Behind the Mic: The Edge of Everyday with Sandra Bargman

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Hello, hello, Amplifyou family. Michelle Abraham here your host. I am so excited. I am joined by a new friend of mine. We've met recently online and we were in a group together called the reset collective. And I've just gone to admire her energy and her spirit and what she's bringing to this world. And she's got a podcast called the edge of every day. Her name is Sandra Bargman. And Sandra, welcome to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here.

Oh, Michelle, thank you for having me. And hello to everyone listening in. It's just a joy.

Awesome. Well, I'm so glad you're here. And this is the behind the mic interview. So we're really diving into your podcasts today. And so I love to just ask like what inspired you to start your podcast in the first place? And first, let's share a little bit about what is the podcast about?

Well, as you said, it's the edge of every day. And it's based on a solo show that I created back in 2013, also called the edge of everyday where I explored the rough edges of life, it was really born out of what was happening in my own life I was seeing on the political scene, I was seeing a lot of polarization and a lot of either or in black or white. And I was noticing it in my own life and internally sort of understanding these paradoxes and contradictions I was discovering. And I thought, well, that's a wonderful thing to explore in my show, because in my performing show, I'm also an interfaith minister and I combined my performing with my ministry. So it felt like an interesting topic to talk about. And then fast forward COVID hits. And I've got all of this other work planned. And I I didn't know what I wanted to do after I got through wallowing and kicking and screaming. And so I decided to start a podcast. And of course, it just made sense that I would also use those same concepts for and call it the edge of every day.

I love it, though. I think COVID really put

everything goes back to COVID.

I remember when we were first like you know how podcasts are so like, delicate with timelines and current events. At first we were like not really talking about a lot. You have to you have to. So it's part of our life now. Part of history, right, where it really changes the course of a lot of people's life was a pivotal moment where it's like, hey can do as plan and now what's next?

Well, and that that very thing is also what inspired me to actually step into podcasting. I was not someone who listened to podcasting. I really didn't you know, when I created the edge of everyday, I never thought it would be a podcast. I never listened to them. I wasn't really up to speed on it. But you know, COVID polished us, man, it just polished all of us to think about after we wallowed zinc, about what is the world what is COVID in the world calling me forward to do at least this is what I felt. Yeah, and the people that are closest to me in my life, you know, all of the, the mishegoss let that fall away what's most important, and how can I really be present to the times that we're in right now? These enormously tumultuous times, and it just made sense. I wanted to share my voice in a bigger way. And because I couldn't get on stage, it made sense for me to step into podcasting.

I love it. I think so many people turn to podcasting during COVID My business was like on fire. So I was like holy smokes. I was like this is like one of the only ways they can connect with people. Right? It was it was it was great for our business. But yeah, I can see how you know it was really helpful for other people also to start sharing their voice in a different way. Just so our audience is clear. Haven't Sandra has like 35 years experience and career as like a professional actor, singer, voice artist performing on stages like all over the world. So your jam is onstage and in front of people and Holy Moly when you can't go out of the house. It changes things a little.

Oh, big fat rug pulled out. Oh, yeah, you change it was, you know, and I'm very honest with everyone I wallowed in my sadness and just rolled around in bed and eat bonbons. You know, the proverbial bonbons. Yeah, it was not easy for me and I'm, I'm an introvert. So I like being by myself, I like recharging by myself, but I'm an extroverted introvert. And I like being on stage and being in collaboration with audiences with other artists with other people creating things that communion that energy. And, but, you know, there's a silver lining that we got in, in COVID. And through zoom, and at first I did, as I said, I'm an interfaith minister, and I did weddings on Zoom. And I was shocked at how meaningful and poignant and fun and, and elevated they felt, I really was shocked at the whole zoom experience. And, and I did feel like it was communion it was, you know, of course, it's not being onstage, it's not being in the same room together. It's not all of those things via yet, but it's still awesome. It offered its own sense of connection that I was surprised and moved by.

I love that when, you know, one of the things that I found recently, no, now fast forward two years of being on Zoom, like constantly, how do you know, hey, I'm hoping that you have some great tips or something like how do we make zoom more engaging with our like, when we're talking on Zoom to people, or giving presentations or like on virtual stages, because I know a lot of our podcasters want to get a taste of the podcasting, they love it and using their voice? Now want to take their voice other virtual stages first, maybe then the live stages?

Well, I think, you know, I think people are, I've got a friend who does work with Gesture work, you can see that I'm work using that, and that I'm not shy about that. And I think a lot of people feel that because we're in this different environment that they need to somehow make themselves smaller. And I, you know, this is not film acting. This is not like where you have to talk about this. Because really, you know, and you can hardly understand you really, in my opinion, can be completely engaged. And, and, and vocally engaged and doing that diction, and doing that deep breathing and being very full with the energy just like you're onstage, I don't I tell everyone I work with, don't shy away from that. Yeah,

that's really cool. And it's like filling up more of the screen to you like, you can feel my energy jumping forward. Exactly. I love that.

