Michelle Maldonado on Mindful Leadership in a Divided World

In this episode of the Mindfulness Exercises Podcast, Sean Fargo speaks with Michelle Maldonado—founder of Lucenscia, leadership coach, Virginia state legislator, and author of The Conscious Mind.

Michelle’s path from the corporate world to public service was shaped by a deep desire to bring compassion, clarity, and trauma-awareness into systems that often overlook them. Learning breath awareness as a child to help manage fear and anxiety, she would bring those same tools to her son, helping him navigate stress and emotional overwhelm with presence and compassion and into a political system often driven by reactivity and disconnection.What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

✔ How Michelle first learned mindfulness as a child—and how it shaped her early emotional awareness

✔ Practical ways she’s taught mindfulness to her son (and how to help children regulate stress with breath)

✔ Why she entered politics—and how mindfulness helps her stay grounded while legislating

✔ How to spot signs of reactivity in your own body and choose how to respond

✔ Why trauma-informed mindfulness is essential for leadership, parenting, and teaching

✔ The difference between bypassing discomfort vs. holding it with care

✔ How to create psychologically safe spaces at home, at work, and in communities

✔ What it looks like to lead from wholeness in real-world, high-stress environments

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Email: Sean@MindfulnessExercises.com

Mindfulness Exercises with Sean Fargo is a practical, grounded mindfulness podcast for people who want meditation to actually help in real life.

Hosted by Sean Fargo — a former Buddhist monk, mindfulness teacher, and founder of MindfulnessExercises.com — this podcast explores how mindfulness can support mental health, emotional regulation, trauma sensitivity, chronic pain, leadership, creativity, and meaningful work.

Each episode offers a mix of:

• Practical mindfulness and meditation teachings
• Conversations with respected meditation teachers, clinicians, authors, and researchers
• Real-world insights for therapists, coaches, yoga teachers, educators, and caregivers
• Gentle reflections for anyone navigating stress, anxiety, burnout, grief, or change

If you’re interested in:

• Mindfulness meditation for everyday life
• Trauma-sensitive and compassion-based practices
• Teaching mindfulness in an authentic, non-performative way
• Deepening your own practice while supporting others

…you’re in the right place.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi everyone, I'm Sean Fargo with Mindfulness Exercises. Welcome to our podcast. Today I have the honor of reconnecting with an old friend named Michelle Maldonado. She's the founder and CEO of Lucencia at lucencia.com. We'll put the link in the show description. I met Michelle, what, a dozen years ago or so? Around 2012, 2013, give or take. We were part of a cohort for the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute teacher training, which is the mindfulness program born at Google. And we were learning how to teach mindfulness and emotional intelligence for organizations together. And I remember Michelle as being one of the more say warm, welcoming, but also like grounded and intelligent people of our cohort where there was just a nice authentic connection that she had with others. And I remember having the luck of sitting next to Michelle on one of the days and we did a dyad together. Michelle, did we do eye gazing? We did. Okay. Yeah, I just remember like looking at you a lot. So we did eye gazing and I remember just a just a palpable presence that she had that was very like I said, just had this combination of warmth, but also insight and intelligence. And I didn't really know that much about her then, but over the years I've gotten to know her more. And she's become a friend of mindfulness exercises in different capacities. And she has like a very strong sense of like capability, leadership, vision, and heart. And it's just a wonderful combination. And so I'm kind of using this podcast episode as an excuse to catch up with my friend and hear all the wonderful things that she's doing in the world, which includes being elected in the Virginia House of Delegates for the last three years and serving people in that area. She's also a mother of a young man who's going off to Japan to go learn some things as part of a school. But Michelle is dedicated to her family. She's an internationally certified mindfulness and emotional intelligence teacher with Search Inside Yourself. Also the Mindfulness Teachers Association, Genos International, Golman EI. She teaches at 1440 Multiversity Retreat Center, which I highly recommend here in California. And she uh co-teaches with Bill George, former CEO of Medtronic, as part of his True North leadership program. Michelle has been uh named among the 12 powerful women in the mindfulness movement by Mindful Magazine. She works with leaders of all stripes, and she has a dedicated mindfulness meditation practice. And uh she's worked with organizations throughout the world in focusing on personal and professional leadership development at the pivotal intersection of mindfulness, unconscious bias, emotional intelligence, authenticity, and compassion nestled on a solid foundation of neuroscience and research and taught through an equity lens to help leaders do their inner work to create positive and sustainable outer impact. And so, Michelle, it's a pleasure to reconnect with you. Welcome to our podcast.

