June 22, 2025 • 55 mins
Have you ever wondered if there's a simpler way to access states of clarity, creativity & presence without years of meditation practice or psychedelics? Leo Mars, 3/5 Sacral Generator and founder of America's first breath studio, reveals how conscious breathing might be the tool you've been searching for all along.
"Breath is the most potent tool we have to live a better life in this modern age," Mars explains, describing it as a Swiss army knife that adapts to whatever you need in the moment. Whether you're seeking emotional release, creative inspiration, or simply a moment of peace, breathwork meets you exactly where you are. Unlike meditation, which often feels inaccessible to those with busy minds, breathwork provides an active approach to mindfulness that can quickly shift your state.
Mars draws an important distinction between "breath awareness" (bringing attention to your natural breath) and "breathwork" (active breathing techniques), explaining how they work together as complementary practices. The former serves as your moment-to-moment anchor, while the latter acts as a more intensive clearing and opening process. Together, they create a powerful system for navigating life with greater presence and purpose.
Ready to experience the transformative power of breath for yourself? Check out Leo's breathwork app "Ethr" (ethrone.com) or follow his journey as he writes his upcoming book through his weekly emails at leomars.com. Your next breath could be the beginning of a whole new relationship with yourself and the world around you.
Let's connect on social media! You can find me @ _journeytowell
Be sure to reach out and say hello 🤍
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Ready to dive deep? Explore our signature 1:1 coaching experiences ALIGN or EMBODY here!
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Book your 1:1 virtual Soma+IQ™ Breathwork session or Human Design chart reading, learn more about my coaching packages & find Seacoast NH in person events - all on my website ⬆️
be well, my friend
xx Hannah
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hello, welcome back to the podcast journey to well.
So today I am joined withanother breathwork practitioner,
leo Mars.
He is the founder of the firstbreath studio in America, a
really early pioneer of bringingbreath to communities and his
community, philosopher, creativeentrepreneur, forthcoming
(00:25):
author, which we'll talk aboutyour book, at the end of the
episode.
Leo, thank you so much forcoming on.
Oh, we forgot, he's also a 3-5sacral generator, which we're
going to talk about human design.
So thank you so much for comingon.
One of the things that we werekind of chatting about before we
started was how do we introduceyou, like what are the hats
(00:46):
that we should put on?
And we all wear so manydifferent hats all the time and
it's really hard to pick a fewor pick the right ones, right.
So I'm going to turn the reinsover to you to introduce
yourself who is Leo, and thenwe'll start our conversation
about breath.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yay, well, thank you for having me, hannah.
I'm happy to be here and haveenjoyed our conversations up to
this moment very much.
So I'm Leo Mars.
I am an entrepreneur, born andraised in Alaska, have always
kind of had a tilt toward.
I was raised Christian andmemorized a lot of the Bible
(01:29):
growing up in private school andyou know I always felt a strong
resonance with basically, likeas an adult, I see it as Christ
consciousness, and that wasn'tsomething that was really talked
about.
You know, in my privateschooling there's a lot of, even
(01:57):
emphasis on the Old Testament,which I was always kind of like
what the's going on here andwanted to understand what a good
life is like and how to youknow, use magic if you will, and
understand magic.
So as an entrepreneur, you arejust kind of inherently agentic.
(02:21):
You know you're reallydeploying magic every day, all
the time and you have to hold.
You know you're you're reallydeploying magic every day, all
the time and you have to hold.
You know that wand is in yourhand.
So so I've always had a verystrong connection to creativity
and to making a difference, andit wasn't until I was 27 years
(02:41):
old when I was running a verysuccessful nightclub and
four-star restaurant that I hadopened and designed at 25.
That I kind of had anon-ordinary state experience
happen in the shower of allplaces, of course.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Always random.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, yeah, and those shower experiences, you know.
So this experience really shookme to the core and changed my
trajectory, or, you know, reallyreally altered my worldview, my
sense of self, my sense of whata good life might look like,
very deeply.
I was visiting my father inAlaska, taking about a week away
(03:26):
from my businesses in the city,and it was about 645 in the
morning, waters falling down mybody, just an ordinary shower,
and I somehow slipped into thisaltered state of consciousness.
It wasn't an out of bodyexperience, I was still looking
(03:47):
through my eyes, but it felt asthough, you know, there were no
thoughts in my head and really,from like a mechanism of action
perspective, I think that'smaybe what, what had to do with
it.
I don't know how I got to thisthoughtless place, but there was
no, there wasn't a singlethought in my head.
So I would say say, like youknow, looking at that from a
(04:08):
rational perspective, what thatdid was it essentially gave me
no sense of location other thanthrough my eyes.
So I had a sense of like.
Here I am staring at the showercurtain, kind of pulsing in a
trance, but I am everywhere.
I am, you know, beyond thewalls of the bathroom, beyond
(04:29):
the walls of the house, beyondthe stratosphere of the earth.
And, you know this, thisexperience really shook me to
the core.
You know, there weren't manyqualities to this kind of
awakening state, but there was adeep sense of, I mean, there
was expanse, there was a senseof freedom, a sense of like
genie out of the bottle, like Ican breathe.
(04:51):
But one of the only qualitiesthat that state had, I knew just
like, somatically, intuitively,I knew that I could just
effortlessly exhale an entireuniverse into existence, and so
that really stuck with me.
You know, there's a many seriesof events that happened.
(05:12):
This was 20, 27 years old I'm42 now, so that was, you know,
quite a few years ago.
Many winding turns.
But I got very interested atthat point in the big questions
like who am I?
You know, where do we come from?
What's going on here?
All of a sudden, the teachingsof, you know, all the great
(05:34):
masters really lit up in myawareness.
I realized like, oh, thatwasn't just for them, like these
states of enlightenment are forall of us, not not just these
masters.
So that got me, you know, intoa very, you know, really deep
yoga practice and I triedgetting into meditation, always
(05:56):
struggled with meditation.
We talked about that a littlebit and one thing led to another
was pulled into the innercircle of a high level of
philosophy and something calledintegral theory, which was a
(06:17):
meta theory that essentially ismade of all perspectives and
models and theories, is made ofall perspectives and models and
theories.
And then when I discovered thebreath, which we talked about a
little bit, it, was like oh yesthis is it.
Don't need any psychedelics now.
(06:37):
Yeah right, we can talk aboutthat too.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Yeah, I remember.
I want to let you finish, but aquick note.
Everyone typically assumes thatI also do plant medicine
journeys because they're just sosimilar and and and not similar
.
You have similar states ofconsciousness, I would say,
(07:05):
although I have no idea becauseI don't do plant medicine
journeys, and I think you evenasked me that and I was like you
know, I, I haven't felt thecall or the pull and I, I love
breath work and it's somethingthat I can put myself into
instead of in my mind.
I have a lot of, I have a lotof blocks around any sort of
(07:25):
external in ingesting, any sortof external um supplement or
whatever, although I do drinkalcohol.
So you know we're, we'rewalking contradictions, but yeah
um, anyway, so keep going.
Yeah, just just so interestingthat you brought that up, but
yeah with your story.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
I love it yeah, yeah, so, yeah, so I guess the you
know I, I found the breath wentthrough some, you know, several
years of very deep psychedelicuse and I, you know, what I
would do is I would, I would, Iwould basically fast for 24
hours and then I would take aheroic dose of some entheogen.
(08:05):
Typically I was using mushroomsor LSD in my home with
basically just me, my gardenmyself.
I'd start on Saturday afternoonand go until the wee hours of
the morning and you pay a lotfor that.
That's a very expensive toll toyou know, understand the nature
(08:30):
of reality and consciousness.
You know you lose sleep and youknow you can really get
sometimes, um, you know,particularly with the synthetic
um, you know, with with thesynthetic stuff, you can get
stuck in some really dark spaces.
And you know, but really havebeen cultivating my own.
(08:52):
I would call it like a designphilosophy for life, for, you
know, 14, 15 years now I call itevolution by intelligent design
.
It's kind of a synthesis of twoapparently paradoxical ideas
the idea that consciousness isemerging out of the evolutionary
process with the idea thatessentially, spirit is involving
(09:16):
itself into form or descendinginto form.
It really kind of resolves.
For me, one of the conflicts is, or one of the challenges has
been how can I be, how can I beI am, how can I be everything
and also, at the same time, bethis human organism with this
(09:38):
personality and this brain andthese drives and values and
proclivities?
And so, yeah, I've gone reallydeep into philosophy and
mysticism, but I feel verydeeply, very strongly, that
creativity is at the core of ourprocess.
(09:59):
I see creativity as how weparticipate or like make love
with the universe, if you will.
And breath is just a massive.
To me, it's the most, it's themost potent tool we have to live
a better life in this modernage.
Opened the breath studio in2018, early 2018, before breath
(10:25):
was kind of a trend.
In fact, if you look up Google,you know keywords.
The trend actually startedwithin a couple of months of
opening the studio.
So that was really totallyunplanned but well-timed and,
you know, had a chance to reallysee how the breath was affected
(10:46):
everyone's lives.
People would come in.
I've witnessed thousands ofpeople come in with the weight
of the world on their shouldersand leave a breath session with
a spark of hope or a new leaseon life, even after one breath
(11:09):
session.
So I'm a huge advocate of thebreath and really respect what
you're doing as well, hannah.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Thank you, Thank you, Obviously.
Likewise, it was one of thosethings that changed my
connection, my ability toconnect to my body, my ability
to connect to I love that you'resaying creativity and creation
(11:38):
and love and all of these, thesethings, because truly that's
what I experience.
I don't I don't know that I'veworded it that way before
experience.
I don't, I don't know that I'veworded it that way before I
will.
