Breathwork Magic
Welcome to Breathwork Magic, a podcast dedicated to exploring the life-changing power of Breathwork. Discover how conscious breathing can unlock inner peace, resilience, and clarity as we dive into inspiring stories and practical insights. Whether you’re new to Breathwork or looking to deepen your practice, each episode offers wisdom to help you connect more fully with yourself and the world around you.
Breathwork Magic
Wim Hof, Wild Energy, and the Magic of 33 Breaths with Marko
Breathwork isn't just a practice, it’s a gateway to healing, transformation, and embracing the present moment. In this soulful conversation, I’m joined by Marko, who shares how discovering Wim Hof's Breathwork during a dark period in rural Australia helped him reconnect to the sweetness of life. Through years of disciplined practice, MarKo has developed a deeply personal approach that balances inner clarity with modern life’s demands.
In this episode, listeners will learn:
• How Wim Hof’s methods opened a path during MarKo’s emotional low
• Experiencing bliss and presence from a single 45-minute breath session
• Why daily disciplines should empower not control our lives
• Marvo’s practice of 33 continuous breaths to create space and stillness
• Navigating the tension between digital life and grounded presence
• Integration through movement, self-expression, and “getting the house in order”
• The importance of simple self-care as a spiritual practice
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Welcome to Breathwork Magic, the podcast that explores the life-changing power of your breath. Breathwork isn't just a practice. It's a gateway to healing, transformation and shifting to a new mindset, by letting go of the past and embracing the possibilities of the present moment. And embracing the possibilities of the present moment. I'm Amanda Russo, your host, a certified breathwork facilitator, level two Reiki practitioner and creator of the Mander's Mindset podcast. On my own journey, breathwork has been a powerful tool for releasing what no longer serves me and shifting my perspective to step into my fullest and greatest potential. Each week, I'm joined by inspiring guests, blood work facilitators, healers and wellness enthusiasts who share how this practice has helped them and their clients heal, grow and embrace lasting change. So take a deep breath in and out, settle in and let's explore the magic of your breath together. The transformation starts now. Welcome to Breathwork Magic, where we explore the life-changing power of your breath. I'm your host, amanda Russo, and I am so excited to be joined with Marvo today. Thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me on, Amanda.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course. So can you tell us how you discovered Breathwork?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I discovered it at at scale, like as a consistent discipline, around the time when wim hof started to become really popular. I think that was maybe seven or eight years ago. I remember seeing his vice documentary and about some of the incredible things that he was achieving with the breath, and at that point in time I was living at a farm just outside of Melbourne, victoria in Australia, and going through some growing pains, we could say, mentally and emotionally, and I was looking for ways to create a little more spaciousness for my mind and a little more liberation, a little more freedom. So Wim Hof was one of my first exposures to that, in a very disciplined way, like day in, day on day, and then from there it started to open up new pathways of curiosity for me that I explored and continue to explore up until this day.
Speaker 1:Wow, now you mentioned day in, day out, so like you started doing it consistently, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I learned about it.
Speaker 2:I tried it once and I felt the results.
Speaker 2:To create a bit of context as far as the results that I'm speaking to specifically, I was living in a part of Australia that's very cold, very dark, and, to add to it, I was living in a very old farmhouse, so it was always very cold and very dark inside, and that darkness kind of started to creep in on my psychological state right to a point where I didn't experience the beauty of life in the way that I knew.
Speaker 2:And so breathwork, when I did it that one time, it reconnected me to that sweetness of life. And as I got a taste for that, I realized well, you know what I'm just going to make, just a daily practice. And I did that for quite a while, doing a lot of the stuff that he teaches with stretching, increasing one's flexibility as well, using the breath and learning how to increase my retention rate, learning how to be without air for an extended period of time as well, and so I started to play with all of those things. For me there was no aim other than just being disciplined with it, because I saw the immediate benefit from it.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing. How did you discover Wim Hof?