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Thank you so much. And I just really I really treasure our opportunity to be back here together because it has been a decade or so since we first met. And I too was thinking about that eye gazing exercise. And I remember thinking that you had a deep well and that you had this amazing presence. And I knew I knew back then that you were somebody special. And so I'm so glad that we've been able to stay connected and to reconnect today.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Thank you, Michelle. Yeah, it's a real treat. I'd love to learn about how you got started in mindfulness and emotional intelligence. When was that for you? And how did that go when you were first introduced to it?

SPEAKER_01 4:43

So I have told this story a few times, and I love it because sometimes people think practicing mindfulness meditation or showing up in any of the ways that we teach in mindfulness may not be accessible to them because they may not connect with different traditions or lineages or understand what secular mindfulness is. And so my story helps people see that there are many paths to this. And my path was learning after, I think it was second grade, it was either after first or second grade. I spent a summer with my grandmother's sister. And I was raised in a traditional Roman Catholic family in New England. But my grandmother's sister was Buddhist. And I spent a summer along with my older sister with her in Casper, Wyoming. And she introduced us to the Lakota Sioux communities, the uh Cherokee communities and rodeos, right? It was all she was the favorite aunt. She still is to this day. We just celebrated, I think, her 96th birthday. But in any event, she didn't say, Do you want to meditate? Do you want to? She just said, Hey, do you want to come sit quietly with me? And as a seven-year-old, I was like, absolutely not. I want to go to this, I want to go swimming, I want to go ride my bike. And I remember thinking these things in my mind. And I caught myself, I was like, but wait, she's the favorite aunt. Maybe there's something, I don't know what she means by sitting quietly. Let me go see. So I would remember sort of getting up into this big chair she had and sitting with my legs crossed in the chair. And she she stood behind me and she placed her hands on my head and said, Quiet here. And then she moved her hands down to the top of my chest, my heart space, and said, So you can be here. And that's all she said. Well, she also said, and when you're ready, just get up, even if I'm not done. And what I can tell you is I'm sure, as I say all the time, if you had asked me at that age, how long did you sit for, I would have been like, it was for hours. But I'm sure it was two minutes, three minutes, whatever was age appropriate. And then I would quietly go outside and I would play. I distinctly remembering though that as I grew that practice, not knowing that it was meditation, but as I grew it, I remember distinctly going outside and feeling like the green in the trees was brighter. The sounds were crisper and louder, the sun was brighter and warmer, not hot, but a warmth that was, and I remember just feeling this over time. And then you probably get a kick out of this. It wasn't until I was 18 that I discovered that that was meditation. And the way I found that out was in college, I would volunteer, I would exchange hours for free classes at this studio. And one day they had changed the schedule and they put meditation on the schedule. But I didn't know the schedule had changed. And I looked in the room and I saw people sitting down, you know, with their eyes closed. And this happened around the time of the tragedy in Waco. And I was like, what is that? We were reeling as a country. And I was like, are we, you know, is this like Waco? What is this? And like my friend popped her head over my shoulder and said, Hey, they're meditating like you did. So all my friends knew that I meditated, but I didn't know that that's what I was doing. So at that point, that's when I realized and I started learning about different lineages, about secular mindfulness, about you know, all the ways, the different types of meditation. But it's been lifelong and it and it has been really beautiful. And I don't know how I would live without it.

SPEAKER_00 8:21

Wow, yeah, me neither. So was your grandmother? You said your grandmother's sister was Buddhist. Was she also from the Lakota Su tradition?

