In a world dominated by deadlines, expectations, and burnout, Marni Mae, known as “The Basic Shaman,” has found a unique calling. Formerly a management consultant at one of the world’s largest consulting firms, Marni’s journey took an unexpected turn after facing the stresses of corporate life head-on. Today, she is an international spiritual and personal development guide, motivational speaker, yoga teacher, and energy worker who helps individuals reconnect with themselves and find balance. Blending ancient traditions like the chakra system and sound healing with modern-day challenges such as burnout, stress, and the search for purpose, Marni is on a mission to ignite consciousness and promote self-realization. Through her global work, she helps people navigate their spiritual paths, blending cultural immersion with practical tools for everyday life. Join Mystic Mag as we explore how Marni’s own transformative journey continues to inspire others to live with clarity, peace, and purpose.
Your journey from a corporate consultant to a spiritual guide is fascinating. What was the turning point that made you leave the corporate world and fully commit to an esoteric path?
I experienced burnout. I had always identified strongly with being a successful business professional. I had a very strong personality and deeply associated my identity with achievement in the corporate world. Even now, I still see myself as a bridge between the corporate world and more esoteric realms. I no longer view them as separate.
However, at the time, my spirit knew that there was more available to me, but my personality was so attached to my corporate identity that my soul put me on a path of illness and burnout. I started self-sabotaging at work in ways that confused me—questioning my own words and actions. Eventually, everything came to a head while I was working at Google in San Francisco. I was on the Google account, and the perks were incredible—my own company-paid apartment, gourmet meals, an amazing community of friends. By all external measures, I should have been happy. But I wasn’t.
That’s when I realized that something wasn’t right internally. The environment wasn’t the issue—it was something within me. That realization of marked the beginning of my commitment to healing myself.
I had grown up in a spiritual household. My father attended Wharton’s Executive MBA program at the University of Pennsylvania during the rise of the mindfulness movement. As a child, I watched him practice Bikram yoga and breathing exercises to manage stress from his business life. My mother became a yoga teacher when I was 12, and our home was often filled with spiritual teachers, kirtan artists, and yogis who would stay with us. My Jewish upbringing also played a role in my spiritual development. But despite all these influences, I suppressed my spiritual gifts from a young age because I wanted to fit in.
I had always identified with the corporate world, believing that my intelligence and professional success were what would keep me safe and accepted. But when I reached a breaking point and recognized that I was deeply unhappy, I decided to take what I called “eight months off” to focus on my healing. I believed that if I could heal myself, I could heal the world. It made sense to start with yoga and spiritual exploration, immersing myself in different cultures and traditions.
The turning point came when I not only realized that happiness wasn’t about external success but also when my body forced me to change. I became physically ill, and my self-sabotaging behaviors increased. Thankfully, I had supportive mentors at Accenture who allowed me to take a leave of absence—with health insurance and other benefits—so that I could truly focus on healing. What was meant to be an eight-month break turned into nine years of transformation.
Another pivotal moment in my journey was my engagement at 25. I had traveled the world for ten months with my fiancé, only to later discover that he was gay. I completely lost myself in that relationship, surrendering my identity and decisions to him. I didn’t even want to think for myself. At the time, he was struggling with his own identity, and I was trying to be someone I wasn’t. When I finally uncovered the truth—that he was gay, and had been unfaithful—it was a profound awakening. I realized all the ways in which I had been out of alignment and neglecting my own self-love.
After that, I returned to consulting, eventually landing at Google. But that, too, became a moment of reckoning. I knew it was time to leave.
My relationship with illness has evolved significantly since then. At that time, I saw sickness as something happening to me. Now, I understand it as a message—one that guided me toward my purpose.
During my transition, I was fortunate to be guided by a Vedic astrologer in Florida. He read my chart and told me, “You have the shamanic path in your chart. You need to explore it.” At first, I was hesitant, but he insisted. That conversation was another major catalyst for change.
What I’ve learned since then is that those who are meant to share spiritual gifts with others will inevitably be called to do so. If we ignore that calling, we will be pushed onto our path—whether through illness, burnout, heartbreak, or some other form of disruption (in my case all of the above- I’ve been known to be historically stubborn so it took the work to get me to hear the calling!). The universe will guide us back to alignment.
Now, I embrace that journey fully. And I’m grateful for it.
You describe yourself as “The Basic Shaman.” How did you arrive at this title, and what does it represent about your approach to spiritual guidance?
