montero healing arts
megan pilar montero
About Megan Pilar Montero
Hi, I'm Megan.
I believe that reconnecting with the healing wisdom of Nature is the key to thriving in the modern world.
I'm a Tepahtiani or traditional healer in the Nahua tradition of Mexico’s central highlands and a Granicera or Nahua weather worker in the same tradition. I’m also a Feng Shui practitioner with twenty years experience helping people heal their homes. I live and work in Santa Cruz, California.
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My personal experience with chronic fatigue and chronic pain, and my experience as a highly sensitive person, led me to my path as a healer.
I was a devoted fine artist and thought I’d spend the rest of my life painting and working with clay. And then, shortly after moving to California in 1996, I started to experience chronic pain. Pain in my hands turned into pain in my whole body. And I had no idea why this was happening to me.
After a long journey of searching for answers and relief, traditional healing is what helped me reconnect and heal and brought me home to myself. I’m grateful to have found my path being of service as a healer and weather worker.
More About My Path & Story
The physical pain forced me away from ‘making art’ to seeking help from the healing arts. The Western approaches I tried initially offered no help and many of the holistic approaches I tried exacerbated my symptoms.
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Early on this healing journey I found chi gong which led me to tai chi. Then one day my tai chi teacher handed me a flier for a Feng Shui workshop and said ‘Meg, you’ve got to check this out.’ I had never heard about Feng Shui, but I was already very interested in the Chinese system of chi through my passion for chi gong and herbal medicine.
Taking that Feng Shui workshop was an aha moment for me. All the years of rearranging my furniture trying to create balance and harmony in my life, along with my high sensitivity to space, finally started to make sense. It was very clear that being a Feng Shui practitioner was my dream job, but I hesitated. Did people actually do this? I knew that being of service was my calling but this seemed so off the beaten path, even for me.
After 3 years of doubts, I found the courage to begin formal training to become a Feng Shui practitioner. In 2003, I began by doing an apprenticeship training with teacher Francine Tuft Peterson. Francine sent me to study with two of her beloved teachers, Carol Bridges and Jetsun Ma Master Teacher Ho Lynn. I’m grateful to have studied extensively with these three wise Feng Shui teachers.
Studying herbal medicine was the beginning of coming home to a deep relationship and connection with the natural world. While I was training to be a professional herbalist in 1999, my teacher highly recommended the book Plant Spirit Medicine by Eliot Cowan. Reading that book was another aha moment for me and completely transformed my life. While reading the book I felt a strong feeling of connection that I was unfamiliar with but was aware I was desperately longing for.
I read Eliot’s book every year for 5 years keeping my dream alive but working with Eliot seemed far out of reach. Until I Feng Shui’d my house with my Feng Shui teacher Francine which initiated a move across the country. I unexpectedly landed in a town that was a hub of plant spirit medicine healers and Eliot’s students. My new home in Asheville was within walking distance from a holistic MD who practiced plant spirit medicine and trained with Eliot Cowan.
Shortly after, I began training with Eliot to be a plant spirit medicine lay spiritual healer and also began working with him for my own healing. Eliot’s traditional Huichol healing, which is a form of spiritual healing indigenous to Mexico, was the first time I really felt I was getting somewhere deep with my healing. Even though it didn’t resolve my ‘physical symptoms’ something in my spirit said ‘yes’ and ‘keep going with this’.
This is a documentary about the Nahua weather working lineage I'm a part of.
After sharing an unusual dream with Eliot, he suspected I had an illness of calling.
Eliot sent me to see a traditional healer named David Wiley for a spiritual divination, to see if I was being called to the path of weather working. He also recommended I work with David for my healing. He sent me to David because of his work as a healer and weather worker in the Nahua tradition. That divination revealed I had a spiritual calling to be a Granicera or Weather Worker in the Nahua indigenous tradition of Mexico.
In 2007, I received an initiation as a Granicera in the Nahua weather working tradition, making a life-time commitment to serve the Weather Spirits and the community. My initiation took place in Nepopualco, Mexico, and was led by Don David Wiley, the successor to the late Don Lucio Campos Elizalde. Don Lucio was a well known healer and weather shaman who passed this tradition on to my teacher, David Wiley, so it would continue for future generations. Watch the short documentary on this page to learn more about the Lineage of Don Lucio Campos.
This path led me to discover a calling to be a traditional healer in the Nahua tradition. After an intense 8 year apprenticeship training with Don David, I became fully initiated as a Tepahtiani or traditional healer in 2021. I return to the highlands of central Mexico twice a year to the home of my tradition to be with my teacher and fellow graniceros and tepahtianime to deepen my learning and experience on this path.
In 2015 I began offering semi-annual community weather ceremonies where I live in Santa Cruz, California. We come together in ceremony to help build a healthy reciprocal relationship with the Weather Beings. We welcome and ask for rain, and give thanks for the rain that is given.
Now I appreciate the hidden gifts that came with having chronic fatigue and pain and with being a highly sensitive person. I’ve learned that reconnecting with the healing wisdom of Nature and the wisdom of ancient traditions is the way back to balance. I’m grateful to be able to share the deep spiritual healing that is possible through traditional Nahua healing, to be able to help people create a home that helps them heal with Feng Shui, and to help people reconnect with the divine natural world through ceremony.
