Miraval Arizona Experience

After my trip to Miraval Austin last year, my friend and I decided we’d book again for this Fall (using the same Cyber Monday code to maximize our resort credits! I’ll share this on socials when it comes around again). We decided to mix it up for our second visit and head to the original Arizona location near Tucson, tucked at the foot of the Santa Catalina mountains.

While the programming is super similar at both locations, each of the surrounding landscapes are quite different. Set in the beautiful high desert just below the Santa Catalina mountains, the Arizona location offers easy access to extensive hiking and world-class mountain biking trails, right off the property. I personally enjoyed the beauty of this location even more than the lake view and hills of Austin, but was unprepared for the cool nights and mornings at this high altitude (I wish I had packed more warm layers!). In late October, the mid-day temps were perfect for a little poolside reading or any outdoor activities you’d wish to do.

If you read my review of my previous experience in Austin, it gives you a good sense of the programming to expect. My first visit to Miraval was very focused on helping to reset my spark of joy by trying new things, moving in new ways and doing a lot of mindfulness work. On this second visit, I wanted to focus on being more present, making space for some curiosity, creativity and exploration. Since the Arizona location is known most of all for its world-renowned spiritual wellness experts, I planned to make the most of my stay and tap into these new-to-me experts to open my mind in new and helpful ways. Of course, I also spent a lot of time doing yoga, meditating and enjoying the spa.

Most that know me well know that I am very wellness-focused and many assume I’m also very woo-woo in my beliefs. I’ve in fact resisted some of this type of work, such as mediums or psychics, for much of my life as I was raised in a very religious setting that never felt right for my beliefs and world view. Because of this, I’ve been anti organized religion for much of my life, and with that, have also resisted connecting more deeply in other spiritual ways.

So, when I met with an energy worker and medium for my first time at last year’s visit to Miraval, I was absolutely dumbfounded at how helpful her insights were. Not only did the information she shared help me, but also helped the friends I was traveling with. On this visit I was determined and excited to connect a level deeper and try to explore the world “beyond” and push myself to open my mind to the wonder of the experience.

Having been to Miraval once before, I was also better able to plan my experiences with the right pacing. When we arrived, my friend and I each enjoyed a late-afternoon floating meditation (in hanging yoga silks) and I made a beeline to the spa for a body scrub after incredibly delicious dinner. As with my prior experience, the spa was second to none in terms of the facilities, the experience, the variety, the products used and the quality of the treatments. I loved starting with a body scrub that kept me from falling asleep before bedtime (which always backfires for me!) and felt like I got the blood and lymph moving in my body. It’s the perfect start to a couple of days of detox-cation!

The next morning we jumped right in with a 7AM morning hike. This two-hour guided walk was absolutely beautiful, leaving right from the back of the property and working our way up through “the chutes” (world-class biking paths) and into “the boulders” – an area near Mount Lemmon with old-growth Saguaro cacti, Prickly Pear, Jumping Cholla, Barrel cacti, Juniper bushes and more. Having not spent much time in nature in the Southwestern United States, I loved how the blue sky opened to a backdrop of bronze mountains and opened up to a lush and surprisingly green desert landscape (this desert gets more than 14” of rain each year, giving it the beautiful flora.) I also loved that this hike was well before the heat of the day, making it perfectly comfortable with just the right amount of physical challenge to get your blood pumping and your legs working. All in, we clocked around 4.5 miles by 9AM. This is my definition of a perfect morning!

We spent the rest of the day attending various yoga classes, spa treatments and pool time. My spa experience for the Rasayana Renewal Ritual was next-level amazing, complete with a full dosha assessment from the Ayurvedic practitioner and a unique massage with a deep-soaking in Ayurvedic herbal oils meant to draw out and balance impurities in my system. It was an incredibly relaxing and beneficial treatment. I felt like I was in a trance for the full 80 minutes and walked out in full bliss mode.

