Episode 44 - Atava Garcia Swiecicki: Curanderismo and Reconnecting with Ancestral Healing Practices

Josie talks with Atava Garcia Swiecicki (she/her/ella), an herbalist, curandera, teacher, and author of The Curanderx Toolkit. Josie and Atava discuss reconnecting with ancestral healing and medicinal practices passed through a lineage of teachers. This episode touches upon some specific practices of Indigenous Mexican Curanderismo such as limpias, and the concept of cosmovision.

Content Warning: brief mention of sexual assault and the Pulse shooting.

[ID: A beige background and orange semi-circle. Text reads: The Intersectional Fertility Podcast Episode 44: Atava Garcia Swiecicki @curanderxtoolkit and Josie Rodriguez-Bouchier @intersectionalfertility.]

Note: This episode aired just a couple days after the Colorado Springs Club Q shooting, but we recorded it the week before the shooting so we didn’t know about it yet. Oddly, there is mention of the Pulse shooting in this episode and the work that Atava did to offer community care in its wake. I’m grateful for people like Atava who are offering their services to care for our queer community in times of crisis. And I'm holding you in my thoughts, dear listener, as you process and grieve the recent events.

Purchase Atava's book The Curanderx Toolkit.

Follow Atava on Instagram.

Visit Atava's website to find her offerings, and visit Ancestral Apothecary School's website for information on classes and events.

Episode Transcript:

Disclaimer: This is an automatically generated transcript edited to be more readable. It may not be 100% accurate.

[00:00:00] Josie: I am Josie Rodriguez-Bouchier, and this is the Intersectional Fertility Podcast, where ideas and identities intersect to deepen our understanding of fertility and ultimately our Whole Selves.

[00:00:17] Atava Garcia Swiecicki is guided by her dreams and her Mexican, Polish, Hungarian and Diné ancestors. She studied feminist studies at Stanford University and received her master's degree in the Indigenous Mind Program at Naropa University Oakland. Atava has studied healing arts extensively for over 30 years and has been mentored by herbalists, curanderas, and traditional knowledge keepers.

[00:00:58] She works as a clinical herbalist and teacher and is dedicated to remembering the healing traditions of her ancestors, and supporting others to reconnect with their ancestral medicine. She also loves helping people build relationships with plants, whom she considers some of our greatest teachers and healers.

[00:01:15] She's the founder of the Ancestral Apothecary School of Herbal Folk and Indigenous Medicine on Ohlone territory in Oakland, California. And she's currently living in Tewa Pueblo territory in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she recently published her first book called The Curanderx Toolkit, reclaiming Ancestral Herbal Medicine and Rituals for Healing.

[00:01:45] All right, welcome back to the podcast everyone. We have a great special guest here today, Atava, welcome to the podcast. Also, am I saying your name right? Is that how you say it? 

[00:01:56] Atava: Atava, that's correct. 

[00:01:57] Josie: Atava. Okay. Welcome. Will you share with us your pronouns and where and the world you're joining us from today?

[00:02:06] Atava: Definitely, yes. My name is Atava Garcia Swiecicki, full name. Pronouns, she her ella, and I'm coming in from occupied Southern Tewa Pueblo territory. Colonially called Albuquerque, New Mexico. 

[00:02:25] Josie: Oh, I love it down there. Beautiful. 

[00:02:27] Atava: Beautiful. Yeah. I'm a recent transplant from Huchiun, Oakland Bay area. 

[00:02:32] Josie: Oh, nice. I was born in Santa Fe and I go down there as often as I can.

[00:02:38] Atava: Oh, sweet. All right. 

[00:02:39] Josie: So what is the story that led you to become a curanderx? 

[00:02:43] Atava: Yeah. Well, it's a long story. I'll give the brief version. It's something that I was called to at a young age, but it wasn't something that I knew about. Let me just back up a little, cuz it's always good to say who I am, who my ancestors are.

[00:03:00] I was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1968 to a multiracial, I guess, multicultural family of ancestors. On my father's side are Polish and on my mother's side were Mexican, Diné, and Hungarian. So all of my grandparents ended up immigrating to Detroit from all their places for the auto boom of the early 1900s. 

[00:03:29] So that's where I was born. I feel like I grew up into a family that on, really on all sides was pretty assimilating or assimilated. I mean, this is, you know, our, my parents' generation is the generation where you got punished for speaking Spanish, Right.

[00:03:48] Or whatever. And Polish and Spanish, all those languages were the ones the adults spoke privately and wasn't shared with the children. So, unlike a lot of people in my life, a lot of my colleagues, my teachers and my students who grew up with curanderismo very present as a practice. Often people weren't using that word, curanderismo.

[00:04:15] In fact, that's a very modern word as I wrote my book. But they grew up with an abuela who rubbed the egg on them, or someone who made teas, whatever the remedies were. So I feel like that wasn't present in my family for a lot of reasons, except for the one, the practice, which as I grow older, I'm having a lot of respect and gratitude for that.

[00:04:40] Both of my parents always were very engaged in tending to the earth and gardening. And I think that's a practice that really continued really from both or all sides of my lineage. So I didn't grow up knowing, you know, what a curandera was. But I think as a young adult, I just was drawn to really finding ways to heal myself.

[00:05:06] I look at that like growing up with all the things that went on in my family with addiction, and mental health issues, and all of that, that I was really searching. And really couldn't find it in academia and college, like, none of the courses really resonated with me until I actually landed in feminist studies when it was actually just yet to become a major.

[00:05:29] But I started studying, you know, this was in the eighties, so it's when Audre Lorde was alive and writing and Gloria Anzaldúa, and it was just an amazing place to find myself. After college, I just still was searching and through actually being in a car accident, not a bad one, but bad enough to be a little bumped around and injured that I ended up seeing a massage therapist.

