The woman sits across from me, eyes glistening with tears that she doesn’t allow to flow. While she was not raised within the Mexican culture, she had heard of Curanderismo and its unique interventions that help heal the mind, emotions, spirit, and body.
“I want to heal, I really do, but I don’t know what to do. I’m tired of going from therapist to therapist.”
And so I formally open the curanderismo session with prayer that is accompanied by the purifying and calming smoke of copal, an aromatic resin that is collected as the life force rises and exudes from within the bursera tree in Mexico. Then begins our plática when the client speaks from the deepest part of her heart and I listen with my ears and my heart; hence this word translates more properly as a heart-to-heart talk rather than simply a “talk” or a psychotherapy session. After prayer, the plática is the foundation of a session. In a curanderismo clinical setting, this term is used to refer to the part of the healing session where the client is given the opportunity to speak openly and honestly no matter how painful or embarrassing they may feel their circumstances to be.
Read the rest of this article, at the Consciousness and Healing Initiative website.
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