FIRST WOO-WOO: INTUITIVE HEALER & MEDIUM

This was a great way to calibrate my system to try my first “woo-woo” experience of my journey. Not knowing exactly what I had signed myself up for, I had an appointment for a highly-recommended Private Journey of Renewal with a woman named Rae Jessie, an Intuitive Healer and Medium (who I didn’t know is also an ordained minister). Rae Jessie grew up in Scotland and brings a delightful, airy and positive energy and truly looks and sounds like a Gaelic Fairy! Not knowing what to expect, she put me right at ease with a big hug and helped me to get settled into our private room for a comfortable and cozy guided meditation. She explained with very beautiful words that we’d essentially be doing some mindfulness and meditation work and clearing the path around me for healing and making space for my ideal life path. Who doesn’t want that!? Seated comfortably on the floor with several props, I was able to drop in quite quickly with her prompts and would liken the experience very much to an alert hypnosis. Throughout the roughly 30 minute session, the time passed very quickly and I saw many images, pictures, images of myself at various ages and stages and lots of color washes. I tried my best to watch the show and not to try to hard to give any of it meaning or judgement. In fact, I’d say most of it I still can’t quite piece together into anything cohesive, but I think my brain worked through a lot. Rae Jessie then had me come out of my deep focus and write a few thoughts on paper. Despite my rational brain not yet having any story from what I saw, my intuitive brain was very clear after this session. I wrote down my personal aspirations and challenges on a piece of paper and folded it to hold in my left hand. She then asked me to stand while she used Gaelic chants and energy work with a feather wand around all four sides of my body. It was peaceful and I felt an inner glow while this was going on, though it was subtle and hard to describe. We then walked outdoors, barefoot, to a little alter where we burned my writings and let them go into an urn.

While this was essentially the end of the experience, Rae Jessie brought me back to the room to discuss and share thoughts aloud. What I didn’t expect is that she had a visitor she wanted to speak with me about in our last few minutes together. As it turns out, she was being visited by the spirit of my Grandfather who had passed one year and a day before this experience and wanted to share a loving message. She shared with me a series of insights, starting with my connection to my living Grandmother, a message of love and assurance of freedom and happiness for my deceased Grandfather, and a special message about both my son and my dear friend that she called my soul sister. This experience was highly personal and would be difficult to describe without knowing much more about my family, but I can say that the specifics of her insights and messages were all too real to be anything other than fact. In the end, my Grandpa wanted us to know he is free and at peace and wants us to keep eating cake together and gathering as a family. It was such a beautiful moment and an unforgettable experience and I’m so glad the universe brought me to Rae Jessie for this moment.

I was a puddle of emotional tears after this experience and felt I was purging out some more of the grief that I didn’t even know I was still holding a year after my Grandpa’s passing. What’s nice about Miraval is that nobody even bats an eyelash at this. I took my red-faced snotty self off to my next class without a second thought.

As it happens, later that evening my friend and I had signed up for a Past Life Regression experience with the same guide, Rae Jessie. Though this isn’t something I have (or at least had) a great deal of interest in, I wanted to try something new and I thought it would be fun to do with my friend. It sounded almost playful and I thought, why not? Off we went after dinner to a large yurt with about ten others for a group session of what was once again, essentially a deep hypnosis. (In fact, my friend’s fitness tracker counted this meditation as deep sleep despite her being fully awake and alert the entire time). During the session, Rae Jessie helped us to access our past life memory bank through a guided meditation down a large visualized staircase and into various stages of this previous life. Once again through deep focus, I experienced very fuzzy but vivid visualizations of what seemed to be two different previous lives. In one I was some sort of fish and I lived underwater and in the next I was a girl and then old woman who lived in Northern Europe somewhere, rolling out dough with snow on the ground outside. In my rational brain it's hard for me to make real sense of these visions – they could absolutely be my imagination or my dreaming mind making up or processing content I’ve consumed. I felt a little undecided and perhaps, unconvinced when we emerged from the meditation. What I did love about this was how soothing and restful this time felt and how Rae Jessie was very clear that we would access only a positive life vision and wouldn’t relive anything that was too deeply painful (a nice insurance policy of sorts.)

