Feeling like something in my life was missing, I set off to travel through Europe. What I found there wasn't a distraction from my path, it was the start of it. I immersed myself in wellness and community, met my husband along the way, and began seeking out ancient healing centers built around plant-based treatments and healing waters, traditions that had endured for centuries.

Those places didn't feel foreign to me. They felt familiar, in a way I couldn't quite explain at the time.

That familiarity had a name, and it connected me back to my own roots from pre-Hispanic Mexico. Energy work, touch therapy, plant medicine, meditation, these weren't new discoveries. They were threads that had quietly run through my life all along, waiting for a framework to make sense of them.

That framework turned out to be Ayurveda, a science that brings together energy, plants, touch (Marma), breath, and meditation (Pranayama) into a single, coherent system for understanding health.

I enrolled at Mount Madonna Institute College of Ayurveda in California, studying under some of the pioneering figures of Ayurveda in the United States, including Dr. Vasant Lad. I later earned my certification from the Chopra Center as a Primordial Sound Meditation Teacher.

Along the way, I saw firsthand how powerful these natural remedies could be, not in a textbook, but in my own home, using them with my own children. That's the moment my training stopped being theory and became something I actually trust.

• Mount Madonna Institute College of Ayurveda, California
• Student of Dr. Vasant Lad, one of Ayurveda's foremost experts in the U.S.
• Chopra Center certified Primordial Sound Meditation Teacher
• NAMA member, National Ayurvedic Medical Association
• Certified in Panchakarma Therapy, a specialized and transformative treatment
• 4,000+ hours of academic and clinical training, including pathophysiology, disease management, and herbology

I still attend seminars, workshops, and conferences every year. Ayurveda is a science, and like any science, it keeps teaching you something new if you stay a student of it.

In 2018, I opened AyurVida Wellness in Mission Hills, San Diego, built on the belief that skincare, massage, and Ayurvedic practice shouldn't live on three separate menus. They're part of one philosophy: treat the whole person, not just the surface.

That philosophy shows up in every service AyurVida offers, from Ayurvedic consultations and Abhyanga massage to Shirodhara, Panchakarma, and Marma therapy, all guided by the same idea that brought me here in the first place, and the same idea I trusted enough to use with my own children: real wellness starts with understanding the whole person, not treating a symptom in isolation.