lesson for me to learn over the years, because I love talking and sounding smart. Explaining, narrating, sounding… I’m good at that stuff. But sometimes “hold the door open,” also means STFU.

What Grounded Intuitive Leadership Requires

There are ingredients to being able to hold this kind of space for people of influence.

1. You really better have done your own work on your own shadow stuff.

2. You’d better have training from mentors who have done the work themselves and know the territory.

3. You gotta be able to hold pristine space without getting in the way, and

4. You can’t get freaked out or impressed by the money/fame/etc of big energy leaders - you need to be with them person to person, with compassion.

(Fortunately for me, I grew up around miserable rich people so I learned early that money/fame/importance is not the important part of being human.)

Your Genius May Already Be Leading Through You

Anyway, holding space for healing juju to flood through someone is just ONE way of channeling your genius. Maybe your genius floods through when you’re speaking from a stage. Maybe it happens when you’re designing a new product line. Maybe it comes through when you are deeply relating to your peeps, your family, your kids. Maybe something moves through you, and it seems kinda miraculous, and you think, “But I’m doing nothing.” Maybe you question if your best deepest gifts can really feel so effortless, like a flow that comes through you. Dude. It can.

And your life has prepared you with all the skills, the wisdom, the experience, the knowledge, the perspective, the talent, the interest, and the opportunities that now make you exceptionally qualified to… “do nothing.” And let all the best of you come through.

We are trained to tell the success story in a very one-man-band way.

One brilliant person has the vision, works like a maniac, overcomes the odds, and arrives at the top looking impressively self-made.

Handy little myth, isn’t it?

Hey, I am all for the real-deal actions that make up real-deal work. Calls need returning, contracts need reading, calendars need tracking, and the invoice does not become enlightened and pay itself.

Still, this myth that we are these solo-heroes who work out way to the top - this thing is a lie.

The Myth of the Self-Made Leader in Modern Leadership

My father taught me this without making it a spiritual teaching. He was a superior court judge for decades, then a deeply respected arbitrator and mediator. People have always been impressed by his ability to find the wise sum-up of complicated situations. He has the perfect parable, the high level perspective, the human read, and the strangely perfect platitude for any problem. Annoying, frankly, when one is his daughter trying to win a point. ;)

Dad is the first person to say that every good thing in his life arrived through some happy collision of circumstances he never could have engineered alone. An introduction at the right moment, a surprising yes that changed the shape of his path, a door that opened because he was awake enough to notice it and walk through.

And if you are honest about your own life, I bet you can find the same thing.

Why Collaborative Leadership Creates Better Results

This month, we’re talking about the archetype that embodies this connective way of living: the Co-Creator.

Why High Achievers Struggle With Intuition

For many professionals, especially those trained in the old-school success religion, these parts of the story are ignored. We mention grit, effort, and credentials because those sound impressive. Meanwhile, we pray quietly under our breath, we write off miracles as “coincidences,” and we reframe our decision made on the gut instinct of our partner as a choice made through careful calculations.

We speak our prayers privately in the darkness, rename the intuitive hit “just a thought,” downplay the friend who opened the door, and ignore the body signal that kept us from signing the wrong contract.

We know better in our bones.

In secret, we thank the Mystery for its grace, and wonder when everyone will figure out that our success landed because of dumb luck just as much as talent or choice.

We admit the miracles over wine with our closest friends. We can’t help but recognize it when we look back honestly at the moments that changed everything. The client, the move, the healing, the role that fit like it had been waiting for us. Our effort was real. But so was the serendipitous timing, the unexpected door opening, and whatever other strange grace nudged us, stumbling, in the right direction towards success.

That is Co-Creator power.

What Co-Creative Leadership Looks Like in Real Life

Co-Creator power expands when we finally welcome it consciously, instead of pretending it doesn’t exist. It grows when we cultivate relationships with our spirit guides (or imaginary friends if you prefer). It flourishes when we turn our attention toward calling in the right collaborators, partnerships, connections and networks - not just the right funding, tools, and rewards for doing it all ourselves.

Why Successful Women Often Resist Support

Unfortunately, it’s hard for many of us Type A go-getters to place nice with others.

We are very good at looking self-contained. We went to impressive schools, built impressive careers, made real money, and learned how to walk into powerful rooms looking like a big deal.

Hey, this took us a lot of practice. And guarding. And defending against other people showing us up or knocking us down or disappointing us or betraying us or stealing our ideas or talking badly of us to our own teams the minute we turn our backs… pant pant… or wait are you still here listening to me rant? Because I definitely was trained to do this in the halls of show-off greatness.

My clients tend to know this game. They, like I, have been burned to a shivering crisp by this game. Under the title, the reputation, the revenue, some deeper part of them is longing for leadership that feels like it really matters - supported, spiritually guided, grounded in the body, and alive in the actual world of feelings and relationships and knowing you did the right thing for the generations to come.

The Shift From Solo Leadership to Co-Creation

The old way gave the boss the praise and hid the web of support that made it all happen. If the team created something extraordinary, the leader became the triumphant victor. The origin story got trimmed until one heroic person stood in the spotlight with suspiciously perfect lighting.

