In this luminous conversation, Brazilian teacher and soul-leader Giu Bergamo joins Megan to explore self-leadership through rhythm, imagination, and embodied awareness. Giu traces a life of movement—from childhood dance to Naam Yoga and Vedic astrology—and invites us to experience our bodies as a temple, a lived practice that opens perception and presence. In her classes, imagination leads the way: “imagination is a leadership for creativity,” she says—so much so that you might “touch the rainbow” as you move, because “you are the water, you are the sun… you are the rainbow with all your colors.”

They reflect on leadership as resonance—“we don’t need to force anything”—and how it “begins with self-leadership… with consciousness, with coherence and awareness,” aligning with nature’s cadence: “when my mind, my heart, my body move [with] the same rhythm, in the rhythm of all things…” Giu shares tender passages of challenge and renewal: rebuilding taste and smell after illness (“Brain, please register”), meeting menopause as initiation, and welcoming change as devotion to life—“What an opportunity to be reborn.”

✨ Connect with Giu

Instagram: @giu_bergamo

Online classes in English at Giving Naam: givingnaamwellness.org In-person classes in Portuguese at Naam Yoga São Paulo

Giu’s app with classes in Portuguese: ritmosbemestar.com

• FULL TRANSCRIPT

Megan: Hello. I'm so happy to be talking with you today.

Giu: Oh, Megan, I'm happy to be here with you. Thank you for inviting me.

Megan: Yes,

Giu: It's a blessing to be here.

Megan: Yes, for all of our listeners, this is Giu Bergamo and she is in Brazil and she is one of my favorite people and teachers. And so I am so excited to have you here on the Spirit of Leadership Podcast.

Giu: Thank you, Megan. I'm so glad. I'm glad to be here. Yes, I'm from Brazil and my accent is special.

Megan: Yes, definitely. And can you tell people about yourself, who you are in yourself and what you do?

Giu: I want to begin saying that I'm a soul. And as a soul, I inspire myself to act with movement, teaching people to move their bodies as a temple because our bodies are our temple.

And then since the beginning, I started to dance when I was very little. I'm little in weight, but it is a way of living to move the body. And I start very soon when I was seven. So this gave me the special relationship with my soul because my soul could feel the movement and then I start to, to dance and then teach dancing, teaching ballet.

Then I became a publicist in my studies and then I said, okay, I don't need this in my life, but I like, and I just move again to the body. And then I studied Pilates and Gyrotonics and then yoga, and then I came to Naam Yoga that changes my life completely because Naam Yoga is the yoga for the soul.

And I say, okay, this is my tribe. I like this. And then I study everything about Naam yoga, all the teacher trainings. And I'm a leader here in Brazil, I think is a soul leader in Brazil because we connect to the souls. And I continued teaching and then I teach the kinds of yoga therapy, hormone yoga.

And also I'm an astrologer, Vedic astrologer, which gives me this soul path. The soul path that aligned me to the stars, to the cycles, to the nature. And I love to be in nature. And then I want to guide everyone who I meet, and it's like when we move our body, I want to express this combination of many energies that we are getting in touch with.

Not only the movement itself, but the sensation, the environment and then we are together. So I like to say that I'm a teacher that inspires you to guide, to be guided through your soul, your soul guidance. And then I can help you to move your body to, to feel this, the soul. Like - how can I say? - soul class and then you know what I'm talking about because you do my classes and then you can share some that you feel in my classes.

Megan: Yes. It's so wonderful to hear you talk about how you came to this and that you came through dance from early on, which is also how I came to yoga - through dance.

And I think it's one of the reasons that I really love your classes, but also you bring that, you definitely bring that soulfulness through. Your imagination - when you're talking - and I remember one time when you were teaching and you were saying imagine that there are rainbows coming out of your fingers.

And I'm just like a little child like, oh, that's so wonderful. I’m imagining rainbows coming out of my fingers while I'm moving and breathing. And so it's that combination of feeling, the sensation of being in the body. So the soul embodied, so the soul can express itself through our physical sensations.

And there's a kind of sensuality about it that is soulful. 

Giu: It is, it's perfect. I remember this class and I - my imagination is very fertile - how can I say this as…

Megan: fertile,

Giu: fertile. And I can imagine since I was little, I could imagine many things.

And then my mom inspired me to do okay, you can build the whole city by your imagination, so keep going. And then I said, okay. And then after 50 years, I've just imagined, with my clients, with my students. It is so wonderful. Thank you for sharing about this, rainbows. And then yes, when we go to imagination, because imagination is a leadership for creativity.

