Product Description

A modern healer draws on Aztec folk medicine to offer a new perspective on women's health.

Showing readers how to become not only physically healthy but also creatively and spiritually whole, Elena Avila's book presents a global vision of how the gifts of indigenous health care, married with contemporary technology, can create a medicine of the future.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #280199 in Books
• Published on: 2000-05-22
• Released on: 2000-05-18
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Dimensions: .98" h x 6.04" w x 8.98" l, .85 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
In the border towns of south Texas, the Mexican "folk" medicine called curanderismo is often regarded as witchcraftAa means for hex removals and love divinations. Avila was therefore surprised to learn in her masters program in psychiatric nursing at the University of Texas that curanderismo is a broad-based fusion of Aztec, Spanish and African traditional medicines with hundreds of useful applications. This discovery, coupled with her dissatisfaction with the limitations of conventional mental health practices, motivated Avila, who grew up in a first-generation Chicano family in El Paso, Tex., to apprentice with an Aztec master and eventually to become a full-time curandera. Her first book, co-written with Parker (coauthor of Maya Cosmos), is a clear-sighted introduction to the fundamentals of this alternative healing practice. It describes the healers, who range from spiritual counselors to general practitioners and massage therapists; their counseling techniques, ritual purifications and soul retrievals; characteristics of common diseases; and formulas for achieving a balanced lifestyle, a rich spiritual life and good nutrition. The down-to-earth explanations of such afflictions as envidia (envy), susto (fright or loss of soul) and mal puesto (bad luck) will help dispel misconceptions about these "folk" ailments that, in curandero terms, are common to all people. Particularly thought-provoking is Avila's perspective on mainstream mental health and her preference for the holistic curandero approach to treating mental diseases, including psychosis and imbalances induced by severe trauma. "A good curandera," she writes, "can help us find the middle ground in a culture where balance, reality, and enlightened compromise are not always part of our support system." Agent, Elaine Markson; author tour.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Curanderismo is a kind of integrated medicine, an amalgam of African, Spanish, and Native American medical systems. Avila is a registered nurse who apprenticed herself to an Aztec teacher to learn this form of folk healing, and here she relates her journey toward becoming a curandera, a spiritual healer. Like other New Age medical practitioners, Avila believes that Western medicine is not responding adequately to the deeper needs of sick people, treating only the biological symptoms and neglecting the spiritual ones. Avila describes her training through a series of case studies recounting different healing experiences. The book is somewhat simplistic and uncritical, but as a study of a different medical belief system, it may be of interest to many public library readers.?Helaine Selin, Hampshire Coll. Lib., Amherst, MA
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
An autobiographical account of how a psychiatric nurse specialist became a folk medicine healer; this also explains the origins and practice of one of the oldest forms of medicine in the New World. It was during Avila's years of practice in psychiatric clinics and hospitals that her dissatisfaction with the way patients were treated and the poor outcome of that treatment sparked her interest in and study of Curanderisimo. The practices and traditions she describes were developed out of a blending of Aztec, Spanish, Native American, and African medicines; Avila explains that curanderas such as herself are devoted to healing and maintenance of the body, soul, spirit, and emotions, all of which have equal importance and are intertwined in maintaining health. Avila is comfortable using all aspects of folk and allopathic medical care; in numerous case studies, she relates how the two approaches can complement and potentiate each other. She makes perfectly clear that the personal qualities and style of a healer are paramount in creating successful outcomes when treating illness (take heed, medical school admissions committees!). Avila is entertaining and often humorous when describing her search to develop a therapeutic practice; but readers will find much more here. Without climbing on a soapbox, Avila's narrative demonstrates what's missing from most American medical practice, and how many patients could be helped so much more than they are now. Co-author Parker is an ethnographic writer and author of Maya Cosmos (not reviewed).. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.