[00:05:53] I was like, wow, this is, I never knew you could like do massage. So I ended up studying massage and acupressure. And on that path led me to herbal medicine and I met my first herbal teacher in, I don't know, somewhere in the mid nineties. And the more I started studying herbalism, the more I, again, as a young person, I had this curiosity.

[00:06:16] Like, what were the medicines, medicinal practices and plants of my ancestors? I didn't even know where to look. I didn't know who to talk to. This was before the internet. So to find information, you had to like, boots on the ground, you had to meet people, you had to go to the library, you go to a bookstore, maybe see a flyer, right.

[00:06:39] It was very different worlds of, you know, finding, making connections. So I had that, it was just an intention and a prayer in my heart. Until in 1999 I was working at a herbal store and literally into the store walked Doña Enriqueta and I do write about that in my book. 

[00:07:00] Josie: Yes, I love that moment. 

[00:07:02] Atava: It was the first curandera I met and I just knew like a lot of my life is really guided by my intuition. So I met her, she electrified the room and I was like, wow. Like who is she? What does she do? I wanna be her student. So even though my Spanish was mediocre, I was like, I'm gonna start studying with her. And so I did. And so that really started me on the path. And, and through her I met many, many other maestras, Estela Román, and you know, through Estela, a whole community down in Mexico.

[00:07:35] And I spent really about the next 13 years, very much actively I guess we'd say an apprenticeship with them. Where they would come to the Bay Area to Huchiun, and teach and do limpias. And I would host them, and support them, and schedule their appointments. And even at that time, I didn't realize, oh, this is what I'm doing, I'm apprenticing. 

[00:08:01] I just felt passionate about this healing system and also wanting it to be available to my communities. So that really started my journey on that path and also concurrently, my herbal journey continued to deepen and I studied more and whatever. 

[00:08:22] Began practicing as an herbalist and as a teacher, you know, so I really say that's my specialty is as an herbalist. And as you know, curanderismo, there's many different specialties within it. Like some people are parteras or midwives, or they do massage, or they run the temescal and for me, it's really herbalism.

[00:08:48] I know a lot about the other things, but it's herbs where I can just say this is what I know best. 

[00:08:54] Josie: Right, right. Oh, that's so cool. I love that story and yeah, that's so clear. As I'm reading your book, I'm almost finished with it and I'm just underlining every other sentence it feels like. I'm loving it so much, but yeah, it's so clear that herbs are your your specialty, your strength.

[00:09:14] That's, it's so beautiful. So I loved reading in your book that you did not come into this medicine. You know that you didn't grow up with it, that you came to it later in life, like you just mentioned. Was there a moment? I feel like I'm in a similar situation, so I feel really inspired to hear your story and how you've come across this medicine and practicing it.

[00:09:33] Was there a moment that you felt like you stepped fully into your own confidence as a curanderx? And how far along into your journey did you feel that confidence or that you accepted that role from your community? 

[00:09:49] Atava: Yeah, thank you. That's a good question. And I will say, and you know the title curanderx, I like curanderx because it's contemporary and gender expansive. And so many people I know are very hesitant to call themselves a curandera, curandex, curandero, because we're always comparing ourselves to the great ones like the Doña Enriquetas. 

[00:10:16] And so I think it's a both and like, I feel like I do believe it's a title that our community gives to us, like they acknowledge that. And I also feel like it's a title that those of us who are actually doing the work in our communities, it is important that we claim.

[00:10:37] Because if the whole generation, you know, those of us, whatever, from our twenties to our sixties aren't claiming it, like then who are the curanderx of the future, right? So I feel like a big part of it is the humility. So for me, one example I think about is when I felt confident to do a limpia.

[00:11:00] Cause that's a practice that's very, you know, specific to this tradition. Although of course comes from many other traditions as I know we'll speak about. But I remember asking Estela cuz I'd been supporting them and helping them and working behind the scenes with Doña Riqueta and Estela's limpias.

[00:11:23] And I just said, when will I know I'm ready? And Estella said, well, when people start asking you. And that actually for me, it literally was about 13 years of whatever training and studying before that happened. But I think it's different for everybody.

[00:11:45] I feel like, and it's hopefully a point that comes across my book, I feel like the first most important part that's ongoing is that we really learn how to work with these practices to tend to our own wellbeing, to tend to our spirits, our hearts, our bodies. And that's enough for a lot of people.

[00:12:06] Like we can learn how to do self limpias and just work through whatever's going on and that's really important. And I feel like that step is very important before we go out and work on other people. To work with other people takes a lot of training and I do believe in this practice, a mentorship is probably the best way. Cause there's things you just can't learn in books or lectures.

[00:12:35] Like you have to be there in person seeing what's happening, how the energies are moving. How someone's expressing their healing, which can look a lot of different ways. So for me, it was a while. It was over 10 years. And then, I mean, even still, if I put myself out there, I just say I'm an herbalist.

[00:12:57] If people wanna call me a curanderx, that's great. And I'm definitely my own curanderx and I know I work that way with a lot of other people. So, yeah I think it's that fine line between building confidence and also continuing to have humility, and it's different for everybody.

[00:13:18] Josie: Yeah, totally. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah I love that in your book, how it's so clear that this is for self-healing first. That these are tools to use for yourself. Will you describe what a limpia is for listeners who don't know? 

[00:13:36] Atava: Definitely, yeah. A limpia is to, is like a cleansing to, to clean, to cleanse, and it's a way to clear or cleanse or release and care for, and bless like our energy body. So that's like our emotions like how our spiritual health. I had this quote in my book, Don Laurencio, one of my teachers, he says, you know, we clean our car, we clean our house, we clean our clothes, but we don't clean our spirits.