Speaker 2:I saw one of his Vice documentaries. So this was before he launched his official courses and became really world famous. It was one of those first little mini dockers that was released about him and all the guinness world records that he had and you know, doing the long run without water I think it was in the desert or something like that and then across the ice and you know his feats and I was wowed by so he was achieving as someone who was getting on in age. Right, he wasn't like a young buck, like 25 or 30 years old At that stage, he was already into his 40s and that fascinated me enough so that I looked into him a little bit more and there were some initial videos that went out that were of people that had already spent time with him. So, even though he didn't have the official format of how to do it as far as his program goes, the information was there for someone that wanted to do the research, and so I did the research and started exploring it from that point.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. Now you mentioned the sweetness of life that you started to experience again after doing Bethlehem. Did that happen after just one session for you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it did happen, just after one session, I will say, though I did take myself to the furthest edge that I could.
Speaker 2:So I was in.
Speaker 2:It was at least a 45-minute long breathwork session where I was going through the rounds the way that he teaches, so 40 rounds, around 35 to 40, deep breaths, hold and then go through a cycle again, right.
Speaker 2:And so I was in there for about 45 minutes before I reached for those states where he speaks about the medicine of the body activating, right. And so I started to feel a real wave of bliss come over and just allow myself to lay down and enjoy the way that energy freely circulates by itself. And that was the moment where it was like the way that I was experiencing things was like the warmth that I experienced at the tips of my fingers in terms of when I touch a tree or a plant or a loved one. It's like that had like drawn back into my skin and into my body a little bit. And then that moment when I connected with that blissful wave of energy damage, it's like that had drawn back into my skin and into my body a little bit. And then that moment when I connected with that blissful wave of energy damage. It's like all of this started to come back online again and back to life.
Speaker 1:Were you skeptical about trying breathwork before you did it?
Speaker 2:I wasn't really skeptical. My general attitude towards life is less about showing me the theory and more about showing me the practicality of it. So I'm really big on direct experiences and I speak about that a lot. I wrote a book last year and my whole book was about how do I have more direct experiences with life. Right, I feel like so many of us spend time living life through the filter of the mind and we miss out on actually engaging with it at the deepest levels. So for me, it was always about direct experience and you give me a bit of information so that I can make sense of it. And if it makes sense to me at some level, I'm happy to pull myself through the trenches and to pull myself to work.
Speaker 1:Have you always been like that?
Speaker 2:I'd say so for the most part. Yeah, I'd say my general attitude to life is when something calls me in terms of like, it has my curiosity and my interest. I'm really big on having the lived experience right, because I guess what I've seen around me through some people that I grew up with and things like that, is they make their minds up on many things based on the opinions of others and I mean that's fine. Some people can choose to live like that, but that, to me, didn't meet the depth of life that I wanted to be meeting. I actually wanted to experience what life had in store for me and not just take somebody else's word on it.
Speaker 2:Because the thing that I miss out on taking somebody else's word for is that I don't consider who they were in the time when they went through the experience and I don't consider how fully they engaged with the experience. So what I mean by that? I'm sure you've seen this before someone goes along to a breathwork session and maybe their partner dragged them along or maybe someone forced them to be there in a way that they weren't fully there with the process, and then when everyone goes into the breathwork process, they're kind of half-assing it. They're not really giving of themselves and nothing really happens for them, or they touch a very gentle doorway where they get something subtle at best, but they don't really reach the magic of breathwork, and so I feel like that's a really important piece as well and why I tow the line more towards living through direct experience.
Speaker 1:That makes a lot of sense when they don't touch the full surface. I have witnessed literally exactly what you mentioned in different group sessions that I've held. Some people go with somebody else and they're not in it. You know they're not putting in the work. Like I say all the time, it's breath work. You know there's some work that you have to do with it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Do you still practice breath work to this day, or what does that look like for you today?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I do. So I did that chapter of like doing the Wim Hof style stuff and then I stopped for a period of time and then the only breathwork that I would really do was when I did cold exposure, just to allow myself to really sink into the cold therapy, and that wasn't that frequent and I did it like that for a number of years because my general attitude with most disciplines is I like to be thorough with them for a period of time and then I like to take my hands off them because the time away also teaches me. In relationship to the discipline. What's happened to me before and I'm a really big advocate for is people having disciplines in their lives to the degree that they empower and support them, and to also be very acutely aware of the point when their discipline starts to control them and that they can't live without it. That's a dangerous place to be. For me, it's like the person who says I can't go and live my day until I've done my 10 minutes of breath work. Well, it's supposed to empower us. It's supposed to make us better for our day. It's not supposed to be the vice that clenches us to it. So I'm really big on that. Like I'll do a discipline for a period of time and then I'll pull away from it entirely, just to like separate my ego from it, so that my ego doesn't start being like oh, now you're the breathwork guy, so now you've got to do this all the time and I'll do that with everything.