What I didn’t expect was the incredible stories that others would share around the circle. Each story varied in depth - some participants weren’t able to let go enough to see anything at all, while others had vivid experiences. Another pair of friends, who were clearly as new at this as we were, began sharing their stories individually. The first woman shared her previous life vision as being a man, who at one point in his journey was catching his baby as it was being born while the birthing mother was dying. She sort of shrugged and dismissed how weird that seemed…and then her friend gasped with disbelief. She said she didn’t think she had accessed anything and wasn’t even planning to share, but was in shock at how their stories aligned. Her previous life vision was that of a woman dying in childbirth. They both started tearing up and sharing each of their stories with fertility struggles. Whether they were somehow together in a past life or have experienced similar struggles in a past life, they have been on the journey together in this life and this experience was clearly very moving and clarifying for them. It was incredible to witness and made me a little more curious about the possibility that our souls live more than once and that we may be able to access more than this one life while we are here. Rae Jessie shared that her favorite book on the subject Many Lives, Many Masters discusses this phenomenon in greater depth and that it’s quite common for “soul sisters” or “soul families” to connect in more than one life, and that past-life traumas (such as a death in childbirth) are believed to be a blockage in this current life. It’s all pretty far from my personal area of expertise, but it certainly made for a thought-provoking experience and I was glad to see those two women find connection, healing and meaning, no matter the source.

SECOND WOO-WOO: CLAIRVOYANT

The second full day was full of more fitness, yoga and relaxation. I also jumped into my second “woo-woo” activity with my first-ever Clairvoyant reading! I’ve never seen any sort of psychic or seer before and I was cautious but curious about what this might entail. I met with another renowned talent, Janet Rae Orth, who is a true clairvoyant – someone who truly sees energies, images and future points in time. Janet made me comfortable from the start, sitting me down in a simple therapist-style office. After a little small talk, she shared her process with me, set her phone to record our session and got to it. For my reading, she simply sat across from me, closed her eyes and asked me to share my name and age to help her “access my energy.” She read my energy on four levels, as she described them – starting with my outward self, then my family and home and then moving on to my body and then inner soul and purpose. Janet spoke very quickly and gave me real-life analogies as a way of explaining her insight for greater meaning. The content was dense and so helpful, from thoughts on my professional horizon to ways to change my mindset about a specific tension in my marriage. She shared beautiful and helpful insights about my children (who are apparently old souls, though I could have told her that!) and gave me some good tough love about how I need to take care of myself differently as I work toward my life purpose of helping others. She also reassured me about my health and longevity, which I didn’t expect to hear. While I can’t say how Janet sees or speaks to other clients, I felt the entire experience was so positive.  To walk out of a room with fresh insights, new tools and ideas for the daily grind and some reassurance about the long, healthy path ahead – it was truly a gift. While I know some folks access this kind of confidence through different means, whether meditation or religious practices or otherwise, I felt like I got a fast-pass to living with far less anxiety about my health, my parenting, my career and beyond. Could the money spent on this save me years of therapy? Time will tell, but I would see Janet again in a heartbeat!