I will say I love bringing inhuman design and one of the
things that I noticed about yourhuman design chart is we all
(11:59):
have defined centers andundefined centers and open
centers and they're just likethese shapes in our chart, their
energy centers, which, ifyou're familiar with the chakra
system I'm sure you are theyroughly pull from the chakra
system.
We have seven chakras, nineenergy centers, because the
heart and the solar plexus aresplit into two different centers
(12:24):
, but you have three definedcenters and they're all like
lower centers.
So you have your root chakra,your root center is defined.
Your solar plexus no, hold on,I'm messing this up your root
chakra, your sacral center andyour spleen are defined, which
(12:44):
are all all like kind of pull inthat creativity and that
groundedness and that love.
I mean the sacral center isreally our center of love as
well, and pleasure and all ofthese things.
So I think that's really kindof cool about your journey and
your human design chart.
But you talked about havingtrouble kind of settling into
(13:09):
meditation and getting intomeditation and you and I are
similar.
I was blessed.
My mother had me meditatingwhen I was young.
I was a child Actually.
I've never shared this story,so I will share it with you.
I was struggling with math.
I've never been a math person.
(13:29):
I've always been that likephilosophy, language, english
definitely thrived more in those, but math and science never
really liked, history neverreally liked.
And so I was learning my timestable in whatever grade.
That was third grade maybe andI couldn't learn the times
tables.
I was really struggling with itand my mom one day she was like
(13:50):
you know what, hannah, I thisis not a punishment.
This is something that I wantto explore with you because I
think that it would help.
I'm going to wake you up 20minutes early before school
every day and you're going tocome in bed with me and you're
going to meditate and she wouldsometimes do most of the time it
was some sort of kind of simpleguided meditation and in her
(14:11):
favorite part of the story isthat I did so much better in
math and I learned my timestables and all of those things.
So I've been meditating on andoff since I was a child and then
I started meditating heavily incollege.
But truly, I think the fasterthat our lives go, the harder it
is to keep that meditationpractice and be able to settle
(14:36):
into a meditation you and I kindof talked about the difficulty
of going from 100 miles an hourto zero.
It's like stopping your body,stopping your mind, and that is
a true practice.
And I still meditate and I havenothing against it.
And I also found that breathwas this another doorway to get
(14:59):
into meditation?
I always call breathwork anactive meditation.
I don't know if that'ssomething that you ever talked
about yeah.
Yeah, so my question would justbe what is your experience with
that?
Because I think that'ssomething that resonates with a
lot of people.
I talk about meditation with mycommunity and a lot of them is
(15:23):
like either oh, I can't meditate, or I think I meditate the
wrong way, or I can't slow mybrain down, and then we just
kind of get away from it becauseit's difficult and we we think
that we're doing it the wrongway, which yeah, or something's
wrong with me.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Maybe that was.
That was my internal dialogue.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, so yeah, I would love to hear that, that
kind of part of your story.
And then, what is differentabout breathwork to you and your
experience versus meditation?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yeah, yeah.
That's a great question andit's definitely at the core of
why you know really was souseful for me and such a breath
of fresh air.
Pun intended to discover.
Pun intended to discover, yeah.
So when I was 29, have youheard of Vipassana?
(16:14):
No, vipassana meditation?
Oh, maybe, yeah, typicallythey're 10-day silent meditation
retreats.
So when I was 29, I thought Idiscovered I came across
Vipassana somehow and I was like, oh, I'm going to apply for
this and if I get accepted whichthey do have a pretty strong
(16:34):
filter system, it's all ondonations and if I get accepted,
then I'll come out like Buddhaon the other side.
This is perfect.
All I got to do is disciplinemyself for 10 days and I will be
enlightened.
But yeah, I went to thisVipassana retreat in some
(17:02):
beautiful kind of naturepreserve in Oregon and that's
the 10 days of silence.
And what I discovered withinthe first 12 hours of, you know,
after the first kind of like,everyone congregates in the
meditation hall and you know theguides are like okay, you know,
at this point forward you'regoing to, you know, not going to
talk for 10 days.
(17:23):
What I discovered within thefirst 12 hours of that was, you
know, I'm pretty crazy and I am,you know, I was sharing, we all
had kind of bunk mates.
So I had a cabin with a bunkmate and, you know, going into a
space with a stranger whereyou're sleeping for the next,
(17:45):
you know, week and a half andnot not being able to talk to
each other, just kind of headdown looking at the ground.
You're just kind of with yourthoughts and that was very it
was a rude awakening, to say theleast.
You know, I realized all ofthese voices in my head, all of
you know, the inner critic andall of the kind of like the
(18:08):
survival-like voices kind ofstarted chattering and I'm like
and they just got louder andlouder and I'm like, oh no, I'm
like I'm.
I don't think I'm schizophrenic, but like it sure feels like
I'm schizophrenic.
There was, there was nowhere tokind of like, you know, expel
any of that energy which is gets, just stay in here.
(18:29):
And so I made it through.
It requires a lot of disciplineto get through a 10-day
Vipassana retreat.
I think they say like 40% ofpeople leave by day three or
four because you're just sittingin like 36 by 36 inch space,
meditation space, for 10 hours aday in meditation, one out, one
(18:52):
hour, um, one hour segments, um, but 10 hours of sitting on
that thing every day, and soyou're dealing with extreme pain
.
By day four they start whatthey call strong determination.
So strong determination is whenit's like find your position
and don't move for the entireone hour sit and that's like
literally do not move, like youbreathe but don't move a muscle.
(19:14):
It was extremely painful bothpsychologically and physically.
I left that experience reallyprobably as close to like having
suicidal thoughts as I've everbeen.
Yeah, and you know I went homeand started a pretty strong
(19:39):
meditation practice where I wasreally committed for months.
But I thought, you know, I justcan't break through.
Something's wrong with me.
I'm the lost cause wrong with me.
I'm the, I'm the lost cause.
And then when I discovered thebreath and realized, oh, like to
(20:03):
me now meditation is.
It's like a by-product of whatI would say like, like,
essentially, like equalizing orregulating the nervous system,
and and sitting in a state ofsilence or witness.
So I'm trying to think whatyour question was.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Oh it was just your experience and what you felt.
The differences are betweenbreathwork and meditation, and
also the similarities too,because there's a lot.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, well, you know it's said that the Buddha never
gave meditation instructionswithout starting with breath
awareness.
And I do think that, especiallyin our modern age, where we're
(20:51):
just so overloaded withinformation and to-do lists and
all the things, that it's wherepretty much we should always
start.
I think that goes for probablymost humans and I think it's the
reason why, you know, so manypeople struggle with meditation.
You know we sit down with adysregulated nervous system.
(21:14):
You know we're getting cut offin traffic and, you know,
haggled by debt collectors orwhatever's going on, dealing
with the stress of just being amodern human, relationships and
all the things.
So, yeah, for me I see them askind of, you know, a partnership
.
(21:35):
I prefer breathing intomeditation, you know, by and
large, and this is pretty muchthe only way I'll do it, unless
I'm, like you know, in a reallybeautiful serene setting in
nature and I'm just like, oh, Idon't have a place to lay down,
I might go to my breath.
Yeah, so I think that you know,eckhart Tolle says in A New
(21:58):
Earth, and I'll paraphrase, hesaid you cannot think and take a
conscious breath at the sametime.
Conscious breathing stops yourmind.
Breathing stops your mind.
So for me I really see it as asupport.
Breath is a kind of a support,and a gateway into states of
(22:20):
meditation.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
I love that.
Thank you for that quote andthat information and that
reminder.
That's definitely somethingthat I find I I told I told you
this.
Maybe everyone's an overthinker.
I don't know if I overthink morethan more than the average, but
I spend so much time up in myhead and so much time I just
(22:45):
always feel like I have so manythoughts running through my mind
, and one of the things that Ilearned in my specific training
of breathwork is it's thisopportunity to really be present
with the body and thesensations that are coming up in
(23:05):
the body, because our body isalways communicating to us, our
body is always sharing theseinsights and these pieces of
wisdom, but it speaks a lotquieter than our mind, and so
one of the things that I alwaysinvite my clients to practice
that I also certainly practicewith breath is noticing the
(23:27):
sensations.
Noticing the breath, like whereare you breathing into?
Can you breathe all the waydown into your tailbone?
What does that feel like versusbreathing into your stomach or
breathing into your rib cage?
And noticing what sensationsare arising and not getting
stuck in the story behind.
Oftentimes we're like oh, myshoulder hurts, oh, it's because
(23:49):
I'm so stressed.
I must have slept the storybehind.
Oftentimes we're like oh, myshoulder hurts, oh it's because
I'm so stressed, or I must haveslept the wrong way, or I, you
know, I had a really hard likearm workout and I must have just
kind of like twinged somethingand we get.
So that's where our mindimmediately goes.
Is the story behind things Samewith emotions?
So if we find an emotion isarising in a breath, work,
(24:13):
practice of like, oh, I'mfeeling really sad right now,
what is the story behind that?
Can I like connect that to amemory or can I connect that to
something that's going on in mylife?
Maybe?
It was a hard conversation Ihad with my sister last week,
and what if we didn't connect itto a story?
(24:34):
What if we didn't follow up?
I'm sad because just I'mfeeling sad right now.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
What if?
Speaker 1 (24:42):
I allowed myself to cry or I'm feeling happy.
What if I allowed myself tolaugh?
I had someone in my breathworkclass last week and she was like
I just wanted to laugh, so badthat I didn't want to throw
other people off because theywere crying.
I'm like no girl laugh Like ifyou feel like you need a laugh,
laugh.
And she's like I don't even knowwhy, like I wasn't, I didn't
(25:03):
have anything, I just felt, youknow, like I needed to, I'm like
, do it.
