Point South Mexico - Real Estate and Lifestyle Magazine

San Miguel de Allende offers visitors seeking an adventure of the spirit a unique opportunity for personal growth.

A curandero’s (healers) broom standing upside down in the corner of an ancient stone house, fresh chamomile flowers on the floor sending up an intoxicating aroma. A painter at work on a dazzlingly colourful canvas, a vision she had in a dream the night before. A wildly gyrating group of dancers ranging from teens to people in their seventies, passionately expressing themselves in movement—dance as a personal sacred ritual.

Welcome to the Mexico of spiritual healing, inner exploration, and mystical seeking—a place of wonder amid the already exotic delights of a vibrant, centuries-old culture steeped in spirituality.

The highlands of central Mexico, long known for its splendid terrain and its gems of Spanish Colonial architecture, is also becoming a destination for travellers attracted to personal and spiritual growth. Mexico’s Seventieth Century hillside mining towns have always held a unique fascination for visitors. Today, the mystical aura surrounding places like San Miguel de Allende and Guanajuato glows anew with both time-honoured and contemporary approaches to inner nurturance and transformation.

Traditional Spirituality

As a glowing gem in the crown of Colonial Mexico, San Miguel offers the visitor in search of inner growth the great legacy of its Catholic past. It is a city of churches and a community of devotion. Religious celebrations—seemingly every week or so—are celebrated with much enthusiasm and pageantry.

Seekers on a private spiritual journey can join in these solemnities and apply their meaning to inner circumstances: the literal meaning of Holy Week, for instance, is the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus; the metaphorical meaning for a visiting seeker can be his or her own transformational process from the “death” of the personal past to the rebirth of the future.

In San Miguel, the seeker will discover a community of like-minded people who are on their own inner search.

Walking the streets of San Miguel, has a spiritual quality in itself. Seven major churches in the small downtown historical district anchor a kind of public spirituality. The Parroquia, the largest and most iconic of the churches, was started in 1683 and styled on the Gothic cathedrals of Europe.

A tour of the other churches gives the visitor seeking spiritual solace a unique, mind-quieting experience: the Oratorio of San Felipe Neri, begun in 1712; La Salud, the Church of Our Lady of Good Health; La Conception, also known as Las Monjas (the Nuns), begun in 1755; the San Antonio Church, begun in 1762.

One of the most fascinating of the churches lies outside of San Miguel, only seven miles from the center of town, in the village of Atotonilco. The shrine there is considered so important an example of Colonial ecclesiastical architecture, that its restoration was recently undertaken by a grant from World Heritage Foundation of the United Nations, winning out again, among other more famous landmarks such as the Taj Mahal. It was built in the 1700s.

Artists of the Spirit

In a town legendary for its interest in and appreciation of the arts, it was natural that art would overlap with spirituality. For many artists in San Miguel, the town itself is a work of art imbued with many layers of spiritual meaning.

Personal Growth Retreats and Programs

Besides boasting an abundance of metaphysically prone artists, San Miguel is home to centres that explore personal growth.

LifePath Retreats are in-depth workshops designed to promote positive change in a person’s life. The retreats are for people who want to look deeper into their lives for meaning and purpose—to help them gain clarity and direction in many areas, including career, family history, creativity, mental and emotional well-being, and life passages.

Retreats are held once a month in the downtown centre. Special topics programs include Shaman Way, which gives people the opportunity to work with a shaman from Tepoztlan; Cosmic Consciousness, held during Semana Santa (Easter week); the Mysteries of the Enneagram, the ancient way of typing personalities; and the Divine Feminine, held during the festivals of Our Lady of Guadalupe. (Visit www.lifepathretreats.com for information and to view the retreat calendar.)

The Meditation Center of San Miguel offers classes and meditation sessions every day of the week. Visitors are welcome to enter and leave quietly at any time during the hours the center is open. (Email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .)

Yoga from many spiritual traditions abounds in San Miguel. One of the most interesting is a yoga cooperative that operates out of the esteemed Bellas Artes. It is Hatha Yoga, intermediate and advanced levels, a gentle yoga for newcomers and people with physical limitations. Classes emphasize strength, stamina, flexibility and peace of mind.

Finally, still another reason the spiritual seeker will find much to admire about San Miguel de Allende—an obvious one, perhaps. In San Miguel, the seeker will discover a community of like-minded people who are on their own inner search. The support of others on the path can be most helpful. In the town of Saint Michael the Archangel, where traditional and contemporary spirituality blends and blossoms, the visitor making a pilgrimage of heart and soul will feel quite at home.