Oh yes, I love that name though I don’t use the term shaman as much anymore. The name itself felt like a beautiful example of the paradoxes I embody, the deep ancestral wisdom and the more surface human play! (I love this idea that we’re all just a bunch of paradoxes and that liberation is at the intersection of accepting all of it!).
Lately, I’ve been using bruja (Spanish for “witch”) instead, as it feels more resonant. The term shaman actually originates from Siberia and has been used broadly to describe spiritual teachers. The best definition I’ve heard is that a shaman is a bridge between worlds—between the physical and spiritual realms.
I actually got the name Basic Shaman when I was in San Francisco, transitioning into a more spiritual path. At the time, I was living in a community home with a group of entrepreneurs and successful tech professionals in a great neighborhood in the Marina district. The night before I left, I had a going-away party. I was still very new to my spiritual journey, but I had done a tarot reading for a friend that night.
The next morning, I went to SoulCycle, which is a well-known cycling class in the U.S. It’s expensive and has a bit of a cult-like following. I walked into the house afterward, carrying my Louis Vuitton bag and a Starbucks drink. Then, I dropped some wisdom about the tarot reading I had done the night before. My friend laughed and said, “Oh, the Basic Shaman strikes again!” I thought it was hilarious and, in many ways, fitting.
I don’t call myself “a shaman” these days as I think the term is often appropriated, but I do identify deeply with the nature based and ancestral wisdom of Shamir practices and practitioners. While I don’t use that term now myself, on a few occasions an shamanic leader has identified shamanism within me and recognized me with the title, which has been humbling and inspiring. I believe that’s really the only way to receive that title—through recognition by those with the gift of sight within a specific lineage. Anyone calling themselves a “Shaman” otherwise feels a bit off to me. I don’t tend to use the term because it carries deep cultural significance, and while I have been initiated into certain traditions, shaman doesn’t fully encompass who I am. Those born into those lineages have the right to hold that title.
The combination of the term “basic” with something so profound as “shaman” was a fun interplay I explored. It speaks to the paradoxes that exist within each of us! Bruja is Spanish for witch, and “witches” and shamans, at their core, are about connecting with nature and Earth-based traditions—reviving ancient wisdom that has been forgotten or erased yet still exists within the collective consciousness. Some incredible souls have preserved these traditions, allowing us to access them today.
Personally, I feel a deep connection to that ancestral wisdom and the desire to bridge it into the modern world. I also love using the term bridge because I enjoy being human. Many people on a spiritual path struggle with the human experience—they long to ascend or return to the places they came from. But for me, being basic means embracing the human experience fully, in all its forms.
So, to me, Basic Shaman (or Basic Bruja) is about bridging the mystical with the mundane—honoring the ethereal, esoteric, and ancient while applying it to the reality we live in. It’s about integrating spiritual connection into everyday life and truly experiencing what it means to be human.
What type of services do you offer?
I’m fortunate to offer a variety of services. At the core of everything I do is transformation—helping individuals and organizations shift energetically so they can unlock their potential and align with their purpose.
I offer a range of services, including:
✨Soul Songs – Personal, channeled sound healing transmissions that activate deep energetic shifts. If everything in the universe is energy, and energy moves in frequencies, then each of us carries a unique vibrational signature—our own song. Just as sound can heal and attune, I channel the specific song that aligns my clients with their highest purpose, helping them find energetic harmony, healing, and transformation.
✨ 1:1 Coaching & Energy Work – Guiding individuals on personal transformation, energetic mastery, and activating their unique gifts.
✨ Frequency Matters Community – A space for group monthly energy resets, monthly energetic mechanics classes (awakening our inner healer), and collective healing.
✨ Corporate Energetics & Burnout Prevention – Helping businesses and leaders integrate ancient wisdom into modern success through workshops, executive coaching, and burnout prevention / stress management programs.
✨ Orgasmic Breathwork – A guided practice that uses breath and energy activation to cultivate deep presence, pleasure, and life-force energy. This isn’t just about physical sensation—it’s about awakening your full energetic potential, clearing blockages, and reconnecting with your body’s natural flow of power and creativity.
Whether through music, energy work, or leadership transformation, my mission is to keep the energy fields of leaders clear so they can continue shifting the paradigm.
Would love to hear more about what resonated with you—how do you see energy playing a role in your own life and work?
