Hello, my name is Eliseo "Cheo" Torres and I teach a class on traditional medicine at the University of New Mexico. Today, is part of a segment of courses and lessons on traditional medicine and we're so glad and fortunate to have an excellent expert on Mayan traditional medicine, Alex Jackson. Alex. Welcome. Thank you. Alex is come in from Kansas City Missouri, is originally from New Mexico but now practices in Kansas City Missouri. His work in traditional medicine for several years not only in the Merida area, the Yucatan area, but also in Guatemala and Belize, where you have the Mayan population in those three countries, one of the largest Native American groups in Mexico are the Mayans. He's going to talk to us about Mayan traditional medicine through the abdomen. Alex has expertise in different fields of traditional medicine whether it's biology, massage and just a number of other areas. Today, he's going to concentrate on Mayan traditional medicine through the abdomen. His part of the summer class that we teach at the University of Mexico right here in New Mexico. So, we're glad to have you Alex and I know that you will explain and the person that you'll be working with is Sonai Peris, and she's originally from El Paso, she's a student of traditional medicine soon to be enrolled at the University of New Mexico. So, thank you for being here Sonai. Thank you there Cheo. You bet. Well, I'd like to start by just talking a little bit about the abdomen and it's one of the most common areas overlooked from the whole body. As I approach Sonai here, is we're going to work a little bit on her abdomen today. It's overlooked because we store a lot of things in this abdomen. All of our digestive, all our of our reproductive center is here in this core. Lot of times we focus on muscle aches in the back, in the arms and legs, and we forget that the abdomen is there. Yet, when we get a muscle ache in our back, in our neck, we go get a massage, we take time to relax it. With the abdomen is tight, we don't usually do that and maybe take a medication or we just eat something different if we have trouble with that. But as I work here, I'm going to act on, hi Sonai? Hi. So, I'm just going to have her relax a little bit and tell you that on the abdomen it's almost as if different living breathing up, living different breathing organism. As you see the breath moving up and down. On here, I'm just quit my hands here to check up on her and feel first the energy in her body. I connect with her, and the most important thing is her breath. Her breath is her life force energy and it moves, it starts here in the abdomen. It's got to go all the way to her legs, to her head, to her feet. We have different organs here on our body, her stomach, her liver, pancreas, also her uterus for reproductive, ovaries are down here, all of this is very important, intestines. Now, one thing that Curanderismo does and traditional healing through my medicine does, it doesn't differentiate through the physical and emotional problems. So, someone we're coming in with a for example, a digestive problem, a reflux issue, which is right here, originated in the abdomen. We will look at not only physically how they're feeling, but also what has happened in their life. This diaphragm here which I'm going to work on, it gets very tight. It has three holes that go through it. Your aorta blood flow coming down, venous blood for climbed back up and also your esophagus which connects to your stomach. So, almost as if right here we're pinching, and twisting, right here on her diaphragm, it's what's happening physically in the bottle when we get emotionally stressed. So, a simple way to relieve that is just through some massage. Sometimes it seems very complicated that we want to take additional medications or we want to take additional. We wonder why our abdomen feels bloated and often people coming with this big bloated abdomen, or they have collides which is inflammation of the colon, or they may have a problem with a tilted uterus. All of this can be alleviated through simple massage. So, what I'm going to do is I'm just putting on a little bit of oil on Sonai's belly, and watching her breath. Very lightly massaging into your belly. What I want to do first is I want to come over here to the solar plexus, this diaphragm area. I'm pushing down a little bit and I'm coming right down to a naval. Sometimes I'll feel a little speed bump there, a little blockage or a little pulse. What I'm feeling is when we get stressed or tight that actually gets stronger. So, by simply massaging here with her breath on the exhale, I'm actually alleviating that pressure. Emotionally in that area, in this area of the body is our solar plexus. It's how we want to be seen in the world, it's how people see us, it's expectations. In Curanderismo, an institutional healing it's very important, that when I'm working on her, I asked her how she's feeling, if it feels tender or feels tight, and not only looking at what she's feeling if she feels pain or discomfort in that area, but I want to know the emotion she's feeling. I want her to know the emotions she's feeling. I want her to recognize that in this area of the body there is something to uncover. Because many times, we go through our life, and we protect ourselves in certain ways, and we don't realize exactly what we're feeling, wherein we