SPEAKER_01 8:32

She wasn't. She was just somebody who traveled the world. She didn't lay roots until later in life. And she was always the one that would come back. I remember she would come back from Egypt having traveled, or she would come back from another country, or being with different cultural communities. That's just part of the jobs she had. And she would always come back and share. So we would always be sitting at her feet or, you know, just like tell us more. We'd be, you know, soaking it up because it was so different from the day-to-day world that we lived in. And her philosophy, her way of viewing things was that we needed to not just have a world vision, but a human vision. And then larger than that, like a vision for holding the world and everything in it. And which is one of the reasons she said she never gave me the language, because she said at that age, she wanted me to find my own language for it. I could make it my own.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Yeah. Yeah. That phrase, just sitting quietly together, feels just very human, very inclusive, doesn't feel you know tradition bound or anything like that. It's so it's very welcoming, especially as a kid, you know, just sitting quietly together. Feel so welcoming. And remind me, did she say what were the words she used? Like quiet? So you can be here. So we can be in our hearts and in our bodies.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Yeah. She never explained what it meant, but it felt like I understood it, you know. I just, and so there's always been a an attention that was placed on how I was feeling in the body without with that kind of guidance. And I think that's what primed me to be open and receptive to learning about emotional intelligence because it was so connected to it.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Yeah, emotions live in the body. Did she kind of invite you to sit with her outside or inside? Or was there sort of a routine that she had that you can remember?

SPEAKER_01 10:34

It was always inside and it was always in the same place, the same room at her house. When I left there though, because I grew up on Cape Cod within walking distance, bike riding distance of the beach, I began meditating on the jetties. And for those who aren't used to growing up on the water, the jetties are those big rock strips that jet out into the water from the beach. And I would go out to the furthest rock and I would sit there and I would meditate. And there were times where you just, you know, it was just so profound. You felt like you were one with the ocean, which is so vast to feel like you are so small and part of something so vast, but also not small. And you could also feel the movement of the ocean as you sat there. It was just, it was, it is the one thing that I have never gotten used to now that I don't live at the water's edge. I've never recovered from not being that was how I that is how I continue to refuel and replenish and reset. It is just in my blood and in my bones.

SPEAKER_00 11:37

To sit next to the water like that.

SPEAKER_01 11:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:41

Yeah. In those early days of sitting quietly, what you later discovered was a meditation practice. Do you remember like really connecting with your emotions? Or was it more of like a calming practice? Or, you know, I know you said that the colors of the trees felt more vivid and it felt nurturing, but I'm curious, especially sitting on the water, like if maybe difficult emotions arose, or like how you navigated whatever came up for you.

SPEAKER_01 12:14

Yeah, that's such a great question. So as I got older, absolutely. In fact, I remember, I mean, I would often in my teenage years go to the beach because I was having strong emotions. I had a difficult childhood. There was abuse in our home, there was alcoholism in our family. There was a whole lot of things that made living in my family difficult. And even though we were a close-knit family and we loved each other, there was just a lot of difficulty. And I remember that there was a difference between the way I was showing up in my family that was different from our traditional sort of, I think, sort of toxic behavioral patterns. Because I remember one time I was in sixth grade and I was really angry, and my grandmother was really angry, and she was yelling at me. And I took a breath and I paused and I said, Nana, I think we're both really angry right now. And maybe we should just take a minute and come back to this conversation. Like I was 11. And I, and because that's how my aunt had taught me, so I it hadn't occurred to me at all that an elder would see that as disrespectful. I thought I was doing the right thing and it did not get met well. It was not met well, received well at all. So that was my first understanding that what I was doing and how I was feeling and how I was responding was different. And I started to try to work with those feelings. And then it really, I think once I got into college and I knew all these things were sort of at the surface because I kept allowing them to come to the surface. But you know, as my my dear good elder friend always tells me, is there's always more. But I remember sitting in my junior year saying, I need to, I might need to do something different or supplemental because what I don't want to happen is to continue the cycle with any children I might have. And I I really credit my practice for helping me. I I didn't know what to do, right? I didn't know how to address all these things, but I did know that I was aware that they were there and I had the desire to do something about it. And I was surrounding but surrounded by people my age who were really struggling and weren't aware like what was underneath, or that they might want to go and get help outside themselves. But I was very clear, I was very clear all along the way that that in this world and this life that we're not meant to do all these things by ourselves. The whole point is to be in community and to find those people and those experiences that help you be who you're meant to be, who you are. And then the gift back is that you're doing that this, you know, doing the very same thing for others.

SPEAKER_00 14:52

Beautiful. It's you know, I I love that you had an example in your childhood of someone who was practicing and who was a positive role model in this regard of being present. And then, you know, unfortunately, you know, through some of the toxic situations, you know, you had examples of ways of being that you, you know, didn't want to follow. And I'm so glad that you chose a path of you know, healing generational trauma and passing on some of these practices with your son and and then the world. And how did you first get involved in like wanting to teach this to others or you know, be a guide for others, either with mindfulness, meditation, emotional intelligence? I know you've studied so many things, but how did that transition go into actively pursuing training to help others with this?

