Acerca de
Don Miguel Ruiz was born into a family of healers in rural Mexico. His mother was a curandera — a traditional healer — and his grandfather a nagual, a Toltec shaman. Trained as a neurosurgeon at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, he abandoned medicine after a near-death car accident in the early 1970s that led him to question everything he believed about reality. He returned to his family’s lineage of Toltec wisdom, spending years studying under his mother, and eventually became a nagual himself.
His 1997 book The Four Agreements distills Toltec philosophy into four practical commitments: be impeccable with your word, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions, and always do your best. The book’s directness and accessibility made it one of the best-selling self-help books of the past three decades, finding audiences far outside the spiritual communities where such teachings typically circulate.
Ruiz has described a serious heart attack in 2002 that left him in a coma for nine weeks as a second turning point — an experience he wrote about in The Fifth Agreement (2010, co-authored with his son Don Jose Ruiz) as confirmation of his teachings about death, dreams, and presence. He continues to lead workshops and retreats, and his family — including sons Don Jose Ruiz and Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. — carry the lineage forward as teachers in their own right.
