Curanderismo is to modern medicine, what Philosophy is to Science. It is it's origin and still it's constant companion. In the other hand, the dichotomy between modern medicine and ancestral medicine is beginning to disappear even among mainstream populations of Industrialized nations.

Growing numbers of patients of today, are becoming more and more interested in traditional healing practices. This interest is not a fortuitous one. For all of the undeniable contributions of modern medicine, we are becoming aware of the negative effects that the pharmacological revolution is causing in our patients. We are finding diseases caused by medications. In more than one way we have gone full circle: The cure is becoming the disease.

Curanderismo has been here long before us, and it continues to be here. While its survival has been partially condition by the lack of access of people to modern health care, there are still stronger reasons for this practice to continue in our communities. The first one is tradition. We humans, are creatures of social habits: we tend to do what

others have done before us. We relay in the knowledge of our ancestors and their ways of facing problems.

The other one -and perhaps the strongest one- is its pragmatism.

Curanderismo is still around because it works. This brings us to

Curanderismo as it has been practiced in the American continent.

Because this knowledge was not European-based, it was considered unscientific by the dominant culture. Nevertheless, traditional healing continued to be one of the healing practices not only of the Indigenous groups but, also, of the mix-blooded new populations.

Western systems of healing had little or no classifications ofthe healing properties of the herbs of the American continent, but the indigenous populations did. And part of this knowledge was preserved by popular traditions that went unnoticed by mainstream medicine. As time went bye plants were given new names, but continued to be used for the

same healing purposes. Herbology is a system of healing integrated into the conceptual frame of Curanderismo, but not the only one. Lets keep in perspective that for the ancient healers, the human soul covered the domain of the body, the heart, the mind, each one of these areas being

approachable with a wide variety of healing practices, the essential one being the healer's ability to search and assess the patient's soul.

The Cartesian dichotomy between body-mind, did not apply to the

ancient healers, who viewed health as a continuum of energy in the human body.

The body was conditioned by the liver, which would either give us "good" or "bad blood."

The body was affected by the air, which would either be "good air" or "bad air."

Accordingly, if we had good blood, we would produce good air around us. People would feel comfortable, well disposed and uplifted with us around. In the other hand, if we had bad blood, those around us would feel uncomfortable, ill-disposed and defensive when we are around.

Environments could be affected with either good or bad air. Sacred places, where those rich in good air. Negative places, were those where bad air had accumulated.

There were specific procedures to "clean the air" of a given person, place or situation.

Sounds, touch, positions, movements, light, warmth, unguents, heat, and aromas, could dissipate the bad air.

The domain of the heart had to do with the nature of the relation of the person with her sense of purpose and her relation with others.

The key question of the healer for this area, the one of relations and action was "Is your heart in it?"

Two symbols were used to described the heart. The one of the flower, and the one of the Quetzal, the sacred bird.

The flower was the highest symbol of the third ring of the Aztec Calendar. One that began with reptiles, move to mammals and eventually reached the state of fruition, the one of the open flower. These stages also represented the evolution of the human heart, growing from the

stages of self-centerdness, to the ones of altruism, growing from the serpent to the eagle. The flower was the unfolding of our potentiality, the realization of our life.

The heart had to do with our sense of purpose, what Latinos of today call "destino."

There were some types of diseases that had to do with people loosing their purpose in life. Life had began to abandon them while they were still in the body. They were like a tree that was still alive, but whose roots were already removed from the Earth. Their personal heart was no longer in unity with the heart of life. In isolation, the Quetzal, the sacred bird that lived in the human heart, would stop moving its wings, would stop singing, would begin to die.

It was this bird that sang through the voice of the poet and the healer. It was this active living bird that encouraged the bird of his fellow humans to rise and sing.

That is why it was said of the healer that he gave others their "true face" (Florentine Codex), for he encouraged the heart of others to blossom and manifest itself fully in life.

Netzahualcoyot, the Aztec King poet tells us:

" I am moved by the song of the mocking bird,

the bird of the four-hundred voices,

but I am more moved

by the song of the inner-bird,

the heart-felt voice of my fellow human being!"

The ancestral healers stated that the pains of the heart could be stronger than the ones of the body.

Broken hearts of today continue to validate this ancestral paradigm. Now we have heart specialists talking to us not only of our diets and

cholesterol levels, but also of the quality of our relations as the main determinant of our heart's condition, for they too have learned through scientific observations what Curanderos have known all along: That relations can heal or kill us.