The new way - the way of the Co-Creator, is more honest, more vulnerable, and more collaborative than we were taught to be as professionals. It’s about acknowledging every win as a tapestry woven by a bunch of people, ideas, actions and aligned timing. It can even be about acknowledging the Mystery as a player in the game.

And it starts with you acknowledging how your best stuff actually came to be. Not as just your individual creation, but also with you as the channel of genius who integrated others’ inputs as well.

• Who opened a door of opportunity?

• What inspired guidance arrived unbidden?

• Where did your body insist you stop and listen?

• When did the perfect timing mysteriously align?

• What quiet voice did you hear, and follow?

Developing Intuitive Intelligence Through Connection and Collaboration

The more you acknowledge the inputs, the more they show up to support you. The more you slow down to connect, to collaborate, to listen to the winds as well as the words, the more you’ll hear. This is a big part of developing intuitive intelligence. Don’t be driven by intuitive hits alone, but dang it don’t ignore or discredit them.

Gather it all, and weave it. You’re a Co-creator.

This version of me. She burned it down, and sat crying in the ashes of her previous life. I was determined I was right, and better, and eternally more awake than those muggles who loved me. Ugh.

Look,
I know that "intuitive awakening" sounds like it would be all butterflies, rainbows, and spirit guides... but...
it made me my best self in one respect,
but it made me my WORST self in others.

Power initiations can make us puff up with egoic spiritual grandiosity. And yah, I had some.

When you suddenly wake up with super powers,

• the ability to see and talk to the dead

• healing juju coming out of your hands that fixes your friend's knee up fast in medically impossible ways

• messages from others' spirit guides that tell you more than you should know...

it can make you a real arrogant bitch.

When Intuitive Awakening Inflates the Ego

I know this from experience.

See, I hadn't even believed the woo stuff was real... until it happened to me at age 31.

So when it DID happen to me, I got scared that all the reasonable people who knew me as a Catholic lawyer would reject me.

What to do?
Like any ego-driven human, I rejected them first.

Spiritual Awakening Can Strain Relationships

I haughtily presumed that those muggles could never understand me.

OOF. It's like a punch in the gut of regret to realize this now.

I’m sorry.

I'm sorry to my church friends who were baffled at my change, but were probably just curious and concerned, not judgmental and rejecting. I never really gave you a chance to continue our connection.

I’m sorry to my folks who were totally swept off their feet with worry and fear when their good-girl-normal daughter suddenly claimed to be an intuitive shaman whatever the F that's supposed to mean. (cringe) I didn't have the courage or patience to stay with them as they (and I) learned more about intuitive awakening and the deepening faith it would eventually give me.

I'm sorry to my former husband who tried to keep up with the woo, but found it really wasn't his thing. We never really had the chance to keep up with our sweet, playful, in-sync life-partner rhythm because I changed. Radically. Suddenly. And it was a painful loss of the marriage I thought I'd enjoy till our dying days.

The Lesson I Teach My Clients Now

Recently, I was advising a client who was in a similar snit. She was waking up to her power, feeling full of herself in both a good way and also a bitchy way.

I said:

"Great leaders open gates
and they don't burn bridges."

And I told her the story above
so that she knew I wasn't just being a bossy auntie.

The Humbling Phase of the Spiritual Path

The puffed up ego phase of spiritual awakening is real.
And talking about the map, the journey, of this pathway is helpful to my mentees, so they don't fall into the same traps I did.

And I think it's important, when you see a loved one in this phase, to have some patience, knowing they will be humbled if they stay on the path. It's a phase.

There’s a hidden tragic loss when you get rich. And it’s more painful and damaging than most folk realize.

You don’t know who to trust. You feel strangely “other.” You carry invisible burdens that folks who haven’t experienced big money will never truly understand.

Some of the issues are obvious. We all notice the loss of privacy, because we see the paparazzi thing happening, and the private family stuff that becomes public struggles. Ugh. And yes, that’s a pain too. You can’t drop your kids off at school without looking coiffed. You can’t have a grumpy day and snipe at a rude person in public (unless you live in Manhattan, where famous folk are compassionately left alone to just be normal people BTW).

But the privacy thing is just the visible edge of a much stranger disconnect, a loss of connection with the rest of the human web. Regular folks might look at you as if you’re “above” them, but also you end up understandably cautious of regular folks, most of whom have big projections about the broken economic system, and blast them onto you 24/7.

Oh yes. There’s an energetic cost to being seen, to going big, to shifting into the upper income brackets.

The Energetic Cost of Visibility and Leadership

I was working recently with one of my favorite big leader clients, talking about what happens when a person’s life expands from their years of striving, risking, and working, breaking through into a level of BIG money, reach, influence, and consequence.

From the outside, that looks like the dream: so many opportunities, fancy stuff, more people taking your calls, and that strange little thrill of realizing your decisions influence bigger levels of money, calendars, bodies, and futures.

And then all that projected energy lands on you like a ton of bricks.

