Community Highlights: Meet Michael Locasto of Monk’s Mind

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael Locasto.

Hi Michael, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
Like many midwestern children, I grew up playing sports. When I was a young boy, I would dream about scoring the game winning goal in hockey for the Chicago Blackhawks. Sports seemed to be a place for me to connect with my true self as a child.

When I was ten years old, I was diagnosed with structural kyphosis (i.e. a hunchback). Doctors told me I would not have back problems if I kept a strong core and back. Four years later I started having debilitating back pain and around this time I found the weight room. The weight room felt like home. It was not only a place to work on my physical body for sport, it was a place to build pseudo confidence as I masked over the emotional indigestion of feeling insecure and inadequate in my body.

For the next eight years, I attempted various forms of western medicine to aid in this back pain with limited relief. Eventually, I chose to follow through with back surgery at the age of 22 ending my baseball career. Seven months after back surgery my spine never healed. Fortunate for me, I had a dream of working as a strength and conditioning coach for professional athletes ever since I was 14. This passion provided me grounds to learn how to rehabilitate my own spine. It also opened up possibilities for learning the art and science of human performance to one day realize my childhood dream.

During my 20’s, I was blessed to live in eight different states working for some of the best minds in the world of human performance. I had the privilege of training professional athletes in all major sports and in 2016 I received a strength and conditioning position with the Arizona Diamondbacks. It was during my time with the Arizona Diamondbacks that my lens of human performance turned inward and expanded. During this time, I learned about the sacred space of inner transformation and the power of our mind & energy to shift our reality.

In 2018, I was working in AA for the Diamondbacks. During that season we had seven hamstrings injuries on the same team. Two hamstrings injuries are enough to raise some eyebrows. Deep down I knew what I was experiencing was preparing me for something far greater in my future. This season was the start of an ongoing spiritual awakening. I started questioning my identity as a strength coach and spent a significant amount of time in introspection, reflection, and self-inquiry. The insights, wisdom, and downloads I was receiving internally opened my awareness beyond the limited conditioned thinking from my childhood. Neuroscience shows that 80% of our belief structures are formed between the ages of 0-7 years of age.

I started offering mental and emotional guidance to my athletes to perform better, which shifted my perspective on unlocking human potential as these athletes were receiving tangible on field results. What seemed like one of the most painful experiences of my life has turned into an incredible gift. I realized human performance is an inside game and my studies went inward. I continued to study Dr. Joe Dispenza’s work, neuroscience, Eastern Philosophy, Flow Psychology, meditation, energy work, quantum theory and spiritual concepts. There have been many mentors and incredible guides to aid in my journey. I learned about epigenetics and the power of our beliefs and mindset in shaping our physiology, psychology, and nervous system. In short, I learned to re-engineer my inner world to break free from self-limiting beliefs to experience lasting peace and true liberation.

In 2019, I realized my childhood dream of working with the Arizona Diamondbacks big league team in the off-season, and yet I felt like I was missing something. At the end of the season, I walked away from the Diamondbacks to start my own business as a Human Performance Energy Coach guiding people into alignment with the top of their game. I am currently in training to become a Breathwork facilitator and coach. I am the founder of a new business that is being created as I type this called Monk’s Mind. It is a coaching and training service that delivers lasting peace.

There have been many twists and turns in this story and I realize that my highest purpose is to be in a space of presence. Through all my years of studying human performance, working in the trenches, and going through my own inner transformation I realized that all the answers are within each and every one of us. My passion is in guiding people to feel at home in their own skin—connecting them back to their true self. We are all at our best in a state of presence.

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
I believe our struggles pave the way for our life purpose and that these experiences are invitations for soul expansion. The nature of life is to expand as mother earth wonderfully demonstrates this truth, and we have an internal mechanism, the ego, that is wired for survival and permanence. If we truly want to experience true freedom, we are invited to break free from the mental, emotional, and energetic prisons of the ego.

The ego can be defined as mental activity that identifies and clings to form (i.e. thoughts, feelings, and body). When we identify with things that are constantly changing herein lies our mental suffering and insecurities. The truth of who we are is vast and infinite like the blue sky. The contents in the sky can never harm or touch the sky. The sky is a beautiful metaphor for our natural state of mind—peaceful and calm.

Upon reflection, introspection, and self-inquiry I believe each of us comes to earth to experience their human curriculum (credit to my coach Natalie Ehmka for this term). This curriculum includes struggles, challenges, and obstacles to experience and eventually to dissolve and transcend into true liberation. Whether we are conscious of it or not, life is constantly using experiences and events in our life as invitations to choose love and expansion over fear. I realize this is one interpretation of infinite possibilities and in every moment our intention is co-creating our life experience. Here were some of the struggles that invited me to open to the power of love and receive the inherent wisdom within.

