Journey to Well
We are not created to do this healing journey or life alone. In fact, it was Bessle Van Der Kolk who expertly shared “healing happens in the presence of an empathic witness”. That is the heart of this podcast & my business : to witness. You can expect a plethora of conversations on nervous system regulation, breathwork, human design & astrology, cycle alignment, energy & spirituality work and so much more. We are all on a journey back home to ourselves, rediscovering our innate power within & I am thrilled to take this journey to well with you. be well xx
Journey to Well
Breathing into Presence | Leo Marrs | Breathwork & Author
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.
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be well, my friend
xx Hannah
Hello, welcome back to the podcast journey to well. So today I am joined with another breathwork practitioner, leo Mars. He is the founder of the first breath studio in America, a really early pioneer of bringing breath to communities and his community, philosopher, creative entrepreneur, forthcoming author, which we'll talk about your book, at the end of the episode. Leo, thank you so much for coming on. Oh, we forgot, he's also a 3-5 sacral generator, which we're going to talk about human design. So thank you so much for coming on. One of the things that we were kind of chatting about before we started was how do we introduce you, like what are the hats that we should put on? And we all wear so many different hats all the time and it's really hard to pick a few or pick the right ones, right. So I'm going to turn the reins over to you to introduce yourself who is Leo, and then we'll start our conversation about breath.
Speaker 2:Yay, well, thank you for having me, hannah. I'm happy to be here and have enjoyed our conversations up to this moment very much. So I'm Leo Mars. I am an entrepreneur, born and raised in Alaska, have always kind of had a tilt toward.
Speaker 2:I was raised Christian and memorized a lot of the Bible growing up in private school and you know I always felt a strong resonance with basically, like as an adult, I see it as Christ consciousness, and that wasn't something that was really talked about.
Speaker 2:You know, in my private schooling there's a lot of, even emphasis on the Old Testament, which I was always kind of like what the's going on here and wanted to understand what a good life is like and how to you know, use magic if you will, and understand magic. So as an entrepreneur, you are just kind of inherently agentic. You know you're really deploying magic every day, all the time and you have to hold. You know you're you're really deploying magic every day, all the time and you have to hold. You know that wand is in your hand. So so I've always had a very strong connection to creativity and to making a difference, and it wasn't until I was 27 years old when I was running a very successful nightclub and four-star restaurant that I had opened and designed at 25. That I kind of had a non-ordinary state experience happen in the shower of all places, of course.
Speaker 1:Always random.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and those shower experiences, you know. So this experience really shook me to the core and changed my trajectory, or, you know, really really altered my worldview, my sense of self, my sense of what a good life might look like, very deeply. I was visiting my father in Alaska, taking about a week away from my businesses in the city, and it was about 645 in the morning, waters falling down my body, just an ordinary shower, and I somehow slipped into this altered state of consciousness. It wasn't an out of body experience, I was still looking through my eyes, but it felt as though, you know, there were no thoughts in my head and really, from like a mechanism of action perspective, I think that's maybe what, what had to do with it. I don't know how I got to this thoughtless place, but there was no, there wasn't a single thought in my head. So I would say say, like you know, looking at that from a rational perspective, what that did was it essentially gave me no sense of location other than through my eyes. So I had a sense of like. Here I am staring at the shower curtain, kind of pulsing in a trance, but I am everywhere. I am, you know, beyond the walls of the bathroom, beyond the walls of the house, beyond the stratosphere of the earth. And, you know this, this experience really shook me to the core. You know, there weren't many qualities to this kind of awakening state, but there was a deep sense of, I mean, there was expanse, there was a sense of freedom, a sense of like genie out of the bottle, like I can breathe. But one of the only qualities that that state had, I knew just like, somatically, intuitively, I knew that I could just effortlessly exhale an entire universe into existence, and so that really stuck with me. You know, there's a many series of events that happened. This was 20, 27 years old I'm 42 now, so that was, you know, quite a few years ago. Many winding turns.