Speaker 2:But right now, at this point in time in my life, I do breathwork. I do it pretty much every day, but it's quite short. So what I do is a continuous breath, which is different to the way that Wim Hof speaks about it. So it's a continuous breath of inhale and exhale with as little tension on the body as possible. So what do I mean by as little tension as possible? I pay really close attention to my tongue, to my mouth, like the whole cavity of the mouth, the tonsils, the throat and all of that, and I'll keep it all open and soft. If I notice there's any tension building up as I'm breathing, I'll allow myself to soften the breath enough that that can begin to open up. Because I realize at some point if I'm doing breathwork that's forcing more tension on the body, then it's not really allowing me to open up as much as I'd like.
Speaker 2:And for me, my intention with breathwork is to create space in my body, right Different kinds of breathworks for different things, but for where I'm at right now and what I utilize it for, it's just to create more space for me. So I'll do that, and I'll do 33 of those breaths. Why 33? Because that's just my age, so I just do one for every year that I've lived, just as a way to respect my life like that.
Speaker 2:And so I'll do 33 of those and I'll do a full exhale and all of that's done through the mouth, by the way, so just through the mouth. And then I'll do a full exhale, inhale through the nose, and I'll hold that for as long as I can. Sometimes I feel nothing, and sometimes it takes me into a really beautiful state of centeredness, presence, focus, feeling the currents of subtle energy moving through me, sometimes even opening up the visual scape. So I found it's short and sweet enough that I can pretty much apply it every day and experience something quite profound from it, and so I'll do that, and then that'll usually lead me into a bit of a meditation. I like to do a meditation after, just because I feel really on point.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, you know. I like how you mentioned you take a break from almost anything. After so long, you know we can become consumed with whatever it is. We have to do this thing. We do breath work every day and it's like what if you can't because something out of the ordinary happens, life is fluid that makes a lot of sense. Now you do the meditation after it. Have you always been doing it like that too, or for a while?
Speaker 2:no, not always. This is really, I think, something has been kind of like naturally evolving for me over the last year you could say maybe just a little bit more than a year now and I started that breathwork. I learned it from a very dear friend of mine he's actually the best man at my brother's wedding and I learned it from him last year that style of continuous breath through the mouth and the softening, and when I did it with him we just did 22 breaths and when he shared it with me he said like 22 breaths, that's like the master architect number. So if you want to architect your life in the way of mastery, 22 is a power number that you can connect to. That will start to draw on that consciousness for each and every one of us.
Speaker 2:So I did 22 for many months and then right around the point when I got in touch with him again, when we met up again, I was feeling to change it to 33 and then he ended up suggesting the same thing. So I just upped it to and then I've used it as a lead-in to my meditation and found a significant difference in my meditations, like my mind's more at peace and it's just smoother sailing through the meditation. It's less turbulence. It allows me to clear out a lot of the junk in the mind and just allow myself to be in observation.
Speaker 1:At a much more peaceful level. That's beautiful. Now, did you have any skepticism with this type of breath work when your friend introduced it to you?
Speaker 2:I didn't have skepticism with it. I did go into it not expecting much at all, because when he said 22 breaths I was like, yeah, sure, we can do 22 breaths, but I had a measure in my mind of what 45 minutes of breath work does. So I figured the 22 breaths would more or less do nothing. But there's a magic to that softening that I spoke about and there's something in the continuous breath I don't know what, but it opens a very clear channel to connect and it slightly allows me to compress the time zones In some ways. It's as if what I used to get in 45 minutes I can now get in the space of a few minutes If I'm really aware of the way that my body is moving as I breathe.