And that's what exactly what we do. And that's what makes interesting storytelling. And then the other thing that I work on with my clients that I do myself is the willingness to be with the stillness. When is the moment in the storytelling, or in the deep listening, where you're, you are willing to sit back and allow that energy to just exist. People who are just listening in can sense that. And people who are watching can sense the power of that stillness. So it's really the engaging

for that to like, listen to your voice and enunciations in the slowing of the speeding up of it, like for our listeners, the you can't see a senator right now you're listening, you can hear and feel her, you know, expanding and contracting, contracting, like with your voice and like that energies and powerful.

Absolutely. And that's all stuff that people can work on. That's literally things that actor techniques and actor, you know, just play tools that I can impart that people can just play around with. And that's the whole understanding of how I work as a presentation. Coach is the playfulness aspect that actor embraces easily. You know, playfulness is really powerful. It's powerful across the board, not just as an actor, it's powerful everywhere in every nook and cranny. If people can move from seriousness and poignancy into playfulness, that juxtaposition is so disarming and so powerful and so real. And so, if, if there's anything that I can impart about, you know, the playfulness Have the actor in terms of presentation coaching it's and work as a podcast. Work on a podcast as a podcaster is the willingness to play with different tempos, as you mentioned tempos and voices, but actually different voices. You know, and and what is the story that I'm trying to tell here? And and, uh, you know, I hear this a lot. Well, I'm not really very, my voice isn't really strong and I immediately will interrupt and say what does that mean? So what if you pretended that it was really strong? Right? What if you just played with that, like, how does Meryl Streep act when when she's has to play somebody that's really shy and, and, and then doesn't want to speak out? Of course, she plays around with a really quiet voice and what what does she play with when she's playing someone strong? She just plays with it gives herself permission. That's what the actor does. They give themselves permission to play.

love it so much. So there's so much of this we can find into our own podcasting. I was listening to a podcast the other day, and I won't say who was it was or what it was, but it was like literally, like they were yelling in the podcast. And it was this the same voice the same tone, the whole the whole time, with like, a very echoey background and was very hard on the ears where, you know, I think that change in tempo changing voices, that energy change, keeps people captivated. I was like, I love I love feels like I'm being yelled,

at, right, here's your note to take it down a notch. And

there's excitement and then there's yelling.

Oh, totally. Totally. Yeah, that's just Yeah, yeah. That you just need to get a class on. Yeah. But I think it also can come back to what is my intention? You know, everything I do in life? Yeah. The Walking Venn diagram that I am, everything comes back to, to knowing myself, and what is my intention? In each of these instances? What is it? What story am I trying to tell? And what is my intention in doing so? And I don't think you know, I don't start a podcast, I don't start an interview, whether no matter what side I'm on, I don't get on stage. I don't. I don't create a ritual. I don't create a wedding ceremony. Every single thing I do. I asked myself, What is my intention? What am I hoping will emerge here?

Why right? Do you you know, you mentioned rituals for a moment there. And I know that's a big part of your life and what you do in your work and in your life. Can you share with us how you've incorporated rituals into your podcasting?

Ooh, I love that question. Well, it's so great. It's, you know, so much of what I do is, is off script, my podcasts are videoed, so it's so much of what I do is off, you know, I'll light my candles, and I'll do my breathing work. And I'll do you know, I will send out gratitude into the universe. And, you know, and I often, I weave it into mentally into the questions that I asked, but recently, I was on vacation. And I, a Cape Cod was fabulous. And I wanted some clarity about I've been doing the podcast for a year. And I wanted some clarity around how do I sharpen the lens, and how to help not only for my audience, but for myself, for my own heart to stay engaged in this work, and in the sharing of my voice and the exploration of the times that we're in. And it became clear that I wanted to be a little more vocal around my ritual building, you know, I don't I'm very spiritual, but I don't I'm my show is not a spiritual show, per se. I don't shy away from those topics at all. But but I'm not about being blue. As you can tell. I'm not very precious. I, I'm, I'm very real. And so I tracked a spectrum of listeners. But that being said, I felt as though the way that I could kind of AMP up amplify the scope of work is through ritual and inviting people into understand ritual, that it's not a religious thing, that it's not a spiritual thing, that it's a transformational thing. It is a way to connect, to navigate a liminal space and to, to change to explore that intention that we were just talking about. So to get back to the specific question of, of how am I incorporating it last week on Halloween, I just had it, it was my first show after all of this clarity. And, and, and in fact, I heard you speak about how you should do a series of podcasts by yourself to to recalibrate it. And so I heard you and I did it, although I did invite in a special guest, one of my closest friends and, and we I did a ritual at the top, and opening invocation and I lit a candle. And then I chose as a way of introduction, in addition to that, to have her talk about a ritual that she and I had done, she's going through a very difficult time in her life. And she came to visit. And actually I, I got, I went down to visit her, and I created a ritual that I do with some of my clients and at retreats. And I really invited her to explore the loss in in a ritualistic way. And she was kind of resistant to it, but because she's my friend, she agreed to it. And she was transformed and got all kinds of answers. So we talked about that in the podcast as a way of introducing it and, and it's my hope to continue to do that talk about ritual, and as well as bring small elements slowly, but surely, I mean, even my husband, who is, you know, like an ex Catholic and wants nothing to do with religion. And I would call him I would say his his church's nature. He has come to love rituals through witnessing my understanding of it, and the invitation of ritual, to explore our big questions in our big transitional moments.