Because when thousands (or more) people are looking to you, counting on you, projecting their hopes, dreams, and resentment into (even though they don’t know you personally), I’m here to tell you that your energy body FEELS it. Imagine all those onlookers, positive and negative, shining their spotlights into your personal space 24/7. And you can’t figure out why you feel bombarded by a heavy glare.

In all the conversations about leadership I’ve heard, I feel like the lone ranger because no one is seeing this, tracking this, and talking about this. Then I talk to my Apache teacher, Maria Yraceburu, and she totally gets it. That’s cause her family has been tracking not just the physical but also the energetic realities of things for many generations. They have the language for it. They have a system that describes the damage of it. And she’s leaning into me to try to describe it in a simple way that modern folks who didn’t grow up tracking the 7 layers of the energy body can understand.

So here goes.

What Happens When Attention Never Turns Off

If you’ve ever stood on a stage with hundreds of eyes on you, you know the strange pressure of being the focal point. Even admiration has weight when enough of it is aimed at you. And after you leave the stage, step out of the spotlight, you’re also going to feel the drop in energy. It can feel like a deep loss, even, or grief, to step out of that attention center. Ask any performer about the expected energy hangover after a performance.

But what happens if the spotlights never leave your body? What if they follow your every move, sleeping and waking? That’s what celebrities have to acclimate to. It’s intense. At first, their response is to puff up. Their energy body gets bigger with all that extra energy, and they will be tempted to think that they are different/better/special because of it. Understandable. They know not everyone receives and holds so much energy from so many folks.

Projection Load: The Hidden Weight of Influence

Let’s call this Projection Load.

The Projection Load is the accumulated energetic weight of other people’s attention, expectation, judgment, fantasy, and need landing in your field as your influence grows. And while it can be exciting and expansive, it can also be onerous, stifling, and exhausting.

And if you’re naturally sensitive? Intuitive? Empathic?

Oh boy. It can make you feel crazy-making.

Look, it’s enough if you are occasionally in the public light as an honored leader who is sensitive. You might feel inflated after a performance or talk, then weirdly hollow the next morning. You might crave being seen, then want to hide under a large blanket with your phone in another room. You might snap at the one person who still treats you like a human because everyone else is interacting with the role, the brand, or the myth.

But when you 100x your revenue, I guarantee you there is a whole other thing that happens. You are permanently blasted with the light of people’s attention, projections, and expectations. Even your old friends are now subtly pitching you for funding their creative projects. No one offers to pick up the check at lunch anymore. No one calls unless they need something. They figure you’ve outgrown them. They expect you to parent them. They see you as Other now. And it’s painful. Your vacation options are now limited to 5 Star fancy places, not just cause they’re beautiful, but because they are used to shielding rich people from the Projection Load for a week or so, offering pampering in a bubble with other wealthy folk hiding from the world.

All that projection can make it hard to discern, “Which is the real me, and which is the “me” they’ve decided to see?” That’s where people can lose their center.

Growing Your Capacity Alongside Your Success

This is why there’s something I think every growing leader should know.

Our culture acts like success should make you need less support, as if achievement proves emotional completion. Cute. Also, false.

Big lives require sophisticated support.

If you’re carrying a complex business, a public identity, family obligations, and spiritual sensitivity, there is more in your field to steward. That calls for more clarity and less pretending.

• Get the therapist.

• Keep the friend who is not impressed by your sparkle.

• Have advisors who can tell you the truth without trying to crawl into your wallet.

• Build a spiritual practice that brings you back to your body before the noise of the field starts wearing your face and using your calendar.

And please learn to steward your bubble.

Energetic Boundaries for Intuitive Leaders

Your “bubble” is what I call the personal energetic space around you. You already know it’s real because you feel it. If someone tries to sneak up behind you, you feel them when they cross the line, long before they touch you. That’s your bubble - your energetic personal space - your auric field.

When you become more aware of your bubble, you notice what belongs to you, what belongs to the crowd, and what needs to get out before it causes confusion, overwhelm, or damage.

Inside my programs, I begin every group session with an exercise that clears and powers-up the bubble. Before we open intuition or ask for guidance, we come home to our own space. Intuitive boundaries matter, especially when visibility blasts you into a new level of bubble-fullness.

Support Before Burnout

So if your platform is expanding or your name is starting to enter rooms before you do, don’t wait until the Projection Load knocks you sideways. Get support now. I’m one person you can lean into for this. There are certainly others.

We need grounded intuitive leaders who can hold bigger fields without becoming hungry ghosts in beautiful shoes.

Your field is getting bigger.

Time to learn how to hold it.

Creation energies are off the hook!

That's why I'm launching a new combined Substack here, with writings from all four areas you need to hear about - inspiring fun stories from the path of spiritual awakening, shares and tips to steward and leverage your woo at work and in life, and potent channeled guidance straight from the Big Mama for all of us who are part of the rise of feminine power in the world.

Why Creation Energy Feels So Strong Right Now

Now is the perfect time to use the extra solar energy (cause the days are long up here in the northern hemisphere) to create all you came here to share!

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How do you make deep channeled, powerful, potent information from the Mother of the universe accessible on social media?

