Midwives Learn Natural Healing Methods for Arthritis
The midwives of CODECOT received a workshop on arthritis today about its causes and ways of prevention, as well as how to treat it with plant medicine and prevent it with healthy anti-inflammatory additions to the diet.
21 of HSP's supported AMA women circle members are participating in the 2-year training to become licensed midwives. They have completed a year of their studies so far and are currently spending one day a week doing their 3-month long hospital practicum where they work alongside doctors in outpatient care, labor and birth, postpartum care, immunizations (vaccines as well as home visits to high-risk pregnant women) and emergency care.
Traditional healing with plant medicine is still practiced in rural communities but is also being lost rapidly. In today's workshop, many of the midwives in training not only learned from the presenter but shared their own personal and family anti-inflammatory recipes in front of the group to contribute to the discussion.
In Maya medicine, health as seen as holistic and therefore one must live according to the laws of nature and society. Maya Cosmovision says that human beings are not separate from the universe and nature, and those forces directly influence our health. When disease occurs, local midwives and health promoters work to help the afflicted return to living in harmony with nature and the world around them. This is why is it important to continue to reinforce the culturally appropriate, economically accessible and geographically available resource of plants to use in prevention and treatment of diseases in indigenous rural communities.
