Back to the Origin: The Art of Being You (E)
Giuseppe Curto
Giuseppe is a curious soul on a mission to explore life from every angle.
Through raw experiences, deep conversations, and powerful insights, he shares what it means to heal, grow, and unlock your limitless potential.
Thousands gather, sharing a singular breath and heartbeat, united yet unique, prompting the profound question: Why here, why now, why us? Embracing impermanence and shedding identities reveals raw, unapologetic freedom, accessed through conscious breathing. The practice combines five expressive layers—thought, image, sound, emotion, movement—invoking freedom, aliveness, love, unity. Embracing primal animalistic energy rekindles authentic presence beyond mental constructs. Each breath embodies death and rebirth, enabling continuous self-renewal unbound by roles or narratives, inviting immersive, collective engagement in raw existence.
Summary
- Emphasizes the uniqueness of each breath and moment shared collectively yet distinctively by individuals. - Encourages letting go of identities and mental narratives to truly live freely and fully present. - Guides through layered breathing exercises connecting thoughts, images, sounds, emotions, and movements. - Invites embodying primal, animalistic energy to break free from mental prisons and connect deeply with life. - Concludes with a call to repeatedly "die" to ego and be reborn in raw, unfiltered presence and true self-expression.
Article
The radical practice of letting go: Giuseppe Curto on shedding identity and rediscovering raw humanity
Speaker invites festival attendees to embrace death of the ego and continuous rebirth through breathwork and primal expression
At the Heal Play Love Festival in Kemptthal, Switzerland, Giuseppe Curto stood before thousands of participants and posed a question that cut through the usual introductions: "Why are you here?"
Not who are you, not what do you do, but why—from infinite possibilities and moments—are you precisely here, now, together?
For Curto, a self-described curious soul exploring life from every angle, the answer to this question reveals far more about human essence than any professional title or social category ever could. Speaking at the gathering on 5 September 2025, he delivered a presentation that challenged attendees to release their grip on fixed identities and embrace what he calls "the art of being you."
Beyond the monkey mind
The presentation, titled "Back to the Origin: The Art of Being You," began with a striking observation about the paradox of collective experience. Thousands of people breathing the same air, hearts beating simultaneously, yet each individual encountering an entirely unique, unrepeatable moment.
"Thousands of us are here and we are breathing the same fucking air, yet none of us will ever breathe this breath again," Curto told the audience, emphasising the impossibility of truly defining oneself without "shrinking yourself back into a box, into a role, into a definition or a category."
His approach to escaping what he termed "the monkey mind"—the endless mental chatter that keeps humans trapped in conceptual thinking—involved an unexpected invitation: becoming the monkey. By embodying primal, animalistic energy through movement and sound, participants were encouraged to reconnect with instinctual presence that exists beyond mental constructs.
The practice of continuous death and rebirth
Central to Curto's philosophy is a radical practice of self-renewal. "To drop yourself means to die," he explained. "Allow yourself to die right now. Let yourself out. You can literally tell yourself, get the fuck out of here. I don't need you."
What remains when identities, roles and narratives fall away? According to Curto, the answer is surprisingly simple: breath, the present moment, raw unfiltered experience. The void.
This stripping away is not about destroying the self but about recognising that clinging to fixed self-concepts creates a kind of prison. By allowing these constructs to die repeatedly, individuals can experience freedom to be reborn continuously, expressing themselves without the burden of maintaining a consistent personality or defending a particular identity.
A multidimensional breathing practice
The session incorporated a structured breathing exercise that engaged five expressive layers: thought, image, sound, emotion and movement. Participants were guided through abstract concepts including freedom, aliveness, love and unity, using each layer to explore these themes beyond intellectual understanding.
Curto invited attendees to connect with primal vocalisations inspired by animals—monkeys, wolves, lions—as a way to access authentic presence. This physical, embodied approach stands in sharp contrast to purely cognitive or meditative practices, offering a pathway to self-discovery through raw expression rather than quiet contemplation.
The question that reveals more than answers
Throughout the presentation, Curto returned to his opening question about why participants had gathered at this particular festival, at this specific moment. The inquiry itself serves as a practice, directing attention away from the stories we tell about ourselves towards the living impulse that brings us into relationship with life and with others.
"The beautiful part is that you don't need to know who you are to know why you are here," he noted. "And yet the answer to that question will tell you much more about who you are than any definition ever could."
Breathing together, transforming alone
The presentation concluded with an invitation to embrace what Curto frames as the fundamental art of being human: the capacity to repeatedly release limiting self-concepts and meet each moment freshly, without the accumulated weight of past identities.
"The art of being you: Allowing yourself to die so that you can be born over and over again," Curto said. "So that you can be yourself without identities, without roles, without personalities, without being obsessed about who the fuck you are."
In an age characterised by carefully curated personal brands and the pressure to maintain consistent public personas, this call to continuous self-renewal offers a counterpoint. Rather than building and defending a fixed identity, Curto's approach suggests that freedom lies in the willingness to let ourselves be unmade and remade with each breath.
The practice requires no special knowledge or preparation, only the courage to step beyond the familiar boundaries of who we think we are and into the raw, unfiltered experience of simply being alive, here, now, together.
Part of Heal Play Love Festival