Your body wants to express thatemotion too.
It's not always the heavyeither, which I don't know what
your experience is with that.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
But oh, yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
I love that, that laughter fromthe breath, like especially
like I've seen that with newbiesto the breath, quite a bit
where they're and they're justlike why am I laughing?
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
It is so cool, you know.
I kind of see like having, youknow, ran the breath studio for
those, you know, a couple ofyears before COVID.
There's the way I've kind oflike I kind of categorize
facilitators a little bit Like Isee, I see kind of like two
sides of the street when itcomes to breathwork facilitators
(25:51):
.
There's kind of the agony sideof the street and there's the
ecstasy side of the street, andboth of these are definitely
like crossing over.
It's not like, oh, all we'regoing to do is like trauma dump
and heal ourselves, and there'salways a bit of both in each.
But yeah, you'll findfacilitators that are more
(26:11):
leaned into that work, thetrauma healing and, you know,
clearing of the nervous system.
And then you have this otherside of the street which are
honestly like my favoritefacilitators.
Oftentimes, like some of myfavorites, are like X, like
international DJs, for example,and they're like their bodies
can't handle the late nights andthe drugs anymore, so they they
(26:32):
guide breath work.
I love that.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Yeah, in fact I don't know if you know Lisa Day
Narvaez of Bliss Point.
Do you know her?
No, she's one of my favorite, infact she probably is my
favorite ecstasy side of thestreet.
Yeah, she does some stuffonline now so you might check
her out, but yeah, so I kind ofsee those two sides of the
street and that's actually why,you know, one of the reasons I
(26:58):
love breath so much is becauseit is a kind of Swiss army knife
.
You know, it'll meet you whereyou are and you know, if you
need to feel joy and just pure,pure joy, it will let you feel
that.
But it really ties into yourbody's wisdom and, yeah, let
your body kind of do its thing.
But man with the studio man,things I have seen.
(27:20):
I have seen, I mean you name it, I've seen it and we used to
open up the container at the endof the class and be like, okay,
if anyone wants to, you know,be witnessed if you will, you
know.
You know now's your moment.
The room would go silent andpeople start speaking up and
sharing their experiences.
I have heard the wildest things.
(27:41):
I realized today that I need toleave my spouse.
I forgave my mother.
Today I've got the title for mybook today.
You know, the range just sowide and really touches into
both that agony and the ecstasy.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah, you know you said something like breath.
Breath is a tool and you'regoing to get out of it what you
need to, and I've met differentkinds of breathwork
practitioners and all are great.
I do.
I would say that I've met somethat are more of that trauma
(28:23):
clearing and, to be honest,maybe that was me in the
beginning, I don't know, I don'tknow, but I felt some kind of
(28:58):
pushed that like let's clear thetrauma, let's you leading.
We're creating that containerand you can lead it however you
see fit, and I'm not judgingother people at all.
But what I have really, what Istrive to settle into, is really
allowing the breath to be thetool and the navigator and that
(29:18):
Swiss army knife.
Like you're pulling outwhatever part of the Swiss army
knife that you need for thismoment, who am I to tell you
what you need, that you need toclear your trauma or you need to
regulate your nervous system,or you need to regulate your
nervous system, or you need toexpress more joy, whatever.
And really allowing, allowingthe breath to be that navigation
(29:42):
, rather than me and it's sointeresting to hear other people
at- the end because and right,we get so in our heads once
again, because they're like oh,I did not get that at all, like
I didn't, I didn't have thislike huge moment, like come to
jesus moment.
Did I do it wrong?
Absolutely not, you didn't doit wrong.
(30:02):
Yeah, you're nervous and andthen we're coming from a nervous
system standpoint.
That's where your nervoussystem was at and your, your
body, will never push youfurther than you can, than your
nervous system can handle it,and I don't, really, I don't
personally believe that as thepractitioner I'm here to push
(30:25):
you into, I don't think thatthat is safe either.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, yeah, and I know you know a couple of things
that you said earlier I do.
I do want to touch on whatyou'd mentioned about.
You know how you coach yourclients to kind of go in and
listen.
At a somatic level, I know forme as a lifelong kind of like
type A entrepreneur, got tocontrol everything, got to
(30:56):
control everything.
That's yeah, yeah, yeah, guilty.
But you know those, thoseexperiences can range, as you
just reflected on.
They can be like, oh, notreally much happened today, but
like I feel peaceful.
And then other days you're, ohmy gosh, like I just saw God or
(31:18):
you know, or I went into somedark spaces that I didn't know
were there and it was importantfor me to see.
But that, listening to the body, and as we've touched on breath
awareness a little bit, this isanother kind of place where I
kind of categorize, if you will,the Swiss army knife it's like
I think the big blade is the,probably the, you know, the
(31:39):
scalpel is probably the breathwork, the active breathing, and
then what, what, what we mightcall the active meditation side
or breath awareness side, is notmanipulating the breath, just
returning to the breath,bringing awareness to the breath
and really reaping the benefitswith a little bit of practice,
(32:00):
and it's not hard to get therefully in the present moment, and
that's you know.
One of the one of the practicesthat's been really useful for me
is using breath awareness,going, okay, I'm just going to
bring my awareness to my breath,bring my awareness to my breath
.
There it is.
And then going, okay, let's seeif I can bring that awareness a
(32:24):
little deeper into my body andthen it'll start to drop down my
neck down into my abdomen.
Okay, and what's the energyfeel like in here?
Is it contraction or expansion?
Is it tension or expansion?
Is it?
Is it tension or excitement?
And what I've noticed and thisis kind of like a new practice
for me as of the last couple ofyears, I met this, this
(32:48):
spiritual quote, uh, coach, thiskind of self, you know,
designated spiritual coach, in aat a cold plunge up in the
mountains a year and a half agoand we just had a short
conversation with him.
But I asked him, I said what doyou find yourself telling your
clients most often?
The advice that you tell themmost often, and he said,
(33:13):
basically, aleister Crowley's dowhat thou wilt.
He said do what feels best toyou in each and every moment,
and you'll just be stacking winsin your life.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Hmm.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
And I think you know we have so much conditioning and
you know a sense of obligationto to other people and um, but
what I've started to do is I'vestacked that breath, awareness
and then bringing the attentioninto listening and then going OK
, if it's expansion orexcitement, then whatever it is
like I might be in a state, acertain type of state that would
(33:49):
that would induce that feeling.
If you're faced with kind of aquestion, or if you're in an
interaction with another humanbeing, or if you're just doing
something, if it's a contraction, that's, that's a no.
It might, it might be thatyou're holding fear and that
you're, you know, creating someof this with your mind.
(34:10):
But that could be what it's ano to.
It's, it's a oh, a oh.
I'm not postured or oriented tothis moment, right, but then
what feels like a yes?
Where is the excitement?
If there's excitement, that's ayes.
Move in that direction.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah, leo, you are talking human design right now.
This is exactly what I say.
So I have more questions.
But I normally end with humandesign.
But I'm going to throw it inright now because I mean, this
is you, segued perfectly andwithout even knowing it.
So sacral.
I said you're a 3-5 sacralgenerator.
(34:48):
Sacral is your, what we call inhuman design, your authority.
This is your decisionmakingmaking process, and
everyone has differentauthorities.
Splenic and sacral are verysimilar in this way.
Exactly what you just said iswhen we feel a yes often the
sacral and splenic, I wouldargue we feel this kind of like
(35:12):
pull forward, we feel thisopening, we feel this levity, we
feel excitement.
I always coach my clients and Isay you define, you find and
define what a yes means to you.
So that could feel like forsome people.
I noticed for me I actually getthis like bodily pull forward,
(35:35):
like I lean forward.
I also find I make a lot ofvocalizations so it'll be like
uh-huh, uh-huh is my yes.
If it's a no, I almost alwaysfeel that contraction or that
like a contraction, but likethis, maybe like tension in my
(35:56):
belly and my stomach, and Iactually, when I was little, I
used to tell my mom mom, mybelly hurts, my belly hurts.
And she navigated that meanslike something's wrong, like
something's misaligned withHannah.
She has something that you knowwe need to dive into.
And so you define what a yesand a no feels like and I love
that you are kind of looping inthis.
(36:18):
Come to the breath and actuallyplay with the breath and take
in that inhale and see what thebreath is telling you, how it's
connecting to your body.
I'm definitely going to stealthat from you and coin it and I
will use it with my clients, butI will, I will quote you in it.
But I love that bringing in thebreath because often again,
(36:41):
when we're in kind of thisdisconnect, when we're, I think,
sometimes when we're in ourhead, we do have this
disconnection to our body.
And how can you feel thatsacral center, how can you feel
that yes or that no, if you'renot coming back into your body
and breath?
Speaker 2 (36:59):
is a way to come back into your body.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
So, anyway, that was your sacral center.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Oh okay.
Well, I didn't have access tothat for most of my life.
That's, you know, it took, ittook a you know some guidance
from on the outside and a littlebit of like logic going.
Oh okay, that's that all makessense now.
And then I'll start practicingthat because I'm tired of making
bad decisions.
You know, it just takes toomuch of a toll.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Yeah, yeah, and you are.
I truly do believe that yourbody has the answer and and we
just spend so much time.
I know I do.
I mean, I'm not preaching toeveryone, I'm preaching to
myself when I say we spend somuch time living in our head.
I know I do.
So let's talk about I want togo back to this as we're kind of
(37:48):
wrapping up this creation, thiscreator, and finding the
creative within us.
Something that I always saidthat I'm like don't say this
about yourself is I'm notcreative.
I don't feel like.
In the past I yeah, I'm tryingto work on my self talk.
