Feeling the call to adventure, at age 21 I left my home country Chile and a budding career as a journalist.


When I arrived in hippie California I found a tremendous contrast with the repressive and conservative atmosphere I grew up in—with a dictatorship and underground terrorism.

Wheat grass juice, hang-loose surfing, and women’s hairy armpits, offered me a freedom I did not know was possible. Studies of yoga and massage opened my eyes to a holistic life.

Despite all these awakenings, a 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 done a lot to alchemize 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 the wisdom keepers from the Peruvian Andes and Amazon jungle.

Meanwhile, I returned to Chile, studied with native medicine women, and created a retreat center in the mountains – together with my second husband, Alberto Villoldo, founder of the mystery school I had attended.

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 is my passion to teach


About maps that point us towards self-realization. I am doing a studies in depth psychology and I weave this wisdom in my teachings.

Being the lead faculty at the Four Winds Society, in the last decade I have led hundreds of students through the Medicine Wheel and Munay-Ki programs.

I am the author of the books Awakening Your Inner Shaman; The Sacred Andean Codes and the co-author of the Mystical Shaman Oracle cards.

When I am not teaching or writing, I love landscaping and designing houses and interiors at our retreat Los Lobos Sanctuary in the mountains of Chile.

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Upcoming Events

Join Marcela in one of her retreats around the world—from ancient landscapes to restorative sanctuaries, each journey is a gateway to awakening and transformation.

APR 02

Summit Peru 2025

SACRED VALLEY, PERU

APR 08

Via Illuminata Exp.

SACRED VALLEY, PERU

OCT 16

Journey to Turkey

TURKEY