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
Who Should Utilize Ancient Healing?
Can anyone truly unlock their inner healer? Join us for an enlightening conversation with Michelle Rios-Rice, a master curandera from New Mexico, as she shares her profound understanding of the sacred art of curanderismo. Throughout this episode, Michelle reveals the deep respect and reverence required to approach traditional healing practices. We discuss why individuals from various backgrounds seek her guidance: whether dealing with physical and emotional pain, relationship challenges, or spiritual quests. Michelle emphasizes the importance of recognizing our own intrinsic healing abilities and the delicate interplay between innate talents and learned skills in the healing arts.
Transitioning to the powerful concept of remembering our inner healer, La Maestra guides us through reconnecting with our true selves amidst life's turmoil. By embracing ancient wisdoms and methods, we can reclaim our identities as healers, knowers, seers, visionaries, and magicians, enabling us to navigate life with enhanced clarity and purpose. Don't miss out on this journey of reconnection and self-discovery, and stay tuned for more insights into the transformative power of traditional healing practices in the next episode.
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Do you need to be concerned about cultural appropriation when seeking out a traditional healer? Can anyone access the mystical, magical and traditional healing of a Kurandera? Last time, I introduced you to Michelle Rios-Rice, a practicing curandera based in New Mexico. She is a master healer with a lifetime of experience in the ways of curanderismo. In the last episode, we began discussing what these ancient healing arts are, and today we will explore who is allowed to access curanderos.
Speaker 2:Anyone can come to a curandera. I think there has to be a profound respect when you come into this, because when you're asking for this, you're stepping into something sacred. My thought is this If I'm coming from the place of the spirit and the creator has given me a gift, and the creator says use this gift to help my children, we are all the children of the creator.
Speaker 1:We will continually note that this podcast is not intended to be a source of medical advice in any way, and that remains Nonetheless. People have sought out traditional healers for generations. I asked Michelle, why do people come to her?
Speaker 2:They come because they are in pain. It would be that physical, mental, emotional, sexual, energetic They've experienced trauma, they're in despair, they can't get an answer. So let's say you have people in there. Like you know, I'm bipolar and you know I've gone to the psychiatrist, psychologist, every doctor, every counselor, every therapist, every helper. In that there is, and I can't get, a balance.
Speaker 2:Some people come before them, you know, before they're at a very desperate place. A lot of people come with relationship issues and I have just as many men as I do women that come with that, which is very interesting to me, right that we're all trying to find that, like you know, that perfect partner and we have these chaotic situations. So a lot of people come from with grief. Or a lot of people come and they want an answer. They come to me and they're like I don't know who stole this, this item from my house. They want to be cleansed, they want to be energized, they want to be restored. Sometimes people are desperately, desperately seeking healing. There's people who come with physical ailments cancer, diabetes and they're looking for another boost and another way, or they're done with the doctors.
Speaker 1:Even in the most conventional conversations about medicine, it is well accepted that our human bodies are capable of regeneration and healing. Wellness and longevity are big and popular topics, often with massive industries trying to profit from them. Learning the natural ways of healing oneself can be widely accessible, but still it usually requires guidance and education.
Speaker 2:A lot of times I am in my work, teaching people to connect to what is innately already in them, what they already know. It's just like I'm the reminder, I'm kind of the mirror of saying like you have this capacity, you have this method, you have this method, you have this strength, you have this beauty, you have this talent and I so I see that in a person and I operate from that level. I was always, always taught by all of the masters who taught me that you have to see a person in their perfection so that they can see their own perfection. Because when you're sick or you're distressed or you've been traumatized by something, someone, some situation, you're in a response.
Speaker 2:We call it susto, you're shocked out of your norm. And so when you're shocked out of your norm and you get in that pattern, you're just back and forth in your heart, in your mind, you're feeling it, you're thinking it and it's just this vicious cycle. And then it just creates this other frequency, this other energy that now takes over and people think like, oh, you know, I'll never be what it was before that rape, before that situation, before that loss. And that's not true, because you can have the experience and not be in an energetic charge of it and be in other places of your life and other energies of your life. And so I'm a teacher, in that sense A teacher. I don't want to cultivate clients. I want to make the world a better place so that people can come into their empowerment and do their own thing in their way. But they have the tool bag, they have their own medicine bag in which they use to create what they need to create for themselves, what they want to manifest. They're ideal.
Speaker 1:Whether working on healing oneself or working as a sacred healer. Are there innate skills that a person is born with, or is this something that can be learned? Michelle shares her viewpoint on the matter.
Speaker 2:I think we're born with certain things, but I think we have the capacity to open up to and activate other things. And so let's say, for example, you want to see energy. You literally want to see the field, you want to see the colors. I believe that you can develop that. Maybe you weren't born with that and I believe that you can develop it, that you can tap into it by heightening your frequency and clearing the mind of all the nonsense of the outside world and so saying that I think if you have, if you have a desire, let's say you have a desire and you're like I really want to be a healer, I want to heal people. I feel that that's your soul speaking to you.
Speaker 1:As with anything, it is important to know the source of information that one consumes. It's no different when learning the healing arts. So is there a right way or a wrong way to go about learning to be a healer?
Speaker 2:You got to get on the right track with the right people in the right ways. Not reading it online. Reading it online to me is very scary because you don't know where that knowledge is coming from and you also don't have somebody containing you in things that are spiritual and things that are very vast and things that you may or may not understand and things that you may or may not encounter when you open up that door. So you really do need a teacher, a guide, a maestra, somebody, not in the sense of authority, but in the sense of like. I just want to learn. It's like us when we are going to take a job and we get a new job and somebody comes in. They train you how to use that system and you get trained and that's it.
Speaker 2:When you're born with a gift, if you don't have teachers around you, then you know you might not know what to do with that gift or those gifts. Then you know you might not know what to do with that gift or those gifts. I know instantly when I connect with a person that they have the medicine gift of a healer or the sight of a healer, the sight of a visionary, those kinds of things. I can see it. It's actually amazing how many people are gifted. I think eventually will return to being supernatural beings. I mean, I was always taught you humans are magical beings. You forgot that you're magical. You have the capacity to create anything you want. You have the capacity to heal, to transform, to manifest, transform to manifest. And we forget. We forget because we're just pushed and shoved into the system, into the paradigms all around us, and we believe those paradigms because our parents believe it and their parents believe in there's other ways to create and live and experience life.
Speaker 1:As we closed out this episode, I asked La Maestra is there one word of wisdom you want to end with?
Speaker 2:One word of wisdom Remember who you are More than one word, but remember who you are. If we remember who we are, without all of this stress and the pain and the drama and all of the things that we're trying to navigate on this planet, if we remember who we are, we can tap in to the curandera within. These are ancient technologies, ancient wisdoms, ancient methods. I want people to remember who they are as the healer, as the knower, as the seer, as the visionary, as the magician, as all of that. Remember who you are.
Speaker 1:I am the Apprentice, Liz, and this is all for this week. Listen in next week to hear more about the ancient ways of curanderismo.