Today, 3 Aj invites us to turn inward to the home within, cultivate the inner sanctuary where we feel rooted and safe, and recognize that the strongest foundation for family and community begins with the peace we create inside ourselves.
Essential Questions:
- What does my inner home feel like?
- What do I need to feel rooted and grounded within myself?
- How can I tend to my inner garden with the same care I give to my outer relationships?
Nawal Aj is the community leader, and its energy extends into our physical and spiritual space. On 3 Aj, we are encouraged to tend to our home and garden to bring harmony to the household.
Working with the Energy of 3 Aj
Bless your home: Light incense or burn sage or copal to clear stagnant energy and invite peace.
Acknowledge your ancestors: Offer gratitude for the foundations they built and the wisdom they passed down.
Commit to integrity: Speak your truth with kindness, and let your actions reflect your values.
Rest in Peace, Maria (3 Aj)
Maria Castells passed away in April 2025. A Uruguayan woman who’d lived at Lake Atitlan for decades, she was a pillar of the community in Tzununa.
I first met Maria back in 2012 when I started working at LIFE School in Panajachel. I was pregnant with my daughter. Maria’s son was in fifth grade. I taught fourth grade that year. My first two years at LIFE were idyllic. My third was not. To make a long story short, I got fired mid-year, and Maria happened to be the president of the board then, so she is the one who fired me. She also put out a denuncio (restraining order) on me, saying that I couldn’t go within a certain number of meters of the campus, which I felt was over the top. A couple of weeks later, she invited me to her home in Tzununa for a post-mortem and even though I felt like she was my arch-enemy, I went. I can’t remember anything about the meeting other than crying and feeling frustrated.
I left LIFE School in January 2015. Within months, we bought a piece of land with a small fixer-upper casita and on June 1st, my husband, daughter and I moved across the lake to Pasajcap, a neighborhood between San Marcos and Tzununa. So Maria and I were now neighbors of sorts. For years, I’d see her randomly on the road and give a civil wave or hola… still feeling resentment, but it faded away over time. In a sense, leaving LIFE School launched me into a new life: living in a forest, beginning a new career working at a luxurious retreat center. Although it was a painful experience and Maria and I had been adversaries, I could forgive if not forget.
Maria hired my husband to teach art classes at the community center and library she’d helped found in Tzununa, which he did for several months and even got paid for it.
At the Festival of Consciousness held in San Marcos, circa April 2023, I taught a yoga class one morning. Maria happened to be leading a workshop on sound healing with tuning forks immediately after me at the same venue, so I stayed and attended her class. She was a master sound healer. By this point, I felt warm and friendly toward her.
Maria ran a beautiful hotel-turned-retreat center called Lomas de Tzununa, and as fate would have it, I was hired by a travel company called Traverse Journeys to lead a yoga retreat at Lomas in March of 2024. I had just had an emergency appendectomy two weeks prior, so I was healing and tender. On the last evening of the retreat, Maria led a fabulous healing sound bath for our small group of 5 yogis including me.
At some point, I ran into Maria by the boat dock in Pana. I was walking uphill, she was coming down. We were both alone and we stopped to talk for a minute. She was preoccupied because she’d been to the doctor in the city and had received a jarring diagnosis. She didn’t share the key detail with me until much later: cancer of the uterus.
I visited with Maria at Lomas and at the Bambu a couple of times when she was ill. She was upbeat, doing alternative treatments including receiving intravenous vitamins on the regular, acupuncture, breathwork, surely sound healing, and meditating, hoping and praying.
My last communication with Maria was via text, asking her to lead a sound bath at the Bambu for an upcoming retreat group. She agreed to it. A few weeks later, she slipped out of her human body. Her death felt like a shock, even though I’d known she was sick. She still seemed invincible.
Maria was an amazing, complicated, intelligent, funny, compassionate, talented, wonderful woman, and her nawal was 3 Aj—the inner home, the sanctuary, the rooted strength. She tended her inner garden even as she built community. Maria Castells taught me that forgiveness is possible, that time heals, and that we can move from adversary to friend.
May your spirit fly free, querida Maria!
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