Hello, I'm Cheo Torres, Eliseo Torres, I'm an administrator and professor at the University of New Mexico. I teach a summer course, curanderismo of Mexico the Southwest traditional medicine without borders. Today we have two speakers that are going to do an excellent job. The first one is Rita, Rita Navarrete. Rita is from Mexico City. She has a clinic in Mexico City. She also has a clinic in Cuernavaca, Morelos Mexico, and lectures throughout Mexico and the US. She's part of the summer class and she will be doing a demonstration that I'll mention in just a few minutes. We're so happy you're here Rita. Tonita, our second presenter is Tonita Gonzales. Tonita is from Gonzales Ranch in Albuquerque in New Mexico. Tonita has been an apprentice with Rita for several years. Tonita studied in Mexico for over a year. She has a clinic in Albuquerque in the North Valley, and both of them will be presenting a session on Ventosas. What are ventosas? Ventosas is what we call cupping, Chinese cupping, very different from Mexican or somewhat different from Mexican cupping of ventosas to relieve stress, pain, sciatica, if you are suffering from sciatica pain. They will be demonstrating this with our staff, a UNM staff. You can't see his face but he is Blas Rodriguez. Blas works at the University of New Mexico and he's also a graduate students. So, Blas thank you for demonstrating and lending us your body. With that, I'll turn it over to our presenters. Thank you. Thank you. Good day. I'm going to share with you part of our traditional medicine. I love the ventosas, the fire cupping. Traditionally ventosas, in Mexico, we would use glasses depending on the necessity of a person or we could use jars. This traditional form of doing fire cupping, especially when we don't have the, isn't easily accessible. The round, these are typically used in Chinese medicine. These are originally come from Chinese medicine. These are hot fire ventosas. These are for cold cupping, we use sometimes. But in this moment, what I'm going to explain, I'm going to show you a way to apply them that's very, very simple and practical. After the material that I'm sharing with you, we need the pinching scissors. These are cotton balls, cotton balls in Spanish we say "torundas". We need alcohol. The alcohol that we prefer to use in Mexico, we use alcohol theicania, but here in the United States it's very difficult to get that, so you can usually get it over Costco and even at some Walmart's, it's a 99% rubbing alcohol. We want the cotton ball that is sufficiently wet with alcohol, so we don't have an accident and that alcohol doesn't run down the scissors or the alcohol will burn. We're going to put, we always have a piece of material for any necessity that you have in case of an emergency. A glass with water so that after when it's on fire we deposit the cotton balls within the water. In a spray bottle we want to have a little bit of alcohol. So, if we wanted to create more pressure in a fire cup, then we would spray it with alcohol on the inside. This is Pomada ointment or a salve that we prepare ourselves. It has 18 different hot plants that we prepare. So, normally when we're making any type of ointment, we look if it's a hot plant or cold plant, and this consists of different hot plants. But we also need a spray of oil but also with plants, and essential oils to have different forms. This is an oil that we prepare that has, it's for even stronger pain. For the people that come with us, if they had a cervical problem, or in the middle of their back, or of the sciatica of the lumbar region. We will try to always explore the body. Here, we're going to do is we're going to show you a demonstration of hot fire cupping. It's very slow and gentle. You want to make sure that when you're lifting the cups that you break the seal with your finger. We will press the cupping in the muscle areas along the sides of the spinal column without touching the spinal discs. Because basically what we're doing, what we know is that muscles contract because the way that they become uncontracted is that there's no blood flow into that area. So, what the ventosas do is they pull that blood and they force it to go there so that when you have a contraction and you remove the ventosa, it naturally relaxes. It helps us also to warm the muscle of a way that's really deep that you can reach the depth of the muscle. You activate your circulation and the pressure that helps to lift the muscle helps us so that the muscle becomes warm. You need to do it and be really sure of yourself so that you're not afraid of what you're doing. You can notice you form a spiral along the back. Here what we'll do is we'll lubricate the back. So, we want to lubricate the back so that we can run the fire cup. When we are working with somebody and we can't do chiropractic work on them and they have a problem in their cervicals or their dorsal region, their back or the lumbar region, I would use a ventosa. She spraying it with alcohol to create more pressure. Here what I'm going to do and this will help me to get more pressure, and especially in the lumbar region. You do it without fear. Basically when a lot of people have like move their back and they're not in place so that when you got a chiropractor adjusted, we can adjust it using the cups. Or when people have fallen really hard and hurt their caucuses, we're able to pull it back up to where it needs to be. If he had a pain going around his shoulder blade, I would do this, and I would form it so that it leaves the muscle and relaxes and releases that contraction. I turn it from one side to the other. Then I'll take out the tension and we release it out. I'm going to it on this this side now. When you don't have the experience, you'll touch first the body, touching the muscle to see where it runs, because you only want to run the ventosas in this case on wherever the muscle runs. If I need to apply fire cupping in the cervical region, you'll use one that's maybe smaller. You would make a zigzag form. Then as you go down all the way to the lumbar region to align the spinal column. I do this as many times as necessary until I see that the muscle's relaxed. So, I want to maintain contact, especially in the lumbar region. Here I would apply the ointment with the hot plants for pain. I would turn it and massage going with the muscle, always touching a body with a lot of respect, with lot of tenderness. I really try to concentrate so that I become sensitive to the needs of the body. So, I can maintain contact and communication with the body. I need to have my posture at a very comfortable position as if I was doing the dance and movement. I go from one side to the other. I need my hands to be sure, and my body needs to be very relaxed