Speaker 2:But I got very interested at that 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 teachings of, you know, all the great masters really lit up in my awareness. I realized like, oh, that wasn't just for them, like these states of enlightenment are for all of us, not not just these masters. So that got me, you know, into a very, you know, really deep yoga practice and I tried getting into meditation, always struggled with meditation. We talked about that a little bit and one thing led to another was pulled into the inner circle of a high level of philosophy and something called integral theory, which was a meta theory that essentially is made of all perspectives and models and theories, is made of all perspectives and models and theories. And then when I discovered the breath, which we talked about a little bit, it, was like oh yes this is it.
Speaker 2:Don't need any psychedelics now. Yeah right, we can talk about that too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember. I want to let you finish, but a quick note. Everyone typically assumes that I also do plant medicine journeys because they're just so similar and and and not similar. You have similar states of consciousness, I would say, although I have no idea because I don't do plant medicine journeys, and I think you even asked me that and I was like you know, I, I haven't felt the call or the pull and I, I love breath work and it's something that I can put myself into instead of in my mind. I have a lot of, I have a lot of blocks around any sort of external in ingesting, any sort of external um supplement or whatever, although I do drink alcohol. So you know we're, we're walking contradictions, but yeah um, anyway, so keep going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just just so interesting that you brought that up, but yeah with your story.
Speaker 2:I love it yeah, yeah, so, yeah, so I guess the you know I, I found the breath went through some, you know, several years of very deep psychedelic use and I, you know, what I would do is I would, I would, I would basically fast for 24 hours and then I would take a heroic dose of some entheogen. Typically I was using mushrooms or LSD in my home with basically just me, my garden myself. I'd start on Saturday afternoon and go until the wee hours of the morning and you pay a lot for that. That's a very expensive toll to you know, understand the nature of reality and consciousness. You know you lose sleep and you know you can really get sometimes, um, you know, particularly with the synthetic um, you know, with with the synthetic stuff, you can get stuck in some really dark spaces. And you know, but really have been cultivating my own.
Speaker 2:I would call it like a design philosophy for life, for, you know, 14, 15 years now I call it evolution by intelligent design. It's kind of a synthesis of two apparently paradoxical ideas the idea that consciousness is emerging out of the evolutionary process with the idea that essentially, spirit is involving itself into form or descending into 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 be I am, how can I be everything and also, at the same time, be this human organism with this personality and this brain and these drives and values and proclivities? And so, yeah, I've gone really deep into philosophy and mysticism, but I feel very deeply, very strongly, that creativity is at the core of our process. I see creativity as how we participate or like make love with the universe, if you will.
Speaker 2:And breath is just a massive. To me, it's the most, it's the most potent tool we have to live a better life in this modern age. Opened the breath studio in 2018, early 2018, before breath was kind of a trend. In fact, if you look up Google, you know keywords. The trend actually started within a couple of months of opening the studio. So that was really totally unplanned but well-timed and, you know, had a chance to really see how the breath was affected everyone's lives. People would come in. I've witnessed thousands of people come in with the weight of the world on their shoulders and leave a breath session with a spark of hope or a new lease on life, even after one breath session. So I'm a huge advocate of the breath and really respect what you're doing as well, hannah.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Thank you, Obviously. Likewise, it was one of those things that changed my connection, my ability to connect to my body, my ability to connect to I love that you're saying creativity and creation and love and all of these, these things, because truly that's what I experience. I don't I don't know that I've worded it that way before experience. I don't, I don't know that I've worded it that way before I will. I will say I love bringing in human design and one of the things that I noticed about your human design chart is we all have defined centers and undefined centers and open centers and they're just like these shapes in our chart, their energy centers, which, if you're familiar with the chakra system I'm sure you are they roughly pull from the chakra system.
Speaker 1:We have seven chakras, nine energy centers, because the heart and the solar plexus are split into two different centers, but you have three defined centers 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 and your spleen are defined, which are all all like kind of pull in that creativity and that groundedness and that love. I mean the sacral center is really our center of love as well, and pleasure and all of these things. So I think that's really kind of cool about your journey and your human design chart. But you talked about having trouble kind of settling into meditation and getting into meditation and you and I are similar. I was blessed. My mother had me meditating when I was young. I was a child Actually. I've never shared this story, so I will share it with you.