(38:09):
In the past, I have felt thatI'm not a very creative person
and art and like painting anddrawing.
I'm not an artist.
I am a musician that I willgive to myself, but I'm not very
creative.
So how does breath connect tocreativity?
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Yeah, yeah, you know, I think that distinction in
fact I think I might do somework to kind of get explicit
about defining this idea of likebeing creative in a more of a
puritanical, artistic sense andI don't really find that very
useful because obviously we'reall creating every moment of our
(38:55):
lives.
We're creating this, as youjust said, I'm creating these
words.
So, yeah, we're all creativeand we're all creators and we're
one with the creator and manyof the mythologies and we're
made in the image of the creator.
You know, for me and it's kindof wild actually, in the story
(39:17):
of Genesis, you know, in thebeginning was the word and the
word was with God, and the wordwas God and the word was spoken
and basically became flesh anddwelt among us.
And that's happening throughthe breath Vibration.
That's basically intentiongiving shape to the breath.
(39:38):
So, you know, for me and wespoke about this a little bit
before starting today probablythe biggest impetus for being
such an advocate of breathpractices and breath as a tool
(39:59):
is to empower that creativeforce within each and every one
of us.
You know, I said somethingbefore we started recording.
I see creativity as kind oflike cosmic lovemaking and we
can't not create right Like wecan't not do it 't not create
right Like we're we can't not doit?
(40:19):
Um, but we can choose to beconscious creators or
intentional creators and andthat doesn't mean you know
controlling things that meansyou know participating with
self-awareness and with acertain level of consciousness.
But for me, you know whetherit's it's the actual active
breathing, the breath work orthe breath awareness.
(40:41):
I was pushing the idea of alwaysbe evolving.
You know, always be improvingyourself.
And I realized about four yearsago, I realized, my goodness,
(41:05):
there's something going on herethat I can't see.
And I realized that, in my ownideological view on this, I was,
I was basically in a constantstate of, on a subconscious
level, rejecting myself in themoment.
If I always need to become, orif there's always an opportunity
(41:26):
to be better, then on somelevel I'm rejecting myself in
each and every moment I'm alive.
And it got to a point where Iwas like man, I'm doing all
these things and on some levelsI'm like I've moved a lot of
lines of my intelligence forward.
You know, I am evolving as ahuman.
You could say, but likesomething's wrong.
(41:47):
So I think it's when we getinto the present moment.
And if you've ever noticed this,like you know, for many years I
would slip into these states ofof just incredible, like flow
and peace.
And I'm like and not to becliche, you know, and I'm not
saying like necessarily flowstate nootropics, I'm talking
(42:09):
about like living in our power,where we're almost in a fearless
, very potent, drawing on all ofthe resources of our
consciousness in such a way like, if you think about the
limitations of fear and worryand anxiety and stress, you're
constantly trying to kind oflike I would say like rearrange
(42:31):
the deck chairs on the Titanic,yeah.
And it's like, hey, just jump inthe freaking ice water, okay,
and what we don't realize isthat we can, we're born again
when we die, when we jump intothe ice water, um, you know, on
the other side of fear, right onthe outside of your comfort
(42:52):
zone, all of these kind of liketruisms.
So for me, like the breath workdoes the heavy lifting of kind
of getting the likemisconceptions, you know,
mistaken identity stuff out, thetrauma, the emotional,
energetic blocks out, so that wecan be more present.
And then the breath, or thebreath awareness, is kind of
(43:13):
like our anchor, our morepractical moment by moment tool.
So the more, the more, the morewe clear that stuff, the easier
it is to use that.
Uh, you know that breathawareness to be in the moment,
but all in service of being inthe moment so that we can create
our lives from a place ofpurpose and power and clarity.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
I love that.
I love that distinction of,yeah, using the breathwork
journey as a tool to clear andthen using breath awareness as
this daily, moment by momenttool that we can always bring
back to, that we can alwaysincorporate in our lives and
really be the creator ratherthan be created.
(44:00):
We spend a lot of timelistening to other opinions and
other people, and whetherthey're opinions of people that
we highly respect, or justgiving our power away to what
somebody says on social media orwhat the school teacher says,
or our parents say know theschool teacher says or our
parents say I mean, well,hopefully we respect our parents
.
but very, very interesting, verycool distinctions, and thank
(44:25):
you for making that.
I've actually again, neverreally had that, that
distinction before.
So I love that Tell me.
I know that you said thatthere's a lot of coming back to
the creator and really cominginto our life in that mindset of
I'm constantly creating my lifeand finding that creativity in
(44:47):
your book.
So I would love for you you'rewriting it.
It hasn't come out yet, correct?
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Right, yeah, honestly , I've been writing this book
for 15 years.
I started it under anothertitle 15 years ago and you know
now I think it was it was aChristmas time that I was
visiting family and realized Iwas on a hike with my dad up in
(45:14):
the woods in Alaska.
I was like it's time I got todo this.
I'm going to slowly kill myselfif I don't take care of this.
So, yeah, so I'm writing it.
It's called the New CreatorRise of the Mindful Artist in
the New Meaning Economy and,yeah, I mean it's really kind of
(45:38):
a manifesto for creatives whowant to really live on purpose
and in service and in power inthis very rapidly changing,
technologically driven time thatwe're living through.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Yeah, I love that.
I am very excited for you and Ilove that.
Absolutely, time's going byfast, right, and there's a lot
and there's I mean that's awhole nother podcast Maybe we'll
have to.
I'll have you back on and we'lljust talk about technology and
AI and finding all of that.
(46:16):
That's not something.
Nother podcast Maybe we'll haveto.
I'll have you back on and we'lljust talk about technology and
AI and finding all of that.
That's not something that Iwant to get into right now, but
it's definitely something I wantto get into.
I think that would be reallyinteresting.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Yeah, I would love to .
So tell me, tell us where wecan follow up with you.
I know that you also have anapp.
I would love to hear a littlebit about that.
We were talking about thisbefore.
There's so many tools and Idon't claim to have the best
breathwork practice or the bestapproach by any means.
(46:51):
So I know that you havebreathwork in this app as well.
So tell us a little bit aboutthe app and then also just how
to stay connected with you.
Where do you hang out the most?
If people are like that booksounds interesting, let me make
sure that I stay connected.
So I hear when it's published,all of those good things.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Awesome, yeah, yeah.
So this is actually my secondbreathwork app.
I started building one justprior to the pandemic with a
couple of partners and justfound that I needed to have more
creative control.
I had someone else as thevoiceover, one of my star
teachers, amazing humans, youknow, we all kind of parted ways
(47:31):
in love.
But this is my second breathworkapp.
It's it's called ether E, t, hR and um.
If people are interested inchecking it out, it's at
etherone O N E, but um,basically, you know, I, as I
kind of like I'm leaned intothat ecstasy side of the street
(47:52):
um, as you can probably tell bynow.
Um, as you can probably tell bynow.
So this is essentially.
It's the.
It's the tool that I havewanted and I needed to.
Not only, you know, have a, youknow two taps and I'm breathing
to something that I can counton or I don't have to think
about who am I going to breathewith or what's the.
(48:14):
You know this, like you know,in wellness, I feel like most of
the time, when you go to reachfor, you know, a wellness tool,
you don't want to have to makedecisions.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
You're like like I'm dysregulated.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
It's just like give me what I need.
So so it's that there are twodifferent types of sequences in
the Ether app.
One I call flows and the otherI call shifts.
And obviously all breath shiftsare state, but the flows are
kind of like your daily bread oryour daily breath and that
(48:51):
helps to obviously regulatenervous system but also build
VO2 tolerance and endurance andstress resilience and things
like that.
And then the other kind ofcategory are these shifts and
those are very specificallydesigned sequences and sound
architecture to do everythingfrom like prep for sleep to, you
(49:14):
know, to energize in theafternoon, to to clear your
subconscious before startingyour day, for example, and those
have quite a range of differentsequencing.
So yeah, if you're interested inchecking that out, there's a
free seven-day trial at etherone.
And then, as far as the bookgoes, I send an email most
(49:39):
Saturday mornings.
It's basically snippets of thenew creator of this book.
As I'm doing the research andthe writing and the
contemplation, I'm sharing itwith my email list.
You can sign up for that atleomarscom that's M-A-R-R-S last
(50:01):
name dot com, completely freeof course, and I try and make
that stuff really accessible andkind of like you know, it's the
type of email that at least Iwould like to get on the weekend
instead of the weekdays.
I have my cup of coffee onSaturday or Sunday morning and
get some inspiration and somelife insight.
Speaker 1 (50:25):
What a cool idea.
You're really kind of bringingthe community along for the ride
and along the journey ofwriting the book, which is very
fun.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Working in public.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
Yeah, yeah, and I will link all of that down below
the journey of writing the book, which is very fun.
Yeah, working in public, yeah,yeah, and I will link all of
that down below.
I'll link the app and thewebsite so you can just easily
click on it, okay, last questionIf you were standing on a stage
and you had the microphone fora minute and you had the ability
to share one message with theworld, what would that message
(50:58):
be?
Speaker 2 (51:00):
I think you told me you were going to ask this
question.
Maybe I did.
Oh, my goodness.
Well, I would.
And you know all that.
You dream of being all of theaspects in your golden shadow,
(51:26):
the things you see out there inthe world and go, oh, I wish, or
oh, they're so lucky.
That's all inside of you andit's waiting for you to get
present.
And when you're present and youdevelop a practice of showing
up in the moment just showing upin the moment, not with a mask
on not trying, when you stoptrying and you get present, you
(51:49):
step into your power.
So, step into your power, getpresent.
Speaker 1 (51:55):
Wow, you should be a motivational speaker.
