By: Maria Williams
From living a limited life to one filled with passion, purpose, and love, Maria Camargo shares her spiritually transformative story that led her to her ultimate purpose: helping others.
Every person’s life is like a map; there’s a beginning and an end, but despite a linear timeline, no route is the same. Maria Camargo’s route is intrinsically linked to her sole purpose of coaching others, and her journey to get there is the glue connecting the pieces.
“I’ve been coaching for a long time in the corporate setting … I did a lot of coaching with directors, managers, staff, and executives.” Yet, the corporate world stopped serving her, and she was led by an intuitive feeling to do something different.
“I have spent the last 15 years learning different tools to improve my life, and now I feel a calling to share this method with others to live the life they want,” she says.
Today, Camargo is an entrepreneur, Founder, and CEO of her wellness coaching practice, SummaWork—dedicated to helping others get their spark back to transform their lives into more joyful, productive, and creative lives.
But before she reached this point, she encountered many road bumps. Like every person on earth, her map is richly unique, featuring cartography of winding roads, dead ends, high peaks, and a lush meadow. Channeling her inner Reese Witherspoon from the movie Wild, Camargo set off on a solo journey of uncertainty that led to her true purpose: helping others remove limiting beliefs to live the life they want.
“I always had within me this sense of I can do anything, without knowing anything,” Camargo explains, her exact thoughts before she dived head first into spirituality. Before moving to California 15 years ago, she began meditating, and even in the early stages of her journey, she experienced the power of this practice. “Things started to come to me. I felt the thirst that I needed more.”
In 2011, Camargo attended a small program of 250 people held by Sadhguru, Founder and head of the Isha Foundation. This led her to his yoga program, the Bhava Spandana Program in his ashram in Tennessee, and others. However, after completing these spiritual practices, she sought to deepen her reach through the advanced program Samyama held in India. After a rejection and timing not aligning, it wasn’t until 2019 (now living in Colombia) that she was accepted. Before she could attend, she underwent rigorous preparation for 60 days, which was “the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she recalls.
“The Samyama Program” (located at the Isha Yoga Center in India) was eight days, complete silence. You’re dressed in white, and you cannot even make eye contact with anyone for the entire time. During the eight days, you have a little mattress. You fold it. You sit in it during the day and only unfold it when you go to sleep—you’re there the whole time.
Apart from meals and washroom breaks, Camargo had to remain silent and avoid eye contact to break the bonds of karma. But despite such a jarring experience, the year ahead was Camargo’s biggest challenge: destroying her limiting beliefs.
“After the program, I went back to Colombia, where everything started going south. My ex (husband at the time) and I were struggling, along with my kids. Within a year, we separated,” she shares.
Emotions rose and fell like waves, but Camargo allowed herself to feel everything gracefully. When the tides settled, she moved back to California.
Yet, something unsettled remained, and it wasn’t until her therapist recommended Joe Dispenza’s book “Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself” that she learned how to move through it.
How? Meditation.
“As soon as I started doing the meditations, all the resentment was gone,” she shares. And even more so, her limiting beliefs went with it. “Through meditation, I was able to say to myself, ‘I know I deserve better, and I love you, but I love myself more. So I’m going to let you go.’”
Camargo was at a low point during this moment, unsure what the rest of her map had in store. Lying in bed, she looked up at the ceiling. She prayed deeply, saying, “The only thing I ask for is to have a loving person next to me, somebody who loves me, likes me for who I am, and makes me laugh. That’s all I want.”
“About a week or so later, sparks flew between myself and a lifelong friend of mine. We’ve been together for three years and are getting married this year.”
While her story ultimately became a happier one, Camargo sought solace in the knowledge that she considers true success as a measure of her family’s strength despite such adversity. “My ex-husband and I are still really good friends,” she points out. “He’s a part of our new family and will continue to be.”
By uncovering the many layers of her being through holistic meditative techniques, Camargo transformed into one filled with love, fulfillment, and happiness. Taking what she learned and transferring it into a power for change, her wellness practice, SummaWork, teaches individuals how to break their limitations through deep inner work and ongoing learning as she did. In the end, despite the many obstacles she encountered along her journey, she reached that lush meadow using techniques stemming from the robust process of spiritual transformation.
Through wellness coaching and retreats, Camargo works to help individuals identify what they truly want in life and address the blockages preventing them from achieving their desired life. “I want to help people understand that they can create the lifestyle, health, and workplace they want—that they’re inspired to be an inspirational force to inspire themselves and their workforce and understand the power that they have!”
Your map of life is not predetermined, it changes as you progress, and you can reach that lush meadow, too. Maria Camargo is here to guide you through the process. Watch for news on the next retreat by visiting SummaWork and connecting with Camargo on her Instagram.
Published by: Martin De Juan