[00:14:10] So when we move through life, our energy system, we interact with the world. So we may receive a susto cuz we just witnessed a car accident. So that's like a shock. So that impacts our energy body. Or maybe we're in a, I don't know, we're in a crowd where there's a lot of like aggressive or behaviors.

[00:14:32] So it's starting to look at ourselves as everything around us impacts us. Maybe we're going through a really difficult time, we're going in conflict. Whatever it is that just kind of shifts our energy or dims our light. I would just say that like literally like kind of shrinks our spirit a little bit.

[00:14:53] Like those are things that we can work on releasing and in the limpia. So the tools we use like, one of my favorite ones, and it's very common, is just a bundle of fresh aromatic herbs like rosemary, basil, sage, literally used as a brush across the body to literally just like sweep away the energies.

[00:15:16] But the herbs, because they're so amazing, they're also blessing us at the same time because with their life force, with their aroma, literally the molecules of the plant, those essential oils that get into our bloodstream by rubbing them on the body, so it's both, a limpia is a time to both release and also bless.

[00:15:37] Well, I'll say this, people can receive limpias for all kinds of things, like I've given them for someone to honor a graduation, or maybe they're moving through a breakup, or maybe they're getting married and they wanna have a blessing before the ceremony. Or maybe they're dealing with real, recovering from a trauma.

[00:15:57] So there's a lot of reasons, and there can be very, I would say just like small limpias that are just like five, ten minutes and then there's intensive ones that can last hours. The other tools that are common are like an egg, literally just a raw egg, which is also rubbed over the body as I call it, like a psychic vacuum.

[00:16:19] Instruments, copal smoke or other sacred smoke. Flowers, I mean, there's many other tools. Different curanderx have their different tools. I know some work with stones. Often we're praying or singing with our client or over, you know, for our clients. I feel like it's just a personal healing ceremony that we all need really, at any given time or really frequently, and it is something we can definitely do for ourselves.

[00:16:49] And I do talk about that in the book because at the end of the day, we're the one with ourselves. And we may have things happening that we don't have, you know, we don't have access to a curanderx, or we just have to wait. So learning how to tend to ourselves and then also seeking support when it's like, oh, this, this energy is really big. I want someone else's energy to support me. 

[00:17:16] Josie: Yeah, it's so beautiful. I've been learning more about that recently, the different kinds of limpias and it makes so much sense how you can't just learn that, you know, from reading about it. It's like you really have to be, in terms of practicing it, for other people you know, as a practitioner. 

[00:17:39] When I was first starting to want to know more about my own lineage and this medicine, it was like, where do I learn? It felt like you have to, it almost was like, you do have to go back to pre-internet days and you have to know people and get into the community and work with someone, like you said, apprentice with someone and over a long period of time, so not just read about it. 

[00:18:05] Atava: Yeah, and, and we're in a really, I would say a flowering of offerings of many different curanderx, at least across Turtle Island in Mexico, who are offering, who are teaching, who are offering their services.

[00:18:19] It's very different than when I first started seeking things out. Whatever, 25 years ago, which is good, you know? People ask me too all the time, like, how do you know? I think it's also always good to do a little background check, like know who you can study with and who their training is. 

[00:18:43] Whenever something becomes popular then someone enters who's doing it, maybe for the wrong reasons. I don't know anyone specifically, but I do know, I mean, this is coming to say it, it's a pretty intense trigger warning story, but I remember once I had someone call me from Los Angeles, this is when I was in Oakland.

[00:19:04] And they were really upset and they just wanted to talk to me because they said, "I saw this cuando in LA and he told me to take off my clothes and he was touching my body. He told me this was a limpia." And I was like "that was not a limpia, that was sexual assault." And so when we don't know, when we were desperate for healing, and there's not, like, literally what I feel like we're lacking is like that council of elders.

[00:19:34] Who has their awareness in the community of who's practicing and who's putting themselves out. People can get away with things like that. I mean, anyways, that's just to be aware of like, if we feel unsafe, or unsupported, or boundaries are crossed, or badgered or whatever, like that's not healing, that's something else.

[00:19:59] Josie: Right, yeah. That's such a good point. I think you wrote about in your book too how important it is to like, and you just said like how to know who your teacher's teacher was and their teacher, and their teacher. So that lineage of teaching is so important to know. Yeah.

[00:20:16] Atava: And who and who the person is in their community. Who they are in their community and, how are they serving their community? Because I think ultimately this is a path of service, you know, which has been complicated by capitalism. Cause we're all trying to also survive.

[00:20:37] Those of us who are working as healers. But I do think it's ultimately a path that people are called to. I just think the role of healer is a role in any community, in any of, all of our ancestors, of all people of the world. There's, there was always the people who were born into the community who had the gift of healing.

[00:20:59] So what happens to those of us who have that calling, but then we're not in our village, we're not growing up mentored by our elders. People aren't supporting us as healers by bringing us the whatever, the eggs, whatever, the chicken, and tending to our house. So it just creates a real interesting dynamic, which to be honest can be really exhausting, but that's another conversation. 

[00:21:22] Josie: Yeah, totally. Totally. The way we're living today is not set up to nourish us in those ways and to lead us back to those ancestral practices, like we really have to fight for it. 

[00:21:34] So, I would love to talk kind of about your ancestral journey. I'm smack dab in the middle of mine right now, and I just, I think ancestral work is so fascinating. Yeah, I just, I'm kind of obsessed with it right now. So I would love to hear from you, I know that you have Mexican and Polish and Hungarian and Diné or Navajo ancestries. How do those ancestries interact with or support each other or what has that been like for you to explore such different ancestries?

