Cahal Pech
Join O.N.E. and Dr. Rosita Arvigo, renowned author and healer, for the Macal River teleseminar as part of our Rivers of Life Series. Dr. Rosita shares about this river which was the life-blood of an ancient Mayan civilization and still important to the people there today. It was also in the skirt of this river that Rosita studied with mentor, healer and shaman, Don Elijio Panti and established the Ix Chel Research Center.
The Macal River flows through the Cayo District in western Belize and eventually into the Belize River. Sites along the river include the ancient Mayan town of Cahal Pech and the Belize Botanic Gardens. The river is a meandering waterway flowing through rugged mountains and countless ancient archaeological sites. It was one of the ancient Maya’s superhighways, linking urban, trade and ceremonial centers and connecting the interior to the coastal trade routes. After linking up with the Mopan at Branch Mouth, it joins the Old Belize River to carry on down to the coast. For centuries it was a vital part of the Maya Empire and an important source of water, transport, communication, trade, food, hygiene and recreation for the Maya.
Rosita Arvigo is a Doctor of Naprapathy, ethnobotanist, spiritual healer, author of six books on traditional healing of Central America, co-founder of The Belize Ethnobotany Project with Dr. Michael Balick of the New York Botanical Garden , and an international speaker. She is the founder of Ix Chel Tropical Research Centre in Belize, the Rainforest Medicine Trail, the Terra Nova Medicinal Plant Reserve, and the children’s Bush Medicine Summer Camp in Belize. She had a thirteen-year apprenticeship to one of the last Maya shamans, Don Elijio Panti, who was born in Peten, Guatemala. She is the recipient of The Earth Award, 2007. As founder of THE ARVIGO TECHNIQUES OF MAYA ABDOMINAL THERAPY she teaches extensive courses on the subject as well as courses in Maya Spiritual Healing.
“It is folly to ignore the sacred in life or medicine, skirting the spiritual has had a shattering effect on every dimension of contemporary existence.”
Dr. Arvigo has lived among the Maya in San Ignacio, Belize for the past thirty-five years. Not only has Rosita’s life’s work kept Maya medicine alive, but she has been instrumental in cataloging and preserving thousands of healing plants and trees of Belize through her work with Dr. Michael Balick of The New York Botanical Garden and the Belize Ethnobotany Project which ran from 1987-1996. For more information about Dr. Arvigo please visit her website.
Macal River
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