Speaker 1:I was struggling with math. I've never been a math person. I've always been that like philosophy, language, english definitely thrived more in those, but math and science never really liked, history never really liked. And so I was learning my times table in whatever grade. That was third grade maybe and I couldn't learn the times tables. I was really struggling with it and my mom one day she was like you know what, hannah, I this is not a punishment. This is something that I want to explore with you because I think that it would help. I'm going to wake you up 20 minutes early before school every day and you're going to come in bed with me and you're going to meditate and she would sometimes do most of the time it was some sort of kind of simple guided meditation and in her favorite part of the story is that I did so much better in math and I learned my times tables and all of those things.
Speaker 1:So I've been meditating on and off since I was a child and then I started meditating heavily in college. But truly, I think the faster that our lives go, the harder it is to keep that meditation practice and be able to settle into a meditation you and I kind of talked about the difficulty of going from 100 miles an hour to zero. It's like stopping your body, stopping your mind, and that is a true practice. And I still meditate and I have nothing against it. And I also found that breath was this another doorway to get into meditation? I always call breathwork an active meditation. I don't know if that's something that you ever talked about yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so my question would just be what is your experience with that? Because I think that's something that resonates with a lot of people. I talk about meditation with my community and a lot of them is like either oh, I can't meditate, or I think I meditate the wrong way, or I can't slow my brain down, and then we just kind of get away from it because it's difficult and we we think that we're doing it the wrong way, which yeah, or something's wrong with me.
Speaker 2:Maybe that was. That was my internal dialogue.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so yeah, I would love to hear that, that kind of part of your story. And then, what is different about breathwork to you and your experience versus meditation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. That's a great question and it's definitely at the core of why you know really was so useful for me and such a breath of fresh air. Pun intended to discover. Pun intended to discover, yeah. So when I was 29, have you heard of Vipassana? No, vipassana meditation? Oh, maybe, yeah, typically they're 10-day silent meditation retreats. So when I was 29, I thought I discovered I came across Vipassana somehow and I was like, oh, I'm going to apply for this and if I get accepted which they do have a pretty strong filter system, it's all on donations and if I get accepted, then I'll come out like Buddha on the other side.
Speaker 2:This is perfect. All I got to do is discipline myself for 10 days and I will be enlightened. But yeah, I went to this Vipassana retreat in some beautiful kind of nature preserve in Oregon and that's the 10 days of silence. And what I discovered within the first 12 hours of, you know, after the first kind of like, everyone congregates in the meditation hall and you know the guides are like okay, you know, at this point forward you're going to, you know, not going to talk for 10 days. What I discovered within the first 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 bunk mate and, you know, going into a space with a stranger where you're sleeping for the next, you know, week and a half and not not being able to talk to each other, just kind of head down looking at the ground. You're just kind of with your thoughts and that was very it was a rude awakening, to say the least. You know, I realized all of these voices in my head, all of you know, the inner critic and all of the kind of like the survival-like voices kind of started chattering and I'm like and they just got louder and louder 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 to kind of like, you know, expel any of that energy which is gets, just stay in here. And so I made it through.
Speaker 2:It requires a lot of discipline to get through a 10-day Vipassana retreat. I think they say like 40% of people leave by day three or four because you're just sitting in like 36 by 36 inch space, meditation space, for 10 hours a day in meditation, one out, one hour, um, one hour segments, um, but 10 hours of sitting on that thing every day, and so you're dealing with extreme pain. By day four they start what they call strong determination. So strong determination is when it's like find your position and don't move for the entire one hour sit and that's like literally do not move, like you breathe but don't move a muscle. It was extremely painful both psychologically and physically. I left that experience really probably as close to like having suicidal thoughts as I've ever been. Yeah, and you know I went home and started a pretty strong meditation practice where I was really committed for months. But I thought, you know, I just can't break through. Something's wrong with me.
