Sastun: My Apprenticeship with a Maya Healer

weakness in the legs, and constipation. Your periods are early, then late.
You see clots of blood, dark blood. You feel tired often. Is all this true?”
“Why yes, tatito, it is all just as you say!” Lola shot me a look of shock
and wonder. “What should I do?”
“It is what I will do, not you,” he answered as he went to work.
Deep, deep into her flesh he dug his gnarled, expert hands. Lola groaned
and stiffened in discomfort. She covered her face with her hands and turned
away.
“Come here, Rosita, feel this,” he said.
He manipulated her abdomen to expose under his fingers a soft, bulbous
object off to the right side just above the pelvic bone. Copying his hand
movements, I too could feel the uterus. I saw what he meant: it did seem too
low and too far to the right.
“Now watch,” said Don Elijio, smiling. He leaned over Lola and pulled
upward with his hands, dragged her skin to a center position, and then
jiggled the flesh vigorously. He repeated this again and again, then slowly
pushed from the right side of her abdomen to the center, and from the
hollow above the pelvic bone upward. As he kneaded and massaged, he
whispered prayers.
I could see the uterus responding and moving. “Now feel this,” he said.
I put my hands on the woman’s pelvis. Where the uterus had been just
minutes before was a soft hollow. The organ had moved to its proper place
quickly and, this time, almost painlessly under his deft care.
He showed Lola how to use a faja, a band that is tied around the pelvis
to help hold and heal the uterine ligaments. As she sat up and straightened
her clothes, he cautioned her sternly about going barefoot on cold floors,
especially cement floors. He told her not to take cold drinks, then warned
her against having sexual relations with her husband when she had her
period. The latter, he explained, was the greatest abomination ever
perpetrated on women.
“The semen mixes with menstrual fluids and causes large clots to
adhere to the uterine wall,” he told her. “This leads to ulcerations and
tumors.”
He motioned for us to follow him back into the other room, where he
rummaged through his plant bags and prepared the Sacca Todo mixture.
“Drink the medicine for ten days before menstruation for the next three
months,” he said, “then come back when the medicine is finished.” He told