This is my story
I arrived in hippie California at age twenty. Wheatgrass juice, hang-loose surfing, and women’s hairy armpits, offered me a freedom I did not know was possible. Studies of yoga, massage, and Ayurveda, opened my eyes to a holistic life. Despite all these awakenings, my marriage and prompt motherhood revived my unhealed childhood traumas and generational wounding.
At age thirty, while miserably drowning in the dark pool of my fears, I was washed exhausted in the shores of the shamanic path. With the force and the speed of lightning, my life took a sharp turn towards my own healing and understanding of the hero’s journey. After a decade I had completed the core work of alchemizing my pain and sorrows into sources of wisdom and compassion. I was first initiated into the mystery teachings within the framework of the Four Winds Society, and then directly by the wisdom keepers of the Peruvian Andes and Amazon jungle.
Meanwhile, I returned to Chile, studied with the medicine women of the south, and created a retreat center in the mountains – together with my second husband, Alberto Villoldo, shaman, author, and founder of the mystery school I attended.
“The heart of the womb implies that life is a continuum; only when we know how to truly die or surrender to our metamorphosis have we learned to live.”
– Marcela Lobos
During all these years, my eagerness to feel and connect with the deepest truth of reality kept expanding in my heart. In my forties, I cultivated tantric and Buddhist practices which I weave with love and joy with the rest of my rituals.
Today, it’s my passion to teach about the maps that guide us towards self-realization, and I am delighted to craft rites of passage for women to step into their own beauty, power, and wisdom.
In 2009, Alberto and I founded Los Cuatro Caminos, a school that shares in Spanish ancient shamanic teachings combined with contemporary wisdom. Since, we have led hundreds of students through the Medicine Wheel and Munay-Ki programs.
When I am not writing, I love landscaping at Los Lobos Sanctuary, our retreat center in the mountains of Chile. Lastly, I am deeply proud of my two sons, who in their search for truth, have become a physicist and a poet.