My work activates transformation and a reclamation of self because I believe, as Ram Dass says, that we are all walking each other home. After years of traveling the world and studying with masters across different traditions, what I engage with and share help people remember who they are and feel good in that remembrance.
I work with individuals, businesses, groups, and communities. For individuals, I offer mentorship, which can include life coaching to help people discover their true purpose. However, much of my mentorship these days focuses on guiding those on esoteric or mystical paths—helping them activate their own superpowers and learn how to utilize them.
Additionally, I have a community called the Frequency Matters Community, where we engage in all things frequency and energy related. We meet once a month to reset energetically as a collective, recognizing the importance of healing together. If people don’t have personal altars for spiritual connection, this serves as a communal altar where we can recharge and realign. We also hold Energetic Mechanics classes once a month. In these classes, I teach techniques that we use in our energy resets so that participants can apply them both personally and in their work with others.
I also offer one-on-one sessions where I share these teachings, which has been some of the most exciting work for me. For a long time, I hesitated to be open about this more woowoo or energetic based work, especially while working in the corporate space. But I’ve come to believe that it’s essential to be honest about our gifts, our purpose, and why we are here.
In addition to individual work, I collaborate with businesses to address burnout and stress. I like to say I help them apply ancestral wisdom to modern day challenges and success! I do this in several ways. Ultimately, I believe the specific modalities don’t matter as much as the transformation they bring. However, to give you an idea, I lead corporate workshops and courses focused on burnout prevention and stress management. At the core, it’s about transformation—helping people ask, Who am I?
To me, burnout is simply a misalignment—an opportunity to reconnect with what is real and aligned for us. Sometimes, all it takes is a small adjustment, a subtle shift, rather than completely upending one’s life. For others, it might mean making a drastic change, like moving to a beach and starting over. I often say, I traveled the world and studied with masters so you don’t have to—but if you want to, I’ll show you how.
One of my passions is helping bridge different worlds. You don’t necessarily have to leave the corporate space to find fulfillment—companies can serve as dojos for personal development and meaningful impact. They can be powerful places for transformation and self-discovery.
When I work with companies, I do more than just workshops and courses—I also offer executive coaching and facilitation. With my consulting background, I bring both strategy and transformation to the table. Having been highly successful in that field, I now use my skills to help organizations foster healthier, more aligned work environments.
Burnout and fatigue are common in today’s fast-paced world, especially for professionals. What specific practices or tools do you recommend for people in the corporate world to find peace and balance?
I love this question because burnout isn’t just about overwork—it’s about misalignment. Two people can be in the same high-stress environment, and one will thrive while the other burns out. That’s because burnout is an energetic imbalance—a signal that something gets to shift.
When I teach about burnout, I frame it through two key concepts: resiliency and antifragility.
1. Resiliency – The ability to bounce back quickly from adversity
Resiliency is about training your nervous system to recover efficiently from stress, so that small challenges don’t take you down. This isn’t just about taking time off—it’s about learning to regulate your energy in real time.
Some of my favorite tools include:
✨ Breathwork & meditation – Resetting your nervous system and shifting out of stress responses.
❄️ Cold plunges & intentional stress exposure – Training the body to adapt to stress instead of collapsing under it.
🌿 Energetic clearing – Releasing stagnant energy so it doesn’t accumulate and cause exhaustion.
When I teach energetic resets, I focus on a combination of breathing, meditation, and sound. This trifecta works powerfully to clear stress, restore clarity, and reset energy. I also emphasize energetic hygiene—keeping your energy field clear from external influences. What that looks like varies for different people, and I teach many techniques to support this practice.
The key? Resiliency helps you bounce back faster, so that stress doesn’t accumulate over time and lead to burnout.
2. Antifragility – Not just bouncing back, but growing stronger from challenges
Beyond resilience, there’s something even more powerful: antifragility.
Antifragility means that instead of just recovering from burnout, we use it as fuel for expansion. We don’t just “get back to where we were”—we evolve. Challenges, when approached consciously, can teach us how to shift patterns, set boundaries, and align with a more sustainable way of working.
Some supportive practices here:
💫 Understanding personal patterns – What energy leaks and habits are keeping you in cycles of burnout? What beliefs are stopping you from setting boundaries?
🔥 Rewiring how we approach work & success – Moving from force to flow, so that work becomes an extension of alignment, rather than a drain on your life force.
