Plants as Allies, Meditation and Energy Cultivation

Cachora Guitemea has served his life of more than eighty years as an herbalist, healer, and traditional spiritual leader of the Yaqui people. From Rio Yaquie, Sonora, he has come to share these special sacred teachings of health and healing, to help bring humans and mother earth into unity and a more haronious balance. In Cachora’s view, “The way to the spirit is through the appreciation and knowledge of plants” and “the way to the infinite is through the experience of this harmonious whole.”

Recently, I traveled to a place in the Baja California Mountains to speak with Cachora. He impressed me immediately as a man of wisdom and spirit. He reminds me of the Dalai Lama, he has the same ageless being and a joy so tangible it leaps from his physical body to all who encounter him. He is a man of few words, but of knowledge of truth and a presence so great it is transmitted without words, without effort and without a doubt as to their veracity. I first asked Ken Small, before I had met him, what Cachora was like and he said, “He has the clearest intent of any persona I have ever met.”

So it is with honor and reverence that I introduce Cachora to you. He is an incredible man and an incredible healer. I feel more hope for our times knowing that there is a man like him in this world.

V: Cachora, could you tell us a little of your tradition and history?
C: My name is Cachora Guitemea. I was born in Rio Yaqui more than eighty years ago. My father, Javali, was what we in the Yaqui would call a man of knowledge or sometimes a Nagual or what I prefer, a “doctor del campo.”

The beginning of my story comes from around 1500 AD when the Spaniards came, when the different civilization came with its new language, new religion of Christianity and foreign customs. Everything natural in the Yaqui world began to become distorted then. The Conquistadors were very aggressive and enslaved the Yaqui. We were then a very natural people without any defenses or protection. ( . . . more)