About the Episode
Psychedelics and breathwork may seem like very different paths to healing, but what if the breath alone could unlock the same powerful states of awareness?
In this episode, Dr. Julie Lopez speaks with Mark Worster, a psychiatric nurse, entrepreneur, and trauma survivor, about how deep breathwork can be a psychedelic experience without substances. Together, they explore non-ordinary states of consciousness, shadow work, and how accessing the subconscious through the body can lead to profound healing and joy.
If you’ve ever been curious about meditation, breathwork, holotropic breathwork, psychedelics, or wondered how to go beyond symptom relief to real transformation through non-chemical methods, this conversation is for you.
Episode Guest
Mark Worster is a distinguished leader, entrepreneur, and U.S. Marine Corps veteran known for his transformative impact in technology and healthcare. His military service has instilled a strong foundation of resilience and commitment, driving his career towards fostering innovation and operational excellence.
Mark has held significant roles, including President of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) in Boston and CEO of Unitel, where he focused on enhancing information technology through innovative solutions.
As a psychedelic healthcare professional, Mark brings a holistic perspective to his work, integrating cutting-edge wellness practices with traditional business strategies. His unique blend of experiences – from military service to healthcare leadership to entrepreneurship – allows him to connect with diverse audiences and offer transformative insights that resonate with business leaders seeking to optimize their personal and professional lives.
Mark has studied Breathwork Facilitation with Dr. Stan Grof and is currently training with Jacques Theron, a world-renowned breathwork practitioner from São Paulo, Brazil. In addition, Mark studies Andean Shamanic Practices with Joan Parisi Wilcox, a skilled Peruvian Shaman and author of Masters of the Living Energy: The Mystical World of the Q’ero of Peru.
Connect with Mark Worster:
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Episode Transcript
Julie: Hi, everyone. It’s Dr. Julie Lopez, and on this week’s episode, we are going to be diving into a very powerful modality, breathwork, as the most powerful, says our guest, modality in the field of psychedelics.
I want you to stay till the end when Mark is going to be telling us the secret to a joyful life. Today, I’d like to welcome Mark Wooster, who is an entrepreneur. He is a psychiatric nurse.
He has a master’s in cannabis science, and I think one of his best credentials is that he learned the secret to curing his own treatment-resistant depression.
Before we jump in, don’t forget to check out our website, www.vivapartnership.com, for free and low-cost resources that can change your life. Thank you so much for joining us, Mark.
It’s awesome to have you here.
Mark: Oh, Dr. Julie, I’m so happy to be here. I really am.
Anytime I get to talk to you, it’s just a highlight of my day.
Julie: Then the feeling’s mutual.
We’re so lucky. So, I just want to start out with, because I think it’s very compelling, you have so many credentials, and I asked you which ones you wanted me to pick. I mean, guys, if I said all his credentials, we’d still be here talking, but he really wanted to share this personal thing, which I think is so amazing, because, honestly, I have worked with so many people who have even fallen off the cliff of despair into really dark places, because we don’t accurately, as a majority in our culture, treat depression the way it can be.
So, tell me about your personal journey. What did you find that really made a difference?
Mark: Diving into that darkness, you know, and that meant…
Well, first off, treatment-resistant depression. 30% of people who are clinically defined or can fit into the category of being depressed have treatment-resistant depression, and it’s just what it says, right? Nothing works.
Medications don’t work. Other modalities don’t work, or rarely do. So you’re kind of out on a limb.
I became a seeker. I mean, I had this my whole life, so I didn’t start to seek treatment until I was 25, and the only reason I went to a therapist is that I was pissed at my father. My father and I did not have a good relationship when I was growing up, and I was angry with him, so I started to see a therapist about it, and then we started down the path of,
“Hey, I think you might have ADD.”
“Hey, I think you might have depression.”
And it turned into this whole 20-year process of trying to figure out just how do we treat this, which, by the way, being on the other side of it, I-
Julie: Hallelujah. Right?
Mark: I’m 63.
Julie: On the other side of it. So amazing.
Mark: On the other side. Listen.
Like almost all of my life till 56 or 57, treatment-resistant depression, and that meant suicidal three times, like gun to the head, am I going to do this, am I not going to do this, am I going to stay or not?
So into the darkness, into the pit, like you say, and that’s how I would say it. I would be in the pit, and being in the pit is just awful.