Speaker 2:So I went into it, you could say with it, with a bit of baggage from having had previous breathwork experiences, but I was open to it. I tried it out and, honestly, the first time I did it I didn't feel that significant a change. But I said you know what? It's been a long time since I've actually been disciplined with any kind of breathwork. Let me bring that back into my life and see what it does. And it was after about a week or so of doing it, I started to have some little pockets of experiences that showed me that there's a real power there. And those little pockets of experience were significantly altered states of consciousness that I was reaching with just 22 breaths right. And when I started to reach those points I was like, okay, this is opening something interesting in my awareness that I see value to keep exploring. It wasn't only clearing out my day-to-day stresses and that kind of junk that we accumulate, but it was tapping some deeper aspects of the psyche that were interesting pieces for me to integrate.
Speaker 1:Now you said deeper aspects. Can you give us an example? Now you said deeper aspects. Can you give us an example?
Speaker 2:yeah, like I had flashes of memories from my childhood with my grandparents, things of when I was five, six, seven years old, and it wasn't like I was watching a whole film unfold. It was more like you know, there's flip books, how you flip the pages and you'll see a story unravel. I was seeing that kind of stuff like very quick succession type imagery. You know, you know there's flip books, how you flip the pages and you'll see a story unravel. I was seeing that kind of stuff like very quick succession type imagery.
Speaker 2:You know, there's some people that get really involved about understanding like well, what does it all mean? But for me that's like trying to compute everything through the mind, right, and it's cool. Sometimes it's nice to make sense of things, but sometimes it's also nice to just let things stay to the mystery of life and just recognize that whatever needed to happen happened. And so for me, there was pieces like that that were happening, where it was like my mind, my consciousness, was filtering through these experiences for whatever reason. And what was the benefit of it? Well, the benefit for me was just that I noticed that as I continued with the practice, I stayed sharper and clearer throughout my day for longer periods of time. So it's like I was fortifying my system to be able to operate at a level that I hadn't operated for a while.
Speaker 1:Wow, so it increased your focus.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And would you say, more so than anything you've done recently.
Speaker 2:In terms of the trade-off for time I put it up there, yeah, in terms of how much time I trade off to do 22 to 33 breaths and the clarity that I get from it and the precision that I get.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it'll take me into such a state where I always feel like, as I reach that final breath and I do the exhale, it's like my heart rate will increase a little bit.
Speaker 2:And when I do the inhale through my nose and hold, I'll hold that for as long as I can, not forcefully, but just wherever it goes. Sometimes it's only 15, 15, 20 seconds because I feel so generated with energy in there that I'm holding so much energy that when I hold the breath in the oxygen it's like a volcano that's about to explode. And then other times I find that it's more like I enter a really precise point where I can feel that energy. But I can ride the waves with it. And in riding those waves I felt what I experienced like if I'm having a really stressful day. I've been spinning a lot of plates, like doing many pieces. I run two different businesses amongst everything else that we do throughout life, and so sometimes I have so many tabs open in my mind throughout the day that I feel like when I sit down and I do that breath, it's like it pulls all those tabs back into my center and creates more space for me again. So five minutes of breath work for a significant amount of clarity.
Speaker 1:And you've been doing this for a little bit now. Has this been a year consistently? You've been doing this, these 22, 33 breaths.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I haven't done it every single day.
Speaker 1:I've done it 90 of the time over the last year did you notice a difference between the 22 breaths versus the 33?
Speaker 2:subtle differences. Yeah, I found benefits of both. I wouldn't say that one was more beneficial than the other. It more so felt like finishing a chapter of study, if you get what I mean. It's like asking me did I get more out of chemistry or biology class? I got value out of both of them. Or, to make the metaphor more relative, like chemistry 101 or chemistry 102. They both had value for me, like at the stages of learning that I was at. And so 22 was good for a little while because it was so simple that like it was so easy to do right that I didn't have to think about it that much. And then 33 was just like the next step. It was like cool, I'm comfortable with 22, been doing that for a while, let's go for 33.
Speaker 2:It also honors, you know, the amount of years that I've lived, but not only that. It also honors so many other things that are important to the human experience. We have 33 vertebrae. 33 is the number of christ consciousness, right? So there's all these pieces around the significance of spiritual development at 33. So when we work with the 33, there's also that aspect to it. Nikola Tesla was quoted saying that if you want to understand the laws of the universe study 3, 6, and 9, right. So 3 plus 3 is 6, 3 times 3 is 9. So that's the energy that I'm tuning to there.