I mean.

There’s a question.

Because this work has been coming through me for 25 years. Literally coming through me. The work I have called Yoni Speak, Channeling Ma, Yoni Ma. Potent. Other-worldly, yet grounded deep in the body. Deep in the Earth. Not exactly something you casually toss into a caption between a Canva graphic and somebody’s lunch photo.

And yet, here we are.

Why Channeling Alone No Longer Works

Because the guidance was clear.

It’s time to come into conversation with Ma about what’s happening in the world, and it’s not just about me.

It’s time to let Her converse, connect, and collaborate with the leaders of feminine wisdom.

These are challenging times, and frankly we need our Mommy!

So I asked Ma how to bring her through now. I didn’t want to freak people out. I didn’t want to be seen as a guru. I didn’t want to fit her in a social media box. So then, I asked, “MA! How do I share you now?”

What came through was not exactly a marketing plan, though it does have practical consequences. More like a correction. A re-orientation. A spiritual “Duh - it’s bigger than you alone.”

Channeling has so often been pictured as one person, one voice, one great cosmic something speaking through one special human while everyone else sits there receiving.

Fun as a game, perhaps.

Fascinating, sure.

Also a little too easy to turn into guru BS or spiritually bypassing woo-theatre.

Ma’s message was clear: wisdom moves in relationship, in conversation.

Wisdom Moves Through Relationship, Not Authority

Truth gets more alive when it is met, questioned, translated, challenged, warmed by story, softened by humor, and brought into the actual lives of actual people.

If you are a woman leading with feminine wisdom, or trying to, you already know the difference between a teaching that sounds “impressive” and a truth spoken that shifts the room.

The Difference Between Impressive Teaching and Embodied Truth

You feel the difference in your body.

One leaves you dazzled, enchanted, maybe even intimidated, a “wow” and then you go back to your business, your leadership, your impossible Tuesday, feeling strangely smaller and alone.

The other one lands in your belly and nether regions with a Oh Yes. Helps you feel your OWN Knowing. Helps you speak your own Truth. Helps you make the next right call without pretending the human mess has somehow been spiritually transcended.

FemWisdom is the best term I have right now. It points to the healed feminine force that is rising in the world, even amongst all the mess.

Nurturing, fierce, collaborative, connected.

The Mother force.

The voice that has been shut in the closet for a few thousand years and is now, inconveniently for certain old structures, booming back to life with longing and power and the revelation of the ugly secrets.

Good.

Let Her out.

But let’s not dress her up as another guru, or pretend she has only one leader channeling Her.

These are potent wacky birth-pain-filled times. The old systems are crumbling. Your clients can feel it. Your teams can feel it. People can feel the old hierarchies cracking, even when they do not have words for it yet.

And when people feel that wobble in the systems they rely on, they get crabby and grabby. They want certainty. They want someone to tell them where to stand. They want a truth to hold onto while they feel themselves falling from the old way into whatever is underneath.

What Leaders Are Feeling Right Now (Even If They Can’t Name It)

Dude. They want their Mommy.

But MA is not the “everything is fine” coddling helicopter mom. She’s the “these are the times you came for” wise grandma who’s compassion is as strong as her sword of truth.

Fortunately, some of us are longing for Her level of integrity, of truth-telling, of big-vision clarity that can only come from the soul’s view.

There’s a big difference between the old longing for spiritual answers that make us comfortable, safe, and maybe a little superior (cough cough *religion* cough cough).... And the type of longing for truth that dives deeper into the mysteries that lie underneath everything.

It’s time for spiritual authority to grow up.

The Evolution of Spiritual Leadership

We’ve had enough of the fear-based enchanters of lies dressed in pontificating spiritual justifications or bypass.

It’s time for more spiritual forms, conversations, and containers that welcome deeper conversation and exploration, that are devoted to empowerment and not just evangelization, fundraising and enrollment.

With Ma, I was looking for a good container that lets the scared people opt out.

It lets the ones who feel the knowing deep in their bellies come closer.

It lets the transmission move through story, humor, real questions, and actual relationship without turning the whole thing into a pedestal.

So that’s what we are creating next. And it’s particularly for leaders who are devoted to the rise of feminine power to balance the masculine.

An Invitation to Women Leading with Feminine Wisdom

So… If you are leading anything right now — a business, a circle, a body of work, a family system, a creative movement — and you feel deep in your bones that you are carrying a calling to bring more nurturing, more nature, more deep dark fertile soil, more blood and bone, more mystery and creativity… you are particularly invited to enjoy, at no cost, what’s being created here.

FemWisdom with Ma will be a conversation because wisdom moves in relationship.

Podcast. Substack. You’ve got Her, connecting with real deal leaders.

Because the Mother is not returning as one voice on a throne.

She is returning through the web of wombs.

Through the brave question.

Through the woman who can feel something true in her belly and is finally willing to lead from there.

I’m a professional shapeshifter. And I think I”m not the only one. I did a lot of shapeshifting when I walked the halls of corporate.

