I chose to teach not because I wanted to teach per se, but because I longed to share and play with others. I started what is in truth calling a person from within, seeking to remind the willing soul of the beauty that lies therein.— Zulma Reyo
Like ancient alchemists who sought to transmute lead into gold, Zulma Reyo aims to help individuals transmute aspects of their beings back into light, helping us realize that the philosopher’s stone has been within us all along. Reyo believes that the transformation of our personal selves is the ultimate alchemy. Her Inner Alchemy framework, drawn from multiple Eastern and Western spiritual and esoteric traditions as well as psychotherapeutic and healing approaches, offers a set of practical tools and processes for transforming and mastering our inner selves, vibrating our material bodies at higher frequencies in alignment with the vibrations of our original light Source.
And yet the spiritual framework or practices of 81-year-old Reyo encompass more than the simple platitudes of “love and light”. Born to Puerto Rican parents and raised in the would-be “Age of Aquarius”, Reyo experienced consistently how people could “lose themselves” through pursuit of spirit—either to drugs that “devastated a whole generation that was saturated by ugliness, … whose minds turned to butter with LSD,” or via lack of discernment that “the New Age heralding the coming of the Light [also] contains shadows at the core. Old world teachers and occultists are reborn in this setting.”
Reyo learned through many decades—including in her childhood as the daughter of a “full-trance medium”— that “when a person loses sight of themselves and relinquishes their inner power, the person then becomes an instrument of another intelligence—in the best of cases sublime spirits of light, but most often ordinary entities or thought-forms of mid to lower-frequencies.” By contrast, when Spirit is invoked in a safe environment appropriately prepared and protection is taken, the fullness of our human faculties and powers can be instruments of service and guidance to others.
The goal of Inner Alchemy is thus to promote discernment as well as inner mastery through carefully prepared, aligned, and grounded invocation of Spirit. Reyo encourages her students to embrace all aspects of the self and to harness, rather than repress, the wounded, lower vibratory, or unhealed parts—alchemically transforming them into their highest versions.
Reyo’s teachings—now developed as a formal offering to leaders and service workers via a gifted multi-year, partially residential School of Consciousness in Mallorca, Spain—incorporate a theory of energy and matter, and a “point of power” within each of us which is waiting to be harnessed. “The human body is composed of dense matter and a light center which is usually invisible,” she says. “The proportion of light inside an individual grows with more awareness, with more practice, meditation, and it becomes more homogeneous in the whole body and affects your emotional system and allows you to think in wider dimensions.”
Raised as a Catholic in New York to a Puerto Rican family with shamanic earth callings, Reyo in her early adulthood pursued studies in psychology and metaphysics, which laid the foundation for her later work in consciousness development. As a young mother in New York City in the 1970s, she studied primal scream therapy with Arthur Janov, whom she considers her first adult teacher, and briefly worked with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in that modality.
From there she went to London, where she interacted with a variety of spiritual seekers, leading her to spend a formative decade in India as one of the inner circle members at the ashram of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (the former name of Osho). Rajneesh’s following was still very small at that time, “before he became a megalomaniac" in Oregon, she says. Rajneesh became her second main teacher, “like my spiritual father guiding me through the inner path.” She also came into contact with Jiddu Krishnamurthy, whom she describes as an additional key influence on her.
After a decade in India, Zulma began extensive work in the 1980s in Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, where she introduced her emerging teachings on consciousness and personal transformation. During this time, she developed her Inner Alchemy framework—a system combining psychology, metaphysics, and spiritual practice designed to help individuals align their inner and outer worlds. This work, rooted in self-awareness and emotional healing, became the foundation for her international teachings and publications.
While teaching and practicing in South America, she struggled with how to deal with the negative energies and betrayals that inevitably develop within human teams. She traveled to Egypt, Turkey, and Cyprus to various schools to get help in the form of a living teacher to learn how to deal with the shadow side of humans. In Cyprus, she met and became adopted by the family of Daskalos, a Greek Cypriot teacher in the Christian Esoteric stream, who became her third teacher.
Based on the direct guidance of these three teachers (Janov, Rajneesh, and Daskalos) as well as a host of Eastern and Western traditions—“such as Esoteric Christianity, Theosophy, Anthroposophy, Zen, Buddhism, Sufism, Taoism, Tantra, and western philosophies”—Reyo formalized her approach through the creation of the Inner Alchemy School of Consciousness. Aimed at fostering both personal growth and collective change, the school has expanded Zulma’s mission of empowering individuals to serve as catalysts for a more conscious and harmonious world. Her teachings encourage participants to view life as a dynamic, transformative process, accessible through energy dynamics, emotional management, and the alignment of mind, body, and spirit. Since 2021, the Zulma Reyo School of Consciousness has been offered entirely on a gift basis through the philanthropic support of LightEn, a UK charity that supports excellence in conscious, humanitarian, and spiritual education with no religious agenda.
In addition to her work through the school, Zulma has written Inner Alchemy: The Path of Mastery (republished in 2021), which encapsulates her teachings and offers a guide to self-management and conscious living, and Emergence of Consciousness: Death of the Ego (forthcoming). Her work, which spans decades and continents, continues to inspire thousands worldwide, enabling them to unlock their full potential and contribute meaningfully to society.
Join us in conversation with this teacher who has dedicated her life to exploring and fostering consciousness, spirituality, and human transformation.