Speaker 2:I'm the lost cause wrong with me. I'm the, I'm the lost cause. And then when I discovered the breath and realized, oh, like to me now meditation is. It's like a by-product of what I would say like, like, essentially, like equalizing or regulating the nervous system, and and sitting in a state of silence or witness. So I'm trying to think what your question was.
Speaker 1:Oh it was just your experience and what you felt. The differences are between breathwork and meditation, and also the similarities too, because there's a lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, you know it's said that the Buddha never gave meditation instructions without starting with breath awareness. And I do think that, especially in our modern age, where we're just so overloaded with information and to-do lists and all the things, that it's where pretty much we should always start. I think that goes for probably most humans and I think it's the reason why, you know, so many people struggle with meditation. You know we sit down with a dysregulated nervous system. You know we're getting cut off in traffic and, you know, haggled by debt collectors or whatever's going on, dealing with the stress of just being a modern human, relationships and all the things. So, yeah, for me I see them as kind of, you know, a partnership.
Speaker 2:I prefer breathing into meditation, you know, by and large, and this is pretty much the only way I'll do it, unless I'm, like you know, in a really beautiful serene setting in nature and I'm just like, oh, I don'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 Earth, and I'll paraphrase, he said you cannot think and take a conscious breath at the same time. Conscious breathing stops your mind. Breathing stops your mind. So for me I really see it as a support. Breath is a kind of a support, and a gateway into states of meditation.
Speaker 1:I love that. Thank you for that quote and that information and that reminder. That's definitely something that I find I I told I told you this. Maybe everyone's an overthinker.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I overthink more than more than the average, but I spend so much time up in my head and so much time I just always feel like I have so many thoughts running through my mind, and one of the things that I learned in my specific training of breathwork is it's this opportunity to really be present with the body and the sensations that are coming up in the body, because our body is always communicating to us, our body is always sharing these insights and these pieces of wisdom, but it speaks a lot quieter than our mind, and so one of the things that I always invite my clients to practice that I also certainly practice with breath is noticing the sensations. Noticing the breath, like where are you breathing into? Can you breathe all the way down into your tailbone? What does that feel like versus breathing into your stomach or breathing into your rib cage? And noticing what sensations are arising and not getting stuck in the story behind. Oftentimes we're like oh, my shoulder hurts, oh, it's because I'm so stressed.
Speaker 1:I must have slept the story behind. Oftentimes we're like oh, my shoulder hurts, oh it's because I'm so stressed, or I must have slept the wrong way, or I, you know, I had a really hard like arm workout and I must have just kind of like twinged something and we get. So that's where our mind immediately goes. Is the story behind things Same with emotions? So if we find an emotion is arising in a breath, work, practice of like, oh, I'm feeling really sad right now, what is the story behind that? Can I like connect that to a memory or can I connect that to something that's going on in my life? Maybe? It was a hard conversation I had with my sister last week, and what if we didn't connect it to a story? What if we didn't follow up? I'm sad because just I'm feeling sad right now.
Speaker 2:What if?
Speaker 1:I allowed myself to cry or I'm feeling happy. What if I allowed myself to laugh? I had someone in my breathwork class last week and she was like I just wanted to laugh, so bad that I didn't want to throw other people off because they were crying. I'm like no girl laugh Like if you feel like you need a laugh, laugh.
Speaker 1:And she's like I don't even know why, like I wasn't, I didn't have anything, I just felt, you know, like I needed to, I'm like, do it. Your body wants to express that emotion too. It's not always the heavy either, which I don't know what your experience is with that.
