Where the Magic Becomes the Medicine

So many people are doing healing retreats right now and I know it is because a lot of people are in need of healing.

But in all honesty, this is not what I feel aligned with. At least not in the traditional sense.

We don’t do sound baths or yoga. We have a lovely friend who some might call a shaman, but he calls himself a yerbatero. He doesn’t wear feathers, and I have never seen him blow a conch shell. In fact, he usually wears his only white shirt, a pair of old slacks and a very cheap pair of flipflops.

Sometimes he wears his baseball uniform.

Yerbatero Don Francisco during a healing session

Sometimes I feel like I am out of step with the world of spiritual seekers (Often actually). My photos aren’t clean and pretty. They are filled with stick homes with old tin roofs, dirt floors, and pots and pans hanging directly on kitchen walls. There are no pretty incenses and flowers and colored candles. There are candles for sure, but they are most always in plastic containers and stuffed together in bunches around atole filled gourd bowls, 2liter bottles of coke, and windblown handsewn table runners.

offerings to the three crosses

I don’t have a gong or singing bowls (sometimes I wish I did). And I don’t offer plant medicine like ayahuasca or mushrooms. My yerbatero friend does offer medicinal plants that he forages for waaaay up in the jungle and harvests of full moons or new moons or half moons or whatever is the necessary time to harvest them. They don’t give you visions, but they are magic. Yeah, that. Most people don’t really believe in the magic anymore. When I tell them our healer friend works with magic, they probably imagine voodoo dolls (well aluxes are a little bit like voodoo dolls) and five pointed stars drawn with salt in the sand.

Actually, yerbatero Don Francisco says it is much better to draw circles in the dirt with sugar because it is sweet and sweetens your life.

Yerbatero with wild harvest medicinal plants on the floor in his kitchen

It feels frustrating when I read lovely posts offering organic vegetarian foods when all we have to offer here is local pork cooked in banana leaves and buried underground or tortillas made one a time, slow fashion, and by hand. The only veggies are limes, hot peppers, black beans (if you can call them veggies) and the occasional side of shredded cabbage. Not much of a selection for modern health conscious nibblers. I cannot promise you the fare you are accustomed to. It simply is not avabile out in the small villages where we spend our time. Sometimes you have a choice of two types of pork. Occasionally there is chicken. Most of it is cooked with aciote and, if not underground, for sure over and open fire. That’s because most places don’t actually have an oven or even a stove. They have three stones with a grate and a big circular pan on top and a fire underneath.

cochinta pibil, pork in banana leaves getting r4eady to go in the ground

I simply can’t compete with the elegant white cotton clothing worn by retreat hosts. Its dirty and hot in most of the places we go. So the photos are of me with damp hair and often grime smeared on a check or surely on the front of my dress.

And yet…..

Somehow, this is where people get healed.

In all honesty, it is hard to put into words what happens. I don’t know if it is the connection to poor but happy families, or the need to get out of your comfort zone or the heat or the sweat or if it is the kids who love to play with you. I don’t know if it is the way locals share fantastical stories of dolls come to life or people who still know how to shapeshift or magical fire that appears at midnight and marks gold deep in the jungle. I don’t know if it is the way our yerbatero friend challenges you to look at yourself honesty or how he gives you a simple bag of herbs and tells you not to let anyone else take them because they are only magicked for you. And I don’t know if it is the offerings left in tiny unkempt shrines or soot covered wicks sprouting from equally soot covered melted wax that were once candles and now lay deserted by some quiet prayer maker.

leftover candle wax from an offering

Perhaps it is the way the little kids play in the streets without supervision or the way the chickens run right through the kitchens. Or maybe it is the skinny cows and donkeys who are well loved but not well fed. I am not sure, but maybe healing comes from following a machete wielding guide through the thick jungle where bushed threaten to gouge you with spines and holes into the underworld loom along the path. Or maybe it is the stories he tells in Spanish about his uncle being magically guided away from Juan de la Monte, the half human, half dog creature as tall as a bear with red glowing eyes.

following the machete wielding guide

Do you think it is possible that any of these things are what brings healing?

Somehow, I think the answer is yes, although I have mulled it over countless times, for countless hours and have never quite come to a satisfying conclusion.

It just happens.

The healing.

It comes in unannounced and unexpected while your attention is caught up with the uncomfortable, the unexplained, and the unexpected.

But when it comes in, it sticks. It stays with you. It changes you. It seems to catch hold of you somewhere deep inside, in some place you had forgotten, but no matter how life tries to shake it free once you return home, the healing takes on a life of its own.

And it carries with it the indelible imprint of the experiences you had. They get into your daydreams, into your night dreams, and into your desires.

For I do believe it is the magic that becomes the medicine. But it is not an easy magic nor one that can be quantified or explained. Rather it is experienced, in all its raw glory.

Come join me on retreat. I cannot promise you that I will heal you, for I am not the healer.

I am the bridge.

Hugs and butterflies,

Laura

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