Traditional Medicine for Modern Times:

An Indigenous Healing Arts Weekend

March 25-27

With Robert Vetter, M.A.

 

Healing is a spiritual journey that connects us to the earth below us and to the sky above us. In the Americas (North, Meso and South), indigenous healing has been used for thousands of years to not only cure illness, but to provide purpose and meaning to the lives of both healers and those who are healed. These ancient ways are as relevant today as ever and helps us to discover healing as a path to find our place in a mysterious universe. 

 

In this weekend, you will be introduced to:

 

Rituals and Ceremonies

Purification Through Heat 

The Healing Power of Prayer

Music as Medicine

Cultivating Personal Power in Nature

Indigenous Talk Therapy

Spiritual Cleansings

Herbal Medicines

 

Join us for this fascinating journey into the heart of traditional medicine as practiced in the Americas.  

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INTRODUCTION TO MESOAMERICAN SPIRITUALITY AND  HEALING: THE ANCIENT AND MODERN ART OF CURANDERISMO

                             

Online Friday, March 25 from 7-9 PM 

 

Curanderismo is an ancient system for healing the mind, body, and spirit.  It’s also an earth-based system of knowledge that provides us with a practical system of down to earth spirituality.

  

Join us for an evening overview of Curanderismo that includes:

•. The history of Curanderismo in ancient Mexico

•. How some versions of Curanderismo blended with Christianity starting in the 1500’s

•. Overview of types of healing included in Curanderismo

•. Curanderismo as a system of self-knowledge based on an ancient cosmology

•. How faith and prayer are used in healing arts

•. Practical methods of self-healing. 

 

HEALING WITH HEAT AND HERBS: TEMAZCAL AND THE ANCIENT MESOAMERICAN SWEAT LODGE    

Saturday March 26 and Sunday March 27 from 10 AM to 5 PM

                                    (Bring food, bathing suit, drinks, blanket, & towel)                                    

       

How might you benefit from a gentle, therapeutic sweat lodge experience?

 

Directly experience the profound healing, purification and spirituality that you may have only heard of that is associated with the Sweat Lodge Way.  The Temazcal is an ancient Mesoamerican version of the sweat lodge that has been utilized to connect us in the Middle World with the Upper and Lower Worlds since early times in Indigenous Mexico.  It is sometimes compared to the Native North American sweat lodge but differs in that it is generally less hot and therefore less intense and is more concerned with personal healing.  It’s a place of prayer, aromatherapy, hydrotherapy, and heat therapy, designed to use emotions to re-establish balance of the body, mind and spirit.  We enter a hot, moist place that symbolically represents the womb of our Mother Earth.  Heated stones in the center provide the heat.  A healing herb-infused “tea” is placed on the hot stones, which quickly turn to steam which we then breathe throughout the session. We use song, chant, meditation, and emotional release to get rid of what no longer serves us and to be re-born into this Sacred World anew.  We emerge cleansed, purified and renewed.

 

In our first day, we look at the history of the Temazcal, discuss the various types of Temazcal , examine the positive physiological effects, and consider how it fits into a wider body of ancient healing practices called Curanderismo.

We then construct a Temazcal to be used over the course of the weekend.  While most Temazcales in Mexico are permanent structures, there is one type which can be put up in a day.  In sacred community, we set one up as a part of our immersive learning experience.  The actual ceremony will take place on the second day.  

 

 

Sunday-The Temazcal Experience

Wear comfortable clothes, long skirts or dresses, sweats, shorts, no metal on bras or jewelry.  Bring pot luck feast food and snacks for your day and water, drinks...  

 

We meet at 10 am to begin covering the Temazcal frame built on Saturday, and to begin heating the rocks.  You will learn how the herbal teas are prepared: one for the rocks and one for us to drink while inside.  (Note: these are for healing and are not in any way psychoactive substances).  We enter the lodge and have four rounds that include prayers, songs, breathing exercises, and speaking from the heart.  It is followed by a potluck dinner feast.  

 

Cost for the three-day workshop is $175 if paid by March 15th;  $200  if paid later.

 

In this weekend of cross-cultural learning, we celebrate a practice that blends ancient and modern, western and non-western, and healing and spirituality.

 

 Robert Vetter, MA is a cultural anthropologist whose life work concerns the intersection of spirituality and healing in diverse indigenous cultures.  His original fieldwork focused on Native North American medicine, especially that of the Southern Plains.  Along with his adopted uncle, medicine man Richard Tartsah Sr., he authored the book Big Bow: The Spiritual Life and Teachings of a Kiowa Family.  He has studied Curanderismo with teachers both in the United States and in Mexico and maintains a healing practice as well as a community Temazcal in New York. 

 

Optional individual healing sessions with Bob will be booked for the weekdays that follow the workshop.