Speaker 2:But oh, yeah, yeah, oh yeah. I love that, that laughter from the breath, like especially like I've seen that with newbies to the breath, quite a bit where they're and they're just like why am I laughing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:It is so cool, you know. I kind of see like having, you know, ran the breath studio for those, you know, a couple of years before COVID. There's the way I've kind of like I kind of categorize facilitators a little bit Like I see, I see kind of like two sides of the street when it comes to breathwork facilitators. There's kind of the agony side of the street and there's the ecstasy side of the street, and both of these are definitely like crossing over. It's not like, oh, all we're going to do is like trauma dump and heal ourselves, and there's always a bit of both in each. But yeah, you'll find facilitators that are more leaned into that work, the trauma healing and, you know, clearing of the nervous system. And then you have this other side of the street which are honestly like my favorite facilitators. Oftentimes, like some of my favorites, are like X, like international DJs, for example, and they're like their bodies can't handle the late nights and the drugs anymore, so they they guide breath work. I love that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in fact I don't know if you know Lisa Day Narvaez of Bliss Point. Do you know her?
Speaker 2:No, she's one of my favorite, in fact she probably is my favorite ecstasy side of the street. Yeah, she does some stuff online now so you might check her out, but yeah, so I kind of see those two sides of the street and that's actually why, you know, one of the reasons I love breath so much is because it is a kind of Swiss army knife. You know, it'll meet you where you 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 your body's wisdom and, yeah, let your body kind of do its thing.
Speaker 2:But man with the studio man, things I have seen. I have seen, I mean you name it, I've seen it and we used to open up the container at the end of 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 and people start speaking up and sharing their experiences. I have heard the wildest things. I realized today that I need to leave my spouse. I forgave my mother. Today I've got the title for my book today. You know, the range just so wide and really touches into both that agony and the ecstasy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know you said something like breath. Breath is a tool and you're going to get out of it what you need to, and I've met different kinds of breathwork practitioners and all are great. I do. I would say that I've met some that are more of that trauma clearing and, to be honest, maybe that was me in the beginning, I don't know, I don't know, but I felt some kind of pushed that like let's clear the trauma, let's you leading. We're creating that container and you can lead it however you see fit, and I'm not judging other people at all. But what I have really, what I strive to settle into, is really allowing the breath to be the tool and the navigator and that Swiss army knife. Like you're pulling out whatever part of the Swiss army knife that you need for this moment, who am I to tell you what you need, that you need to clear your trauma or you need to regulate your nervous system, or you need to regulate your nervous system, or you need to express more joy, whatever.
Speaker 1:And really allowing, allowing the breath to be that navigation, rather than me and it's so interesting 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 this like huge moment, like come to jesus moment. Did I do it wrong? Absolutely not, you didn't do it wrong. Yeah, you're nervous and and then we're coming from a nervous system standpoint. That's where your nervous system was at and your, your body, will never push you further than you can, than your nervous system can handle it, and I don't, really, I don't personally believe that as the practitioner I'm here to push you into, I don't think that that is safe either.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I know you know a couple of things that you said earlier I do. I do want to touch on what you'd mentioned about. You know how you coach your clients to kind of go in and listen. At a somatic level, I know for me as a lifelong kind of like type A entrepreneur, got to control everything, got to control everything. That's yeah, yeah, yeah, guilty.
Speaker 2:But you know those, those experiences can range, as you just reflected on. They can be like, oh, not really much happened today, but like I feel peaceful. And then other days you're, oh my gosh, like I just saw God or you know, or I went into some dark spaces that I didn't know were there and it was important for me to see. But that, listening to the body, and as we've touched on breath awareness a little bit, this is another 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 scalpel is probably the breath work, the active breathing, and then what, what, what we might call the active meditation side or breath awareness side, is not manipulating the breath, just returning to the breath, bringing awareness to the breath and really reaping the benefits with a little bit of practice, and it's not hard to get there fully in the present moment, and that's you know.
Speaker 2:One of the one of the practices that'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 see if I can bring that awareness a little deeper into my body and then it'll start to drop down my neck down into my abdomen. Okay, and what's the energy feel like in here? Is it contraction or expansion? Is it tension or expansion? Is it? Is it tension or excitement?
Speaker 2:And what I've noticed and this is kind of like a new practice for me as of the last couple of years, I met this, this spiritual quote, uh, coach, this kind of self, you know, designated spiritual coach, in a at a cold plunge up in the mountains a year and a half ago and we just had a short conversation with him. But I asked him, I said what do you find yourself telling your clients most often? The advice that you tell them most often, and he said, basically, aleister Crowley's do what thou wilt. He said do what feels best to you in each and every moment, and you'll just be stacking wins in your life.