[00:22:08] Atava: Yeah, that's a great, great question. I mean, and it's really been my whole life's work to be in exploration of these ancestries, really starting again in my, probably my early twenties. And I would say the first ancestors that I had a lot of curiosity about were my Navajo or Diné ancestors. I don't know a lot about them, but I've done research.

[00:22:32] I know that I have a great-grandfather who is Navajo, who is actually from New Mexico. I think that curiosity and that search and that really, I'd say that prayer led me to other northern native Indigenous communities and ceremonies. And I think being in those, such as like the sweat lodge which was run by a Lakota community. 

[00:23:01] I think entering those spaces helped me understand not so much the specificity of what being Navajo is, but just kind of that understanding of, or really an opening to like, there's all these other ways of moving in the world with prayer and ceremony and culture beyond like again, the assimilated mainstream American Catholic space I was raised in. 

[00:23:28] The next ancestors that really called out were the Mexican ancestors. And that was through this path of meeting Doña Enriqueta and Estela and going to Mexico and studying and becoming more familiar with that. And then the next, the next set who, who showed up really to my, not because I wanted it per se, but was my Polish ancestors.

[00:23:53] I was actually a student in a graduate program called the Indigenous Mind Program at Naropa University when they had a campus in Oakland. And one of our assignments, I mean, that was all about ancestral connection and healing and my mentor Apila Colorado, her belief was that, you know, we all are, and I believe this too, we're all Indigenous to somewhere, and we all come from indigenous practices.

[00:24:17] It's about restoring our relationship to those ancestors in those practices. One of our assignments was really for the whole breadth of the, the course of study was to focus on one lineage and to go deep. I was like, I'll do anybody not my Polish ancestors. Cause at that point I had through my life, had a difficult relationship with my father.

[00:24:44] He had a lot of mental health issues, and addiction. And felt pretty distant from his family. And there's also dynamics, which I've since learned about, like his mother, my grandmother's racism towards my mother and all of that. You know, there was a lot going on there. But lo and behold, like those are the ancestors who literally showed up knocking on the door saying, no, we want you to explore us.

[00:25:10] Literally, I was receiving money from Polish sources. I was like, when you start getting money, I was like, so yeah. I got money, you know, from two different, one was a Polish foundation, the Kosciuszko Foundation, and one was from a private donor who was Polish American. So I was like I have to do this.

[00:25:32] So that actually was, I would say, some of the most important and healing work I've done in my whole lifetime, because as I explored the lineage and the history of my Polish ancestors and also the healing practices. I realized it was extremely rich and extremely powerful. And there was actually, you know, again, because of the history of what happened in Poland, it was occupied by other countries for 127 years.

[00:25:59] People weren't allowed to speak Polish. I mean, it, it's just like the Polish people were also colonized. They came here to the quote US, received, you know, their own. At one point they were at the bottom of the barrel of immigrants, so, right. But then they could assimilate in a different way than if you were a Person of Color.

[00:26:19] Cause they're white passing. I think learning that story, I mean, not the, all the layers of the history, but also touching back way, before all these colonizations and, you know, immigrations and wars, right? Poland was decimated in the second World War. I realized, Oh, there's actually a power and a depth and a richness here.

[00:26:41] So I actually wrote a whole thesis on it called Journey to My Polish Indigenous Mind. And that's actually, that's gonna be my next book will be more writing about that. Cuz I feel like, it's really important for me to honor all my ancestors as a multiracial, white passing person to really not just dismiss my European ancestors and also to model like there, you know, there is, it's not just all the horrible things that white European or European American people have done, like to, there's a lot more complexity to that story.

[00:27:21] And, and also healing that needs to happen so that we don't perpetuate that. You know, against people of color or, as it is playing out here and many other places. So that's, yeah. The one ancestors that I really haven't connected with are the Hungarian and, and I'm like, okay, that they'll come, I mean, maybe they're like, when I'm an old lady, they'll, maybe they'll come when I'm working on the next book, cuz it's really gonna be about a map for everyone who's doing ancestral work.

[00:27:55] You know, based on the, what I've done and the, you know, the circles and trainings and experiences I've been in and the work I've supported others to do. I've done that a lot. My herbal classroom, I've supported my students to what do what we call the ancestral medicine project. So each one of them does research on one of their lineages on a healing practice.

[00:28:19] And of course that opens up a hole a lot. I say it opens up the ancestral field because sometimes it's a lot of grief or rage. Because, why were these practices lost? You know, what happened? And I don't even like my family, you know, some of them don't even wanna relate to their families, so why would I think about my ancestors?

[00:28:39] So anyways, it's been a journey, and it's intense work. I also think it's work that some of us are called, some people are called to, it seems like in every family, or maybe not every family, but you know, often we're the one person in our family who's doing the work.

[00:28:56] Josie: Yes, yeah. I feel that kind of similar to how it seems like this is having a flowering right now, that a lot of people are mm-hmm. Interested in doing that ancestor work, yeah. 

[00:29:08] Atava: Yeah. It's important that it's the past unless we face and heal and make peace with the past and reparations, which I also believe in. Like, it's gonna just keep following us. 

[00:29:20] Josie: Totally. Oh my gosh. I cannot wait to read that book, your next book. 

[00:29:25] Atava: I'm still writing it. But yeah, it is on the horizon. I'm starting to feel it. 

[00:29:31] Josie: I love it, I love it. I can't wait. So I would love to talk about your current book more that's out right now, and the course offering by the same title.

[00:29:41] It's called The Curanderx Toolkit. So I would love to know what was the process like for you writing this book? How long did it take to come to fruition? 

[00:29:51] Atava: Yeah. It took about two and a half years. I started writing, well, I started the proposal in early 2019 and at that point, I was still living in, in Huchiun Oakland, and I was still running my school ancestral apothecary and things are really busy.

