Heritage of Healing
This podcast episode delves into the traditional practice of curanderismo, focusing on the relationship between an apprentice and her master healer, La Maestra Michelle. Michelle explains the various types of curanderos and their specialties, which include massage, midwifery, herbalism, and spiritual healing. The episode also discusses the interchangeable use of terms like curandera, shaman, and medicine person, as well as the cultural roots and misconceptions surrounding these practices.
Listeners are cautioned that the podcast is for entertainment and not medical advice. The episode highlights the importance of lineage and the apprenticeship process in becoming a curandera, emphasizing the long-term dedication required to master the healing arts.
Heritage of Healing
Unlocking the Secrets of Traditional Healers
What if the ancient wisdom of curanderismo could bring harmony to your modern life? Join us in this insightful episode as we explore the timeless practice of curanderismo with La Maestra, Michelle Rio Rice. Rooted in the rich indigenous cultures of South America and Mexico, and still thriving in places like New Mexico, curanderismo encompasses a variety of healing arts, from massage and midwifery to herbalism and spiritual counseling. Michelle delves into the essence of these practices, unraveling the similarities and distinctions among curanderas, shamans, and medicine people within different cultural contexts. Through her narratives and experiences, you’ll gain a deeper appreciation for the universal principles that guide these healers.
Curious about what it takes to walk the path of a curandera? Michelle shares her personal journey and the profound commitment required to become a traditional healer. Whether one is endowed with innate gifts or driven by a heartfelt desire to heal, this path demands comprehensive initiation and continuous learning. The importance of familial lineage, early mentorship, and the lifelong quest to expand one's medicine bag are underscored in our conversation. Tune in to understand how to identify the signs of a healer within yourself or others and to appreciate the enduring legacy and contemporary relevance of curanderismo. This is not just an episode; it's an invitation to discover and reconnect with ancestral wisdom.
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Is magic real? Do the medicine? Men and women who study the ancient ways of healing have special insights or powers that tap into the supernatural. Answers will certainly vary by culture and tradition, but in this podcast we are learning about the ageless ways of curanderismo. In this podcast, you have access to a sacred and rarely seen dynamic between an apprentice and a master An apprentice learning to remember her familial lineage of healing, being guided by a master healer, a medicine woman healer, curandera, who has ancestral roots in the healing arts. You will hear her addressed as la maestra.
Speaker 1:In Spanish, a term of respect is maestra or teacher. It is used with reverence, especially by a protege. You'll hear an array of real and hypothetical questions brought to the apprentice and to la maestra alike. We share the wisdom of the ancient teachings from the curanderismo ways. Please remember that this podcast in no way is offering any advice, nor is anyone on or affiliated with this show responsible for any impacts of the information that is shared. This show is intended exclusively for entertainment and cannot substitute medical advice from your own licensed medical provider. Michelle la maestra herself explains what curanderismo is.
Speaker 2:Let's start with the word curar. The word curar means to cure, and curanderismo is all of the practices that create curing and healing for people. There's different kinds of healers, of curanderos. There's people who they massage, but it's not massage like going to a spa, it's massage to bring the toxins out and balance into the body. So there's massage. There's midwives. There are people who simply do limpias, or work with prayer, or work with spirit or work with dream. There's consejeras, which are counselors, and so there's a vast array of specialties. There's herbalists.
Speaker 2:There's many different branches of what a curandera is. All of them come from the place of wanting to bring balance and whatever method they use to a person, the balance through body, mind and spirit, and that's very cliche, but it's the spiritual body, the mental body, our words, our heart, our sexual energy, our physical body, the energetic field, our soul field, our soul, and so they bring, they assess and they bring their wisdom and knowledge into what that person needs to create harmony and the blend, because they're out of on one or more levels. And so a curandera and curanderismo is the practices of bringing healing and health and balance and being to a person.
Speaker 1:Again, there are many cultures and many ways of healing. This podcast won't try to address them all. Instead, it focuses specifically on curanderismo. Still, I asked La Maestra to talk about the differences between curanderas, shamans and medicine people. What should our listeners know?
Speaker 2:Those words are interchangeable in the understanding. In the Western world we have a tendency to jump on something and let's say the word shaman or medicine person, we jump on it and then we water it down into our own understanding. Let's say you look at yoga. Yoga is a very profound spirit practice. The same with this interchange of words, of a medicine person are all intertwined. We do many things that are similar and many things that are different, but the core of it is the same and those things are, those words are.
Speaker 2:To me they're interchangeable. They mean the same thing, although some of the traditions and some of the teachings may be. They may vary slightly, but we would understand each other. For example, if I went from here to Tibet and I went and stepped in a room with a shaman from Tibet, I would know what they were doing. I would know what they were doing in their rituals and in the processes of putting together their altar and in the work of the energy field and in the prayer and all of the pieces. I would know and they would know what I'm doing. They would say, oh, that looks so familiar. And the same with the indigenous peoples in our tribes across the US and our Pueblo people here in New Mexico. It's very similar, so that's why I see it as an interchange.
Speaker 1:You're referencing places like Tibet. What about curanderismo? What are, where are the roots? Where does it come from?