SPEAKER_01 15:52

Well, I I would start with my son, who always saw me meditating. And when he was two, he started to show curiosity. And one day he I sort of opened my eyes when I was finishing and he said, Are you sitting quietly, mommy? And I said, Yes. Would you like to try it with me? But my son at that age, you know, trying to get a two-year-old to sit still or whatever, I had to make it like it was a competition because he's so competitive. I want to see who could sit quietly the fastest to 10. You know, it made no sense. For him, he's like, Yes. And he closed his eyes and he just, you know, I said the same things that my my great aunt said to me. And then 10 seconds was up and he was still doing. And then I whispered to him, you did it, right? And so what so we tried to introduce it in age appropriate ways. And what we saw was that over time, so when I was experiencing it as a child, I wasn't, it's just different to see it outside yourself with somebody else, right? Not just yourself. And so what I saw was how he was changing. And I remember then he got into sixth grade and he has some anxiety, some ADD, and some things. And it was hard because you know, kids that age have standardized testing in school, and that was never his favorite thing, I think, with as with most kids. But when we started to really dig in and do body scans every night, starting two weeks before his standardized test, it was the first time he scored advanced on all of his tests. And so that was like a couple of years where I said, you know, this is so powerful, and it has helped me. And it's so clear that when you provide the seeds and you water them, that so much is possible. So fast forward a couple of years later, I knew that it was time to grow every once in a while. I don't know if you have this feeling, Sean, sometimes where you're like, I feel like I'm being asked to grow, to stretch again, to learn some new things, to become more fuller. And so I was kind of trying to figure out what that was. And out of the blue, I I didn't, I had never heard about CERT Inside Yourself Leadership Institute. And out of the blue, I was keynoting at a conference, and somebody who worked for the organization came up to me and said, that is everything that we teach. I'd like to give you our book. Love for you to read it. And once you finish, I'd love to have a conversation with you. And then I was like, this is really interesting. And then a couple of weeks later, I saw that there was a program, a cohort opening up, which is where you and I met. And I applied. And I only did it because I wanted to deepen my own practice to help show up, help me how I show up as a leader in my organization, my then organization, and as a wife, as a mother, as a friend. I was not at all thinking that I would integrate it into any kind of professional work at all. And then December came, the last month of the cohort, and I was flying out, and I'm like, I this has been really transformational. I might want to teach this when I started, but I didn't enter it with that intention at all.

SPEAKER_00 19:00

Yeah, it's so funny. A lot of people enter, you know, teaching programs more to deepen their own, you know, practice than to teach. You know, the teaching kind of comes later or it's secondary sometimes. That's great. I love that you shared the sitting quietly together practice with your son and made it age appropriate or you know, you kind of made it malleable in a way that would be, you know, welcomed by him. You know, and that's kind of what a search inside yourself does for organizations. They just kind of, you know, change the languaging a little bit and add some structure that's going to be, you know, receptive by, you know, leaders, organizational leaders. But you know, so when we're wanting to share mindfulness with others, you know, it's just helpful to find the language and the ways that we think will resonate with others. We don't need to package it, you know, in the same package that we learned it in, however it was, you know, we can relate it to people in a way that's just very human, very practical, very relevant for whoever they are. I'm curious when the search inside yourself person came up to you during a keynote, were you giving a keynote on emotional intelligence or something else?