Speaker 1:That makes sense. I gotcha. So I'm curious did you have any sort of sensations that came up while doing the breath work?
Speaker 2:yeah, I'd say the usual ones, like static kind of sparks of energy or tickling, or sometimes I refer to as subtle fireworks that we can experience like dancing along the skin.
Speaker 1:I like that term.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a unique way to express it.
Speaker 2:And then the other big piece that I noticed is, especially with this continuous breathing that I've been doing the last year is it can open.
Speaker 2:I'm looking for the words because I haven't experienced those states elsewhere with other kinds of breath, work or with anything else that I've done.
Speaker 2:It's almost like spirit energy pulls out a tracer and just goes around my whole body and creates this pocket of space and in that pocket of space a lot of energy starts to circulate through it to the point where sometimes it has overwhelmed me.
Speaker 2:I get so much energy that moves through me and it takes me in a state where there's no more body. It's just entering into the dreamscape, entering into the space of the beyond, entering into the space of totality, of union, whatever you want to call it, like people have different ways of expressing it, but there's no more. I don't feel the space like where marco ends and where something else begins. It all feels like one thread of life that's connected and it's a powerful state to enter. But it's also a state that can overwhelm one quite easily because it's a lot of powerful energy that's moving through and what that looks like is at times is, I'll open my eyes out of that state and I should be bracing myself on the ground because I wasn't aware that right or sometimes I'd lay down if I had the awareness to.
Speaker 1:Now you mentioned about it being overwhelming. Has that ever caused you to not do it?
Speaker 2:No, not at all. When I say overwhelming to create more context around it, I don't mean overwhelming like I get anxious or something like that. Overwhelming like it's so much energy moving through the body that, like, as we expand, we have to integrate the energies. Right, we're expanding too, and this is asking me to expand so much sometimes that I'm not at capacity to integrate it fully. So the metaphor to me would be like the, you know, like you get to meet the big boss, in a way like the warrior that reaches a certain level of capacity and he goes out and he puts himself out against the odds and learns where his levels are at.
Speaker 2:For me, this is one of those domains where I get to learn where my levels are at, and I'm in no competition with anyone at all. It's just a state where I enter, where I know that it calls for all of my precision and clarity and it just shows me how I'm holding myself for the day. So the days when it's overwhelming, it's only because my mind's too busy and for no other reason. Right, and so does that mean I'm doing things bad or the Not at all. It just means that my mind's very occupied and that was my opportunity to clear it up as much as I could. And then other times I find the real sweet spot where I ride the waves, like when a surfer catches a good wave, and I'll surf it all the way home, through the peak and the climax and then as it slowly drifts off, and that just means that I'm attuned to all the subtleties for that day.
Speaker 1:I get you what would you say? This type of breathwork has helped you with the most.
Speaker 2:To be able to dance between the worlds, and what I mean by that is I don't like to spend a lot of time online.
Speaker 2:I like to be in nature, I like to have my feet on the earth, but the demands of modern day life are also present online, especially now. I'm in the stage of my life where I'm promoting my book launch, I'm promoting my products, I'm doing a lot of marketing, doing a lot of sales, doing a lot of podcasts. So a lot of my time is actually on screen, seated right here and just putting in the repetitions. So it's allowed me to condense how much time I need in nature but maintain a similar level of clarity within my being, which I really appreciate. So it's allowing me to bridge those worlds that are both very important to me. It's very important for me to feel connected with life. There is no way I'd do this conversation or any other if I didn't feel clear and connected within myself, because I like to speak from a place of integrity and a place of sincerity, and so that breathwork has allowed me to bridge that.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's amazing. I love that, Would you? Is there anyone specific you'd recommend that type of breathwork for?