It’s awful. Yeah. And, you know, people always tell me, oh, you know, I had a friend who committed suicide, how selfish of them to do that, and I’d say it was a selfless act because at that moment when you’re in the pit, you feel like you are a burden to everyone else.
Julie: Yes.
Mark: So you look at it as you’re doing everybody a favor by exiting, right? At the end of the day, it was a blessing to have this because it made me seek out so many different things like mindfulness and meditation. You know, I lived in the Boston area, and I was able to be a part of some amazing studies at Harvard University that compared mindfulness and meditation to pharmaceutical interventions, right? But they compared the two.
That was my first introduction to meditation, which is amazing. It didn’t cure my depression, but it sure helped my symptoms, you know?
Julie: So, can I say something? I just want to say, we have a lot of these tools like this that are amazing, that help people regulate their nervous system, but they aren’t going to cure something that’s deeply seated. They’re just not.
And so a lot of times I get people saying, oh, I tried this thing I saw on TikTok or that thing I saw on social media, and it was kind of cool to learn these different things about my body, but it didn’t change my big struggle, whatever that was.
Mark: Right. And that was my experience.
All these things were good for temporary symptom relief or to shift me a little bit, but they never got to the root.
Now, I had some great therapists, Julie. I had some amazing therapists who were really good at what they do, really loved me and cared about me and helped me in many ways, but never ever were we able to get to the root cause, not until I get into the psychedelic medicine space and I was able to have some experiences that uncovered really the root cause of my treatment resistant depression.
And at the end of the day, it was really simple. When I was a little boy, interactions with my parents, who both loved me. My father is still alive, and he loves me like no other human being. But in the moment, being the oldest, young parents, they didn’t have any tools, and the experiences that I had programmed me for some beliefs that were at the root of my treatment-resistant depression.
And the number one belief was I am unlovable. Right? Now, that caused some behaviors that were positive, I mean, they’re not always negative, the positive behaviors, where you mentioned I have a whole litany of achievements, right, I have all of these things that I’ve done.
Yeah, that was because I needed to be top of the class so you’d love me, so that you’d be impressed with me. I had to do all of those things. I mean, I was always at the top of the class.
I was, you know, number one or two. I had to, you know, I had to run a business that was successful, and whatever I did, I had to do it as perfectly as possible because then you’d love me. So that was driving that.
But at the end of the day, always being unlovable affects every relationship that I had, because at some point, if I was criticized or I was questioned, it would be crushing to me because I’d say, ah, yeah, I am unlovable. You’re right. Yeah.
And then I’d be in the depression again. And so to break that cycle, to get rid of that belief, was done through utilizing psychedelic modalities and being and having these experiences that uncovered that base program. And once it was uncovered, I could work with it.
It could be done. Like the number one thing that I got out of that is I love me.
Julie: Yeh!
Mark: When you love yourself, then you’re available to love everybody else.
You don’t have anything that they have that you need to get validated. They don’t need to be anything. They don’t need to give you anything.
They can be them, and you can be you, and you can be in love. So that’s fundamentally shifted everything about relationships for me in an amazing way. Yeah.
Julie: What an amazing story. And you said that you started dipping into that world at 53 or 56 or somewhere in your 50s?
Mark: Fifty… Eight.
Julie: Fifty-eight. Amazing.
Mark: Yeah.
Julie: What an amazing story.
And of course, I’ve known Mark now for a couple of years, maybe. We’re in an entrepreneur’s group together. And I’ve always been drawn to you.
We have a little simpatico thing going on. And I’m… you know, my drug of choice was performance. So I can really relate to that compulsive performance thing, because as a person who was relinquished by her family and spent time in an orphanage, this like illogical place felt like, oh, my gosh, I’m in danger.
And if I’m not very, very valuable and prove it, then I could be kind of given away again. So the other thing I wanted to say, because you mentioned psychedelics, and when you say psychedelics, I think most listeners think about ketamine and MDMA and, you know, all the things.
Mark: And mushrooms and LSD and all of the things that…
Julie: …are out there. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and what we talked about and what you said, what you said you wanted to focus on is actually, I want to bring up a term that people may or may not be aware of, non-ordinary states of consciousness, right on ordinary states of consciousness.
And this is my jam because I’m all into this unconscious and implicit memory and all these things. But you said you feel that breathwork, breathwork, no chemicals, no medications, nothing ingested, injected, nothing is the strongest form of psychedelic work that there is. And I don’t think most listeners would think of breathwork as a psychedelic.