hid a lot. As I'm moving down, and I'm coming down here right underneath the stomach, under her ribcage, and I'm moving my hands slightly to her naval. I feel a little bit of gurgling, that's good. It means things are loosening. It means that the fluid passing through the intestine, through the stomach is loosening. A lot of times, this diaphragm gets tighten, it pulls up, and then we cannot breathe properly. We can't digest properly. Right over here on the liver, right underneath the liver, a lot of times people have very tightness right here. What we're discovering here, is livery motion is anger. It's unresolved in that way, very tight there. So, I'm working on someone, we might feel that emotion come up. I might ask her and say, "How are you feeling in this body, in this area?" That's what holds on to. How are you feeling, Sonai? As you come towards the center of my stomach, it feels a lot tighter. A lot tighter. Especially towards my belly button. So, ask I you just to breathe in your belly and exhale through your mouth, just as she's doing. A lot of times, we hold our breath through our nose, or we hold our breath through here, and it's very important to breathe in our belly and breathe out in our mouth. As I started, I also move around the navel. As I massaging down lower, I feel a little tension here in the left side. Now, as a healer, also I've known the energetically in the body, we store things. On the left side of the body is female. On the right side is male. So, sometimes, and we've had stress about something, male or female person, that's where it's going to reside. In the colon, as we're losing in here, how does that feel? I feel little bit uncomfortable. A little bit? Yeah. Okay. How do you feel in your body? I mean, [inaudible] what can you feel? What's it make your body feel like doing? It makes me want to just, I guess sigh. Sigh, and that's a good response. Because a lot of times, what we're going to find in this body here, we hold and clench. Pelvis is a big lock for security, and so by locking down our pelvis and tightening everything up, we're seeing that security and fear and those things. So, we want her just to breathe into it. If she feels like sighing, take a big sigh, Sonai. Opened her mouth and lock up. So, right now, I'm in this left quadrant of her belly, and I'm still moving to her navel, and I'm just moving, and I'm slowly just relaxing. Normally, what we should be able to do in our belly is almost pushed down to our spine. Yet, many times we're going to find that we can only go maybe an inch or less or even half an inch. Then, as we open and massage more, and as they feel more comfortable, it's going to open back up. On the right side here, she feels a little bit tender, so we go a little bit soft and open up. Sometimes, people will say that the abdomen, they feel a little bit tender. It feels a little bit odd because most people are not used to having their abdomen worked. Just like when we have our back work, our shoulders work, does there a therapeutic feeling between good and too much, I guess, is what I would say. But as they sink into it, it feels good. Every time we've had a pain, we go rub our stomach. So, I'm massaging right now all the way down the right side. I can all come down here to the pubic bone coming up. I'm massaging actually all over here, I'm massaging the ascending colon coming up. A lot of times, people will come in with constipation. So, as we do this, the constipation, that is permanent or chronic. It means people aren't eliminating stress all over their body it need really aren't eliminating intention. So, as we do this, she's going to feel a lot lighter. The colon is going to get nicely massaged, and we're going to open up her energy, so she breathes better and has more life in her body. Just like a limpia or cleansing, this is another form of limpia or cleansing. The body through the abdomen, which is where we hold all of our tension in our body or stress. We feel it tighten up as we go. So how are you feeling now, Sonai? I feels definitely like there's definitely movements. Movements, okay. It's not as sensitive as it was at the beginning. Many times also, people will report tingling in their arms or legs. This is a great sign. As the time when you've actually slept on your hands or your feet before your arms and cut off circulation, same thing happens in our abdomen here. We have that rush come back to our extremities and put energy in circulation back, so people will feel renewed. Also after this, I would take maybe some herbs and just do a nice little spirit, a nice cleansing of her energy over her abdomen, saying little prayers we do this. Sometimes, she may have emotions come out, and that's okay. That means that she's cleaning that out as well as whatever physically there was her [inaudible]. So, the physical element will take care of it. Well, any percent or more of our diseases all come from our emotions, and they reside here, why it's so important to work on this area of the body. Thank you. Alex, thank you so much. What an excellent demonstration. Alex, we thank you for coming from Kansas City, Missouri to do this demonstration. Alex also teaches short courses here in Albuquerque and also in Kansas City. Is that right, Alex? Yes. Again, Sonai, thank you so much. We appreciate you. Until next time, we thank you, and we thank both of you.