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Yes, it was on leadership, but it was really threading emotional intelligence, compassion, and mindfulness. And it was at a time where not a lot of people were talking about mindfulness in the HR space. I don't even know. It might have been shortly before. I mean, it was around the time, but maybe shortly before, you know, Time magazine had a cover for mindfulness, which I never really liked because I felt like it created an image that wasn't like a young, pretty, blonde girl. And it was sitting in meditation pose on a conference table. And, you know, there's so many ways to meditate as well. And I just don't think it was represented in a way that made it accessible and created a narrative that might not be as welcoming as it could otherwise be. But so I was doing all of that and testing it out, quite frankly, because I really would look and see what I had always referred to as the quiet suffering that I would see people and organizations experiencing. And they were making decisions with around product and service design, around strategy, around talent development, around strategic partnerships. And they were doing it from these places where you could see that they were not being responsive, but were being reactive and reactionary in how they were designing these things. And those reactions nestled on this bed of resentment, sometimes hurt, like unprocessed things that had happened in the workplace or maybe in that that were compounded by things that happened before they even got to the workplace. And so I always would look for what was underneath and saw that like everybody is going through something you know nothing about. And what would be different? How would these organizations be different? What would the impact of these organizations be across their communities, the country, the world, if the leaders making these decisions and the people executing the strategy came from a place of better awareness? I mean, nobody's perfect, and we're always, no matter how much work we do, we're always, there's always going to be something that that we'll notice. And it's not about perfection. It's just it's about embracing who you are and being aware of how who you are impacts your decisions and how your decisions and your actions impact others and what you want to do about that. If you don't want to do anything, and that, you know, I don't have any judgment about it, but I think the awareness so that you can you can exercise choice and agency matters.

SPEAKER_00 22:55

Yeah, it's a beautiful confluence of emotional intelligence and and mindful awareness. And then you also have this thread in your experience of true north leadership, and I don't know much about it, but when I think of true north, there's this like you know, North Star, this vision, this direction, maybe mission in life of what we want or where we're going, which also plays a big part, I think, with leadership and also just kind of providing an anecdote to that quiet suffering that you mentioned. Can you talk a little bit about how say vision or direction kind of combines with this emotional intelligence and mindfulness for organizational change or leadership change?

SPEAKER_01 23:49

Absolutely. So, what I love about the work of Bill George, he wrote authentic leadership, he wrote true north leadership, and it was based off of his experience in the corporate world. And he was the, as you noted in the introduction, he was the chairman and CEO of Medtronics. And what he learned was there was this, you know, need for people to have a North Star, right? To understand where they wanted to go and then have a roadmap for going there. But that roadmap couldn't be done in a silo because that roadmap was impacted by our personal crucibles, by our life story, weaving in what we felt our values are and our purpose. And so looking at all of those things and then also understanding that you've got to have self-awareness. And that was the piece where the intersection was when you look at how do you develop a true North leader? And it was the intersection of the mindfulness pieces, the self-awareness pieces, the emotional intelligence, the self-management, and the social awareness that intersected with how do you show up for your team? How do you show up for your organization? And how does what happened to you in other parts of your life impact the lens through which you view all of this, right? And I'll give you an example, and it's a personal example because I grew up in the household I did, I have this aversion to bullies, right? And so I may think, or somebody else may experience something and be like, oh, whatever that person, I may be like, that person's a bully, and I may have a much more intense reaction and I know exactly where it comes from, right? But if I'm not self-aware, I'm not able to choose my response. I'm just going to be reactive and my reaction might be outsized. It might have an outsized sort of proportion to what actually happened. And that's why it's important, you know, we think about as leaders, do you feel like, you know, everybody's out to get you? Because maybe that's how you've been raised to behave, is that you go get it first and take it. And so then as a result, you then fear that everybody's trying to get it from you. Right. And so if you don't understand these dynamics, it it just makes leadership maybe not as joyful and positively impactful as it otherwise. And so it's it's it's an invitation to unpack some of these things and choose differently.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

Yeah, absolutely. When you're sharing mindfulness with others, either in a one-on-one capacity or in a group team dynamic, what are some of your favorite practices or meditations that you've uh shared with others that uh maybe had say a bigger impact or something meaningful to you? Or you know, because there's a whole range of meditations and mindfulness practices and being aware of stories and and so I'm curious which ones did you find say most effective, or what were some of your favorite ones that you've shared?

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Well, I'm gonna answer that in two ways. The first is for me personally, I have always found the dedicated practice of setting aside time in stillness, but that stillness could be in nature. So I'm listening to birds as I'm doing it, or the rustling of the wind in the trees, or I'm sitting quietly in my room on a chair. Like those sustain me. And I have generally never or rarely enjoyed guided meditation. I have a hard time with people's voices.