So when you get your mind going while you move your body, you have mind and spirit because the imagination is the spiritual realm, right? You can imagine. And then you can feel the imagination. So you bring to your body, this non-reality to the reality. So when you do this movement, imagining the fingertips like rainbows, you can touch the rainbow itself. Because we only see the rainbow very far from us when we see it when it's raining and then there's the sun. And then you are the water, you are the sun, and then you are the rainbow with all your colors. So it's beautiful. Thank you for remembering this. Yes.

Megan: Yes. And it's interesting when you talked about - that's the leadership - the soul and the imagination being the leadership of the life force and your expression in life. 

How do you experience being and becoming a leader? How have you experienced it in your life and in your community?

Giu: I think leadership for me… When I began, I had no idea I was a leader in Pilates. I was a leader in Gyrotonics. I was a leader. I am a leader in Naam Yoga because it is how I'm working nowadays, but for me, begins with self-leadership. This ability to self-knowledge to lead yourself with consciousness, with coherence and awareness.

Because to be a leader, we have to lead ourselves. When my mind, my heart, my body move the same rhythm, in the rhythm of all things - that is happening with my presence. And then I can turn my presence itself in leadership, in a leader is the, is the truth? 

I like the teachings from Naam Yoga because leadership, the teachings lead us to the truth. And then you don't need to command, I don't need to command, it is like flowing naturally. I'm inspired by the rhythms of the nature. I love nature. I just came from the Amazon rainforest, from this past weekend.

And yes. The rhythms of nature are like, we don't need to force anything. It's like it's real. And then the way I live, by the way I live and then I inspire others, I think is the true leadership. So it radiates from this alignment, from this work that we do every day, not from, I think it's not an effort.

I think it's like my body aligns. And I speak and then people follow me. so naturally, and I think it's the altar of consciousness. Yeah.

Megan: Beautifully said. Beautifully said.

Giu: Yes, because, as a Rosicrucian, I just lead very early, in the temple, as the columba, the name of the girl very young, from 12 to 14. I decided to be a columba. I don't know the name in English, but is the one who represents the consciousness in the temple. It's like a, it's like a pomba. The name is the bird…

Megan: Dove. 

Giu: Yes. The dove. The dove. It represents the consciousness of the temple. So as a columba, as a dove, I had to incense the temple and then the four corners, and then in the altar, the Shekinah inside the temple was a triangle.

I lit the light, the candles like doing a prayer. And then as a consciousness I light this candle as love, as, truth as life. And then I began very early. So it is like when we lead the light of consciousness for others. I had no idea what I was doing at 12, 14 years old, but now I know it was a path in life, of consciousness, of the altar - is the altar of consciousness, altar of the soul.

And then we can lead, we can lead others to do the same. Not inside the temple, the building, but inside our own temple. Because the Shekinah represents our heart where the true light, the true wisdom, the true life can shine. So our body is the temple, and I love to teach classes so that we can enter this temple.

Megan: And that's exactly how I feel when I'm taking your classes. Even though it's online, I feel…

Giu: Good, good.

Megan: We're right there in that beautiful space. Yes.

Giu: You know what you are saying about online classes... I don’t know if you remember when we entered the beginning of the pandemic, Dr. Levry said, “I can reach you through online. Please feel your heart, feel your energy.” That class, I said, okay, I will. You go from this. I will give, I will send the energy out through the space, through the wifi, through the corners of the earth so we can share energy, so we can feel each other.

Otherwise,we couldn't stand online. I'm feeling your energy right now and I'm shining with you, so it's beautiful. I think. Yeah, we can all do the same.

Megan: And that's one of the reasons too, that I'm doing this podcast series is because it's so wonderful to have a conversation and then be able to share it with others, so we're not limited by time and space.

Giu: Yeah.

It is an illusion. I don't know. I'm just repeating this, because it's not an illusion because I see my clock. Okay. But it is because our mind-frame was trained to see the clock.

And then I created a class that I call, Plans, Your Plans in the Solar Rhythm. So when you open your agenda, you see all the times in your agenda.

There are times for the sun because noon is the sun. 7:00 PM is the sun. 7:00 AM is the sun and the cycle. With the sun, we can do our plan. So we can move, I don't know, the old, the old ancient life, with the sun. And then we perceive all our plans running through the sun. So, time exists in our mind, but is like infinite, is infinite.