We owe to the ancestral healers the awareness that the emotional life and the physical life don't necessarily experience time and space in the same way. While it is in the nature of the physical body to be only in the present, that is, in one place and moment at a time, the emotional body, can be in several places and moments at once. That is why it was represented as a sacred bird who's wings would allow him to go beyond the boundaries of time and space. This defiance of physical limitations can also be done by our awareness-body, for we can go from our individual consciousness, to the collective and Universal Consciousness,

these last ones being experienced as "visions" and "prophecies" and other forms of enhanced perception.

It is this quality of trascendency that entitled the emotional body to experience life from a much larger frame of reference than the ordinary one, the physical one. This transcendental peculiarity of the emotional body that granted humans an expanded sense of freedom, also made us vulnerable to an equally intensified sense of oppression and fragmentation. Our emotional body, while it could take us to experience the essential oneness of life, it could also take us to experience the most extreme sense of desolation and despair. The dismemberment of the emotional body caused illness in the physical being. In this case, the healing of the body required the integration of parts of the emotional-body, parts that could be in different moments and places.

In order to address the human being in his totality, the Curanderos charted the world of the human soul.

While some of the levels of the should could not be reached by the ordinary people until they had left their body and experienced death, there were some extraordinary individuals who could reach such states while still being in the body. These last ones, had either been born with this ability ("gift") or had come to develop it either by trauma, illness, initiation, or mystical experience. Curanderos then work with the physical body, the emotional body, and the awareness body. The first question that they want to answer when assessing a patient is: "Which part of the soul is being afflicted with this particular illness or wound?"

If it is the one of the body, then ordinary remedies can help the healing process. This healing practices relay heavily in local herbs (such as the "Tepescohuite" the skin-tree of the Mayas, which replaces the burned skin), places (such as Medicine Lake for the Pit River Indians), animal products (such as the bear grease for open wounds), the use of cold and hot water, and sweat-lodges.

However, if the affliction of the soul is at the level of the heart, or of the awareness -body, then extraordinary psychospiritual procedures are set in motion.

The purpose of curanderismo is to heal the wound at all of its levels, to facilitate the process of integration of the patient's soul to its essential unity within itself and with the Universal-soul, for the leaf can not live without being united to the living tree.

Wholeness within the individual, and wholeness with nature and relations, is the essential paradigm of Curanderismo.

The wound of the awareness-body has to do with the "shadow" or double, the part of our mind that is affected by our ordinary experiences, such as physical or emotional experiences. Often times, it is this shadow that is trapped in the world of the mind, creating confusions and distortions (wounds) in our awareness-body. The challenge of the Curandero is then two-folded. First, the task is to find the shadow of the afflicted individual. The second one, is to integrate this shadow to the awareness-body who needs it as long as the soul is going to be encapsulated in the body.

From the ancestral perspective, the shadow stores all of the

experiences that the individual goes through. At times, the

awareness-body suffers because it refuses to integrate parts of the shadow to its being. In extreme cases, the individual fears his shadow as if he was being persecuted by a separate entity.

During traumatic experiences, the awareness-body leaves the physical body. It is with the aid of the shadow that the awareness-body can be re-introduced to its physical being, a procedure followed in the healing of "susto" (fright), or "espanto" (freezing of the soul), spiritual wounds that are gradually overcome when the individual integrates the

traumatic events into the field of his awareness, when his

awareness-body literally overcomes (takes in) the "fear."

Living fear has been represented as a "black sun" radiating darkness.

It can be found afflicting the body, the heart, or the mind. In extreme cases, it has to be fought in all three fronts. It is then that the Curandero assumes the role of "Spiritual Warrior" and aids the suffering bringing forth his or her love as a "living sun." In this case, the Curandero not only practices medicine: He himself is medicine.

At another level, the Curandero has realized that he is one with his natural environment, and protects sacred places from the wounds of the unnatural ways of existence. The Curanderos are the care-takers of the Earth for the life of future generations. They go, today, to those sacred places. They fast, maintain silence, and absorb the healing energy of those places, what the Pit River Indians called "Nahui." Then

they bring that feeling, that mind, the multiple voices of all of the creatures who live there, and share it with their confuse brothers who have plans to "develop" those places. The Curanderos protect the Earth from the wounds of our civilization.