That was beautiful.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
I need to rewind that .
Speaker 1 (52:02):
listen to it again.
The last minute, wow, yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
Hard-earned lessons got to say.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
It's harder in practice than it is just
listening.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
Oh yeah, Well, at least yeah, I mean knowing you
know that stuff forever, but itgets really easy.
It's actually a very easypractice Once you get over you
know building the muscle.
Just start flexing that musclemoment to moment and you'll find
your way there.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
Thank you.
Thank you so much for coming onthe podcast.
This was a really funconversation.
Thank you, Hannah.
Speaker 2 (52:34):
It's a pleasure.
Hello, welcome back to the podcast journey to well.
So today I am joined withanother breathwork practitioner,
leo Mars.
He is the founder of the firstbreath studio in America, a
really early pioneer of bringingbreath to communities and his
community, philosopher, creativeentrepreneur, forthcoming
(00:25):
author, which we'll talk aboutyour book, at the end of the
episode.
Leo, thank you so much forcoming on.
Oh, we forgot, he's also a 3-5sacral generator, which we're
going to talk about human design.
So thank you so much for comingon.
One of the things that we werekind of chatting about before we
started was how do we introduceyou, like what are the hats
(00:46):
that we should put on?
And we all wear so manydifferent hats all the time and
it's really hard to pick a fewor pick the right ones, right.
So I'm going to turn the reinsover to you to introduce
yourself who is Leo, and thenwe'll start our conversation
about breath.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Yay, well, thank you for having me, hannah.
I'm happy to be here and haveenjoyed our conversations up to
this moment very much.
So I'm Leo Mars.
I am an entrepreneur, born andraised in Alaska, have always
kind of had a tilt toward.
I was raised Christian andmemorized a lot of the Bible
(01:29):
growing up in private school andyou know I always felt a strong
resonance with basically, likeas an adult, I see it as Christ
consciousness, and that wasn'tsomething that was really talked
about.
You know, in my privateschooling there's a lot of, even
(01:57):
emphasis on the Old Testament,which I was always kind of like
what the's going on here andwanted to understand what a good
life is like and how to youknow, use magic if you will, and
understand magic.
So as an entrepreneur, you arejust kind of inherently agentic.
(02:21):
You know you're reallydeploying magic every day, all
the time and you have to hold.
You know you're you're reallydeploying magic every day, all
the time and you have to hold.
You know that wand is in yourhand.
So so I've always had a verystrong connection to creativity
and to making a difference, andit wasn't until I was 27 years
(02:41):
old when I was running a verysuccessful nightclub and
four-star restaurant that I hadopened and designed at 25.
That I kind of had anon-ordinary state experience
happen in the shower of allplaces, of course.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Always random.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
Yeah, yeah, and those shower experiences, you know.
So this experience really shookme to the core and changed my
trajectory, or, you know, reallyreally altered my worldview, my
sense of self, my sense of whata good life might look like,
very deeply.
I was visiting my father inAlaska, taking about a week away
(03:26):
from my businesses in the city,and it was about 645 in the
morning, waters falling down mybody, just an ordinary shower,
and I somehow slipped into thisaltered state of consciousness.
It wasn't an out of bodyexperience, I was still looking
(03:47):
through my eyes, but it felt asthough, you know, there were no
thoughts in my head and really,from like a mechanism of action
perspective, I think that'smaybe what, what had to do with
it.
I don't know how I got to thisthoughtless place, but there was
no, there wasn't a singlethought in my head.
So I would say say, like youknow, looking at that from a
(04:08):
rational perspective, what thatdid was it essentially gave me
no sense of location other thanthrough my eyes.
So I had a sense of like.
Here I am staring at the showercurtain, kind of pulsing in a
trance, but I am everywhere.
I am, you know, beyond thewalls of the bathroom, beyond
(04:29):
the walls of the house, beyondthe stratosphere of the earth.
And, you know this, thisexperience really shook me to
the core.
You know, there weren't manyqualities to this kind of
awakening state, but there was adeep sense of, I mean, there
was expanse, there was a senseof freedom, a sense of like
genie out of the bottle, like Ican breathe.
(04:51):
But one of the only qualitiesthat that state had, I knew just
like, somatically, intuitively,I knew that I could just
effortlessly exhale an entireuniverse into existence, and so
that really stuck with me.
You know, there's a many seriesof events that happened.
(05:12):
This was 20, 27 years old I'm42 now, so that was, you know,
quite a few years ago.
Many winding turns.
But I got very interested atthat point in the big questions
like who am I?
You know, where do we come from?
What's going on here?
All of a sudden, the teachingsof, you know, all the great
(05:34):
masters really lit up in myawareness.
I realized like, oh, thatwasn't just for them, like these
states of enlightenment are forall of us, not not just these
masters.
So that got me, you know, intoa very, you know, really deep
yoga practice and I triedgetting into meditation, always
(05:56):
struggled with meditation.
We talked about that a littlebit and one thing led to another
was pulled into the innercircle of a high level of
philosophy and something calledintegral theory, which was a
(06:17):
meta theory that essentially ismade of all perspectives and
models and theories, is made ofall perspectives and models and
theories.
And then when I discovered thebreath, which we talked about a
little bit, it, was like oh yesthis is it.
Don't need any psychedelics now.
(06:37):
Yeah right, we can talk aboutthat too.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
Yeah, I remember.
I want to let you finish, but aquick note.
Everyone typically assumes thatI also do plant medicine
journeys because they're just sosimilar and and and not similar
.
You have similar states ofconsciousness, I would say,
(07:05):
although I have no idea becauseI don't do plant medicine
journeys, and I think you evenasked me that and I was like you
know, I, I haven't felt thecall or the pull and I, I love
breath work and it's somethingthat I can put myself into
instead of in my mind.
I have a lot of, I have a lotof blocks around any sort of
(07:25):
external in ingesting, any sortof external um supplement or
whatever, although I do drinkalcohol.
So you know we're, we'rewalking contradictions, but yeah
um, anyway, so keep going.
Yeah, just just so interestingthat you brought that up, but
yeah with your story.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
I love it yeah, yeah, so, yeah, so I guess the you
know I, I found the breath wentthrough some, you know, several
years of very deep psychedelicuse and I, you know, what I
would do is I would, I would, Iwould basically fast for 24
hours and then I would take aheroic dose of some entheogen.
(08:05):
Typically I was using mushroomsor LSD in my home with
basically just me, my gardenmyself.
I'd start on Saturday afternoonand go until the wee hours of
the morning and you pay a lotfor that.
That's a very expensive toll toyou know, understand the nature
(08:30):
of reality and consciousness.
You know you lose sleep and youknow you can really get
sometimes, um, you know,particularly with the synthetic
um, you know, with with thesynthetic stuff, you can get
stuck in some really dark spaces.
And you know, but really havebeen cultivating my own.
(08:52):
I would call it like a designphilosophy for life, for, you
know, 14, 15 years now I call itevolution by intelligent design
.
It's kind of a synthesis of twoapparently paradoxical ideas
the idea that consciousness isemerging out of the evolutionary
process with the idea thatessentially, spirit is involving
(09:16):
itself into form or descendinginto form.
It really kind of resolves.
For me, one of the conflicts is, or one of the challenges has
been how can I be, how can I beI am, how can I be everything
and also, at the same time, bethis human organism with this
(09:38):
personality and this brain andthese drives and values and
proclivities?
And so, yeah, I've gone reallydeep into philosophy and
mysticism, but I feel verydeeply, very strongly, that
creativity is at the core of ourprocess.
(09:59):
I see creativity as how weparticipate or like make love
with the universe, if you will.
And breath is just a massive.
To me, it's the most, it's themost potent tool we have to live
a better life in this modernage.
Opened the breath studio in2018, early 2018, before breath
(10:25):
was kind of a trend.
In fact, if you look up Google,you know keywords.
The trend actually startedwithin a couple of months of
opening the studio.
So that was really totallyunplanned but well-timed and,
you know, had a chance to reallysee how the breath was affected
(10:46):
everyone's lives.
People would come in.
I've witnessed thousands ofpeople come in with the weight
of the world on their shouldersand leave a breath session with
a spark of hope or a new leaseon life, even after one breath
(11:09):
session.
So I'm a huge advocate of thebreath and really respect what
you're doing as well, hannah.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
Thank you, Thank you, Obviously.
Likewise, it was one of thosethings that changed my
connection, my ability toconnect to my body, my ability
to connect to I love that you'resaying creativity and creation
(11:38):
and love and all of these, thesethings, because truly that's
what I experience.
I don't I don't know that I'veworded it that way before
experience.
I don't, I don't know that I'veworded it that way before I
will.
I will say I love bringing inhuman design and one of the
things that I noticed about yourhuman design chart is we all
(11:59):
have defined centers andundefined centers and open
centers and they're just likethese shapes in our chart, their
energy centers, which, ifyou're familiar with the chakra
system I'm sure you are theyroughly pull from the chakra
system.
We have seven chakras, nineenergy centers, because the
heart and the solar plexus aresplit into two different centers
(12:24):
, but you have three definedcenters and they're all like
lower centers.
So you have your root chakra,your root center is defined.
Your solar plexus no, hold on,I'm messing this up your root
chakra, your sacral center andyour spleen are defined, which
(12:44):
are all all like kind of pull inthat creativity and that
groundedness and that love.
I mean the sacral center isreally our center of love as
well, and pleasure and all ofthese things.
So I think that's really kindof cool about your journey and
your human design chart.
But you talked about havingtrouble kind of settling into
(13:09):
meditation and getting intomeditation and you and I are
similar.
I was blessed.
My mother had me meditatingwhen I was young.
I was a child Actually.
