Isabel's Story

​

There is a rhythm in you that was beating long before you had word.

​

As a young girl, Isabel was the drummer in the circle, drumming, chanting, and dancing through ceremonial evenings in celebration of the spirits. She also served as a cambono, sitting beside the mediums as the spirits spoke through them and helping pass their guidance on to the people who came for healing. She learned to build altars, perform limpias (spiritual cleansings), prepare despachos and baños florales (floral baths), and offer prayers in Yoruba, the sacred language of the orishas, the divine spirits of nature. The drum warmed her heart and connected her to something far greater than everyday life. It was her first medicine, and sound has guided her ever since. Few children walk this path so young. For Isabel, it became the foundation of everything that followed.

 

As a young woman, Isabel stepped out of the ceremonial circle to discover the wider world. In Brazil, she returned from time to time to her first teacher, Pae Pirica do Xangó, for blessings, divination, and guidance, deepening the roots planted in her youth. Then came Italy, where she worked in the fashion world as an artist, creating with color, texture, pattern, form, and light. It was the same eye that once built altars as a girl, and today it brings beauty and meaning to the sacred spaces she creates for healing. Having lost her mother at six, she knew early what it meant to begin again, and each new country asked her to recreate herself once more. But when she arrived in America in 2008, starting over brought the deepest heartbreak and grief she had ever known. An autoimmune diagnosis, a broken heart, and the loneliness of a new land brought old wounds to the surface. On the yoga mat, she finally met that pain in her body, and slowly, breath by breath, the girl who once drummed for the spirits began to remember who she was, and why she came.

 

Isabel knows that spirit isn't somewhere far away. It lives in the blood, in the bones, in the quiet rhythm at the navel. Within each of us burns a small, steady flame, the same one that has carried her through every loss and still wakes her each morning in love with life. When we tend the pain we carry, that flame grows warmer, and we begin to remember who we truly are: wise, creative, alive. Time has softened her, and that softness is part of her medicine.

 

The backbone of her life's work is tending deep emotional wounds, the ones that rise from the underworld of the soul. She feels called to offer her presence and medicine to those carrying sorrow and pain they can't yet name.

 

Wherever you are on your path, there is a place for you in her circle.

 

These are the maestros y maestras, teachers and trainings, that helped Isabel remember.

​

Yoga, 2010 to present

Isabel's path on the mat began in 2010 with power Vinyasa flow training under Zeke Vincent in Las Vegas, learning to move and flow with the breath. In 2013 she completed the 200-hour Bikram Yoga College of India teacher training, beginner and advanced series, in Los Angeles. In the heat and discipline of the practice, worn down by grief and isolation, she found her way back into her body. It was her first breath back. To this day, she continues to share the teachings that shaped her so lovingly.

​

Portland, 2013 to present

Right after her teacher training, Isabel moved to Portland and began teaching. Here she put down roots, and this city became her ashram. The rivers, forests, and healing waters of the Pacific Northwest, and the soulful communities she found here, slowly drew her toward the sacred. This land guided her back to her spirituality, and opened the door to the plant medicine that would change her life.

​

Plant Medicine, 2017 to present

In the Shipibo cosmovision, every plant carries a spirit, a living teacher. Oni, the spirit of ayahuasca, first came to Isabel in 2017, in ceremony. In 2020, the path led her into this traditional lineage, under her current maestro, Neten Pani Onanya (Robert Morrow), where she came to know the true healing of the plant spirits.

 

After many years of sitting in ceremony, held by the circle and watched over by her maestro and his icaros, Isabel was invited to begin the path of the apprentice and enter her first sacred dieta. A dieta is a retreat of solitude, silence, and simple food, where one spends weeks learning from a single plant and its spirit.

 

She was blessed to diet two powerful master plants. Her first dieta brought her the loving, fatherly energy of Ajo Sacha, who clears the path and brings back joy. With him, she was able to heal her father wounds and her relationship with the masculine. In her apprentice dieta, she sat with Inkaiko, also known as Marosa, a gentle feminine spirit of the waters. Marosa held her broken heart and brought her profound self-love, unshakable confidence, and the quiet maturity of a woman who knows herself.

 

Through it all, Tobacco was always present. The grandfather of the plants rooted her to the earth, and brought her deep peace, the presence of her ancestors, and a steady faith in her own inner knowing.

 

These plants remain her gentle teachers and companions. The peace they gave her lives in her still, and it is that peace she brings to every session she offers.

 

Isabel is profoundly grateful to her maestro, Neten Pani, for his generosity, and to the living lineage of plants and curanderos of the Shipibo people of the Amazon, who keep this sacred knowledge alive.

​

Kundalini Yoga & Meditation, 2017 to 2020

Level One training in Portland, followed by three years of devoted study with Jai Dev, including Ayurveda. Kundalini cracked her heart open. On the mat she wept, touched what is hard to touch, and through the chanting of mantras, found her voice again, the same voice that once chanted in the ceremonial circle as a girl.

​

Sound Healing, 2018 to present

Sound was Isabel's first medicine, and it came back to her through the gong during her Kundalini training. She began offering sound baths in 2018 and completed Level One and Level Two practitioner training with the Sound Healing Academy in 2022. Today, the drum, the gong, and the singing bowls are at the heart of her circles and her one-on-one sessions.

Andean & Ancestral Healing, 2018 to present

From a maestra of the Andes, Isabel learned the Andean despacho, an offering to the earth made with coca leaves. She also studied Alberto Villoldo's teachings on ancestral and chakra healing. This work echoed the earth wisdom she first received as a girl in Uruguay and Brazil.

​

Compassionate Inquiry, 2022

With Dr. Gabor Maté, Isabel learned to gently uncover the beliefs and early wounds that live beneath our pain, bringing a grounded, human tenderness to the backbone of her work.

​

Intuitive Craniosacral, 2022 to present

Basic and intermediate training with Lena Ixchel and Etienne Peirsman. Here, Isabel learned to listen through her hands, holding stillness so the body can speak and release what it has held for so long. In a way, it's the same listening she learned as a girl, sitting beside the mediums.

​

Thai Yoga, 2023

Training with Francisco Morales in Thai Yoga, a slow, meditative bodywork on the mat with deep, nourishing stretches. Isabel weaves in Tibetan singing bowls, bringing together the healing traditions of Southeast Asia and the Himalayas.

​

Kundalini Dance, 2023

Facilitator training with Leyolah Antara, dancing through each chakra to restore, rejuvenate, and let go. The girl who once danced for the spirits danced again, reawakening her feminine energy, her wildness, and her bond with the goddesses she calls upon: Mary Magdalene, Isis, and Hathor. The dance brought a beautiful light and so much joy back into her life. Today, she shares it in her workshops and retreats.

 

 

 

Each of these teachers left something in her hands, her voice, and her heart. Isabel is deeply grateful to every maestro and maestra who walked beside her and shared their wisdom so generously. Today, she weaves it all together, offering each person who comes to her the same care she was once given.

 

​

​​