How One Breathwork Session in a Walmart Parking Lot Changed My Entire Life
It was a lunch break.
I had an errand to run for work, and I knew the call was coming — a free online event I'd signed up for called LOVE Fest. L.O.V.E. It stood for Level Of Vibrational Energy. I'd found it through SOMA Breath, a breathwork organization I'd stumbled across while searching for something I couldn't quite name yet.
I drove to the Walmart in Round Rock, Texas, parked on the far edge of the lot where it was quiet, and pulled out my phone.
My wife was tuning in from home.
I didn't know what I was about to experience. I didn't know that the next two years of my life were about to be completely dismantled and rebuilt from the inside. I just knew I had an hour, a parking spot, and something in me that had been looking for a door.
What Happened in That Parking Lot
The energy on the Zoom call was immediate.
People were dancing. Not in a performative wellness-content kind of way — genuinely moving, free, lit up from the inside. One of the songs they played was "I Love My Life." I watched people on my screen getting up and dancing, and they were cycling through different participants, showcasing the joy in the room, and I just — started dancing too. In my car. In a Walmart parking lot in Round Rock, Texas, on my lunch break from a job I didn't yet know I was about to leave.
I want to be clear about who I was at that point in my life. Music and movement had always been my anchor. I grew up in that world. But I'd left the club scene by my late twenties because I wanted to keep dancing — I just didn't want alcohol to be the vehicle anymore. I'd been looking for a space where you could feel that free without a reason to feel guilty about it the next morning.
I'd been looking for a long time.
Then the breathwork portion of the call began.
I had tried to meditate before. Many times. It had never worked — my mind was always somewhere else, planning the next thing, replaying the last thing. But something about the breath rhythm, the music, the collective energy of a hundred strangers doing this together on a screen — something quieted. And in that quiet, I saw things.
Not metaphorically. Visually. I saw what was possible. For my life. For my wife's life. For the family we were building and the impact we could have. I saw it the way you see something that's already true, not the way you see a dream you're not sure you deserve.
I was overwhelmed with joy. I cried. In my car. In a Walmart parking lot.
Going back to work that afternoon, I already knew things were going to be different. I didn't have the words for it yet. I just knew.
Less Than Two Weeks Later: Ibiza
I started looking for the next in-person SOMA Breath training before the call was even over.
The next one that worked with my schedule was in Ibiza, Spain. I had never been to Europe. I booked it anyway — before I could overthink it, before the practical voice in my head could build a case against it.
I need to tell you something about Ibiza that I didn't see coming.
The in-person training was a different order of experience than the Zoom call — deeper, slower, more confrontational in the best way. Being in a room with people who had given their lives to this practice, going through SOMA Breath journeys together, feeling what happens to a room full of strangers when they breathe in unison — I understood immediately why this thing existed and why it had found me.
And in one of those sessions in Ibiza, I connected with my ancestors.
I'm careful with that language because I know how it lands. But there is no other way to say it. Something showed up in that breathwork session that I had no framework for — a presence, a recognition, a sense of being held by people who had come before me. Whatever that first session in the parking lot had cracked open, Ibiza reached in.
Ibiza was also where I experienced ecstatic dance for the first time. The same thing I'd been looking for when I left the clubs. The same freedom, the same aliveness — without any of the cost. A room full of people moving however they needed to move, no choreography, no performance, no drink in anyone's hand. Just bodies remembering how to be in themselves.
By the time I boarded the flight back to the States, I knew there was no going back. Not to the job. Not to the version of life I'd been living. Not to the person who needed a Zoom call to prove something was possible — because now I'd felt it in my bones.
What Happened After I Landed
Two months after Ibiza, I left my job. The secure one. The one with the salary and the stability and the errand I'd been running when I parked in that Walmart lot.
A few months after that, my wife and I sold our house.
We wanted a runway — savings to carry us while we explored what this new life was actually supposed to look like. It was terrifying and it was right. Both of those things can be true at the same time.
By March 2024 — exactly one year after Ibiza — we were in Rishikesh, India for a 500-hour yoga teacher training. Victoria, my wife and co-founder, came with me. Thirteen-hour days, six days a week, in the birthplace of yoga. The culture shock was real. The physical demand was real. And the understanding I came away with reframed everything I thought I knew about the practice.
The asanas — the poses that most Western yoga classes treat as the whole point — are preparation. They exist to prepare the body for pranayama. Pranayama prepares the mind for meditation. Meditation is the path toward samadhi. I had been doing the warm-up and calling it the workout. Rishikesh changed that.
By July 2024, I was in Bali for my 5Elements Dance Activation DJ training. My background in music — the years in the club scene, the hours behind the decks — turned out to be exactly the foundation I needed for what I was being called to do. Not a detour. A preparation.
The Thread That Kept Pulling
April 2025. Victoria and I began our ACIM study calls and became ministers for Energy of Creation, the nonprofit we'd been building through all of this.
