Latina/o Healing Practices

Latina/o Healing Practices

Author: Brian McNeill

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2011-03-17

Total Pages: 361

ISBN-13: 1135919615

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This edited volume focuses on the role of traditional or indigenous healers, as well as the application of traditional healing practices in contemporary counseling and therapeutic modalities with Latina/o people. The book offers a broad coverage of important topics, such as traditional healer’s views of mental/psychological health and well-being, the use of traditional healing techniques in contemporary psychotherapy, and herbal remedies in psychiatric practice. It also discusses common factors across traditional healing methods and contemporary psychotherapies, the importance of spirituality in counseling and everyday life, the application of indigenous healing practices with Latina/o undergraduates, indigenous techniques in working with perpetrators of domestic violence, and religious healing systems and biomedical models. The book is an important reference for anyone working within the general field of mental health practice and those seeking to understand culturally relevant practice with Latina/o populations.


Speaking from the Body

Speaking from the Body

Author: Angie Chabram

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2008-11-20

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0816544506

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In compelling first-person accounts, Latinas speak freely about dealing with serious health episodes as patients, family caregivers, or friends. They show how the complex interweaving of gender, class, and race impacts the health status of Latinas—and how family, spirituality, and culture affect the experience of illness. Here are stories of Latinas living with conditions common to many: hypertension, breast cancer, obesity, diabetes, depression, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, dementia, Parkinson’s, lupus, and hyper/hypothyroidism. By bringing these narratives out from the shadows of private lives, they demonstrate how such ailments form part of the larger whole of Latina lives that encompasses family, community, the medical profession, and society. They show how personal identity and community intersect to affect the interpretation of illness, compliance with treatment, and the utilization of allopathic medicine, alternative therapies, and traditional healing practices. The book also includes a retrospective analysis of the narratives and a discussion of Latina health issues and policy recommendations. These Latina cultural narratives illustrate important aspects of the social contexts and real-world family relationships crucial to understanding illness. Speaking from the Body is a trailblazing collection of personal testimonies that integrates professional and personal perspectives and shows that our understanding of health remains incomplete if Latina cultural narratives are not included.


Curanderismo

Curanderismo

Author: Robert T. Trotter

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2011-03-15

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0820340715

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The practice of curanderismo, or Mexican American folk medicine, is part of a historically and culturally important health care system deeply rooted in native Mexican healing techniques. This is the first book to describe the practice from an insider's point of view, based on the authors' three-year apprenticeships with curanderos (healers). Robert T. Trotter and Juan Antonio Chavira present an intimate view of not only how curanderismo is practiced but also how it is learned and passed on as a healing tradition. By providing a better understanding of why curanderos continue to be in demand despite the lifesaving capabilities of modern medicine, this text will serve as an indispensable resource to health professionals who work within Mexican American communities, to students of transcultural medicine, and to urban ethnologists and medical anthropologists.


Voices from the Ancestors

Voices from the Ancestors

Author: Lara Medina

Publisher: University of Arizona Press

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 457

ISBN-13: 0816539561

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Voices from the Ancestors brings together the reflective writings and spiritual practices of Xicanx, Latinx, and Afro-Latinx womxn and male allies in the United States who seek to heal from the historical traumas of colonization by returning to ancestral traditions and knowledge. This wisdom is based on the authors’ oral traditions, research, intuitions, and lived experiences—wisdom inspired by, and created from, personal trajectories on the path to spiritual conocimiento, or inner spiritual inquiry. This conocimiento has reemerged over the last fifty years as efforts to decolonize lives, minds, spirits, and bodies have advanced. Yet this knowledge goes back many generations to the time when the ancestors understood their interconnectedness with each other, with nature, and with the sacred cosmic forces—a time when the human body was a microcosm of the universe. Reclaiming and reconstructing spirituality based on non-Western epistemologies is central to the process of decolonization, particularly in these fraught times. The wisdom offered here appears in a variety of forms—in reflective essays, poetry, prayers, specific guidelines for healing practices, communal rituals, and visual art, all meant to address life transitions and how to live holistically and with a spiritual consciousness for the challenges of the twenty-first century.


Healing with Herbs and Rituals

Healing with Herbs and Rituals

Author: Eliseo “Cheo” Torres

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 2014-08-15

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 082633962X

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Healing with Herbs and Rituals is an herbal remedy-based understanding of curanderismo and the practice of yerberas, or herbalists, as found in the American Southwest and northern Mexico. Part One, "Folk Healers and Folk Healing," focuses on individual healers and their procedures. Part Two, "Green Medicine: Traditional Mexican-American Herbs and Remedies," details traditional Mexican-American herbs and cures. These remedies are the product of centuries of experience in Mexico, heavily influenced by the Moors, Judeo-Christians, and Aztecs, and include everyday items such as lemon, egg, fire, aromatic oil, and prepared water. Symbolic objects such as keys, candles, brooms, and Trouble Dolls are also used. Dedicated, in part, to curanderos throughout Mexico and the American Southwest, Healing with Herbs and Rituals shows us these practitioners are humble, sincere people who have given themselves to improving lives for many decades. Today's holistic health movement has rediscovered the timeless merits of the curanderos' uses of medicinal plants, rituals, and practical advice.