This is, like, tricky as humans because we are trained to see the time like frame and the time is: you have no time…you have to do this in this time, but really, we need to enjoy. In the Amazon, there's no time. There's only the time of the sun and the rain and the moon and the stars, so we don't have to worry about the time, just see the sun. We feel the nature, the sounds of nature, the sounds of the forest, and then we return to the sounds in ourselves. So it's it's wonderful. Is wonderful. It's wow. I wish I could bring everyone there to feel the Mother Nature - is the womb, is healing, is true. Healing from within - and then we can remember who we are being there.

Megan: Beautiful. That's so beautiful. And one question I'd really like to ask you is what challenge, what is one of the - because I'm sure that you've overcome, faced and overcome many - but what is one challenge that you can share with us that you have faced and overcome? That's really made you who you are and who you are becoming?

Giu: There's many, but I remember when you were saying, I remember in the pandemic when I lost my senses, I had no taste and the smell, no smell, no taste. And then, I said, wow, what I'm going to do? I don't feel the food. I cannot taste the food. I cannot smell the food. And then this was like a challenge.

And then through Sukshma yoga, through breathing, through Naam yoga, through the meditation, I said, okay, I need to - how can I say this - 

Megan: revive. 

Giu: to bring significance again, yeah, to revive, to bring this… Okay, I don't feel, I don't smell. And then, okay, I need to train my brain again.

Okay, what I'm tasting now is… Brain, please register.

Like I was learning the first smell, the first taste of each food. And then I train my brain through the breath. Because of this, I'm devotee of  Sukshma yoga, and I keep going teaching everyone because it's like a powerful class, a powerful way to return to the breath and then give the brain food through the breath.

And then that's what I did. 

And then now, five years later, five years from this day that I felt no sense, no taste and no smell, now I can smell and taste food again, like training the brain. And also we have the shadows, right? Menopause - I'm in menopause - is a shadow.

Like what you are bringing out, there's no training to enter in the menopause. I'm training myself to regain the power to… regain and then to - I think the word is - return to myself, the real self. Because we don't need to do nothing, but we can do everything in this feeling.

It is the same five years from the COVID now in menopause. I'm just bringing new significance to the life with… I think it's the same body, but it's a completely new body, new way of thinking, new hair, new skin because everything is changing our mood. And then again, I stand in this soul leadership.

How can I do this for me and then inspire others crossing the same path. Who is crossing my path that I can help to listen to their own body, listen, this rainforest inside of me that is changing. It's completely changing because I keep returning to the forest each year, seven years that I go every year.

Everything changed there. It's wow, this is… last year was completely different. Yes. So I can be different each day. So let it be. How can I love myself in the mirror today? What can bring to me this life that I'm looking for? How can I inspire my clients? How can I inspire the people who I meet today?

So yeah, it's like the trees, is like the forest. So I overcame the COVID, but I'm overcoming now this new Giu that is old but is new. How can I move? How can I stand tall with all these changes? Yeah, I'm just teaching myself to accept - I think it is acceptance - but it's not acceptance in the negative - is the positive.

Wow. What an opportunity to be reborn.

Megan: Yeah. beautiful. And, you express it so beautifully and come round to that inspiration and how you inspire yourself. And then that is very inspiring to all of us in your circle, your big circle. 

Giu: thank you

Megan: And can you tell people how to be in touch with you and how to join in, and experience this?

I can put links in the show notes, but please tell us.

Giu: Okay. I'm teaching through Zoom. 

Also, I have Naam Yoga. Sao Paulo - a place, a physical place that I founded, 15 years ago. I teach there classes in Portuguese.

 But online, you can reach me on my Instagram that is Giu underline Bergamo.

@giu_bergamo

And, I have my own app where I share my Portuguese classes. And then we can add the link to this podcast.

App

ritmosbemestar.com

Also I teach for Giving Naam - givingnaam.com - where you can find my Naam 5 classes that are amazing classes. We move as a whole in five exercises that are all the same, but it is completely different, each class.

https://givingnaamwellness.org/p/naam-giu

And then I teach Sukshma. Also for Giving Naam.

https://givingnaamwellness.org/p/sukshmahmethod-giu

And then you can find me in all these places, and then you can share, you can ask me things and then you can, meet me in my WhatsApp too if you want, because it's a way to connect too. 

Yes, please share all this.

Megan: Yes, we'll share all this

Giu: English classes, Portuguese classes, and Instagram and WhatsApp - amazing to know, and then reach out to everybody who wants to reach out to me.

Megan: Yes, and please do reach out because you are just such a treasure and I'm so grateful.

Giu: I'm grateful. Oh my God. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. I'm super happy to be here with you. Thank you. Thank you all.

Listeners, I'm sending you love and light and then waiting for you in my classes or maybe in my Instagram - will be a pleasure.

Thank you.