This week I became an affiliate (something I’ve never done before..!) for Millana Snow’s Integrative Energy Healing Retreat in Topanga, California @ March 7-11.
Millana has been my breathwork teacher for 3+ years. I first started practicing with her in 2021 and my life has taken a complete 180 since we began working together. As I started thinking about why I felt called to share about Millana’s latest Retreat, I of course became reflective about my own journey with her trainings, with breathwork, with my own transformation. Here, if you please, are some of the highlights.
June 2021 I was in one of the darkest periods of my life — depressed, lonely, truly miserable — and I joined a free virtual breathwork class Millana was hosting. That first session, I literally felt like I was floating. My entire body was vibrating and I knew, I knew I needed to continue this work. That night, I signed up for Millana’s online Integrative Energy Healing course: 3 days of online breathwork, teachings, and community.
For the online training, I turned my office into a mini retreat center and basically just did breathwork and cried for 3 days straight. I remember at one point after the sessions finished for the day, I was on the couch with my partner, tears just streaming down my face and he was just flabbergasted like whaaaaat is going on?? I couldn’t put my experience into words at the time. But looking back, I feel that my body, my heart, my spirit had been holding onto grief, shame, loneliness, self-hatred for 20+ years and this virtual breathwork retreat was my first true release point.
After the training, I joined Millana’s monthly community breathwork meetup. I returned to the library of previously-recorded sessions almost daily and continued to practice as much as I could, sometimes multiple times per day. It was a lot. But around this time, I was trying to navigate moving from Columbus to NYC and the logistics were bringing up a lot of old patterns: stress, control, fear, scarcity, loneliness and so much more. Even though I’d attended one breathwork training and experienced momentous breakthroughs, that was only the tip of the iceberg. There was a lot more waiting to be faced and healed within me.
So when Millana announced her breathwork retreat in NYC at the start of September, I signed up immediately. The training was Sep 2-6. My 30th birthday was Sep 4. Our lease was up in Columbus at the end of August. I could go to NYC for the training, celebrate my 30th birthday, move into my new apartment… bam bam bam, perfect timing.
More or less, that’s what happened. I had a beautiful birthday with my breathwork community, went even deeper into my practice, healed wounds around family, identify, scarcity, and moved into my new apt in New York! NBD! (jk it was a big deal. Signing a lease and moving in NYC was truly nightmarish).
Then in August 2022, I went to Spain for an ~~international breathwork training with Millana, where I had a wild manifestation experience. During one of our first breathwork sessions, I got the hit that I could go to back to Vietnam. This was a wildly unexpected thought. I lived in Saigon from 2014-2020 and moved back to the States when things became untenable due to ~le pandeme. Leaving Vietnam in 2020, I’d been furious that I was “forced” to leave a place I loved so much, where I had a full and happy life. During this breathwork meditation in Spain, I was surprised (and excited!) that my subconscious was ready to go back.
I went back to my room in Spain and started looking up flights. This was right when international travel was coming back and rates were exorbitant. It was going to cost roughly $1600 USD to fly coach from England (where I was going after Spain) to Vietnam and back to New York. I told the universe that I was up for the trip, but I wasn’t thrilled to be paying so much for flights. I asked for another way to be revealed.
And wouldn’t you know it… the next day I saw someone had put in an offer to buy my wedding dress, which I had posted online ages ago. I sold it to them for $2,500, netting me $2,000 after fees. I was shocked that things were falling into place so easily and started looking into booking my flights.
The WiFi wasn’t amazing at this remote Spanish retreat, and I was having issues booking the $1600 trip. Feeling frustrated and annoyed about the tech difficulties, I decided this was not the energy I wanted to be in to book my trip and committed to try again later.
The next day after breathwork, I got the idea to look into booking with credit card points. I had never booked a trip using cc points, so I wasn’t really sure what to expect. I got on the Chase portal and I was able to book the tickets using $650 worth of points + $250 cash. I was overjoyed. I had the money from my wedding dress to use as ~~fun money in Vietnam and was able to pay for my flights with very little cash down. It worked out better than I could have ever imagined.
I ended up having theeee most amazing time in Vietnam. I got to ring in my 31 birthday with my besties in Saigon and I got so much closure regarding my precious six years there. Beyond words, beyond expectations.
Of course it wasn’t *just* the breathwork trainings that gave me access to these miracles — the miracle of loving myself again, the miracle of moving to NYC, the miracle of closing out my time in Vietnam — but breathwork has undoubtedly helped usher in the greatest transformations in my life. I have found more peace, love, gratitude for this life than I ever felt before through this simple, yet specific pattern of breathing.
And the best part is that all we need is our breath, our attention, and time for the practice. There is no guru, there is no dogma, there is nothing we need outside of ourselves to access this transformational healing.
I’m working now in New York, offering virtual and IRL breathwork, astrology, tarot sessions. I saw my business cards out in the wild today for the first time ever and that was a trip! I never could have imagined the trajectory my life would take, but I am so proud of the progress I’ve made and proud of the person I’m becoming.
I’ll leave you with my entry from the last day of my very first breathwork training—
I love us, Liz. Thank you getting us here. Thank you for trusting yourself to take this course even when it didn’t make the most financial sense. Love you, love you, love you.
I honestly just feel so balanced. I’ve never felt so calm, balanced, and centered. It’s wild and beautiful and I want to try and maintain this as much as I can. It’s important.
Important, indeed.
Ahhhhh Eliza I can't tell you how much I enjoyed reading this. Your entire journey was just *chef's kiss* 💋 Thank you for opening up, sharing your heart, and letting us in. I was especially excited to read the bit about you going back to Vietnam!!!! Like whaaaat!!! I LOVE reading about magic in action. As you said: It's important. Big hugs!! xx