Personal Story
Luisa was born into a family lineage of healers. Her father was a physician and psychiatrist. Her grandmother was Concepción Palacios, well known as the first female physician in Central America; her great-grandmother was a curandera (healer) in Nicaragua.
Since early childhood, Luisa has experienced inner visions, clairvoyant dreams and auditory guidance. The lack of relevant mentors in the American culture during that time meant she lived with the emotional pain and confusion that comes from navigating blindly between consensual reality and a vivid non-ordinary inner reality.
At 14, Luisa had a breakdown of her rational and perceptual processes. She was told by an inner voice that she was "shedding a skin"; and that the process would last for one year. The experience ended one year later. This period of isolation and destabilization led to a deeper opening of Luisa's psychic and intuitive abilities.
The type of intra-psychic deconstruction Luisa experienced during this period can facilitate a disintegration and subsequent reorganization of ego structures, allowing natural access to non-ordinary states of consciousness. Such a core death-rebirth experience is a common feature of initiation into a shamanic life.
Education & Training
Luisa earned a B.A. in humanities from Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. In Washington, DC, she worked for rogue financial-investment advisor Doug Casey. She was an assistant producer for the Source Theater Company and an editorial assistant to editor Richard Peabody of Gargoyle Magazine. She became acquainted with the writings of Paul Bowles (The Sheltering Sky), and felt a kinship with his exploration of the chaos and magic of the unconscious territories of the psyche.
Feeling alienated from American culture and values, Luisa left the U.S. several years later to find Paul Bowles in Morocco. She met and spent time with him; it was a pivotal experience for her.
From Morocco she went on to Ibiza, Spain where she met master-healer Ioanna Salajan who saw in Luisa the nascent qualities of a healer and natural mystic. She recognized her as the student for whom she had been waiting to transmit the teachings of her Western Mystery School lineage, and invited Luisa to engage in a one-on-one apprenticeship. This apprenticeship involved over four years of daily, intensive training in psychic "seeing" of the aura and chakras, Zen meditation, psychological shadow work, study of metaphysical and esoteric texts, Bach Flower Remedies and hands-on healing.
Salajan's teacher was the Polish mystic Stefan Lubienski. Lubienski's teacher was the well known metaphysician Rudolf Steiner (creator of the Waldorf schools). Ioanna Salajan is known as the author of the cult-classic series "Zen Comics"; as well as a seminal Dutch text on the Bach Flower Remedies, Werkboekje voor de Therapie met de Bach Bloemenremedies (Workbook for Therapy with Bach Flower Remedies).
Returning to Washington, D.C. after several years abroad, Luisa specialized in working with terminally ill clients. She used hands-on healing, meditation, shamanic journeying and Bach Flower Remedies to midwife the death journey for clients and their families. Her work in this area was modeled on the conscious dying teachings of Ram Dass and Stephen Levine.
Two years later Luisa moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico and took a Master's degree in Counseling Psychology from Southwestern College. She continued with postgraduate training in psychodrama and dialectical behavior therapy.
Luisa studied the trance posture work of Felicitas Goodman with psychologist Johanna Maybury (Cuyamungue Institute). With author and medical astrologer Marcia Starck she explored the archetypes of the Dark Goddess and earth-based spiritual ceremony. Her association with Joan Halifax Roshi (Upaya Foundation) deepened Luisa's understanding of Zazen sitting meditation and Buddhism.
In 2001, Luisa spent six months in Sedona, Arizona studying and practicing the teachings of meditation master and mystic Osho.
Luisa's mission is to assist clients in healing and clearing the psyche of unconscious, self-defeating, spirit-denying patterns, so that there is greater connection with Spirit and an ability to take responsibility for one's emotional and spiritual life and self-healing. The ultimate aim is more aliveness.
Luisa teaches workshops, facilitates shamanic journeying and drumming circles, provides spiritual mentorship and conducts psychotherapy and healing sessions in person and over the phone with clients all over the world. She currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Luisa is the mother of a musician/artist son, has a passion for salsa, two-stepping and swing dancing, yoga and weight training and studying the effects of nutrition on emotional states.
Member - Society for Shamanic Practitioners