I’d suit up when I entered a room of “important people.” Like, I’d finally do my toenails. And I’d wear a tailored jacket, good shoes, maybe even a nice bag.

My body would shapeshift too. Better posture. Firmer handshake. More careful words. No silliness. No visible weirdness (was that even possible?).

Look. I was raised among wealthy important people. My dad was a judge. I was valedictorian. I went to Stanford. I knew how to get the A, win the room, look respectable, and keep anything too wacky tucked way inside where it could not embarrass me, my dad, my family.

And for a while, that looked like leadership to me. At least, what I thought leadership was before I understood intuitive leadership.”

The Cost of Performing Leadership

But OUCH that little formula hurts after a while. You’ve probably felt it too if you’ve spent years succeeding in the old boys’ world.

It can make you look rather impressive, yes. It can even make you formidable. But it does not make people relax around you. It doesn’t make them feel met. And it sure as hell does not make a room come alive.

Sometimes it does the opposite.

You get more controlled. More proper. More visibly competent. And the actual current between you and other people gets flatter and flatter. Boring. Or competitive.

A show-off contest that leaves everyone feeling like a loser while pretending to be a winner. Yuck.

I was trying to be respected. Trying to outrun the fact that as a woman, and a pretty one at that. I thought I needed to be doubly respectable to count. But it left me feeling de-feminized at a deeper level.

Did you play that game too?

• Maybe you learned to do all that so well that now people trust your resume more than they trust your presence.

• Maybe you’ve also felt that flat boring empty version of “corporate” or wealth-signaling culture.

• Maybe you also felt starved for authenticity, and the freedom to make big giant fart noises just to break the awkward silencing of the creative spirit.

That’s where improv changed my life.

What Improv Teaches About Real Leadership

I didn’t take that Improv class at Stanford in 1991 because I was looking for an easy A. I took improv because it terrified me, which is often a decent clue I need to do something.

And at Stanford, it was not just “tell a poop joke and laugh” kind of comedy for drunk folks.

Nope.

It was “stop your thinking brain and free your creative flow to create a story” kind of theatre that freezes people in fear of looking foolish or revealing something far too vulnerable.

The “Yes And” Principle in Business and Teams

See, good improv training goes straight for the overachiever’s throat. The first lesson is to say “yes” to all offers. Even if you think you had a better idea.

Even if it puts you in a vulnerable position. Even if your whole dang life, you’ve been trained to say “no thank you” to stay safe and “yes maybe but” to look smarter.

Just yes. Receive what is here. Add to it. Move the story forward in collaboration. It’s about the story. It’s not about you. Sacrifice looking good/cool/pretty/smart for the story. Make other people look good for the story.

Generous, mind-bending, and TERRIFYING all at once. That’s improv.

See, if you compete with the people you’re in a scene with, the story stops. Now you’re in a pissing match with another player instead of serving the story you create together. You stop the narrative to look good? Then nobody is building anything. Instead the players are defending, correcting, grabbing, trying to win…like in real life… and that’s BORING. Ok. Now is the moment you’re supposed to realize this is a big key lesson for real life.

You’ve seen this happen in meetings. In partnerships. In sales conversations. In teams that say they want innovation - but can’t sit with the discomfort that comes right before something fresh arrives. Maybe you can imagine what would happen instead if everyone found ways of agreeing with others, of truly listening and adding to what’s in the room, of living by the improv rule of saying “yes and…” to just about everything.

Reclaiming the Fool Archetype

Improv forced me to reclaim the part of myself I’d left in the basement for years: the Fool.

I’d locked my Fool self in the closet in order to seem respectable, a winner. I told myself that the Fool is an idiot. A child. A mess. She reveals our silly wacky little-kid creative that will be rejected in the real world. Better to put her away, I thought.

But I was wrong.

The Fool is one of the most powerful aspects of self.

The playful one.

The risky one.

The one who does not need to look perfect every second.

The part of you who can laugh, respond, be surprised, recover, and stay real while the scene is unfolding.

The part of you who’s alive enough to actually be with other people instead of performing credibility at them.

Why Intuitive Leadership Gets Suppressed

So many highly educated professionals have lost contact with their Fool. It’s depressing for them, and boring and disconnected for us all.

What Happens When You Lead Without Your Fool

But here’s the wild thing: when your Fool is not welcome, your leadership intuitive suffers.

• You may get more polished, but people don’t trust you more.

• You may sound more mature. You don’t actually become more persuasive.

• You may “win” the interaction, but you’ll lose the room.

I saw this so clearly later when I was teaching improv to trial lawyers. The lawyers who clung hardest to being structured and proper and perfectly professional were often the least believable to a jury. Wooden. Controlled. Boring, honestly. You could feel them trying to be right instead of trying to connect.

And juries know. Clients know. Teams know. You look like a performative robot, not a trustworthy relatable embodied authority.

How to Reconnect With Your Intuitive Leadership

What if you bring the Fool to work? Not like being a total bozo. I mean the deeper, weirder, more intuitive parts of yourself - what if you bring them with you in work, leadership, money, decisions, all of it.

