Indian tradition draws willing patients from around the world to sweat out their illnesses
[reproduced in full as printed in the Globe and Mail, Wednesday, May 31, 2000] by Elizabeth Fullerton
Ajijic, Mexico - Banging drums and singing while crouched naked in a pitch-black, roasting-hot brick igloo might well induce panic rather than calm in most people. But Mexican shaman Katuza, who says he has cured 20,000 people of a range of illnesses, swears by the ancient Indian tradition of the temazcal: a fire-heated human oven or steam bath, which he says has important healing properties. "In there things happen that we still don't know [how to explain]," Katuza, 49, said in an interview at his home in the lakeside town of Ajijic in central Jalisco state.
Drawn by word of mouth, people travel from as far as Japan and New Zealand to be cured by Katuza and his pupil-cum-muse Hikulima, 23. Both names are Nahuatl, the Aztec language.
The point of the temazcal, used by Aztec, Mayans and other tribes more than 500 years ago, is to sweat out illnesses and redistribute energy, Katuza said. "The main thing is to transform the person, and that is done through fire." Literally, temaz and calli mean bath and house in Nahuatl. "You'll go on a voyage," Katuza told three wide-eyed visitors. "You'll see whether you prefer hospital or this."
Katuza, long brown-grey hair swaying as he moves, starts the treatment with a full massage in the courtyard, kneading his patient's body into a rag-doll-like state of relaxation. "With our hands we detect what's wrong with someone," he said. "We don't look at the clothes or listen to the stories people tell but the story their bodies tell."
Katuza said he was taught how to heal by his uncle when he was a child but spent 18 years on the streets as an alcoholic before deciding to turn his life around. His heavily lined face bears witness to his previous trauma. "I was nearly paralyzed, my body was nearly dead and I couldn't talk. At that point I made a pledge to God to help me and I would never drink again, and I haven't," he said.
Katuza's modest yellow-painted adobe house stands at one end of his tranquil garden planted with cactuses, herbs, palms and flowers. A cow's skull hangs from the window pane, along with an eagle's wing, a crucifix and various magic charms. The domed temazcal, roughly two meters in diameter and 1.5 meters high, sits squat against the garden wall, with an adjoining compartment outside where wood and leaves are burned to heat the inside chamber. A plunge pool beckons nearby. The temazcal is said to help gynecological complaints, the nervous system, breathing and muscular and bone problems. After the massage, the next stage of the treatment is to slap thick, cooling mud fetched by Katuza from nearby mountains all over the body. Once the mud cakes, patients are hosed down and led, naked, to the temazcal. "People say hell is hot because they've never been inside a temazcal," Katuza said with a loud, hearty laugh. Inside, he seals off the entrance with a thick blanket and utters a prayer. "Welcome to this blessed temazcal, we hope for good vibrations with the earth, the trees, the lake...."
About four people can fit in the average temazcal, seen as symbolizing a womb. All must introduce themselves. Then Katuza offers up a blessing to the four elements, represented by the cardinal points, and throws water against the hot wall, sending the temperature up a few notches each time. Suddenly he grabs a gourd and begins pounding it. His deep voice booms out in song: "Red parrot, red parrot, where are you eating? Here there's nothing, pure peyote."
Peyote is a hallucinogenic cactus used by the Huichol Indians in religious rites.
Hukulima joins with a flute until the scorching air is filled with rhythms and chanting and the smell of eucalyptus and sage plants, which lie strews across the earthen floor. As the heat rises in the confined chamber, hair and skin burn and the air is almost too hot to breathe. "Many people haven't been without their clothes on [in front of others] or in a dark room so small. You have to learn to think differently, leave your problems, your sins, your fears behind. Here everything's equal," Katuza said.
When the heat becomes unbearable, it is time to make a dash for the cold plunge bath. Then Katuza wraps each person in blankets from head to toe and lays them out in the courtyard to drift off into a gentle sleep to the sound of birdsong. The sensation of release is overwhelming.
Mexicans, though staunch Roman Catholics, also have a lot of superstition and alternative traditions. In the drought-afflicted northern state of Zacatecas, seven town mayors recently called in a shaman in the desperate hope he could invoke his rain gods and save the rapidly dying livestock and farmland, according to TV Azteca.
Katuza and Hikulima travel around the country building temazcals for impoverished communities, many of which can pay only in offerings or pledges to their saints. Katuza laments the loss of traditional techniques: "The traditions are being lost because the young New Age lot are not curers. I know only a handful of real healers."
He lived for six years with the Huichols, based mainly in northern Mexico, where he said he learned to heal their way, using feathers and mirrors. "Scientists, for all their modern technology, never knew how to use a mirror and the sun to detect illnesses," he said, holding a pocket-sized mirror at an angle to shine the sun's reflection onto the chest of a patient. "When someone has a tumor it comes up as a small black point," he said. "It's very clear to detect."