SPEAKER_00 27:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:30

Stillness that I need, I crave. I'm a I don't like a whole lot of labels, but if I were to give a label to myself, I would say I'm a social introvert. And so I do very well. I love people, love being around people. But when I've met my Max, I've met it and I need to go into a closet and shut the door and sit there, you know, with no noise. So that has always been for me. And but here's what I know is that sometimes that feels like too much for people when you go out to the world. I don't have time for that. I'm so busy, or I'm so tired, or I've got this, or I've got kids, and there's no room. And by the time I get them to bed, I'm so exhausted, I just fall out. And so what I have found is that until people can get to a place where they can have dedicated practices, starting with integrated practices has been life-changing for people. So, for example, if someone is in a meeting and they're feeling they're they're noticing they're starting to get really irritated or maybe angry about something that's happening, taking, you know, having a short three-breath practice in that moment. Um, and it could just be the breaths, or it could be the breaths accompanied by some words and that that are signals for them, whatever works for people. So, not the mantra or the world's words may not be the same for everybody. People can can maybe use examples and then ultimately find their own that works for them. And that's part of the permission we have to give people is to give them permission so that the practices they make it their own in a way that's sustainable for them. So I think the three-breath practice, I I use that all the time. I actually often just use a one-breath practice, but it is big and big on the exhale. But you can do them in stealth mode so nobody even has to know what you're doing. And that that's powerful because you can help yourself reset in the moment. I remember one time in my last job, I was in a meeting and it went, it went south real quick. And I was like, what is happening in this room? And people were, they were standing up, they were raising their voices, it was all this stuff. And I remember sitting in my seat and I took a breath and I closed like nobody's paying attention to me, but I was like, somebody's gotta kind of get this under control. And I wasn't thinking it was me, but I could feel myself becoming really, really activated. So I closed my eyes, I took a breath, a long slow breath in and a slow breath out. And then in that process, words came to me to say in the room. And when I said it, the room and Immediately calm down. Now I wasn't aware that I was doing this. I was just literally just in a meeting. But after the meeting, one of the folks in the room came to my office and said, I saw what you did in there. How did you do that? And I said, How did I do what? She said, That room was out of control. And you just said like five words and everybody sat down and there was this calm that came over the room. I don't even know what I said, honestly. I don't even remember. And that's also the beauty of it. A lot of times people think that these practices have to be these big displays, these big things. And mindfulness is all these little things in every moment of every day. And the myth is that everything that's successful or everything that is good is big, right? You're the president of a company, you're the, I don't know, the venture capitalist of the year, you're the teacher that does everything and gives us like, but it, you know, the way I think we really enrich ourselves and the world is through these micro moments, doing our own awareness. And I hate the word work because we don't, I don't like to make everything work because we're just being, we're living and we're being, but we're also trying to live our life to our fullest potential.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Um yeah. Yeah. I mean, you spoke about that quiet suffering earlier. You know, that's not big, that's not explicit most of the time, but yet everyone can kind of feel it in a more subtle way. And it it can be quite palpable. And same goes with that quiet presence or quiet state of being that can also be very palpable as well. And you know, Tina's some famous phrase around, or a poem, I guess, around you just need one sort of mindful person in a boat full of you know anxious people to quiet the whole boat down and to invite that state of calm presence. And in some ways, we're gravitated towards these quiet, present leaders. I think there's a sense of trust there that you know, if they're really present, they look at us in the eyes, they listen, you know, they speak with a calm, uh caring confidence. The quality of those words can, you know, resonate deeply in us. And it's not about, you know, the bombastic, you know, shiny phrases that people say. Yeah. So for everyone listening, you know, even in our families, like, you know, leading our families or our groups of friends, maybe we can experiment with, you know, med meditating a little bit beforehand or bringing in one breath or three breaths, as Michelle is talking about, in that dynamic and feel the shift internally and then notice what happens externally. See if the dynamic changes or just kind of sense into the different energies of what happens can be an interesting experiment. I love how just kind of going back to your son and how he scored much better on his exams as a result of having done you know some of these practices. I remember when I practiced meditation, like just for a few months off and on. I remember my my whole family, my parents and my sister all commenting, like, Sean, something's changed. Like, what's happening? Are you like you seem so much nicer now? Like, what are you doing? And I hadn't even noticed myself any like significant change. I didn't realize I was different. But anyway, I'm curious, Michelle, about your work with the Virginia House of Delegates. And you're part are you still a part-time legislator right now?

SPEAKER_01 33:58

I yes, yeah. You're called a part-time legislator, but it feels like full-time work and part-time pay, is what we say.