Mark: No, I had a conversation with somebody from India this morning, as a matter of fact, and you know, India in the Hindu traditions, they have pranayama, right? So they’ve worked with breathwork for 5000 years. Right. So it’s very well defined, and they use breathwork in beautiful ways to elicit these non-ordinary states of consciousness.
The breathwork that I practice and that I’ve been trained in for the last five years really is a psychedelic modality. It’s a psychedelic experience. And for me, all of the other medicines and I consider them sacred.
I think they’re gifts from God. All of those other ones would allow me to see like the program of I’m lovable, I’m unlovable. It would allow me to see it.
And then once I began to work with it, breathwork was what actually brought it out. I mean, think about it’s the physical act of breathing in new life force, breathing out anything you no longer need, because that’s what the exhalation is about. It’s about getting rid of stuff you don’t need.
Physiologically, it’s carbon dioxide, right? That’s what we exhale. But metaphysically, it removes all of those old memories, all of those old programs, physically, metaphysically removes them from your body. And we talked about it just before we got on the podcast.
The body keeps the score. That was a great book that was mind-blowing for me many, many years ago when it came out.
Julie: Bessel van der Kolk.
Mark: Right. Bessel van der Kolk from the New England area. My boy.
And so in that book, it’s the body keeps the score, your cellular memory. I mean, memory is not just here. It’s throughout every cell in your body.
And it made sense.
Julie: Here, being in your head, in your frontal lobe of your brain, your logical center.
Mark: Most people associate memory with just being within the brain, within the mind.
Right. And think this is where we hold it. And for me, and I truly believe this.
We hold it in every cell in our body. And that’s why, you know, we have physical manifestations of things like right now I’m dealing with some muscle issues within my within my upper chest region because I’ve been doing a lot of shadow work, and I went on a sort of a pilgrimage to Peru, right. A retreat.
And I did some energy work while I was there. This I know, which I’ve not ever had anything like this happen before. Physically, I know, having done this work for as long as I have now, that this is just a manifestation of that stuff getting ready to leave my body.
So tonight I’ll do a breathwork. A friend of mine is going to get online and we’re going to do a breathwork session together. And that’ll physically remove this…
Julie: …from your system.
Mark: Yeah. Yeah.
Julie: Amazing.
Can you tell us just to keep the people listening, caught up with our conversation? Can you tell us a little bit about what you mean when you say shadow work?
Mark: So shadow work, you know, Carl Jung, very, very famous psychologist, was a protege of Freud, Sigmund Freud, and they had a split, and Jung had this whole theory about the shadow side of our psyche. Right.
And so you have these shadows that are you that are not manifest, like you have shoved them down into the darkness of your subconscious, and they’re there, and they affect you all the time. Almost like the base programming that I talk about, like the unlovable, they’re pieces of you that sit unintegrated in your psyche. And so as you start to do work and uncover these things in this very specific way that you can do this, when you get into that work and you start to uncover some of the shadow stuff, it can be it can be a lot because, you know, it’s still you at the end of the day.
And I, I very much got that the shadow, the darkness, the things that we pushed down and try not to accept, are still me, and they need the love, too. So I am very good about loving my shadow side. So you bring it out and you work with it, right? Yeah,
Julie: I was going to say, and not only are they you and not only do they need love, but they hold gifts.
Mark: Oh!
Julie: They hold gifts.
Mark: Absolutely. I tell people all the time when I when I lead a ceremony and somebody’s I say, when you have something that comes up during your journey and it feels like it’s a difficult moment and you’re fearful and you don’t want to look at ice, I always say, you know what? Just ask it what it has for you, because it has something that it wants to give you a gift every time it’s a gift.
If you ask, it will just give it to you, and you’ll be like, oh, no fear, no nothing. Wow. What an insight.
What an awareness.
Julie: Amazing. I love it so much.
So I have a question for you because you talked about integrating these parts of yourself. So when you were in your, I mean, what, 40, 50 years of this very depressed state, if I said to you, you think you’re unlovable, would you have been like, what? You’re crazy. Or would you have been like…
Mark: I would have said everybody loves me.
Julie: Yeah, you would have been like, no, I reject that. But I don’t. You’re crazy.
Mark: I would have said, I don’t believe it.
Julie: No, I want to really highlight this because people listening might be like, oh, that’s Mark. That’s him.
