The Self Sourced Podcast: Episode 

Transcript: The Self Sourced Podcast, Episode 6 – Embodying The Light & The Dark, with Marina Savic-Baines

FRANKIE: Few deep breaths, my Marina. In for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Exhale for 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Just land in this body, in this space. Feel your feet on the ground, feel grounded, settled. Feel your skin, feel the touch of the chair, and just connect with this beautiful moment and this beautiful connection between two beautiful souls.

How gorgeous, my Marina. I'm so excited to connect with you on the Self Sourced Podcast today. That breath you just did — I feel so connected. That was gorgeous, I'm definitely keeping that in for the intro for everyone else.

You're my soul sister, one of the most amazing women I've had the pleasure to know, to love, to have fun with, to walk with, to grow with. I'm so grateful to know you as the woman that you are, in all of yourself, and to have this conversation with you today, which we've spontaneously called The Light in the Dark. I mean, look at us — literally the light and the dark today.

Talk about your gift. Talk about your work, your approach, and how you help women grow and evolve into all that they are and all of their potential, as the founder of your work, Energetic Alchemy. Welcome, welcome, welcome.

MARINA: Wow, where to start? Thank you so much, first of all — you are that soul sister who always opens space for me and sees me deeply. And at the end of the day, when we talk about my work, your work, any work, and about embodiment — this is exactly what a fully embodied woman is, and what fully embodied women are for each other. That's how I personally see things.

So I don't know where to start, my Frankie. Shall I start with how this all came into my life, and how my personal disembodiment brought me to the fully embodied person I am today?

As you know, I grew up in Serbia in the times of war, uncertainty, scarcity, isolation. I can say until I was 10 years old, everything was kind of beautiful, peaceful, in alignment — the way a child imagines the world. But once I reached 10, from that time, I remember the wars. I remember sitting in line waiting to get one loaf of bread and one litre of milk. In 1999, the bombing of the country. Sleeping in the basement. Going through eight really, really hard years in a relationship. After the bombing finished, my parents got divorced. So me and my brother went through that too.

All of these experiences brought me to a place where I got lost. I remember sitting and crying in my bathroom, asking myself: is this life? Is this life all about feeling that level of pain in the body? Honestly, my Frankie, in some moments in my life, I was feeling so much pain in my body that I thought I wouldn't survive. I was like, this body won't survive. So is it just about that?

That moment changed everything for me. Really — that question changed everything.

My Frankie, I know we'll go from subject to subject. I'd really love this to just be a natural conversation, for everybody listening. All of us have been through hard times in our lives. It's so easy to go down that road — to become someone who complains, who only sees that bad things are happening and everything is bad. If I look back at my life, I could easily have become one very miserable, disconnected woman, I can tell you that.

But no. The question I asked myself — and somehow I had the capacity to ask it — really changed everything for me. Even with everything I witnessed, and the suffering and isolation, there were also so many beautiful things I witnessed. But it was that constant survival, constant uncertainty.

At one point in my life, when I was studying drama at university, a friend invited me to give fitness classes for her in her studio. I'd always loved being active, always loved sport. When I told my mum I wanted to start teaching fitness classes for my friend, she said, "What are you talking about? You studied drama, you're an actress, this is what you need to do."

In that moment, I don't know how, but something deeper within me — something I've always been connected to — spoke to me. I've always believed in something bigger than us. I grew up in a culture of believers, religious in that sense, but this wasn't about religion. It was something that always lived through me, that I was naturally so connected to.

My dad, in one moment, said to me, "Why would you work for someone else? Why don't you open your own studio?" And looking at my mum — who was in scarcity, anxiety, fear, this whole structure of what I should study and how I should live — and then my dad, who was more in that feminine trust and connection to energy, gently pulled me forward with that one question.

And I left everything. I left drama. I didn't want to keep fighting to prove myself, because at that time in Serbia, during war, with so few resources — who cares about art? Who invests in art? It was a constant fight for a role. And I didn't want to keep questioning my worth, questioning how good I was, how smart, whether I was intelligent enough, beautiful enough.

So at that moment, I opened my ladies-only fitness studio. From that time, I've been an entrepreneur, and it changed everything for me. That's the moment I'd say it all begins — everything that unfolded after that.

FRANKIE: Wow, goosebumps. What I'm really hearing is there have been so many choice points in your journey — these sliding-doors moments. You've been through so much, like many of us. But you came from a country at war, and it's not easy to choose life there. Not easy to choose purpose. Not easy to start a new business.

What I feel from you, and know about you, is that at these choice points, you dig deep and you have a way of embodying that connection — choosing aliveness, choosing joy, choosing the higher, more aligned way. Not always the easy way.

MARINA: No, not always aligned. People think alignment is going to be all flow. No, no, no, no, no. Not always — sometimes it's very hard, because it needs us to stretch and grow.

FRANKIE: Talk to that — to the trust, the curious mind for truth. You're a devourer and a seeker of truth. Talk about how you follow those threads to make the choices, and to embody and become the woman you are today.

