By Diana Hoogesteger
“In 1970, when I arrived in Mexico, every family had a healer. People knew how to heal physically and spiritually with the medicine of plants. Today, this is being lost.”—Rosita Arvigo.
Throughout the world, allopathic medicine, or patent medicine, has been replacing the understanding and knowledge of the use of plants, herbs, and natural cleanses. When someone suffers from a disease, they look for a pill to remedy the illness. Few have the knowledge or easy access to plants, which are really the medicine that creation gave us.
Let us remember that a large part of medicines are chemical formulas composed of pharmacological properties in plant species, which constitute the primary ingredients that laboratories use in their commercial medicines.
Mexico has a very rich knowledge and tradition of use of medicinal plants.
At Vía Orgánica we had a workshop with Dr. Rosita Arvigo, an 81-year-old grandmother full of vitality. Rosita first studied allopathic medicine, and when she arrived in Mexico in the ’70s she recognized the wealth of medicinal plants and their uses. She was passionate about learning more. She focused on home remedies, plants easily accessible to all for common ailments.
Don Eligio Panti (Mayan shaman) was her teacher for 13 years. The shaman died at the age of 103. He cured physical and spiritual illnesses as every holistic practice does, understanding that we are sentient beings with body and spirit. Plants are also sentient beings that listen if you speak to them, and every healer has a spiritual relationship with them.
There is something called «The Signature Doctrine,» where nature helps us recognize which plants to use according to certain characteristics: color, shape, or habitat; for example, purple for bruises, yellow for infections, red for bleeding, white can be for spiritual or poisonous cures. You have to know and study well with people who know to use them.
This is mentioned by Rosita as one of the forms of communication between the kingdom of plants with the human. For some remedies, the healer must meditate or pray, and the answers may come in dreams or with signs. With faith, will, and the help of plants, you can heal. One must be honest, not steal, not lie, and be in service to others.
For spiritual healing, there is a way to harvest the plants. You must pray from the time you go out to collect until you return home, thanking the spirit of the plants for the healing. You must always ask their permission before harvesting them as they are sentient beings.
Rosita says that she has lost understanding of some spiritual cures, but we all suffer from them. Symptoms can be not being able to eat, not being able to sleep, headaches, anxiety … They can come from a «fright» that today they call «trauma» or, in English, PTSD or shock, or from deep sorrow. For that there are spiritual cleanses that healers of all times have been able to give.
But let’s go back to folk remedies and common plants.
In our region we share the following species:
Purple bougainvillea: for cough or to decongest the lungs. She stressed that with many cures, the disease first worsens; the cough will increase for two to three days because the medicine is doing the work of removing congestion.
Marigold: colic, menstrual pain, skin infections, vaginal cleanses, and spiritual cleanses.
Corn silk: clean kidney, bladder, lymphatic system.
Horsetail: Kidney stones, bladder problems, osteoporosis; helps bones, skin, and hair.
Disease prevention through good nutrition was also discussed. Purslane is one of the best foods, a gift from God, because it contains all the minerals we need—the quelites full of iron for the blood—and for calcium: sesame, amaranth, kale, rutabaga.
There are plants that clean and prevent and can be prepared in water for use.
Let us rescue this ancient knowledge that also has the goodness of not producing secondary effects and of rescuing the rich biological diversity of this country.
Vía Orgánica will continue to share workshops on health, food, and plants. Check the website www.viaorganica.org to stay informed.
