Mexican herbal steam baths (temazcal)

Traditional construction of a Temazcal

A modern update on the Temazcal

'During her thirty years working as a nurse in an Oaxacan hospital, Mariana Emilia Arroyo Cabrera witnessed Western medicine’s neglect of the whole patient. In fact, she saw it from several perspectives—in the operating room, as a hospital administrator, and at the Universidad Benito Juarez, where she trained nurses.

“There were thousands of beds in the hospital and only a few doctors,” she says. “Their consultations were short; they didn’t have time to ask about the patient’s problems. The doctors filled out lots of prescriptions, but many illnesses are caused by the heart and the mind, and those were not being addressed.”

'About six years ago, she decided that Western medical treatments left many patients incompletely healed. Consequently, she began to heal others holistically, using a centuries-old traditional herbal steam bath called a temazcal.'

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Temazcal

The Traditonal Mexican Sweat Bath

'Some twenty years or so ago, a renewed interest in the ancient sweat bath, still called by the same name used by the Aztecs, the Temazcal, sprang up in Mexico. It's a part of the movement, now so widespread in this country, to return to the healing practices preserved in indigenous medicine. These sweat baths, still a living tradition in many parts of the country, are usually small round stone or mud structures looking rather like old fashioned bee-hives. Many more began to be constructed everywhere, and more and more often, people who are ailing will turn to them for relief from their complaints.

Sweat baths, of course, are used in many cultures of the world, both ancient and modern. The sauna of Scandinavia is famous, as is the hamem of north Africa and Turkey. In the ruins of Pompeii there are the remains of sweat baths, and in India, people lay in the sun, covered with leaves to protect themselves from the burning rays of the sun, to bring on sweating. It is, of course, a well-known part of the culture of our own Indians, and in this form the sweat lodge is enjoying renewed popularity.'

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