Speaker 2:It starts with the indigenous peoples of South America, mexico, and although in South America they will call a healer the shaman, it's a shaman. In Mexico curanderismo is seen in a little bit different context than we would see it here in New Mexico. Sometimes in Mexico they see curanderos as people who make offerings at the church, with the dead chicken and their spit on people and they make their offerings and their contact with the spirits, but a lot of people don't. It's like very underground still in certain places.
Speaker 2:And here in New Mexico you come from a tradition and a family line of you had a curandera in your family and my grandmother, although she didn't go into business as a curandera, but she did ventosas, and ventosas are like a cupping and again, that's a different method. Right, she would do the ventosas and that's what she did. And again, that's a different method. Right, she would do the ventosas and that's what she did. She had very healing hands, was very aligned. And here in new mexico there is history of curanderos and there are still many who are practicing through family lineage and you're born with that gift and you use that gift for your community. That that's what people had. They had the herbs, they had the understanding of herbal medicine and the understanding of what you take in, what you ingest as your nutrition for certain things to help you heal. That's not the full history of it, but we definitely. This is in our roots, it's in our ways.
Speaker 1:My family has a legacy of curanderismo and I, anecdotally, have observed some resistance to the term curandera. In fact, my great-grandmother, a well-known curandera and midwife in Taos, New Mexico, is sometimes spoken about in hushed tones. I sense that some people are scared that she could be categorized as a bruja or witch. After all, a midwife deals with pain management, lactation, postpartum healing and herbalism topics that in older times weren't necessarily as accessible as they are today, weren't necessarily as accessible as they are today. So let's explore why the word bruja or witch might be triggering or even affiliated with curanderismo, Some of our supernatural gifts.
Speaker 2:As curanderos, they're open In order to be a true curandera or curandero. Some don, some gift was given to you by the spirit and that gift affords you the divinely ordained mission to be in the healing. It doesn't mean that everybody doesn't have gifts or doesn't have something of that, that we are our own healers, but some of us come in with it alive and ready to be used. So when you have those gifts let's say the gift of sight, spirit, sight and you can see somebody walking in and they come in, they're afraid. I have a lot of people who are afraid when they come in. They're afraid that you're going to see something about them that they don't want to know or they don't want to be known.
Speaker 2:Curanderos have a power about them in which they can manifest and create certain things, and some curanderos are known for doing mal or bad to other people, and somebody will come to them and ask them to do that, or they have bad intention. And then there are others who only work in the space of light and promoting good, but people are afraid of that. I've had a man from Northern New Mexico who set up an appointment with me. He didn't know me and somebody he knew referred him to me. He scheduled an appointment with me in an evening it was like eight o'clock at night and at the time I told my husband. I said I have a man coming over. I'd like for you to stick around just in case, because I don't know who he is.
Speaker 2:So the man shows up and he's in this big old dually truck and a six seater kind of truck and he comes in. I open the gate and he says can I bring my brothers in with me? I usually do the work just one-on-one, because I'm working with one person's energy and I just do it one-on-one. He said no, I need my blisters to come in, and so I was like, okay, I thought he had a brother in the front seat, one in the back seat. I said that's okay, and so they opened the door and six men were following me into my healing room.
Speaker 2:Wow, and so they come, they sit in the healing room and they're all scared to death. The session went fine and they laughed. And that man comes to see me periodically not all the time, but he comes to see me periodically and I always tease him.
Speaker 2:Now that we're now that we have a confidencia, that we have trust. It's funny because we are, in a way, we are brujos, which is my grandkids always say to me Shishi, are you a really, are you a really true witch? Can you make it rain? Yes, yes, I can make it rain. Yes, I have that capacity. What is magic? It's what is healing, it's the understanding of frequency and energy and what creates frequency to heal and transform or manifest something. And so it's not so well, it's pretty obvious, it's pretty practical, it's pretty normal, but and we're all magicians and we're all healers, but we just don't know it, we don't have the awareness yet, but we're. That's what you and I are going to do Create that awareness for everyone.
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely so. How did you become a Kurandera? Can anyone be a Kurandera? Does it have to come through?
Speaker 2:the lineage. I was born this way, so I came in open to the spirit, I came in having vision, I came in having the gift of the word and the healing hands and being a dreamer and a seer. So I was always I've always been in touch with that supernatural part and with the spirit, and so it's passed on. And when, in the sense when it's passed on, you're lucky because you have that support system to start teaching you right away. Can anybody become a Kurandara? I believe.
Speaker 2:If you have a gift and it's open and you desire to heal people, yes, but you must do an initiation or an apprenticeship and you must do it for many years.
Speaker 2:It's not something that happens in a class over six weeks and you can look online and you must do it for many years. It's not something that happens in a class over six weeks and you can look online and you read this book and then you're a curandera. It takes years and years and I just look at it like you're in always learning mode when you're a healer and when you're a curandera, because you're always gathering tools for your medicine bag, it just takes a lot of time. Now, when I look at you and I met you. Under the context that I met you, I knew that you had the gift and that would be opening up. I actually saw in your ancestry over the phone, without even ever seeing your face. I saw your ancestry connected to you and your wisdom in curanderismo that was just waiting to blossom open, and I think anybody who has a clear heart and a clear mind and has the gift or a gift that is open and the desire of love to help others can become or is a curandero.
Speaker 1:Thank you to La Maestra Michelle. Listen in weekly to learn more about curanderismo and follow the apprentice's journey towards the mastery of this traditional way.