The People Behind the Work

Founder

Marco Pepino

Marco’s path into this work did not begin with a calling to serve others. It began with his own suffering.

In what should have been a successful chapter of his life, he found himself facing a painful divorce, deep corporate burnout, and an exhaustion and depression that touched every part of his being. Despite decades of spiritual practice, something essential remained unresolved. Beneath the accomplishments, beneath the meditation, beneath the personal growth, old wounds and unconscious patterns were still shaping his life.

For nearly thirty years, Marco had immersed himself in the study of consciousness and healing. He practiced meditation, Kriya Yoga, Qi Gong, Tai Chi, and Taoist internal arts. These traditions brought profound insight and awareness, but eventually he came to a difficult realization: awareness alone was not enough. He could observe his patterns, but observation did not always free him from them. The deeper wounds lived not only in the mind, but in the body, the emotions, and the nervous system itself.

His search for deeper healing eventually led him to Peru, where he spent years participating in traditional dietas and learning from the Peruvian curanderos. There he encountered a level of healing that challenged everything he thought he knew. The medicine seemed to work beyond concepts, reaching emotional, psychological, and even physical layers that had remained untouched by years of spiritual practice. At times, the experience felt like a form of inner surgery — revealing, unwinding, and healing places within himself he did not know how to reach alone.

Yet over time, Marco became concerned by what he witnessed in much of the modern plant medicine movement. He saw powerful ceremonies and beautiful experiences, but often very little lasting transformation. Many people were having profound insights, yet returning home to the same patterns, the same suffering, and the same lives. Increasingly, it felt as though the medicine itself was becoming another form of seeking rather than a pathway to genuine freedom.

As a result, he stepped away from the medicine work for nearly eight years.

During this period, Marco met his life partner, whose presence and guidance would profoundly influence the next chapter of his journey. While spiritual practice had taught him how to cultivate awareness, she introduced him to a much deeper path of self-inquiry — one that invited him not merely to observe his experience, but to investigate the hidden assumptions, identities, and conditioning that lay beneath it. Through this work, Marco began to see that true transformation required more than insight; it required the courage to question the very structures through which he had been experiencing himself and the world.

She later introduced Marco to Ash.

Then everything changed when he encountered Ash and the 4-E Elemental Wisdom Process. For the first time, Marco experienced a framework that brought together the insight of medicine, the wisdom of self-inquiry, the intelligence of the body, and an understanding of how trauma and conditioning become embedded within us. It was no longer about chasing experiences. It was about transforming the patterns underneath them.

The results were profound. The work reached places that years of spiritual practice and medicine alone had not fully touched. More importantly, the changes lasted.

Lumina was born from that realization.

Today, Marco’s passion is not helping people have extraordinary experiences. It is helping them create meaningful and lasting transformation. His intention is to offer the kind of environment he once searched for himself — one that honors the wisdom of sacred medicines while placing equal importance on integration, embodiment, inquiry, and the courage to live what is discovered.

Because in the end, healing is not measured by what happens during ceremony. It is measured by the life you are able to live afterward.

Spiritual Director & Lead Facilitator

Ash Ruiz

There are people who teach about awakening, and there are people whose lives become an expression of it.

For more than three decades, Ash Ruiz has dedicated his life to exploring the nature of consciousness, healing, and human transformation. His journey has taken him through the worlds of music, spirituality, plant medicine, and deep self-inquiry, always guided by a single question: What truly frees us from suffering?

What makes Ash unique is not simply the breadth of his experience, but the depth of his presence. Those who work with him often speak of feeling profoundly seen — not judged, analyzed, or fixed, but met with a rare combination of compassion, clarity, and insight. He has an extraordinary ability to recognize the deeper patterns operating beneath a person’s story and gently guide them toward the truth that lies underneath.

Ash’s path has been anything but conventional. From performing on stages around the world to years spent studying with indigenous elders and shamans in the Amazon, his life has been devoted to understanding both the heights of spiritual awakening and the realities of human healing. For fourteen years, he shared transformative teachings through a conscious music project that touched audiences around the globe. Along the way, he has taught, performed, and shared space with many of the most respected voices in modern spirituality, including Eckhart Tolle, Marianne Williamson, Gangaji, Adyashanti, Byron Katie, Wayne Dyer, Ram Dass, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama.

Yet despite these experiences, Ash’s work has never been about collecting teachings, experiences, or spiritual accomplishments. His focus has remained remarkably simple: helping people discover what is already whole and free within themselves.

Over the years, Ash began to recognize that awakening alone does not necessarily resolve the emotional wounds, trauma, and unconscious conditioning that continue to shape our lives. This understanding led him to develop an approach that bridges spiritual realization with embodied healing and deep inquiry — an approach that eventually evolved into the 4-E Elemental Wisdom Process at the heart of Lumina.

At Lumina, Ash serves as the Spiritual Director and Lead Facilitator, guiding the ceremonies, teachings, and transformational work that define the retreat experience. His gift lies in helping participants move beyond temporary insight and into genuine transformation — where healing is not simply experienced, but embodied.

Those who come to Lumina often arrive seeking answers, healing, or freedom from long-standing patterns. Ash’s role is not to provide those answers for them. It is to help create the conditions in which they can discover the truth for themselves.

Because lasting transformation does not come from following another teacher. It comes from awakening the wisdom that has been within you all along.