Megan Montero, feng shui consultant

Hi, I'm Megan.

My personal experience with chronic fatigue and chronic pain, and my experience as a highly sensitive person, led me to the Chinese art of Feng Shui and traditional indigenous healing. 

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, chronic pain came knocking at my door. 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, these approaches are what helped me reconnect and heal and brought me home to myself. 

Now as a Feng Shui coach for 20 years and as a healer in the Nahua tradition of Mexico, I’ve found my path being of service. I offer a holistic healing approach for body, mind, spirit, life and home. I believe that reconnecting to the healing wisdom of Nature is the key to thriving in the modern world. 

How did I find Feng Shui?

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. 

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. 

Feng Shuiing my home with the help of my teacher Francine, produced profound movement and change in my life. It initiated a move across the country to a town where I met the spiritual healer (Eliot Cowan) who had a profound impact on my healing and spiritual path. I’ve moved many times over the years and I always Feng Shui my space as soon as possible after moving in because I’ve experienced how supportive it is to my life and healing. 

Coming home to Nature through the healing of plants.

Studying herbal medicine was the beginning of coming home to the comfort and connection I find 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 desperatly 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 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 Dr. 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’. 

My illness turned out to be an illness of calling to serve the Weather Spirits. 

After telling Eliot an unusual dream, he suspected I had an illness of calling and sent me to see a man 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 Spanish, granicero means, one who works with hail or storms, also called trabajadores del tiempo, workers of the rain season. In the Nahuatl language called quiatlzques, or someone who makes “watery” arrive, or a quiapaquiz, someone that makes moisture rise up and inundate the land. Although I had no sense of having a special connection with the weather, for many years I had a very strong feeling that I was being called to something. 

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. If you’d like to learn more about the Lineage of Don Lucio Campos click here to watch this short documentary film.

This path led me to discover a calling to be a healer in the same 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.

As part of my role as a granicera, in 2015 I was asked to offer community weather ceremonies to help with the drought. Now I lead semi-annual community weather ceremonies in Santa Cruz and in Santa Monica, 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. 

This path of being a weather worker, a ceremonial leader and a healer in the Nahua tradition has completely transformed my life. 

Now I can say that I understand and appreciate the hidden gifts that come with having chronic fatigue and chronic pain and with being highly sensitive. I’ve learned that reconnecting with the healing wisdom of Nature and the wisdom of ancient traditions is the missing piece and 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.