By Jennifer Nguyen and Kaitlyn Ngo, Staff Writers
Last Tuesday, Adriana Acosta’s Advanced Placement (AP) Spanish students learned the basic techniques of a folk remedy healer (la curandera) using a lemon and an egg.
The AP Spanish course is split into five temas (subjects): personal and public personalities, families and communities, worldwide challenges, beauty, and technology and science. Tema five covers the role of technology and sciences in various communities, as well as the practices and perspectives towards health issues in Spanish-speaking communities.
The AP Spanish course heavily focuses on the similarities and differences between Spanish-speaking communities and our very own community in Fountain Valley. The impact of medicine is a very important aspect in both communities, however, the medical practices used in Spanish-speaking communities are typically unfamiliar to students. With this in thought, Acosta decided to have students perform their own body and mind cleansing.
The night before, Acosta instructed students to bring lemons to class in order to participate in the practice of traditional medicine, based on the culture of indigenous communities. Indigenous communities have practiced this ritual for centuries. Traditional medicine’s capabilities is believed to extend to countless remedies such as heartbreak, sickness, depression, marriage, etc.
In this particular practice, the lemon is believed to cleanse your body and mind from negative energy and thoughts. It is also believed that afterwards people feel happier and less stressed without the burden of an overwhelming medical bill. According to curanderas, the instructions are as easy as one, two, three:
- Get a lemon and wash it thoroughly.
- Rub the lemon first on your face and forehead to cleanse the mind.
- Continue rubbing the lemon on the top of your head and towards the back.
- Move towards the spine of the back.
- Proceed to rub the lemon over both shoulders and arms.
- Continue to brush over both feet.
- Rub lemon around your stomach.
- Finally, throw the lemon and the negative energy away.
The lemon ritual is believed a great and easy way to spiritually cleanse your body and soul in the comfort of your own home. In addition to cleansing using these rituals. Acosta also taught students how to interpret their thoughts and future based on the crack of an egg. Additional materials of a glass of water and salt are required. The instructions are relatively similar to those of the lemon ritual: rub the egg all around your body. Afterwards, crack the egg into the glass of salt water.
The results of the cracked egg’s formation in the water is also rumored to reveal truths about the individual. There are many interpretations that can be made from the egg that only a professional curandero could fully interpret.
If you would like to learn more about these traditions, you can do more research and find out about different remedies as well. Those that believe the methods of the curandero can seek out natural remedies and rituals. If you’d like to partake in a traditional ritual, you can also contact professional curanderas as well.