So if you’ve spent years building the respectable version of you, and it’s worked, mostly, but now it feels a little expensive in your body, in your work, in your relationships, here’s your homework:

Notice how often your first move is ‘no.’

Notice where your own Fool is waiting, just offstage, ready to help you become more real and more effective at the exact same time.

Because that part of you is not a liability. She may be the part people trust most. She’s probably the one they’ll listen to. And she’s definitely more fun than your credibility performance - for you, and for them.

And if you’re in that tender in-between where your gifts are getting louder, but you still want to stay grounded, smart, and real in the world, come join us in the free Explore Your Gifts community:

https://channelyourgenius.com/join-the-explore-your-gifts-community

Why Intuitive Women Struggle with Sales

You think you hate sales. But actually, because you’re a kind, compassionate person, you hate the tension, the pressure, the hot feeling of conflict rising when you’re asking for the money. You don’t like what sales FEELS like in your sensitive empathic body.

Dude. That’s normal. It’s ok. And it’s actually your Sales Superpower. Let me explain…

The Problem with Old-School Sales Tactics

When you’re an intuitive, kind, highly perceptive person, old-school sales can feel brutal, pushy, and fake. Old school sales coaches teach you to identify the “target” market, “press the pain buttons,” and “close the deal.”

Barf.

No thank you.

Those old salesmen are all out of a job, these days - or they’re about to be fired. That’s because people have become hip to their tricks, and allergic to their pushiness.

What Clients Actually Need to Make a Decision

What do people need to make an investment decision now? They need something you do naturally - pace holding, a form of emotional intelligence in sales. They need the safe informed space to walk through their fear borne of old failures and betrayals, in order to make a clear balanced well-informed decision to hire you.

It’s natural to have emotions rise when you’re making a big decision, right? And that’s especially true if you’re deciding to invest in something that will challenge you, expand you, and lead to a transformation or healing of some kind (like your services). Well hey - if you’re an intuitively gifted mentor, guide, expert person, you already have a gift for holding space for people working through just that sort of thing! Woo hoo!

Why Sales Feels So Uncomfortable in Your Body

So then why aren’t sales conversations already your favorite thing? Well, you’ve likely got sales trauma of your own.

• That car salesman who lied to you, pressured you, made you wait.

• That charming saleslady who sold you that POS garment you wish you’d never bought.

• That biz program that promised the world, and delivered stale advice in a windowless hotel ballroom with stinky carpet.

Sales have done you wrong in the past. And you shudder at being like THOSE people.

What Happens When the Conversation Gets “Hot”

That’s why your pits get sticky when the sales convo gets hot. You might find yourself:

• feeling paralyzed

• rambling with over-explanation

• sputtering out extra discounts

• escaping under cover of “just think about it and let me know”

Funny thing is… if they were already working with you, you’d hold them through any heat - the heat of a tough decision, the heat of their anger in their relationship, the heat of their grief after a major loss. You don’t flinch at heat - unless it’s in a sales conversation, Am I Right?

The Skill You Already Have (But Aren’t Using in Sales)

So now I want to talk to that part of you- the spaceholding expert mentor guide expert one.

And it’s our job to hold space for ALL of it.

Emotional Intelligence in Sales: Working with Anger, Grief, and Fear

When I teach my mentees how to sell, we talk about holding space for every emotion. We talk about how each emotion has an elemental intelligence that needs to be heard, honored, and integrated even in a sales conversation.

Want to know a bit about this advanced “emotional alchemy” of sales? OK you got it.

Anger is basically a boundary alarm.

We get angry when we feel a boundary has been (or may be) crossed unfairly. When someone gets sharp or defensive in a sales conversation (or any conversation), that doesn’t mean something has gone wrong. It often means they are touching a place where a boundary has been (or could be) breached. This is beautiful awareness. They are protecting fairness, autonomy, dignity. Good. They need to make sure you’ll honor their boundaries. You will. So don’t be chased off by their fire. Dance with it. Meet them there. Clarify and honor the boundaries you’ll hold.

Grief has the intelligence of letting go, the blessed cleansing release.

Sometimes the person in front of you isn’t just thinking about the benefits they’ll get working with you. They ‘re feeling the ache of what hasn’t worked before.

• The money they already spent.

• The version of themselves they keep trying to outgrow, and the part they hate to lose.

• That grief is a blessing.

It’s a sign they are recognizing what has come before needs to change now. They are releasing the past to step into the future.

Don’t leave them there alone. Be with them as they acknowledge what’s got to go.

Fear is like an alarm bell, directing us to pay attention to something dangerous.

It amps us up, preparing us to defend against danger.

Fear is like an amped up version of excitement, focusing our attention on what is new, and increasing our vigilance to make sure it’s safe.

Well, you are offering something new to this new client.

• New level.

• New visibility.

• New support.

Of course fear shows up. It’s not a bad thing. It’s your job to educate this person about all aspects of your offering, to show them all details and help them understand what they are saying yes to. That can relax their fear into an enthusiastic brave yes.