Speaker 1:Hmm.
Speaker 2:And I think you know we have so much conditioning and you know a sense of obligation to to other people and um, but what I've started to do is I've stacked that breath, awareness and then bringing the attention into listening and then going OK, if it's expansion or excitement, then whatever it is like I might be in a state, a certain type of state that would that would induce that feeling. If you're faced with kind of a question, or if you're in an interaction with another human being, or if you're just doing something, if it's a contraction, that's, that's a no. It might, it might be that you're holding fear and that you're, you know, creating some of this with your mind. But that could be what it's a no to. It's, it's a oh, a oh. I'm not postured or oriented to this moment, right, but then what feels like a yes? Where is the excitement? If there's excitement, that's a yes. Move in that direction.
Speaker 1: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 human design. But I'm going to throw it in right now because I mean, this is you, segued perfectly and without even knowing it.
Speaker 1:So sacral. I said you're a 3-5 sacral generator. Sacral is your, what we call in human design, your authority. This is your decision makingmaking process, and everyone has different authorities. Splenic and sacral are very similar in this way. Exactly what you just said is when we feel a yes often the sacral and splenic, I would argue we feel this kind of like pull forward, we feel this opening, we feel this levity, we feel excitement.
Speaker 1:I always coach my clients and I say you define, you find and define what a yes means to you. So that could feel like for some people. I noticed for me I actually get this like bodily pull forward, like I lean forward. I also find I make a lot of vocalizations so it'll be like uh-huh, uh-huh is my yes.
Speaker 1:If it's a no, I almost always feel that contraction or that like a contraction, but like this, maybe like tension in my belly and my stomach, and I actually, when I was little, I used to tell my mom mom, my belly hurts, my belly hurts.
Speaker 1:And she navigated that means like something's wrong, like something's misaligned with Hannah. She has something that you know we need to dive into. And so you define what a yes and a no feels like and I love that you are kind of looping in this. Come to the breath and actually play with the breath and take in that inhale and see what the breath is telling you, how it's connecting to your body. I'm definitely going to steal that from you and coin it and I will use it with my clients, but I will, I will quote you in it. But I love that bringing in the breath because often again, when we're in kind of this disconnect, when we're, I think, sometimes when we're in our head, we do have this disconnection to our body. And how can you feel that sacral center, how can you feel that yes or that no, if you're not coming back into your body and breath?
Speaker 2:is a way to come back into your body.
Speaker 1:So, anyway, that was your sacral center.
Speaker 2:Oh okay. Well, I didn't have access to that for most of my life. That's, you know, it took, it took a you know some guidance from on the outside and a little bit of like logic going. Oh okay, that's that all makes sense now. And then I'll start practicing that because I'm tired of making bad decisions. You know, it just takes too much of a toll.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and you are. I truly do believe that your body has the answer and and we just spend so much time. I know I do. I mean, I'm not preaching to everyone, I'm preaching to myself when I say we spend so much time living in our head. I know I do. So let's talk about I want to go back to this as we're kind of wrapping up this creation, this creator, and finding the creative within us. Something that I always said that I'm like don't say this about yourself is I'm not creative. I don't feel like. In the past I yeah, I'm trying to work on my self talk. In the past, I have felt that I'm not a very creative person and art and like painting and drawing. I'm not an artist. I am a musician that I will give to myself, but I'm not very creative. So how does breath connect to creativity?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you know, I think that distinction in fact I think I might do some work to kind of get explicit about defining this idea of like being creative in a more of a puritanical, artistic sense and I don't really find that very useful because obviously we're all creating every moment of our lives. We're creating this, as you just said, I'm creating these words. So, yeah, we're all creative and we're all creators and we're one with the creator and many of the mythologies and we're made in the image of the creator. You know, for me and it's kind of wild actually, in the story of Genesis, you know, in the beginning was the word and the word was with God, and the word was God and the word was spoken and basically became flesh and dwelt among us. And that's happening through the breath Vibration. That's basically intention giving shape to the breath. So, you know, for me and we spoke about this a little bit before starting today probably the biggest impetus for being such an advocate of breath practices and breath as a tool is to empower that creative force within each and every one of us. You know, I said something before we started recording. I see creativity as kind of like cosmic lovemaking and we can't not create right Like we can't not do it 't not create right Like we're we can't not do it? Um, but we can choose to be conscious creators or intentional creators and and that doesn't mean you know controlling things that means you know participating with self-awareness and with a certain level of consciousness. But for me, you know whether it's it's the actual active breathing, the breath work or the breath awareness.