MARINA: As a Scorpio woman, I'm definitely this underground, mystical researcher. If you ask me what I think I am, it's not just the joyful soul that I truly am, but also that mystical researcher — I love tapping into and being curious about our life, our potential, our bodies.

And I was someone so disconnected from my body — believe it or not — especially at the time I opened my fitness studio, teaching women to be healthy, to train, to love their bodies. But I was that distorted person who couldn't accept living in this body.

The journey of my personal disconnection and distortion, at that time, brought me almost to anorexia. I didn't know how to deal with so much emotion, so much energy I was sensing around me, while being very aware of the distorted, three-dimensional world we're living in. That's why I had that question — is this just life? Is it all about this rushing and running and proving? I was in my early twenties thinking, if I have to live like this my whole life, I will die before my time. That's genuinely how I felt.

There was too much emotion for too long, and at that time nobody talked about emotions — especially not in Serbia. We're tough people, we have a tough history, so we need to be tough, we need to be strong. In one way, that really helped me in my life. But on the other side, it disconnected me from myself, from my body, from being vulnerable, from allowing myself to be supported.

So everything became about control. I tried to control everything through my body. I punished myself, controlling how much food I ate. I wrote down calories in a book every single day, so I wouldn't go above what I "should" eat — complete obsession. I can see that clearly now.

I remember my mum saying, "Marina, can you see how obsessed you are with food?" And I said, "No, I just love food, I just love knowing how many calories I had today." Everything was controlled — my training, wanting to be as skinny as possible. I'd spend an hour in my bathroom in front of the mirror, judging every part of my body — my hips don't look good, my core doesn't look good, my back. An hour of judging myself. Can you imagine the energy I was in?

Everyone told me, "Marina, you're so skinny, you need to gain weight." And I'd think, no, I need to lose more. And at the same time, I was giving all my love and teaching to the women in my studio, who were so happy — we had animals in the studio, kids, this connection to life I truly lived for. But externally, while I looked like a successful person, loved by the community, doing good — rescuing animals, helping people, running my studio — internally, I felt like the loneliest person in the world. I was living deep within my own darkness.

The moment before I came to Dubai, I fainted in my studio one night after the last session. I called my ex-boyfriend, who I was in that long relationship with, and asked him to come pick me up. He carried me home, and my body temperature completely dropped. My mum called the hospital, and they guided her on how to bring my temperature back up. Afterwards, I did a check-up, and the doctor told me, "You're just exhausted. Your body is exhausted."

Something triggered in me in that moment, and I remember crying so much over what I'd done to myself — why I was punishing my body like that. It was something stronger than me to explain, to find answers for. But when we live only in our minds, in the constructs that live within us — the shame, the guilt, the judgment, our personal fears, grief, sadness — and we only express ourselves externally, trying to control every outcome, trying to give the impression that we're "good girls" — we become distorted, disconnected women living in our own darkness, unable to even see that we're in it.

FRANKIE: Thank you so much for sharing that piece of your story. I know so many women listening will see themselves in this, whether or not it's food specifically — because really, it's about our connection to ourselves. So many of us have been there, in our own patterns — for me it wasn't food, but pouring into other people, into clients, into family, at the detriment of myself. Pedestalling other women — "she's so amazing, she's so this, she's so that" — and not seeing myself, not cherishing myself, not respecting or loving myself.

I feel like the whole concept of "self-love" has become quite fluffy.

MARINA: Oh, yes.

FRANKIE: So when I'm talking about this, it's that deep connection to self. Because when we prioritise ourselves above and beyond everyone and everything else, everything else around us flourishes. Why aren't we taught that? When we see ourselves in the highest light, everything else flourishes — when that deep connection and identity of taking care of ourselves is so deeply embodied in every aspect of who we are, and we live it, we breathe it, we feel it deeply.

That's a shift. And you embody that like no one else I know. You're a woman so connected to joy, overflowing with love — we can feel it. So connected to play, to abundance, to all the emotions, but also to this side, this childlike wonder about you.

MARINA: Oh yes, forever.

FRANKIE: It's so deeply authentic and playful. When I describe you to people, or refer women to work with you, and their connection to your work — what are the pieces you can speak to that helped you make the deepest transformation, from where you were to the woman you are today, so deeply connected to the most beautiful relationship with yourself, your body, your connection — and who helps other women do the same?

MARINA: I felt everything you just shared. When you talk about "self" and how we perceive self-love — the moment I hear "self-love" somewhere, I get a little irritated, because it's become so diminished from what it truly is.

For this soul, in this body, what brought me to be embodied, to truly love living in my body, to love my life, to be so connected to this energy of life, to the breath we breathe every single day, to the opportunity to create something new every day and experience our neighbour fully — we talked about this in the car, how the basic things, we forgot to allow them to be alive in our space.

Nothing new happened, really. I was going through a deep journey, especially when I lost my dad. I came to Dubai, and then, four years later, in 2018, I lost my dad. That moment was an initiation for me to really ask myself deep questions — who am I? Even though I'd always loved researching — reading Dr. Joe Dispenza, The Power of the Subconscious Mind, the Silva Method, brain frequency — I never shared any of that with my mum or my environment at the time, because back then, nobody was talking about it. They'd probably have said, "Oh my god, you're crazy, what are you talking about, brain frequency?"