But when you talk about integrating these shadow parts, it’s you literally because, you know, I’m so into the unconscious because you literally don’t know it’s there. It feels totally separate from you. If I if someone told me you’re afraid of dying, I’d be like, you’re crazy.
I don’t even think that way because I, in my first 23 years of life, I was just overperforming like it was my job. I was like, no, I don’t. I’m an engineer, and I was top of my class, and I’m the captain of the swim team, and I do all the things.
Yeah, it’s unconsciously impressive. So impressive, but, you know, it’s it’s not conscious. That’s the important thing.
Yeah. And the idea that they have gifts to give you. I think that’s important, too.
Mark: Oh, my gosh. And. Where I work, what I do, all the things that I do now are all about accessing the subconscious.
I mean, think about it’s the repository of every experience that you’ve ever had. Everyone, I found this out a short while ago, and it really made a lot of sense to me. You know, your conscious mind, your prefrontal cortex, you know, your five senses can bring in about 11 million bits of data per second.
It’ll stream into you. Your prefrontal cortex can only receive 40 bits per second, like 11,000,040 bits, just a little bit.
Julie: I love that.
Mark: But your subconscious mind can handle like 20 million bits per second. So it takes everything that your senses, everything. And brings it in and records it, your prefrontal cortex, which is your awareness of the present moment, here you are, only a tiny little slice of what your senses have picked up.
And I think it’s, you know, it’s really by design because it would be such an overload if you knew everything that was going on around you. Like, think about it. You just live in this tiny little world, blinders on.
So the work that I know, this is the work that you do as well, is you’re opening up that awareness to the rest of all that stuff that’s in the subconscious, where all those programs live, where the shadows live. And those are really what are running the show. I mean, it’s it just it kills me.
It makes I laugh so hard all the time, where we think, we think that we know what reality is. We don’t have a clue. We don’t have a clue.
We got this tiny little slice of what is really available.
Yeah.
Julie: Well, and I think that’s important because I think most people, if they hear the term shadow work or these parts of self that are like hidden away, or maybe even your system pushed them away because they had difficult data, and there might not be that interested in working with the shadow.
They’d be like, oh, no, no, no. I don’t want to touch that. Right.
Mark: That’s why that’s why that’s why my shirt says it’s not for everyone. I mean, you may have an ego that is so strong. And when you know, when I say the word ego, sometimes it has a bad connotation.
Right. But for me, the ego is a beautiful construct that creates this world that we live in, this safety box that we live in. Some people have an ego that is so strong, and it creates such a wall that they’ll never get behind it to get to the shadows and stuff.
At the end of the day, soften that up, open it up. Yeah. And it’s fine if you live in that little box and you have a great life, 80 years, you’re in and you’re out.
Bravo. Bravo. I could never do it.
I needed to dive in. I’ve been blessed to have this life of being insanely curious as to how we end up being who we are.
Julie: Yeah.
Curious, combined with suffering.
Mark: Yeah.
Julie: Right. That’s a great recipe.
Mark: Pain is a great motivator. Pain is the motivator. Unless you’re in pain, you’re not going to do something.
Julie: Yeah.
Mark: You’re going to stay.
Yeah. I mean, you’re designed to stay in the comfort as long as you can.
Julie: So we don’t have a ton of time left, but I want to hear a little bit more about breathwork and about, you know, like stories you’ve seen, how it works, what could someone expect, how would they find not because like like I said, there’s a bunch of stuff out there. You can like search on social, but you can search on social media and learn about changing your breathing and parasympathetic nervous system, and all this stuff.
But when you talk about breathwork, what really moves the needle? Like, what type of stuff have you seen?
Mark: So I teach all of those modalities, right? I do a lot of the breathwork about coherence and bringing teams into coherent modes where they’re connected and able to, you know, work together in a much more efficient manner, and breathwork that, like you say, will shift you from sympathetic to parasympathetic nervous response, which is beautiful. And that breathwork is really about working with this physical body in this 3D world. The breathwork that I love to do and that I do most of is deep breathwork that lasts about an hour, and it is you are lying down, you have an eye mask on, I guide you through it, and it is deep.
It’s a deep experience, about 15 or 20 minutes in when you’re doing this circular breathing pattern, about 15 or 20 minutes in if your ego isn’t still like totally in the way. And sometimes that does happen. Sometimes it takes multiple sessions to break through that.
Once you get through those 15, 20 minutes in, you are in a non-ordinary state of reality, really. Now, I’ve done, I’ve traveled the world doing, I don’t know, probably 25, 30 different entrepreneurs’ groups. And what I get for feedback afterwards is simply amazing.