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Yeah, and you were rookie legislator of the year, education champion in 2024, you're named a 2024 Impact Maker by the Virginia Business Magazine and a legislative champion by Virginia Education Association. And, you know, I imagine it's not only full-time work, but like overtime work in in some ways. How are you like are you weaving in mindfulness or emotional intelligence in your work in the house?

SPEAKER_01 34:36

Yes. I it's one of the reasons why I ran because you know I I never saw myself in any political anything. I don't I never had aspirations. In fact, I was pretty convinced that I hated politics and wanted nothing to do. It just wasn't a consideration set for me. Um, but then over an 18-month period, there was I learned of children being separated from their parents at the border. In fact, that happened across administrations. It wasn't just one party, it wasn't one political party. It happened across multiple administrations of different parties. And then that was devastating as a mother. I just couldn't imagine. And many of those children hadn't, you know, hadn't been reunited with their parents and they didn't know where their parents were. Parents didn't know where their children were, but it was just as a parent, that was just heartbreaking. And then the summer of George Floyd, Ahmad Arboret and Brianna Taylor. Any again, I think all of this in the beginning really struck the chord of me being a mother. And when George Floyd, towards the end of his life there, was calling out for his mother, I just lost it. I couldn't help, but it just happened that I just imagined that being my son. I just can't, you know, I just, and at each of these points, I kept saying, where are the people, like some things have to crumble for us to build something new, right? Something more humane, something that holds more accountability, but with civility and compassion, but firmness, right? We we do need to have things evolve. But I wasn't seeing people who wanted who were morally courageous and were willing to stand in the gap to try, and as things disassembled and crumbled around us to try and bring us together. People were getting increasingly more divided and more firm in their certainty that they were right. And then January 6th happened, and then that was like, maybe I'm the person that I'm looking for. Maybe I can bring this body of work in this presence to inspire a different way of showing up in politics. And I do think that my presence makes a difference, but it is extremely hard because that culture is one of general distrust, right? There is there's just a distrust that people mean what they say, you know, and have good intentions because a lot of times they and so with somebody like me that comes in the picture, it's like, I said what I said, I mean what I say. You know, it's kind of like, no, you know, what what's your angle? I'm like, my angle is the people. That's my angle, you know. And so I had to two things. I think just by showing up and having this kind of presence, people feel that and see that. And I've had people ask me, like, what is going on? I've had people, both parties say, I'm so glad you're here. Like I find you so grounding. If I get up and do a floor speech, I've had people from both sides of it all say, I don't know what it is about your voice, but every time you talk, it's it's so comforting to me. And I'm so glad you're here. And always change votes to go and draw. So I am trying. And then last year, people asked if I would begin to host it during session. And I was so busy I didn't do it last year. And then they asked me again to do it this year, and then I did, and nobody showed up. So I was like, well, I can sit at home before I come to the Capitol. So I didn't, so I didn't end up doing it.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

But here's what I will say you went to the Capitol closet, or where do you go?

SPEAKER_01 38:06

Yes, and the closets are always nice, but in my office. And I, you know, I invite people to show up when they went to. And but what I have found is that once I got into political life, all the self-care, all the practices, all the routines that I've relied on were no longer enough. My environment was so intense that I also had to amp up my practice, the ways I practice it, practice, how often I practice. I had to this day, I have to do so much more to keep me grounded because the environment, it is very easy to lose yourself, to become distracted by the distractions. And that to me is not what I signed up for. I signed up intentionally to be a mindful legislator. And I haven't, I mean, I can think of one person in particular, two people, where I haven't been as mindful in my interactions with them because they annoy me so much. I think they're bullies and that's my trigger. I think they're, you know, all these things. And so I I I want to share this because sometimes you can hear the conversations and you're like, man, I wish I could do that. That's they're doing it in perfection, right? And I just want to disabuse people of that notion that I do not. And there are days where I get it wrong, right? And I I fall short of my own expectations about I get so frustrated or and I have to really work on not being reactive. And that's why I said that all of my practice, all of my self-care has to be brought to a whole nother level to be able to sustain how I want to show up. And then in those parts where I don't show up, the way I'd want to being able to be accountable in those moments.

