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Summary: A STANDING OVATION FOR ELENA AVILA!
Review: As a practicing Curandera I found WOMAN WHO GLOWS IN THE DARK inspiring, helpful and right on target. A long overdue blueprint for getting in touch with our inner and ancient knowing and healing powers. I applaud her life's work and what it took to write about it. I am ecstatic that this healing tradition is now out there for the advantage of all. The guiding light has been lit - let the healing begin! I have been very privileged to work with Elena, to be in her life, to be her sister. Irma Martinez Mossner - Oxlahun Ahau
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Summary: Refreshing View of a Beautiful Healing Culture!
Review: Elena Avila delightfully takes her readers through an enlightening and joyful exploration of the traditional art of a Curandera(healer). She shows us the vibrant beauty of what "woman" is and the magnificent power within all of us to heal.The book truly brings to all of us the great power of love and ritual in our lives and how important it is to "remember" our past pain with respect, and then move forward to create new, more wonderful lives!
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Summary: Refreshing View of a Beautiful Healing Culture!
Review: Elena Avila delightfully takes her readers through an enlightening and joyful exploration of the traditional art of a Curandera(healer). She shows us the vibrant beauty of what "woman" is and the magnificent power within all of us to heal.The book truly brings to all of us the great power of love and ritual in our lives and how important it is to "remember" our past pain with respect, and then move forward to create new, more wonderful lives!
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Summary: Patch Adams, meet Elena Avila
Review: Elena Avila describes a compassionate healing art with soul and love. She also points out how we need to regain our own power to heal ourselves rather than giving up all responsibility for our own health as the western medical business practices decree we should. This book comes at a time when many are ready to take this responsibility back as they feel slighted by their current health community.
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Summary: Open your mind an dyour heart
Review: Elena Avila describes a compassionate healing art with soul and love. She also points out how we need to regain our own power to heal ourselves rather than giving up all responsibility for our own health as the western medical business practices decree we should. This book comes at a time when many are ready to take this responsibility back as they feel slighted by their current health community.
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Summary: An incredibly empowering, inspiring, enlightening book!!!
Review: Elena Avila's vision is years ahead of our present health care system, which fails to treat the whole person. We send the body to a doctor, the mind to a psychiatrist, the spirit to a church. Elena's heartfelt book explains why this doesn't work. She explores the mysteries of curanderismo in a straightforward, sensible way. No wonder this system of healing has worked for people for centuries. After finishing Elena's book, I found myself longing for a curandera to heal my own "susto" or soul wounds. Her rational explanations of folk diseases are treasures of understanding. She's right that people are frustrated with Western medicine because it lacks "heart." Her intelligent approach to healing is brave and she truly does have a foot in two worlds. This book is one I'll re-read again and again.
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Summary: The vision of a new health system for mind/body/spirit.
Review: Elena Avila's vision is years ahead of our present health care system, which fails to treat the whole person. We send the body to a doctor, the mind to a psychiatrist, the spirit to a church. Elena's heartfelt book explains why this doesn't work. She explores the mysteries of curanderismo in a straightforward, sensible way. No wonder this system of healing has worked for people for centuries. After finishing Elena's book, I found myself longing for a curandera to heal my own "susto" or soul wounds. Her rational explanations of folk diseases are treasures of understanding. She's right that people are frustrated with Western medicine because it lacks "heart." Her intelligent approach to healing is brave and she truly does have a foot in two worlds. This book is one I'll re-read again and again.
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Summary: Wonderfully alive & full of wisdom--just like Elana herself!
Review: Elena's book is wonderfully alive, and full of spirit and wisdom--just like Elana herself. The people who had the good sense and great fortune to be treated by her were very lucky people, and so are we as we take the opportunity to read about her life and work. WOMAN WHO GLOWS IN THE DARK not only takes us into the primary world of healing through curanderismo (expressed for the first time by one who is actually practicing it, rather than someone outside looking in), but also has the capacity to inform our own life and spirit. Joy has helped Elena do a wonderful job of telling this fascinating story. Beginning with Elena's own experience and on into the healing stories of others, this book will keep you deeply interested. OPEN YOUR MIND AND HEART AS YOU OPEN THIS BOOK - THERE IS MUCH TO GAIN.
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Summary: Her medicine is on time for our multicultural ailments.
Review: Elena's reappropriation of curanderismo is relevant for us today not only because of the curative wisdom the tradition maintains and advances. It is a fruit to be savored for our times because of curanderismo's roots in multiple contexts. Is not one of the concerns of our period how to integrate the many diverse manifestations of human spirit in a loving and fulfilling approach to life? Top curanderas are well schooled in these matters. Elena's book is a wonderful example of cultural inclusiveness and assimilation that not only expands health care modalities it also show what is possible for us to become as we explore our human potential personally and collectively.
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Summary: Seeds of Ancient Cultures Flowering into New Plants
Review: For the last twelve years I have had the privilege and the joy of editing and writing books with healers from the indigenous world. I learned about the incredible medicine of Africa from my friend Malidoma Some while working on "Of Water and the Spirit," and the healing ways of the Maya Indians with Martin Prechtel while editing his books "Secrets of the Talking Jaguar" and "Honey in the Heart." I also wrote about Maya shamanism in "Maya Cosmos: Three Thousand Years on the Shaman's Path." Recently, I explored the 40,000-year-old healing traditions of the Australian Aborigines while writing a book with a man whom the aborigines healed of MS. All these experiences have taught me that the medical systems of these cultures are far, far more advanced than "modern" Western medicine. The vision of the world and of our human potential that indigenous cultures offer to us is breathtaking in its wholeness and scope. We desperately need to hear this message today. The medicine described in "Woman Who Glows in the Dark" is a practical, earthy, and timely gift. Curanderismo, which has its roots in indigenous medical practices, is truly one of the most creative, subtle, holistic, and self-revealiing medicines that I have ever encountered. It teaches people to be not just passive recipients of healthcare, but to become "co-creators" of joyous wellness with the guidance of God and the curandero. Modern people often want quick fixes for their health problems. There are no quick fixes in this book, but extraordinary stories of people finding wellness through their dedication to healing their souls and their emotions, as well as their bodies. "Curanderismo teaches that it is not enough to diagnose a physical problem, as so many modern medical doctors do, without also looking into what is going on in the heart and soul of the patient. Each illness is a story, and only the patient can tell that story." I know from years of teaching workshops that a story, rightly told, heals. "Woman Who Glows in the Dark" is the first comprehensive book ever to be written about curanderismo. I believe it is no accident that the seeds of ancient cultures are flowering into new plants at this time in our history. The Mayan prophecies speak about the regeneration of the Tree of Life, that tree that connects the Underworld, the Earth, the Heavens, and on which all we humans and all of creation hang as fruit. Curanderismo is one of the magnificent fruits of this tree. Writing this book has truly renewed me and I honor and offer gratitude to the ancestors, and to all the men and women who have kept the fruits and seeds of curanderismo alive and fertile for all of these years. I offer this book as a gift of healing for people of all races and ethnic backgrounds.
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