Ok. They never taught you this stuff in sales school? Yah. I’m not surprised. ;)

A New Model of Intuitive Sales

Old-school sales training teaches people to exploit these exact emotional states. Push the fear. Rush the decision. Get the signature. And sure, that works — in the most depressing possible sense of the word. But you make the sale while silently damaging trust. You get the yes while teaching the client to override their own knowing. You “win” while leaving a weird taste in the room that both of you feel later.

It lands in client regret, a bad reputation, a dearth of referrals and plenty of chargebacks and refunds. Plus, it’s yucky. And as people get more and more savvy, intuitive, and tuned-in, this old manipulative sales crap doesn’t work like it used to. (yay!)

You can be a sales master by being the master mentor you already are.

You can LOVE sales calls as the sacred generous and productive moments where you share your deep gift with a person before they even become a client.

Sales can be a win-win connection.

Sales calls can create easeful abundance.

Sales is just you, doing what your soul came here to do, with integrity.

There’s an army of intuitively awakening feminine-powered leaders, waking up inside of their corporate prison, setting themselves free.

Some of them are digging little tunnels through the corporate foundation with spoons, infiltrating their companies with calls to emotional intelligence, resilience, and equity. Some of them go deep undercover, and end up running the joint. Some of them are quietly cooking in their dissatisfaction until they eventually explode and escape, reborn as an ungrounded woo woo practitioner.

However, they respond, I can tell you there are a lot of overly educated well seasoned professional women popping open intuitively right now.

I’m one of the people they come to when it happens, because I know how to help them create a lucrative new career, even with their woo out of the closet.

They come to me because I know the territory on both ends, and I can help them map the path from one world to the next, without sacrificing, respect, relationships, or revenue.

What Spiritual Awakening at Work Actually Feels Like

Secretly, with tears in their eyes on Zoom, whispering behind a closed door in their office they tell me…

• I can’t wear this armor any longer.

• It’s not just about playing with Tarot cards anymore. I need to get to work.

• They’re showing me visions like I’m supposed to be in front of a big audience, but I have no idea how to get there.

• I’m ready to give up my professional licensed career to do my sacred work, but I have a family to support.

• I’ve put too much into my reputation to suddenly turn into a weirdo.

The Split Between Professional Identity and Intuition

I’ve had this conversation one thousand times.

• She feels like she has to hide, like she’s living two lives.

• She’s exhausted, irritated and thwarted by the levels of superficiality that used to just seem normal.

• She’s done repressing her rage about the old boys game.

• She’s not willing to pretend anymore that she doesn’t know what she’s so deeply knows.

And underneath it all…

She’s terrified of dying before she ever gives the gift her soul came here to give.

The Pattern That Keeps Playing Out

Her common mistake… To let this tension build until she has a true breakdown or blow up at work. She struts away from the office with one finger in the air, and goes completely woo for a while. She listens only to her guides now, eschewing all strategic support, studies modalities like Reiki, and calls herself a transformational life coach, expecting her spiritual guidance to magically make her successful.

Of course this does not work.

Spirit guides suck at marketing.

Everyone can feel that she’s denying half of herself.

She feels ridiculous, embarrassed, ashamed.

Then she quits, feeling betrayed by God.

But the deep calling in her heart doesn’t go away. And eventually, she looks for help from someone who has bridged her two worlds.

The Real Work: Integrating Intuition and Strategy

That’s usually when I get to talk to her. And it’s tricky, because her trust has often already been damaged. So I get to prove myself.

It is her professionalism, her experience as a leader, her strategic mind that can help her leverage this new spiritual infusion into her clearly-stated valuable expertise.

The Future of Leadership Is Integrated

She needs a new vision where she’s not leaving one half of herself for the other. And this world needs a new culture where the leaders are integrated with intellect and intuition.

It always works out, like putting two puzzle pieces together. We are always able to find a way to leverage her unique intuitive gifts into the specialty that she has been training for incorporate for her entire career. It’s what I think we are meant to do.

These women, I believe, are the leaders we need now. So I’m excited about this movement of intuitive awakening among the experienced women leaders. They embody and transmit the balance that I believe can literally save the world.

Hey there, Smartipants. You’re likely as creative, intuitive, inspired (and secretly or overtly mystical) as you are overly educated, brilliant, and capable. Am I Right?

Don’t worry. Here, you can be both sides of yourself.

• Intellect and Intuition.

• Prosperity and soul-satisfaction.

• Masculine Work and Feminine Woo.

Here, we gather to talk about the ways we can have the best of both worlds. Balanced.

We tend to be Renaissance people who do a lot of things at once, while we are also cavorting with the divine/intuitive/creative spark that moves through us in our best moments.

The Four Types of Content You’ll Find Here

We like to have it ALL. So I’m giving you FOUR streams of content here, to meet all your intuitive/intellect balancing needs… From intuitive development tips to embarrassing relatable stories to compassionate marketing biz stuff to deep feminine channeled wisdom… you get everything I’ve got. I hope you like it! (and yes, you can choose which of these you get emails for).

Here’s the run-down of the four types of content I’ll share each month with you.