I love the way that you're doing experiential, like you're actually incorporating, but then also talking about it with your guests. So it's kind of like a two full part. So for our listeners that are maybe unclear about what you mean by ritual, can you just share a little bit about what you know what ritual means to you and how, how that it comes into play at the beginning of a podcast? Well,

the ritual and ceremony is as are my jam, I like to create ritual, and I like to create ceremony. And I do that in all aspects of my life, particularly through what what would be considered very spiritual ministry through creating, you know, funeral ceremonies and wedding ceremonies and baby blessings and that sort of thing. Ritual a ceremony is sort of a marking of what has what what is occurring,

like an event.

And ritual is more intentional, it's to create what one wants to create what the clarity for the next step are not. It doesn't have to be a specific I want this or I want this kind of outcome. It can be just asking for guidance, or clarity around next steps on the path,

like in shin or something like that. It's a ritual. Exactly, exactly. And with no ritual mean, like, then you're repeating that each time you go and do something like Well, that's

one way of understanding ritual, I mean, something that you do over and over and over again, but but that can begin to be you're not thinking about the intention, because it's such a habit, that you don't necessarily, you're not necessarily paying attention. And I mean, that can be said about, you know, just everyday rituals that we do with our coffee. Right? Hello. But it can also be said about rituals, that that should be more poignant. You know, if you are someone who is religious and you attend a religious, an event in the rituals there, people can recite things and do things and you know, and it's just by rote. And so my understanding is always to be very, to bring the presence back to whatever it is that we're doing whatever it is, at its heart ritual, is the willingness to sit in a liminal space and by liminal space, I mean, a space of not knowing it isn't like the space we're in right now as we rebirth Earth. And and the way things people are always like, I can't wait for things to come back the way they used to be. It's never going to be that way. That what used to be It used to be, and what is being created in society and around the world is now being created. So we're in this liminal space of not knowing, of growing our muscle of not knowing and being comfortable with that, because we're control freaks. And we all want to, you know, know exactly what's going on. And, but that's in a tiny or sense, that's what ritual is, it's the willingness to be in that space of not knowing that liminal space, and I want to move from this place that I am into this next place of understanding, I want to emerge into that. And that's what ritual is. So how do I do that? And, you know, I've always done it once.

That's planation of it. I love

it. So, you know, again, I set a, you know, if I'm hanging around with a lot of Christians, I can use opening prayer. And that's their, their language. And that's one of the great things about being an inter spiritual Minister, you understand people's languaging if I'm hanging around people who don't want to hear the word God, and believe it or not, I do know, those people. And I've been some of my wedding couples don't want that word. You know, some want God and blessing and greetings from the Bible and everything in between. And that's the beauty of the work that I do. But you can cry, you can say, I'm going to give an ode to, you know, nature and read a beautiful poem. And that can feel like an opening invocation that can feel like an opening prayer, that all have the same energy of opening up the space that we are all sharing in this hour, on the edge of every day, together. How are we coming together in this conversation?

I feel like it's like a grand gratitude to us in that space as well. Yeah, very cool. I think you've, you know, definitely some ideas in my head of ways that you can, you know, use conversations and use raw casts you, you know, bringing things in your life that you are doing outside of the podcast, into the podcasts, even though you might think that like, ceremony doesn't fit in the podcast from the outside perspective on first glance, but you've found a way to woven those things all in, which is fantastic. And, yeah, really interesting.

