When Breath Became My Backbone: A Surgeon’s Story of Mindfulness, Acceptance, and Gratitude

Host Holly Wayment brings us Houston spine surgeon Rex Marco who, after a terrible cycling accident , faced  life-changing paralysis to recovery through mindfulness, the RAIN method, and radical acceptance.   He describes what happened to him and how in one moment everything can change. His work now explores how compassion, mindfulness, and vulnerability can reshape how we live, lead, and heal. In 2019, Dr. Marco sustained a C3–4 fracture-dislocation in a cycling accident, resulting in C2 quadriplegia. Today, he serves as the Chief Medical Ambassador for the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, advocating for research, cure, and improved quality of life for individuals living with spinal cord injury. He is also a certified mindfulness meditation teacher and is passionate about integrating resilience, presence, and emotional healing into medicine, leadership, and life. He's known for creative and transformative teaching and shares that his most profound transformation came through recovery, where he confronted longstanding patterns in how he related to himself and others.  This episode explores how he says acceptance, gratitude, and recovery programs transformed his leadership, clinical practice, and family life, offering actionable tools for cultivating presence and emotional safety. Dr. Rex Marco is an internationally recognized orthopedic spine and musculoskeletal oncology surgeon whose career has centered on caring for patients with complex spinal disorders and tumors. He completed his undergraduate studies at UC Irvine and conducted research at the National Institutes of Health through the Howard Hughes Medical Institute before earning his medical degree from the UCLA School of Medicine. He went on to complete surgical training at Virginia Mason Medical Center, orthopedic residency at UC Davis, and dual fellowships in musculoskeletal oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and reconstructive spine surgery at Rush University. Dr. Marco has held leadership roles at MD Anderson Cancer Center, Texas Children’s Hospital, Houston Methodist Hospital, and UTHealth Houston, where he serves as Spine Fellowship Director.