A month later, we were back in Bali together — two months of deepening, learning, expanding. Then three months in Thailand.
Thailand almost broke me open in a different way. It turned out to be extremely close to the ten-year anniversary of the first time I'd ever gone to Thailand — a solo trip I'd taken just one day after turning 26. I was 36 standing in nearly the same place where a younger version of me had first understood that the world was bigger than the life I'd been handed. Ten years. A full circle I hadn't planned.
That's what this path does. It keeps circling back to show you that nothing was wasted.
March 24, 2026
Three years to the day from that first training in Ibiza, I received my certification as a SOMA Breath Transformational Coach.
I thought about the person in the Walmart parking lot. Dancing in their car. Crying from joy over something they couldn't explain. Scrolling for the next training before the call was even finished.
I thought about my wife tuning in from home. About the life we sold and the one we built. About ancestors who showed up in a breathwork session in Spain, and a ten-year anniversary in Thailand I didn't know I was walking into, and a co-founder in a yoga room in Rishikesh learning the same thing I was learning at the same time.
None of it was planned. All of it was right.
Energy of Creation exists because of that lunch break. Because something in me was already looking for what SOMA Breath turned out to be — and because once I found it, I couldn't do anything except follow it and then turn around and build a door for other people.
We built this in Temple, Texas because this work needs to exist here. In Central Texas. In working-class communities. For BIPOC and queer and neurodivergent people who've been told that transformation is for someone else, somewhere else, with a different kind of life than the one they're living.
You don't have to go to Ibiza. You don't have to sell your house.
You just have to find a quiet edge of a parking lot and press play.
Explore SOMA Breath at Energy of Creation →
Frequently Asked Questions
What is SOMA Breath and what does L.O.V.E. Fest have to do with it? SOMA Breath is a structured breathwork system founded by Niraj Naik, rooted in ancient pranayama and updated with modern neuroscience and music technology. LOVE Fest — Level Of Vibrational Energy — is a free community event that SOMA Breath has run to introduce people to the practice. It was my first experience with SOMA Breath, and it happened on a lunch break in a parking lot in Round Rock, Texas. Not a retreat. Not a studio. A Zoom call and a car.
What does a SOMA Breath session feel like for a complete beginner? For me, the first session was the first time I ever successfully meditated. The breathwork rhythm gives the mind something to anchor to — which is what most beginners struggle with in silent meditation. During the session I experienced visual imagery, a profound sense of possibility, and emotions I hadn't been able to access before. Tingling and warmth are common physiological responses and are normal. Many people cry. Not from sadness — from relief.
Do I need spiritual beliefs or a yoga background to benefit from SOMA Breath? No. The physiological effects of SOMA Breath are grounded in science — changes in oxygen and CO2 levels, vagal activation, brainwave entrainment — and are measurable regardless of your belief system. I came from a music background, not a wellness background. My wife was tuning in from home on a whim. Neither of us knew what we were doing. It worked anyway.
Is it normal for breathwork to create such a significant life change? I want to answer this honestly rather than dramatically. Breathwork didn't make decisions for me — I made them. What it did was create a clarity I hadn't been able to access before. The job, the house, the move — those were choices I made with my eyes fully open. Breathwork gave me the nervous system regulation and inner access to see what I actually wanted, and the courage to stop performing a life that wasn't mine. That's what it can do. What you do with it is always yours.
What happened when you connected with your ancestors in Ibiza — and is that something everyone experiences? Not everyone experiences it and I wouldn't promise that anyone will. What I can say is that the in-person SOMA Breath training in Ibiza created conditions — depth, safety, collective energy, extended practice — that my first session couldn't. In one of those sessions, something showed up that I have no other language for except ancestors. A presence. A recognition. For me it was one of the most significant moments of my life. For others, the sessions produce different things — clarity, emotional release, physical sensation, imagery. The practice meets you where you are.
Where can I experience SOMA Breath in Central Texas? Energy of Creation offers live SOMA Breathwork sessions in Temple, Texas and the broader Central Texas area, as well as online sessions for community members. Our Frequency Social Club events include an accessible guided breathwork experience for complete beginners. Visit our events page for current dates, or join our community for regular session access.
What is Energy of Creation and how did it come out of this journey? Energy of Creation is a 508(c)(1)(a) nonprofit wellness community co-founded by me and Victoria Thompson, based in Temple, Texas. It exists because of everything described in this post — the parking lot, Ibiza, Rishikesh, Bali, Thailand, and the understanding that the transformation I experienced needs to be accessible to people who look like me and live lives like mine. Our mission is breaking cycles and building futures. That's not a tagline. It's the literal description of what happened to my life after one lunch break Zoom call.
Peace and much much love. — Destinē The Leader Minister of Love · Co-Founder, Energy of Creation Certified SOMA Breath Transformational Coach
