You Can Have an Easeful Life — But It Won't Be Your Life: Maria Magdalena Garzon

Maria Magdalena Garzon has been sitting with one question for years: who am I when I stop performing?She works with women (and some men) who want to develop a genuine, deepening relationship with themselves — not the kind of self-knowledge that comes from journalling prompts or Instagram insights, but the kind that is cultivated over a lifetime.This conversation opens with a distinction that ran through everything: curiosity versus inquiry. Curiosity is the opening — the door swinging wide. Inquiry is what happens when you walk through it and start looking in the dark corners. Some wounds have guards. They need more than openness. They need a sustained investigation.We also talked about what a poor relationship with yourself actually looks like — and it doesn't look like obvious dysfunction. It looks like being easygoing. Fine with any restaurant. Happy to go wherever. Indifferent to most things. Maria and Kait pull this thread hard: that indifference is not flexibility, it's numbness. And numbness is the beginning of depression.Maria's pivot point came at 30: a relationship ended, a career collapsed, and she was left with a blank page. From there, she found ISTA — the International School of Temple Arts — and started unpacking the layers she'd spent her whole life building. The needs she didn't know she had. The no she'd never been able to say.Kait brings her own lens to all of this: the idea that enlightenment — the spiritual injunction to transcend the body, to leave, to ascend — is a patriarchal technology. That the real path is what she calls endarkenment: going deeper into the body, not out of it. Finding your own spark from the darkest place.The episode ends with Maria's vision for what a world of self-intimate people would look like: not a world where everyone is happy, but a world where everyone is alive. Colourful. Curious. Not fighting because they have nothing left to prove.KEY TAKEAWAYS:- Why 'being easygoing' might be a warning sign (and what it's hiding)- The role of sisterhood and asking for help in the journey back to self- What a world of self-intimate people would actually look likeConnect with Maria- Website: https://www.intimacy-guide.com/- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/intimacy_guide- Online course: https://www.howtogetintimate.com/Connect with Kait + PhenXXKait on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kaitlyntregenza/PhenXX: https://www.phenxx.comPhenXX on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lovephenxxBecoming Flame Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/becomingflame.podYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lovephenxxSponsored by PhenXX.com — use promo code "podcast" for 10% off your first purchase.