I've never shared this story,so I will share it with you.
I was struggling with math.
I've never been a math person.
(13:29):
I've always been that likephilosophy, language, english
definitely thrived more in those, but math and science never
really liked, history neverreally liked.
And so I was learning my timestable in whatever grade.
That was third grade maybe andI couldn't learn the times
tables.
I was really struggling with itand my mom one day she was like
(13:50):
you know what, hannah, I thisis not a punishment.
This is something that I wantto explore with you because I
think that it would help.
I'm going to wake you up 20minutes early before school
every day and you're going tocome in bed with me and you're
going to meditate and she wouldsometimes do most of the time it
was some sort of kind of simpleguided meditation and in her
(14:11):
favorite part of the story isthat I did so much better in
math and I learned my timestables and all of those things.
So I've been meditating on andoff since I was a child and then
I started meditating heavily incollege.
But truly, I think the fasterthat our lives go, the harder it
is to keep that meditationpractice and be able to settle
(14:36):
into a meditation you and I kindof talked about the difficulty
of going from 100 miles an hourto zero.
It's like stopping your body,stopping your mind, and that is
a true practice.
And I still meditate and I havenothing against it.
And I also found that breathwas this another doorway to get
(14:59):
into meditation?
I always call breathwork anactive meditation.
I don't know if that'ssomething that you ever talked
about yeah.
Yeah, so my question would justbe what is your experience with
that?
Because I think that'ssomething that resonates with a
lot of people.
I talk about meditation with mycommunity and a lot of them is
(15:23):
like either oh, I can't meditate, or I think I meditate the
wrong way, or I can't slow mybrain down, and then we just
kind of get away from it becauseit's difficult and we we think
that we're doing it the wrongway, which yeah, or something's
wrong with me.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Maybe that was.
That was my internal dialogue.
Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, so yeah, I would love to hear that, that
kind of part of your story.
And then, what is differentabout breathwork to you and your
experience versus meditation?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Yeah, yeah.
That's a great question andit's definitely at the core of
why you know really was souseful for me and such a breath
of fresh air.
Pun intended to discover.
Pun intended to discover, yeah.
So when I was 29, have youheard of Vipassana?
(16:14):
No, vipassana meditation?
Oh, maybe, yeah, typicallythey're 10-day silent meditation
retreats.
So when I was 29, I thought Idiscovered I came across
Vipassana somehow and I was like, oh, I'm going to apply for
this and if I get accepted whichthey do have a pretty strong
(16:34):
filter system, it's all ondonations and if I get accepted,
then I'll come out like Buddhaon the other side.
This is perfect.
All I got to do is disciplinemyself for 10 days and I will be
enlightened.
But yeah, I went to thisVipassana retreat in some
(17:02):
beautiful kind of naturepreserve in Oregon and that's
the 10 days of silence.
And what I discovered withinthe first 12 hours of, you know,
after the first kind of like,everyone congregates in the
meditation hall and you know theguides are like okay, you know,
at this point forward you'regoing to, you know, not going to
talk for 10 days.
(17:23):
What I discovered within thefirst 12 hours of that was, you
know, I'm pretty crazy and I am,you know, I was sharing, we all
had kind of bunk mates.
So I had a cabin with a bunkmate and, you know, going into a
space with a stranger whereyou're sleeping for the next,
(17:45):
you know, week and a half andnot not being able to talk to
each other, just kind of headdown looking at the ground.
You're just kind of with yourthoughts and that was very it
was a rude awakening, to say theleast.
You know, I realized all ofthese voices in my head, all of
you know, the inner critic andall of the kind of like the
(18:08):
survival-like voices kind ofstarted chattering and I'm like
and they just got louder andlouder and I'm like, oh no, I'm
like I'm.
I don't think I'm schizophrenic, but like it sure feels like
I'm schizophrenic.
There was, there was nowhere tokind of like, you know, expel
any of that energy which is gets, just stay in here.
(18:29):
And so I made it through.
It requires a lot of disciplineto get through a 10-day
Vipassana retreat.
I think they say like 40% ofpeople leave by day three or
four because you're just sittingin like 36 by 36 inch space,
meditation space, for 10 hours aday in meditation, one out, one
(18:52):
hour, um, one hour segments, um, but 10 hours of sitting on
that thing every day, and soyou're dealing with extreme pain
.
By day four they start whatthey call strong determination.
So strong determination is whenit's like find your position
and don't move for the entireone hour sit and that's like
literally do not move, like youbreathe but don't move a muscle.
(19:14):
It was extremely painful bothpsychologically and physically.
I left that experience reallyprobably as close to like having
suicidal thoughts as I've everbeen.
Yeah, and you know I went homeand started a pretty strong
(19:39):
meditation practice where I wasreally committed for months.
But I thought, you know, I justcan't break through.
Something's wrong with me.
I'm the lost cause wrong with me.
I'm the, I'm the lost cause.
And then when I discovered thebreath and realized, oh, like to
(20:03):
me now meditation is.
It's like a by-product of whatI would say like, like,
essentially, like equalizing orregulating the nervous system,
and and sitting in a state ofsilence or witness.
So I'm trying to think whatyour question was.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Oh it was just your experience and what you felt.
The differences are betweenbreathwork and meditation, and
also the similarities too,because there's a lot.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yeah, well, you know it's said that the Buddha never
gave meditation instructionswithout starting with breath
awareness.
And I do think that, especiallyin our modern age, where we're
(20:51):
just so overloaded withinformation and to-do lists and
all the things, that it's wherepretty much we should always
start.
I think that goes for probablymost humans and I think it's the
reason why, you know, so manypeople struggle with meditation.
You know we sit down with adysregulated nervous system.
(21:14):
You know we're getting cut offin traffic and, you know,
haggled by debt collectors orwhatever's going on, dealing
with the stress of just being amodern human, relationships and
all the things.
So, yeah, for me I see them askind of, you know, a partnership
.
(21:35):
I prefer breathing intomeditation, you know, by and
large, and this is pretty muchthe only way I'll do it, unless
I'm, like you know, in a reallybeautiful serene setting in
nature and I'm just like, oh, Idon't have a place to lay down,
I might go to my breath.
Yeah, so I think that you know,eckhart Tolle says in A New
(21:58):
Earth, and I'll paraphrase, hesaid you cannot think and take a
conscious breath at the sametime.
Conscious breathing stops yourmind.
Breathing stops your mind.
So for me I really see it as asupport.
Breath is a kind of a support,and a gateway into states of
(22:20):
meditation.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
I love that.
Thank you for that quote andthat information and that
reminder.
That's definitely somethingthat I find I I told I told you
this.
Maybe everyone's an overthinker.
I don't know if I overthink morethan more than the average, but
I spend so much time up in myhead and so much time I just
(22:45):
always feel like I have so manythoughts running through my mind
, and one of the things that Ilearned in my specific training
of breathwork is it's thisopportunity to really be present
with the body and thesensations that are coming up in
(23:05):
the body, because our body isalways communicating to us, our
body is always sharing theseinsights and these pieces of
wisdom, but it speaks a lotquieter than our mind, and so
one of the things that I alwaysinvite my clients to practice
that I also certainly practicewith breath is noticing the
(23:27):
sensations.
Noticing the breath, like whereare you breathing into?
Can you breathe all the waydown into your tailbone?
What does that feel like versusbreathing into your stomach or
breathing into your rib cage?
And noticing what sensationsare arising and not getting
stuck in the story behind.
Oftentimes we're like oh, myshoulder hurts, oh, it's because
(23:49):
I'm so stressed.
I must have slept the storybehind.
Oftentimes we're like oh, myshoulder hurts, oh it's because
I'm so stressed, or I must haveslept the wrong way, or I, you
know, I had a really hard likearm workout and I must have just
kind of like twinged somethingand we get.
So that's where our mindimmediately goes.
Is the story behind things Samewith emotions?
So if we find an emotion isarising in a breath, work,
(24:13):
practice of like, oh, I'mfeeling really sad right now,
what is the story behind that?
Can I like connect that to amemory or can I connect that to
something that's going on in mylife?
Maybe?
It was a hard conversation Ihad with my sister last week,
and what if we didn't connect itto a story?
(24:34):
What if we didn't follow up?
I'm sad because just I'mfeeling sad right now.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
What if?
Speaker 1 (24:42):
I allowed myself to cry or I'm feeling happy.
What if I allowed myself tolaugh?
I had someone in my breathworkclass last week and she was like
I just wanted to laugh, so badthat I didn't want to throw
other people off because theywere crying.
I'm like no girl laugh Like ifyou feel like you need a laugh,
laugh.
And she's like I don't even knowwhy, like I wasn't, I didn't
(25:03):
have anything, I just felt, youknow, like I needed to, I'm like
, do it.
Your body wants to express thatemotion too.
It's not always the heavyeither, which I don't know what
your experience is with that.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
But oh, yeah, yeah, oh yeah.
I love that, that laughter fromthe breath, like especially
like I've seen that with newbiesto the breath, quite a bit
where they're and they're justlike why am I laughing?
Speaker 1 (25:29):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
It is so cool, you know.
I kind of see like having, youknow, ran the breath studio for
those, you know, a couple ofyears before COVID.
There's the way I've kind oflike I kind of categorize
facilitators a little bit Like Isee, I see kind of like two
sides of the street when itcomes to breathwork facilitators
(25:51):
.
There's kind of the agony sideof the street and there's the
ecstasy side of the street, andboth of these are definitely
like crossing over.
It's not like, oh, all we'regoing to do is like trauma dump
and heal ourselves, and there'salways a bit of both in each.
But yeah, you'll findfacilitators that are more
(26:11):
leaned into that work, thetrauma healing and, you know,
clearing of the nervous system.