because it's also very important that when we're doing this medicine that we take care of our own bodies. I breathe softly, but deeply as if I'm pulling that energy and exhaling. Then I exhale softly, releasing the nervous energy that he has because I also don't want to stay with that tension. So, you're wanting to pull it out and sweep the body and pull it out. We do that specifically with our breath. As we're inhaling, we're going to pull, and as we pull down, we're going to exhale to release that so that we're releasing the energy from the body. Here I'm doing a different type of treatment and massage. In some occasions, when I need to do another practice of sciatica, what I'm going to do is protect the body. Especially when the body is warm, you want to protect. We've warmed it with the fire cupping. We're going to do the practice on the sciatica. To do it on the gluteus muscle. So, your sciatica runs from your gluteus muscle all the way through the back of your leg. So, what you want to do is relax the muscle from the top so that it can relax, and pull that tension out of that. A lot of people suffer from sciatica. So, for us, it's not as much as you pulled a muscle, but more of the stress of where you carry it is carried in the muscle. So, this is just a way of pulling that to allow that muscle to relax. But I'm going to try to liberate. What I have practiced with fire cupping is to try to apply where it's contrary indicated that you would not apply by your coupling if you had like varicose veins or veins that are altered in any way, or also we would put fire cupping on tattoos or a scar. Depending on the necessity of the cup, it's how you would want the different types of material in hand, and we're going to do is the application. Here, we're doing it quickly because this is just a small demonstration. Normally, this therapy would actually take about an hour to complete. We would again apply the ointment, and you would lubricate. Here, I would do now in this way in zigzag but down the leg. The calves are a huge area in which people normally carry a lot of stress. So, when you can relieve the muscle stress on the calves, then they also feel better emotionally. Chinese medicine typically they don't run the way she's running the muskets. They would hold it in one place and actually to a point that sometimes we do some fire cupping where we call it sungrea, where you'd actually put a lancet in bleed appoint, an acupuncture point. But in this case, we're doing this more for muscle relaxation. So, we'd do more running of them so that you usually would not leave the body marked up as you do this type of fire cupping. We would massage this area after from all of the leg from the ankle, and we could use different techniques of how we move our hands. You could run through the whole body the same way, and that you would apply and you'd sweep the body from the ankle, inhale and exhale as you pull out the energy as deep as you can, moving that energy, moving your body, pushing, and inhale, and exhale as you pull. You always want to protect the area since we're applying the fire cup. We could use this technique of the massage of [inaudible]. But we also can work with people when they have problems with inflammation, especially after they've given birth. We're going to turn the body forward. So, you'll turn towards me. We're going to lift up the sheet, and if you'll face towards me, and just flip. Doing a [inaudible] is very important. That's a way doing hands-on healing. For the question of time right now, I am not completing this treatment, I'm just showing you a demonstration. But I believe that the technique is very important. What I will do sometimes when there's a problem on the wrist, because they moved it wrong or they need to be adjusted on the wrist. This dislocated or moved it out of where it needs to be. I would again apply fire cupping, and I would run it as much as I could to loosen where there's been inflammation, and it's been dislocated or a nerve has been pinched, we would use the fire cupping to release that. We use this technique when we've lifted something, or you've fallen or you've lift something and you've pinched a nerve. I'm going to try to warm the hand as much as I can. The skin, you'll see will start becoming pink. With the chromium on the shoulder blade, I'm going to put the ointment. So, she's putting the hot ointment again and then a little bit of lubrication from the oil. I give the necessary hands-on treatments and on the fingers, specifically to make them relax such that she can adjust it. After I've given a whole area hands-on healing, I really warm the area. I would warm it with my hands, and I will turn it softly, and pull it back into its place to where it needs to be. Go to another area, making sure that everything's in alignments. There, it has come into its place and I pull softly. This is the technique that we use when we talk about hands-on healing. If it's a problem with the stomach, if there's a lot of inflammation. We use it specifically when people have given birth, after the cesarean for example. When women have normally given birth, we do this type of treatment. Because when they've had the cesarean, they normally get air trapped and they can have a lot of abdominal pain. So, this helps relax the muscles. Especially, if they have any tightness around where the sides of the scar, it prevents him from building a scar tissue. We always go from left to right and around the belly button. This is if you are through the hands of a clock counterclockwise. We would do this technique the times that are necessary to complete the treatment. Here, I would apply an oil to pull down the inflammation of plants, to remove the air within the womb. I would do soft treatment, so I could take out the inflammation and just help the person relax, but this also removes pain. Then on top, we would put a compress or maybe if it would be some live plants and then a towel. Like always, time goes quickly and is never enough time. But I would like to share with you, but for me, the fire cupping is excellence, especially when we come out of the temazcal, which is a Mexican sweat lodge, which we are both the my temazcaleras. Thank you very much. Rita, thank you. Thank you, Tonita. Thank you too. What a wonderful presentation on Ventosas fire cupping. Blas, how do you feel, Blas? Well, very good. Very good, wonderful. Blas, we also want to thank you. Thank you. Ventosas are traditionally fire cupping. But in Mexico, they're done different from the Chinese cupping style to relieve stress, sciatica is that what a patient is suffering from, or just a muscular pain. So, thank you so much, Rita, again and Tonita. Until the next module, we'll see you soon. Thank you. Thank you.