I had this one, I had this one, I’ll give you an example. I had this one woman in India, 40, early 40s. She came up after the breathwork session, and it was a good one.
We had done it outdoors, it was at night, and it was beautiful. It was a great setting, and she had a deep experience. She came up and she shook my hand and then she started to cry and she said, “My dad died two years ago.”
You know, in India, family is so very, very important, right? Generations live together in the same home, and they’re very tight-knit family units. She said, “My dad died two years ago, and my mom died a month ago.” She said, “I’ve been holding on to them and missing them so much and holding them so tightly.”
She said in the breathwork, this is an hour-long breathwork. She said in the breathwork, they came to me and they said, “Daughter, we’re fine. You’ve got to let us go. You’ve got to live your life.” And she said they floated away with smiles on their faces. And I have not felt this much peace and joy and contentment in I can’t tell you how long.
That’s the kind of thing that happens in a breathwork session.
Julie: It’s amazing.
Mark: It is.
Julie: I could feel that while you were telling the story.
Mark: To have her have that moment of peace and just understanding that her parents are fine, like they’re fine.
Julie: That they could deliver it with a smile on their face.
Mark: They came and they were smiling. They were happy.
They were together. And they said, “Just don’t worry about us. Go live your life. We love you.”
Julie: Well, I do want to give a shout-out because I did attend one of your breathwork sessions, and it was so powerful. It was amazing.
And I’ve got to say, because you add the music with it, too. You’re a killer DJ.
Mark: Oh, yeah, I do.
I was gifted with that voice. Welcome to the show, everyone.
Julie: But also the music that you chose.
It was great.
Mark: Yeah. The music, the soundtrack, you know, and they’re based on what I’m doing and the intention. Sometimes there is no soundtrack, Julie.
Sometimes it’s me breathing with you and bringing you through. And it’s just as profound. But the soundtrack, ooh, the soundtrack, that can take you there.
Julie: It was so amazing. OK, you know, I could talk to you forever, but we’re closing in on that time when we’ve got to shift gears. So tell us the secret to joyful living.
You promised at the end that you would share the secret with us.
Mark: Well, you know, you’re you may not believe me on this, but I’m telling you, this has been my experience. It’s been and it’s been taught to me through so many different.
Groups or people or traditions. Here it is. You ready?
Julie: OK, I’m ready,
Mark: Everybody, pay attention now. “It’s all made up.” Your whole entire life is made up.
It’s all a story. And if it’s all a story, you can just make a new story and live that one.
Julie: Yeah.
Mark: It’s that simple.
Now, I know you say, No, I have these obligations. I have these, I have to do this. I have to do that.
No. It’s all made up. You can do anything you want because it’s your life. I don’t know.
Once you get in, once you get that, Jules, once you get that and you really understand it. There is a level of freedom and joy that comes into your life that you just you you just can’t anticipate. And, you know, we were we were both at the Global Leadership Conference, and I was third row.
Deepak Chopra is being interviewed by Winnie.
And she asked the question, “What’s the true measure of success?” And I swear to God, if you’ve ever been to a show where you feel like the performer or the person on stage turns and looks directly at you, I’m telling you, Deepak Chopra looked right at me, and he said, “The true measure of success is joy.”
Julie: I love it.
Mark: Yes, yes, it is.
Julie: And I could hear in your words when you said freedom, just such a sense of freedom, also picturing the possibility. Right.
Once you rewrite your story, all these other possibilities are right there for the taking.
Mark: Your story limits the possibilities when you get rid of your story, and you realize it can be anything you want it to be. Infinite possibility shows up.
Anything can happen.
Julie: I love it.
Mark: You could end up on a podcast with Dr. Julie Lopez.
Julie: Within 24 hours.
Mark: Within 24 hours.
Julie: I mean, Mark, thank you so much for being here.
And thank you, everyone, for joining me on this episode of Whole by Design.
I hope it left you feeling inspired to toss out labels, embrace new perspectives, and take one step closer to the joy and clarity that you deserve.
As always, visit www.vivapartnership.com to access our amazing free and low-cost resources that will empower you and your loved ones in health and healing.
Let’s spread the message, subscribe, review, or share this episode with someone who could benefit from a stigma-dropping approach to mental fitness today.
Thank you so much, Mark, for being here.
Mark: My pleasure. It’s an honor. Thank you so much.