[00:30:09] So when I talked to my editor, I said, I'll start working on the outline and slowly finding time to work on the writing. But then 2020 is gonna be my writer's retreat year. Ha ha ha, right? So then 2020 came and that, well, that just interrupted everything. So instead of like having a nice writer's retreat, I was, you know, crisis managing a small business you know, keeping it afloat during the pandemic transitioning.

[00:30:41] All of our offerings that have been in person to online. So I needed, I asked for and got a little extra time through, I think March of 2022 to, no, that was, that was last year, 2021 to finish the writing. So, but I will say, you know, before it was, I know you wanted to talk about the class before it was a book, it was a class. 

[00:31:04] And it, and the Curanderx Toolkit was a class that I started teaching in 2011, really with this dream and this vision of creating an offering that was focused on herbal medicine, but then rooted in these cultural practices of, curanderismo, because what I found in herbal schools was very white, Eurocentric, scientific based. 

[00:31:30] And not really inclusive of a lot of, any other cultural practices or even naming that the perspective was a cultural practice from, again, white or European American perspective. So I started the class and then, so when I went to writing the book, literally, it's based on already, the way the class had been run for many years. Like all of the topics in the book were, you know, lectures or assignments that we did in the class.

[00:32:03] And also a lot that's in the book came from handouts that I had already made. I mean, it really just became to that point where I had so many handouts and so much class material that the book just really, I mean, it was still quite a process to write because it's different to give a handout versus like something that reads as in a book.

[00:32:23] But, I really enjoyed the writing process. It was really grounding to have that focus during the pandemic, especially in 2020 when it just was like, so, intense and so scary, and it's so much unknown. And it also lit a fire, you know, under me, like I want this, these stories out there.

[00:32:49] We were talking about the pandemic, but I'm also thinking about the political climate then and now of the rise of this, you know, right wing extremism and intense misogyny and homophobia and transphobia and racism and xenophobia. I kept thinking like, in a hundred years, if someone looks back at this time, are they just gonna think, I won't even mention their name, but you know, they're gonna just think the names of these politicians.

[00:33:16] I was like, no, actually. That's all happening on one level, but there's this other story that's happening on a grassroots level where people are organizing, they're reconnecting with ancestral medicine practices. They're bringing them back to their communities. They're serving communities. We're creating different models of healthcare that are based in care and love and mutual aid.

[00:33:42] And so I really wanted to tell that story so that it was not forgotten and really celebrate and honor the community that raised me and that I was a part of in the Bay Area and well, Northern California, well throughout California, like honoring my teachers and my elders, and then my colleagues and my students who then came up and became, you know, Great, you know, healers or medicine makers or herbalist or curanderx in their communities.

[00:34:13] So it felt, you know, I feel like that moment of writing through 2020 was very catalyzing for me because I felt very clear that I wanted this book to be brought out into the world. And that this story to be represented. So, as you see in the book, I highlight 13 different curanderx.

[00:34:33] Cuz that was also important for me that the story, I mean, obviously I wrote the book, so in some way it's my story, but also to show that I, I'm just one of a community. I'm one member in a community and there's people who taught me. And there's, you know, and then there's my teachers' teachers. And then there's the people who I work alongside, and that they all have a different way of entering relationship with the practices. And they all have a different story and it's all part of this movement. 

[00:35:05] Josie: Right, right, right. Yeah, I loved that. I love reading about the different spotlights of the different healers in your book. I've learned also from Berenice Dimas, and I've learned from Batul True Heart. And I just, and it's so cool to learn about all these other healers in here. They're all so incredible. 

[00:35:27] You say in your book; "as a system of healing that grew on the blood soaked soil of genocide and colonization, curanderismo specializes in ways to treat and heal trauma." You also say that "curanderismo gives personal and intimate care to each individual, and contains the most important ingredient of healing, which is love, and that so many people are drawn to this medicine because it is based in love."

[00:35:52] And I just felt that so deeply when I read that. Can you talk a little bit more about that, or is that what drew you to this medicine? 

[00:35:59] Atava: Probably, yeah. I mean, I didn't even know it at the time. I was drawn to Doña Enriqueta because she has a huge heart. She has so much love and compassion. She's also very fierce. 

[00:36:12] Josie: Yeah, yeah. I was reading about that. 

[00:36:14] Atava: Yeah. She's also very fierce. Yeah, I think I was drawn to it. And also just my ancestors were calling me. I mean, I look back now at dreams I had, or just guidance I followed based on my own intuition. That really feels like it was ancestors guiding me.

[00:36:33] And the part about trauma, that's a quote also. Well, that was inspired also by a quote from Elena Avila, who's the first Mexican American curandera to write a book. Woman who goes in the Dark, highly recommend she wrote that over 20, 1999, so whatever, almost 24 years ago. That was her observation, and I think it still resonates today.

[00:37:02] I think we're in a different moment now where there are a lot of incredible practices, somatic based therapeutic practices that are talking about ways to heal trauma. Especially with, for me, the ones I follow are the BIPOC therapist. Like I'm a big fan of Resmaa Menakem and his work. And I know there's a lot of other folks as well, but I do think before, like Peter Levine, who actually in his book, he does say that he observed a traditional healer.

[00:37:38] I actually think it was a curandera. I think there's maybe since then his book, he's giving credit to where credit was due. But I think some of his inspiration, if not all came from witnessing traditional Indigenous healers. I don't know if it was a curandera or Northern Native person. But anyways, I think that the way that the healings for, again, a limpia, it's a ceremony, it's a prayer, it's very physical.

[00:38:07] Like, you're literally smelling the herbs, people's hands are in your body. People are shaking, they're moving, you know, like we can't just think away our traum. It's in the body. Our trauma is in the body. So these practices to help move it, and to repattern the whole system, the brain, the whole system.