Antifragility shifts the conversation from “How do I avoid burnout?” to “What is burnout teaching me?” Instead of just trying to recover, we ask:
“Why am I not saying no?” Instead of just learning to set boundaries (a resilience tool), we explore the deeper patterns and belief systems behind our choices.
“What beliefs have shaped my current behavior?” Without judgment, we acknowledge how these beliefs once served us—and whether they still do.
“How do I choose to move forward differently?”
Self-Discovery as a Tool for Realignment
There are many different approaches to self-discovery, from astrology to human design to esoteric traditions. Personally, I just had my Nadi leaves read—a tradition in India where ancient sages recorded guidance for future souls. It was extraordinary!
That said, I believe these tools are only valuable if they help us make informed decisions about our lives. They lose their power when we let them define us or limit us.
For example, if someone says, “I’m a projector in human design, so I can’t do this or that,” they’re giving their power away. Instead, I see us as co-creators of our lives. The world is happening for us, not to us.
The Ultimate Goal: Sustainable Success & Alignment
For those experiencing burnout, when I support them, my role isn’t just to help them manage stress—it’s to help them understand their patterns, shift what no longer serves them, and integrate new choices that align with the life they’re committed to creating.
Because when we realign, we don’t just recover from burnout—we step into a version of ourselves that is more energized, clear, and empowered than ever before.
Sound healing and the chakra system are central to your approach. Could you share a specific example of how these ancient practices have helped someone overcome a modern challenge?
Absolutely! I could geek out on this topic for DAYS! Sound healing and the chakra system are ancient tools that continue to offer profound healing in modern times.
Across traditions, we see that everything is energy, and energy moves in frequency. The chakra system, mapped in yogic and Ayurvedic traditions, is a framework for understanding how energy flows in the body. Each of the seven main chakras corresponds to different aspects of our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. When energy is blocked in a particular chakra, we often experience challenges—whether emotional distress, physical ailments, or a sense of being out of alignment.
Sound is one of the most powerful ways to restore balance and attune our energy. Different frequencies resonate with different chakras, much like a tuning fork can bring an instrument back into harmony. Mantras, singing bowls, and other sound healing practices have been used for centuries to recalibrate our energy, shift our state of mind, and support deep healing.
In yogic tradition, mantras were the ancient masters’ best attempt to bring higher-dimensional experiences into the 3D world. Spiritual teachers would enter deep meditative states—what we might call “the field”—where everything exists as pure vibration, love, and frequency. What they experienced there was beyond words, but through sound, they could bring the essence of those realms into this reality. Mantras are encoded frequencies—vibrations that activate transformation when spoken or sung.
In my work, I use sound and frequency intentionally, both in individual sessions and through music. Soul Songs, for example, are personalized, channeled sound healing transmissions that align with a person’s unique energetic signature. Similar to the way shamans use “icaros”—sacred healing songs in plant medicine traditions—these songs act as vibrational medicine, helping to clear blocks and activate deeper alignment. If everything is frequency, then each person has a unique song—an energetic signature that can be tuned for healing, attunement, and activation.
Beyond personal healing, I integrate these principles into my music, infusing intentional frequencies, mantras, and vibrational medicine into modern music. My recent release, Sita Rama Heart Healing (639Hz), is tuned to the heart chakra frequency, designed to support emotional healing and connection. This is part of a broader movement bringing sound healing into contemporary spaces, making these transformative frequencies more accessible to the collective.
Everything is energy. Everything is frequency. If sound is frequency and we are frequency, then certain sound vibrations have the power to shift our state, realign our energetic systems, and bring us into resonance with our highest selves. Sound interacts with our bodies, our emotions, and even the water within us—it’s a fundamental force of healing.
This is why I’m so passionate about pioneering this work—not just in individual healing but in music that moves people on a vibrational level. The songs I’m releasing now are chakra-based, intentionally tuned for energetic impact. This isn’t just healing music—it’s a new frontier in sound healing within pop and electronic music. Some artists use subliminal frequencies, but this approach is different—it’s an intentional fusion of mantra, healing frequencies, and modern production to create true sonic activations.
We are standing at a moment where ancient wisdom and modern technology can merge like never before. Right now, there is an opportunity to use sound to uplift the collective, to create movement in the system, to heal, and to raise the frequency of the planet. That is the mission I’m committed to, and I’m so excited to continue exploring what’s possible in this space.
