My great, great-grandmother was a curandera, a healer in Northern Spain. Though I never met her, and she didn't pass on her craft, my grandmother always called me la bruja of the family: the witch. 

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With the folk knowledge in my family all-but lost, I sought it elsewhere. 

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When I was twenty-one, in 2013, I lived in a nunnery in the desert of Rajasthan for four months. I was studying with Jain nuns, who taught me how to meditate and teach meditation, along with Jain philosophy. They instructed me in a rigorous daily practice that I undertook for a year. 

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My first apprenticeship into the healing arts was through two Peruvian shamans, Don Cesar and his son and apprentice Julio. I lived with them in their village in Catacaos for 6 months in 2014. Don Cesar was in his eighties at the time, and Julio in his fourties. They taught me how to diagnose and track illness in the body, how to clear the energy field with flower water and plants, how to use the breath to blow away disease, how to communicate with spirits, the ceremonial uses of San Pedro and how to move energy. They also taught me the rituals around their healing traditions, which are centred around an altar, or mesa.

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After they initiated me into the tradition of their lineage, I felt a deep longing to find these ways in my own heritage. Back in Europe.

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In 2015 I did a three-year certified training in classical shamanism as per the Foundation for Shamanic Studies. I have since been offering shamanic healing work for nine years.

  

That same year, alongside my shamanic training I began a 5-year apprenticeship with a mentor in womb work and women's mysteries. I do not name her because she and her husband (also a teacher of mine) turned out to be plagiarists and I am no longer in contact with them.

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Mentorship & Supervision

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When I began my shamanic work, I was supervised for the first three years (from 2015-2018), by one of my dearest mentors, a Jungian scholar and mystic, Narelle Bouthillier. In 2020, I then underwent a year-long online training with her called Scriptorium, followed by a teacher-training with her and another student in 2023. 

 

In 2016 I was mentored monthly for a year by Suzi Crockford, an animist and hedgewitch, a relationship that has since become a beloved friendship that I deeply treasure.

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In 2021, during my master's program, I was mentored by poet Alice Oswald and mythologist Martin Shaw, and worked closely with Alice as supervisor of my dissertation. 

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I currently receive supervision from Emma Meadows, a shamanic practitioner and psychotherapist, and dear friend. And am in regular contact with Narelle and Suzi. 

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I have been inspired and informed by so many extraordinary people in my life, often meeting them for brief encounters or continued written correspondence in strange and magical ways. These include Sufi mystics, poets, scholars, shamans, and the salt of the Earth people. And I tip my hat to them for getting me in the shape that I'm in.​

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