I shared my physical struggles of back pain and physical pain was only one manifestation. Ever since I was a little boy, I was incredibly sensitive.

Society has taught me that being a man means being tough. At a very young age, I learned to harden and contract my body as a protective mechanism against society. This disconnected me from the innate intelligence of my emotions. I remember from a young age experiencing a significant amount of fear and anxiety due to disassociating myself from my emotional body. When I was 10 years old and my doctor told me that I had a hunchback this proliferated a sense of fear and inadequacy. On top of experiencing debilitating back pain in my teenage years, I also carried the childhood programming of feeling really uncomfortable in my skin.

Throughout my time in sports, I remember manifesting coaches and people in my world that would reveal to me the limitations I felt were true about me (i.e. I am not enough… I am not accepted). One of my favorite quotes by James Allen states, “Circumstances do not shape us, so much as they reveal us.” Looking back, I realized that the fear I was experiencing was of my own making. Everything I experienced in my childhood and adulthood has prepared me to guide humans as a mind, body, and energy trainer. We are multidimensional beings and our consciousness (i.e. energy) creates our life experience. When we shift our energy by changing our relationship with our thoughts and our emotions our direct experience changes.

Going through high school with debilitating back pain was a struggle. I remember receiving numerous cortisone injections, unsuccessful rehabs stints, and various other treatments with limited relief. During this time, I had five different doctors actually misdiagnose my spine. After back surgery never fully healed my spine, I accepted the responsibility that if I wanted to live pain free it was incumbent upon me to learn how to rehab myself. Before my back-surgery doctors told me that I needed a lifestyle change. In 2020, I ran my first ultramarathon completing the Javelina Jundred, a 100-mile race, in the desert of Arizona. In 2022, I will attempt to run the Cocodona 250. I have come to realize how powerful we truly are as humans.

Along the way, I have overcome addictions and compulsions, self-limiting beliefs, and performance anxiety. From a young age, I always felt like something was wrong with me. From doing the inner work, I have come to realize a space of true freedom and peace. I know this space is within each one of us. It’s my mission today to guide others back to their inherent sovereignty. Some powerful tools along the way have been meditation, breathwork, movement, coaching, and self-inquiry. Overcoming these challenges through unlocking human potential has become my life’s work.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Monk’s Mind is a business being formed as we speak. It will combine Human Performance Energy Coaching and Breathwork Coaching. Monk’s Mind is a coaching and training service that delivers lasting peace.

Currently, I am a Human Performance Energy coach. My coaching is designed to move you from a state of mental stress to one of lasting peace. Together we create a safe space for you to do the inner work for transformation and liberation. This invitation is for those that want to transcend the limitations of the conditioned mind to experience the unlimited one.

Your life is a state of being—when you free your mind, you master your energy, and you express your soul. I combine mindset, energy, and embodiment coaching to guide you to the truth of who you are.

Beyond the self-limiting beliefs of the subconscious mind lies our true self. I help people remove the mental, emotional, and energetic blocks in the way of them being at the top of their game in life. I define being at the top by aligning to one’s reason for being here at this time.

Whether you are—an athlete wanting to up level your game, a business executive wanting more peace and happiness, or someone wanting to embody your greatest self-expression—Energy Coaching is personalized for you.

Together we identify the key mental and emotional prisons preventing you from accessing the peace, freedom, presence, and flow that is your birthright. It is my absolute honor to offer Human Performance Energy Coaching as I know firsthand the power of this work.

What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
Like Best – The desert has felt like home ever since I was a little boy. I had been visiting with my family once a year as we would spend time with my Grandparents that were out here. The energy of the desert is incredible and expansive. There is so much to do in nature from running trails, paddleboarding down the Tonto National Forest, and camping underneath the immaculate desert sky. Alongside, the outdoors there is an ever-growing community of conscious souls. The food is incredible and if you are looking for some natural health remedies my favorite spot in town is Optimize. There is so much for me to explore and the city is expanding by the day. I love how everything blends into the natural land and that it truly does feel like we are living in nature.

Like Least – I am not one to look for faults and if I had one thing I like least it would have to be the summer heat. Not because I do not like the heat, in fact, I find myself running trails quite often in 110+ degrees. The heat makes it a challenge for my dog as her only time outside is early mornings and late nights. Otherwise, the desert truly feels like home.

Contact Info:

• Email: info@michaellocasto.com
• Website: michaellocasto.com
• Instagram: Michael.locasto
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiVcmhYlVYBjxuPPHFsKf-g
• Other: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/top-of-your-game/id1546643658

Image Credits
Jon and Stacey
Jackie Sterna