Speaker 2:I'd say for someone that's been through at least a chapter of breathwork in their lives. I wouldn't suggest it for newbies, just because of what I mentioned, with the energy being quite overwhelming. It's good to be facilitated for a period of time. It's good to learn how to facilitate oneself for a period of time and be really comfortable with that, because it can be scary. What I mean by it can be scary is one of my teachers once said that when we speak about experiencing more light, like universal light, in our bodies, we have to be careful, because sometimes we can experience so much light that we mistake it for darkness because it exposes so much, right? So you think about, like the sunrise that we mistake it for darkness because it exposes so much, right? So you think about, like the sunrise at the point of arising, we can look at it and we can experience that level of light. But at 12 o'clock midday, if you try and look into the sun for too long and then you look around you you're going to see shadows everywhere, right? And you can experience that. If you just glance at the sun when it's midday. If you just glance at it for a few moments and you look around, you'll see spots and all kinds of stuff. You know, discombobulate your vision for a little bit, and my teacher spoke about that.
Speaker 2:He said that like it's important to tread carefully with these things, like more isn't always better, it's the right and the right dose is exactly the amount that I can integrate and that allows us to stay present with our own development. Because it's not even about how many years of breathwork someone has. Right, someone can come into breathwork brand new, but they can have a really solid track record of discipline and connection to themselves from other disciplines and they can come through and they can catch it like relatively fast, right, and just find a nice way to surf the waves and they probably, if they have a really good sense of themselves, then they'll know how to toe the line with their limits. But then if someone's coming into a venue, I definitely suggest first, like, get facilitated for a period of time, go through some of these experiences, be clear that you're integrating them as well.
Speaker 2:Right, so more breathwork without integration isn't necessarily a good thing. Sometimes it can be the opposite. It can be the reverse, because if we're not integrating, then we're leaving parts of ourselves exposed or open. The loop needs to be closed on so we can continue evolving. So I'm kind of dropping in these threads for people that are at different stages of the journey and then for people that are comfortable and they're like they've been through and they've been facilitated a fair bit. They're comfortable in facilitating themselves, then yeah, go for it, but tread carefully yeah take your time, be gentle about it.
Speaker 2:There's no shortcuts and there's no end game, right like the end game is our last breath, so don't be in a hurry to get anywhere that's true.
Speaker 1:Now I I know what you mean when you say integrating, but can you give a general example, in case anybody doesn't like, how to integrate post-breath loop?
Speaker 2:yeah, I'd say there's some. I mean there's some general things that people speak about on integration that are valuable, and then there's specific pieces as well. So I'll speak to both. And then the general ones. I usually will tap parts of ourselves that perhaps haven't been expressed, and integration is about allowing the expression of those parts.
Speaker 2:So it's usually the things that are suppressed in our subconscious, whether we did that consciously or unconsciously. So sometimes they're childhood traumas, sometimes they're more recent traumas, sometimes they're traumas that we can't even make sense of, that are just somewhere there in the psyche. They can be generational things as well, like science is even showing that we can store up to seven generations of trauma in our systems, and that happened for me. Like I, I had memories of one of my great grandfathers who I'd never met in my life, but I was processing some of his experiences and his emotions before I even knew his story. And then, later on in life, when I learned his story through listening to one of my aunties, I realized what all of that was and that I was actually living some parts of his experience, so that the trauma could be processed because, like, I'm of the same blood as him, even though I never knew him. Yeah, and so integration is about finding a way to express these things, and what that looks like is it might be artwork, it might be music, it might be freedom of movement. So people speak about ecstatic dance. I was big on just getting out in nature and allowing myself to move in all kinds of different ways to mimic different animals, to mimic the way that insects and serpents would move, to mimic the way that a bear or a jaguar would move, and all, or a lizard, and all these primal movements to the body. They unlock pieces within us that are really important, and then you might have talk therapy as well.
Speaker 2:So, like, some of these things may need to be spoken about, not all of them. Some of them can just be addressed through some of the other stuff I mentioned drawing, artwork, music but some of them we may feel a need to speak about, and so those are kind of like the general pieces of integration recognizing what wants to be expressed and allowing myself to express it in a way that the cycle can complete, I will say, around talk therapy. That's a really important piece, because sometimes I've seen that people get addicted to their suffering, and what I mean by that is they'll always talk about the same trauma, and so expressing a trauma to clear it is good, but if I have to keep speaking about it, then I have to be real with myself about the fact that there's something that I haven't put to peace yet. And if I really put something to peace, I don't have to speak about it again. I can speak about it if I need to. For example, I can speak about a traumatic experience that I've been through, but why would I speak about it? Well, for me right now, the only reason that I would is if I see that I'm speaking to a group of people who are experiencing something similar, and I know that through me sharing my darkness and light that I went through, it's going to give them permission to do the same in their own journey. So that might be a good reason to share, but otherwise it's not something that I draw out in general conversation or in any kind of conversation.
