Conversation with Mariana of EASY TO BREATHE on Clay, Culture, and Creativity
NATURE AND INTENT JOURNAL profiles conscious brand owners that create a meaningful impact through living their nature and intent.
Earlier this summer, we connected with Mariana Mae of EASY TO BREATHE at her Upper Ojai residence.
As a multi-passionate creative and conscious being, Mariana embodies what it means to be a conscious creator. She’s intuitive, grounded, and weaves her life and work into a beautiful tapestry that shares her culture, art, and story. Read on to learn about her creative journey, relationship with clay, new offerings, and wisdom.
Can you share your journey on how you started working with Clay? How do you weave sharing stories and ancient wisdom of indigenous peoples? Please tell us more about your Origen Raíz organization.
Mariana: My journey with Clay began subconsciously at a young age, as I was thirsty for a creative outlet of expression while living in a foreign country with a foreign language. Upon feeling the safe sense of belonging each time I co-created with the Clay, I recognized this was an ancient thread that connected me to the Spirit of Creation and the Spirit of my ancestors.
Over the many years, my path of ancestral healing has taken a life of its own, and I’ve solely followed the call. This led me back home to my Motherland of Mexico, where I began to gather the seeds of my grandmothers and reclaim my own roots. This led me to meet and be deeply impacted by various Indigenous peoples, including my own, to remember the importance of sitting at the feet of the elders, to listen and learn of their stories, and to integrate the following instructions I was given to continue my path forward in an aligned way. This led me to where and who I am now.
What began as a documentary film series of Indigenous Women is now a newly founded organization in alliance with families of Mexico, Peru and Guatemala. Origen Raíz is dedicated to amplifying the Living Traditions and Ancestral Preservation within each family lineage in benefit to the Heart Healing of Humanity. We value the importance of fostering accessibility with opportunities to this impactful Cultural Exchange work to our community worldwide. Soon we will be offering an online platform of offerings directly transmitted from the Indigenous Nations.
What’s the significance and story behind the name of your brand, “Easy to Breathe”?
Mariana: Easy To Breathe was born as a reminder. A remembrance of our conscious choice to lean on our breath as a principle, an anchor, and a compass. To remember that it truly is easy to consciously breathe and receive the healing benefits of each inhale and exhale. We simply forget this, and at times we make it challenging. To remember that during turbulent times and even in easeful times, we have access to our Breath. Our Breath does not betray. Our Breath is our Living Grace.
Easy To Breathe reminds us of the power of choice.
To remember our accessible, innate creative, and healing tools and to choose them time and time again.
With the guidance of various creative + healing modalities, Easy To Breathe tells the story of Ancestral, Earth-based teachings, Women’s Health + Reclamation, Relational Exploration, Psycho-spiritual Art Therapy, Traditional Rituals, and more.
“Over the many years, my path of ancestral healing has taken a life of its own, and I’ve solely followed the call. This led me back home to my Motherland of Mexico, where I began to gather the seeds of my grandmothers and reclaim my own roots. ”
“I share this story because as creative conscious beings, we are cyclical, seasonal, and unpredictable. While we can plan and have an agenda with deadlines, we truly are our most authentic selves when we allow for time to guide us and for our plan to be directed by the Great Mystery. This is why intention + prayer is vital for you to have a solid foundation so you may remain open in a grounded way. Once we begin to control the when and the how, we lose sight of our why, the pillar of our purpose; thus, we risk falling into outdated, conditioned programming.”
How have you shifted your offerings online? What are your favorite and least favorite parts of managing a small business online?
Mariana: With willingness, trust, patience, and creativity.
About two years ago, I began to transfer chapters of my life’s written and oral teachings onto the computer with the intention of creating an online program in the future to share the seeds farther and wider with those in resonance. Once the pandemic hit, I felt the wave of online offerings crashing the interwebs pretty strongly, yet I didn’t feel the alignment. Over the following months, I began to offer my Mujeres de Barro Ceremony online and tried it out, but it still didn’t feel like it was time. I resisted this new way of working behind the screen as I dearly appreciate my time off the screen. Until about a year ago, following the Death of a dear friend and teacher of mine, my Heart cracked wide open. And so my inner teachings flooded through me. The channel became very clear for me at that time, and within one month, I sat with my computer and organically co-created the curriculum with the guidance of Spirit.