And then you have this otherside of the street which are
honestly like my favoritefacilitators.
Oftentimes, like some of myfavorites, are like X, like
international DJs, for example,and they're like their bodies
can't handle the late nights andthe drugs anymore, so they they
(26:32):
guide breath work.
I love that.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Yeah, in fact I don't know if you know Lisa Day
Narvaez of Bliss Point.
Do you know her?
No, she's one of my favorite, infact she probably is my
favorite ecstasy side of thestreet.
Yeah, she does some stuffonline now so you might check
her out, but yeah, so I kind ofsee those two sides of the
street and that's actually why,you know, one of the reasons I
(26:58):
love breath so much is becauseit is a kind of Swiss army knife
.
You know, it'll meet you whereyou are and you know, if you
need to feel joy and just pure,pure joy, it will let you feel
that.
But it really ties into yourbody's wisdom and, yeah, let
your body kind of do its thing.
But man with the studio man,things I have seen.
(27:20):
I have seen, I mean you name it, I've seen it and we used to
open up the container at the endof the class and be like, okay,
if anyone wants to, you know,be witnessed if you will, you
know.
You know now's your moment.
The room would go silent andpeople start speaking up and
sharing their experiences.
I have heard the wildest things.
(27:41):
I realized today that I need toleave my spouse.
I forgave my mother.
Today I've got the title for mybook today.
You know, the range just sowide and really touches into
both that agony and the ecstasy.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Yeah, you know you said something like breath.
Breath is a tool and you'regoing to get out of it what you
need to, and I've met differentkinds of breathwork
practitioners and all are great.
I do.
I would say that I've met somethat are more of that trauma
(28:23):
clearing and, to be honest,maybe that was me in the
beginning, I don't know, I don'tknow, but I felt some kind of
(28:58):
pushed that like let's clear thetrauma, let's you leading.
We're creating that containerand you can lead it however you
see fit, and I'm not judgingother people at all.
But what I have really, what Istrive to settle into, is really
allowing the breath to be thetool and the navigator and that
(29:18):
Swiss army knife.
Like you're pulling outwhatever part of the Swiss army
knife that you need for thismoment, who am I to tell you
what you need, that you need toclear your trauma or you need to
regulate your nervous system,or you need to regulate your
nervous system, or you need toexpress more joy, whatever.
And really allowing, allowingthe breath to be that navigation
(29:42):
, rather than me and it's sointeresting to hear other people
at- the end because and right,we get so in our heads once
again, because they're like oh,I did not get that at all, like
I didn't, I didn't have thislike huge moment, like come to
jesus moment.
Did I do it wrong?
Absolutely not, you didn't doit wrong.
(30:02):
Yeah, you're nervous and andthen we're coming from a nervous
system standpoint.
That's where your nervoussystem was at and your, your
body, will never push youfurther than you can, than your
nervous system can handle it,and I don't, really, I don't
personally believe that as thepractitioner I'm here to push
(30:25):
you into, I don't think thatthat is safe either.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, yeah, and I know you know a couple of things
that you said earlier I do.
I do want to touch on whatyou'd mentioned about.
You know how you coach yourclients to kind of go in and
listen.
At a somatic level, I know forme as a lifelong kind of like
type A entrepreneur, got tocontrol everything, got to
(30:56):
control everything.
That's yeah, yeah, yeah, guilty.
But you know those, thoseexperiences can range, as you
just reflected on.
They can be like, oh, notreally much happened today, but
like I feel peaceful.
And then other days you're, ohmy gosh, like I just saw God or
(31:18):
you know, or I went into somedark spaces that I didn't know
were there and it was importantfor me to see.
But that, listening to the body, and as we've touched on breath
awareness a little bit, this isanother kind of place where I
kind of categorize, if you will,the Swiss army knife it's like
I think the big blade is the,probably the, you know, the
(31:39):
scalpel is probably the breathwork, the active breathing, and
then what, what, what we mightcall the active meditation side
or breath awareness side, is notmanipulating the breath, just
returning to the breath,bringing awareness to the breath
and really reaping the benefitswith a little bit of practice,
(32:00):
and it's not hard to get therefully in the present moment, and
that's you know.
One of the one of the practicesthat's been really useful for me
is using breath awareness,going, okay, I'm just going to
bring my awareness to my breath,bring my awareness to my breath
.
There it is.
And then going, okay, let's seeif I can bring that awareness a
(32:24):
little deeper into my body andthen it'll start to drop down my
neck down into my abdomen.
Okay, and what's the energyfeel like in here?
Is it contraction or expansion?
Is it tension or expansion?
Is it?
Is it tension or excitement?
And what I've noticed and thisis kind of like a new practice
for me as of the last couple ofyears, I met this, this
(32:48):
spiritual quote, uh, coach, thiskind of self, you know,
designated spiritual coach, in aat a cold plunge up in the
mountains a year and a half agoand we just had a short
conversation with him.
But I asked him, I said what doyou find yourself telling your
clients most often?
The advice that you tell themmost often, and he said,
(33:13):
basically, aleister Crowley's dowhat thou wilt.
He said do what feels best toyou in each and every moment,
and you'll just be stacking winsin your life.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Hmm.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
And I think you know we have so much conditioning and
you know a sense of obligationto to other people and um, but
what I've started to do is I'vestacked that breath, awareness
and then bringing the attentioninto listening and then going OK
, if it's expansion orexcitement, then whatever it is
like I might be in a state, acertain type of state that would
(33:49):
that would induce that feeling.
If you're faced with kind of aquestion, or if you're in an
interaction with another humanbeing, or if you're just doing
something, if it's a contraction, that's, that's a no.
It might, it might be thatyou're holding fear and that
you're, you know, creating someof this with your mind.
(34:10):
But that could be what it's ano to.
It's, it's a oh, a oh.
I'm not postured or oriented tothis moment, right, but then
what feels like a yes?
Where is the excitement?
If there's excitement, that's ayes.
Move in that direction.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
Yeah, leo, you are talking human design right now.
This is exactly what I say.
So I have more questions.
But I normally end with humandesign.
But I'm going to throw it inright now because I mean, this
is you, segued perfectly andwithout even knowing it.
So sacral.
I said you're a 3-5 sacralgenerator.
(34:48):
Sacral is your, what we call inhuman design, your authority.
This is your decisionmakingmaking process, and
everyone has differentauthorities.
Splenic and sacral are verysimilar in this way.
Exactly what you just said iswhen we feel a yes often the
sacral and splenic, I wouldargue we feel this kind of like
(35:12):
pull forward, we feel thisopening, we feel this levity, we
feel excitement.
I always coach my clients and Isay you define, you find and
define what a yes means to you.
So that could feel like forsome people.
I noticed for me I actually getthis like bodily pull forward,
(35:35):
like I lean forward.
I also find I make a lot ofvocalizations so it'll be like
uh-huh, uh-huh is my yes.
If it's a no, I almost alwaysfeel that contraction or that
like a contraction, but likethis, maybe like tension in my
(35:56):
belly and my stomach, and Iactually, when I was little, I
used to tell my mom mom, mybelly hurts, my belly hurts.
And she navigated that meanslike something's wrong, like
something's misaligned withHannah.
She has something that you knowwe need to dive into.
And so you define what a yesand a no feels like and I love
that you are kind of looping inthis.
(36:18):
Come to the breath and actuallyplay with the breath and take
in that inhale and see what thebreath is telling you, how it's
connecting to your body.
I'm definitely going to stealthat from you and coin it and I
will use it with my clients, butI will, I will quote you in it.
But I love that bringing in thebreath because often again,
(36:41):
when we're in kind of thisdisconnect, when we're, I think,
sometimes when we're in ourhead, we do have this
disconnection to our body.
And how can you feel thatsacral center, how can you feel
that yes or that no, if you'renot coming back into your body
and breath?
Speaker 2 (36:59):
is a way to come back into your body.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
So, anyway, that was your sacral center.
Speaker 2 (37:05):
Oh okay.
Well, I didn't have access tothat for most of my life.
That's, you know, it took, ittook a you know some guidance
from on the outside and a littlebit of like logic going.
Oh okay, that's that all makessense now.
And then I'll start practicingthat because I'm tired of making
bad decisions.
You know, it just takes toomuch of a toll.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Yeah, yeah, and you are.
I truly do believe that yourbody has the answer and and we
just spend so much time.
I know I do.
I mean, I'm not preaching toeveryone, I'm preaching to
myself when I say we spend somuch time living in our head.
I know I do.
So let's talk about I want togo back to this as we're kind of
(37:48):
wrapping up this creation, thiscreator, and finding the
creative within us.
Something that I always saidthat I'm like don't say this
about yourself is I'm notcreative.
I don't feel like.
In the past I yeah, I'm tryingto work on my self talk.
(38:09):
In the past, I have felt thatI'm not a very creative person
and art and like painting anddrawing.
I'm not an artist.
I am a musician that I willgive to myself, but I'm not very
creative.
So how does breath connect tocreativity?
Speaker 2 (38:31):
Yeah, yeah, you know, I think that distinction in
fact I think I might do somework to kind of get explicit
about defining this idea of likebeing creative in a more of a
puritanical, artistic sense andI don't really find that very
useful because obviously we'reall creating every moment of our
(38:55):
lives.
We're creating this, as youjust said, I'm creating these
words.
So, yeah, we're all creativeand we're all creators and we're
one with the creator and manyof the mythologies and we're
made in the image of the creator.
You know, for me and it's kindof wild actually, in the story
(39:17):
of Genesis, you know, in thebeginning was the word and the
word was with God, and the wordwas God and the word was spoken
and basically became flesh anddwelt among us.