[00:38:27] And I think that element of love, I think, I mean, I remember the first time I got a limpia from Doña Enriqueta I think I just cried just cause I could feel that someone was loving me and tending to me like I was a little baby. Just that kinda love, like I think we all, everyone needs that no matter what age we are. Especially when working with our wounds, our traumas, our inner child.

[00:38:53] So I believe that this ability to treat trauma exists in many other Indigenous healing practices. And this is the one that I know about. And you know exactly because of colonization and because the people Indigenous to Mexico had to like, adapt to a complete, well first of all, those who survived the bloody conquest and then adapt to like a lot of enforced beliefs and practices and having their own beliefs and practice outlawed.

[00:39:28] I feel like there was just something in the alchemy of that time that I don't know who knows how these practices were before that moment. I think they were very sophisticated. I think what the more I studied Mexican Indigenous history, I think is very, very sophisticated systems of healing in herbal medicine, and midwifery and all of that medicine in general before European contact. 

[00:39:56] Josie: Right, right. And so much of it was lost. 

[00:40:00] Atava: Yeah. But a lot still survived. That's that's amazing. 

[00:40:03] Josie: Yeah that is totally amazing. Yeah, absolutely. And just what's in our DNA and our bones, and that we can access it that way as well.

[00:40:15] Yeah. So will you talk about Elena Avila describes curanderismo as a three-headed serpent. I love that. Will you talk about why it's viewed that way? And then I also love this word that you use a lot in your book called Cosmovision. 

[00:40:32] Atava: Cosmovision, yes. Okay. So the three-headed serpent, that has to do with the primary cultural roots of curanderismo being in, what Elena Avila says is it's the roots that come from the practices and people that were indigenous to Mexico. Mexico, which is also right, many southwest US right before colonization. 

[00:41:03] And within that there's many, many roots. Cuz there's many, the Mexica and the, Otomi and Purépecha whatever many different cultural, ethnic, you know, Indigenous groups there, so that's one route. The indigenous route of, of the people of Mexico. 

[00:41:20] And then there's the root of the practices and people that came from Europe, primarily Spain, with their beliefs. For example, something like mal de ojo, evil eye, really can be traced to Spain. And actually before that, It's a Middle Eastern and North African countries.

[00:41:38] So those practices, especially as colonization and Catholicism became a kind of heavy imprint. A forced imprint on the people. So instead of praying to Tonanztin, mother Earth, it's, our ancestors adopted Oh, the Virgen de Guadalupe. So that's who we pray to. So that root of the influence of the colonizer, and actually a lot of the plants that are really key and important in curanderismo also come from Europe.

[00:42:11] Like rosemary, rue, basil. And then the other root, which I hope more, there's more conversation and exploration and research is the root of the influence of the people that, of African people, people that were brought over enslaved. Mexico had a huge population of free African people in the colonial times. And a lot who revolted and formed their own colonies.

[00:42:45] And so of course these people brought their own practices. And for example, like I only found one source, but that traces the, even the ceremony of the a limpia to actually practices that came from West African people. And then there's some historians that also say that even pre European contact, there were African people in Mexico because it's not actually that far across the ocean. From parts of Africa, between parts of Mexico. 

[00:43:19] So, so, so those three routes, the, the Indigenous to Mexico, the European, and then the African roots, like those people with their practices, their traditions, their plants, come together, came together at this time and fused. This tradition was born out of that. So it's gonna look different, you know, and curanderismo expands beyond just Mexico. Like it's practiced in all Latinx countries in different ways, right? 

[00:43:50] So those are the three roots, historically and contemporarily as well. And the other question about the Cosmovision, like I'll give credit to my maestra Patricia Chicueyi Coatl, who's my maestra of Danza and also of Mexica philosophy in cosmology or what she'll call Anahuacan Cosmovision. Cosmovision, is it could also be called cosmology.

[00:44:22] It's the way of interacting with and understanding the universe, and that, by that I mean the sun, the moon, the movement of Venus, you know, the energies of each of the cardinal directions. East, West, North, South, the pleiades and how all of these movements of these planets affect human life and life on Earth.

[00:44:51] Like our Mexican ancestors had very, very sophisticated understanding of their place and the cosmos and as do people contemporaries, who, who carry this knowledge, you know, that's why great places like the pyramids of Tenochtitlán and, all the other pyramids, a lot of these were literally measuring the, or tracking the planets in the, in the sun.

[00:45:19] So the, so the Cosmovision, like for me that was, I don't know if the word is a risk, it was like, I feel like so many herbal medicine books are written without credit or connection to the cosmology of the culture that informs those practices. And so I was like, well, since I was a Danzante, you know, a Mexica, or some people say Aztec dancer for many years. 

[00:45:52] And I was learning about the Cosmovision, cuz that's Danza really has preserved those traditions throughout 500 years. So I was like, I wanna include this in the book because it will give a context for where these practices come from. 

[00:46:13] I don't know exactly what herb goes in the East or exactly what, but I knew it was just important to include as like a reference point to say like, the, these traditions are also connected to this way of moving through the world and understanding the universe and understanding our role as human beings in the universe. And how, how that interaction is continuous and ongoing. 

[00:46:46] Josie: Right, right. I love that it really zooms you out, like you really have a much bigger picture of not only humans and not only on planet Earth, but you know, our place in the whole universe. Yeah, I love that. 

[00:47:02] So, I would love to talk about how queer, trans and non-binary folks with wombs, especially Black Indigenous and People of the Global Majority can use ancestral medicine on their fertility journey or reproductive healing journey.

[00:47:17] How important do you think it is for folks to learn or connect with their own ancestral medicine practices, especially as a queer BIPGM? 

