Hello, I'm Eliseo Cheo Torres, administrator and professor at the University of New Mexico. In one of the classes that I teach, it's a summer class is on traditional medicine of Mexico and the southwest. With us today is an important acupuncturist who is able to integrate Mesoamerican Mayan acupuncture, acupressure with that of the Chinese culture. If we look at the roots of curanderismo, which is the art of Mexican folk medicine, there's many, and one of them is Chinese medicine and we're able to borrow from different cultures. I have with me Sofia Salazar. Sophia is an instructor at a Holistic Medicine Program in Cuernavaca Morelos, Mexico. Sophia is a biologist by profession and she's been able to bring her talents as a biologist into acupressure, acupuncture and other things that she's going to share with us and tell us how she works with hot and cold, the Yin and Yang concept, but the Mesoamerican way. I also want to introduce Tonita Gonzales. Tonita is also a healer, a Curandera, and she studied in Mexico. She studied under Sophia and now she has her clinic here in northern part of Albuquerque in the North Valley. With us also is Aitha, Aitha Sulla Samora. Aitha is also from Mexico and she's also apprentice under several curanderas. So with that, I'll pass it onto Sophia. Thank you Tonita. Thank you. Welcome. For the Mesoamerican medicine, first, we start with the theme of hot and cold. When our body is not balanced, we have a part that is cold and a part that is warm, and that balance can change our mind. For that, Mesoamerican medicine tells us that any different situation can cause problems within our body. Our Mayan grandparents, they had a lot of wisdom. This point, Mesoamerican medicine would say that they had to puncture that point at least once in their life. What they would say, is that you had to remove the essence, the bad essence, that from birth that you would have to remove. The goal would either to bleed that point or the goal would be to leave the needle there so that you can remove hot wind, which is the cause of the bad feelings within the body. We have another point that our grandparents Mayans would use. In Chinese medicine, you would say the road of Shen. So, there wasn't a coincidence that both the Meso-American Chinese acupuncture and the Mayan acupuncture were identical, the concepts were identical. Because this point will bleed, because the road to your spirit could also be blocked. So I will go to feel the body of my patient. But also our Mayan grandparents, they would use the spines of the maguey plant, or they would pinch the body with the spines of fish. So, now we use sterile needles. But our grandparents used to sterilize them with Garlic, which is a natural antibiotic. Simply with that, with natural medicine, that our mother nature gives, they would sterilize their needles. Currently, some people still traditionally use the garlic to sterilize. With this that I am moving now, I'm removing the heat that has become stuck. We'll know that the needle can't and won't come out anymore, because the body is saying it needs this therapy, so that it can remove the heat that is out of balance. Because I know that there's heat here, but I can also feel that within the feet it is cold. So now we'll do a therapy using heat to help and regulate even more. We could use this cigarette that is made of bug warts, you could purchase this here in Chinese stores. For us in Mesoamerica, we make this. You need to wait until it is completely red and hot and strong. So we'll start to warm the bottom of the foot so that this heat warms the lowest part of the body. This soft heat will rise and will nutrify. Sometimes it can be contra-indicated. Because we find heat here and in the head. This swarve, this soft heat helps me so that the liquids will go up, and then the heat starts coming down. It's refreshing, because the feet are cold. I need to warm the feet, when I feel the feet. So when I warm the feet basically what I'm doing is I'm starting to be balanced within the body. Another technique that we use in Mesoamerica, we say scraping. This scraping helps us to free, liberate, so what I can do, I'll put a tiny bit of oil, and I recommend the olive oil but she just need very little. In this case you wouldn't need a specific aroma. Because I'm finding heat in the center part of the body, I could do this on the arm, in the leg, and the back of my patient can liberate even more heat. I find this part of her body is tense, and the tension tells me how much heat there is within the body. This scraping is very soft, but it really calls what we will find here in the body. Here are the where I'm actually scraping you'll find the exact canals that we would use in Mesoamerican medicine. It's the exact point and canal that the Chinese used as well, which we know is that Mesoamerican medicine is a little bit older than Chinese medicine. Approximately about 1000 years, it's older than Chinese medicine. What is interesting is to know the fact that it is really interesting is to really recognize that the same points in Mesoamerican medicine and Chinese medicine are identical. So now, I find this canal that has heat. This exact point has heat within it, and here it is. If I do this scraping on the back, then I would have a better response from the body. Because for us on our back, our points are very representative along the canals within our back. The Mesoamerican medicine is exact with identical to Chinese medicine. We have a structure in Mexico of a young person, where it represents the exact points that they used within Mesoamerican medicine. But within our Medicine in Mesoamerica, Chinese medicine has 365 but in Mesoamerican acupuncture, there actually exists more points. There's a study in which they did the comparison of the two points, and it was surprising to find the points to calm emotions and to remove heat from the stomach to regulate your intestinal movements, they're identical. Mesoamerican medicine then tells us the importance of heat over cold is health, so I cannot get cold. What I need to do instead is to regulate, and that regulation of the temperature you can do is for me to feel, for me to recognize my body, so then I know when I have a cold that has penetrated, and for me to recognize that within my body, I know what to do. I know what to do from that point of view from regulating both the heat and the cold. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's an honor to have Sophia here with us today. What an excellent presentation, being able to identify the illnesses related to hot and cold, which is very similar to Chinese acupuncture, but somewhat different because this is Mesoamerican. So Sophia has done a study and it's an excellent instructor and we appreciate her being here. Gonzalez, thank you so much. Thank you. An excellent interpretation and translation. She feels great. Very good. Well, thank you very much.
