D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
July 2009
Modern Medicine Woman
In a remote corner of Catron County, Kiva Rose works to recover and renew the ancient arts of healing with medicinal plants.
By Jess Hardin
A dozen or more interested people take notes as the author and herbalist Kiva Rose leads them along a creek in Southwest New Mexico's Mogollon Mountains. The path leads along the water, where she points out edible dock along its banks and gourmet watercress floating in its current. Then up into a draw with sweet mint that she has them smell and taste, up past silver-green clumps of medicinal moonwort.
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Herbalist Kiva Rose leads walks to teach about medicinal plants. |
"Also known as mugwort, you can use it for hepatitis and many digestive issues," she explains. "It works well as a tea or tincture, but can also be prepared as an aromatic oil or healing salve."
On Kiva's left, at the base of the pines, she shows them skullcap, excellent for relaxing nervous energy. To her right she points out redroot, best known for its remarkable ability to drain the lymph and increase the quality and viscosity of the blood.
"My grandmother used to know the names of all the plants around here," a woman in her 50s speaks up to say, "but neither my mother nor I thought to ask her about them when she was alive."
Kiva Rose understands what has been lost in the past few generations, as modern culture has moved us from knowing how to feed and heal ourselves and our families and neighbors, to knowing nothing about locally available plants and depending completely on supermarket imports and the expensive western health care system. Some of her workshop participants are couples responding to the economic downturn with increased attention to self-care, survival and self-sufficiency. A few are young women wanting to learn what it takes to start down the road to becoming medicine women themselves.
"A medicine woman is any woman for whom tending and healing is a calling and priority, servicing the people of her community," Kiva explains, "and not just healing our ailments but our spirits, the hurting planet and ongoing injustices."
With her long reddish-blonde hair and close-set eyes, Kiva looks more like a Norse woman than the black-haired Hispanic abuelas who practiced the healing arts before her in this region, or the dark-skinned Mogollon Indians who gathered precious medicinal herbs some 1,000 or more years before. And yet in her own way, she has joined their ranks and lineage, doing all she can to preserve existing wild foods and healing herbs information while incorporating her own intuitive ideas and the results of the latest scientific studies.
Kiva does all her work on a donations basis, including online healing consultations, mentoring apprentices and hosting events at her botanical sanctuary and learning center, located in a river canyon 100 miles north of Silver City. In 2005 she established the contemporary Medicine Woman Tradition, launching a comprehensive year-long correspondence course and accepting a limited number of student interns. Herbalists, healers and everyday people from all over the world regularly check in on her blog on the Internet, where she discusses wild foods foraging and her experiences with the more effective natural remedies: usnea for infections, yarrow as an wound healer, vervain for nervousness, nettle infusions for arthritis and allergies.
She recently stirred up the holistic teaching community with an article featuring her rediscovery of common backyard goldenrod for the rapid relief of muscle aches. She garnered additional national attention for her writings on elderberry elixir — apparently more effective than echinacea for modulating the immune system and lessening or preventing the symptoms of infections and colds.
"I don't try to replace regular doctors, and sometimes I advise my clients to see a specialist," Kiva says. "On the other hand, there are many imbalances we can treat with diet and herbs, with far less side effects. And the most advanced modern drugs are usually developed from or inspired by the healing chemicals naturally found in plants."
Besides studying and working with native Southwestern herbs, Kiva is also reaching out to the eldest healers in her home state of New Mexico in order to preserve and put to use their traditional healing knowledge. "Much of the old wisdom has been lost, with the grandmothers often dying without their knowledge being passed down to a younger generation," she says. "Part of my work is to search them out, and learn from them what I can."
Most recently Kiva has been asking around Las Cruces for a onetime Reserve curandera called Jovita, asking anyone with information about her or other elderly healers to write or email her.
"Health is determined by what we eat as well as how we treat problems," she says as the Plant Walk breaks for lunch, "and healing is not just about repairing damage but changing how we live and respond — in ways that make a wonderfully awakened and healthy life possible."
Kiva Rose will host a Medicine Woman Gathering, Aug. 7-12. For information, write Anima Learning & Retreat Center, Box 688, Reserve, NM 87830, or see www.animacenter.org Her blog, Medicine Woman's Roots: Healing Plants of the Gila, can be found at medicinewomansroots.com She can be reached at kiva@bearmedicineherbals.com