Temazcal in Oaxaca, Mexico
Curandera Doña Mariana chants while controlling your body with the laying of water over hot rock, as the mysterious meandering of a range of herbal bouquets piques the olfactory sense. Traditional healer, or pleasing dominatrix? She methodically swats almost every inch of your torso, and each limb, with varying degrees of assertiveness and pressure. Yet she is ever so gentle. She reassures you of her command over process and purpose: relaxation, rejuvenation and healing: “Qué salga el mal; qué entre el bien,” she cajoles. Out with the bad; in with the good.
Mariana Emilia Arroyo Cabrera is a temazcalera, expert in the ancient pre-Hispanic science and ceremony of temazcal. The heart of temazcal is entry into a dark chamber filled with steam and select aromatic plants and herbs, and being carefully guided through ritual stages by one who has learned function, effect and procedure through years of training.
Temazcal is akin to the Iroquois sweat lodge of which many of us have heard and read in the course of our childhood education into the disappearing cultures of our First Nations, the original inhabitants of our homeland. Who would have thought that we could ever have such a first-hand experience during modern times? One of the treasures for visitors to, and in my case residents of, Oaxaca.
Doña Mariana’s pedigree dates to the knowledge of curative plants and uses of the temazcal she gained from her Zapoteca grandmother, supplemented by thirty years of training and experience as a nurse in Oaxaca. Zapotec is one of sixteen indigenous cultures still thriving today in the state of Oaxaca. It is one of several