As I shared last time, one of the best parts of Miraval for me is the food. Not only is it delicious and healthy, but it is all prepared in a way that I can eat almost everything they offer. The Arizona location was trying a new buffet-style service while we were visiting, supplemented by a fresh daily menu. The buffets were not only super convenient for the fast meals I inevitably needed to squeeze in between my fun classes, but they were exceptional in their quality and variety. In the mornings, the buffets offered everything from toasts and bagel bar with lox and jams, to baked goods (nearly all gluten free and many vegan), a huge assortment of fruit and berries and a variety of hearty warm dishes such as egg dishes, bacon and breakfast potatoes. You can graze the buffet while you wait for your fresh-ordered avocado and egg toast, or simply grab a bite as you dash off to your morning hike. At lunch, fresh sandwiches, incredible Ottolenghi-style salads and delicious soups more than sufficed, though you could order a plant-based burger or a daily special like chicken curry to fill you up for your next spa treatment. The dinners were my favorite, with a slower pace to linger and enjoy the meal. The giant prawn cocktail and oysters with mignonette were super fresh and a beautiful range of salads and elegant soups and charcuterie made the perfect starter course (or whole meal if you wish), while you enjoy a cocktail or mocktail with a friend and order your main course. Of course, I always visited the buffet again for dessert at the end of the meal. I can’t resist a vegan chocolate mousse or tiramisu cup! To be nourished in body and mind, and with delicious and safe food that I didn’t have to cook, is a true vacation indeed!

THIRD WOO-WOO: ASTROLOGY

On our last morning, I visited the in-house astrologer as my third and final “woo” experience. This was only my second-ever reading after diving in earlier this year with some curiosity after my last Miraval experience. I’ve spent the past several months following Chani Nicholas and learning more about the study of astrology. I wanted to meet with a top-grade professional to go a level deeper on my studies and ask some bigger questions on the practice. As I learn more about astrology, I will share that it feels far less woo than other works, such as the psychic realms. Legitimate astrologers aren’t making predictions, but rather using the planetary “weather” to help forecast the energies that will be pulling on us as individuals, and as a collective. I find this a little easier to swallow, and frankly, explain to those who aren’t familiar. For example, we all know the moon pulls the tides, and most of us know that the moon sets a woman’s menstrual cycle when she is not exposed to hormonal or electromagnetic interference (and some woman still do despite interference). Considering this,  is it not so hard for me to believe that other planets create energetic weather and impact for us as humans. That said, when you hear astrologists start to talk about archetypes and mythology to help explain this weather, it can all sound a little hocus pocus and turn people off.

When I met with Ashley Leal at Miraval, I immediately appreciated her rapport, her tone and explanations of my personal weather report. If you are newer to astrology, a reading is typically focused on the date and time of your birth, referencing what is called your natal birth chart. This chart is essentially a picture of the sky the moment you were born and most in astrology believe that our personal energetic fingerprint is set by the planetary gravitational pulls the moment we emerge from the weightlessness of the womb. Ashley walked me through my chart, for only my second official reading of my life, and I was able to go a level deeper than before having done some of my own homework to know more about where I wanted to ask questions. Ashley also pulled the chart for the current day – a present-moment picture of the sky. Being such a visual learner, some elements of astrology and my personal report, really clicked for me with these charts right in front of us. What made this all the more interesting was just how closely much of what she shared with me (such as energies in my professional realm) lined up with what the clairvoyant shared, right down to the timing. Seemingly through very different modalities, these practitioners were highlighting very similar themes for me and my life path ahead.

THE OUTCOME

I’m the first to admit that all this woo-woo can be a little hard to swallow. After all, I’ve been rewarded my whole life for using my very high-performing rational brain. And while many would call these pseudo-sciences, it’s also clear that science hasn’t figured it all out yet. For example, when we dive deeper into physics, we begin to understand that the space-time continuum is not the linear thing we believe it to be. When we study gravitational pulls, tides and lunar phases, we learn how these things impact our bodies. I believe these professionals are in touch with something science can’t quite yet explain. Regardless of what you or I believe, the power of positive thinking and optimism rooted in whatever helps you get into that headspace, is unequivocally good for our health.  

My heart feels light and at peace and I have fresh insights for my journey ahead, a wonderful result no matter how unbelievable or silly it might seem to some. I’m coming back from this trip with the gift of confidence in my health, in my path and in my purpose. What a breakthrough!