Make Room for Magic in Your Life!

by Roxana Valea

Roxana, the founder of The HEAL Institute, talks about her journey from a polo player and management consultant to a shamanic healer and Reiki Master.

Five years ago, my life changed. It had changed many times before so I didn’t make much of what was happening at the beginning. But this change was meant to be bigger and deeper than anything I have experienced before. This time, it was magic that entered my life and it came because I made room for it.

Prior to this moment, I had been stuck in a destructive loop of playing polo and going through accidents, breaking bones, one after the other, having surgeries and recovering from surgeries. And then playing polo again. One accident too many and it finally hit me: I had to give up polo or I’d end up giving up my life. I chose my life.  I turned my back to Argentina which held all the magic of polo for me and travelled across the globe to India to embark on what was to become a healing journey. I was not motivated by some sudden spiritual awakening but rather by the need to fully heal a badly broken collar bone and recover my full range of motion.

I started my healing journey in an Ayurveda sanatorium in India and here I learned that Ayurveda was not only their traditional medicine, but it also meant the science of life. I then moved on to spend some time with an old shaman lady in Thailand and it was her who pushed me to go further on this path. I travelled back to Europe and started training as a Reiki therapist and ultimately I became a shaman trained in the tradition of the Q’ero shamans from Peru.

“How does one become a shaman?” I was asked by sceptic friends. “You have to be born there to be a shaman!” It turned out that I did not have to be born there or anywhere particularly. I just had to make room for this new reality in my life. I also had to invest about 600 hours of training split across two years and show up for 6 weeks of residential training in the first year.

I went into this new adventure with a mixture of curiosity and scepticism. After all, I had the time and the money both freshly freed from the grip of polo, an expensive and time-consuming sport. I figured out that if I had spent so much money and time breaking my body, the least I could do was spend a little more to heal it.

And so I opened the door to magic. I did it simply by saying yes to this shamanic training, by showing up at an old manor house in Somerset, the location of our first residential week. I did it by doing my homework, practising what I had learned, showing up for the next module and writing up my case studies. I did it simply by walking this path that opened up in front of me.

I gave my time and energy to magic, and magic responded by showering me with gifts.

After my first week of residential training, I changed countries and went to live by the sea in Spain, a place I have always dreamed of living but never saw a way to make happen. 

Two months later, after my second week of training, I realised that I had become a full-time writer, something that I always wanted to do but never thought I could afford. I had written four books in less than a year and I was starting to edit them in preparation for publishing.

And after my third week of shamanic training that year, magic hit me with the force of a hurricane. I went to that training as a single girl. A week later I came out of it completely in love and in the most romantic of relationships. The man I had always dreamed of not only showed up there but fell in love with me on the spot. We got married exactly a year later and for the last six years, I have been living every day of this magical relationship with deep gratitude and a fresh sense of wonder.

And magic did not stop there… because it never stops. Once you open the door wide, it enters your life, and it keeps on coming back with more gifts. On one condition though – that you keep that door open.

I have started teaching some of these shamanic practices in my online courses. This year, my online course “The Munay Ki Rites” enters its fourth year. Of all my shamanic practices, these rites hold a very special place in my heart as it was during the week when I received these rites that I said goodbye to being the single girl, forever looking for Mr Right. My Mr Right showed up there and our love was born as we learned these rites and cemented as we gave them to each other. Of all the magic that entered my life, these rites have brought me the most precious gift of all: true love. So I made a pledge: I would honour these rites by teaching them once a year, every year. And every year as I teach them, they bring more magic into my life.

So here’s the invitation: This year (2023) the Munay Ki rites course is free with your membership to The HEAL Institute. That's because I want to encourage as many people as possible to join our platform and benefit from the bespoke healing advice and resources.

Join me on this path.

Open your own door to magic

Let it come into your life and let it shine.

And enjoy the gifts it bears. For magic will always come bearing gifts.