Genius Activation: Developing Your Intuition and Leadership

We’ll explore how your gifts actually work, and grow your abilities along with your leadership. We are all intuitive, but we are not all intuitive in the same way. Here, you’ll find inspiration and guidance to grow your gifts, activate your intuitive genius, and leverage your woo to land well in your world.

Intuitive Business Leadership: for Spiritually Sensitive Professionals

This is where intuitively gifted business folk bring their woo to work, without sacrificing relationships, respect, or revenue. How do you price, lead, sell, decide, and communicate when your intuition is one of your strongest assets? I’ve mentored intuitive leaders for 15+ years, from Silicon Valley founders to mid-life professionals who suddenly realized they couldn’t keep ignoring the deeper calling. Most business advice was not built for people with this much empathy and spiritual sensitivity running through their systems. So we’ll talk about what actually works.

Bridging the Worlds: Spiritual Awakening and Everyday Life

I’ll tell the stories from a life filled with “I can’t believe this woo stuff works!” and “Is this seriously my life now?” and the “Holy Crap” and “Whoops” moments too. The strange awakenings, the sacred ahas, and the parts where being intuitive just plain feels awkward in a world where we don’t yet have the words to make sense of it all.

FemWisdom with Ma: Feminine Wisdom for Modern Leaders

I share my deepest transmissions from embodying the big Mama energy that flows through me in my best moments. Ma is the feminine wisdom voice that has been coming through me for decades, both as a quiet whisper in my own work, and as a voice on stages as a medium. Now this work is moving into its next form: intimate podcast conversations with feminine wisdom leaders, Substack articles full of Ma-inspired ahas, and direct guidance for leaders who are devoted to bringing more truth, creativity, embodied power, and grounded feminine wisdom into a world that very clearly needs Her.

What You’ll Receive as a Subscriber

If you subscribe here, you’ll receive monthly energy forecasts, plus new writing each month across these four streams. You’ll also hear about ways to come into my circles — the community, the conversations, and the mentorship spaces where the real integration happens.

Subscribers receive:

• Monthly energy forecasts

• New writing across four content streams

• Feminine wisdom teachings

• Intuitive leadership insights

• Stories of spiritual awakening and integration

• Invitations into mentorship and community spaces

You’ve probably subscribed to content on one side (strategy, news, real world real stuff) or the other (astrology, NDEs, spiritual stuff, channeling)...

Well, if you’re the kind of person who likes to explore what’s connecting the two sides, you’re in the right place.

I’m glad you’re here, and I look forward to sharing my best with you.

Subscribe if you’re looking for a grounded place to explore intuition, feminine wisdom, leadership, business, and spiritual growth without abandoning your intelligence or your real life.

Ante Up! You know, when things get challenging, it’s not time to quit. It’s time to Ante Up to stay in the game! And we might as well enjoy the ride, says the Fool Archetype who guides us this month. The Fool holds the spark of serendipity, not the anchor of planning. The Fool keeps us playing, gaming, laughing and dancing.

Rebel against the dying sick systems by keeping your sense of humor intact! Keep your focus on your unbridled creativity, intuition, and spiritual power. That, my friends, is a key to thriving through these big times of change.

Not spiritual bypass. Not ignoring the tragic. Yes, we stay connected to the struggles. BUT we don’t allow our spirits to be extinguished by them. Rather, we set our spirits on fire with devotion, with creative passion, with the rebellious act of enjoying the ride.

In alignment with this spirit of Ante Up (instead of dying back), you are about to see this Substack channel blossom and grow, serving up four different publications that serve the awakening professional and leader in you.

Stay tuned. The four-petaled blossom of this work on substack will be birthed next month. Meanwhile, listen in to the rumblings of creation.

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The transmission in this video speaks to the tension between the power someone can access when their channel opens wide and the habit of shrinking that power when other people are present.

Ma addresses the deeper pattern underneath this dynamic. She speaks to those who already know what it feels like when their voice opens fully. Those who have tasted that range through music, teaching, speaking, or spiritual work. People who know their channel can go wider than it currently does.

This transmission explores the strange human habit of partially silencing ourselves while believing someone else holds the microphone.

Watch the transmission below.

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For analytical leaders, strategists, and highly educated thinkers, the mind rarely stops calculating. Traditional advice about stillness and quieting thought can create friction instead of access. The thinking continues and the person concludes they are doing it wrong.

This Channeling Ma transmission addresses that tension directly.

Ma speaks about a different orientation to awareness. The mind continues doing what it does well. Meanwhile the body becomes louder. The body processes information, weighs signals, and responds through sensation and vitality. When that layer rises, the internal experience changes. The channel opens through the whole system rather than through mental quiet.

The message also speaks to people who have always operated at a high level of capability. Strong intellect, ambition, and even a large ego can become useful instruments when a larger current begins moving through someone. Those traits allow a person to carry large ideas, complex information, and guidance that others might hesitate to hold.

At the same time the process exposes what is hidden underneath. Old material surfaces. Confidence and humility move in waves. Leadership develops through that rhythm.

This video offers Ma’s perspective on embodied awareness, elderhood, and why certain kinds of minds become powerful channels when the body joins the conversation.

Watch the transmission below.

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