SPEAKER_00 39:56

Beautiful. I love how you said that like for your own practice, you need that time each day, sort of a more of like a formal meditation practice where you you need, you know, the time to really quiet the mind, you know, be in the heart and to do your practices. And now you're saying too that like you've had to increase your self-care and your meditation. And I think you know, a lot of people listening right now are going through some rough times. And, you know, they're looking for strategies, they're looking for, you know, solutions for how to get by. And I think that you know, if you're just starting out, you know, Michelle's suggestions of like just even one mindful breath, maybe it's a big breath, is a great start. And, you know, moving on to three breaths over time. And then maybe taking just five minutes by yourself to, you know, recenter, reground, reconnect, you know, whether it's outside, inside with others or solo, you know, seeing if certain voices of guided meditations resonate or extending your practice to 10 minutes, 20 minutes, maybe trying a retreat. You know, whether it's an online mindfulness meditation retreat or an in-person retreat somewhere, but just kind of sensing into, you know, how how can I increase my self-care? How can I increase either the quality or duration of my mindfulness or meditation practice to help us meet the moment with more presence? So I love that I love your your humility, Michelle, of just saying, like, look, it's tough, you know, with this new environment. And I can only imagine how intense it can be. Just hearing a lot of stories and, you know, intense personalities. So kudos to you for stepping up and meeting it with more self-care. And, you know, and so now moving forward, I'm curious. You know, you've done so many things with Lucencia, you know, as a delegate, as a mindfulness and emotional intelligence, you know, trainer. I'm curious what your North Star or your true north is, whether that's changed over time or if it's still the same true north you've always had.

SPEAKER_01 42:17

So, you know, when I think about my true north, it rests on what I think my purpose is. And forever I've always had this sense of my purpose being to help alleviate suffering in the world. And the reason I always kept it so broad is because I like change, I like variety. And if I use that as that is what I am trying to do, how I'm trying to impact the world, I can do that in any expression I want. And that can change over time. And so, you know, with mindfulness practices, as you know, Sean, you know, suffering is in many ways a choice. And in some ways, it's conditional by environmental factors where we're that maybe outside of our control, maybe when we're growing up, or maybe, you know, we haven't learned how to navigate those places, and that there are real systems in place that reward and reinforce suffering and apart from what our own choices are. And so when I think about the work that I've done, it's always been with that as my fuel. So then how does that get expressed? Well, it's been expressed as a teacher, it's been expressed as a tech lawyer, as a tech business leader, as a small business owner, as a legislator. And I think what's up and next for me over the last couple of years, I have really reconnected with my tech roots. And I am feeling in these moments a sense of urgency around humane technology and the rise of AI and how we make sure that we are balancing this beautiful ability to be innovative and co-creative, but also our responsibility to protect humanity and to protect Earth. And so I have found myself reflecting on how that intersects with my desire to prevent suffering, to alleviate suffering, and to allow these pathways for people to blossom, to flourish in balance in a balanced society, a balanced nation. And I think there is a calling in the space of tech and AI because there aren't a lot of legislators or people on the other side of tech asking tech. I mean, there are great organizations, but maybe not coming from the legislative space that grew up in the tech space to say, actually, Mr. Miss Tech Company, that's not true. You shouldn't be doing that, and you can stop it. Or, you know, and so I'm I'm feeling very, very animated in those spaces. And I do I have come over the last several years to be sort of that go-to person in our General Assembly to help address and balance those interests and those needs. And so that feels really top of mind and sort of surface level for me in this moment, and we'll see how it unfolds.

SPEAKER_00 45:16

Yeah. Well, thank you for doing all the good work that you're doing for humanity, for our country, for everyone listening and for everyone who you've taught over the years. You know, one of the like on lucentia.com on your website, which I hope that everyone checks out, partly just to see your smiling, beautiful face on the website. Your website has a picture of a little hummingbird floating around. And, you know, I hope that this episode serves as one of the flaps of your hummingbird to you know help create the change you're working so hard to make in the world. Michelle, it's been a real treat to catch up. I would love to do this again, hopefully in less than a dozen years from now.

SPEAKER_01 46:05

I'm gonna do it sooner.

SPEAKER_00 46:07

And catch up again. So for everyone listening, please check out Michelle's website. We'll put a link in the description for lucencia.com where you can learn more about her, her offerings, and the work that she's doing in the world. Michelle, thanks again for coming. It's been a real treat. And thank you again for all the wonderful work that you're doing in the world.

SPEAKER_01 46:29

Thank you for having me.