[00:47:25] Atava: I think it's really important. I mean, this is my perspective. The way I look at it is for generations or millennia, our ancestors we're engaged in certain practices or in relationship with certain plants.

[00:47:45] I mean, this is true for everybody, but definitely for the People of the Global Majority, many of whom are still actively engaged in those plant medicines. According to the World Health Organization, I think it's something like 80% of the world's population is still primarily our first medicine is herbal, or ancestral. 

[00:48:08] So forever ancestors, were in relationship to these plants and these practices because they maintained like the health and wellbeing of the individual and the community. And so there's a way that even if we've lost connection with them, one or two, more generations or not, we haven't lost connection.

[00:48:31] That those, those practices like our cells, our bones, our DNA, recognize them. And they're gonna have a different, it just feels different when we en engage in a practice that is ancestral. And, and I'm someone who, I've been, I've been blessed by acupuncture and reiki, and all kinds of practices that come from a lot of lineages that are not mine.

[00:48:58] And I, and I love it and I receive it, and I'm grateful to have access to it and yeah. And there's something special when it, I know it's an ancestral practice for people who are queer, trans, and non-binary, our relationship to ancestral medicine, we can't overlook the impact of colonization and missionization and with all of the anti queer, anti-trans beliefs that were imposed on that.

[00:49:34] So the harm, the trauma to the body of someone who has that identity, it's something that we could just literally be born with. At the moment, we realize we're not a cis hetero person. There's a certain level of ambient or really explicit trauma that, that we are receiving. 

[00:49:53] I think these practices can be tools. I feel like for me, when I, when I think of curanderismo and herbal medicine, the word I think about a lot is resilience. And it supports our resilience, it gives us tools to, like this thing happened, but I have skills, I have tools. I have a community that's gonna tend to me. So that I can recover. 

[00:50:27] I've worked with a lot of people. Like, I remember one really powerful, difficult, but also very tenderhearted moment was after the Pulse shootings, you know, the massacre and a group of curanderx were invited to a community, a LGBTQIA+ two-spirit center in somewhere in the fruit fill. 

[00:50:54] I don't even where it was, but, we were there just to offer healing to our community members. Ones who, whether or not we knew someone there, it felt very, very personal. Right. I know I had a very somatic experience, and you know how that connects to the fertility healing or journey, like this is your work, but our overall wellness.

[00:51:19] If we have unhealed traumas, if we have things we haven't processed, that's gonna come up in the journey of fertility or giving birth. I'm not a midwife, but I've heard from many of my partera friends that, of someone even not even realizing they had a real significant trauma until childbirth brought that to the surface.

[00:51:43] So I think these practices just offer tools to navigate all of that. You know, again, as the work we do on ourselves or the work we seek from a skilled curanderx. And I'll say the book, the X is to be very intentionally inclusive of our trans and non-binary gender nonconforming community members.

[00:52:13] And the class started out as curandera's toolkit, but that was in 2011. So as we evolved with our languages, our language, so did the class and, and the x to me is really important. It's a statement that this book is actually for people who might not identify with the gender binary. 

[00:52:37] Cause I know one of my, when we had a little book prayer when I was back in the Bay, someone said, this is the first book, healing book that actually is explicitly for and about, you know, the queer trans BIPOC queer trans community.

[00:52:57] So that is really important to me. I mean, that's my community. The book includes other stories. Like, not everyone who's spotlighted has that identity, but I felt like I really wanted them, us, to have a presence. Because it's also about, I think about myself as a young person and like who I knew as a healer.

[00:53:18] I mean, first of all, you think a lot of 'em were cis men or cis white men. And then it's just like, maybe they're women but they're not queer or whatever. So I just, I believe so strongly in the representation model. Like if we can see someone who we identify with, who shares identity on their healing journey and they made it through all the things that, you know, folks in our communities go through. 

[00:53:44] So, yeah. Those are my thoughts. I think the ancestral medicine practices, or whoever our ancestors are, have something to offer us on this journey. Because honestly, I think probably what comes up a lot in fertility journey is ancestral as well.

[00:54:01] We have so much awful history of, from just literally forced rape. Definitely people who were enslaved Africans forced sterility without consent, you know, medical experimentation. I mean, all of that happened on the bodies of our ancestors. So when we attuned to our body, Even though we're not being conscious of it, I feel like those memories are still somewhere in the cells.

[00:54:31] Josie: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you. That's that's so true that on a fertility journey, trauma comes up and this medicine, especially if this is in your bloodline, is really helpful for addressing those traumas and staying resilient throughout your fertility journey. And I love just how inclusive this your book is, and I felt like it actually makes me feel emotional because as a non-binary, queer Latinx person who wanted to learn about my own lineage in my ancestor work. You know, finding this book felt like, oh my gosh, I can't even believe this exists. So thank you. 

[00:55:15] Atava: What was written for exactly you. 

[00:55:19] Josie: That's how it feels when I'm reading it. Like I feel like this is written for me. So thank you. 

[00:55:27] So a question I love to ask all my guests has to do with our fertility, which is what we is referred to as our essence in Chinese medicine.

[00:55:35] So the more we're able to get in touch with who we really are, or our essence, the more access we have to our fertile potential or creative power if we're past those childbearing phases of life. So I wonder, do you have any personal practices or rituals in place that allow you to connect with your essence or your Whole Self?

[00:55:53] Atava: Definitely, yeah. Well, really everything, everything that's in the book, I mean, for me, a big part of me connecting with my essence is connecting with nature, connecting with the Earth and the plants. So that, that's a big part of it. I mean, for me, I feel like the plants have saved my life more than once, but it's also the, it's a reflection again.