Speaker 2:I was pushing the idea of always be evolving. You know, always be improving yourself. And I realized about four years ago, I realized, my goodness, there's something going on here that I can't see. And I realized that, in my own ideological view on this, I was, I was basically in a constant state of, on a subconscious level, rejecting myself in the moment. If I always need to become, or if there's always an opportunity to be better, then on some level I'm rejecting myself in each and every moment I'm alive. And it got to a point where I was like man, I'm doing all these things and on some levels I'm like I've moved a lot of lines of my intelligence forward. You know, I am evolving as a human. You could say, but like something's wrong. So I think it's when we get into the present moment.
Speaker 2:And if you've ever noticed this, like you know, for many years I would slip into these states of of just incredible, like flow and peace.
Speaker 2:And I'm like and not to be cliche, you know, and I'm not saying like necessarily flow state nootropics, I'm talking about like living in our power, where we're almost in a fearless, very potent, drawing on all of the resources of our consciousness in such a way like, if you think about the limitations of fear and worry and anxiety and stress, you're constantly trying to kind of like I would say like rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic, yeah.
Speaker 2:And it's like, hey, just jump in the freaking ice water, okay, and what we don't realize is that we can, we're born again when we die, when we jump into the ice water, um, you know, on the other side of fear, right on the outside of your comfort zone, all of these kind of like truisms. So for me, like the breath work does the heavy lifting of kind of getting the like misconceptions, you know, mistaken identity stuff out, the trauma, the emotional, energetic blocks out, so that we can be more present. And then the breath, or the breath awareness, is kind of like our anchor, our more practical moment by moment tool. So the more, the more, the more we clear that stuff, the easier it is to use that. Uh, you know that breath awareness to be in the moment, but all in service of being in the moment so that we can create our lives from a place of purpose and power and clarity.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that distinction of, yeah, using the breathwork journey as a tool to clear and then using breath awareness as this daily, moment by moment tool that we can always bring back to, that we can always incorporate in our lives and really be the creator rather than be created. We spend a lot of time listening to other opinions and other people, and whether they're opinions of people that we highly respect, or just giving our power away to what somebody says on social media or what the school teacher says, or our parents say know the school teacher says or our parents say I mean, well, hopefully we respect our parents.
Speaker 1:but very, very interesting, very cool distinctions, and thank you for making that. I've actually again, never really had that, that distinction before. So I love that Tell me. I know that you said that there's a lot of coming back to the creator and really coming into our life in that mindset of I'm constantly creating my life and finding that creativity in your book. So I would love for you you're writing it. It hasn't come out yet, correct?
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, honestly, I've been writing this book for 15 years. I started it under another title 15 years ago and you know now I think it was it was a Christmas time that I was visiting family and realized I was on a hike with my dad up in the woods in Alaska. I was like it's time I got to do this. I'm going to slowly kill myself if I don't take care of this.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, so I'm writing it. It's called the New Creator Rise of the Mindful Artist in the New Meaning Economy and, yeah, I mean it's really kind of a manifesto for creatives who want to really live on purpose and in service and in power in this very rapidly changing, technologically driven time that we're living through.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. I am very excited for you and I love that. Absolutely, time's going by fast, right, and there's a lot and there's I mean that's a whole nother podcast Maybe we'll have to. I'll have you back on and we'll just talk about technology and AI and finding all of that. That's not something. Nother podcast Maybe we'll have to. I'll have you back on and we'll just talk about technology and AI and finding all of that. That's not something that I want to get into right now, but it's definitely something I want to get into.
