Friday, February 18, 2005
Sastun:One Woman's Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer and Their Efforts to Save the Vanishing Rainforest by Rosita Arvigo
Recommended by Ms. Henry
A sastun is a gift given by the spirits in order to facilitate communication and divination between Mayan spirits and humans.
Sastun came to me from a teacher who thought I'd be interested. I was. Rosita Arvigo is one of those people in the world who not only feel strongly about a particular issue but live their lives in harmony with it. Rosita believes in the power of herbs and plants and hands on treatment for healing illness or things wrong with the body. She acknowledges the impact of emotional problems on physical bodies but is skeptical about curses, spiritual healing, and the ideas that those things involve.
Rosita, her husband, and her daughter moved to Belize and attempted to hack a small healing farm out of the wild forest. Rosita does not skimp on portraying the work as Sisyphean. They also hope to start a natural healing practice among their neighbours. As Rosita goes about her life she hears about Don Elijio Panti a revered Mayan healer; she journeys to his village to get to know him in hopes of learning about native rainforest plants and their healing properties. Rosita learns even more than she had thought she would. She become Don Elijio's apprentice and helps to bring his life work to the notice of the whole world. Along the way Rosita learns not only plants and their healing properties but human nature. She sees Don Elijio use his sastun to find spiritual and physical problems and is initiated into the healing practice and is given her own sastun. Like Rosita, I was taken aback (and a little worried) by the spiritual manifestations and their exorcisms. It doesn't make sense to me but it doesn't need to.
This is an impelling look at the loss of the rainforests and what it means to all of us. There is also quite a bit of information about the encroachment of Western/Northern foods, religion, medecine and entertainment and the changes they bring about in traditional cultures.
It's not the life I want to live but I enjoyed reading about it and I learned a lot about medecinal uses of plants.
A sastun is a gift given by the spirits in order to facilitate communication and divination between Mayan spirits and humans.
Sastun came to me from a teacher who thought I'd be interested. I was. Rosita Arvigo is one of those people in the world who not only feel strongly about a particular issue but live their lives in harmony with it. Rosita believes in the power of herbs and plants and hands on treatment for healing illness or things wrong with the body. She acknowledges the impact of emotional problems on physical bodies but is skeptical about curses, spiritual healing, and the ideas that those things involve.
Rosita, her husband, and her daughter moved to Belize and attempted to hack a small healing farm out of the wild forest. Rosita does not skimp on portraying the work as Sisyphean. They also hope to start a natural healing practice among their neighbours. As Rosita goes about her life she hears about Don Elijio Panti a revered Mayan healer; she journeys to his village to get to know him in hopes of learning about native rainforest plants and their healing properties. Rosita learns even more than she had thought she would. She become Don Elijio's apprentice and helps to bring his life work to the notice of the whole world. Along the way Rosita learns not only plants and their healing properties but human nature. She sees Don Elijio use his sastun to find spiritual and physical problems and is initiated into the healing practice and is given her own sastun. Like Rosita, I was taken aback (and a little worried) by the spiritual manifestations and their exorcisms. It doesn't make sense to me but it doesn't need to.
This is an impelling look at the loss of the rainforests and what it means to all of us. There is also quite a bit of information about the encroachment of Western/Northern foods, religion, medecine and entertainment and the changes they bring about in traditional cultures.
It's not the life I want to live but I enjoyed reading about it and I learned a lot about medecinal uses of plants.
# posted by JJ @ 2:20 PM 