And that's happening throughthe breath Vibration.
That's basically intentiongiving shape to the breath.
(39:38):
So, you know, for me and wespoke about this a little bit
before starting today probablythe biggest impetus for being
such an advocate of breathpractices and breath as a tool
(39:59):
is to empower that creativeforce within each and every one
of us.
You know, I said somethingbefore we started recording.
I see creativity as kind oflike cosmic lovemaking and we
can't not create right Like wecan't not do it 't not create
right Like we're we can't not doit?
(40:19):
Um, but we can choose to beconscious creators or
intentional creators and andthat doesn't mean you know
controlling things that meansyou know participating with
self-awareness and with acertain level of consciousness.
But for me, you know whetherit's it's the actual active
breathing, the breath work orthe breath awareness.
(40:41):
I was pushing the idea of alwaysbe evolving.
You know, always be improvingyourself.
And I realized about four yearsago, I realized, my goodness,
(41:05):
there's something going on herethat I can't see.
And I realized that, in my ownideological view on this, I was,
I was basically in a constantstate of, on a subconscious
level, rejecting myself in themoment.
If I always need to become, orif there's always an opportunity
(41:26):
to be better, then on somelevel I'm rejecting myself in
each and every moment I'm alive.
And it got to a point where Iwas like man, I'm doing all
these things and on some levelsI'm like I've moved a lot of
lines of my intelligence forward.
You know, I am evolving as ahuman.
You could say, but likesomething's wrong.
(41:47):
So I think it's when we getinto the present moment.
And if you've ever noticed this,like you know, for many years I
would slip into these states ofof just incredible, like flow
and peace.
And I'm like and not to becliche, you know, and I'm not
saying like necessarily flowstate nootropics, I'm talking
(42:09):
about like living in our power,where we're almost in a fearless
, very potent, drawing on all ofthe resources of our
consciousness in such a way like, if you think about the
limitations of fear and worryand anxiety and stress, you're
constantly trying to kind oflike I would say like rearrange
(42:31):
the deck chairs on the Titanic,yeah.
And it's like, hey, just jump inthe freaking ice water, okay,
and what we don't realize isthat we can, we're born again
when we die, when we jump intothe ice water, um, you know, on
the other side of fear, right onthe outside of your comfort
(42:52):
zone, all of these kind of liketruisms.
So for me, like the breath workdoes the heavy lifting of kind
of getting the likemisconceptions, you know,
mistaken identity stuff out, thetrauma, the emotional,
energetic blocks out, so that wecan be more present.
And then the breath, or thebreath awareness, is kind of
(43:13):
like our anchor, our morepractical moment by moment tool.
So the more, the more, the morewe clear that stuff, the easier
it is to use that.
Uh, you know that breathawareness to be in the moment,
but all in service of being inthe moment so that we can create
our lives from a place ofpurpose and power and clarity.
Speaker 1 (43:35):
I love that.
I love that distinction of,yeah, using the breathwork
journey as a tool to clear andthen using breath awareness as
this daily, moment by momenttool that we can always bring
back to, that we can alwaysincorporate in our lives and
really be the creator ratherthan be created.
(44:00):
We spend a lot of timelistening to other opinions and
other people, and whetherthey're opinions of people that
we highly respect, or justgiving our power away to what
somebody says on social media orwhat the school teacher says,
or our parents say know theschool teacher says or our
parents say I mean, well,hopefully we respect our parents
.
but very, very interesting, verycool distinctions, and thank
(44:25):
you for making that.
I've actually again, neverreally had that, that
distinction before.
So I love that Tell me.
I know that you said thatthere's a lot of coming back to
the creator and really cominginto our life in that mindset of
I'm constantly creating my lifeand finding that creativity in
(44:47):
your book.
So I would love for you you'rewriting it.
It hasn't come out yet, correct?
Speaker 2 (44:54):
Right, yeah, honestly , I've been writing this book
for 15 years.
I started it under anothertitle 15 years ago and you know
now I think it was it was aChristmas time that I was
visiting family and realized Iwas on a hike with my dad up in
(45:14):
the woods in Alaska.
I was like it's time I got todo this.
I'm going to slowly kill myselfif I don't take care of this.
So, yeah, so I'm writing it.
It's called the New CreatorRise of the Mindful Artist in
the New Meaning Economy and,yeah, I mean it's really kind of
(45:38):
a manifesto for creatives whowant to really live on purpose
and in service and in power inthis very rapidly changing,
technologically driven time thatwe're living through.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Yeah, I love that.
I am very excited for you and Ilove that.
Absolutely, time's going byfast, right, and there's a lot
and there's I mean that's awhole nother podcast Maybe we'll
have to.
I'll have you back on and we'lljust talk about technology and
AI and finding all of that.
(46:16):
That's not something.
Nother podcast Maybe we'll haveto.
I'll have you back on and we'lljust talk about technology and
AI and finding all of that.
That's not something that Iwant to get into right now, but
it's definitely something I wantto get into.
I think that would be reallyinteresting.
Speaker 2 (46:25):
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (46:27):
Yeah, I would love to .
So tell me, tell us where wecan follow up with you.
I know that you also have anapp.
I would love to hear a littlebit about that.
We were talking about thisbefore.
There's so many tools and Idon't claim to have the best
breathwork practice or the bestapproach by any means.
(46:51):
So I know that you havebreathwork in this app as well.
So tell us a little bit aboutthe app and then also just how
to stay connected with you.
Where do you hang out the most?
If people are like that booksounds interesting, let me make
sure that I stay connected.
So I hear when it's published,all of those good things.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Awesome, yeah, yeah.
So this is actually my secondbreathwork app.
I started building one justprior to the pandemic with a
couple of partners and justfound that I needed to have more
creative control.
I had someone else as thevoiceover, one of my star
teachers, amazing humans, youknow, we all kind of parted ways
(47:31):
in love.
But this is my second breathworkapp.
It's it's called ether E, t, hR and um.
If people are interested inchecking it out, it's at
etherone O N E, but um,basically, you know, I, as I
kind of like I'm leaned intothat ecstasy side of the street
(47:52):
um, as you can probably tell bynow.
Um, as you can probably tell bynow.
So this is essentially.
It's the.
It's the tool that I havewanted and I needed to.
Not only, you know, have a, youknow two taps and I'm breathing
to something that I can counton or I don't have to think
about who am I going to breathewith or what's the.
(48:14):
You know this, like you know,in wellness, I feel like most of
the time, when you go to reachfor, you know, a wellness tool,
you don't want to have to makedecisions.
Speaker 1 (48:29):
You're like like I'm dysregulated.
Speaker 2 (48:30):
It's just like give me what I need.
So so it's that there are twodifferent types of sequences in
the Ether app.
One I call flows and the otherI call shifts.
And obviously all breath shiftsare state, but the flows are
kind of like your daily bread oryour daily breath and that
(48:51):
helps to obviously regulatenervous system but also build
VO2 tolerance and endurance andstress resilience and things
like that.
And then the other kind ofcategory are these shifts and
those are very specificallydesigned sequences and sound
architecture to do everythingfrom like prep for sleep to, you
(49:14):
know, to energize in theafternoon, to to clear your
subconscious before startingyour day, for example, and those
have quite a range of differentsequencing.
So yeah, if you're interested inchecking that out, there's a
free seven-day trial at etherone.
And then, as far as the bookgoes, I send an email most
(49:39):
Saturday mornings.
It's basically snippets of thenew creator of this book.
As I'm doing the research andthe writing and the
contemplation, I'm sharing itwith my email list.
You can sign up for that atleomarscom that's M-A-R-R-S last
(50:01):
name dot com, completely freeof course, and I try and make
that stuff really accessible andkind of like you know, it's the
type of email that at least Iwould like to get on the weekend
instead of the weekdays.
I have my cup of coffee onSaturday or Sunday morning and
get some inspiration and somelife insight.
Speaker 1 (50:25):
What a cool idea.
You're really kind of bringingthe community along for the ride
and along the journey ofwriting the book, which is very
fun.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Working in public.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
Yeah, yeah, and I will link all of that down below
the journey of writing the book, which is very fun.
Yeah, working in public, yeah,yeah, and I will link all of
that down below.
I'll link the app and thewebsite so you can just easily
click on it, okay, last questionIf you were standing on a stage
and you had the microphone fora minute and you had the ability
to share one message with theworld, what would that message
(50:58):
be?
Speaker 2 (51:00):
I think you told me you were going to ask this
question.
Maybe I did.
Oh, my goodness.
Well, I would.
And you know all that.
You dream of being all of theaspects in your golden shadow,
(51:26):
the things you see out there inthe world and go, oh, I wish, or
oh, they're so lucky.
That's all inside of you andit's waiting for you to get
present.
And when you're present and youdevelop a practice of showing
up in the moment just showing upin the moment, not with a mask
on not trying, when you stoptrying and you get present, you
(51:49):
step into your power.
So, step into your power, getpresent.
Speaker 1 (51:55):
Wow, you should be a motivational speaker.
That was beautiful.
Speaker 2 (52:00):
I need to rewind that .
Speaker 1 (52:02):
listen to it again.
The last minute, wow, yeah.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
Hard-earned lessons got to say.
Speaker 1 (52:10):
It's harder in practice than it is just
listening.
Speaker 2 (52:12):
Oh yeah, Well, at least yeah, I mean knowing you
know that stuff forever, but itgets really easy.
It's actually a very easypractice Once you get over you
know building the muscle.
Just start flexing that musclemoment to moment and you'll find
your way there.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
Thank you.
Thank you so much for coming onthe podcast.
This was a really funconversation.
Thank you, Hannah.
Speaker 2 (52:34):
It's a pleasure.
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