[00:56:18] There's so much chaos and static in the human world right now. Maybe always, but definitely right now, like, you know, there's something about being in nature. I can feel who I am. Without all of that noise. So just being outside. I mean, today there's several things going on, like what I told you.

[00:56:40] And I also have a dear friend who's beginning her death journey. So I was like, I just, even though it's cold, it's Albuquerque, it's 20 degrees. I was like, I'm going outside. I have to walk around. Because this will remind me of that, the part of me that's part of a bigger. Cosmovision.

[00:57:02] I am a human, but someday I will be in the dirt. Worms will be crawling through me. Hopefully, I would like to be composted. I would say, you know, the other practices, I mean, for me, every day just starting my day with, with prayer and meditation and reflecting on my dreams. That's really important to me just to touch in, to set that kind of charge my energy filled with my spirit and with downloads from great Spirit Cosmos, ancestors before I interface with technology, all of that.

[00:57:44] And then, you know, in the book that inner curanderx meditation, like that's really just about listening to our intuition. I've had for the past eight years, a lot of health journeys. Like I'm really on a continuous health journey, including surviving cancer. And so that practice of tuning in, it's like, what does my body need today?

[00:58:10] What does my spirit need? Like, just to really trust that. Cuz I think our intuition is so wise. It's just learning, literally learning how to listen to it and, and with the way healthcare is like, I think we need that because doctors aren't given the time and space to really know us and know what we need on a deeper level.

[00:58:30] And, and then for the moments, which there are many, when things come along that throw me off balance or the aires, the emotional challenges arise. It, are those practices, the self limpias, the baños. I did one, I did a baño last night. It's just a regular part of my life to tend to myself that way. 

[00:58:55] And that was really important to me as an author. Like, I feel like I could only write about things that I was actively engaged in, in a very regular way. Like I didn't wanna write about things that I hadn't really worked on myself, and with whatever is arising in my life.

[00:59:18] So, yeah. I think those are the ways, and of course all the other things, eating good food, time with friends, petting my cat, hugging my sweetie. All of those things are maintaining my essence. And, and I think it's just, I love that concept cuz it's like, what nurtures that?

[00:59:38] And what takes away from that. Like we could just look at everything in our lives and I'm like, wow. No wonder we're feeling stressed and sick and outta balance. Cuz if we're just like in traffic, and in a stressful job, and in a stressful relationship. And person because of our skin color or identity, we're target of hate in society.

[01:00:00] Like, it's hard to be bright and full of your essence. So I really feel like I said that, and it's Audre Lorde who said it first, self-care is a political act, like taking care of ourselves when the forces of the world are trying every hard to, you know, steal our essence, or diminish it.

[01:00:25] I do think that's again a way to be very political by taking care of ourselves, and then extending that to the care of our community. Like that was another point I hopefully comes across to my book. It's not just enough to be well right and take care of ourselves, but we are part of a circle, we're part of our community. Like we heal in community. 

[01:00:51] And I feel like it's a responsibility for those of us who've had the privilege to receive teachings of whatever it is, acupuncture or reiki or curanderismo like, it's our responsibility to offer this to our community. And, and especially the ones who don't have access. So that's, I hope, where we're moving in the future.

[01:01:12] I'm gonna start visioning it out, like just more spaces that do that. And also at the same time, find finding ways to resource support the healers. Who are offering those services. 

[01:01:28] Josie: Yeah, I think that's one of the things I love most about curanderismo is that it's two things. That it's not just something that you access when you're sick, but that it's something that can be a way of life and a way of interacting with, like you said, the universe and the earth and your ancestors. 

[01:01:47] And then also that it is a political act in a lot of ways because it's offering that new vision and that new plan for a healthcare system that works for our communities and takes into account not just one small piece of the puzzle, but many pieces of the puzzle.

[01:02:07] And yeah. So I love that, that it's, that it's so revolutionary in that way, even though it's such an old practice. 

[01:02:14] Atava: Yeah. Maybe perhaps it always was revolutionary, you know? Like back in the times of the conquest, people just kept taking care of themselves and their communities and keeping knowledge hidden and underground and totally privately. Guarded and preserved for 500 years. 

[01:02:34] Josie: Right. So, cool. So Atava, how can people find you and support you and your work?

[01:02:41] Atava: So yeah, my book, the Curanderx Toolkit, I would recommend that people go to your local indie bookstore and ask them to buy it. But it can be bought through Heyday Books, which is my publisher, the one, an online book or online sale.

[01:02:58] I have two websites: ancestralapothecary.com is my personal website, ancestralapothecaryschool.com Is the school that I started, which is in the process, hopefully by the time this is live, transitioning to a new steward. But I will continue to be connected to the school, so through ancestral apothecary school.

[01:03:25] I do teach the Curanderx Toolkit class that will be held again in probably starting in March of 2023. I'm also thinking of teaching a, a dream workshop. That was chapter 13 in the book. That will kind of go from the early, beginning of the Gregorian year, until, you know, the first couple of weeks, but on, on Instagram, I could be, I'm at @curanderxtoolkit.

[01:03:50] Josie: Okay, excellent. And I'll include all of that in the show notes for people. So they're easily accessible. Of course. And I will be taking all your courses. 

[01:03:59] Atava: Awesome. Yeah. Well then I'll see you again. 

[01:04:03] Josie: Oh, thank you so much for being here Atava. This was such an honor for me. Thank you. 

[01:04:07] Atava: Yeah. Well thank you for the invitation and the really thoughtful questions, like it was really a good interview.

[01:04:14] Josie: Aw, thank you. 

[01:04:16] Thanks for listening to the Intersectional Fertility podcast. To get customized fertility recommendations based on your Whole Self Fertility Method element, join my mailing list at intersectionalfertility.com and get immediate access to my two minute quiz. 

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