Speaker 2:And then the specific part that I mentioned around integration is sometimes we just get a clear sense that something needs to be done. I call it homework. Right, we'll get some kind of homework that we need to take care of, and that homework might be simple things like. For starters, a lot of people that I meet who are searching for healing and things like this, the question is oftentimes a basic conversation of like let's get the house in order, right, what does the house look like? Well, yeah, that looks like our bedroom, the house that we live in, but it also looks like our financial house so we can pay the bills.
Speaker 2:It also looks like being able to do the laundry when the laundry needs to be done, and all these little basic things that are so important, because for me, the whole Breathful Journey is about connecting us to our beauty of life, so that we can express it everywhere.
Speaker 2:Not so that I can go to a yoga studio where I can do my breathwork, or a beautiful retreat in a sanctuary that's been set up, but then go back to my life that looks like a bulldozer's ran through it, right, it's about taking that same current energy that I feel in all that sweetness and then imbuing that into my life.
Speaker 2:That's the real integration, and for many people, it's those simple things at the start Pay the bills, do the laundry, clean the dishes. You're enlightened, cool, go make your bed. And then, once we've made our beds, it starts to extend from there. For me personally, what the extension looked like was a recent big chapter of integration for me from some transformational work that I did was writing my book, so I spent nine months reviewing a lot of what I went through, which was very valuable for me. It was like walking back through my life and turning on all the lights that I hadn't turned on before and seeing very clearly what my process was, but then also sharing it in a way that could be valuable to other people, and that was one of the homework tasks.
Speaker 1:I like that analogy the turning on the lights.
Speaker 2:Right, life right.
Speaker 2:And so me sharing about my book was just to say that sometimes, like we'll get big projects of integration, integration isn't sometimes just like a one trick pony where they would just do one thing and that's it.
Speaker 2:And I'll also speak to the fact that integration, to me, in a way, it's important to speak about, but it's also a trap, and the part that's a trap is for me to say that I need to integrate is to suggest that I'm disintegrated Right, whereas me, as a human, I'm whole and complete the way that I am, and so for me, it's just an awareness, and I share this with everyone as a piece to marinate on, to meditate on, is to recognize that we're in a constant state of transformation. We're never fully integrated and there's always going to be something to integrate, right. And just because there's something to integrate, it doesn't mean that life stops. No, to the contrary, it means that I am in flow with life and I'm in movement with life, and the pieces that I'm integrating are my inspirations that are calling me forward. Once we've taken care of the basics of making our bed, then that's the integration.
Speaker 1:I love that. The basics of making our bed. You know, that's so true. You know like I talk about that and have talked about that on my other podcast about starting the day for success, no matter how the rest of the day goes. You did something, you accomplished something.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much, Marco, I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Pleasure Amanda. It's been a great chat.
Speaker 1:Thank you for having me on yeah, of course, and thank you, guys, for tuning in to another episode of breathwork magic. Thank you for tuning in to breathwork magic. I hope today's episode inspired you to connect more deeply with your breath and embrace the transformation it can bring. Remember, as long as you have your breath, you have options. You're not stuck. You can make a change, you can make a shift. Each inhale is a new beginning and every exhale is a chance to let go of what no longer serves you.
Speaker 1:If you're craving a reset, I'd love to invite you to Mindful Mindset Mondays, now held on the last Monday of every month. It's a virtual pay what you can breathwork session designed to help you recharge and realign. You'll find all the info in the show notes and if you're ready to go even deeper, you can always schedule a one-on-one breathwork session with me. This is your space to work through what's coming up and move energy in a more personalized way. As always, thank you so much for listening. If you loved this episode, it would mean the world if you shared it with a friend or left a review. Your support helps more people discover the magic of breathwork and the shifts it can bring. Until next time, keep breathing, keep shifting and keep embracing the magic with inside of you. I'm proud of you, I'm rooting for you and you got this.