Curandero

Curandero

Author: Eliseo “Cheo” Torres

Publisher: UNM Press

Published: 2014-08-15

Total Pages: 181

ISBN-13: 0826336418

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Eliseo Torres, known as "Cheo," grew up in the Corpus Christi area of Texas and knew, firsthand, the Mexican folk healing practiced in his home and neighborhood. Later in life, he wanted to know more about the plants and rituals of curanderismo. Torres's story begins with his experiences in the Mexican town of Espinazo, the home of the great curandero El Niño Fidencio (1899-1939), where Torres underwent life-changing spiritual experiences. He introduces us to some of the major figures in the tradition, discusses some of the pitfalls of teaching curanderismo, and concludes with an account of a class he taught in which curanderos from Cuernavaca, Mexico, shared their knowledge with students. Part personal pilgrimage, part compendium of medical knowledge, this moving book reveals curanderismo as both a contemplative and a medical practice that can offer new approaches to ancient problems. From Curandero ". . . for centuries, rattlesnakes were eaten to prevent any number of conditions and illnesses, including arthritis and rheumatism. In Mexico and in other Latin American countries, rattlesnake meat is actually sold in capsule form to treat impotence and even to treat cancer. Rattlesnake meat is also dried and ground and sprinkled into open wounds and body sores to heal them, and a rattlesnake ointment is made that is applied to aches and pains as well."


The Curanderx Toolkit

The Curanderx Toolkit

Author: Atava Garcia Swiecicki

Publisher: Heyday Books

Published: 2022-07-07

Total Pages: 304

ISBN-13: 9781597145718

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A practical guide to understanding and using Mexican healing traditions in everyday life Arranging ofrendas. Brewing pericón into a healing tea. Releasing traumas through baños and limpias. Herbalist and curandera Atava Garcia Swiecicki spent decades gathering this traditional knowledge of curanderismo, Mexican folk healing, which had been marginalized as Chicanx and Latinx Americans assimilated to US culture. She teaches how to follow the path of the curandera, as she herself learned from apprenticing with Mexican curanderas, studying herbal texts, and listening to her ancestors. In this book readers will learn the Indigenous, African, and European roots of curanderismo. Atava also shares her personal journey as a healer and those of thirteen other inspirational curanderas serving their communities. She offers readers the tools to begin their own healing--for themselves, for their relationship with the earth, and for the people. The Curanderx Toolkit includes more than 25 profiles of native and adopted plants of Baja and Alta California and teaches you to grow, know, and love them. This book will help anyone who has lost connection with their ancestors begin to incorporate the herbal wisdom and holistic wellness of curanderismo into their lives. Take the power of ancient medicine into your own hands by learning simple herbal remedies and practicing rituals for kinship with the more-than-human world.


Cultural Foundations and Interventions in Latino/a Mental Health

Cultural Foundations and Interventions in Latino/a Mental Health

Author: Hector Y. Adames

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-07-07

Total Pages: 277

ISBN-13: 1317529804

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Advancing work to effectively study, understand, and serve the fastest growing U.S. ethnic minority population, this volume explicitly emphasizes the racial and ethnic diversity within this heterogeneous cultural group. The focus is on the complex historical roots of contemporary Latino/as, their diversity in skin-color and physiognomy, racial identity, ethnic identity, gender differences, immigration patterns, and acculturation. The work highlights how the complexities inherent in the diverse Latino/a experience, as specified throughout the topics covered in this volume, become critical elements of culturally responsive and racially conscious mental health treatment approaches. By addressing the complexities, within-group differences, and racially heterogeneity characteristic of U.S. Latino/as, this volume makes a significant contribution to the literature related to mental health treatments and interventions.


Curandero Conversations

Curandero Conversations

Author: Antonio Zavaleta

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 486

ISBN-13: 1449000894

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"The University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College"--T.p.


The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Popular Culture

The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Popular Culture

Author: Frederick Luis Aldama

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-05-26

Total Pages: 465

ISBN-13: 1317268202

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Latina/o popular culture has experienced major growth and change with the expanding demographic of Latina/os in mainstream media. In The Routledge Companion to Latina/o Pop Culture, contributors pay serious critical attention to all facets of Latina/o popular culture including TV, films, performance art, food, lowrider culture, theatre, photography, dance, pulp fiction, music, comic books, video games, news, web, and digital media, healing rituals, quinceñeras, and much more. Features include: consideration of differences between pop culture made by and about Latina/os; comprehensive and critical analyses of various pop cultural forms; concrete and detailed treatments of major primary works from children’s television to representations of dia de los muertos; new perspectives on the political, social, and historical dynamic of Latina/o pop culture; Chapters select, summarize, explain, contextualize and assess key critical interpretations, perspectives, developments and debates in Latina/o popular cultural studies. A vitally engaging and informative volume, this compliation of wide-ranging case studies in Latina/o pop culture phenomena encourages scholars and students to view Latina/o pop culture within the broader study of global popular culture. Contributors: Stacey Alex, Cecilia Aragon, Mary Beltrán, William A. Calvo-Quirós, Melissa Castillo-Garsow, Nicholas Centino, Ben Chappell, Fabio Chee, Osvaldo Cleger, David A. Colón, Marivel T. Danielson, Laura Fernández, Camilla Fojas, Kathryn M. Frank, Enrique García, Christopher González, Rachel González-Martin, Matthew David Goodwin, Ellie D. Hernandez, Jorge Iber, Guisela Latorre, Stephanie Lewthwaite, Richard Alexander Lou, Stacy I. Macías, Desirée Martin, Paloma Martínez-Cruz, Pancho McFarland, Cruz Medina, Isabel Millán, Amelia María de la Luz Montes, William Anthony Nericcio, William Orchard, Rocío Isabel Prado, Ryan Rashotte, Cristina Rivera, Gabriella Sanchez, Ilan Stavans Frederick Luis Aldama is Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of English and University Distinguished Scholar at the Ohio State University where he is also founder and director of LASER and the Humanities & Cognitive Sciences High School Summer Institute. He is author, co-author, and editor of over 24 books, including the Routledge Concise History of Latino/a Literature and Latino/a Literature in the Classroom.