Mexican Traditional Medicine
What is Mexican traditional medicine?
If you ask people what is Mexican traditional medicine, most of them will shyly answer ….
Medicine plants?
Let’s start with this definition:
“Mexican folk healing, or curanderismo, is a practice that blends Mayan, Aztec, and Spanish Catholic traditions. Folk healers, known as curanderos, believe that their healing abilities are a spiritual vocation. They use a variety of treatments and remedies, and their knowledge is often passed down through generations of families”.
Stephen Woodman
Traditional medicine has been around for centuries, but in recent years there has been a resurgence of interest in this area.
In prehispanic times, there was no illness – there were only misbalances, and it is balance that a traditional healer is responsible for.”
Your balance is between the spirit, the body and the mind.
“Healers believe a trauma, an accident, or a strong emotion, brings you out of balance and it is this misbalance that makes you physically sick, sometimes even years later. After your spirit gets sick, your body follows.
Every emotion is linked to an organ; sadness stays in your lungs, anger in your liver, fear in your kidneys.”
There are a thousand ways to bring you back into balance and getting back into balance is only where your healing journey begins.
Sometimes balance is restored through a “limpia”. This is a cleansing ritual where the healer uses herbs, cold water or mezcal, a chicken egg and fire or the smoke of copal (natural incense) to bring you back in balance. Temazcal, the indigenous steam bath, is another common form of cleansing.
Each curandero has his or her own method.
Some are guided by visions, others read your iris, some diagnose with the chicken egg, or they feel your pulse, they read the fire or smoke, the earth, the water, they work with ceremonies or rituals, with candles, healing with sacred plants, or through massages.
Most of us believe that only through the use of psychedelic plants the connection between spirit and body can be achieved but only 10% of traditional healing practices are using them, as quoted by Michael Harner
Like Elizabeth, one of the healer, says: