Natural Medicine
(View Mayan Spirituality here)

Guatemala is a multiethnic and multicultural country. Each community has different traditions and understands the human being in the way that its culture configures it, both in the conception of the human being as an individual and in the relationships that the human being establishes with his or her surrounding environment. For that reason, in a multicultural country as many different styles of medicine as cultures exist.

There exist complex systems of understanding about life and death that govern the life of our communities. And of course these systems of understanding influence the organization of social and familial relationships and the customs surrounding health and illness. One of these cultural expressions, of social relations and organizations, is the model of attention to health with community roots, which can be recognized as indigenous or Mayan medicine. This model is structured to solve problems that are recognized as having the following origins: physical, mental, social, and spiritual. According to the Mayan cultural connotation, the understanding of the problems of health and illness are multifaceted and not just the biological facts.

Spiritual guides, midwives, and natural healers acquire and recycle knowledge for the practice of a medical system, which covers diagnosis, treatment, and educational and preventative measures. In order to practice this style of medicine, they prepare and use natural therapeutic resources such as plants, animals, and minerals as well as symbols originating from the spiritual and mental culture known as rituals in which prayers for health are complemented with the use of candles, incense, liquor, and other resources.

The use of other resources from Western medicine fits in with this model when they concur with this understanding of health and illness. In this sense, the Mayan system is not isolated without influence from the modern system or Western medicine. Consequently, "pure Mayan medicine" does not exist, at least not in the practice used today.