I share this story because as creative conscious beings, we are cyclical, seasonal, and unpredictable. While we can plan and have an agenda with deadlines, we truly are our most authentic selves when we allow for time to guide us and for our plan to be directed by the Great Mystery. This is why intention + prayer is vital for you to have a solid foundation so you may remain open in a grounded way. Once we begin to control the when and the how, we lose sight of our why, the pillar of our purpose; thus, we risk falling into outdated, conditioned programming.
As we navigate a time where it is accessible and now common to create an online business/offering/program/training, may you remember your purpose, root into your integrity, and return to your prayer for the answers to your questions.
Remember to always prioritize caring for your body and health.
Remember to create a healthy balance off and on the screen, to create a container of time plugged in, being mindful of your posture and eye health, and to create boundaries so you may use your phone and computer as a tool to translate your physical, present life and work into the interwebs.
Remember, we are here to work with the modern faculties to bridge the ancient technologies.
You express yourself in many creative ways! Through clay, song, storytelling, photography, writing, ceremony, and curating community experiences. What inspires your creativity? Do you have any personal rituals, wisdom practices, or plant allies that support your creativity?
Mariana: This may sound easier said than done, but truly what ignites inspiration in my Life is to return being in tune with my Heart, my emotions, and my body.
For me, Prayer is at the core of all - whether I sit beside my altar and pray aloud, or while I sow seeds in the garden with song, or when I walk to visit the river in silence, or how I prepare nourishment slowly and traditionally, I open the eyes of my Heart and Mind to listen and receive clarity.
There are many ways to arrive here - to open the doors of Creation and access a new vision or idea. Creativity is a way of being that requires us to let go of expectations, invoke the imagination of your inner child, and continuously be in awe of your own inner world and the world around you ~ amidst the challenges, and actually, because of them, Creativity is re-born.
My most beloved practice is deepening my relationship with my guitar and my Voice. There is a certain strength that we cultivate here, especially as Women - to heal and release emotion from the Womb through the Throat, to shift our perspective into resonance, and melodically express our Voice through Song as sound is the Song that birthed us as Creation into the world.
How do you live your NATURE AND INTENT?
Mariana: Cyclically ~ Seasonally ~ Elementally ~ Somatically
How has your connection to your own culture and ancestral lineage inspired your journey?
Mariana: It’s been my return Home.
My most humbling healing journey.
My way of growing and maturing into the Woman I am.
My offering of gratitude to my abuelas y abuelos.
It’s been the gateway for my relationship to flourish with our Holy Mother, Tonantzin y el Gran Espiritu Santo.
What would be your advice to those early on their path of ancestral remembrance and decolonization journey? Please share any resources, offerings, and courses that can be nourishing and informative for our community.
Mariana: Embrace exactly where you are, with the resources you have and the knowledge you already remember. Don’t jump ahead and try to seek this remembrance outside of you. Begin again and again, within.
This is a lifelong path of deep inner inquiry work and committed healing, so it is important to walk step by step, slowly and steadily. Be easy on yourself, allowing control to dissolve. Because if you are called to this path, you will be guided and your willingness to receive and follow the guidance is your arrow of trust.
Decolonization work will illuminate the shadows awaiting to be seen as you meet the glory of Death in a beautifully liberating way so you transmute what was to what is and what will be for the coming generations.
Remember to return to the whispering Winds of silence. Return to streaming Water of memory. Return to the warm Hearth of your Heart. Return to the Earth Mother, for She will lead you Home along your ancient journey here upon Her.
May you be interested in the Decolonization guidance of Women of Color whom are dedicated to this revolutionary work, I recommend you to know the work of Dr. Rosales Meza, Marilu Shinn, and Myranda Bennett.
May you belonging to reconnect with your own ancestral lineage, continue forward with your matriarchal and patriarchal healing path, seek out the elders and medicine, wisdom keepers of your lineage, and remember that the most accessible way to reconnect is to witness and be witnessed by our universal, elemental ancestors, the Earth, the Air, the Fire, and the Water, within and around us all.
So grateful to receive the wisdom and creative inspiration from Mariana. Follow Mariana on Instagram @easytobreathe.
Photos and interview by Kristine Lo.
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