I think we can all take from that into your look at our own podcasts, how can we make it more of like a ceremony or make it a more of a say? Like, it's

not just like a transaction? You know, to figure out how cool is podcasters word Yeah, like our goal is podcast is really to actually transform our listeners, rather than to be a transaction. So like incorporating some of those other things like at the end of it, maybe some takeaways or some things that they can then take away into their, into their world. Another one of our podcasts is she does an abundance activation at the end of her show, which is really cool. That's a ritual in itself. And she's added that into her show so many great things that you can do to making your own thing. Your own. Yeah,

we all and I also think, you know, that's just who I am. That's totally like I said, it's my jam. And so I want to help people too. And I see that as a way of exploring edges. And if I'm going to talk about the edges of every day, and the edges of life, and the boundary pushing of life, that's the way that I do it. And so here are an here's an invitation to you all, and you can witness it, how it plays out here and how it feels try again, play with it, get playful with it, just try it on. It doesn't have to be this big thing. It can just be a fun initiative. So I think

there's one thing that stopped me when I was launching my podcast was a thought that it needs to be to see him all the time. Like, when I made that decision for a podcast, I had to be committed to that decision of what it was going to be like what was gonna be said. And this is how it showed up. And you just bring up a great point there of like how like it can I, that you there's so much personal development that comes from using your voice, as you and I were discussing before this episode, that evolution of your show to changes over time. And so giving yourself permission, just like you said, like to show up and play, be playful and try different things on and see what works. That's okay, because if you don't, you're going to start here with your podcast. Your personal developer is going to end up here your podcast is still going to be way back here yet Do you think you're going to get people are gonna

hear that you're gonna hear that the incongruency and that you're not going to invite people in, I mean, that kind of vibe comes through comes through and your throat chakra comes through and the energy of what you're saying, it comes through from your power chakra, you know, like, boom, this is this is my intention and this is my truth. And this is and I'm and I want to be present with your truth and I want to invite everyone into explore their truth within this conversation. And that kind of energy comes through

where whereas if you're not super excited about your showing you chose to write like, yeah,

totally. And of course, this is not to say, like, every single episode, you know, be sure there's a couple there, we're like a slogging through it, you know, being sick and slogging through and, but, or not being clear, but the timing of getting clarity didn't quite happen for an episode and that's okay. Be self compassionate, but But stick with it. Stay on it and and be willing to evolve it. I mean, there's there's no consistency only you know, I think that's an old structure. Consistency is a real is like a hetero patriarchal. Yeah. You know that who made that rule? Yeah. Yeah, I don't I don't see any little kids being you know what, I'm gonna consistently do the same thing in the sandbox.

You know, like, goes back to that like, quote of like, the definition of insanity, right, doing the same thing over and over expecting different results. But yeah, if you're getting stale and getting bored, switch it up. And you know, I think what you were saying is perfect, like use that time to like, call in what is your intentions for this show? How can we get better back in alignment with it? Or what is it? What is the message you want to share with the world? So powerful? Totally, totally. So Sandra, where can our obviously we can check out your podcast? Where can our listeners, you know, learn more about the what you're doing in ceremony? Do they have an event coming up a wedding, baby blessing, something like that? Where can they find out more information about you?

Well, the best place to find me is on my website, which is Sandra Bargman. No E, even though it sounds like there is one.com. And I'm sure that'll be in the show notes. You can also I've got a room, my garage during another little COVID project, I converted my garage, which is separate from my home in the Catskills, which is where I'm tuning in from, into a salon space, or a proverbial historical salon space. That will that has hosted two pretty big events already. But my my thought for it is in deep alignment with starting a podcast, having the courageous conversations, and the edgy conversations that we need in today's tumultuous times these crossroads in history, and inviting people into that space, and combining conversation with music with performance with poetry, the combination of art, and all of these things that I'm weaving into my podcast that we're talking about YouTube can weave into your podcasts, all those things going into that room, but you into that salon space, but that website is the plumb, t h two.com. And you can see what's happening there. My YouTube channel where I have all of my past episodes, but also other videos of you know stuff from theater, that kind of stuff from weddings is Sandra bargeman on the edge of every day, please go subscribe and like and comment and all those good things that help the algorithms and I'm on I'm ubiquitous on on social media. I'm on Facebook and Twitter and IG and all those. Yeah, all the all the things

so well before I can let you go. I have one more question for you. Some of our audience hasn't launched their podcast yet they're sitting there thinking about it, not using their voices, maybe a little bit shy or timid to get out there and use their voice. what's some advice you would give to them?

Lean into your fear. Lean into your fear. That's the number one edge of every day just lean into it. Keep taking small steps forward the don't misinterpret your fear as a reason not to do something step through it and understand that the other side the other side of the edge of fear is excitement. So Eight minutes what brought you to doing this? So don't be confused by that fear. Use it to fuel yourself because you know what? You are always at the edge of the miraculous.

Elevate. Thank you so Sandra for being here with us today. We've enjoyed our conversations so much, and I know our listeners have as well. Make sure you guys go check out Sandra. We'll link it in the show notes everywhere that you can find her. And until next time, go out there be amazing guys amplify your voice to the world. You know, you have a message that needs to get out there. It's time to start doing it today. All right, so again next week, guys.