When my dad died, I asked myself — who am I really, what do I want from life, how do I truly feel? The level of grief I went through and allowed myself to feel brought me back to so much joy. It reminded me of the amount of love that had always been within me — love I gave to other people, to community, to animals, to nature — but love I'd abandoned for myself. I always felt a kind of shame around it, like I didn't deserve it, like I was only here to give love. But we can't do that. If we don't understand that we are that love, and allow that amount of love to come into our life, into this body, into this beautiful earth — we can't expand love further to others. There will always be a leakage in the cable of our energy. It needs to move in and out.

That journey of grief, and everything I later studied around somatic work and embodiment — coming from 20 years in the fitness industry, starting with drama university a long time ago — brought me to a deep acceptance of allowing life, and love, into my space.

Actually, funny story — a few days ago, I was visiting a long-term client, and my husband was waiting for me in the car afterwards. I got in and said, "Hi babe," and he was laughing. I asked why, and he said, "Marina, I'm just watching you — most people just walk. But you're completely immersed in your environment." I said, I'm probably not even aware of it anymore, it's just become part of who I am, my beingness.

Ravi says the same thing to me — that I live in a bubble. And I say, I know, I love it. But I don't want anyone to think life is just butterflies and bubbles. We all have pain. We lose people. In the twelve years since I came to Dubai, my husband and I have lost so many people together — including our parents, our animals, so many friends. So much grief.

If you asked me to choose one emotion I've felt most often over the past 30 years of my life, I'd say grief. And I can tell you how powerful that emotion is, because its opposite is joy — and we can move through grief and experience joy at the same time, when we allow ourselves to fully sit with it, rather than numbing ourselves with external things and forgetting we're going through something.

I think presence, and beingness, and how connected we can be to the wave of life, is absolutely fundamental. We all experience grief, hard times, plot twists, highs too. Some people get everything they've ever wanted and still don't feel it. Others go through hard things and avoid feeling them. But if we can stay connected to it, we're with life — life runs through us, and we can feel all of it.

FRANKIE: For me, over the past couple of years especially, there's been so much growth, abundance, depth — and also learning to hold duality. Something can be happening that's hard, that's painful, and it doesn't block the joy. The magic can still come in, the love can still come in. There can be pain and grief and love and joy and abundance all at once.

That's a catalyst for aliveness, because most people let one bad thing block everything — how often does one bad thing ruin someone's whole day? But how often do we let a glimmer of joy brighten our day the same way? It's about being connected to all of it, and letting it all in.

MARINA: Exactly. And we spoke about this in the car — something so deeply important to me, every single day. When we talk about mental health, we have this completely shadowed picture of our own potential, of aliveness, of what we can allow ourselves to experience — because of our disconnection, over decades, from nature, from soil, from sun, from wind, from plants, from animals, from our own neighbour. From the cashier we never ask, "How are you?" People just ask, "Where's my coffee?" instead of asking someone how their day is going.

Those things might look so unimportant, but to me, this is the deepest aliveness we can allow into our lives — being in that exploration, being generous, being present. There's no amount of healing, no amount of self-development, that matters if we're not engaged with the basics.

I say to my clients — when was the last time you said good morning to your neighbour and gave them a smile? It doesn't matter if they respond. My husband and I used to live in a building where we'd get in the elevator, and everyone would be looking down at their phones. We'd say good morning, and nobody would reply. He'd get a bit defensive about it — like, "people don't..." — but for me, I never stop saying good morning to people. How are you today, how's your day going, how are you feeling? Even to the man washing cars in the Dubai heat in the car park — bringing him a litre of water. It's so little, my Frankie. But it's so important.

And I see so many people chasing the next fix, the next longevity hack, the next biohack, doing all these therapies — but the energy is still distorted. You can feel it. It's still take, take, take energy, and that's not what life is. I believe we're all connected, that energy is always moving, and we get a choice in how we embody that, how we show up in it — and that's in how we interact with others.

When I'm out and about, my kids ask, "Mummy, do you know her?" And I say no, we're just chatting, just saying hi. They just started school last week, and we take water bottles in for the people digging the roads, for the people helping others cross the road — because that's what we want to model to our girls. We're very lucky, they're going to an amazing school, I'm so proud of that — but we're all in this together, and everyone plays a part. No one is above or below anyone. How we show consideration and care for ourselves and others is absolutely fundamental.

It's part of my life's work — supporting people to live in their heart, to get out of their head and into their hearts. Because if we're not looking after other people, if it's all self-serving — how much can I get, how much can I grow, how much can I evolve, how much can I biohack — it creates real imbalance. Walls go up around the heart. People become cold. People stop caring. And that's when people start to get sick, become vulnerable — in their minds, in their bodies — because they're not getting the basics right. And we need those basics to thrive as individuals, and to thrive as a collective. Because it takes everyone.

FRANKIE: It takes everyone. Absolutely.