Speaker 1:I think that would be really interesting.
Speaker 2:Let's do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would love to. So tell me, tell us where we can follow up with you. I know that you also have an app. I would love to hear a little bit about that. We were talking about this before. There's so many tools and I don't claim to have the best breathwork practice or the best approach by any means. So I know that you have breathwork in this app as well. So tell us a little bit about the app and then also just how to stay connected with you. Where do you hang out the most? If people are like that book sounds interesting, let me make sure that I stay connected. So I hear when it's published, all of those good things.
Speaker 2:Awesome, yeah, yeah. So this is actually my second breathwork app. I started building one just prior to the pandemic with a couple of partners and just found that I needed to have more creative control. I had someone else as the voiceover, one of my star teachers, amazing humans, you know, we all kind of parted ways in love.
Speaker 2:But this is my second breathwork app. It's it's called ether E, t, h R and um. If people are interested in checking it out, it's at etherone O N E, but um, basically, you know, I, as I kind of like I'm leaned into that ecstasy side of the street um, as you can probably tell by now. Um, as you can probably tell by now. So this is essentially. It's the. It's the tool that I have wanted and I needed to. Not only, you know, have a, you know two taps and I'm breathing to something that I can count on or I don't have to think about who am I going to breathe with or what's the. You know this, like you know, in wellness, I feel like most of the time, when you go to reach for, you know, a wellness tool, you don't want to have to make decisions.
Speaker 1:You're like like I'm dysregulated.
Speaker 2:It's just like give me what I need. So so it's that there are two different types of sequences in the Ether app. One I call flows and the other I call shifts. And obviously all breath shifts are state, but the flows are kind of like your daily bread or your daily breath and that helps to obviously regulate nervous system but also build VO2 tolerance and endurance and stress resilience and things like that. And then the other kind of category are these shifts and those are very specifically designed sequences and sound architecture to do everything from like prep for sleep to, you know, to energize in the afternoon, to to clear your subconscious before starting your day, for example, and those have quite a range of different sequencing.
Speaker 2:So yeah, if you're interested in checking that out, there's a free seven-day trial at etherone. And then, as far as the book goes, I send an email most Saturday mornings. It's basically snippets of the new creator of this book. As I'm doing the research and the writing and the contemplation, I'm sharing it with my email list. You can sign up for that at leomarscom that's M-A-R-R-S last name dot com, completely free of course, and I try and make that stuff really accessible and kind of like you know, it's the type of email that at least I would like to get on the weekend instead of the weekdays. I have my cup of coffee on Saturday or Sunday morning and get some inspiration and some life insight.
Speaker 1:What a cool idea. You're really kind of bringing the community along for the ride and along the journey of writing the book, which is very fun.
Speaker 2:Working in public.
Speaker 1: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 the website so you can just easily click on it, okay, last question If you were standing on a stage and you had the microphone for a minute and you had the ability to share one message with the world, what would that message be?
Speaker 2: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 the aspects in your golden shadow, the things you see out there in the world and go, oh, I wish, or oh, they're so lucky. That's all inside of you and it's waiting for you to get present. And when you're present and you develop a practice of showing up in the moment just showing up in the moment, not with a mask on not trying, when you stop trying and you get present, you step into your power. So, step into your power, get present.
Speaker 1:Wow, you should be a motivational speaker. That was beautiful.
Speaker 2:I need to rewind that.
Speaker 1:listen to it again. The last minute, wow, yeah.
Speaker 2:Hard-earned lessons got to say.
Speaker 1:It's harder in practice than it is just listening.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, Well, at least yeah, I mean knowing you know that stuff forever, but it gets really easy. It's actually a very easy practice Once you get over you know building the muscle. Just start flexing that muscle moment to moment and you'll find your way there.
Speaker 1:Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. This was a really fun conversation. Thank you, Hannah.
Speaker 2:It's a pleasure.