A guide to healing mind, body and spirit – a curandera reveals traditional aztec secrets of physical and spiritual health. • With an introduction by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women Who Run with the Wolves

In the West, we have doctors to heal the body, psychiatrists to heal the mind and the church to heal the spirit. In South American tradition there is the curandera who treats the whole person with a combination of massage, counselling, herbalism and ritual. This form of healing enforces a mind-body-soul connection.

While studying nursing, Elena Avila began to piece together both her own healing heritage and to uncover the thriving healthcare system which many Mexicans still rely on today. Her fascination led to an apprenticeship with a master curandero in Mexico and today she incorporates this holistic approach with her Western psychiatric training in a successful practice in the USA. As a curandera, Avila deals with physical and emotional disorders like heartache, rage, bad luck and the evil eye and also applies the healing to Western physical disorders such as migraine, eating disorders and diabetes. She also shows how she has healed people with counselling and soul retrieval, so they can reclaim lost parts of themselves from traumatic situations.